What’s Good Enough for Baghdad is Good Enough for New Orleans
CPL Kierys by MATEUS_27:24&25.
As noted last week, I’m setting out to make sense of the Recovery School District and the School Facilities Master Plan for Orleans Parish. I’m getting caught up today by reading Eli Ackerman’s research into some of the School Facilities Master Plan contractors.
In Who Is Parsons?, Eli Ackerman looks into the contractor who’s tasked with the engineering evaluations that determine which schools are to be demolished.
One of the planners, listed in the section of the website entitled The Planners is a firm from California called Parsons Corporation.
Parsons has made the news last year for their work in the reconstruction of Iraq. Their contract was terminated when “it was found to have finished only six of more than 140 primary healthcare centres it was supposed to build, after two years work and $500m spent.”
One of their projects was the Baghdad Police Academy. An important component of the plan to increase the security in Iraq. From the Washington Post article Heralded Iraq Police Academy a ‘Disaster’:
“This is the most essential civil security project in the country — and it’s a failure,” said Stuart W. Bowen Jr., the special inspector general for Iraq reconstruction, an independent office created by Congress. “The Baghdad police academy is a disaster.”
The Guardian tells more about the Iraqi Police Academy in
Corruption: the ’second insurgency’ costing $4bn a year.
In a police college Parsons built for $75m in Baghdad the plumbing was so bad that urine and excrement rained down from the toilets on to the police cadets. Parsons left a sub-contractor to do repairs but in general there is little punitive action that can be taken for shoddy work.
Finally, MSNBC has a slide show of Parson’s work at
Did Iraq contractor fleece American taxpayers?.
We are looking at losing half of the schools in New Orleans to a decision to demolish and we are being asked once again, to participate in a planning process that will give the appearence that we’ve chosen this destruction for ourselves. A peculiar twist that the contracts were let to such an infamous contractor.
It is not at all reassuring to have the future of our school system decided by the analysis of Parsons Corporation.
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