Halliburton
Diane Feinstein: Yet More No-Change Change
First Hillary Clinton got to run our foreign policy. Now Diane Feinstein gets to oversee our intelligence agencies. This is change?
December 16, 2008 | Read More
What’s Good for GM is Good for America
You might recall old “Engine” Charlie Wilson, the former CEO of General Motors, later the Secretary of Defense under President Dwight Eisenhower, who became known for his statement that “what’s good for GM is good for the country.” But is what’s good for GM’s top execs good for us?
November 11, 2008 | Read More
Where’s Our Harry Truman?
During World War II, then Senator Truman waged a nonstop battle against defense contracting fraud and saved the country $15 billion (in 1940s dollars). In honor of Veteran’s Day, we thought we’d ask: are there any Harry Trumans in Congress fighting today’s war profiteers?
November 11, 2008 | Read More
Blood Stocks
Slate highlights a study this morning that shows U.S.-led coups didn’t just benefit connected multinationals. They also made unknown government insiders a ton of money.
October 28, 2008 | Read More
Reason #91: Halliburton in the Halls of Government
A I’ve discussed, before he got to be our vice president, Dick Cheney was V.P. at Halliburton. He was also CEO of the company for a while. Under Cheney, Halliburton doubled its political contributions to the sum of $1.2 million. Most of that money went to Republican politicians. Not coincidentally, the U.S. government awarded Halliburton several contracts to rebuild oil infrastructure in Iraq, without allowing other companies to bid for the jobs, as the government normally does.
These days, Halliburton remains big in the business of campaign contributions, and 93 percent of this money goes to Republicans. (The Fluor Corporation is…
August 28, 2008 | Read More
Reason #90: Destroying Iraq So Halliburton Can Rebuild It
There used to be pretty good government oversight of companies helping the U.S. military … all that’s out the window today.
The biggest army in Iraq isn’t comprised of U.S. troops. It’s a force of 180,000 civilian workers. These contractors, who include construction contractors like Bechtel and Parsons Delaware, as well as security forces like Blackwater, have been hired to rebuild the country. But the word “rebuilding” is a stretch. There’s an awful lot of waste-and that’s a charitable term for war profiteering.
War is big business; the corporations do very, very well when it’s raging. Consider that while GI grunts get…
August 28, 2008 | Read More
Reason #83: The Military-Industrial-Political Complex
Eisenhower originally intended to add the word “Congressional” to his “military industrial complex” phrase. He crossed the word out at the last minute, but he should have kept it. Congress and the rest of our political establishment are deeply ingrained in our role as World Boss.
Every year, our legislators happily allocate half a trillion dollars for “defense.” Hundreds of billions go straight into the pockets of giant weapons manufacturers like Lockheed-Martin and Raytheon-not to mention companies like Halliburton that feed and house our troops or firms like Bechtel and Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) that come in to rebuild the cities…
August 28, 2008 | Read More
Reason #30: Presidential Payola - The (Brown and) Root of Halliburton’s Power
Dick Cheney isn’t Halliburton’s first friend in the White House. The company has a long history of setting up shop on Pennsylvania Avenue. One of Halliburton’s main subsidiaries, Brown and Root, bankrolled a young Democratic politician named Lyndon Johnson and cashed in as he rose to become the leader of the free world.
Back in the late 1930s, Brown and Root was just a backwater construction company in South Texas. But after then-Congressman Lyndon Johnson convinced the Roosevelt Administration to grant the firm a coveted dam building contract, a cataract of federal cash gushed into its accounts. In return for his…
August 26, 2008 | Read More
Reason #29: The Well-Oiled Revolving Door
As a reward for his work for the drug industry, former congressman Billy Tauzin slid from the public to the private sector for $2 million a year. But many government officials go the other direction, from corporate boardrooms to government posts, and still do quite nicely for themselves - and their former employers.
Dick Cheney is probably the worst example. He went from government to industry and back to government again, but no matter where he hung his hat, he kept making money for his benefactors in the business world. As defense secretary during the first Bush Administration, Cheney helped a company called…
August 26, 2008 | Read More
