Hurricane Halliburton
By John Nichols
The Nation
Sunday 11 September 2005
With the wheels rolling for the purchase of his own $2.9 million home on the east coast, the Cheney was more or less ready to commiserate with the folks who had lost their homes on the Gulf Coast. Unfortunately, not all of the locals were prepared to thank the vice president for finally showing up.
Cheney was greeted in Gulfport, Mississippi, by a survivor of the disaster who – recalling the veep’s blunt salutation for Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy during a visit to Capitol Hill last year – repeatedly shouted: “Go f— yourself, Mr. Cheney.”
Class envy? Charming. And a dash of ad hominem too. How witty.
If Cheney had actually interacted with anyone on the ground, however, he would have heard a lot more. But the vice presidential visit was merely the latest in a series of photo opportunities by administration aides who are scrambling to undo the damage done by their plodding and disengaged response to a catastrophe that was made much worse by initial federal neglect and incompetence.
Hmm. First he knocks Cheney for not visiting quickly enough, then calls his visit a mere damage control photo op. Something tells me there’s no pleasing Mr. Nichols.
Joe Allbaugh, the former director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, has a new job. He’s lobbying for the Halliburton subsidiary in Washington and elsewhere. Conveniently, Allbaugh showed up in Louisiana on the day before Cheney’s visit with the purpose, in the words of a Washington Post report, of “helping his clients get business.”
Even if Allbaugh drops the ball, Halliburton is well covered.
The vice president can always be counted on to “make certain that we’re doing everything that needs to be done.”
And then the big scary corporation popped out of the closet and gobbled up all the funding that should have gone to our soft headed bleeding heart liberal causes instead. BOO! Why make an argument based on fact when sarcasm and innuendo are so much more entertaining?
KBR (subsidiary of Halliburton) is cleaning up naval facilities throughout the hot zone under an existing $500 million contract. That’s business, who cares.
How that contract is billed in light of the suspension of Davis-Bacon is what Im interested in. In light of all the $4000 hammer stories and missing billions in Iraq, this contract and for that matter all federally funded $$$ spent should be scrutinized. The President has already sent an army of DHS employees to begin the process. Follow the money.
I’m sure the Fourth Estate’s fifth columnists will. Just as we can trust them to fearlessly pursue their patriotic duty to show dead bodies, and more Abu Ghraib photos.
Of course when it comes to investigating something that might reflect badly on local Democrats, eg. where all those decades of government spending on levees, dredging, and flood control went, you can be sure they’ll be too busy covering something else.