How many more abuses before we stand up and fight?

Not content with the largesse dispensed by President Bush in ordering waiver of the Davis-Bacon rules for post-hurricane work along the Gulf Coast, thus permitting contractors to hire cheap labor, many of those same contractors have also relieved themselves from the obligation to provide housing for the workers they do hire.

Some of the contractors have been so bold as to drop their workers off at shelters at the end of the work day. The American Red Cross has caused somewhat of a flap by insisting that the shelters they offer are for victims of the hurricanes and not for imported day laborers, and that funds provided by taxpayers and private donors should not be used to subsidize the contractors.

Today’s Weekend Sunday on NPR covered the story; it’s available on their web site though not in transcript yet.

Meanwhile a few people are noticing the absolute unfairness of hiring workers from out of state and out of the country (in many cases here illegally) without at least offering the work to evacuees who are desperate to come home. How can they claim, by the way, that “Americans won’t do the work,” if they don’t even offer them the jobs?

And, of course, there's the inevitable connection between the Administration and those who get the lucrative contracts . . .