JUST WHEN YOU THOUGHT HE COULD STOOP NO LOWER, HE CUTS KATRINA LABORERS' WAGES TO BELOW MINIMUM

'Fool me once, shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again.'

--unless you're the American public, if they put up with this.

No mention, though, of price restraints on the no-bid contracts, or any hint at limiting executive salaries or corporate profits; this has made Fluor, Bechtel, Halliburton The Shaw Group (represented by Allbaugh, who gave us Michael Brown) very happy, because they can use those extra pennies that the underprivileged-anyway laborers won't really need, since they're so lucky now.

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"The order cancels 'prevailing wages,' which assure that workers on federal jobs receive hourly pay akin to workers doing similar work in those areas. Prevailing wages in the Deep South states are barely above poverty: $9.55 an hour, for example, for a construction laborer in New Orleans.

Now Bush is yanking away even that shaky floor - for the very same people hardest hit by the nation's worst natural disaster. We don't know how much that poor laborer will earn under Bush's decree, but let's face it, we're talking about slave wages here for a desperate group of workers washed out of their homes, out of their jobs, out of the world as they knew it.

Bush did this on the same day when he called on the Lord.

Does this man have no shame? Is there no level he won't stoop to, to line the pockets of his buddies in business? We might wonder how his mother could have raised him this way, but we've already seen Barbara Bush's disgraceful statements about low-income people.

Consider, Bush has put little or nothing in place to control the money that will flow to businesses receiving chunks of the $62.3 billion authorized so far for Katrina relief. Five private firms have already been hired, and a sixth, Vice President Cheney's Halliburton, is already on the job, according to The Wall Street Journal."

They have the biggest shovels, too... More

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"Joe M. Allbaugh, a close friend of President Bush's, the president's 2000 campaign manager and the FEMA director from 2001 to 2003, and James Lee Witt, an Arkansan close to former President Bill Clinton and a former FEMA director, are now high-priced consultants, and they have been offering their services to companies seeking or holding federal contracts in the post-Katrina gold rush."

And who gets that gold, I wonder.... More

w/big thanks to Melissa

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Talking Points Memo on Allbaugh

w/thanks to chancy

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Firms with White House ties get Katrina contracts