Setting the Record Straight by Bill Moyers

Consider the story of the president’s buddy, Joe Allbaugh. When he was appointed head of the Federal Emergency Management Administration—FEMA—he described the agency as “an oversized entitlement program” and told states and cities to rely instead on faith-based organizations. Not surprisingly, the first in line at FEMA’s front door in the aftermath of Katrina was the televangelist and tycoon, Pat Robertson. Although he had only recently called for the assassination of a foreign head of state and had prayed in public for God to open some Supreme Court vacancies “one way or the other,” Pat Robertson’s Operation Blessing—sic—got one of the first faith-based grants for relief work on the Gulf Coast. As a Christian magazine has now informed us, Robertson used some of those tax dollars to help rush 80,000 Bibles to the stricken region.

Joe Allbaugh, meanwhile, was already on the scene—but not as head of FEMA. He had returned to “private life,” as the term is laughingly used among Washington lobbyists. Having failed to prepare his agency to cope with disaster, he carefully prepared himself to exploit disaster when it strikes. It had not escaped him that the invasion of Iraq opened splendid opportunities for gain among the well-connected of Washington who ha cheered it on. Setting up a lobbying firm near the White House, he was soon facilitating business for contractors in Iraq and running another company that provides security for private companies operating there. Allbaugh house his entire complex at the Washington lobbying and law firm of Barbour, Griffith and Rogers. The ‘Barbour’ in that lineup is none other that the former chair of the Republican National Committee, Haley Barbour. The ‘Rogers’ is Ed Rogers, Barbour’s partner, who is also—hold your breath—one of Allbaugh’s vice presidents. Haley Barbour, having enriched himself as an influence peddler, went back to Mississippi and ran for governor, which means he is playing a big hand in passing out your tax dollars for reconstruction. Lo and behold, on September 1, the Pentagon announced a major contract for repair of Naval facilities on the Gulf Coast to Halliburton, whose chief lobbyist is… Joe Allbaugh. What a lucky coincidence. Or as Shakespeare might put it: ‘Merit doth much, but fortune more.”

This is what you get from people who don’t believe in government except to aggrandize their own privilege. It wasn’t the lack of resources that prevented the administration from responding effectively to the disaster. The Washington Post’s Bill Arkin, among others, reminds us that the federal government had water, medicine, food and security at hand, in addition to the transportation needed to get it down to the coast in a hurry. The problem was “leadership, decisiveness, foresight.” And this goes to the core of the radical right’s atheist-in-the-Vatican philosophy: Denounce the government you now run, defang its powers and dilute its responsibilities, and direct the spoils of victory to your cronies in the private sector. ~ Bill Moyers Read the whole speech here.