In answer to critics who claimed he and others were cashing in on their service to Bush and Cheney, Allbaugh responded, "I don't buy the ‘revolving door' argument. This is America. We all have a right to make a living."
But let's pull back for a moment and try to reconstruct, however briefly, at least a modest picture of the massively interconnected world of the reconstructors. A good place to start is with George Bush's pal Joseph Allbaugh, a member of his "so-called iron triangle of trusted Texas cohorts." Allbaugh seems to display in his recent biography just about every linkage that makes New Oraq what it is clearly becoming. He ran the Bush presidential campaign of 2000; and subsequently was installed as the director of FEMA which, in congressional testimony, he characterized as "an overstuffed entitlement program," counseling (as Harold Meyerson of the American Prospect pointed out recently) "states and cities to rely instead on ‘faith-based organizations... like the Salvation Army and the Mennonite Disaster Service."
As at the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, so at FEMA in Washington, the larder of administrators would soon be stocked with second and third-rate Bush supporters and cronies. Five of FEMA's top eight managers would, according to Spencer S. Hsu of the Washington Post, arrive with "virtually no experience in handling disasters," three of them "with ties to President Bush's 2000 campaign or to the White House advance operation." A "brain drain" of competent administrators followed as -- à la the Pentagon -- FEMA's focus turned to the war on terror, money was drained from natural-disaster work, and the agency was "privatized" with previously crucial activities outsourced to Bush-friendly corporations.
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=21843