Shrub actually actively disdain’s anyone who isn’t wealthy enough who bail him out of his business disasters or finance his political campaigns. Now in the wake of hurricane katrina he has suspended the prevailing wage laws in the affected areas. The purpose of these laws is to require government contrators to pay same wage as other companies in the wage for comparable work. For example, if construction contractors in an area are paying an average of $7.50/hr for laborers, any company doing a government construction contract must pay the same amount. Instead they now only have to pay the federal minimum wage which has stuck at $5.15/hr since the mid 1990’s. It is not clear what rationale shrub had for suspending the prevailing wage laws, other than to benefit the companies that are getting the no-bid contracts for reconstruction. Guess which company was the one of the first to get one of these contracts? You got it, Halliburton. To top it off no local gulf coast companies got these contracts.

The Army Corps of Engineers hired four companies yesterday to remove debris from parts of Louisiana and Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina. No companies from the affected Gulf Coast were awarded a share of the $2 billion in contracts, but the winners must give preference to subcontractors in those areas, the Corps said in a statement.

So bush buddies get big contracts to clean but they don’t have to pay a decent wage to the local people who need the help most to rebuild their lives. It also appears that shrub was in such a rush to screw regular laborers that he may have violated the law to do it. This from Rep. George Miller (D-CA)

From: TPMCafe Special Guests
The President suspended wage standards for workers on the Gulf Coast before he declared a national emergency. That means he was so focused on cutting the wages of people who’d be returning to the Gulf Coast to rebuild their lives and their communities that, in order to hasten the suspension, he failed to follow the law. And at the same time the White House was cutting workers’ wages, it was busy awarding no-bid contracts. The President has proven once again that he’s more interested in governing for the few than in governing for all of us.

The President’s pay cut affects tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands, of Americans who desperately need a decent income to rebuild their lives. People working construction jobs in the Gulf Coast might only have earned $7 or $8 in the first place; now, the only protection left for them is the federal minimum wage, which is a disgraceful $5.15 an hour because Republicans repeatedly refuse to increase it.

What the President has done is immoral.

If you still believe that shrub is just a regular guy (did anybody ever really believe that?) and that he knows how regular people feel, it is time for a reality check. He hates anybody who is not one of his cronies.

PS did you notice that he couldn’t line up the buttons and buttonholes on his shirt during his speach the other night?

Rick Santorum should be confined to House Arrest in what was the ninth ward of New Orleans for the rest of his life. This evil scumbag earlier this year introduced a bill in the US Senate that would prohibit the National Weather Service from providing weather information free to the public if any private company is also providing that information.

Do you want a seven-day weather forecast for your ZIP code? Or hour-by-hour predictions of the temperature, wind speed, humidity and chance of rain? Or weather data beamed to your cellphone?

That information is available for free from the National Weather Service

But under a bill pending in the U.S. Senate, it might all disappear.

The bill, introduced last week by Sen. Rick Santorum, R-Pa., would prohibit federal meteorologists from competing with companies such as AccuWeather and The Weather Channel, which offer their own forecasts through paid services and free ad-supported Web sites.

Accuweather is a company based in Pennsylvania that has contributed substantial sums to Santorums campaigns. Of course Accuweather and Weather Channel and other outlets get all their weather data from the NWS, for free. They of course do not provide that information to people for free. You have to pay in some way, either advertising or your cable bill, etc to get that information from the “private” sector. Of course we have already paid for theis information through our taxes that fund the NWS, so we have a right to get this data for “free” since we paid to compile it in the first place. So scumbags like Santorum would have people pay to generate the information and then pay some company again to actually see it. Welfare for poor people is bad, but welfare for wealthy corporate contributors is just fine.

And now Santorum has the gall to say in an interview that National Weather Service warnings were not sufficient. I posted the following warning from the NWS the day before the storm hit

URGENT – WEATHER MESSAGE
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE NEW ORLEANS LA
413 PM CDT SUN AUG 28 2005

EXTREMELY DANGEROUS HURRICANE KATRINA CONTINUES TO APPROACH THE
MISSISSIPPI RIVER DELTA

DEVASTATING DAMAGE EXPECTED

MOST OF THE AREA WILL BE UNINHABITABLE FOR WEEKS…PERHAPS LONGER. AT
LEAST ONE HALF OF WELL CONSTRUCTED HOMES WILL HAVE ROOF AND WALL
FAILURE. ALL GABLED ROOFS WILL FAIL…LEAVING THOSE HOMES SEVERELY
DAMAGED OR DESTROYED.

He is just like all the other republican leaders, an evil, corrupt, hypocritcal liar. If that warning is not sufficient, I don’t know what is. He is all for savings unborn fetuses but once you are out, Fuck You if you actually need any help from society. Unless you of course you are big contributor to the campaign, then belly right up to the pork bar!