Now’s the time for you to head to Texas and Florida to get rich quick. It helps if you’ve contributed to Republican campaigns, but first things first.
Start a company that has “disaster relief” in its name, launch a website and starts selling. It’s amazing how much money you can score if you’re not a government agency. (Everybody knows that for-profit corporations can do anything better than any government bureaucracy, right?)
You can file a cheap corporation here on the High Desert Plantation, tax-free and deregulated. Just pay a small state fee and swing your project.
After Hurricane Katrina devastated much of New Orleans in 2005, the administration of Bush the Lesser sprang into inaction.
“The companies that snatched the biggest contracts were the familiar Baghdad gang,” reported the awesome Naomi Klein.
“As in Iraq, no opportunity for profit was left untapped,” she noted in her highly honored 2007 tour-de-force “The Shock Doctrine – The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.”
It’s a primer on how Wall Street and corrupt governments have turned political, economic and natural holocausts into marketing opportunities worldwide. A major Bush donor averaged $12,500 per New Orleans dead body retrieved, missed many over a year and actually barred non-profits and community groups from searching because of contractual exclusivity.
My favorite is Lighthouse Disaster Relief, “paid $5.2 million to perform the crucial role to construct a base camp for emergency workers.” Lighthouse was a religious outfit with zero qualifications.
“About the closest thing I’ve done to this is just to organize a youth camp with my church,” said the dim bulb preacher guiding the Lighthouse for fun and profit. Heckuva job, Brownie!
“After all the layers of subcontractors had taken their cut, there was next to nothing left for the people doing the work,” Klein reported.
Locals were rarely hired. Imports, many undocumented, were paid below area-standard wages or not at all. That won’t be an issue today with El Presidente deporting Latino communities, making way for new hotels and such. Joe Arpaio is available to supervise.
President Trump is already praising himself for the government’s response, but my credit goes to former Obama Secretary of Energy Dr. Ernest Moniz who ordered research preparing for a Level 3 hurricane hitting Galveston, Houston’s seaport. (Vanity Fair, Sept. ‘17)
Tsar Donaldov appointed former Texas Gov. Rick Perry to succeed the eminent MIT nuclear physicist at DOE. Perry advocated eliminating the department during his presidential campaign.
OLIGOPOLY OOZES. Speaking of disaster capitalism, even before Harvey hit, I was informed by a resident on the northern fringe of the hurricane path that gasoline was already $5.00 a gallon. Go to the NevadaLabor.com Oilogopoly Archive to see how BigOil jacks up retail prices on news of any disaster large or small. A fire in a wastebasket at a refinery? Christmastime! A tugboat denting a tanker? Buy stock! Prices ratchet down very slowly afterward.
The majors don’t have to worry about conspiring to fix prices. The floor is always set by whatever local ARCO stations post. They hide in plain sight.
SLAVE LABOR DAY. Go to Barbwire.The US to read “Virginia City celebrates Slave Labor Day,” my exposé detailing how freedom-loving racists have morphed the traditional Comstock Labor Day parade into “Civil War Days.” The south has risen again in Tesla County, Mississippi West Nevada, USA.
Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga Infierno.
Andrew Barbano is a 48-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com. E-mail <barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us> Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988.
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