Haliburton

[Ken Roberts]

Did I hear it right on the news last night that Haliburton is moving out of the U.S. (Houston) as a cost reduction measure by not having to pay U.S.taxes? If this is correct isn't the U.S. a major source of Haliburton's income?

Isn't Haliburton one of the top suppliers/vendors to the Dept. of Defense in the war in Iraq, including fuel supply, feeding our troops,etc.

I for one do not think it is right to award contracts to a vendor who is openly making a major business decision to avoid paying Federal taxes.

If the newscast that I heard is anywhere near correct I would hope that the GAO and the DOD seriously look at why we are doing business with such a corporation, Ken....

[Ken Roberts]

Did I hear it right on the news last night that Haliburton is moving out of the U.S. (Houston) as a cost reduction measure by not having to pay U.S.taxes? If this is correct isn't the U.S. a major source of Haliburton's income?

Isn't Haliburton one of the top suppliers/vendors to the Dept. of Defense in the war in Iraq, including fuel supply, feeding our troops,etc.

I for one do not think it is right to award contracts to a vendor who is openly making a major business decision to avoid paying Federal taxes.

If the newscast that I heard is anywhere near correct I would hope that the GAO and the DOD seriously look at why we are doing business with such a corporation, Ken....

[apackof2]

Wednesday, March 14, 2007; 1:11 PM

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Oil services company Halliburton Co. (HAL.N), which plans to move its chief executive to Dubai, said it will add more than 13,000 new employees in 2007.

In a memo sent to workers on Tuesday, Chief Operating Officer Andrew Lane wrote: "It is our expectation that our planned growth for 2007 to 2009 will mean that we will hire more than 13,000 new employees in 2007. This will include growth in our Houston employment numbers."


The plans were first reported by the Associated Press.
That growth pace is similar to 2006, when the company added more than 13,000 employees, Halliburton said.

On Sunday, Halliburton said CEO David Lesar will open a corporate headquarters in Dubai. The move, which has generated political controversy, aimed at expanding the Houston-based company's business in the Eastern Hemisphere.

Wall Street analysts have said having its top executive in the region will lend Halliburton an edge when negotiating contracts in the oil-rich Middle East.
But the company said it will maintain its legal registration in the United States and it does not expect any tax benefits from the move to UAE.

Halliburton, which was led by Vice President Dick Cheney from 1995-2000, has drawn scrutiny from auditors, congressional Democrats and the Justice Department for the quality and pricing of its KBR Inc. (KBR.N) unit's work for the U.S. army in Iraq.

Halliburton is in the process of splitting off KBR into a separate company. KBR, which provides construction and logistics services and is the Pentagon's largest contractor, has long been a drag on Halliburton's bottom line.

Halliburton shares fell 44 cents, or more than 1 percent, to $31.36 on the New York Stock Exchange.

Halliburton

When certain politicians kill all hope for increasing domestic production, then business needs to move where it can grow and profit.
Sharholders expect profits

[Dalsn1]

If you want to see the real business that Halliburton is in, just take a look at the documentary "Why We Fight".

[RustyJC]

Current expectations are that spinoff of KBR (Kellogg/Brown & Root), the Halliburton subsidiary that held the military support contracts, will be complete by the end of April 2007. At that point, it will no longer be part of Halliburton.

Rusty

[Dalsn1]

If my wife robs a bank and gives me the money and I divorce her, I am innocent right? Good thinking.

[RustyJC]

Excuse me, but I don't believe I did anything other than state a fact. I said nothing about guilt or innocence. My post was in reply to the following statement in the first post:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Isn't Haliburton one of the top suppliers/vendors to the Dept. of Defense in the war in Iraq, including fuel supply, feeding our troops,etc.

I for one do not think it is right to award contracts to a vendor who is openly making a major business decision to avoid paying Federal taxes. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

1. Halliburton's move of its CEO has no effect on its Federal taxes.

2. After April, Halliburton will no longer be in the military support contract business, so the future awarding of any such contracts is a moot point.

Rusty

[Dalsn1]

I thought you meant that getting rid of KBR would make them a better company.

"Halliburton is moving to UAE at a time when it is being investigated in the U.S. for bribery, bid rigging, defrauding the military and illegally profiting in Iran. It is currently in the process of divesting all of its ownership interest in the scandal-plagued KBR subsidiary, notorious for overcharging the military and serving contaminated food and water to the troops in Iraq.

Although Halliburton will still be incorporated inside the United States, moving its corporate headquarters to UAE will make it easier to avoid accountability from federal investigators. The company has proven adept at using offshore subsidiaries to circumvent restrictions on doing business in Iran and to elude responsibility for paying benefits to former employees.

Halliburton has also used its operational structure for contracts in Iraq and post-Katrina -- especially multiple layers of subcontractors -- to elude oversight and accountability to taxpayers.

Moving to UAE may also hinder ongoing government investigations into Halliburton's alleged bribes paid to the government of Nigeria. CEO David Lesar, a former accountant who is presumably very adept at structural finance, supervised former KBR chairman Albert "Jack" Stanley during the time when KBR is alleged to have bribed Nigerian government officials. Stanley was subsequently fired after allegedly receiving $5 million in "improper" payments related the bribery scheme. Lesar, who was president and chief operating officer at the time, reported directly to then CEO Dick Cheney. According to the Dallas Morning News, "Mr. Cheney ran Halliburton when one of four suspicious payments occurred." (Dallas Morning News, Sept. 8, 2004.) (Dallas Morning News, Sept. 8, 2004.)

The United States has no extradition treaty with the UAE."

[apackof2]

The "documentary" "Why We Fight" was made by liberal,Bush hater and antiwar flimaker, Eugene Jarecki <BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Dalsn1:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_Jarecki

For those of you who are unaware of who Eugene Jarecki is, his new ˜documentary', Why We Fight, released by Sony Classics, claims to be a bi-partisan picture which asks the questions, "Is American foreign policy dominated by the idea of military supremacy? Has the military become too important in American life?"� I'll assume you can guess where this is going, can't you? Right – Bush, Iraq, Oil, and Greed.

This however is not surprising coming from Sony Classics, an independent film studio which also released the Academy Award-winning ˜documentary' The Fog of War, directed by Errol Morris. The evening he accepted his award for Best Documentary was one year after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003 had begun. In his acceptance speech he said, "Forty years ago this country went down a rabbit hole in Vietnam and millions died. I fear we're going down a rabbit hole once again - and if people can stop and think and reflect on some of the ideas and issues in this movie, perhaps I've done some **** good here!"�So with that in mind, let me start off by saying that I am not surprised by this announcement, or the discovery by Professor McAdams for that matter. Quite frankly any film which wins awards from film festivals like Sundance and garners critical praise from liberal-biased newspapers can't be conservative.

An interview with the BBC gives us a more clear insight into what filmmaker Eugene Jarecki is attempting to get across to his audience with Why We Fight ...
"It really followed on from the experience we had making The Trials of Henry Kissinger. That film came out in about 130 U.S. cities, and in every one I met with audiences and talked about the film. I thought I had made a film about US foreign policy but the audiences seemed to be most interested in talking about Henry Kissinger the man. To me, that felt politically impotent because the forces that are driving American foreign policy are so much larger than any one man. With the next film I wanted to go further - I didn't want to stop at an easy villain or a simple scapegoat. I wanted to have a much more holistic approach that really took on the whole system."
Without skipping a beat Jarecki admits to having an agenda with his film.Jarecki goes on in the interview to discuss how the film focuses on two particular individuals, Wilton Sekzer (a former New York cop who lost his son on September 11th) and Anh Duong (a Vietnamese-born munitions expert) ...
"If a viewer can see a man on screen, like Wilton, who after losing his son in 9/11, comes to understand that the extraordinary patriotism and downright hawkishness of his youth was misguided, and turns in another direction, that's the kind of learning I think everyone should seek. It inspires one to remember that there is the prospect for change"�

"Anh Duong on the other side is someone, who having been a refugee from Vietnam, becomes one of the leading bomb makers in the United States. Her path from victim of war to someone engaged in the implementation of war is extraordinary"�

In summation, the American war machine turns victims into tools of war and in reverse can cause former-hawks to reexamine their patriotism and their sense of loyalty to their country. Yep, sounds unbiased to me!

However in an interview with CTV in Canada, he is a bit more open about his opinions of the Bush Administration and the war in Iraq ...

"There's a growing sense among people that the wars we fight seem to be driven more by profit than by principle. And it's that very shift in the public psyche and in our perception of our own role in the world

...And it tries to ask it in a lot of directions all across the political spectrum in America and up and down in the society. And what we found at all levels was that there is a degree to which we are all asking ourselves "how did we get here?" Not just in regard to the Iraq war, but more broadly as a society how we went from the dreams and aspirations of World War II, which were very much the aspirations of a republic, to the realities of an empire -- and the costs of empire as we see in the Iraq war and elsewhere

...
We have a systemic problem -- a kind of a sickness at the heart of the American republic itself. And I wanted to get at the roots of that.

...

The reason I don't look to blame any single public figure right now for the situation in which we find ourselves is that to do so would be to have institutional amnesia. It would be to forget the past and to forget the path by which we got to a place where a George Bush is possible, a Bush administration is possible, a war in Iraq. So senseless and so at odds with international norms of decency and collaboration among nations is possible. So, in order to understand the roots of that you're only looking at a symptom if you focus on one particular administration or another, one leader or another.

If you were to decide that George Bush is problematic and get rid of him I assure you somebody will take his place upon whom the same forces are exerting pressure.

...I think because the Iraq war came very much out of the minds of those in power in Washington, it was an event that they were in control of, they had the power to spin it. I think Hurricane Katrina hit the administration like hurricane hits. And they didn't have the power to spin. For that reason they weren't ahead of the game, and for that reason they found themselves on the receiving end of questions they hadn't scripted"�

Eugene Jarecki and his anti-war ˜documentary' are nothing more then Michael Moore with a shave and a shower.

http://marquettehomelandsecurity.blogspot.com/2006/01/e...i-is-moore-lite.html



If you want to see the real business that Halliburton is in, just take a look at the documentary "Why We Fight". </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

[Dalsn1]

Yep, Bush and Cheney are great examples of the American Dream

"This company truly has a guardian angel: former Halliburton CEO and now Vice President Dick Cheney who looks out for its interests from the White House. The result? $8 billion in contracts "rebuilding"� Iraq in 2004.

CEO: David J. Lesar
Military contracts 2005: $5.8 billion
Oil and gas-related contributions in the 2004 election cycle: $221,249*

The biggest windfall in the invasion of Iraq has most certainly gone to the oil services and logistics company Halliburton . The company, which was formerly run by Vice President Dick Cheney, had revenue of over $8 billion in contracts in Iraq in 2003 alone. And while Halliburton 's dealings in Iraq have been dogged everywhere by scandal – including now a criminal investigation into overcharging by Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root for gas shipped into Iraq – Vice President Cheney manages to be doing quite well from the deal. He owns $433,000 unexercised Halliburton stock options worth more than $10 million dollars.

But Halliburton 's history of benefiting from government largesse goes back a ways. From 1962 to 1972 the Pentagon paid the company tens of millions of dollars to work in South Vietnam, where they built roads, landing strips, harbors, and military bases from the demilitarized zone to the Mekong Delta. The company was one of the main contractors hired to construct the Diego Garcia air base in the Indian Ocean, according to Pentagon military histories.

In the early 1990s the company was awarded the job to study and then implement the privatization of routine army functions under then-secretary of defense Dick Cheney. When Cheney quit his Pentagon job, he landed the job of Halliburton 's CEO, bringing with him his trusted deputy David Gribbin. The two substantially increased Halliburton 's government business until they quit in 2000, once Cheney was elected vice president. This included a $2.2 billion bill for a Brown and Root contract to support US soldiers in Operation Just Endeavor in the Balkans."

[HB Phil]

The KBR military contingency support contract was awarded to KBR under the Clinton administration. At that time, as well as now, the military needs certain support services to function. It is impossible to put out an RFP (Request for Proposals from contractors) and to go through the entire contract process upon going to war.

The Dept of Defense/Clinton was prudent/correct to have a contractor in-place and prepared to support military contingencies.

Blaming Bush and Cheney for inappropriately contracting Halliburton is distorted self-serving nonsense. KBR was already under contract to provide these services contingent upon the needs of the military - long before Bush was elected.

[Frankie]

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by HB Phil:
The KBR military contingency support contract was awarded to KBR under the Clinton administration. At that time, as well as now, the military needs certain support services to function. It is impossible to put out an RFP (Request for Proposals from contractors) and to go through the entire contract process upon going to war.

The Dept of Defense/Clinton was prudent/correct to have a contractor in-place and prepared to support military contingencies.

Blaming Bush and Cheney for inappropriately contracting Halliburton is distorted self-serving nonsense. KBR was already under contract to provide these services contingent upon the needs of the military - long before Bush was elected. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Thank You for bringing us some truth and wisdom, I still think this Forum is a lousy place to talk about our political views,but its hard to look away when the facts get distorted.

[Garbageman]

Thank you Phil. I've tried telling people that for years. In the 80's and 90's when our government really started reducing the size of our active military or should I say hacking apart. It was determined that a lot of functions that had been performed by the active duty forces would be contracted to civilian sources.

When our Forces were in Eastern Europe with the UN peacekeepers our government awarded civilian contracts without a lot of the bid process that every Bush hater is screaming about now. The way it works the government say we need xyz, contacts companies and who ever can provide xyz the quickest gets hired. You can't wait for months or weeks for bids and closing dates and reveiws, when the military needs to move it needs to move now.

I was in the Army from 1974 to 1995 and was involved with many ops throughout those years. I witnessed the hacking of our military strength and the growing reliance and civilian contractors.

God Bless our Men and Women in uniform today.

Paul

[HB Phil]

Many times no-bid contracts are awarded to those that are the only entity that can provide the service or product required.

Halliburton is primarily an oil field service provider. It already had the administrative and logistical resources (trucks and heavy equipment) in-place in the ME and was the only one capable of delivering the services on a quick contingency basis that was required by the Clinton Administration/Dept of Defense.

Again, it was Clinton, not Bush, that contracted Halliburton on a no-bid basis.

BTW this type of no-bid contracting is perfectly legal when there is a lack of other companies capable of meeting the requirement of the RFP (Request for Proposal) - when no other companies qualify to submit a competetive bid.