Four news items and a conclusion

Item #1: While New Orleans reels from the worst natural disaster America has faced in a century, the Republican-controlled Senate will leap into action next week by attempting yet again to repeal the estate tax, which affects something like the top one percent of all estates in America, thereby helping to create better America for Paris Hilton.

Item #2: The Disaster Profiteering Specialists at Haliburton (Dick Cheney's other employer) have been hired to help clean up in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. So the good news, I suppose, is that New Orleans can look forward to having 4 hours of electricity per day . . . in 2007.

Item #3: And speaking of Halliburton: Last month a 20-year career Army procurement official was demoted in retribution for arguing that a particular no-bid contract awarded to Halliburton at the outset of the Iraq war should be reconsidered, since there was clear indication the contract was awarded for political reasons.

Item #4: Following Hurricane Katrina, the FEMA web page's list of relief agencies is dominated by religious organizations--including Operation Blessing, run by the same Pat Robertson who recently called for the assassination of a head of state, and once mused fondly about bombing the State Department headquarters--to the exclusion of many secular and international relief organizations.

(The Bloomburg article linked to above includes this classic example of a smart man accidentally answering his own question:

"How in the heck did that happen?" said Richard Walden, president of Operation USA, a Los Angeles-based secular group that has been conducting disaster relief work since 1979 and was not on FEMA's list. "That gives Pat Robertson millions of extra dollars.")

Conclusion: If it doesn't involve lining the pockets of campaign contributors, appeasing their political base, strengthening the ever-more-corrupt one-party stranglehold on government, or dealing out political pay-backs for people who've crossed them, the Bush administration just isn't very interested in it. (Props to Krugman.)

And any--any!--opportunity to advance these goals, no matter how short-sighted, venal, craven, disingenuous, hypocritical, sanctimonious, unethical, or flat-out illegal it might be, apparently must be seized and acted upon at once.

Quod erat demonstrandum.