Hypothetically Speaking

Josh Marshall is worried, as well he should be, about Bush & Co.'s planned attempt to spend its way back back into favorable terrority with the American people - and the intentions that may be afoot:

Maybe you want to spend $200 billion on rebuilding the Delta region too. Fine. Something like that will probably be necessary. But don't fool yourself into thinking that what's coming is just a matter of a different chef making the same meal. This will be Iraq all over again, with the same fetid mix of graft, zeal and hubris. Cronyism like you wouldn't believe. Money blown on ideological fantasies and half-baked test-cases.

You could come up with a hundred reasons why that's true. But at root intentions drive all. You'll never separate this operation or its results from the fact that the people in charge see it as a political operation. The use of this money for political purposes, for what amounts to a political campaign, tells you everything you need to know about what's coming. [emphasis added]

What ideological fantasies and half-baked test cases? In today's Wall Street Journal reporters John Wike and Brody Mullins start to get their arms around the stench that's ahead:

Congressional Republicans, backed by the White House, say they are using relief measures for the hurricane-ravaged Gulf coast to achieve a broad range of conservative economic and social policies, both in the storm zone and beyond.

Some new measures are already taking shape. In the past week, the Bush administration has suspended some union-friendly rules that require federal contractors pay prevailing wages, moved to ease tariffs on Canadian lumber, and allowed more foreign sugar imports to calm rising sugar prices. Just yesterday, it waived some affirmative-action rules for employers with federal contracts in the Gulf region.

Now, Republicans are working on legislation that would limit victims' right to sue, offer vouchers for displaced school children, lift some environment restrictions on new refineries and create tax-advantaged enterprise zones to maximize private-sector participation in recovery and reconstruction. Yesterday, the House overwhelmingly passed a bill that would offer sweeping protection against lawsuits to any person or organization that helps Katrina victims without compensation.

"The desire to bring conservative, free-market ideas to the Gulf Coast is white hot," says Rep. Mike Pence, the Indiana Republican who leads the Republican Study Group, an influential caucus of conservative House members. "We want to turn the Gulf Coast into a magnet for free enterprise. The last thing we want is a federal city where New Orleans once was."

So, despite the utter failure of the vaunted "free-enterprise" conservative experiment in Iraq, the same despicable gang wants to make Louisiana into a laboratory.

We're cynical enough to believe the Bush & Rove couldn't care less about these experiments, but support them, in part, to assuage the concerns of the conservative fiscal hawks, and in part, to provide a smokescreen for the KBR (and others) loot-a-thon that's already working to transfer public funds to private wealth. Hasn't that been the MO since the start of the Iraq war?

God help the people of New Orleans from these sewer rats.