FEMA hurricane clean-up contracts going to carpetbaggers

The Bush administration is taking its catastrophically succesful approach to rebuilding Iraq, and applying it to the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast:

Companies outside the three states most affected by Hurricane Katrina have received more than 90 percent of the money from prime federal contracts for recovery and reconstruction of the Gulf Coast, according to an analysis of available government data.

More on the flip...

...already the trend toward out-of-state firms is clear, despite pledges by administration officials that federal funds for Katrina relief will become an engine of local economic redevelopment. Among the contracts analyzed, 3.8 percent of the money went to companies that listed an Alabama address, 2.8 percent to firms in Louisiana and just 1.8 percent went for Mississippi contractors. Taken together, that amounts to less than $200 million.

Mind you, these are not high tech jobs that require a special, propietary technology - the argument (largely untrue) that companies like Halliburton used to defend their no-bid contracts in Iraq. We're talking about cleaning up, hauling off, and disposing of debris.

The out-of-state companies are not even employing jobless citizens of the Gulf states. They're bringing in their own employees, who are often being paid less than competitive wages, and who will not be paying income taxes to the hurricane-ravaged states.

Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) was on Franken's show today (which is how I heard about this). According to the WaPost article I link to, he's asked for "...a federal investigation into a no-bid, mobile classrooms contract awarded to an out-of-state company that is subcontracting much of the work. He said the job could have been done directly by an in-state firm for roughly half the price."

Thompson also told Franken and listeners that one of the out-of-state companies now working in Mississippi, and not employing any Mississippians,  still has governor Haley Barbour on its board of directors. (IIRC; if anyone else heard the broadcast, and I don't have Barbour's relationship to the company quite right, please let me know. Barbour was connected to the company in some fashion - that I know.)

I'm sure once word of this has become widespread among Mississippians, Barbour's popularity will soar into the stratosphere, right alongside those of such Republican governors as Taft, Fletcher, Ahhnold et al.