But Townsend’s previous dirty work assignments at least involved her area of expertise — intelligence policy and the arcane, Orwellian laws governing the national security state. On the other hand, her resume contains absolutely no job experience whatsoever in the fields of disaster response, emergency relief or the management of large, bureaucratic organizations.
Back to Main
September 20, 2005
WB: Safe Hands
Comments
Note: while this story relates to our Euro-brethren, it is a mere one step forward or one step behind the mirror image of the military-industrial complex
control grid now being implemented for our safety{tm} and freedom(tm}.
New plan for terror supergrasses
“Under another proposal likely to attract criticism from civil rights campaigners, the Government also announced stringent new rules to target extremist bookshops and curtail the dissemination of “terrorist publications”.
According to the new law, a terrorist publication is any article that includes “a direct or indirect encouragement or other inducement to the commission” of terrorist acts or information that would help someone to commit an atrocity.
“Direct or indirect”. What the hell is that supposed to cover?
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 20 2005 21:07 utc | 1
09/05/2005
King Abdullah receives U.S. official
Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz has received a message from U.S. President George W. Bush, delivered in Jeddah today by Assistant to the President for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Ms Frances Fragos Townsend. King Abdullah took the opportunity of reiterating, in his own name and on behalf of the people and government of Saudi Arabia, his condolences on the victims of Hurricane Katrina, reaffirming the Kingdom’s support for the United States and the American people facing this catastrophe.
Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz also received Ms Townsend, as did Minister of Foreign Affairs Prince Saud Al-Faisal.
Posted by: annie | Sep 20 2005 23:41 utc | 2
Today on NPR (OK, I was bored) some deputy administrator (Brooks D. Altshul? Patrick Rhode?) was taking e-mails and phone-calls about Katrina, and I had to laugh at the reference in here to “BushSpeak” and, of course, “1984”. But it was a short, hollow laugh, cut-off.
When asked about Bush’s invocation of a national emergency and the
suspension of prevailing wages in 41 states, this person, and I’m
sorry I didn’t catch his name, gleefully and glibly described how
this was to “make it easier for small contractors in the region to
become a part of the massive construction effort”.
I almost choked on my chile relleno!
Look, I’m a construction administrator. All I do all day is write
up procurement and construction contracts, and conduct bid awards.
“Prevailing wage” means one thing. A *tiny* portion of the contract
document is supplemented with county-level local prevailing wages
for every trade. For example, in Suffolk County, Virginia, a steam-
fitter would make, let’s say, $37.50 an hour as a prevailing wage.
So we put in a pink sheet for the contractor to use to calc labor.
Potential bidders, large and small, in creating their bids, need
only use those wages in calculating their labor costs. That’s all!
Oh, and they have to submit certified payrolls, stating that they
did in fact pay those wages, on little cribsheets, nothing fancy.
That’s the “tremendous hurdle” prevailing wages places before
the small contractors. So how does throwing out prevailing wages
help them, without egregiously helping out-of-state contractors?
It doesn’t. Other than cash-flow, which any factor would step in
and bridge on a signed Federal contract, eliminating prevailing
wages only makes it that much more likely that big out-of-state
contractors can bury their higher overhead in lower trade wages.
And then, instead of fighting with the little contractors over a
3% – 7% profit many of them run at, the big contractors can steal
the contracts, and by sitting on labor, eke out 20% – 30% profit!
Better than that, when those labor itinerants are eventually laid
off, and they *will* be itinerant workers, because nobody is going
to leave a prevailing wage job in the north to work for minimum
wage in a trailer-park crew-camp with a long f’g commute, the big
contractors, local governments and Fed will be able to scoot off
with 1/6th of the unemployment compensation, and no renewal period.
Again, it goes straight to the bottom line of Corporate-Socialism.
But what really creeps me out, and is still raising the hackles
on my neck, this FEMA guy *really* sounded like he believed what
he was saying was the truth. Like Night of the Living Dead with
a microchip brain implant, absolutely passionate proselytizing.
Multiply that by $2.4TRILLION a year worth of Federal employees,
IDIQ-to-IDIQ perpetual porkbarrel Defense (largely) contractors,
*most* of which aren’t even competed, they’re sole sourced, for
hundreds of millions of dollars, right down the line:
McDonnell Douglas Corp., Long Beach, Calif., is being awarded an
$8,269,752 fixed-fee contract, sole-sourced;
Raytheon Co., El Segundo, Calif., is being awarded a $14,550,000
cost-plus award-fee, sole-sourced;
Bell Helicopter Textron Inc., Fort Worth, Texas, is being awarded
an estimated $7,697,690 modification to a previously awarded firm-
fixed-price contract, sole-sourced;
Electric Boat Corp., Groton, Conn., is being awarded a $5,136,420
cost-plus-fixed-fee modification to previously awarded contract,
sole-sourced;
And that’s just a tiny portion of a single *day* at the Pentagon. http://www.defenselink.mil/contracts/2005/
Imagine.
$200B Reconstruction of New Orleans, sans prevailing wages,
non-compete, sole-source, IDIQ, cost-plus and award-fee.
Crude oil heading to $70 a barrel and it’s not even October.
Wow! We are truly and royally f–ked!!!
Posted by: Lash Marks | Sep 21 2005 4:05 utc | 3
David Brin says, Take a look at the New America Foundation.
The Board is quite eclectic, comprised of onetime liberals (James Fallows) and conservatives (Francis Fukayama) who have stepped back from the brink of their respective cliffs, so to speak. Are they trying to accomplish what I {Brin} recommended last year, here
Is this a potential locus for the Enlightenment to fight back against left-right romanticism. Too soon to tell.
(Seeing Fukayama’s name here makes me wonder. Is he possibly less of a shill and court intellectual for the neocon-kleptocrat apocalypt troika than we thought? Could it be that, like Colin Powell, he is smart enough to notice some of what he has been a part of? Perhaps even enough to (tepidly) start to stand up?)
Note: those were Brins words above, I have my own opinions of Colin Powell, like HE IS A FUCKING MURDERER AND HIS SON SOLD US OUT.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 21 2005 22:57 utc | 4
Addendum: Well, scratch that, reason being, speaking for myself, any organization
that denigrates the ideas of John Rawls will not get my support, though, i dig on david brin.
p.s. I plan on writing Michael Lind at “New America Foundation, to get a better understanding on what his problem w/ Rawls work seems to be. When I get the time.
Posted by: Uncle $cam | Sep 21 2005 23:20 utc | 5
Thanks Lash Marks, for explaining these things. It is always good to see the inside of how a scam is being worked.
But you should know that these guys do know what they are doing. First America is to be destroyed financially, and then it is to be destroyed physically.
As Jim Kundstler says, look around yourself this autumn. By this time next year, the America you knew will be gone.
Posted by: Gaianne | Sep 22 2005 6:34 utc | 6