Wow, that took even less time than I expected. Halliburton has already secured no-bid contracts for Katrina clean-up.

CNN video here.

BTW, that's the same company that still pays Dick Cheney $194,000 a year.

andrew 12 Sep 2005

Any bets as to whether Haliburton will be taking less than the $9/hr prevailing wage as payment for their services in NOLA?

mollusk 13 Sep 2005

Sorry to be off-topic. But, this is a response to the previous thread that was shut down:

I never said bush was blameless. And there are PLENTY of conservatives who find fault with the president. Browse the pages of any conservative journal.

My comments defending him were only referring to the original posting about wage controls. Of all the posts, yours was the only to directly argue the action of the President and it's potential ineffectiveness if companies don't "pass on the savings." There's a chance they won't. When your customer is government, pleasing the customer means jockeying for political favor (a core point of the libertarian position for privatization). But this doesn't take away the fact the study after nobel-prize-winning economic study that show wage controls hurt the economy. Unlike the opposite position, there is little to no chance that artifically raising wages would show any economic benefit for the people of New Orleans, and a good chance that it will actually hurt them in the long run.

My point on politicization is more about people using the tragedy to demigogue and gain politcal clout in whatever their pet agenda happened to be. In the case of some, their pet agenda can, perhaps wrongly, be interpreted as a pathological hatred of the president.

And finally, I don't work in the mornings. My time is split between watching my daughter, doing my art and receiving my talking points from my real boss, the great glowing Karl Rove palantir.

Gomez 13 Sep 2005

Gomez, I read your "disclaimer" regarding blame for all - including the boy wonder. But I chose to be brief rather than cover every bit of minutiae in that thread. If you would like to continue straddling the line between being a Libertarian and a human being, that is fine with me. My interest in that thread skewed more towards the wage issue than the politicization - and I recognize your point. Seems that you have, on more than one occasion, advocated that if a worker doesn't like the conditions or their wage, they should find another job. Perhaps I am wrong, but you seem to, as g-dummy, consistently side with big business over their workers. I am not trying to anger you, please understand, but in this instance it seems pretty clear that this pro-business administration has again paved the way for record profits over ensuring that the individuals doing the actual labor are protected. I never meant to imply that a laborer should receive MORE pay for rebuilding efforts - I don't think raising wages is the answer here, I am just trying to be fair, I don't want to see wage cuts, that's all.

Look, these clowns might be trying to get the rebuilding accelerated by trying to create incentives for companies to take a stake in the rebuilding, or even demonstrate that they are using exisiting legislation to show that they are doing everything within their means to be pro-active, but I doubt it.

My glib mention of "passing on the savings" is my way of saying I doubt this will actually benefit the American taxpayer. It is certainly not going to help the laborers who could use the gitas. Instead, I see those well-connected outfits getting Gov't contracts, without other bids, and having the greenlight to slash wages to increase profits on top of that. Privatize? Bring it on, but simply start by eliminating these no-bids to friends in the industry.

Damn shame that he wasted all that moolah on battling mullahs, and as an American taxpayer, I'd love to see the actual bill for both campaigns in the middle east with line item expenses for providing "assistance" to countries like Turkey, who made, what - 89 billion to look the other way while we went into Iran from the North? We might actually have enough in the coffers to pay for infrastructure as recommended in NOLA and we wouldn't be faced with this massive bill (or this massive deficit)

A general contractor with 6 laborers as employees is a businessman, able to profit from their service. A GC without the 6 workers is just a carpenter, in their shoes. If that businessman can't turn a profit in what is sure to be a - pardon the pun - slammin' time for builders, perhaps he should look elsewhere for employment.

Lastly, let's take this offline if you want to debate - you can always reach me through CM. And I think you should spend some more time with your daughter than waste any more on half-man half-fish Turd Blossom. I know I shouldn't pick on him because he's still evolving, but that better be one shiny palantir.

pazen 16 Sep 2005