I got the buses!

So this article in the Chicago Tribune tells some interesting facts about how government money is spent to fund companies that aren't so concerned about actually doing the job. Atrios explains it better, but basically, Landstar Express America was given a $100 million dollar annual contract for disaster relief. Instead of ordering buses before the hurricane, it just checked their availability and didn't actually order anything until Aug. 30th, two days after the storm. Meanwhile, Peter Pantuso of the American Bus Association(whose members include some of the nation's largest motor coach companies, including Greyhound and Coach USA) was doing anything and everything to try to contact FEMA to utilize their bus lines for relief efforts. Did FEMA settle the issue and make sure things would work out better next time? No.

"In a regulatory filing last week, Landstar Express said it has received government orders worth at least $125 million for Katrina-related work. It's not known how much of that total pertains to the bus evacuation.
Landstar Express is a subsidiary of Landstar System, a $2 billion company whose board chairman, Jeff Crowe, also was chairman of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, one of the nation's premier business lobbies, from June 2003 until May 2004.
Whatever happens likely will be good for Landstar's bottom line.
Landstar's regulatory filing also said that because of Hurricane Katrina, the maximum annual value of its government contract for disaster relief services has been increased to $400 million."

So instead of granting a new contract to the company that was on the ball, our fine friends in Washington just upped the contract to the guys that weren't on the ball. And the connection of board chairman Jeff Crowe also being chairman of U.S. Chamber of Commerce? That's not cronyism, it's umm... working with friends, right?