Posted on 03/20/2006 1:08:44 PM PST by Awgie
What this country has seen over the last two terms of GWB is the opportunity of companies aligned with GWB to make billions when a tragedy occurs ...off of taxpayers money. Big Money! Beyond comprehension.
Halliburton/Bechtel and its no bid contracts in Iraq.They have been paid billions with no oversight enforcement. Is this a correct assumption? If it is not why then are there no voices being heard in opposition? Could it be Apathy.
Katrina/ FEMA contracts. Due to a recent federal court order all FEMA contracts are to be protected by this ruling and the details must remain secret. Nice trump card for the Ultra - rich and connected!
The Washington Post reviewed hundreds of jobs performed by FEMA awarded contractors and found that in most cases the actual companies performing the work were paid normal rates. BUT that big money was paid to a tier or pyramid of companies above the companies that performed the work which increased the costs to the US taxpayers up to 1700%. These companies mostly did absolutely nothing to collect their money. Nothing other than shuffle paper work!
Examples of inflated price costing:
FEMA pays a series of companies to COVER damaged roofs with tarps a temporary measure..at $1.75 per square foot. A 1800 square foot home costs US taxpayers $3150 to have covered in a tarp.
The actual time it takes to cover a roof of this size...two hours. The costs of the tarps...is under 300 dollars. Mostly Mexicans who work for less than 6 dollars per hour perform the work. Of the roofing contractors who were interviewed with the pledge by the Post not to mention their names for fear of being fired....they all said that the cost US taxpayers are being charged would be suffient to place a PERMANENT roof on these houses!
One billion dollars so far has been paid to the Katrina involved companies.
"If this is normal', we have a serious problem in this country", said Ben Rousselle, president of Plaque-mines Parish down river form New Orleans. "The federal government ought to be embarrassed about what is happening. If local governments tried to run things this way, we'd be run out of town."
Its hard to be embarrassed when a billion dollars is lining the pockets of a select few. Those who are well connected, most with ties to Texas companies.
Florida:
The last two years have brought 7 land fall hurricanes. Governor Jeb Bush hires 2 Texan companies to perform the work of Insurance Adjustors for the Florida State Citizen's Insurance company. Theses 2 companies bill out at 500 dollars per hour for Insurance adjusting work. They have no Florida licensed insurance adjustors. So they hire independent adjustors or they have people attend a 2 day class, 4 hours per day and get them licensed. They in turn furnish a software adjusting CD. The independent adjustors then must have a lap top to run this software. The lap top is their own purchase responsibility.
Each adjustor signs a 6 month contract. Pays for all travel expenses, lodging, ect. He or she is paid a percentage of the final adjusted price on each home they view. They get paid at the conclusion of their contract. The time it takes to process the adjustment per home is less than two hours. They enter into their computer certain variables and save the file as such. All files are sent via the internet to these 2 companies each evening. These companies bill out per house adjusting typically $2000 - $3000 per home. The State pays this fee. The commission paid to the independent adjustor...typically $150 per home adjusted.
The Texan companies make a clean 1800- 2800 per house hold. The software is batched by the Texan companies and forwarded via internet for payment by the State of Florida. Basically a hands free transaction.
There have been 177,000 plus homes adjusted over the last 2 years. Approximately a $265,000,000 profit made here if you take in consideration that you allow for approximately 150 dollars per home for administration costs, which is $26,500,000 million dollars. Nice work if you can find it!
When a number of State of Florida Adjustor companies filed suite in Federal court to have access to this big money and resulting contracts. The Court refused to hear the case.
So you see its very important to have all you bases covered. Its nice to know that the last stop for justice is also covered. So you wonder why people in Congress try to prevent the Allen's of the world (GWB failed Federal Court appointee) from getting a seat on the bench!
This rip off of America is a well orchestrated thing. With billions on the line no room for error. No room for disclosure. No room for justice.
This makes the Savings and Loan scandal under Regan a walk in the park. That criminal activity costs the US taxpayers 500 billion dollars. It all was allowed to happen with the drastic funding cuts to the Federal Departments responsible for oversight by you guessed it Regan's administration. (GWB boys have this down pat.)
The lack of qualified agents and those who are still employed in turn have huge case loads. This makes it ripe for the picking.
It also helps to have select carefully appointed Federal division managers unwilling to pursue select individuals and appointed justices reluctant to hear select cases. It also is pure joy knowing if you are caught what ever fines are levied in court can be negotated on the back side and dramatically reduced or left unpaid due to no enforcement.
So the question is: Does America have the right to question or ask for accountability from this administration? Or do we allow our constitution to become a worthless piece of paper? You know it was wriiten by our founding fathers to prevent such things. Or maybe you just dont care.
Two words: E-Mail Filter.
Yep. Bob has a problem. Why do you feel obliged to keep up with it?
People with OBHS (Obsessive Bush Hating Syndrome) will never be satisfied with any answer you give, no matter how truthful or well researched. You are completely wasting your time.
I suggest you write a rule for your email filter.
I'd suggest he ought to start drinking cologne "White Lilac". Per classic "Moscow-Petushki", drinking this particular brand of cologne reconciles the drinker to life's imperfections. Hopefully it will mitigate his obsession as well.
There is no point arguing with those fools - they will only believe what they want to believe.
Thanks for sharing your e-mail with us. NNNNNOOOOOOTTTTTTT!!!!
We were wondering what Baghdad Bob was doing these days.
I would say: All this crap and you liberals want to make governemnt BIGGER! What are you all? Retarded?
Tell him to impeach & remove President Bush from office. (Don't point out to him that it would make Mr. Cheney President; he (your friend) might stroke out!)
Surely, there was at least one intense hurricane during that time...
100% employment in Iraq would douse the insurgency overnight. We need to hand the country over to them, let THEM do the reconstruction (afterall, they did it after 1991) as well as the fighting, and start dealing with the real threats out there - Iran and Syria.
If Bush rallied the country in an offensive against Iran, watch his poll numbers shoot up overnight - and people like your friend will look like whiney liberals..
On Katrina, the admin was a little late getting on top of that disaster. It was good to fire Michael Brown (but it should have happened a little sooner). Bush visited a week ago, and that was a start... people want to see their president at the disaster scenes, taking charge..
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The time it takes to make up a bunch of alleged facts and type them up. Ten minutes.
Here, watch me:
H.R. 252 secures $11.7 billion dollars for tomato farmers over 11 southern US states. The main sponsor for the concurrent bill in the Senate is John Kerry. For each taxpayer dollar spent, the cost per pound of tomatoes for the Heinz corporation is lowered by 12 cents. Overall this increases the profit margin of Heinz by just under $1.2 billion annually, benefitting the principle shareholder of Heinz, Teresa Kerry, to the tune of $400 million. In addition, the Heinz Foundation, and related charities, funnel $780 million to leftist organizations such as The Tides Foundation. Three of the principle board members of The Tides Foundation are in the employ of the Southwestern Tomato Growers Association and decide how the federal farm aid is distributed amongst their members. These three individuals contributed a total of $12.1 million to Democratic PACS over the course of the last decade...
Tell your buddy this: All of these example of the federal government wasting money argue for reduction of the federal government.
Can I quote you on that? ;)
Turn it around on him -- make him document and support each claim and implication, with citations to primary sources. And note that Michael Moore, Air America, some random email he received from liberal moonbats, or CNN/ABC/NYT/etc. are *not* "primary sources".
In the attempt, he'll learn a lot about the unreliability of his *current* sources (due to spin, incompetence, and dishonesty), and at the very least, it'll keep him out of your hair for a while.
If you really want to drive him nuts, play it not like you're challenging him or attempting to dispute his claims, make him think you're genuinely interested in learning more and/or telling others about these "revelations", but you need more documentation before you can go forward with them.
If he manages to document some of the small details (e.g. no-bid contracts), send him back out to research whether that's an unusual arrangement in cases such as that, etc. You can keep him busy forever this way. Remember that on any item or claim, the important questions (borrowed from the excellent book, "How To Lie With Statistics") are:
1. Who says so?
2. How does he know?
3. What's missing?
4. Did somebody change the subject?
5. Does it make sense?
Hold Bob's feet to the fire until he answers those questions for *each* of his many assertions and implications.
In short, don't just reply with a length, "is not!" Walk him through how to be a critical thinker on his own material.
Yes. All assertions in that paragraph are 100% typed.
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