You can judge from the results what the purpose of the Task Force might have been.
The second aspect of the story, having to do with graft and profiteering, is one that has gotten more coverage, but is still being distorted by Republican noise, beginning with Bush’s Katrina do-over speech given in Jackson Square, New Orleans. Bush almost immediately alluded to now largely discredited accounts of black looting and violence, although, ironically, he adopted en masse economic proposals on reconstruction put out by the Heritage Foundation, including the whole idea of a “Gulf Coast Opportunity Zone.”
With an efficiency belying the administration’s slowness in responding to human suffering, Karl Rove oversaw the awarding of hundreds of millions in no-bid reconstruction contracts within a few weeks. Maybe he was a little too successful. Under pressure from Congress, the new director of FEMA has promised to reopen all no-bid contracts. Still, the fact that the favored businesses are already on the scene gives the original contractors an edge over all other comers. This is a method they’ve successfully employed in the past, which is why I won’t hold my breath waiting for Halliburton, Bechtel, and Fluor to be replaced by local, cheaper contractors. The overwhelming majority of these no-bid contracts went to out-of-state companies, including an Alaskan firm with close ties to Bush.
A lesser known push is for a giant housing project involving the creation of trailer communities for evacuees, in spite of a large number of vacancies in available housing. In the past, housing vouchers have been an efficient way to handle such a situation. According to Paul Krugman, the problem with vouchers, as far as Bush & Co. are concerned, is not that they don’t work, but that they do. FEMA says, “It may not be quite on the scale of building the pyramids, but it’s close. This is big. We’ve never done anything like this.”
Building mobile-home communities also allows the White House to choose new electoral districts for the displaced. New Orleans Republican Craig Romero went to Washington immediately to make the point that his district would go red if the blacks weren’t allowed back. State officials in Louisiana say they are now “virtually certain” they will lose a congressional seat, due to a drop in population, with a concomitant drop in federal revenue. Louisiana could easily go from Blue to Red, statewide and nationally.
Under Karl Rove, the reconstruction effort has become a goldmine for numerous corporations via a legislative agenda that includes:
Gutting the endangered species act. From now on, the government will pay corporations for complying with provisions of the act.
Richard Pombo, Republican from California, seized the moment to relax rules on offshore drilling on both coasts and to encourage oil-prospecting in the Rocky Mountains.
Texas Republican Joe Barton is asking that pollution laws be relaxed
Bush is calling for entitlements to be cut to pay for Katrina, at exactly the same time that taxes are being cut—again—for the wealthiest fraction of one percent of Americans. This time, billionaires are being “relieved” of the inheritance tax, one of the last impediments to inter-generational concentration of wealth.
Finally, to support this radical corporate agenda, the Bushitters propose to amend the Posse Comitatus Act prohibiting domestic use of the military. This, in combination with the packing of the Supreme Court, may be the most ominous structural change of all.
But the radical right was giddy with what was accomplished even before the gravy began to flow. Richard Baker, 10-term Republican from Baton Rouge, enthused, “We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn’t do it, but God did.” Which brings me to the third suppressed aspect of media coverage: the references to racial (and class) cleansing, both coded and explicit.
For example, Bill Bennett joined in the high spirits on his radio show, spontaneously introducing the extremely hypothetical and morally repugnant idea of aborting black fetuses—all of them, Condi—in order to reduce the crime rate.
Bush made a reference to the Great Flood in his Jackson Square speech: “Along this coast, for mile after mile,” George said, talking directly to his base, “the wind and water swept the land clean.” In the Bible story, you’ll remember, God sent a Great Flood to cleanse the land of sinners, who got what they deserved.
Patricia Goldsmith is a member of Long Island Media Watch, a grassroots free media and democracy watchdog group. She can be reached at plgoldsmith@optonline.net.
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