Brother, Can You Spare A Prevailing Wage?
Of all the low, disgusting things the President has done in the wake of the hurricane (and they are legion), this may be the worst, though also the most predictable. Why should we be surprised that he's using this disaster to increase our income gap? Now, shamefully, people will be rebuilding homes that they're no longer going to be be able to afford.
The federal government should wipe out all debt of anyone who lost their home in the hurricane, whether they're rich or poor. To deploy two entirely appropriate cliches: Level the playing field and let everyone have a fresh start. But that's not what's happening. He's creating a mercernary, desperate society, where people are scrounging to make minimum wage to repair their destroyed neighborhoods. Everything is being left to private citizens.
We have three evacuee families in my little neighborhood alone, and it's up to our neighborhood association, which has no resources other than limited human energy, to house and feed the people and to find them education and work. This is not a complaint--we're glad to help out--but it's astonishing to me that it takes half a dozen people, with no official money at all, only two days to set a family up, but that the federal government can't figure out how to distribute ATM cards.
These are disheartening times. We have a million Okies in our midst, and the government (or its satellite corporations), is directly profiting from their misery. Time to bring our pitchforks and flaming torches to the White House gates. Fuck off, Mr. Cheney, indeed.