As the Gulf Coast begins to pick up the pieces of their lives and begin rebuilding, the Bush administration continues to help itself and its friends. Damages to roads, buildings, oil rigs and city infrastructures are enormous. Sadly, the no-bid contracts to companies close to the Bush administration are enormous as well.

Under normal circumstances, every major project paid for by the government has to be made public to companies who are able to complete the task. For example, If a new highway needs to be built, all of the highway-building companies are given the opportunity to assess whether or not they would like to bid on the project. A bidding process is then implemented and the lowest bidder is rewarded with the project. In more dire circumstances, the government has the right to bypass this system and give projects to a company without the bidding process, hence the term “no-bid contract.” This type of contract is generally looked down upon because the companies involved often have the opportunity to make an enormous amount of profit that they could not reap otherwise. But the rationale is that even if the company who is given the project may not have been the lowest bidder in the fair bidding system, the situation is desperate and needs to be dealt with right away.

The Gulf Coast situation certainly meets the requirements for no-bid contracts. Many cities and towns were ravaged by Hurricane Katrina and the faster the problems are dealt with, the better. However, it seems that the Bush administration has a few favorites in the disaster relief industry. Just as Halliburton, a company directly connected to Bush through Vice President Dick Cheney, was given the no-bid contract to deal with the oil infrastructure problems in Iraq, other connected companies are feeling the positive effects of being buddy-buddy with the current administration.

Joe Allbaugh, a former FEMA head who served before the infamous Mike Brown, is a lobbyist for two of the companies who were invited to the no-bid party: Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) and The Shaw Group. KBR, a subsidiary of Halliburton, has already received $500 million in no-bid contracts while The Shaw Group has received $200 million in no-bid contracts. While it is true that there are a limited number of companies who are able to deal with such huge disasters, there are certainly ones who can do the job that are not as well connected. Is it right that the companies that give millions of dollars in campaign donations get preferrential treatment in a capitalist system that prides itself on fairness and competition?

In addition to these usual back scratching tactics by the Bush administration, Bush has made an executive decision that will continue to preserve the gap between the rich companies and the poor workers by allowing the winners of the no-bid contracts to pay their workers below the prevailing wage, the minimum that must be paid to any workers by taking the average wage for workers of the largest city in the county that the contract work is in.

Let’s get this straight. Bush said that he will do everything that he can to help the people whose lives were destroyed. But he has also told his buddies at Halliburton and Shaw that they can pay the people of ravaged cities less than they deserve so that the workers can rebuild their city and their lives. But many of people who will be doing the hard work are those who lost their homes and possessions. Bush has, essentially, backstabbed the people he swore to help for the sake of his supporters’ profit margin.

Bush failed the people of the Gulf Coast by waiting too long to react to the catastrophe and he continues to hurt their causes. Bush has taken responsibility for his reluctance to react to Katrina’s destruction, but who will take responsibility for his decisions to help his buddies while leaving everyone else out in the cold?