Halliburton, Cheney, Right in the money with Katrina cleanup

The Equinox | October 6, 2005
By Ben Conant

You know the feeling when you wake up on Christmas Day, and you run downstairs and there is a big pile of gifts with your name on them?

You know that maybe other people are less fortunate than you, or that you really shouldn't be so greedy as to rip open all the presents right away, but you forget all that and spend all day wallowing in torn wrapping paper?

That must have been how Vice President Dick Cheney felt when he woke up the morning after Hurricane Katrina destroyed the Gulf Coast.

You see, Cheney makes money when Halliburton's stock rises. Halliburton's stock rises when they land big government contracts.

They land big government contracts all the time, probably because they are given them without having to bid.

For instance, you've heard of Iraq, right? There's like this war going on over there or something.

During a war, somebody has to do laundry, feed troops and restore pipelines. Halliburton scored, uncontested, those contracts and countless others.

They should be pretty lucrative too, since they're charging $100 to do a load of laundry, feeding the soldiers spoiled food and giving them contaminated water from the Euphrates River.

That brings me to the point. Hurricane Katrina caused a lot of problems, and somebody has to clean up the mess.

One and a half billion dollars worth of contracts have been signed by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and according to sources like the New York Times, more than 80 percent of that money was awarded without a bidding process.

That money is going to Halliburton affiliates like the Shaw Group and Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR.)

Basically, Halliburton-based companies are charging whatever they want to for clean-up efforts. We must really trust them. I wonder if any sway came from KBR lobbyist Joe Allbaugh. He's a lobbyist now, but he used to be an advisor to-guess who! President George W. Bush.

In fact, Allbaugh has been called "the Karl Rove of contracting." He also used to head up FEMA. There are just so many ways the interests can be conflicted, and cronyism lurks in every shadow.

Recently, the Congressional Progressive Caucus, headed by Rep. Lynn Woolsey (D-Calif.) and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.,) sent a letter to President Bush asking him to suspend any new contracts with Halliburton pending investigation of possible abuses in Iraq. Suspension is an option if the contractor has a history of unsatisfactory performances.

According to the letter, Halliburton "clearly does." This happened on the same day Senators Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) called for investigation into a $236 million deal with Carnival Cruise ships.

Jesse Jackson called these no-bid contracts "gifts" to the companies that are receiving them.

Maybe if enough people speak their mind and let the world know how they feel about this, Cheney will get coal in his stocking this year, instead of oil.

Last modified October 10, 2005