A Few of the faces of those responsible for the Houston disaster.

NAHB's Senior Officers

NAHB is member-driven, with more than 2,200 members serving on the association’s board of directors, which elects the Senior Officers and helps set the association’s agenda.

Granger MacDonald

Chairman of the Board

Granger MacDonald, a Kerrville, Texas-based builder and developer with 40 years of experience in the home building industry, is NAHB’s 2017 Chairman of the Board of Directors.
Biography | Downloadable Photo

Randy Noel

First Vice Chairman of the Board

Randy Noel, MIRM, CGB, CMP, NAHB’s First Vice Chairman of the Board, is a Louisiana-based custom home builder with more than 30 years of experience in the residential construction industry. Noel founded Reve Inc., a custom home building firm in LaPlace, La., in 1985.

Biography | Downloadable Photo

Greg Ugalde

 Second Vice Chairman of the Board

Greg Ugalde, CGP, GMB, a Connecticut builder and developer, is NAHB's Second Vice Chairman of the Board. Ugalde is president and chief legal officer of Torrington-based T&M Building Co., Inc., one of the largest home builders in the state. T&M Homes has built more than 3,500 new single-family attached and detached homes in over 40 Connecticut communities.

Biography | Downloadable Photo

Dean Mon

Third Vice Chairman of the Board

Dean Mon, a New Jersey-based builder and developer with more than 30 years of experience in the home building industry, is NAHB’s 2017 Third Vice Chairman of the Board. Mon is president of the D.R. Mon Group, Inc., which specializes in the development and construction of green urban living projects throughout New Jersey.
Biography | Downloadable Photo

Ed Brady

Immediate Past Chairman of the Board

Ed Brady, NAHB’s 2017 Immediate Past Chairman of the Board, is a home builder and developer from Bloomington, Ill. A second generation home builder, he is president of Brady Homes Illinois, one of the largest home building firms in central Illinois. The company has developed 20 residential communities throughout the state, built more than 1,800 single-family homes and developed more than 2,000 single-family lots.

Biography | Downloadable Photo

Gerald M. Howard

Chief Executive Officer

With more than 25 years of lobbying and association experience in Washington, D.C., Jerry Howard is NAHB's Chief Executive Officer. Previously, he was the Senior Staff Vice President of NAHB's Government Affairs Division.

Here is a link to the senior officers of the Texas Association of Builders. Lets put a human face on some of the people whose decisions affect the lives of millions of people in a harmful way and who get very rich doing it. I'll bet these guys all go to church on Sunday, it's good PR.

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

Member DSA

Above are some of the people that head one of the major organizations responsible for the catastrophe in Texas and Louisiana, the National Association of Home Builders. Along with them are the politicians that they bribe to ensure that laws are not passed that would hurt their profit margins even though such restrictions would be less environmentally destructive and safeguard human life and property. Guilty of crimes against society are the heads of the oil and chemical industry in the region. They don't build homes for human shelter, they build them for profit and could just as easily be investing capital in a candy factory. They are a parasitic burden on society.

In a previous posts like this one we pointed out that the causes of the Houston catastrophe are being obscured that in the mass media the tremendous solidarity between people that we see all the time in these situations is being used to avoid assigning blame, Climate change and unrestricted markets and the lack of zoning laws are enemy number 1. Bloomberg Business Week's latest edition covering this event goes in to a little more detail confirming what we have been saying in posts of the past week or so.  BW does this for two reasons. One is that the magazine is one of the more serious publications of the US capitalist class read mostly by them and they know that so they can be a little more open and honest in it. The other is that a huge section of the capitalist class in the US accepts climate change as one of the most important issues threatening humanity today.

The present administration and its Predator in Chief, the buffoon Trump, do not accept climate change. The fossil fuel industry which is prominent in Texas and Houston also does not want this issue discussed seriously.  But the situation in Houston and the ongoing tragedies connected to climate change, Katrina, Harvey and numerous other storms and floods around the world mean the issue cannot be put aside much longer and Trump and co will have to answer for it.  The lack of any rational planning when it comes to capitalist society worsens an already bad situation. Here in italics are some comments from Business Weeks coverage: *

"Any measure introduced in Texas that increases costs draws opposition from homebuilders, a powerful group in state and local politics. At the end of this year’s state legislative session, the Texas Association of Builders posted a document highlighting its success in killing legislation it didn’t like. That included a bill that would have let cities require residential fire sprinklers. Another would have given counties with 100,000 people or more authority over zoning, land use, and oversight of building standards—something the builders’ group called “onerous.”

This is similar to the Grenfell Tower fire in London in that there are human beings who made conscious decisions or bribed politicians to ensure profits were placed above public safety. They are murderers and criminals. In this Houston case those who wrote the measure, introduced it, bribed politicians to pass it and the politicians themselves are guilty of crimes against humanity. They should be named and tried as such. Panels composed of rank and file union members, representatives of community organizations environmental groups, indigenous communities and other non business or business friendly organizations should take the initiative, identify these people and demand they be brought to justice. Put a name and face to the people responsible for these market driven catastrophes that are almost daily occurrences.  Where do they shop, worship (they cover their asses by going to church) and where do their kids go to school. They should not escape our ire. BW adds further:

"Last year the National Association of Home Builders boasted of its prowess at stopping codes for 2018 that it didn’t like. “Only 6 percent of the proposals that NAHB opposed made it through the committee hearings intact,” the association wrote on its blog. The homebuilders demonstrated their power again this year, when President Donald Trump reversed an Obama initiative restricting federally funded building projects in flood plains. “This is a huge victory for NAHB and its members,” the association blogged."

So we know who those responsible are, a terrorist organization that goes under the name The National Association of Home Builders, like ISIS and the NAZIs they boast about their victories. The leaders can be brought to trial.  We can pull the mask off the killers. A friend told me they were criminals but not terrorists because they are not politically driven, just greedy. But they are politically driven. They are driven by their support for capitalism and free markets at all costs and their rapacious thirst for profits. They are certainly economic terrorists.

Hard Rain and Hard Lessons Business Week 9-4-17