Big money rules in the political world

BILL MINOR: Big money rules in the political world
10/6/2005 5:03:55 AM
Daily Journal

<snip> First reported by The New York Times, and substantiated by a report to a special Katrina state legislative committee, was that a Florida-based company with political ties to Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour had been given a $568 million no-bid contract by FEMA for debris removal.

The company, AshBrit Environmental, as The Times first reported, has been a client of the potent Washington lobbying firm Barbour headed until he ran for Mississippi's governorship in 2003.

AshBrit, according to the Times, paid $40,000 in the first half of 2004 to Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, the Mississippi governor's old lobbying firm, which he had founded after leaving the chairmanship of the Republican National Committee. <snip>

Meantime, Gov. Barbour has installed his nephew, Henry Barbour, as executive director for the 40-member Katrina recovery commission he had appointed two weeks ago. <snip>

http://www.djournal.com/pages/story.asp?ID=203413&pub=1&div=Opinion

in the political world???? . . . who'da thunk it . . .

:sarcasm:

Minorities feel process is awry
By HOPE YEN
Associated Press

<snip> Businesses with more than 50 employees typically must have a written affirmative action plan if they are awarded contracts of more than $50,000. But the Bush administration removed that requirement for three months, saying basic anti-discrimination laws would provide adequate protection.

At a recent meeting in Mississippi for minority businesspeople with federal contracting officials, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said many of the 100 owners walked out in anger when told their best chance of getting work was to seek smaller subcontracts from the larger companies.

The larger companies include Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton, which Vice President Dick Cheney headed from 1995 to 2000; and AshBritt Inc., a Florida company with ties to Mississippi's governor, Haley Barbour, the former chairman of the Republican National Committee. <snip>

http://www.theeagle.com/stories/100505/nation_20051005027.php

"Things fall apart, the center cannot hold"

Examples abound: Katrina, the Iraq fandango, our growing
isolation in foreign affairs, the failure to make timely
economic adjustments to change, the rise of the fundies
(a VERY bad sign), the Rube Goldberg power grid, a defense
business that CANNOT turn out cost-effective weapons, a
tax system that rewards incompetence and does not adequately
fund the government, a political system that provides no
choices ...