New Orleans is at the heart of America’s most extensive and lucrative petroleum reserves and ground zero for massive defense infrastructure. Like so many before them, post-Katrina contracts benefited Bush cronies like Donald Bollinger—CEO of Louisiana’s Bollinger Shipyards—and Joe Canizaro—a wealthy real estate developer and leading Bush supporter-- and the elite CEO members of committees and boards dictating structural changes behind the scenes.
Northrup Grumman director Lewis Coleman is also director of the international “non-government” organization Conservation International and of the philanthropic Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The former (CI) is involved in defense, intelligence and mining projects in Central Africa and the Amazon, while the latter funds big industrial development agencies involved in undersea ventures (Woods Hole, Chemical Heritage Foundation) and, at the same time, many of the so-called “environmental” and “conservation” organizations involved in wetlands, oceans and other natural resource protection: World Wildlife Fund, Ocean Conservancy, Wildlife Conservation Society, National Audubon Society, and Environmental Defense (Fund).
Northrup Grumman directors Ronald Sugar and Kevin W. Sharer are also directors of Chevron Corporation, another of the many petroleum majors deeply responsible for devastating the natural and social environments of the Gulf Coast.
Norman R. Augustine, Former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Lockheed Martin Corporation, is also on the Advisory Council for the Department of Homeland Security. Lockheed Martin’s Vice-President of Communications, Mary Jo Polidore is on the board of directors of United Way of Tarrant County (Texas), whose officers also include a Bell Helicopter/Textron executive.
Entergy Corporation director J. Wayne Leonard is a trustee of the United Way of Greater New Orleans. Entergy Louisiana, the state’s largest utility, declared bankruptcy in September 2005, and thereby gained a government (taxpayers) bailout. [22] Entergy Louisiana earned about $168 million in 2004, while Entergy’s overall revenues were $2.4 billion in 2004. (Note: If corporations’ subsidiaries incur losses they are transferred to taxpayers and ratepayers, but profits go straight to directors and shareholders.) Meanwhile, over two years after Katrina, electrical wires still dangle all around the Ninth Ward and Gentilly.
Louisiana Governor Kathleen Blanco appointed E. Renae Conley, the CEO of Entergy Louisiana, to the Board of Directors for the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation (LDRF), established just after Katrina to fund “disaster relief.” E. Renae Conley also serves on Louisiana’s Cultural Economy Foundation Board and as a member of Governor Blanco’s Advisory Commission for Coastal Restoration and Conservation.
LDRF director C. Berwick Duval, an attorney for the New Orleans law firm Duval, Funderburk, Sundbery, Lovell & Watkin, is also an executive director of the Coastal Conservation Association of Louisiana, the Bayou Chapter of Coastal Conservation Association, and the South Central Industrial Association.
Is this a perfect example of industrial expansion masking its devastating activities with a “conservation” front and profiting off misery and destruction through a “humanitarian” front like the Louisiana Disaster Recovery Foundation?
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