As everyone gets ready for the political Super Bowl of the presidential primaries, it's worth it to take a moment out for a quick study in the kind of disaster capitalism (a phrase made famous by author Naomi Klein) that's changing the landscape in important and appalling ways while we look in other directions.
After the Asian tsunami of 2004, Condoleezza Rice called the storm that killed over 200,000 "a wonderful opportunity" that has "paid great dividends for us." What did she mean? A group known as Thailand Tsunami Survivors and Supporters says the tsunami was indeed an opportunity for businessmen and their political cohorts in that region, "since it literally wiped these coastal areas clean of the communities which had previously stood in the way of their plans for resorts, hotels, casinos and shrimp farms."
Who needs bulldozers, permits, landtakings when the weather obligingly washes beaches clean of people and their homes? Closer to home, our corporations used this logic on the Mississippi coast after Katrina. Before the hurricane, the parts of casinos where gambling took place had to be kept offshore. Hotels and restaurants were built on land, but gambling had to be done on boats.
But only two months after the storm, while many Mississippians were still scrambling for housing, the state legislature changed the law so that gambling facilities could be built on land. The rules of the game changed, and so did the economic and cultural landscape. In Biloxi, seven casinos have opened since then; last fall the town's casinos were grossing $97 million a month, and the mayor was predicting that Biloxi would eventually rival Las Vegas.
For homeowners on the Mississippi coast, the situation is quite different. Congress directed that $5.4 billion in Community Development Block Grant funds go to the region, with half to be channeled to low- and moderate-income residents. But Mississippi governor Haley Barbour, the former Republican National Committee chairman whose law firm gained fame lobbying for the tobacco industry, waived that stipulation, allowing the money to be diverted from the coast's less well-heeled citizens. Pricey condos are springing up, but according to press reports late last year, only 20 percent of the money had been earmarked for programs serving needy homeowners, and less than that had been distributed.
