Firms with Bush-Cheney Ties Secure Hurricane Rebuild Contracts

The facts don’t lie, people do. They lie, they cheat, they steal and they become politicians. As the facts are presented today, we know that at least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush?s former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency have secured millions in government contracts without public bid.

The Shaw Group and a Halliburtion subsidiary, Kellogg, Brown & Root are the two which have secured contracts for the Hurricane relief in the gulf coast. According to the New York Times:

Congress appropriated $62.3 billion in emergency financing after Hurricane Katrina struck. So far, a total of $15.8 billion has been allocated from a FEMA-managed disaster relief fund, of which $11.6 billion has been committed through contracts, direct aid to individuals or work performed by government agencies.

Already, questions have been raised about the political connections of two major contractors – the Shaw Group
and Kellogg, Brown & Root, a subsidiary of Halliburton – that have been represented by the lobbyist Joe M. Allbaugh, President Bush’s former campaign manager and a former leader of FEMA.

‘When you do something like this, you do increase the vulnerability for fraud, plain waste, abuse and mismanagement,’ said Richard L. Skinner, the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security, who said 60 members of his staff were examining Hurricane Katrina contracts. ‘We are very apprehensive about what we are seeing.’

The Shaw Group’s Executive VP is retired Marine Corps Gen. Michael DeLong who was deputy commander of central command, the headquarters for U.S. forces in Iraq from 2000 to 2003. The Shaw Group as well as Halliburton also heads up many of the contracts secured (also with out bid) for environmental and public infrastructure building in Iraq (DeLong Link).

Bechtel was also awarded major contracts and was a major benefactor for contracts rebuilding Iraq after the second wave of strikes on Iraq (CorpWatch link on Iraq contracts linked to US officials)

Halliburton (KBR) has already shown to abuse the contracts and manipulate the political environment to their favor in Iraq, and this may be another case where political favoritism is funneling US Tax dollars directly into the hands of corporate controllers with direct ties to the president, vice president and his cabinet members.

With Rita coming to TX and LA over the weekend it looks like this abuse will continue to be unobstructed – Get you’re US contracts today! You must be qualified to apply though (meaning be old chums of Joe Allbaugh). Allbaugh’s Baton Rouge-based Shaw Group, has updated its Web site to say: “Hurricane Recovery Projects — Apply Here!”