150,000,000,000

Let’s stop using the word billion or million let us truly gaze at the number being thrown around Washington these days. 150 billion just doesn’t have the same gravitas as 150,000,000,000. It is a wonderful number, almost majestic in its length and bold in its necessity. It would take a person at least a decade (counting continuously) to reach such a number and this is apropos. 10 years is my estimate for the bureaucratic wrangling which will swamp the Big Easy. Mismanagement and corruption have been the hallmark of New Orleans politics, this is no secret. Thus it is fitting that a corrupt giant has emerged with contract in hand to help clean up and clean out the 150,000,000,000. For, Halliburton has already been awarded a new no-bid contract for clean-up in the region and many more international corporations will be happy to drink from the new corporate welfare trough.

Monies will be lost like 100,000 bricks of cash in Iraq. Patronage, preferential treatment and nepotism will be overwhelming and irresistible. New Orleans will finally come back to its roots of pirates, smuggling and political graft. Washington will find out what it did right and blame the rest on amorphous bodies such as ‘local levels, state agencies or community developments’. Pontius Pilot will once again wash his hands in an oval basin of the White House and slip painlessly into a portrait decorating the Green Room. After calmly pulling his shoulders back he will look himself in the mirror and pronounce that I am the truth the light and the way. Bush will be oblivious to the true human consequences of his delayed actions and misjudgment.