A very important column this week from Mississippi's best columnist, Mr. Bill Minor. Definitely read the whole thing, which deals with the funneling of money from the U.S. Chamber to GOP judicial candidates, the AshBritt contract to Barbour friends, and Barbour's appointment of his nephew to direct the Katrina recovery commission.
The DeLay scheme, which has, at least temporarily, dethroned him from his leadership post, calls to mind when some $1 million in corporate money was filtered through the Washington-based U.S. Chamber of Commerce down to Mississippi in 2000 in an unprecedented move to elect four state Supreme Court judges. Claiming that its blitz of TV ads in the Mississippi judicial races were merely "issues" and not advocacy, the powerful chamber was able (despite efforts of state election officials and a federal district judge) to circumvent the state campaign law and not reveal who contributed the money or how it was spent. [...]
Even here in Mississippi, cronyism reared its ugly face in the multi-million-dollar Katrina debris clean-up in the south Mississippi area.
First reported by The New York Times, and substantiated by a report to a special Katrina state legislative committee, was that a Florida-based company with political ties to Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour had been given a $568 million no-bid contract by FEMA for debris removal.
The company, AshBrit Environmental, as The Times first reported, has been a client of the potent Washington lobbying firm Barbour headed until he ran for Mississippi's governorship in 2003.
AshBrit, according to The Times, paid $40,000 in the first half of 2004 to Barbour, Griffith and Rogers, the Mississippi governor's old lobbying firm.
Meantime, Gov. Barbour has installed his nephew, Henry Barbour, as executive director for the 40-member Katrina recovery commission he appointed two weeks ago.
Henry Barbour, significantly, was Haley's chief sidekick to round up big donors when Haley headed the Republican National Committee in the 1990s.
The Times reported that AshBrit, whose contract for Mississippi debris removal was the largest of the 15 in the three Gulf states impacted by Katrina, is being paid $15 per cubic yard to collect and process debris, and an additional amount to dispose of it in landfills.
That is some $5 more per cubic yard than three communities are paying independent contractors doing the same work, The Times said.
A preliminary report on Katrina recovery prepared by staffers of Mississippi's legislative PEER committee at the request of House Speaker Billy McCoy, shows that AshBrit in getting its $568.3 million contract had several distinct advantages over possible competitors for the cleanup work. [...]
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