Reply #39: Dave - have you been in touch with this guy? [View All]

[radfringe]

Robin Hood in Reverse: The Looting of the Gulf Coast
Tuesday November 14, 2006
Gulf Coast Reconstruction Watch
by Bill Quigley | Justiceforneworleans.org
http://www.reconstructionwatch.org/index.php?s=20&n=87


Robin Hood stole from the rich and gave to the poor. On the Gulf Coast, the reverse is happening. Federal, state and local governments are teaming up with corporations and developers to systematically steal hurricane relief funds from the poor to enrich themselves.

Billions of dollars were given to help the communities damaged by Katrina. The people gave this money to help the working, elderly and disabled people of the Gulf Coast rebuild and restart their lives after Katrina.

--snip--

This corporate plundering follows the path taken in the immediate days after Katrina when politically connected corporations were given hundreds of millions of no-bid contracts. Ashbritt of Florida was awarded a contract over $500 million to clean up debris in Mississippi, despite not owning a single dump truck. Ashbritt had paid a GOP lobbyist firm $40,000 right before the storm and another $50,000 directly to the GOP the year before.

Ceres Environmental of Brooklyn Park, Minn. was given a $500 million contract for debris removal in Louisiana by the Army Corps of Engineers. In the previous four years, the company had received a total of $29 million in government contracts. The Minnesota Office of Environmental Assistance listed the company as a provider of "yard waste compost and horticultural potting soil."

Circle B Enterprises was awarded $287 million in contracts by FEMA to build trailers despite not even being licensed to build homes in its own state of Georgia and filing for bankruptcy in 2003. The company does not even have a Web site.

Other corporations profiting off the devastation include Bechtel, Blackwater, CH2M Hill, Fluor, Halliburton subsidiary KBR and many others.