The bartender in search of the VP.
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August 4, 2004
Billmon: Where Was Dick?
Comments
” secure in the knowledge that political fraud, unlike the financial kind, is well beyond the reach of the SEC.”
Pigs at the trough, and we can do sweet fuck all about it.
Hello George Orwell.
Posted by: Cloned Poster | Aug 4 2004 19:15 utc | 1
The fact that Cheney’s ticker is still ticking indicates that he must of not sweated the entire ordeal. Just to check, somebody run up and pop a paper bag behind him.
Posted by: b real | Aug 4 2004 20:00 utc | 2
…and we can do sweet fuck all about it.
I understand your rage CP.
And…I was going to say we could invest in Halliburton and feast at the trough too…
But strangely enough Halliburton’s stock has underperfomed. I guess that serves those wannabe little Dick Cheneys right.
So what to do about it?
All I can suggest is laughter and good health.
Laughter:
There are is always going to be a sizable minority of folks like Dick who absolutely live for the hard-on that money gives them.
Would that we could but give Dick a swimming pool filled with $10,000 dollar bills and watch him dive in naked and climax repeatedly.
Oh…if only I could twitch my nose and make it so. Because all the little Dicks of the world deserve to have their narrowly defined little slit of a heaven. They really do.
If that doesn’t lighten your load…then imagine Dick on his exercycle in his bunker and eating rabbit food every night. This is a guy who grumbled about everything hippyish…and now to prolong his tiny little life a few years…he is having to act the hippy. Visualize the sweat on his brow. See his dumpy little body trying to turn the cranks. Hear him complain.
Belly laughs. All belly laughs.
Do you see what I am saying? Everything has a price. Including good health. Including morality.
We don’t get something for nothing.
Cheney is decaying. He is broken and infirm. A huffer and a puffer. He has eaten too much red meat without so much as a hint of blessing towards the creatures he has consumed.
He is dying. And not at all dying well. His artless life must have its artless end. He has earned it.
What I am saying is that Cheney and Halliburton are suffering theirs–even as they appear to be profiting.
They are stunted in morality, stinted in laughter, and stent-ed in health.
Which is all to say: I absolutely love being morally and physically and emotionally superior to the leadership of the United States.
So should you.
Posted by: koreyel | Aug 4 2004 20:12 utc | 3
seems I remember reading long ago that Dresser was somehow mixed in with The Carlyle Group before Halliburton rescued them.
maybe some of you economic geniuses know more about this than I do, or how and where to get that information, if it’s true.
I’ll go look around, but maybe someone else here recalls that one too?
Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 4 2004 21:47 utc | 6
Here’s one from Corporate Criminals
…But the connections in government to the Carlyle Group do not end there. George Bush’s old firm Arbusto Energy, was also funded by an investment banker named James Bath, (an advisor for the Bin Laden family). One of the Bin Laden companies’ major partners is the H.C. Price Company, a joint partnership between Dresser Industries and Shaw Industries, which are both owned by the Halliburton corporation. And guess who ran Halliburton? You guessed it, none other than Vice President Dick Cheney. Cheney even coordinated the Dresser-Shaw purchase back in 1998.
Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 4 2004 21:51 utc | 7
Dresser Industries is an old company that has been tied to the Bush dynasty since the old days of Harriman Brown Brothers / Brown Brothers Harriman or one of the incarnations. Kevin Phillips book “American Dynasty” covers the history of the Bush connections. That’s probably where you got the connection.
Posted by: sukabi | Aug 4 2004 21:57 utc | 8
thanks sukabi. yes, Phillips’ book is really great…and I need a whole database or something to keep up with the shenanigans.
here’s another long article via FTW
Amongst the multitude of oil pipeline construction running through the new war zone is one project – according to a Sept. 19, 2001 Wall Street Journal story – a joint venture in which the bin Laden family joined with the construction firm H.C. Price. A researcher named “Phoenix,” writing for the Internet news site Rumor Mills News Agency located at http://www.rumormillnews.com, reported that Price subsequently changed its name to Bredero Shaw, Inc. and is now owned by a subsidiary of the Halliburton Corporation, Dresser Industries. It was Dresser industries that gave George H.W. Bush his first post war job in 1948. A check of the relevant corporate web sites has confirmed this.
Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 4 2004 22:10 utc | 9
God Billmon. Go Go Go! With your dedicated effort and probably thousands of other real patriots like you (though not quite as articulately insightful. eg. Springsteen, Pearl Jam, Dixie Chicks et al.) we’re going to reclaim our country, freedom, democracy etc. etc.
You keep inspiring me to keep the pressure on the gangsters in the White House and other governmental bodies across our country, in spite of their control of our countries major propaganda machines. We’re breaking through. Full court press, power play, sock it to em.
Yeah, Yeah, Yeah!!!
Posted by: Juannie | Aug 4 2004 22:14 utc | 10
by googling Bredero Shaw, Dresser, Halliburton and Enron, I came across this interesting compliation of links and info from an industrious person at DU.
Posted by: fauxreal | Aug 4 2004 22:18 utc | 11
@Juannie:
If you read carefully the anti-war lyrics some of those bands have written–they are pretty GD articulate too.
Hopefully it all comes together.
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 4 2004 23:18 utc | 14
is it wrong that i enjoy accounting-related posts this much?
by the way there is something we can do, however little, about this.
The Senate is currently considering the Stock Options Accounting Reform Act (S. 1890). It already passed in the House (HR 3574). This bill would block the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) from implementing a rule to require that stock options be counted as expenses.
Ask your Senator to oppose this bill. (sample letter).
Posted by: dirtgirl | Aug 4 2004 23:34 utc | 15
Anonymous @ 7:18 PM
Yeah, I understand. I wasn’t belittling them in the least. I love what they’re doing. Was just honoring Billmon’s incredible contextualizing insights.
For another talanted (not quite so famous) artist, check out Scott Ainslie’s C.P. Snow inspired Don’t Obey
Anonymous @ 7:18 PM
Who are you I liked your comment. My point is, it is coming together. We just all need to believe and continue our efforts. Please forgive my overzealous preaching. My father was an Anglican minister. But I need to keep the pressure on myself.
Posted by: Juannie | Aug 5 2004 0:39 utc | 16
@Juannie:
You made my evening.
DON’T OBEY is the best example I’ve seen yet
in my recent study of the power of song and verse.
I’ll EMAIL you. Don’t want to interrupt the thread.
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 5 2004 1:10 utc | 17
Vote For Change
Springsteen, Raitt, Dave Matthews, Dixie Chicks, Pearl Jam, ect. concert tour.
Posted by: sukabi | Aug 5 2004 5:33 utc | 20
“…somebody has to take governments’ place, and business seems to me to be a logical entity to do it.” – David Rockefeller – Newsweek International, Feb 1 1999.
Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 5 2004 17:37 utc | 21
New lawsuit against Halliburton: Suit Accuses Halliburton of Fraud in Accounting
The charges in the complaint and in the S.E.C.’s action cover the two years when Vice President Dick Cheney was Halliburton’s chief executive. But he was not named as a defendant in the new filing nor in the regulatory proceeding. …
The filing also noted that one former employee in the accounting department said superiors had told her to do “whatever it took” to make projects appear profitable and to meet Wall Street estimates for the company’s earnings.
The filing also asserts that executives at Halliburton misled investors in the fall of 2001 about asbestos liabilities faced by the company’s subsidiary, Harbison-Walker, which it had acquired in the September 1998 purchase of Dresser Industries. Even though the company had lost a major case in a Texas court and was ordered to pay $130 million to plaintiffs, top Halliburton executives told analysts unaware of the verdict that the news regarding its asbestos obligations was “positive” and that there had been “no adverse developments at all” relating to Harbison-Walker.
Only on Dec. 7, 2001, when the verdict became public, did investors learn of Halliburton’s obligations as a result of it, the suit said. The company’s stock plummeted, losing 42 percent of its value that day. …
According to a quarterly filing it also made on Tuesday, Halliburton is under investigation by the Justice Department over possible overbilling on government services work done in the Balkans from 1996 through 2000, when Mr. Cheney was the company’s chief executive. The filing also noted that the Justice Department and the S.E.C. were investigating a project in Nigeria in which Halliburton participated and which might involve illegal payments under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. …
One former employee said that manipulation of monthly profit and loss statements at K.B.R. “was systemic and indeed a matter of policy.” The accounting improprieties were necessary, the filing said, because they helped conceal burgeoning problems related to Halliburton’s exposure to asbestos claims.
Reuters adds
The filing also said that from 1998 to 2001 about $3.1 billion “went missing” as the company generated $1 billion of profit and $2.1 billion from asset sales, yet ended the period with roughly the same amount of debt and cash as it started.
Posted by: b | Aug 6 2004 10:29 utc | 22