Marauding Barbourism
Bush's press conference emphasized his devotion to spending what it takes to rebuild the Gulf States devastated by Katrina, and now Rita. Perhaps he cares about his red-state kinfolk and genuinely wishes to improve the shattered lives of millions of poor Americans. Or perhaps this is yet another opportunity to line the pockets of his contributors and puppet-masters. Guess what, he kinda let the cat outta the bag:
The first sign of the administration's regressive funding priorities in Katrina's wake was his conspicuously hasty torching of the Davis-Bacon Act, effectively neutralizing whatever benefit blue-collar workers could gain from government contracts. See, the Bush people can move quickly when their objectives are at stake.
The next wave of enacting the Republican goal of wealth transfer has been an absolute stunning replay of no-bid contracts to firms outside the Gulf States but not outside the Republican circle of friends.
And it's all about the Haley Barbour connection.
Barbour is one of the singlemost sleazy corporate whores in American history. He's not just a whore--that word isn't big enough for the level of depravity he's willing to accept for cash--he's a thick-assed, toothless, man-battered, soup-gargling HO-ERR.
As former Chairman of the Republican National Committee he hustled enough johns to start his own lobbying firm. Name an unscrupulous industry (take your pick: pharmaceutical, gambling, music, oil, tobacco...) and Barbour has been their he-bitch: enabling their lax scruples and despoiling public funds.
In 2003 Barbour was elected governor of his home state of Mississippi. Guess how he was able to afford such an endeavor? After a typically racist campaign won him the hearts of the reddest of red states he soon began implementing the will of his pharmaceutical clients with draconian Medicaid restructuring. Barbour simply dropped the 50,000 most needy Mississippians from the Medicaid rolls; and who might benefit from that? Not content to let his pharmaceutical buddies gorge themselves at the state level, Barbour has gone national with his clients' craven appetites.
Welcome Katrina.
Barbour's remarkably unremarkable response to, or preparation for, Hurricane Katrina--on par with his hapless Democratic counterpart in Louisiana--is being retold and respun by the usual suspects in the parrotocracy: it isn't easy to repackage Barbour's pornographic relations with Washington money and Wall Street predators as a benefit to Gulf States, but leave it to Newsweek to obfuscate this orgy of greed which we all pay for.
The corruption which brought us Iraq, has quickly descended upon these Gulf States as yet another opportunity to enrich the rich. Barbour's lobbying firm spawned New Bridge Strategies which, as their home page proudly explains, was created exclusively to exploit Iraq's miseries and America's open wallet. The director is the notorious Joe Allbaugh, whose credits include parlaying a staff position on Bush's Texas political team into directorship of FEMA, only to hand that job to One Heckuva' Brownie. Unlike team Bush, Allbaugh was johnny-on-the-spot for Katrina: that cat was on the ground securing contracts for his clients before Bush could even cancel his vacation.
Is it any wonder that dull parrot supreme Howard Fineman would go onto the September 17th edition of the Chris Matthews Show and reiterate his stock judgment that Barbour is presidential material, all evidence to the contrary. Hey, why not cut out the middle-man puppet-figures like Bush and simply hand the treasury over to these Barboury pirates? Because every pirate needs a beard. And every pirate has his parrot.
Do you get it yet America? Like Iraq, Katrina is yet another excuse to cut spending on hard-won and desperately needed social programs to transfer wealth to the Republicanly well-connected. Complete conversion to a Banana Republic is nearly complete.
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