Today's Times story about Halliburton being accused of inflating costs reveals a deep vein of shame coursing through the blood of House Republicans. Apparently these folks don't want the truth of Halliburton's wayward politics revealed and they're fighting House Democrats to ensure that the public will never understand the true scope of this administration's indifference to corporate swill.
While it's no mystery that Halliburton is associated with thieves, several interesting pricing items shed a revealing light on the magnitude of the company's abuse of public funds. Halliburton employees said the company did the following:
• Lodged 100 workers at a five-star hotel in Kuwait for a total of $10,000 a
day while the Pentagon wanted them to stay in tents, like soldiers.
• Abandoned $85,000 trucks because of flat tires and minor problems.
• Paid $100 to have a 15-pound bag of laundry sent for cleaning to Kuwait as
part of a million-dollar laundry contract. The price for cleaning the same
amount of laundry in war-torn Iraq was $28.
• Spent $1.50 a can to buy 37,200 cans of soda in Kuwait, about 24 times
higher than the going price.
So much for entertaining conservative delusions of fiscal responsibility. The math says it all.
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