Below the Belt:
PARDON MY CYNICISM
A Biweekly Column by
NOW President Kim Gandy
From the Web, August
30, 2006
"Make Levees, Not War" was one of
many Katrina-related t-shirts that were still in abundance when I last visited
my beloved New Orleans in mid-August.
Now hurricane season is upon us, and we are still making war, but the levees
aren't even close to ready for another storm the magnitude of Katrina.
Driving past miles and miles of abandoned homes, the scene of devastation looked
virtually unchanged since my first post-Katrina trip in November, when we
marched across the Gretna bridge that had been notoriously blocked to New
Orleanians fleeing Katrina.
What happened to the promises? Where did all the billions go?
Pardon my cynicism, but has it occurred to anyone that Bush's "mismanagement" of
the Katrina aftermath actually accomplished longstanding political goals while
benefiting his political allies? Before you think I've lost my mind, or
have become too cynical for words, hear me out.
The Bush administration's neglect of the levee system (including drastically
cutting the levee rebuilding budget every year since 2001 -- but for which there
might never have been such a disaster), and their helter-skelter awarding of
massive (and massively mismanaged) no-bid contracts to political friends, gave
the Bush administration a "three-fer."
It let them:
(1) give billions upon billions of tax dollars to their conservative corporate
allies (and Republican donors) like Halliburton, Bechtel and Blackwater, without
adequate oversight to prevent waste and fraud;
(2) use those same billions of dollars of expenditures as an excuse to demand
dramatic cuts to the budget for federal human needs programs, which they'd been
looking to get rid of anyway; and as a bonus, or lagniappe as we say in
New Orleans,
(3) give the Republican party the likelihood of another governorship, another
U.S. Senate seat, and perhaps another House seat -- by making it virtually
impossible for most of the African-American residents to return to the area,
thereby locking in the demographic shift in the traditionally-Democratic New
Orleans population.
I know "eptitude" isn't a word, but you can't really call it ineptitude when it
gets you what you want, right?
The war profiteers have also become disaster profiteers, and Gulf Coast
residents are preyed upon daily.
Contractors are raking in billions, and pocketing a fortune. The reported
difference between the actual price for doing a job and the amount billed to
taxpayers was as high as 1700 percent, according to The Washington Post.
While in-state businesses in need of work (but without the right political
connections) have received a paltry 13% of the lucrative rebuilding contracts.
And guess which contractors are at the top -- pocketing hundreds of millions of
dollars in profits, while the work on the ground is done shoddily or not at all
-- you got it, the same politically-connected ones who engaged in questionable
practices on jobs they were hired to do in Iraq.
After a year of complaints that numerous insurance companies were refusing to
pay valid claims, there are now reports of insider allegations that State Farm
hid evidence of covered wind damage in order to decline claims, saying instead
that the damage was caused primarily by water, a non-covered risk.
Residents who desperately want to return are prevented by limited housing and
spiraling prices. Even the public housing projects, which were essentially
undamaged, have been boarded up and the prior residents prohibited from
returning to their apartments, because city leaders want to tear the buildings
down. Maybe so they can build that "Trump Tower" the city leaders have
been touting.
For those of us who promised a year ago that we would not forget New Orleans,
and that we would not let others forget -- it's time to renew that promise.
We cannot let the disaster profiteers and their government sponsors destroy the
legacy of a diverse people and a beautiful culture.
Together we can and must demand the rebuilding of ALL of New Orleans and the
Gulf Coast, until we can again laissez les bons temps rouler.
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