Hillary Clinton Takes On George W. Bush
Hillary Rodham Clinton has written an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal titled “No Crisis Is Immune From Exploitation Under Bush.” The crises she speaks about in this article are the war in Iraq, hurricane Katrina, and others.
In the past few years, the number of corporations flocking to places like the Cayman Islands to evade U.S. taxes has exploded. One of these companies, former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, has used offshore tax havens to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal taxes. To no one’s surprise, instead of cracking down on KBR, the Bush administration has rewarded the company in April of this year with a 10-year, $150 billion contract in Iraq.
There appears to be no crisis, tragedy or disaster immune from exploitation under the Bush administration. The examples of the waste, fraud and abuse are legion — from KBR performing shoddy electrical work in Iraq that has resulted in the electrocution of our military personnel according to Pentagon and Congressional investigators, to the firing of an Army official who dared to refuse a $1 billion payout for questionable charges to the same company. In another scam, the Pentagon awarded a $300 million contract to AEY, Inc., a company run by a 22-year-old who fulfilled an ammunition deal in Afghanistan by supplying rotting Chinese-made munitions to our allies.
But the fraud and waste are not limited to the war. In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, for example, FEMA awarded a contract worth more than $500 million for trailers to serve as temporary housing. The contractor, Gulf Stream, collected all of its money even though they knew at the time that its trailers were contaminated with formaldehyde.
While touting fiscal responsibility, President Bush and his administration have lined the pockets of political cronies like Halliburton and Blackwater. While calling for earmark reform, the president has allowed no-bid and questionable contracting throughout the federal government to dwarf earmark spending by a 10-to-1 ratio.
Of course, letting the market deal with certain problems is not necessarily a problem. No bid contracts, however, are problematic; they are all too often used to give contracts to befriended companies, not because they are able to do what needs to be done for a low price, but because… they’re just that; friends.
Although I am no fan of Hillary, I agree with everything she said. I was hoping this issue was going to be an election boiling point, but no one seems to be addressing this issue. It was Hurricane Katrina that first brought this to light, when the Cruise lines were providing shelter to the displaced victims. At first the news thought it was great, through tragedy, a silver lining for another sector of the economy. Then it was quickly realized, wait.. they’re all based out of Panama??
I thought Clinton’s column was yet another decent criticism undermined by the author’s choice to use tired BDS themes.
I remember hearing something about KBR going to the Caymans, but didn’t realized they went through with it.
You shouldn’t be allowed to get a defense contract with the government unless you are fulfilling your corporate responsibilities, like paying taxes.
As for market forces dealing with issues, it’s not the market doing the work when KBR is the only company you go to for the work.
What needs to be recognized though is that no bid contracts sometimes are necessary (either due to time constraints or the lack of competitors- some specialized jobs are only performed by a single entity, and the cost of doing business in war zones or disaster areas precludes the natural market tendency for competition.)
What is lacking in these situations is oversight; when a no bid contract is necessary, there ought to be a highly increased sensitivity to the need for scrutiny.
You know, these things have been boiling for years in the U.S., and she has been a member of the Senate for quite some time and fingers should be pointed to everybody in the House and the Senate including herself for allowing these things to happen. But now she is taking to the usual Blame-Bush-because-his-popularity-is-twenty-something-percent tactic along with all other Democrats… Blame Bush because focus groups say so… Hmmm…
My issue is, she is writing an op-ed complaining about these NOW ? Seems like more of a theatrical performance piece designed to get attention rather than some serious work that seeks to abolish corruption in the U.S. on all fronts.
While it is impossible not to agree with Hillary Clinton in this case, her self-serving agenda to become the poster girl in the fight against war-profiteering sound disingenous at best. For me, at least :)))