GOP: Good Old Pigs Feeding at the Public Trough

I've been working a lot lately and have been too tired to blog much, but I want to thank all of you who've sent articles and who have replied to comments made by the trolls who've been hanging around lately. One troll is an anonymous Libertarian and the other James, is a member of the GOP. I assume that both are proponents of small government and, as supporters of the Bush crime family, they are probably pleased to see more of their tax dollars going into the pockets of the fat cats at Halliburton et al. No one on the GOP side of the aisle seems to be concerned about the overcharges taking place in Iraq, so they probably will be happy to turn their heads while Halliburton makes out like a bandit once again. We, the working people are paying for this, because as you know and as Bush once pointed out the wealthy don't pay taxes.

(Thanks to Doug for sending a link to this article.)

" Companies with ties to the Bush White House and the former head of FEMA are clinching some of the administration's first disaster relief and reconstruction contracts in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

At least two major corporate clients of lobbyist Joe Allbaugh, President George W. Bush's former campaign manager and a former head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have already been tapped to start recovery work along the battered Gulf Coast.

One is Shaw Group Inc. and the other is Halliburton Co. subsidiary Kellogg Brown and Root. Vice President Dick Cheney is a former head of Halliburton.

Bechtel National Inc., a unit of San Francisco-based Bechtel Corp., has also been selected by FEMA to provide short-term housing for people displaced by the hurricane. Bush named Bechtel's CEO to his Export Council and put the former CEO of Bechtel Energy in charge of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation.

But the web of Bush administration connections is attracting renewed attention from watchdog groups in the post-Katrina reconstruction rush. Congress has already appropriated more than $60 billion in emergency funding as a down payment on recovery efforts projected to cost well over $100 billion.

"The government has got to stop stacking senior positions with people who are repeatedly cashing in on the public trust in order to further private commercial interests," said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight."

Halliburton's bilking of public coffers is becoming so commonplace, it's hardly news any more.

UPDATE from The Onion courtesy of BlackbirdCD. :

HOUSTON—On Tuesday, Halliburton received a $110 million no-bid government contract to pry the gold fillings from the mouths of deceased disaster victims in the New Orleans-Gulf Coast area. "We are proud to serve the government in this time of crisis by recovering valuable resources from the wreckage of this deadly storm," said David J. Lesar, Halliburton's president. "The gold we recover from the human rubble of Katrina can be used to make fighter-jet electronics, supercomputer chips, inflation-proof A-grade investments, and luxury yachting watches."