bush does something right

CNN reports that "Bush lifts wage rules for Katrina":

In a notice to Congress, Bush said the hurricane had caused "a national emergency" that permits him to take such action under the 1931 Davis-Bacon Act in ravaged areas of Alabama, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi.

Yay! For whatever reason, Bush has temporarily suspended one of the few Jim Crow laws that are still on the books. Naturally, leftists are going ape-shit crazy:

So workers come back to their ravaged neighborhoods to try and start over. They get whatever job they can to feed their family, perhaps a construction job with a federal contractor. But technically, because of Bush's executive order, the contractor can pay the worker $5/hr or even 5cents an hour. The less they pay the workers, the larger their profits. So how low will they go?

Bwahahahaha! What no one on the left will tell you is that Davis-Bacon was enacted by a wildly racist, Democrat Party-controlled Congress, back in 1931 specifically for the purpose of keeping blacks unemployed and keeping the money rolling into corrupt union coffers. Don't believe me? David Bernstein lays it out for you:

The measure passed because Congressmen saw the bill as protection for local, unionized[12] white workers' salaries in the fierce labor market of the Depression.[13] In particular, white union workers were angry that black workers who were barred from unions were migrating to the North in search of jobs in the building trades and undercutting "white" wages.[14]

The comments of various congressmen reveal the racial animus that motivated the sponsors and supporters of the bill. In 1930, Representative John J. Cochran of Missouri stated that he had "received numerous complaints in recent months about southern contractors employing low-paid colored mechanics getting work and bringing the employees from the South."[15] Representative Clayton Allgood, supporting Davis-Bacon on the floor of the House, complained of "cheap colored labor" that "is in competition with white labor throughout the country."[16]

Most on the left are too dumb to know the racist origins of the Davis-Bacon Act, but the bottom line is that elite Democrats are happy to sacrifice employment opportunities for minorities so long as the money continues to roll in for their buddies in the Unions.