Katrina: Great Opportunity for Corporate Gold-diggers

If you’ve got dollar signs in your eyes and aren’t hindered by morals or a conscience, New Orleans is the Land of Opportunity. There’s gold in them thar ruined lives.

Halliburton (of course) is getting in on the act. They reaped a fortune with their no-bid contract in Iraq; now they’re getting the same deal in New Orleans. Devastation plus tragedy equals $30 million for Halliburton.

This petition is asking the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish a competitive bidding process for the cleanup and reconstruction. Please sign and send this if you think the Katrina victims are more than just a goldmine waiting to be plundered.

And in case you thought they don’t get any sleazier than Halliburton, here is another company headed for New Orleans for the easy pickins. The Department of Homeland Security has hired Kenyon International to set up a mobile morgue to handle the corpses. Kenyon is a subsidiary of Service Corporation International (SCI), which has a colorful history of hiding and dumping corpses.

In 2001, SCI removed hundreds of bodies from two cemeteries in Florida and dumped the remains into swamps and woodlands. In one case they used a bulldozer to crack open a vault, so they could remove the old corpses and make room for new ones. They paid $100 million to settle the ensuing lawsuit.

The chairman of SCI is a longtime friend and campaign donor to both George Bushes, father and son. But surely that’s just a coincidence and has nothing to do with why the Bush administration hired them again to do what they do best.