| Topic: |
Politics > Politics-USA |
| User: |
"Harry Hope" |
| Date: |
04 Jun 2007 08:40:29 AM |
| Object: |
War-profiteer Halliburton's payoff to their employee, Cheney, balloons |
From a New York Times editorial, 6/3/07:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/03/opinion/03sun2.html?ex=1338523200&en=c50056805230df94&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
***** Cheney Rules
Americans are accustomed to Vice President ***** Cheney’s waiting out a
terrorist threat in a “secure undisclosed location.”
Now it seems that Mr. Cheney wears the cloak of invisibility in secure
disclosed locations.
The Associated Press reported that Mr. Cheney’s office ordered the
Secret Service last September to destroy all records of visitors to
the official vice presidential mansion — right after The Washington
Post sued for access to the logs. That move was made in secret,
naturally.
It came out only because of another lawsuit, filed by a private group,
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, seeking the
names of conservative religious figures who visited the vice
president’s residence.
This disdain for accountability is distressing, but not surprising.
Mr. Cheney has had it on display from his first days in office, when
he refused to name the energy-industry executives who met with him
behind closed doors to draft an energy policy.
In a similar way, Mr. Cheney seems unconcerned about little things
like checks and balances and traditional American notions of judicial
process.
At one point, he gave himself the power to selectively declassify
documents and selectively leak them to reporters.
In a recent commencement address, he declaimed against prisoners who
had the gall to “demand the protections of the Geneva Convention and
the Constitution of the United States.”
Mr. Cheney is the driving force behind the Bush administration’s
theory of the “unitary executive,” which holds that no one, including
Congress and the courts, has the power to supervise or regulate the
actions of the president.
Just as he pays little attention to old-fangled notions of the
separation of powers, Mr. Cheney does not overly bother himself about
the bright line that should exist between his last job as chief of the
energy giant Halliburton and his current one on the public payroll.
From 2001 to 2005, Mr. Cheney received “deferred salary payments” from
Halliburton that far exceeded what taxpayers gave him.
Mr. Cheney still holds hundreds of thousands of stock options that
have ballooned by millions of dollars as Halliburton profited
handsomely from the war in Iraq.
Reviewing this record — secrecy, impatience with government
regulations, backroom dealings, handsome paydays — it dawned on us
that Mr. Cheney is in step with the times.
He has privatized the job of vice president of the United States.
__________________________________________________________
What one would expect of Tricky Dicky Cheney -- making money on death.
Harry
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