OK. Think back to Katrina. Let the images surface in your mind. Remember the dead bodies littering the streets, the trapped survivors screaming for help, the old and the young and the suffering, a city underwater, a collection of the poor and the black that spoke volumes about the state and the country. Remember Nero fiddling while Rome burned -- I mean, remember W. playing that guitar while NOLA sank.
Now move past all that and focus on what the Administration did AFTER Katrina.
What has always bothered me the most about the Administration's reaction to Katrina, and what has come back into my mind with the prospect of Nancy Pelosi enacting her 100 Hours Agenda, was this:
Bush Suspends Pay Act In Area Hit By Storm
President Bush yesterday (9-08-05) suspended application of the federal law governing workers' pay on federal contracts in the Hurricane Katrina-damaged areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana, and Mississippi. The action infuriated labor leaders and their Democratic supporters in Congress, who said it will lower wages and make it harder for union contractors to win bids.
Yes, the White House, at the request of 35 Republican members of Congress, chose to suspend the minimum wage/Davis-Bacon Act, which:
prohibits the federal government from undercutting prevailing wages in the construction industry in areas where the federal government is contracting for work.
Of all the priorities the Bush Administration could have focused on after Katrina, priorities like, oh, food, water, shelter, doctors, the Bush Administration made sure that the poor of NOLA would not be burdened with cash from the immediate construction needs presented by NOLA, as they made sure that contractors would not be burdened with paying those employees minimum wage or overtime.
These are the people who would not even consider raising the minimum wage without tacking on the "death" tax, because, and I'm sure you agree, the children of multi-millionaires and billionaires should be the only people in this country who's income isn't taxed.
I'm going to end my diary here, because at this point I risk trailing off into any number of diatribes about the Bush Administration, the Republican Congress, and everything in between. For me, the action of suspending the Davis-Bacon act by itself speaks volumes about this Administration and Republican Congress's view of the poor and the needy, and it stands alone as representing how this Administration would treat the workers of this country, if it weren't for all those pesky laws, unions and Democrats.
Just remember it, and vote your asses off in November.