|
Disaster Hustlers
March
4, 2010
by Jamala Rogers
(continued from front page)
Because the cameras are gone, we don’t know that a third of the
addresses in the city are vacant or abandoned, the highest rate
in the nation. We don’t know that rent rates have doubled and
tripled to keep poor folks out of the city. We don’t know that
thousands are squatting and thousands more are homeless. We
don’t know that 82 percent of the landlords refuse to accept
Section 8 vouchers, according to New Orleans Fair Housing Action
Center.
We still don’t know the identity of some victims because of
budget restraints to analyze DNA. We still don’t know the exact
number of missing and dead.
We barely got the news that the New Orleans voters left in the
city elected a white mayor. New Orleans is still in a state of
deliberate incompleteness, with political pimps and contract
hustlers at the feeding trough.
In response to the earthquake in Haiti, ABC News reported that
Americans donated half a billion dollars to 23 American
charities. Seventy percent of that has not been spent. Billions
more in aid came from countries around the world. There has been
little accounting for that money.
Because the cameras are gone, we don’t know that there are only
900 latrines in Port-au-Prince for about one million people. We
don’t know how many are dead or missing. We don’t know what
provisions have been made for temporary housing to accommodate
the million dislocated Haitians. We don’t know if the charitable
relief is making it to the people.
We don’t know that private military contractors are being used
for security services in Haiti and will likely end up getting
contracts for reconstruction as well.
Where there’s money, there’s a hustler. I’m not talking about
someone coming in and selling bottled water. I’m talking about
big dollars.
Companies like AshBritt live for these kinds of disasters. The
Institute for Southern Studies recently exposed AshBritt is a
company which, because of its political connections, received a
no-bid contract to remove debris in the Gulf Coast area. The
company subcontracted out much of the work. Some of those
contractors are still waiting to be paid.
In “A Failure of Initiative: Final Report of the Select
Bipartisan Committee to Investigate the Preparation for and
Response to Hurricane Katrina,” AshBritt’s questionable
practices came under scrutiny. The company is still under
investigation for their work after Hurricane Wilma where the
company allegedly overbilled the Broward, Florida school
district.
Ashbritt is now in Haiti, boasting about its cleanup operations
in the Gulf and how many jobs it will bring to the suffering
country exploited by a long list of native and non-native blood
suckers.
Through the U.S. Agency for International Aid, $20 million was
awarded to three companies: Chemonics, Internews and Development
Alternatives Inc. According to the Miami Herald, these were
no-bid contracts. Someone’s friends are getting the big hook-up
at the expense of the Haitian people’s suffering.
Now there’s a tragedy in Chile – an earthquake of such powerful
force, it may have changed the Earth’s axis. And disaster
hustlers are lining up.
|
