Sunday, September 10, 2006

The Halliburton Tax: Potential Campaign ads from the DSCC and the DCCC if they were smart

This is how Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown & Root supports our troops, eat their food and then bill the U.S. government for services it "provided" for the troops. A Super Bowl party for the troops complete with a widescreen TV and chicken wings, tacos, cheesesticks became a Super Bowl party for KBR itself while we paid for the Super Bowl Party apparently the troops never had.

Remember how KBR served SPOILED, ROTTEN FOOD for our troops, and there were NO cries of outrage from the Republicans about it. None. This is supporting our troops, GOP style: Allow your cronies to FUCK em over and then stand idly by while they make a profit off it.

The Republicans want to get personal on this election campaign? Well bring it on! We can play dirty just the same except that we won't be mud-slinging like the Republicans do, because it's not when you're telling the truth. Why don't we air ads showing rotting food in a dumpster somewhere with a caption that says, "Dick Cheney's company served our troops spoiled food while the Republicans did nothing to investigate. Is this supporting our troops?"

Or how about this? "KBR, a subsidiary of Dick Cheney's former company stole a Super Bowl Party from the troops and wasted taxpayer money billing US for it. Is this supporting our troops?" Then you would show a cartoon of corporate pigs watching the Super Bowl on a widescreen while gobbling up wings, nachos, tacos, pizza, etc. on a split screen with troops in an empty room asking, "Where's our party?"

You know what? Let's call KBR and Halliburton overcharging us for laundry ($100 per 15 pounds of laundry) and a 12-pack of soda ($45!) the Halliburton tax. In my state of California, the California GOP is running ads saying that Angelides is for raising every tax ever dreamed about. Well let's fight back. Let's say the GOP is for keeping the Halliburton tax, ripping you, the American taxpayer while allowing it to make obscene profits while fucking our troops over. Do you want your money going towards spoiled food, $45 packs of soda, unsanitary kitchens with BLOOD AND ROTTING FOOD ALL OVER THE FLOOR?!

They say that Halliburton: 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, at $139 a night; Abandoned $85,000 trucks because of flat tires and minor problems; Paid $100 to have a 15-pound bag of laundry cleaned as part of a million-dollar laundry contract in peaceful Kuwait. 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 contract price; and knowingly paid subcontractors twice for the same bill.
Government waste...The Republicans claim that it's your money and that you should have say over it and that the government just takes it and wastes it. Yet when Halliburton takes YOUR money and wastes it like junking perfectly servicable trucks so that you can pay for more trucks, it's not waste according to the silence coming from the Republicans. It's just the free market at work except that our troops are getting screwed over. Your money is going to accommodate Halliburton contractors at five-star hotels while our troops sleep in tents for a fraction of the cost. Yet, there is no cry from the Republicans who get all pious and teary-eyed when they talk about how taxes for the rich are affecting ordinary Americans and how it's your money and not the government's.

and Remember, the GOP is not the party of the troops, it's the party of Halliburton. Back in 2005, they KILLED a bill that would have investigated Halliburton's ripping off of the American taxpayer with a lame promise that they would eventually investigate Halliburton sometime later...Fast forward to June 2006...Surely ENSIGN would keep his promise to jumpstart a Halliburton investigation after all, he did say this...
"I want to inform the Senator from North Dakota that, hopefully, when we come back for a couple days in December, as the chairman of the Readiness Subcommittee, I plan on holding hearings on exactly this. I plan on pulling that curtain back. I plan on getting into the investigation in the same way as Harry Truman. If it happens to be it is embarrassing to the administration, we are going to find out the truth on this--just like Harry Truman went after those cost-plus contracts in those days. It is not only the soul-source aspect, it is also the fact they are cost-plus contracts."
The Republicans killed S.AMDT.4230 which would have dealt with contracting "by eliminating fraud and abuse and improving competition in contracting and procurement."

Wells Fargo has a commercial on the radio wondering how much better the world would be if we all knew where our money goes...Well we can with My Spending Report...It's about time the Democrats ask the same question. Wells Fargo customers...you know where your money goes, but do the American taxpayers know where their money is going when it comes to Halliburton? Do you think that it's going to gourmet food (have a screenshot of troops finally back at home enjoying lavish dinners and parties) or is it really going towards this? Then have a screenshot of a slab of rotting beef (don't mind the smell, it's for the good of the country) Then have a screenshot showing the facts and then blast the GOP for not investigating, then end with this line: "The GOP thinks supporting the troops means providing them with foods that could poison them while Halliburton gets rich. The GOP thinks that your tax dollars should be funneled to Halliburton."

You know what, we shouldn't worry about GOP cries that we are exploiting the troops when we should stand by them. The corporate media does not care that another corporation is exploiting their troops because it would make the GOP look bad. We need to get the message out, especially in the red states in the South where the military is everything to them. Do they even know what Halliburton is doing to their sons and daughters, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers serving in the military? Probably not, because the GOP would rather keep them in the dark while appearing in photo-ops with the troops to show that yeah, they really are the party that supports the troops. These Southerners need to realize that the GOP is not providing any oversight to check the abuses being wrought upon our troops and by GOD, we need to make that connection.

Comments:
The reason the GOP didn't cry was that they can continue to exploit the nation's faith for political gain. At the same time get the money they need/want for re-election.

The people's ignorance allows this injustice to manifest.
 
of course, but the Dems need to call them out. Let the GOP talk about us exploiting the troops, but let us point out that they're doing nothing while a vile company like KBR is fucking them over. I updated the post while you commented...
 
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