{"id":6748,"date":"2006-03-02T10:32:20","date_gmt":"2006-03-02T15:32:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/?p=6748"},"modified":"2006-03-02T10:32:20","modified_gmt":"2006-03-02T15:32:20","slug":"jeb-carnival-cruise-lines-and-a-suspicious-katrina-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/jeb-carnival-cruise-lines-and-a-suspicious-katrina-contract\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeb, Carnival Cruise Lines, and a suspicious Katrina contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

Speaking of Katrina, there’s an interesting controversy brewing about Bush pulling strings<\/a> to get a lucrative contract for a major GOP donor. No, not that Bush, the other one.<\/p>\n

A top House Democrat released e-mails Tuesday detailing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s role in pushing a $236 million federal contract for Carnival Cruise Lines to house Hurricane Katrina victims.<\/p>\n

In a letter, Rep. Henry Waxman of California called on Bush to explain his role in the award of the “lucrative contract,” which was given to the Florida-based company without a full competitive bid process.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shortly after the storm hit the Gulf Coast, Carnival signed a $236 million contract to house evacuees. The deal was controversial<\/a> not only because of the cost, but also because the cruise ships sat half-empty<\/a> for weeks. But the Jeb angle makes matters worse.<\/p>\n

The president’s brother worked behind the scenes on Carnival’s behalf to make the contract happen, without a competitive bidding process, after a Carnival exec emailed Jeb about the idea.<\/p>\n

According to Waxman, Bush forwarded to Brown, then the FEMA director, an e-mail from a Carnival advertising executive proposing that the company’s ships be used for housing two days after the Aug. 29 storm.<\/p>\n

The Carnival official, Ric Cooper, has been a major political donor to the Florida and national Republican parties, including $65,000 to the state GOP in 2002, and $50,00 to the RNC in 2004, Waxman said. Less than three hours later, Brown replied to Cooper, saying he thought it was a “great idea.”<\/p>\n

“One of my HQ folks working the housing issue is going to contact you directly,” Brown wrote. “If you haven’t heard from them by close of business tomorrow, please call me on my cell phone …Thanks. MDB”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

What’s more, Carnival told Congress that the federal government approached the company about the Katrina-related contract, though these emails suggest the opposite<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Was there any<\/i> part of the Katrina response that was effective and scrupulous? It doesn’t look like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Speaking of Katrina, there’s an interesting controversy brewing about Bush pulling strings to get a lucrative contract for a major GOP donor. No, not that Bush, the other one. A top House Democrat released e-mails Tuesday detailing Florida Gov. Jeb Bush’s role in pushing a $236 million federal contract for Carnival Cruise Lines to house […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6748","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6748","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6748"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6748\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}