People..

It is soooo much better for Halliburton, Fluor, Bechtel....whomever to pay construction workers $7/hr plus benefits (so maybe a total of $9/hr) than to pay them $12/hr plus bennies. Why? Well, if the contract is for time and materials [which the current ones are], our politically connected contractor is probably charging the government $65/hr for each worker. The gross margin per employee per hour would be either $56 or $53.

Not a big difference until you consider that in a year a Katrina contractor might log a million contract hours. The difference would be $3,000,000. Surely, this is a small price to pay for embracing Republican ideals like "Greed is good." and "The poor are so appreciative [ala Barbara Bush]."

jay