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Rather than join the nationwide effort to help families trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina, special interests in Washington, DC and their amen choir in the media believe now is the time for even more division and partisanship. Their latest cause celebre, President Bush's executive order exempting individuals and companies who aid Hurricane Katrina victims from some affirmative action regulations.

Sounding more like the arrested LAPD officers than Rodney King, leaders of the AFL-CIO, the DNC, and the NAACP are essentially pleading that the national cooperation and progress not seen since September 11 grind to a halt. Hopefully their efforts will not succeed. On the heels of false charges ranging from a racist conspiracy to destroy the levees in New Orleans to claims that the Bush Administration willfully allowed the poor and minorities communities to suffer needlessly, America -- in the midst of dealing with this tragedy -- can ill afford to entertain further alarmist claims that needlessly divide us based on race and income.

But the prospects for us all coming together aren't looking good. Like Jesus said in the New Testament, "Seeing they may see and not perceive, and hearing they may hear and not understand lest they should turn." So it is with the division mongers in our midst who will not be deterred in their efforts to divide at the very moment when unity is most needed.

The AFL-CIO waited as long at it could before announcing that President Bush had used the "disaster to attack federal standards." An NAACP spokesman helpfully weighed in with his view that "if the victims had not been mostly poor and black" the federal response would have been entirely different and the DNC predictably issued a release titled "Gulf Coast Needs Relief, Not A Right-Wing Agenda From Bush."

So what's this latest furor about? According to the Department of Labor, "new" federal contractors assisting in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts "will not be obligated to develop written affirmative action programs for those contracts entered into for a period of 90 days. These same firms must continue to list job vacancies with state employment services, take affirmative steps to ensure non-discrimination, and keep required records."

Nothing in the President's order repeals any requirement regarding discrimination by employers. The exemption and related waivers are simply about requirements to develop written affirmative action programs. Frankly, such relief is a commonsense and fairly innocuous measure to encourage greater assistance by the private sector in relief efforts.

Unbeknownst to most Americans, when companies like Wal-Mart, Home Depot, pharmaceutical giant Johnson and Johnson or anyone with 50 or more employees offer to turn over their inventories of goods, facilities, services or even their employees to the federal government at reduced or even below cost rates to assist Hurricane Katrina evacuees they are considered "federal contractors" subject to Executive Order 11246.

EO 11246 as originally issued by President Johnson covers businesses and corporations who have contracts with the federal government for highway construction and the like. And despite what the alarmists have suggested, after the waiver period ends individuals or businesses that wish to continue working with the federal government would be expected to take up the same paperwork duties as other pre-existing federal contractors.

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