The Hollywood Liberal

Dubya’s Dudes Dealing, Dodging, and Dancing in Dubai

Huffington Post
Excerpt
I’m still waiting for Congressional investigations to begin into Halliburton’s move to Dubai. Six months ago Halliburton — our leading military contractor in Iraq, thanks largely to no-bid no-look contracts — announced that it was moving its main corporate headquarters and its chief executive from Houston to Dubai.

The apparently hasty move came but a month after Halliburton spun off its military division — KBR — as a separate legal entity and, curiously, about the same time federal investigators started charging that Halliburton, or whatever-the-legal-hair-splitters-now- want-to-call-that-company, had illegally squandered, overcharged, and defrauded U.S. taxpayers out of billions in Iraq.

Just a business move?

Realize that Dubai has become the grand destination for cutthroat corporations seeking to evade domestic taxes and regulations — a Switzerland, Hong Kong, Cayman Islands, and Las Vegas all rolled into one. Plus, Human Rights Watch reports that boomtown Dubai features exploitative and hazardous working conditions that HRW describes as “modern-day slavery.” No corporate taxes, no regulations, no extradition treaties, cheap labor, great golf courses, great beach, great horse track, tallest buildings: such a deal!

Six months ago, leading Democrats demanded an investigation. Should our national security basically be outsourced to Dubai (didn’t we go through this once before with the U.S. ports issue)? Isn’t the re-headquartering, given the war situation and Halliburton’s profitable role in it, just a tad un-American? Should U.S. tax dollars really be flowing into a tax haven? Henry Waxman, Hillary Clinton, Patrick Leahy, Bryon Dorgan, and Charles Schumer all denounced the move and called for investigations. So what happened? Where’s the follow-up?

HLs Take
That will be one of my questions to Henry Waxman if I get to interview him. Apparently Mr. Waxman left a comment on one of my posts telling me to call his LA office for an interview, which I am going to do right now.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 7th, 2007 at 8:00 am and is filed under H.L. News, Main Blog (All Posts). You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.