Blood Money
Guess who is handling the reconstruction of New Orleans' navy ports?
That's right - the people who brought you the Iraqi Reconstruction Project - Halliburton (or more accurately the Halliburton subsidiary - Kellogg, Brown and Root).
Before a single National Guard soldier had even set foot in New Orleans to rescue the thousands of people stranded at the Superdome and the Convention Center, the feds had already given a $500 million contract to KBR to start work on the reconstruction of those ports in New Orleans.
Why do you suppose Halliburton scored such a high-profile contract so quickly before anything was actually done to save the PEOPLE of New Orleans?
Could it be because they have experience handling this kind of work ala Iraq? Possibly.
Could it be because they have a great reputation of handling this kind of work? If, by good reputation, you mean the misappropriation of tens of millions of dollars in reconstruction funds provided by the Coalition Provisional Authority, I suppose that's a possibility.
Could it be because of Halliburton's close ties to George Bush and Dick Cheney? If I were still a betting man, that's the choice on which I would put all my chips.
If you would also like to profit off the devastation and deaths from Hurricane Katrina, call your broker and invest in Halliburton stock as soon as possible (the abbreviation is HAL on the NYSE). I hear the stock is at a 52-week high and climbing.
That's right - the people who brought you the Iraqi Reconstruction Project - Halliburton (or more accurately the Halliburton subsidiary - Kellogg, Brown and Root).
Before a single National Guard soldier had even set foot in New Orleans to rescue the thousands of people stranded at the Superdome and the Convention Center, the feds had already given a $500 million contract to KBR to start work on the reconstruction of those ports in New Orleans.
Why do you suppose Halliburton scored such a high-profile contract so quickly before anything was actually done to save the PEOPLE of New Orleans?
Could it be because they have experience handling this kind of work ala Iraq? Possibly.
Could it be because they have a great reputation of handling this kind of work? If, by good reputation, you mean the misappropriation of tens of millions of dollars in reconstruction funds provided by the Coalition Provisional Authority, I suppose that's a possibility.
Could it be because of Halliburton's close ties to George Bush and Dick Cheney? If I were still a betting man, that's the choice on which I would put all my chips.
If you would also like to profit off the devastation and deaths from Hurricane Katrina, call your broker and invest in Halliburton stock as soon as possible (the abbreviation is HAL on the NYSE). I hear the stock is at a 52-week high and climbing.
posted by cvo @ 12:07 PM
7 Comments:
At 6:44 PM,
R said…
The story I read said they had already been awarded the contract for this sort of thing well before the current disaster, as if that matters.
At 8:25 AM,
jmeriwether said…
And the one Patrick heard was that the existing one that Russell is referring to is for military installations only. So, I wonder if a new one for civilian facilities was granted? Curtis what can you find out?
At 9:15 AM,
Unknown said…
According to various dictionaries that I have consulted, "blood money" seems most often either to mean
(1) money paid (as compensation) to the next of kin of a person who has been killed or
(2) money used to purchase either the killing of someone or the information necessary for the killing to take place (as in the silver given to Judas so that he would betray Jesus).
I don't deny the possibility of some evil in the granting of a contract to Haliburton, but I am wondering about the use of "blood money" in the context of speculation about that possibility.
At 9:16 AM,
Unknown said…
According to various dictionaries that I have consulted, "blood money" seems most often either to mean
(1) money paid (as compensation) to the next of kin of a person who has been killed or
(2) money used to purchase either the killing of someone or the information necessary for the killing to take place (as in the silver given to Judas so that he would betray Jesus).
I don't deny the possibility of some evil in the granting of a contract to Haliburton, but I am wondering about the use of "blood money" in the context of speculation about that possibility.
At 9:23 AM,
Unknown said…
Oh, maybe you mean that the federal relief money, in part paid to Haliburton to provide indirect assistance to the victims, is blood money.
Hmm. Even this wouldn't really fit, though, because the the compensation in the first definition that I quoted comes in the context of a murder or an assassination, not a natural disaster like a hurricane.
At 11:41 AM,
cvo said…
No-bid contracts have already been given to companies like Fluor Corp. and Bechtel for projects like temporary housing and pumping water out. Both companies received the same kind of freebie/no competition deals in Iraq. Halliburton's port deal IS part of an existing Pentagon contract, but they are in line for some of the support services like feeding the National Guard troops who will be remaining in the area and providing latrine and trash service (just like the mafia in Jersey).
As far as the clinical definition of "blood money", I'll let Shakespeare address that:
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
Or, in Halliburton's case, the prick of the thorns would be as sharp.
Doesn't matter what you call it. It still stinks of cronyism.
Every president appoints his buddies to be ambassador of Lichtenstein or the president of the Fitness Council. That's been done since the days of George Washington.
This president chooses his college buddy's friend to be the director of FEMA.
This president hires oil company executives to be Energy department chairs and logging company chiefs to decide environmental policies like how much timber should be protected.
This president funnels billions of dollars into the pockets of his oil and defense industry buddies.
It's like letting a bunch of 8-year-old kids have free reign at a candy store. But only the rich kids. The poor kids from the other side of the tracks have to sit outside the candy store on the other side of the glass, watching all the candy go into the mouths of Richie Rich and his friends. The middle class kids get to sit on the floor of the store and gobble up any Reese's Pieces or Gummi Bears that the rich kids accidentally drop out of their overstuff hands and pockets.
At 8:01 PM,
Unknown said…
Interesting analogy, the candy store.
Yeah. Politics and favoritism seem often exclusive of justice.
My concern is just that we call a rose a rose. If we start calling a rose a cactus---just because "cactus" sounds more sensational---then we might lose our ability easily and naturally in conversation to distinguish between a rose and a real cactus.
By the way, can you get rid of the duplicate posting?
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