Oops, another myth drops away from the continuing black eye of contracting for Iraq for the Bush Adminstration:
And as noted before, Cheney not endearing himself to Bush, on top of all the Halliburton mess, he was one of the hype masters behind the WMD claims disaster, not to mention:
Bush supports cannot be happy that they are saddled with such a liability at V.P. given the latest poll numbers. But alas, I think Bush is stuck with Cheney, warts and all, as dropping him would be a tacit admission of failure. The one chance is if they could convince Cheney to resign for “health” reasons. But given Cheney’s personality, I doubt he would.
I had a good chuckle at Fark’s snippet on the link:
His deferred compensation is fixed, meaning it won’t change with Halliburton’s value. So he is like an unsecured creditor. But in the article it said he had purchased an insurance contract in exchange for the deferred compensation, thus making it completely immune to Halliburton’s success or failure. In orther words, if Halliburton goes belly up, his compensation payments are not affected.
He said he would donate the after tax proceeds of the stock options to charity. If he does, then it would make his personal fortunes completely immune to Halliburton the company and its stock price.
Emily Latella: What’s all this talk about Cheny and Iraq? I mean, how can his monetary investments in a luggage company affect some contract they’re awarding for some foreign oil fields?
Jane Curtain: Uh, Emily, that’s Halliburton KBR and Energy Services Group, one of the largest petroleum extraction equipment contractors in the entire world, currently awarded a non-competitive bid worth over one billion dollars for the reconstruction of Iraq’s oil fields by Cheny’s superior, Boss Shrub.
Ever ahead of my time, I quoted this little factoid in a thread some days ago and was promptly pounced on by a resident defender of the Flying Monkey Club as being completely out of my mind to think that there is anything inappropriate in any of this. The list of egregious acts by the members of this administration have got to be getting more and more difficult to defend, even for staunch Bushies. I just read today where the number of persons living in poverty has gone up for the second year in a row (NY Times article: a link is unreachable unless you are a subscriber, sorry). What a fuckin’ surprise…
Do you then propose that no person who receives a pension be eligible for elective office? Should the high offices of the land be reserved exclusively for lawyers and owners of capital? Or is owning capital also disqualifying?
Or you know how to find it in Google News. Wait, you mean that poverty increases during and in the aftermath of recessions? Alert the media!
So yes, I do- by the way which one do I get? I hope its one of the offices that gets your signature on currency- that would make taking the bar so worth it.
Or maybe those in office shouldn’t look to enrich their friends and collegues in companies they still hold financial stakes in with back door Billion-dollar no-bid contracts. If Clinton had done something like this Fox News Channel and Rush Limbaugh would be holding round the clock coverage.
Given the closed door meetings with heavy energy company donors, that Cheney desperately tried to hide, and still zealously works to withold any documentation on (leading to an unprecented suit by the GAO)- Cheney has proven to be tied at the hip to Halliburton and the various big donors from the Fortune 500 energy companies.
Yeah, what a crack up. Hilary Clinton scores a few thousand in the cattle market and she’s the biggest, most underhanded, cheatingest scalliwag since Michael Milken…
But Cheney’s doings start to look a little dubious to the tune of millions of dollars and it’s … “Oh it’s all on the up and up … he’s an honest man … there is no wrong doing … nothing to see here … move along.”
It seems like most people have forgotten an old political maxim.
I recall that a good politician is not only supposed to avoid conflicts of interest, but also is obliged to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest.
Cheny has blown this to smithereens. His back room dealings with Enron have cast his role in the most injurious light possible. This guy is a dead and rotting albatross around Shrub’s neck, which is precisely where he belongs.
Umm. I don’t believe Bill Clinton ever held a job in the private sector, or, as I like to refer to it, the Real World, so what you’re suggesting is pretty much impossible.
If one is going to claim that their is something wrong with Cheney’s retirement compensation, or the fact that he had dealings with Enron you’re going to have to tell us what exactly they are.
The simple fact that Cheney has retirement benefits is not an actual indictment. Guilt by association doesn’t fly.
Enron having been a Fortune 50 company at one time, in the same sector as Halliburton, it would be very surprising if Cheney did not have dealings with them.
Shit. I had dealings with Enron. I still own stock.
So again, let us be specific. What exactly is wrong with Cheney’s retirement or Enron dealings?
This is a bit difficult when he will not disclose the content of discussions with them. That he would refuse to do so becomes even more conspicuous when you consider that Enron loaned Shrub their corporate jet during his presidential campaign. All of this smacks of cronyism to such a degree that a clean breast is pretty much mandatory. Instead, the public has been treated to legal obfuscation rivaled only by the Nixon era. Not much of a recommendation in my book.
Had Enron’s chief officers not intentionally misreported their company’s performance, they might never have been able to afford to loan such an unaffordable asset as a private jet. There is no after-the-fact connection sought by this inference. Merely, that it remains highly conspicuous that so many other CEOs are in the dock while Lay, Skilling and others are still free men.
It’s not merely guilt by association. Cheny stands to profit directly from further success of Halliburton. To be even a remote part of their being awarded a no bid billion dollar contract fairly shrieks, “conflict of interest” in glowing neon letters.
The whole point of this is, HE DID, and a lot of us see this as a massive conflict of interest. I do not see what needs to be so secret about the discussions between Cheny and these energy people. These are not secrets of state. Affairs of state, yes; Secrets, no. To withhold this information inasmuch proclaims the very need to be suspect. Anyone who is not has on blinkers the size of Sir Elton John’s spectacles.
I think we should all just leave Mr. Cheney alone and go think some Happy Thoughts! That’s what I like to do in times like this… no point in letting such trivialities get you down…
[quote[That he would refuse to do so becomes even more conspicuous when you consider that Enron loaned Shrub their corporate jet during his presidential campaign.[/quote]
What does the one say about the other, or is this just an excuse to segue into the jet thing?
[quote[All of this smacks of cronyism to such a degree that a clean breast is pretty much mandatory. Instead, the public has been treated to legal obfuscation rivaled only by the Nixon era. Not much of a recommendation in my book.[/quote]
I don’t care what it smacks of. What happened that was wrong? What did Cheney do that he shouldn’t have?
Calling it “legal obfuscation” whatever that it means, and invoking Nixon doesn’t make it true.
I truly hate these innuendo based attacks. If you have an actual issue, display it. Failing that all we have is a disingenuous little whine.
Allright, here’'s something specific. I.E. Cronyism brought about the dishonesty that brought down Enron.
This simply doesn’t hold water. You simply don’t understand the scale of Enron which, IIRC got as high as the ninth largest US Company. Enron didn’t need to lie to produce a Corporate Jet anymore than you’d need to rob banks to give away a peanut butter sandwich. It’s a drop in the bucket, and the two have nothing to do with each other by inference. If you posit a connection you’ll need to find a direct one.
[quoteMerely, that it remains highly conspicuous that so many other CEOs are in the dock while Lay, Skilling and others are still free men.It’s not merely guilt by association.[/quote]
No, it’s just innuendo.
The first part is false. As has already been explained to you, Cheney does not stand to profit. He has taken public steps in accordance with law and custom to divorce himself from the possibility of profiting directly from the success of his former company.
As for the no bid thing, the government does this a lot. They did this with Bootsncoots after the gulf war, because that company was by far the major player in oil field disaster recovery. They were really the only choice.
Halliburton is the major player in oil services infrastructure. Who else should they have chosen for this?
[quote[The whole point of this is, HE DID, and a lot of us see this as a massive conflict of interest.[/quote]
Once again, how you see it isn’t an argument. How you see it, isn’t what it is. You need to demonstrate your viewpoint is correct. Just having a vewpoint isn’t an argument.
That’s some seriously stuffed up coding, there Scylla. There’s only one bit that I’ll bother with:
The problem isn’t in the ultimate choice, it’s in the method of choosing. There was no tender, no evaluation of bids, nothing. There was no opportunity to choose anyone else.
Well now, it’s really hard to base these attacks on facts when Cheney will not divulge them.
But these are the facts as we know them:
Cheney has a continuing financial interest in Halliburton. (Can someone explain to me how a person can own unexercised stock options in a company and not have an interest in the future of that company?)
Cheney had White House Task Force on Energy discussions while Vice President of the United States but won’t tell the GOA what it was they discussed (won’t even say who was in on the discussions) because it’s not their buisness!
Halliburton gets a no-bid billion dollar contract to rebuild Iraq.
Still, according to the Scylla, any questioning of these facts are “innuendo based attacks”.
How about who Cheney discussed national policy with, what it was they discussed and how these discussions influenced our national energy policy.
