Now don't you refugees er, evacuees had connections to the White House? You'd be able to really cash in on disaster.

Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast. One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton. Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

We all know about Cheney's alma mater, Halliburton, which as already received $9 billion in taxpayer dollar contracts. And those are not exactly squeaky clean billions, either:

Pentagon audits released by Democrats in June showed $1.03 billion in "questioned" costs and $422 million in "unsupported" costs for Halliburton's work in Iraq.

But wait, there's more:

TWO BUSH APPOINTEES AT HALLIBURTON Allbaugh formally registered as a lobbyist for Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root in February. In lobbying disclosure forms filed with the Senate, Allbaugh said his goal was to "educate the congressional and executive branch on defense, disaster relief and homeland security issues affecting Kellogg Brown and Root." Melissa Norcross, a Halliburton spokeswoman, said Allbaugh has not, since he was hired, "consulted on any specific contracts that the company is considering pursuing, nor has he been tasked by the company with any lobbying responsibilities." Allbaugh is also a friend of Michael Brown, director of FEMA who was removed as head of Katrina disaster relief and sent back to Washington amid allegations he had padded his resume. A few months after Allbaugh was hired by Halliburton, the company retained another high-level Bush appointee, Kirk Van Tine. Van Tine registered as a lobbyist for Halliburton six months after resigning as deputy transportation secretary, a position he held from December 2003 to December 2004. On Friday, Kellogg Brown & Root received $29.8 million in Pentagon contracts to begin rebuilding Navy bases in Louisiana and Mississippi. Norcross said the work was covered under a contract that the company negotiated before Allbaugh was hired. Halliburton continues to be a source of income for Cheney, who served as its chief executive officer from 1995 until 2000 when he joined the Republican ticket for the White House. According to tax filings released in April, Cheney's income included $194,852 in deferred pay from the company, which has also won billion-dollar government contracts in Iraq.

Then there's Bechtel corporation, which was so closely knit with the Reagan and Bush the elder administrations. Why, in this so-called conservative era, do so many people seem to float back and forth between Republican administrations and government contractor boardrooms? Bush the lesser ran on a platform of "cleaning up government." What is this supposed to be? Clean pork? Of course, even though these corporations are feeding at the taxpayer trough, Bush wanted to give them a little extra juice, so he issued an order allowing them to take advantage of the desperation wrought by Hurricane Katrina and pay the people who do the actual work below the market wage.

The Davis-Bacon law requires federal contractors to pay workers at least the prevailing wages in the area where the work is conducted. It applies to federally funded construction projects such as highways and bridges. Bush's executive order suspends the requirements of the Davis-Bacon law for designated areas hit by the storm. Bush's action came as the federal government moved to provide billions of dollars in aid, and drew rebukes from two of organized labor's biggest friends in Congress, Rep. George Miller of California and Sen. Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts, both Democrats. "The administration is using the devastation of Hurricane Katrina to cut the wages of people desperately trying to rebuild their lives and their communities," Miller said.

In other words, if you're an owner, you get to feed at the taxpayer trough. If you're a worker, you can look forward to cut-rate wages. Why? Why because this is the "ownership society" -- that means the government helps the owners, and the rest of you need to show ID and get into that concentration evacuee camp. Isn't that just lovely? (Via Echidne and DreamOfPeace on Our Word)

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