I think more than anything this (from YRHT) demonstrates the absolute contempt with which the Bush administration--and the GOP--hold the citizens of this nation.
Linda Esparza and her son Tommy Yager can be added to the list of thousands of families feeling the effects of formaldehyde in the trailers FEMA sent to the Gulf Coast after Hurricane Katrina.
"Fatigue was a big, big problem," Esparza said.
"It would be cold, flu like symptoms," Yager said.
But they didn't live in the trailers. They built them, in Indiana, for an RV maker, Gulf Stream Coach.
Sad to say, it wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the GOP, their wingnut howler monkey chorus, and associated loons blamed THIS set of victims, given that they've repeatedly blamed the citizens of New Orleans for the failure of ACOE built levees.
By early 2006, the Gulf Stream Coach plant was cranking out more than 100 trailers a day--about three times normal production. That’s a pace, former employees say, that quickly forced the company to turn to low-quality materials.
This, despite the fact that Gulf Stream received a half billion dollar government contract.
OK, maybe that's a little harsh: by my math, it looks like it came to $10,000 per trailer, which I'll assume is a "reasonable" price. However, as we all know, thousands of these trailers ended up...in Arkansas, where they've been surplused or auctioned off (probably at a loss), while those that ARE being used are little more than toxic holding cells.
Meanwhile, sensible options like Katrina cottages are dismissed as "too expensive" or "not within FEMA rules/guidelines" (as if this adminstration gives a damn about the law).
No, the very real problem is that our government--or, at least, the GOP--no longer gives a rat's ass about its own citizens. Hell, they rarely even call us "citizens" these days, preferring the rather patronizing term "consumers." Who apparently are little better than prisoners at this point.
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