Halliburton story -- should I be pissed?

[Cocoa]

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/261527_jackson03.html

Halliburton's latest outrageous withdrawal from its ATM (American Taxpayer Machine) cries out for the great communicator. Back in 1976 when Ronald Reagan first ran for president, he stoked the anger of largely white audiences with brutal exaggerations of the undeserving black and brown poor.

He talked of a "welfare queen" in Chicago who collected $150,000 under 80 different names. It turned out that she collected only $8,000 under four names. In a Florida campaign stop, Reagan bemoaned how hard-working people wait in line at grocery stores while a "strapping black buck" purchased T-bone steaks with food stamps. It was code language in Florida, where Reagan's Republican state campaign manager told The New York Times, "We are wasting our time to get black people registered."

<snip>

Reagan won the presidency in 1980 partially on that attack on the poor. His lasting imagery led to sweeping cutbacks in welfare under President Clinton, a Democrat, and in the current budget cuts to the poor by Republican President Bush. But Halliburton, one of our greatest cheats of the past quarter-century, continues to skip to the head of the grocery line for tax bones as the poor continue to be axed to bare bones.

Even though an Army audit determined that $263 million of charges by Halliburton were exaggerated or unjustified on its $2.41 billion no-bid contract for fuel deliveries and oil equipment repair in Iraq, the Army said it will pay all but $10.1 million of it. The Times reported Monday that the decision to withhold only 3.8 percent of the charges in question is far below the average of questionable charges that are withheld. That average has ranged between 56.4 percent and 75.2 percent over the past three years.

more...

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. K&R We should all be pissed

[Starlight]

2. Very, very pissed.

:grr: :grr: :grr: :grr: :grr:

[Frustratedlady]

3. Join The Silenced Crowd

Isn't anyone in the White House watching these numbers and balancing the books? They throw millions of dollars around like they were throwing $10 bills.

K&R --

[salin]

4. at the end of the Clinton admin - an exec order was passed

that prevented a company that had defrauded the govt from getting any govt contract for a number of years.

One of the *first* things the bush admin did in office, was to reverse that order.

I know hear that to "save" the Dubai Port deal - there is pressure to bring in an American corp partner... and who is that partner? Halliburton, you know the country that went around the US sanctions against doing business with Iraq (through a foreign subsidiary) to become the largest company in the world doing business with Iraq to service/repair the Iraqi oil infrastructure. The company that has been proven to have defrauded the govt of hundreds of millions of tax payer dollars.