remember being ripped off by Halliburton, year after year?

[G_j]

contract after contract..

where was all the outrage then?

http://www.halliburtonwatch.org/news/dpc_hearing062705.html

Whistleblowers, auditors describe Halliburton's rip-off of US taxpayers
29 June 2005

WASHINGTON, June 29 (HalliburtonWatch.org) -- A Congressional hearing on Monday provided detailed evidence of the cozy relationship between Halliburton and top officials of the Pentagon, revealing how the Army's number one contractor abuses US taxpayer funds in Iraq with impunity.

During the hearing, sponsored by the Democratic Policy Committee, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA) released a previously-secret military audit criticizing an extra $1.4 billion in "questioned" and "unsupported" expenditures by Halliburton's KBR subsidiary in Iraq. The audit was conducted by the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency (DCAA). It determined that KBR had $1 billion in "questioned" expenses in Iraq (i.e. expenses which military auditors consider "unreasonable") and $442 million in "unsupported" expenses (i.e. expenses which military auditors have determined contain no receipt or any explanation on how the expenses were disbursed).

Last August, Pentagon auditors disclosed $1.8 billion in questioned and unsupported costs by KBR. Last February, top officials in the Pentagon ignored their own auditors and paid the $1.8 billion to Halliburton even though KBR was still unable to explain or justify the cost.

Most of the audits of the Pentagon's 77 contractors in Iraq have "found only minor cost" problems, says the DCAA, and "the majority of these problems have been resolved by the contractors." But this is not the case with Halliburton. According to DCAA, "major contract audit issues" are "limited to largest Iraqi reconstruction contractor," which is Halliburton.

Given the cozy relationship between Halliburton and top officials at the Pentagon, it's likely that the amount of suspicious KBR expenditures will continue to increase further into the billions while political appointees at the Pentagon reward the problem by ignoring it or offering bonus payments for KBR's work. <snip>
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5610.htm

The Halliburton Shuffle

By BOB HERBERT

01/30/04: (New York Times) Can you spell Halliburton? R-i-p- o-f-f.

War-torn Iraq has been a gold mine for Halliburton, yet another treasure trove of U.S. taxpayer dollars for a company that has no peer in the fine art of extracting riches from the government.

But if you go through some of Halliburton's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission over the past several years, as I have, you'll see a company that goes to great lengths — literally to the ends of the earth — to escape paying its fair share of taxes to the government that has been so good to it.

Annual reports filed with the S.E.C. since the mid-90's — when Dick Cheney took over as chief executive and wrote the game plan for garnering government goodies — showed Halliburton subsidiaries incorporated in such places as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, Trinidad and Tobago, Panama, Liechtenstein, and Vanuatu.

Vanuatu? Who knew?

Vanuatu is a mountainous group of islands in the South Pacific. Its people support themselves mostly by fishing and subsistence farming. "Additional revenues," according to the Columbia Encyclopedia, "derive from a growing tourist industry and the development of Vila as a corporate tax shelter."

Halliburton, in an S.E.C. filing in 2000, duly noted that it had a subsidiary incorporated in Vanuatu called Kinhill Kramer (Vanuatu) Ltd.

The company adamantly denies that its offshore subsidiaries are used to shift income out of the U.S. But it's indisputable that somebody is doing a dandy job of limiting Halliburton's tax liability. When I asked how much Halliburton paid in federal income taxes last year, a company spokeswoman, Wendy Hall, said, "After foreign tax credit utilization, we paid just over $15 million to the I.R.S. for our 2002 tax liability."

That is effectively no money at all to an empire like Halliburton. Less than pocket change. Dick Cheney must be having a good laugh over the way his old company, following his road map, is taking the U.S. for such a ride.
<snip>

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[dkf]

1. Bush's entire Presidency was an outrage.

Its almost not worth the effort.

[SpiralHawk]

2. "Sneer. Smirk." - xVP Dickie 'Five Military Deferments' Cheney (R)

"That's just Republicon Homelander Family Values in action. Deal with it. Sneer. Too bad - smirk - about you poor-ass American proles. Ha ha. Sneer."

- xVP Dickie 'Five Military Deferments' Cheney (R)

[G_j]

4. I love that photo

it is so endearing!
:scared:

[jus_the_facts]

3. Cheney's stock options have raked in billions.....

“Halliburton has already raked in more than $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney Administration for work in Iraq, and they were awarded some of the first Katrina contracts," Lautenberg said in a statement. "It is unseemly for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his Administration funnels billions of dollars to it. The Vice President should sever his financial ties to Halliburton once and for all.”

Cheney continues to hold 433,333 Halliburton stock options. The company has been criticized by auditors for its handling of a no-bid contact in Iraq. Auditors found the firm marked up meal prices for troops and inflated gas prices in a deal with a Kuwaiti supplier. The company built the American prison at Guantanamo Bay.


http://rawstory.com/news/2005/Cheneys_stock_options_rose_3281_last_1011.html