Ummm... yeah, all those hundreds of thousands of displaced poor population in New Orleans who are all Federal contractors...

You seem to be missing the point of the President's action. Construction is expensive, the biggest part of that expense being labor. By removing the wage restriction (A.K.A. price fixing!), you LOWER the cost of rebuilding for that guy who only makes 18 G a year!

Gomez 10 Sep 2005

ADDENDUM: Not that your average New Orleanean would hire Federal contractors to fix their house. The Davis-Bacon act only applies to public buildings not private residences. But the point remains, spending less money on reconstruction, even post offices and libraries, means more money in pocket for the taxpayers of the city to spend on getting their own lives together.

Gomez 10 Sep 2005

Sorry, Gomez, we're just gonna have to disagree on this one. I never said anything about private citizens using Federal contractors to rebuild their homes. Of course those contracts pertain to public buildings, roads, services, etc. being re-built. And who works for those companies? Typically, the guys who before the storm were being paid the prevailing wage of $9/hour.

You prove my point with your first comment. The guy making 18K a year that has to re-build his house doesn't get the wage break the government gives itself. I completely understand that it makes it cheaper for the government to re-build all these things. But at what cost to the guy doing the job? The entire nation is absorbing these costs, yet the guy working on the project, who may need that 9 bucks an hour, now can't get it.

andrew 10 Sep 2005

Davis-Bacon only covers buildings.. roads are under dept. of transportation (interstates only that is-the roads in N.O. are under LA state dept. of transportation juristiction) . The number of people affected by the potential and voluntary wage decrease is miniscule.

"The guy making 18K a year that has to re-build his house doesn't get the wage break the government gives itself"

Yes he does. He gets the benefit of lower costs of rebuilding. Meaning more money in his pocket. Trying to lower the costs of the reconstruction is a perfectly rational approach to help people.

I dunno, all this politicizing of this disaster just makes me sick. Everyone in this country is trying to help out. Not that I think the administration is beyond reproach for the way it has handled itself thusfar, but my cringe-o-meter goes red evertime I hear people insinuate that the adminstration is somehow out there deliberately trying to hurt people.

Anyhow, there are going to be PLENTY of non-federal jobs for anyone who may get a pay reduction. If that person's economic value is indeed at the level that it was arbitrarily set at before the President's decision, he should very easily be able to find work elsewhere in the private sector. This is what a market economy is all about.

gomez 10 Sep 2005

The politicization is both sickening and unavoidable. Unavoidable because the GOP's foreign and domestic policy directly increased the potential for a disastrous situation in the gulf region. Sickening because we were shown just how vulnerable we are as a result of gross negligence, incompetence, cronyism and mis-management—at all levels of government, and by members of both major parties.

No one gets off on this one. Although he is incapable, Bush should be ashamed of appointing a phony horse judge to head FEMA. And the 95 senators who weren't at his 42 minute appointment hearing have some questions to answer as well.

But BushCo is in charge of all three branches of our federal government, yet somehow manages to always duck taking responsibility for the mess. Interesting, that. They're real good at handing out medals and cushy jobs, though. Oh, and scripts.

Tomorrow is four years since 9/11, and do you feel safer? More secure? I don't.

Gomez, I understand that suspending the Davis-Bacon Act probably isn't the most nefarious thing Bush has done in the past couple of weeks. I just find it interesting that this is one of the things that manages to make it to his priority list of "things to do today" (which I envision gets written on a little horse-y cowboy pad of paper, but that's just me). Gotta make sure we take care of them government contractors! Yee haw!

After all, it ain't going to be the guy hopefully making 9 bucks an hour at those $1000/plate dinners as the GOP attempts to...er...mend fences over the next few election cycles.

andrew 10 Sep 2005

"But BushCo is in charge of all three branches of our federal government, yet somehow manages to always duck taking responsibility for the mess. Interesting, that."

Bollocks! Bush is taking a beating in the polls!

"The politicization is both sickening and unavoidable. Unavoidable because the GOP's foreign and domestic policy..."

So now we have to politicize politicizing?

Gomez 11 Sep 2005

"Bollocks! Bush is taking a beating in the polls!"

As well he should. However, reacting to poll numbers isn't quite the same as taking responsiblity for massive fuck-ups on your watch.

"So now we have to politicize politicizing?"

...and you've completely missed my point. Which isn't really surprising.

andrew 11 Sep 2005

""So now we have to politicize politicizing?"

...and you've completely missed my point. Which isn't really surprising.""

Your point was, as you wrote it, that GOP policies are why politicization is unavoidable. Politicization is not a result of a single party's policies as you suggest, it's a result of placing every aspect of our lives in the political realm. Simple things, like driving a bus two blocks to rescue up trapped people, become group descisions mired in bureaucracy. People start to point fingers and make decisions based on broader, unrelated ideologies like race, class or political affiliation rather than doing the fucking obvious job that's right in front of them.

Gomez 11 Sep 2005

Look, I think 100% of everyone everywhere would much rather be talking about what a great job the City of NO did, and what a great job the Govs. of LA/MS/AL did, and what a great job FEMA did. But they're not. Why? Because everyone screwed up and people died as a result. Who screwed up and how? That question certainly begins at the top, at the front door of the White House, which is currently inhabited by a guy who ran on a platform of securing the homeland, and supposedly put people and plans in place to do just that. And we just saw how well thats workin' out for him, and all of us.

So, if you want to say critics calling a spade a spade is "politicization," well, I guess that's what we'll call it. But the bottom line is, these guys didn't get the job done, and have now put the Rove Spin Machine into overdrive to attempt to cover their asses.

Instead of saying, "...and Brownie, you're doin' a heck of a job," Bush would have gained much more support and respect if he'd instead gone to the region looking for Mike Brown's head on a platter, and brought along someone to replace him who actually knew how to handle a crisis. Christ, there's probably a dozen guys in Florida alone he's played golf with who have more hurricane relief experience than Brown. But that would require someone in this administration to admit they made a mistake, and in their reality distortion field, that automatically puts them on the side of the terrorists.

andrew 11 Sep 2005

gomez, you should have stopped with the rape joke... you are sick of politicization? I'm sick of g-dummy always being given the benefit of the doubt by people like you - I think I read Andrew pointing a finger at the entire Senate, but you missed that.

I know you claim to be a libertarian, but what's it going to take for "conservatives" to find fault with this commander in chief? Getting a blow-job from an intern? please... I don't think those Federal Contractors are going to pass along the savings to the US public - at least that hasn't been the case with the corporations who are getting paid rebuilding Iraq - does anyone other than those displaced make any sacrifice?

You oughtta go to your boss and ask to be paid less for the time that you spent back and forth online this morning. Then, please post how good you felt about it, cause this site could use something funny after that exchange.

pazen 12 Sep 2005

Gomez. People did help... Imagine what they could have done with help from the government. Instead a C-student frat-boy cheerleader from Yale who has laid waste to the country over the last 5 years had to be led by the nose past his own idiotic tone-deaf response to reality. That's some leadership. The Red Cross was told not to enter New Orleans for days, a bridge out of New Orleans to some white-bred suburb was defended at gunpoint by the National Guard so that the adjoining suburb wouldn't "become another superdome," while people died in the sun and filth over 5 days.

jpg 13 Sep 2005

Jpg, I've edited your comment. This thread has been heated, but it has never been personal.

andrew 13 Sep 2005