The horror of people still living in tents is one thing..The horror of corporations making money off their misery is entirely another.
The carpetbaggers are going strong in New Orleans. The business's are largely back on their feet, gotta keep them happy right? But the residential areas are far from being rebuilt. The FEMA office closed in May. Nothing says loving like having to deal with Federal red-tape over a telephone.
And the residents are getting the shaft locally too. The energy company known as Entergy is trying to suck funds out of the government to rebuild their infrrastructure. They can afford to do it themselves, they are afterall, a Fortune 500 company.But they don't want to use their own profits. CorpWatch has a nice accounting of their profits:
"Entergy Corp. racked up $10 billion in revenues last year and has $29 billion in collective assets. On paper, there is no question Entergy could comfortably cover its losses and rebuild the infrastructure of its utility business in New Orleans. On May 2, Entergy announced that its first-quarter profit rose nearly 13 percent, as higher energy prices offset disrupted sales following last year's hurricanes. Entergy CEO J. Wayne Leonard received a $1.1 million bonus at the end of 2005, according to SEC records, which coincidentally works out to one dollar per Entergy customer in the Gulf Coast left without power in the weeks following the hurricane."
Corporate Profiteering is alive and well in New Orleans. The names listed are the same corporations, for the most part, making money in Iraq and that doesn't make me feel warm and fuzzy. People are still living in tents but big business is raking in the cash. Remind you of anything, or anyplace in particular?
It couldn't be that the people most affected by Katrina were poor, elderly or black, right? That couldn't possibly be the reason that people are no better off today than the day after Katrina hit but the big corporations are just having record profits? I am not pulling the race card, far from it. The people of New Orleans are and were historically poor and black. This fact can not be denied by anyone. That this horror is still going on today on OUR soil disgusts me.
The second part of "When the Levees Broke" airs tonight on HBO. I hope people will watch it and get angry. Angry that our federal government and LA. state and local governments haven't done much of anything to rebuild the homes and lives of the residents of New Orleans. I hope people will realize that carpetbagging corporations are recording record profits while doing very little to earn that largesse both here and in Iraq and Afganistan.
Thank the boys in the Federal government..they are helping their friends in big business while screwing the people of New Orleans, whose only crime was being in the way of a Cat 5 hurricane.
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