That would certainly make sense; You are both dipshits.
Ooh, good one, Brutus. Are you going to insult his mother next?
I’m sure Krugman and his mother could handle it.
Having trouble with the whole sanity deal, are we, Brutus?
Well, what about your mum? Can she deal? 
I haven’t asked her, but I’m pretty sure she’s like the other 6,313,999,999/6,314,000,000 = 99.9999999842% of the world’s population who couldn’t give a rat’s ass what Brutus thinks.
Fine, fine fine – you’ve successfully convicted me on one count of improper adjectiving. I think you’re missing the forest for the trees. Delete the word “anonymous” in that sentence and my point about Marshall’s article still stands. **
I am admittedly basing this solely on my own reading of things, but as I understand it the CPA stuff is related to the costs of setting up a government – internal security, police and fire protection, setting up courts, establishing functioning mechanisms for Iraqi governance, etc, etc, etc. I think it’s telling that the CPA isn’t mentioned in any of the articles discussing government contracting with Halliburton. I also think it’s telling that the article you cited had Wolfowitz seeking to limit access to information about “Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) activities related to intelligence or operational plans,” which would have to be stretched pretty goddamned far to include pricing disputes with American companies. I’m unpersuaded that the audit limits proffered in the article you cited would have anything remotely to do with the kinds of things the OP is dealing with. **
I can accept the notion that the administration is willing to play lovey-dovey with their friends in a manner that is entirely legal. But given that perfectly legal avenues are available to make lovey-dovey, I can’t see the administration going beyond that. That’s a high-risk, low-reward strategy. **
This just doesn’t square with reality. Contract damages are non-punitive in nature. Yet most companies strive to abide by the terms of the agreements they’ve entered.
As long as he doesn’t reference Desmos’ sobriety, it’s all cool, I suppose. 
Do you have a cite that Brutus actually thinks? All of the evidence to date indicates he merely regurgitates the same right-wing junk from the usual right-wing sources.
Huh?? WRT ‘anonymous’, I thought you’d made it clear you were talking about me, rather than Marshall.
But feel free to make, or reiterate, your point about Marshall, whichever is appropriate. I’m not digging back there to see who said what when about whom.
From a casual reading of the newspapers, it certainly appears that contractors are doing a lot of this. Contractors were even doing the bulk of training the new Iraqi army. (I’ll get you a cite if you wish.)
I think that omission is inconsequential. YMMV, and clearly does.
It isn’t a dispute until somebody complains. If everybody who’s in the know is happy, there’s no dispute.
I’m saying that pretty much anything of consequence over there could be construed, by someone so inclined, as having to do with national security. If a Bush Administration official were so inclined, that would surprise me about as much as finding the shopping malls jammed this Saturday. Like I said, just how many Administrations have you slept through?
It might not pass muster if legally challenged, but a lot of water might go under the bridge while challenges worked their way through the courts. And the resulting difficulty of even getting to look at the details of such contracts would keep a lot of contracts from ever being examined in detail.
What’s illegal for the Bushies about anything I’ve suggested??
This seems to be one of the sources of your confusion. You seem to have in mind collusion between the Administration and its favored contractors. I don’t. All I have in mind is Bushies creating an environment that gives the contractors lots of legal money, and little oversight that might prevent them from getting even more than they’re entitled to. But the Bushies will play by the rules: they aren’t going to suggest ways that Halliburton might skirt the law, nor is Halliburton going to suggest to the Administration that they might be thinking of doing so.
The Bushies will ease regs and oversight because they like doing that. Halliburton et al. will simply take advantage of the opportunities that provides.
And all contracts are like unto one another? You’re taking an awfully big universe there, and saying that this particular distinct corner of the universe should be like the universe itself. That’s not the sort of assumption one should make without a good reason.
Earlier on in this increasingly ass-hole and jerk ridden thread, some one (I think our old friend Scylla) reported that the “gas from Kuwait to Iraq” contract was a cost-plus deal. We need to confirm this in order for any of this to make any sense.
It is well and good to say that when an action can be explained by either incompetence or by villainy the smart money rides on incompetence. But, when a mistake puts money in the pockets of the guy who made the mistake it smells like the standard shop lifter’s excuse when caught with a small item of high value in his pants cuff. In that case smart money hedges its bet towart villainy.
For the uninformed, cost plus contraction acquired a bad name in the post WWII era when cost plus 10% contracts were used to build facilities for the occupation army in Western Europe. The more the project cost, the more money went into the general contractors pocket. This sort of thing is an invitation to fraud, dishonest accounting and kick-backs.
Does anybody else yen for the good old days of Boss Tweed and the New York City County Court House when blatant corruption was met with the demand “what ch’er gonna do about it?” On thought “what ch’er gonna do about it” is Scylla’s Big Dawg theory of force projection and international relationships.
I was a bit dismayed at the name calling- so much so I almost asked for the thread to be closed (a first for me). But I saw that a Mod was following the situation and decided to stay out of the thread until tempers cooled a bit.
My main thoughts were with regards to the excessive word parsing a few posters engaged in. Let’s stick with facts then:
The overcharging certainly happened.
The overcharging was directly tied to Halliburton, through their no-bid contract for Iraqi services and rebuilding.
Halliburton got the controversial no-bid contracts though a basically closed door process with Administration officials with close direct ties to the company. Cheney was the ex-CEO, has many friends and campaign contributors within the Company. The Congressional report on Cheney and Halliburton ruled that he still holds an interest in the company, despite his claims to the contrary.
Halliburton selected all the contractors, including the “connected” one unnamed Admistration officials are trying to shift the blame to (see i.e., “those 16 words”, the Blume affair and other blame shifting exercises). No official has spoken on the record or provided a single piece of proof from their claims that Halliburton wasn’t profiting despite the official report.
Yet some posters have jumped on this scrap (as they were intended too), ignoring the fact that it’s source is unamed an official in the very Adminstration with close ties to the company or at least a major interest in this issue going away. Also, no evidence was provided either. All this is counter to the on-the-record findings of overcharging by Halliburton and the fact that most of their required reports are now long overdue.
I would think after the WMD disaster and the Plume affair that people would be alot more skeptical at relying on self-interested unnamed Admistration officials talking off-the-record then with the evidence sitting right before them.
Finally, I asked that if you wish to continue the debate you do so without pointless personal insults to other posters.
Sort of.
The sentence in question reads: "I should have said I’ll take my personal experience over the histrionics of some anonymous message board poster, because nothing in Marshall’s article suggests that the CPA proposal would affect the auditing of contracts such as those involved here.
The overall point of the sentence related to Marshall’s article. The “anonymous poster” comment was not a critical element to the point I was raising. That’s all I meant.
**
I think you’re straying into Oliver Stone/Captain Planet territory here. Sure, that might happen. The Bush administration might also secretly be controlled by space aliens. It’s easy to “might” your way into believing things that are quite unlikely. Politically, any presidential administration is constrained by the limits of plausibility. It simply isn’t true that “just anything” can be labeled national security – there is a point at which the press and the people start calling bullshit. **
Nothing, but the political costs of allowing your bedfellows to act illegally, particularly when they can easily benefit substantially by entirely legal means, are wholly out of proportion to any benefits that might accrue to the Bushies. And while yes, maybe they won’t get caught, the risk of exposure is ever-present. **
You’re the one that said the lack of punitive measures – the fact that the only cost to fudging your way on contracts of these types – meant that everybody would try to fudge. In your words, using a baseball analogy, every baserunner would try to steal on every play.
That simply isn’t reflected in reality. Ordinary contract damages are non-punitive in nature – they only put the parties to the contract on the same footing as they would have been if the contract had been carried out correctly. That’s basic Contract Law 101 stuff. And yet, we don’t see epic scales of fudging in real life. The baserunners aren’t trying to steal on every play. Your assumption is inapt.
Of course, this isn’t an ordinary contracting situation, as you are aware. Contracting with the Federal goverment does obligate you to a new set of statutes, some of which do have a punative nature, such as the False Claims Act. Obviously people are still trying to steal second, but there is a catcher with a good arm playing today. So really your analogy as faulty as well.
Additionally, you forgot the commonality of, and reasoning behind, liquidated damages clauses.
Here is some information which directly applies to the situation.
As we learned in law school that argument is a bit reductio ad absurdum There is no need to take that approach I believe- especially given the Administration’s penchant for classifing embarrasing materials to avoid turning them over- such as with the 9/11 committee (see below). Additionally, the current Attorney General has committed the Justice Department to fighting FOI requests.
So there is plenty of smoke here to infer a fire. However, you could have simply retorted that while smoke certainly infers a fire, it does not guarantee one. That would have been better then the “space aliens” gambit which made it look like your position was weaker then it truly was.
Cites:
It isn’t my analogy, it’s RT’s, and even if we assume the FCA applies it doesn’t change the truth of my basic point: that contract damages are generally non-punitive, and yet most contracting parties don’t look to fudge on their obligations (as RT claimed). If the FCA adds punitive measures to ordinary contract damages, well, great! – that’s another reason why it doesn’t make sense for Halliburton to deliberately fudge on the contract. But if it doesn’t, then we’re left with an ordinary contract damages situation, which, contra RT, are apparently enough of a disincentive to fudging for the overwhelming number of contracting situations that happen on an every day basis. **
And you forgot that liquidated damages clauses are not enforceable if they are deemed a penalty – they must represent a plausible effort on the part of the parties to estimate their actual contract damages at the time of agreement.**
Yes, and it has done so with arguments that, while disputable, do not strain the limits of plausibility. Again, presidential administrations are constrained by political realities.
I would have thought my concurrence was clear from the way I responded. I responded with amusement and facetiousness to the ‘anonymous’ comment (and later returned to it solely as part of the ad hominem discussion), while I rebutted your claim about Marshall’s article.
Well, sure - but ‘calling bullshit’ doesn’t in and of itself change anything. We’ve been ‘calling bullshit’ about the WMDs and the general connection of the War on Saddam to the War on Terror all year now, and what’s come of it? Bush is still the clear favorite to win in November.
So much for the utility of calling bullshit. Sounds like a playground term, anyway, as in “I call King’s X” or some such. But I suppose the thing to watch out for is when bullshit returns your calls.
elf6c has already responded to the space-alien bit, but let me add that this is less Oliver Stone/Captain Planet territory than Nixon and Reagan Administration territory, in addition to the current one. Like I keep saying, how many Presidencies did you sleep through??
See above.
Hardly. In contracts between businesses, what happens when one party tries to get away with a whole bunch of stuff?
- They’ve got to give the money back. (In the analogy, they have to return to the previous base.) Then:
- Word gets around that that’s how they play, and - guess what? - it gets a lot harder for them to find someone to play with them in the future. (The player’s team gets kicked out of the league.)
Now, compare that to the present situation. Is there a snowball’s chance in hell that the Bush Administration is going to stop contracting with Halliburton? Haw haw!!!
BTW, my analogy was specifically about the dealings of Halliburton and other favored firms with the Bush administration. It was not intended to apply to business contracts generally, for it does not apply to such.
Like I suggested two posts back, this sub-universe of contracts is not at all like the universe of contracts as a whole.
True in many aspects, but it overlooks the rise of UCC 2 and tthe reasons behind it. Also the theory of “Efficient Breach” also applies. Also liquidated damages. In other words, contracting parties will look to push the boundries of their agreements absent outside contraints. It is in their self-interest to do so.
In many cases those constraints are the UCC 2 provisions, contractual liquidated damages clauses, litigation and reputational risks, repeat player issues ect. Plus in this case, add in special contracting issues when dealing with soveriegn institutions as well.
So for the average contracting party, one would assume that these outside pressures would restrict their natural urge to act in an exploitive manner with regards to their contractual obligations. Unfortunately, upon departure from legal academia and arrival in the real world, one finds this not to be the case. The courts are choked with contractual litigation matters. Breachs and serious contract disputes are not all that uncommon, and become more common (and expected) as the dollar value of the contract goes up.
Additionally, in the world of military contracting- a whole new world of efficient planned breachs, expected cost-over runs, high stakes political fundraising, closed door no-bid contracts with favored contractors, contractual gerrymandering, and basic fundemental conflicts of interest inherent to the system of a few powerful companies with extensive high level ties with the Pentagon and the Bush Adminstration. This ads another layer of expectations with regards to how the “actual” deal will work- as opposed to how the deal was written up.
Oh and you said:
That only is true if you are not rewriting your reality:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9821-2003Dec17.html
:dubious:
In any event- the Administration seems to be forming up behind a new scapegoat for this mess- the Army Corps of Engineers.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9734-2003Dec17.html
and
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A9734-2003Dec17_2.html
Hmm.
Here is Bush’s take on the situation:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60978-2003Dec12.html
More on the Army Corps of Engineer’s role in Iraq contracts:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A54567-2003Dec10.html
Hopefully these links will help the discussion.
No, it doesn’t. The UCC was drafted to unify certain aspects of contract law among the various states. It principally deviates from common-law contracts in the areas of offer and acceptance (resolving the “battle of the forms”) and in implying certain warranties in goods sold by a merchant. It also clarifies the manner in which nonconforming goods are handled. Damages for breach under the UCC, however, are still essentially expectation-based, and are not punitive in nature. **
This is not an efficient breach. An efficient breach is one where it is more economically efficient to breach. For example, you agree to supply me with widgets. Before delivery, your raw material costs triple, which would cause you to lose significant sums on the contract. If it’s cheaper for you to pay me expectation damages than it is to take the loss by performing, you will breach, and that breach is efficient. Economists would say it is more socially useful for you to breach the contract than to abide by its terms.
Halliburton does not realize any sort of economic efficiency here. At best, it’s a wash for them – they have to pay back the money. Ergo, efficient breach theory does not apply. **
Which, again, are not enforceable if deemed a penalty. The UCC puts it thusly:
Contract damages are simply not punitive in nature. **
Would you care to mount an actual argument relating to the OP, or are you content to just list buzzwords from a typical law and economics seminar? **
Well, sure; I never claimed otherwise. But that major-contract litigation typically involves serious, legitimate disputes over the interpretation or validity of the contract. It doesn’t involve situations where, as here, both the terms and one party’s deviation from those terms appears to be clear (I’m assuming as much for the sake of argument; if Halliburton can reasonably argue that they haven’t overcharged the government under the terms of the contract, surely no one would argue it improper for them to contest the government’s claims on those grounds.) **
I would actually think there would be fewer planned efficient breaches when contracting with the military because, let’s face it, who else are you going to sell to? The rest of your list relates to the relative fairness or unfairness of the contracting process itself, not to the incentives for a given party to breach a contract already existing, and is thus irrelevant.
How terrifically convenient. Except that there’s no logical reason to exclude other firms that contract in the ordinary course: they all face as their sole legal responsibility for breach ordinary contract damages, which are non-punitive in nature. If that isn’t sufficient legal disincentive for Halliburton, then it isn’t sufficient legal disincentive for anyone else, either.
And your “reputation in the market” argument affects Halliburton, too. Their dealings with the government reflect on their integrity in private-sector contracting and in contracting with state governments. And frankly, I think you’re wrong when you say that if Halliburton proved to be regularly fudging on its claims that the feds wouldn’t use someone else; given the Bush administration’s deep connections to myriad energy and energy-service firms, finding a replacement surely couldn’t be that difficult. Why pay the political price of having an unethical business partner when you can find a relatively clean partner amongst your cronies?