New Katrina Contracts Awarded; Include Fluor, Bechtel, Halliburton

Once again, the same massive corporations that have
screwed up the Iraq reconstruction, screwed up numerous US projects,
and been fined for overcharges and wage and safety violations, have
been rewarded by the Bush Administration.

FEMA reports today
that 5 of the nation’s major corporations have been contracted to
“speed emergency housing relief” to the Gulf Coast. “Fluor Corp. of
Aliso Viejo, Calif. heads up operations for the Housing Area Command.
An engineering and construction firm, it is now in Louisiana beginning
construction on temporary housing units that will provide electricity,
potable water and sanitary sewage facilities. Bechtel National Inc. of
San Francisco, an engineering and construction firm that is now on the
scene in Gulf states to provide emergency housing relief.” This in
addition to the $500 million contract KBR has already received for
clean up and repairs to Gulf Coast military facilities.

This time Bush gave these corporations an extra benefit, they won’t even have to pay prevailing wages, as was reported earlier.
I imagine the next pronouncement will be that Gulf Coast residents
didn’t return which is why we will need Latino immigrants and the
associated illegal immigrants who will work for minimum wage or less.

But with all of these billions for these corporate contracts, we still can’t manage to get a hot meal and hot shower

for our troops and other first responders, a task managed on the
wildfire lines across the country every single day. Paige Benson, a
volunteer, said to Anderson Cooper yesterday:

COOPER: You came in
— what are you doing here now? BENSON: We’re down here serving meals
to all the troop and to all the police officers.
COOPER: Now, you
would think that there would be someone doing that. I mean, you’d think
that there would be some federal, you know, meal services company doing
that, but there’s not. This is all donated food.
BENSON: Right. It’s
donated food from our small community. They sent — three people came
down here with their grills and started the whole thing. Eddie Warner
(ph) got the call and he showed up here that night.
COOPER: And they thought they were going to feed a couple hundred people. How many people are you feeding now?
BENSON: Six-thousand meals were served today

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