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TechnoratiShell companies in Cayman Islands allow KBR to avoid Medicare, Social Security deductions
CAYMAN ISLANDS - Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.
More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands.
The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies, and officials said the move allowed KBR to perform the work more cheaply, saving Defense dollars.
But the use of the loophole results in a significantly greater loss of revenue to the government as a whole, particularly to the Social Security and Medicare trust funds. And the creation of shell companies in places such as the Cayman Islands to avoid taxes has long been attacked by members of Congress.
A Globe survey found that the practice is unusual enough that only one other ma jor contractor in Iraq said it does something similar.
"Failing to contribute to Social Security and Medicare thousands of times over isn't shielding the taxpayers they claim to protect, it's costing our citizens in the name of short-term corporate greed," said Senator John F. Kerry, a Massachusetts Democrat on the Senate Finance Committee who has introduced legislation to close loopholes for companies registering overseas.
With an estimated $16 billion in contracts, KBR is by far the largest contractor in Iraq, with eight times the work of its nearest competitor.
The no-bid contract it received in 2002 to rebuild Iraq's oil infrastructure and a multibillion-dollar contract to provide support services to troops have long drawn scrutiny because Vice President Dick Cheney was Halliburton's chief executive from 1995 until he joined the Republican ticket with President Bush in 2000.
The largest of the Cayman Islands shell companies - called Service Employers International Inc., which is now listed as having more than 20,000 workers in Iraq, according to KBR - was created two years before Cheney became Halliburton's chief executive. But a second Cayman Islands company called Overseas Administrative Services, which now is listed as the employer of 1,020 mostly managerial workers in Iraq, was established two months after Cheney's appointment.
Cheney's office at the White House referred questions to his personal lawyer, who did not return phone calls.
Heather Browne, a spokeswoman for KBR, acknowledged via e-mail that the two Cayman Islands companies were set up "in order to allow us to reduce certain tax obligations of the company and its employees."
Social Security and Medicare taxes amount to 15.3 percent of each employees' salary, split evenly between the worker and the employer. While KBR's use of the shell companies saves workers their half of the taxes, it deprives them of future retirement benefits.
In addition, the practice enables KBR to avoid paying unemployment taxes in Texas, where the company is registered, amounting to between $20 and $559 per American employee per year, depending on the company's rate of turnover.
As a result, workers hired through the Cayman Island companies cannot receive unemployment assistance should they lose their jobs.
In interviews with more than a dozen KBR workers registered through the Cayman Islands companies, most said they did not realize that they had been employed by a foreign firm until they arrived in Iraq and were told by their foremen, or until they returned home and applied for unemployment benefits.
"They never explained it to us," said Arthur Faust, 57, who got a job loading convoys in Iraq in 2004 after putting his resume on KBRcareers.com and going to orientation with KBR officials in Houston.
But there is one circumstance in which KBR does claim the workers as its own: when it comes to receiving the legal immunity extended to employers working in Iraq.
In one previously unreported case, a group of Service Employers International workers accused KBR of knowingly exposing them to cancer-causing chemicals at an Iraqi water treatment plant. Under the Defense Base Act of 1941, a federal workers compensation law, employers working with the military have immunity in most cases from such employee lawsuits.
So when KBR lawyers argued that the workers were KBR employees, lawyers for the men objected; the case remains in arbitration.
"When it benefits them, KBR takes the position that these men really are employees," said Michael Doyle, the lawyer for nine American men who were allegedly exposed to the dangerous chemicals. "You don't get to take both positions."
Founded by two brothers in Texas in 1919, the construction firm of Brown & Root quickly became associated with some of the largest public-works projects of the early 20th century, from oil platforms to warships to dams that provided electricity to rural areas.
Its political clout, particularly with fellow Texan Lyndon Johnson, was legendary, and it became a major overseas contractor, building roads and ports during the Vietnam war.
Halliburton, a Houston-based oil conglomerate, acquired Brown & Root in 1962. And after the Vietnam cease-fire agreement in 1973, it all but stopped doing overseas military work for two decades.
But in 1991, during the Gulf War, Halliburton decided to try to revive its military business. The next year, Brown & Root won a $3.9 million contract from the Defense Department under Secretary Dick Cheney to develop contingency plans to support, feed, house, and maintain the US military in 13 hot spots around the world.
That small contract soon grew into a massive logistical-support contract under which the company did everything from building military camps to cooking meals and providing transportation for troops. Under the contract, the military agreed to reimburse Brown & Root for all expenses, and to pay a profit of between 1 and 9 percent, depending on performance.
In Somalia, starting in December 1992, Brown & Root employees helped US soldiers and UN workers dig wells and collect garbage, among many other tasks. The company quickly became the largest civilian employer in the country, with about 2,500 people on its payroll. Its headquarters in Texas had a "war room," where executives would get daily updates about events in Mogadishu.
Later the company would play similar roles supporting US troops in Haiti, Rwanda, Bosnia, Uzbekistan, and Afghanistan.
As its military work increased, Brown & Root sent more American workers overseas. Americans working and living abroad receive significant breaks on their income tax, but still must pay Social Security and Medicare taxes if they work for an American company. The reasoning is that such workers are likely to return to the United States and collect benefits, so they and their employers ought to help pay for them.
But the taxes drive up costs. A former Halliburton executive who was in a senior position at the company in the early 1990s said construction companies that avoid taxes by setting up foreign subsidiaries have obvious advantages in bidding for military contracts.
Payroll taxes can be a significant cost, he said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. "If you are bidding against [rival construction firms] Fluor and Bechtel, it might give you a competitive advantage."
Service Employers International was set up in 1993, as Brown & Root was ramping up its roster of overseas workers. Two years later, the company set up Overseas Administrative Services, which serves more senior workers and provides a pension plan.
The parent company became Kellogg Brown & Root in 1998, when it joined with the oil-pipe manufacturer, M. W. Kellogg.
Around that time, KBR lost its exclusive contract to provide logistical support to the US military. But in 2001 it outbid DynCorp to win it back, by agreeing to a maximum profit of 3 percent of costs.
Then, in 2002, the firm received a secret contract to draw up plans to restore Iraq's oil production after the US-led invasion of Iraq. The Defense Department has said the firm was chosen mainly for its assets and expertise, not its ability to control costs.
Nonetheless, KBR's top competitors in Iraq do not appear to have gone to the same lengths to avoid taxes. Other top Iraq war contractors - including Bechtel, Parsons, Washington Group International, L-3 Communications, Perini, and Fluor - told the Globe that they pay Social Security and Medicare taxes for their American workers.
"It has been Fluor Corporation's policy to compensate our employees who are US citizens the same as if they worked in the geographic United States," said Keith Stephens, Fluor's director of global media relations. "With the exception of hardship and danger pay additives for work performed in Iraq, they receive the same benefits as their US-based colleagues, and Fluor pays or remits all required US taxes and payroll burdens, including FICA payments and unemployment insurance."
Only one other top contractor, the construction and logistics firm IAP Worldwide Services Inc., said it employs a "limited number" of Americans through an offshore subsidiary.
Officials at DynCorp, the company that KBR outbid for the logistics contract, did not return numerous calls.
KBR is now widely believed to be the largest private employer of foreigners in Iraq, and it hires twice as many workers through its Cayman Island subsidiaries as it does by direct hires. Service Employers International alone employs more than 20,000 truck drivers, electricians, accountants, and engineers, roughly half of whom are American, according to Browne, the KBR spokeswoman.
KBR declined to release salary information. But workers interviewed by the Globe who served in a range of jobs said they earned between $48,000 and $85,000 per year. If KBR's American workers averaged even as much as $63,000 per year, they and KBR would have owed more than $100 million per year in Social Security and Medicare taxes, split evenly between them. Over the course of the five-year war, their tax bill would have been more than $500 million.
In 2004, auditors with the Pentagon's Defense Contract Audit Agency questioned KBR about the two Cayman Island companies but ultimately made no complaint. The auditors told the Globe in an email exchange facilitated by Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Brian Maka that any tax savings resulting from the offshore subsidiaries "are passed on" to the US military.
Browne, the KBR spokeswoman, said the loss to Social Security could eventually be offset by the fact that the workers will receive less money when they retire, since benefits are generally based on how much workers and their companies have paid into the system.
Medicare, however, does not reduce benefits for workers who don't contribute, and Browne acknowledged that KBR has not calculated the impact of its tax practices on the government as a whole.
She said KBR does not save money from the practice, since its contracts allow for its labor expenses to be reimbursed by the US military. But the practice gives KBR a competitive advantage over other contractors who pay their share of employment taxes.
And critics of tax loopholes note that the use of offshore shell companies to avoid payroll taxes places a greater burden on other taxpayers.
"The argument that by not paying taxes they are saving the government money is just absurd," said Robert McIntyre, director of Citizens for Tax Justice, a Washington advocacy group.
To the people listed as its workers, Service Employers International Inc. - known to them as SEII - remains something of a mystery.
"Does anybody know what or where in the Grand Cayman Islands SEII is located?" a recently returned worker wrote in a complaint about the company on JobVent.com, an employment website. He speculated that the office in the Cayman Islands must be "the size of a jail cell . . . with only a desk and chair."
In fact, the address on file at the Registry of Companies in the Cayman Islands leads to a nondescript building in the Grand Cayman business district that houses Trident Trust, one of the Caymans' largest offshore registered agents. Trident Trust collects $1,000 a year to forward mail and serve as KBR's representative on the island.
The real managers of Service Employers International work out of KBR's office in Dubai. KBR and Halliburton, which also moved to Dubai, severed ties last year.
Both KBR and the US military appear to regard Service Employers International and KBR interchangeably, except for tax purposes. According to the Defense Contract Auditing Agency, KBR bills the Service Employers workers as "direct labor costs," and charges almost the same amount for them as for direct hires.
The contract that workers sign in Houston before traveling to Iraq commits workers to abide by KBR's code of ethics and dispute-resolution mechanisms but states that the agreement is with Service Employers International.
Some workers said they were told that Service Employers International was just KBR's payroll company. Others mistook the name as a reference to the well-known, large union, Service Employees International.
Henry Bunting, a Houston man who served as a procurement officer for a KBR project in Iraq in 2003, said he first found out that he was working for a foreign subsidiary when he looked closely at his paycheck.
"Their whole mindset was deceit," Bunting said. He said that he wrote to KBR several times asking for a W-2 form so he could file his taxes, but that KBR never responded.
David Boiles, a truck driver in Iraq from 2004 to 2006, said that he realized he was working for Service Employers International when he arrived in Iraq and his foreman told him he was not a KBR employee, despite the fact that his military-issued identification card said "KBR."
"At first, I didn't believe him," Boiles said.
Danny Langford, a Texas pipe-fitter who was sent to work in a water treatment plant in southern Iraq in July 2003, said he, too, initially believed that he was an employee of KBR.
But when he allegedly got ill from chemicals at the plant and was terminated that fall, he said, his application for unemployment compensation was rejected because he worked for a foreign company.
"Now, I don't know who I was working for," he said in a telephone interview.
For decades Congress has sought to crack down on corporations that use offshore subsidiaries to lower their taxes, but most of the debates have focused on schemes that reduce corporate income taxes, not payroll taxes. Last year a Senate subcommittee estimated that US corporations avoid paying $30 and $60 billion annually in income taxes by using offshore tax havens.
Senators Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat; Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat; and Norm Coleman, a Minnesota Republican, are trying to pass the Stop Tax Haven Abuse Act, which would give the US Treasury Department the authority to take special measures against foreign jurisdictions that impede US tax enforcement.
American companies that evade payroll taxes face fines or other criminal penalties. The use of foreign subsidiaries to avoid payroll taxes, while allowed by the Defense Department, may still be subject to challenge by the Internal Revenue Service, according to Eric Toder, a former director of the office of research for the IRS.
Toder said the IRS could try to take action against a firm if the sole purpose of setting up an offshore subsidiary was to reduce tax liability. The practice could become a more costly problem in the future, Toder said, as an increasing number of American companies register subsidiaries overseas and bring American employees to work abroad.
"It obviously looks unseemly where you have a situation where, if you did it in a straightforward way, they would pay payroll taxes," Toder said. "If this becomes the norm, and other companies do that as well, it could further erode the tax base."
Peter Singer, a specialist in the outsourcing of military functions at the liberal-leaning Brookings Institution, said the practice will probably attract more scrutiny in the future, as the military expands its outsourcing and as workplaces become increasingly global.
"It is fascinating and troubling at the same time," Singer said. "If you are an executive in a company, you are thinking: 'Wow. Cash savings and a potential loophole from certain domestic laws, lawsuits, and taxes. It's win-win.' But if you are a US taxpayer, it is not a positive synergy."
Globe correspondents Stephanie Vallejo and Matt Negrin contributed to this report.
© 2008 The Boston Globe
56 Comments so far
Show AllAmerican Friends Service Committee calculations:
ONE DAY OF THE IRAQ WAR =
- 6,482 Families with Homes
- 12,478 Elementary School Teachers
- 95,364 Head Start Places for Children
- 84 New Elementary Schools
- 1,274,336 Homes with Renewable Electricity
- 163,525 People with Health Care
- 1,153,846 Children with Free School Lunches
Will someone in the media (or in a townhall meeting) please ask McCain if he will continue the practice of awarding military contracts to shell companies designed specifically to evade US taxes? Please?
Is there no end to the "evilness" of this man Cheney? Condoner (maybe instigator) of 9/11 in the quest to steal oil from Irag and Afghanistan; Warmonger, wasting trillions of public dollars on invasions, and now Thief of public money by supporting Mega tax fraud.
How can the US claim to be any sort of civilized society with its leaders engaging in such behavior, while at the same time admonishing Asian and African countries for lesser corruption? Why doesn't the US public wake up and do something about it? Can't they see that they are all being taken for a ride BIGTIME!
Dubya Bush turned the US into a laughingstock worldwide. Cheney has turned it into the world's biggest terror cell (or should that be "Terror Sell"). We have all been sold a lie and we ain't gonna get our money back unless some REALLY BIG changes are made!
It is no good thinking you are going to save the world by recycling your newspapers and plastic bags and being "Green". There are far, far greater forces within the US government and military intent on the domination and ultimately decimation of the world as we know it through short-term greed for money and power.
Surely, there are some people with real integrity left in the USA. Surely, other families rather than Bushes and Clintons could be voted for! I'd vote for Michael Moore!
Of course -- what'll cause most of today's batch of young idealistic progressive democrats the same grief that I experienced (though fortunately not for very long), was a growing cognitive dissonance that lays out like this:
Exhibit A: Congress has allowed the growth of a unitary executive, we have a president who's made more signing statements than all past presidents combined, etc. The office, now, is extraordinarily powerful -- but mostly used to circumvent the law, instigate wars, deregulate to create future scandal, etc.
Exhibit B: It'll turn out that once elected Democrats will claim to enjoy only a small fraction of the power Bush enjoyed. They're "trying hard", "doing what they can", etc. but there are just so many darned limitations.
Therein will emerge the cognitive dissonance: Bush's great power to turn everything he touches into crap, vs. the Democrats inability to touch much of anything at all.
To bad we can't just explain it to the country now, and get out of this nonsense cycle: the corporate parties are incapable of representing We The People: quit voting for them already!
Just watch: assuming the Democrats win the White House and larger majorities in Congress, they will find some reason for not cracking down on this unpatriotic, dishonest practice. Kowtowing to the corporate oligarchy is apparently an ineradicable part of the American governance system now.
It occurred to me, when the contract was let to Airbus, that this is a bribe to get Europe to go along with us. That is like Boeing's policy of having sub-assemblies made by, say Italy, or pushing favorable trade agreements with potential customers, to ensure they buy Boeing planes for their airlines.
France gets a multi-billion dollar contract to supply us with tankers and under the table, they are to support our wars.
The MIC also get to stick another finger in the eye of the American worker.
Bruce asks the smart question, why are KBR and Halliburton considered American companies at all...This points to the ridiculous irony of the current controversy of the Pentagon awarding the huge refueling plane contract to a French company and not an American one, providing yet another distraction from the real issue of all of these offshore companies making a killing on the backs of the taxpayers. Maybe everyone is so pissed off because it was a FRENCH company. And we all know how mature the average American's attitude is towards the French. Who cares if French (Freedom) fries are Belgian? The Belgians are just French under a different name.
Sorry for the rant, but there is a certain degree of madness that comes with living in the United States these days.
And another thing: Hillary and Obama do not address any of these issues, or any REAL issues whatsoever. They are off playing a game of ping pong in the rec room while the house burns down.
what a disgrace to the falling hero's of the war.
I don't see anyway out of this terrible situation.
The American people have lost their voice to the corporations and lobbyists.
re libertas fugit 2:52am
some of these guys are reagan-era retreads, and apparently have taken a page from his playbook.
borrow and spend (on your (closest cronies) until there's a gargantuan deficit, and then it's a shrug and an "oh well" for your social spending. those corps then kick back some of that taxpayer money to the pols in the form of campaign donations, which then get spent on media ads, and around it goes.
representation without taxation---sweet.
re porcupine 3/6 7:56pm
that was older brother marvin bush, not neil.
Shysters and Con-men of the old school neo-crap continue to hide the disasters of the middle east battlegrounds, whilst quietly shifting the money out the country for themselves and their rich corporate friends. Whoever gets to be president will have a mountain of debt. Whether or not the US of I has the gumption to repudiate all of its trillions of US sick government bonds, with the threat of megatons of nuclear missiles, is the big bomb question. There is only one reason of not being afraid of so much debt. You plan to destroy or intimidate your creditors completely. In other words its a mafia extortion scheme already in operation.
Just remember, the predecessors of the Neocons hated Roosevelt for the New Deal. They didn't and don't believe that the government has any need or right to serve and protect it's people. It's only function is to protect business from any checks on profits.
They cannot vote out Social Security and Medicare. That is political suicide. They finally hit on the way to do it. Give big business most of the treasury through tax breaks, spend the rest of it on the Military Industrial Complex and war.
One day, not far off, the government will turn its pockets inside out and say, "Sorry, folks, no more Medicare, no more SS, no more aid to education. We're broke. If you need something, go beg from a rich person.
bruce,
The privateers (state-sponsored pirates) probably faced a similar predicament. I guess wherever they come home to roost is where their headquarters is. And may god help the locals.
Why are Halliburton and KBR considered American companies when their headquarters are not in the US?
Some will do anything to make a buck,I guess.
NancyH, actually, pigs eat their young only in captivity and if stressed - which we are good at doing to them.
kelmer, I hesitated making that snide remark because it did seem insulting to pigs. But the word that came to my mind with the above article is piggish Republican behavior.
There ought to be a law - but who would write or pass it?
kathyodat
I read this, and all of the news that comes along, and I am feeling more and more violated, and hopeless every day.
Really, the more one reads about the crimes being committed, the more I become numb and terribly saddened at the behavior of these assholes in power.
And then I see the dems, our one hope to fix this mess, and I am saddened further, as they bitch and assasinate each other in order to gain a seat at the table.
What are we to do? Who will bring us back?
The ages are changing, the old ways of doing things must give way to a new order. But the old ways will not go quietly, they will fight to the death to hold on.
Get ready fellow travelers. God could care less if we are uncomfortable - God wants us to grow, as his universe is in the process of evolving, it will be up to our children to move us forward, those who rule us now don't deserve to live.
There'll be no investigation. bush's last signing statement said he was going to ignore Congress' right to establish a commission to investigate US contractor fraud in Iran and Afghanistan - along with ignoring these others: expansion of whisleblower protection, requiring that US intelligence agencies respond to congressional requests for documents, banning funding for permanent bases in Iraq and prohibiting funding of any actions that exercise US control over Iraq's oil revenues. Impeach now before martial law becomes the law of the land.
Take over the company. Jail the leaders. Use what money you get from the company to pay its employees their SocSec.
I mean it. Jail the leaders.
Kellogg Brown & Root is just another shell company for Haliburton. Dick Cheney was, and probably still is the man at the helm of this vast corporation that has amassed the largest taxpayer fraud of our time, something called no bid contracts. Congress will do what it usually does when it feels "outraged" over anything the Bush Administration does that bends, breaks, or changes the rules, "absolutely nothing!" Washington D.C. has made America its personal playground and we are the toys that march off to work each and everyday to support the government machine that sucks in everything it can get its hands on from the Amrican taxpayer and than breathes out a lot of hot air as a return on our investment. Speaking of air, don't hold yours in waiting on these politicians to do anything that might actually look like representation; they don't even know what the word means...
This particular fact only illuminates clearly the need for a constitutional amendment that does the following; specifically denies 14th Amendment protections for corporations and forbids corporate entities that use tax havens from even being considered for government contracts. If this does not come to pass, the nightmare future depicted in the original "Rollerball" (where corporate feudalism reigns, including higher ranks having the right of prima note) is where we are headed towards.
I wonder how many soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan will be working for "Service Employers International Inc" in the future. That's one way to keep disability and death benefits down.
Funny how Halliburton announced it's move to Dubai same time as the Dubai Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX helped set it up) opened to trade oil futures, and oil prices have increased from 65 to 105 dollars a barrel in less than a year.
Cheney needs his own Independent Prosecutor. In fact, he needs a team of lawyers, as do Rummy and Bush, to make sure they don't profit from this war or anything they did while in office. That's after the team of lawyers we need to impeach and try these bastards for war crimes. Rumsfeld already cashing in. Watch his Roche pharmaceutical investment. What's he on the board of now? Well, Stanford welcomed him with open arms. If Cheney ever gets a dime from deferred compensation from Haliburton or KBR he should be put in jail. Will that happen? Not while millionaire democrats like Pelosi, Feinstein, and Clinton pull the strings. Hell, if the democrats had any spine at all they'd take a serious look at what happened at 9/11. There were no jets scrambled when three or four jet liners left course? And the terrorists really all came from Saudi Arabia (Bush territory). And they were trained at US bases? And the Saudis were given free passage out of the country while everyone else was absolutely kept on the ground? Let's waterboard the neo-cons on a few tidbits. Neil Bush was head of security for the towers? And closed them down the week before 9/11? Doesn't Neil still owe us 3 trillion dollars? For S&L. Remember?
Yah sometimes I think there are no "good guys" in Congress. They are all just a group of thieving demonic low-life scum putting on a phony show to trick Americans not to notice they are there, in Congress, just to steal their money. But, however you look at it, Neocon Bush and his obedient lapdog congressional Republicons have done more comprehensive damage to the good ol' USA than any of it's enemies could possibly dream. We need to clean both houses of Republicons except Ron Paul of course. Then go on to do things like work to repair Neocon-Bush damages to the country and it's relations. We can still do it. It's still possible.... You know it's just as if Bush and the Neocons have carpet bombed the USA and stolen vast sums of money. We are in a really big mess because of these demented criminal psychopathic idiots.
If the election comes down to Clinton or McCain – I will vote for McCain. Though both he and Hillary are pieces of shit, at least McCain admits that he is a Republican.
Laws? We don't need no stinkin' laws!
We know Clintok and O'Bama both had a hand in pushing billions of taxpayer dollars through these war profiteers and their tax haven front companies to avoid funding Medicare and Social Security. Vote "least worst" capitalist puppet and help grow the racket into a bigger godzilla that will stomp you into deeper slavery.
The government knows this and other companies are evading taxes and turn a blind eye to it....well not blind was it, they set up the loopholes to begin with. It is amazing how little conscience or caring some of these politicians have, because the average American is going to have to make up that lost money from taxes evaded. It just puts more of the burden on people who are already burdened enough.
Bush and his minions have truly and for really destroyed this country. When you leave, turn off the lights please.
Once again we are being used as human shields in this Administrations grab for riches.
When will they have enough? Just how rich does one person have to be? Will it ever stop and if it does, will there be anything left for our children and grandchildren?
Their companies don't pay Social Security and it saves them billions. Why should they care? Where will they be when those workers, who are making them rich, need to retire? Those workers who will have no way of supporting themselves because they will have on pension and no social security?
The Cheneys of this country will be so filthy rich, they will never come into contact with the citizens who live on welfare due to having no retirement. Nor will they have to look at the Veteran they sent to Iraq, who has lost a body part, became homeless or is suffering from PTSD. Why? Because these great leaders will be hiding behind the locked gates of their estates. Never venturing out amoung the poor, the tired, the starving, the American citizen. Instead of having to face us, they will be sending their servants out to buy whatever they need, from food to gas, the gas they will use in their toys as they play on the lands they bought, with the money they made through their affilation with these corporations.
We the citizens of USA are in jeapordy of having nothing left. The land of opportunity has become just another cliche.
Anyone who supported this vile war should be hung by their thumbs for risking our servicemens' lives and our country's economic health for these corporate greed-mongers.
And the Republicans picked McCain? "What fools these mortals be."
There is nothing stopping any American from moving abroad and start living a real life.
What a mess, what a country, full of Church going brainwashed morons frightened out of their wits lead by people who make Al Capone look like an ideal citizen. I can understand why such people support an invasion, it gives them a sense of power, and that's not to be sniffed at by anybody has existed in a plastic shed all their miserable lives being told they're the greatest thing since sliced bread.
The illegal immigrant scam is the best one in that it gives Americans the impression all and sundry are trying to get in when in fact it's one of the last ones, UK is the first.
Swaheal...
beleive it or not I HAVE had a knife to my throat plus a gun to my head and tortured. There is no justice for most in the USA.
I have little fear of them.
Its all about who can kill who first, and if I die it would be nice to go fast.
Whats the difference between technique of Blackwater/US Military, and a Muslim terrorist? The Marine only cuts half way through the throat.
This is how business is run, as if "skirting US taxes" were some sort of crime. Big Public companies, like Lockheed, gorge at the DOD trough, inhaling billions in profit. Skirting or evading doesn't apply to la Casa Nostra.
Meanwhile, bought and sold legislators duel on behalf of the Defense Behemoths, witness the most recent snubbing of Boeing (tanker deal). The shrieking is louder then a spoiled rotten teenager who's been docked his allowance. A major welfare recipient snubbed as cash gets dumped into Northrup's coffers.
YES LETS ALL JUST INCORPARATE "WE THE PEOPLE INC" IN THE CAYMANS SO NONE WILL EVER PAY ANOTHER PENNY INTO THE DEATH MACHINE. but when regular folks try that stuff the irs shows up and calls it "TAX EVASION" GO FIGURE.
Thanks in some part to NAFTA.
One of the many reasons I don't vote for Senator Clinton.
Cheney has "deferred compensation" coming from Halliburton when he is done being VP. That means that the conflicts of interest that you see are very real. So much for the blind trusts and other mechanisms that elected officials use. This guy is a bald faced greed monger of the first order and he does not care what anyone thinks.
Golddogs; Blackwater is right behind ya with a hand over your mouth and a knife to your throat. Plus a sniper on the roof, just in case.
The Republican Party should change it's logo to a pig. They're smart and they eat their young.
***
Pigs are benevolent and intelligent. Humans have been known to set their children on fire out of spite, chaining them to beds or even injecting them with aids to get out of alimony payments.
The Republican party should change its logo to a human.If you want to insult them that's the image to use. A pig is a compliment.
Don't forget the 'illegal immigrant detention cen....'
Oh. Hell let's call them what they are : concentration camps built by KBR
Insult to injury. Just another typical newsday. I am totally against spending any of my tax dollars on this fiasco anyway. Then to have this lawless bunch of murdering 9/11 terrorist's use this offshore tax dodge is just beyond the realm of sanity.
Yes, it's treason.
Forbes has a new list of the world's billionaires.
The Bush/Cheney cabal has stolen more for their illegal war than the sum total of the world's billionaires.
Congress let them do it. Social Security, Healthcare, Education all plundered. When there's nothing left to eat but roadkill then let's all have a Congressional 'weenie' roast.
Treason.
Ohyah, no surprise at all that Cheney has his greasy fingers in every new scandal involving the Iraq War contractors. The draining of America... all in the name of (false) Patriotism.
Too bad, so many that blindly support the status quo are too stupid/brainwashed to realize that they are also paying the taxes that feed this bottomless pit of a War Machine, which brings them no return except some ridiculously flimsy assurances of safety against the perceived Terror Threat, and they also just don't get it that they are very much to blame for the destruction of cherished American ideals. I'd feel sorry for their ignorance, except this group includes some of the most annoying bunch I've ever had the displeasure of meeting- it doesn't help that many of them also actually believe that they are persecuted Christians, engaged in an immense battle against Evil, and are so completely indoctrinated by this ideology that there is just no way on Earth to talk any reason into them- I mean, they are like a CULT! It's CRAZY! Another good reason to separate Church from State- which our Congress neglected to ensure, when they allowed Bush to hand out lots of $$$ to religious organizations prior to the last election, same thing as buying votes.
tip of the iceberg no doubt.
We need some Congressional hearings on the war profiteering.
This is the tip of the iceberg. It encapsulates what the Bush administration has been about from day 1, making a select few corporations rich and ruining everyone else. Don't think that same members of the oligarchy aren't somehow making a killing on the 105 dollar barrel of oil. "We the people" are impoverished dupes who have been taken for an 8 year ride. Government is just a puppet show to distract us from the massive flood of wealth into the pockets of a very, very few.
Hmmm, where is Blackwater on that list?
I understand the Republicans are moving their financial operations offshore so they need not account for their dirty tricks form of campaigning.
These Global Terrorists sure know how to play the system!
(Who sez the system is broke?)
Get yo' evil on, baby, and keep buyin' them lottery tickets!
Whoo-Haaaa!!.... d' Amerikan Dream B right around d' corner!
The extent of corruption under this Adm. would make the corruption during the Ulysis S. Grant Adm (another Repug.) seem like "Mary Poppins."
To all the Republicans/right-wingers out there: If you don't want to pay taxes, then just leave the country!!
I've heard that many times when I expressed my displeasure with the Bush Family Evil Empire's fascism. I'm told to "leave the country and don't let the door hit you in the ass." (Now it's their turn to hear it.)
Beforkids,
I really like that idea. (chuckle, chuckle). If the logo fits, wear it? It fits. (but I didn't know pigs eat their young) Really?
This is what the Bush crime family has been all about, lining the pockets of their rich friends with tax payer dollars. They do not want to pay any taxes themselves, but they are first in line with their hands out to get the huge checks paid for by poor working people.
"...officials said the move allowed KBR to perform the work more cheaply, saving Defense dollars."
If this is allowing the company to perform work more cheaply, I would hate to see how much they would have charged if they had to pay taxes. Can we guess double or triple the billions already charged.
What a scam!!!
What a rotten bunch of War Profiteers.
The Republican Party should change it's logo to a pig. They're smart and they eat their young.
kathyodat
Flag-waving, chest-thumping, red-blooded PATRIOTS, all!!!! Another way (legal???) for the corporations to screw not only their employees, but the country and it's citizens. Time to close the loop-holes. This off-shore scam has been out in the public for years and hasn't gained traction with many of our elected officials. Time for them to start responding to the peoples needs, not the corporations.
I was talking to a middle aged combat veteran just back from Iraq last Summer, he claims that its common knowledge among the "troops" that KBR is actually owned by Cheney.
This is part of the tax breaks for big business and less government control that the Republicans talk about.
Now they? set a Bomb off in front of a recruitment center to escalate the FEAR factor. I smell an election coming.