If greedy real estate developers weren't taking advantage of programs meant for the poor, the disenfranchised, or, say, the victims of horrifying natural disasters, then it wouldn't really be America, would it? I mean, that's what we're all about here in the U.S.A. It certainly explains why developers are using tax benefits created as part of the Gulf Opportunity Zone (GO Zone) Act of 2005 to build luxury condos in an area that only got heavy rain during Hurricane Katrina.

Tuscaloosa, hundreds of miles away from the Gulf Coast, but incidentally the home of the University of Alabama football stadium, is benefiting from a bunch of brand new million dollar condos built with money that should have gone to actual hurricane victims. How did this happen? It might have to do with a certain Republican Senator from Tuscaloosa who sits on the Appropriations committee.

The GO Zone extends so damn far, but the people who need it the most can't take advantage of it," said John Harral, a lawyer in hard-hit Gulfport, Miss.

"It is a joke," said Tuscaloosa developer Stan Pate, who has nevertheless used GO Zone tax breaks on projects that include a new hotel and a restaurant. "It was supposed to be about getting people … to put housing in New Orleans, Louisiana, or Biloxi, Mississippi. It was not about condos in Tuscaloosa."

Locals say Tuscaloosa was included in the GO Zone through the efforts of Republican Sen. Richard Shelby, who is from Tuscaloosa, graduated from Alabama and sits on the powerful Appropriations Committee. But Shelby aides said Tuscaloosa made the cut because it was classified as a disaster area by the government after Katrina, not because of the senator's influence.

When asked how he felt about the misuse of GO Zone tax cuts, a pawn broker in Slidell, La. said he didn't even know what the GO Zone was, adding that he lived in the "Dead Zone."

So, the GO Zone Act has been working beautifully, huh?

[AP]