Edwin Meese is baaaack

September 18, 2005 -- Former Attorney General under Ronald Reagan Edwin Meese has become an unofficial adviser for New Orleans area reconstruction. Meese has a close working relationship with Karl Rove, the newly-appointed White House point man for Gulf Coast rebuilding. The major link is Meese's leadership position in the Christian big business and fascism-rooted Fellowship Foundation. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, the Fellowship Foundation is a powerful and wealthy tax-exempt religious foundation financed by defense contractors and other corporations that uses "Jesus" as a corporate logo in the same manner McDonald's uses the "Golden Arches" and Microsoft uses a multi-colored window pane.

Meese, a Heritage Foundation public policy fellow, recently helped author a policy paper on Katrina recovery, a blueprint that is beginning to influence the White House's plans for New Orleans. Meese's criticism of FEMA's plan to distribute $2000 debit cards to hurricane victims likely led to the last minute cancellation of the program. FEMA, instead, said it would transfer the money to victims' bank accounts -- held in bank branches that are now closed and in accounts not available to evacuees who have been transferred to other states.

The Meese plan emphasizes tax credits and vouchers in lieu of cash grants. This, of course, is designed to help businesses and religious schools at the expense of the poor and jobless. The Meese plan also calls for rezoning New Orleans and suburbs as "Opportunity Zones," capitalist free-for-all playgrounds where capital gains, 2004 and 2005 business income taxes, and estate taxes are eliminated and environmental (including the Clean Water and Clean Air Acts), anti-predatory lending, health insurance portability and accountability (HIPAA), public education, equal opportunity housing, minimum wage (Davis Bacon Act), anti-securities fraud, pension protection, and civil rights laws and regulations are suspended or abolished.