government liberal? Look who’s talking
By Steve Rundio
Still don’t believe big-government conservatism exists? Compare
spending patterns of the Clinton and Bush years. Under Clinton, federal spending went up 13.3 percent over eight years. Bush needed just
four years to jack up spending by 19.7 percent. The difference isn’t defense spending. Clinton raised non-defense discretionary spending
by 15.1 percent in eight years. Under four years of Bush, it’s up 25.3 percent. …
There’s nothing good about big-
government conservatism. It’s an iron triangle of politicians, lobbyists and industry wallowing in the spoils of government
contracting and favoritism linked to campaign contributions. The recipient of big-government liberalism is likely to be a 90-year-old who
can’t get out of bed, or a pregnant teen in need of pre-natal care. The recipient of big-government conservatism is a
Halliburton executive or someone who lobbies on Halliburton’s behalf.
[via Coco and Tim McGivern]
—–
The Progress Report – American Progress Action Fund
KATRINA: New Problem, Same Mistakes
by Judd Legum,
Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney, Amanda Terkel, Payson Schwin and Christy Harvey
Already, watchdog groups, “including two in New York
that have monitored the post-9/11 reconstruction of Lower Manhattan,” are warning Gulf Coast leaders to “closely monitor the design of
Hurricane Katrina aid packages so that low- and moderate-income people, unemployed workers, and small businesses are treated fairly.”
They pointed out that after 9/11, “rules that normally restrict federal economic funding to primarily benefit low- and moderate-income
communities were stripped out,” as is being suggested now. As a result, the groups says, “much of the $20 billion allocated for
economic development has benefited real estate developers and wealthy neighborhoods.”
—–
Reconstruction of New Oraq By Tom Engelhardt and Nick Turse
Leading the list was Kellogg, Brown & Root (KBR), a
subsidiary of the energy firm Halliburton, the mega-corporation Vice President Dick Cheney once presided over. From providing
fuel to building bases, doing KP to supplying laundry soap, it supported the newly privatized, stripped-down American military — and for
that it “received more money from the U.S. involvement in Iraq than any other contractor,” a sum that has already crested ten billion
dollars with no end in sight. The Bechtel Corporation, the San Francisco-based engineering firm, known at home for its staggering cost
overruns on Boston’s “Big Dig” and its especially close ties to the Republican Party, raked in almost $3 billion in Iraq reconstruction
contracts just in the nine months after the fall of Saddam Hussein. …
In fact, with Congress already making a $62
billion initial down payment on post-Katrina reconstruction work, the Bush administration has just given out its first 6 reconstruction
contracts, five of them — could anyone be surprised — to Iraqi reconstructors, including Fluor. Small world indeed.
The Bush version of crony capitalism should perhaps be termed predatory capitalism, following as it does so closely in
the wake of war and natural disaster much as camp followers used to trail armies, ready, in case of victory, to loot the baggage train of
the enemy.
But let’s pull back for a moment and try to reconstruct, however briefly, at least a modest picture of the massively
interconnected world of the reconstructors. A good place to start is with George Bush’s pal Joseph Allbaugh, a member of his “so-called
iron triangle of trusted Texas cohorts.” Allbaugh seems to display in his recent biography just about every linkage that makes New Oraq
what it is clearly becoming. He ran the Bush presidential campaign of 2000; and subsequently was installed as the director of FEMA which,
in congressional testimony, he characterized as “an overstuffed entitlement program,” counseling (as Harold Meyerson of the American
Prospect pointed out recently) “states and cities to rely instead on ‘faith-based organizations… like the Salvation Army and the
Mennonite Disaster Service.” …
George Bush’s version of capitalism is of a predatory, parasitical kind. It
feeds on death, eats money, goes home when the cash stops flowing, and leaves further devastation in its wake. New Orleans, like a
rotting corpse, naturally attracts all sorts of flies.