During the Clinton administration, millions of dollars were spent on attempting to prove wrong doing in a real estate deal by Bill and Hillary Clinton. When this proved fruitless, they switched focus to Clinton getting some on the side and being less than forthcoming with his answers (thanks to Linda the mutt Tripp).
The final bill for these proceedings was either close to or in excess of 100 million tax dollars.

Now, the Justice Department is spending tax dollars to extradite Bobby Fischer from Japan, for the crime of violating US/UN sanctions by competing in a chess tournament in a country that was under sanction. How much this will cost in the long run is yet to be seen.

Neither of the above "defendants" committed any act that aided the enemy, or caused physical harm to their country or any ally of their country.

On the other hand, Richard Cheney aka the VP while serving as CEO of Halliburton was engaged in business dealings with the country of Iran in direct violation of US/UN sanctions. Using the loop-hole of having an offshore corporation handling the affairs, the Halliburton folks say they did nothing wrong, even though official correspondence was being routed to the home office in Texas. This is the same Iran that started the hostage crisis back during the Carter administration; the same Iran that has been accused of sponsoring terrorists; and, the same Iran that GW has included in the Axis of Evil. How much of that Halliburton money went toward sponsoring terrorist activites, do you imagine?

While VP Cheney is "supposedly" no longer connected to Halliburton, this company was given the meaty contracts in Iraq without allowing any competing bids; they have repeatedly been shown to be overcharging (what some would call cheating) the US government for services, some of which they can not even prove they performed; and, they have had these contracts renewed even after the media has published reports of the enormous overcharges and questionable billing/services.

Where are these Republican defenders of the flag and American way now, when it is one of their own that is caught with the hand in the cookie jar? Why have there been no demands for a special prosecutor to investigate aiding a terrorist affilliated country? Why has there been no special prosecutor to investigate why the VP's former company received all the lucrative contracts in Iraq? Why is a chess player facing criminal charges for violating sanctions that the VP thumbed his nose at?


And, if it were found that GW had known of and helped to smooth over any of the possible transgressions by the VP, would there be as strident a call for impeachment as there was for his predecessor who was caught lying about his sex life?


Definitely some food for thought.

Buck the system, vote for McCain:p

Interesting.

And I'll agree on McCain at least. He's one major republican I'd have no problem voting for. I would have in 2000 if he had won the primary over bush. :-/

I am no fan of this administration's extremely cozy relationship with a few select companies, but Bobby Fischer doesn't get any sympathy. Prison would be a good place for him.

Fil

I've asked the same question to myself over and over Bylimet...and here's the only answer I can come up with in reading about this.

If there was something there that the Democrats could prove....don't you think they would be raising a helacious stink about it? Escpecially now, with the elections coming up. I believe that either overt wrong doing didn't happen or is impossible to prove that it did. That's the only explaination I can come up with.

Welcome to the second Gilded Age :). Democrats don't raise a stink about it because they took the 'if you can't beat 'em, join 'em' road over a decade ago and sold out their actual constituency to corporate interests and are feeding at the same trough, so to speak, that the Republicans are; they just aren't quite as successful at it. Why doesn't the media cover this, or the events you mentioned, instead of endless rounds about the Swift Boat Vets and other assorted detritus that's been beat into the ground? One of the reasons is that while most individual journalists tend to be liberal, the corporations that own the major media outlets are not, and are *not* terribly interested in raising a stink about, and potentially blowing the lid off and forcing reform of or changes to, how the sweetheart deals are made in this country (keep in mind that GE owns NBC, for example, and that conglomerates such as Belo now own all of the major newspaper and radio outlets - yeah FCC deregulation :) ).

Issues like the Swift Boat Vets, Bobby Fisher, and the Starr investigations are both 1) sensational (which sells papers/Nielsens) and 2) don't seriously threaten to cause any examination of or changes to the corporate welfare state that this country has been becoming over the past 20 years, and so make good media fodder/opiate for the masses. It is my opinion that this (corporate mollycoddling/welfare) has reached the state in this country where it has become a very real threat to national security, as exemplified by the cases you've mentioned.

I could go on about this issue in greater depth/detail, and I'm genuinely disturbed, on a larger scale, about the jeopardy that the 'sleeping of America' (and I'm not talking about 9/11 here) poses with regards to the whole fox/henhouse way that we have allowed the public trust and its resources to be 'managed' for us, but it'll have to wait as I have to drag my dog and pony back into lecture atm... :)

Regards,
Nydia Ywalmoriel
Past Coercer - Autonomous Collective

Business/politics in America are inseparable and always have been. Last 20 years? Try the last 200 years. Big business has always had it's fingers in the American pie.

Democrats have liked to style themselves as more "labor" oriented, concentrating a lot of effort on appealing to labor unions (which these days are themselves "big business"), but the fact of the matter is they have also always had ties to large businesses as well. After all, businesses are interested in influencing policy and often contribute to both parties in an effort to cover their bases.

Ideally business and government should be more separate, but in the real world it has never been the case. I'm not going to lose sleep over it suddenly now, having spent my entire life living in such a system. That is not to say abuses should not be corrected/exposed/prosecuted, but certainly grand conspiracy theories are kinda going overboard, at least IMO.

Your post drips with ignorance Bylimet. Clinton sexually harassed at least one woman and was accused of rape and harassment by several other women. "Getting some on the side" with regard to rape and sexual harassment is very misogynistic. He then lied under oath in a deposition regarding the sexual harassment.

Your boy Clinton was in league with corporations far more than the Bush administration. For example, Clinton

personally phoned King Fahd to beg for sales on behalf of Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, whose executives were contributors. His Commerce Department sponsored sales trips to China for CEOs who made large donations to the Democratic National Committee. One of his last official acts was to issue a mysterious pardon to fugitive commodities trader Marc Rich, after being lobbied by his ex-wife, a big donor
The country is still cleaning up the legal mess, including a recent $14 million fine paid by a company run by Mr. Clinton's single biggest campaign contributor. Its offense: illegally shipping missile technology to China. Another big Clinton bankroller, Indonesian tycoon James Riady, last year paid $8.6 million in penalties for making serial illegal contributions to bankroll Mr. Clinton's career since the Arkansas days.

You then proceed to flip flop from Halliburton committed direct violations of U.S. to "using [a] loop-hole." Which is it? If it's a violation they'll be called to task for it; if it's a "loop-hole" as you like to call it then they did nothing wrong.

Why include "supposedly" and put it in quotes regarding Cheney and Halliburton? Cheney is no longer connected to Halliburton. To do so would be illegal. If you have information not available in the news, go ahead and post it and call your news organization; I know they're jumping at the chance to try and establish some connection there. So far they haven't been able to.

Halliburton is also being called to task for all of the services they've performed for the government; moreso than any other government contractor out there. In fact, Halliburton is fleecing the government so much they posted a $663 million LOSS in 2Q this year.

Furtivus, your naivete and conservative bias are telling.....

You claim Clinton to be "my boy", but I have not claimed him, or claimed to be a Democrat. I have simply listed some information taken directly from a televison news program and the newspapers, and added my views oif the information.
Because it is not favorable to your political leanings does not change it.

Halliburton and GE are both being looked into for their dealings in Iran and elsewhere that US/UN sanctions are in place. The possible connection to Cheney is being looked at along with Halliburton's setting up more than one shell-company (consisting of an office with a telephone) to handle business with Iran, as reported by CBS this past weekend. (Pretty sure it was CBS, I was somewhat pre-occupied at the time)

As far as Clinton is concerned, he was accused of many things, even as far as murder, while leading the country. The far left and far right wing folks will jump to anything they think they can get away with when making these attacks. BUT, what crimes was Clinton found guilty of, please? Accusations are a dime a dozen when you want to smear someone, but proving beyond doubt in a court of law is the test of their validity. I view those accusations with the same skepticism as the accusation by the Swift Boat captain who claims there was no enemy fire the day Kerry earned his Silver Star, but who claimed that there was enemy fire when he was putting in for his own medal after the day's events.

I enjoy the debate we are having in this forum and in the country regarding the direction the country should take, and the character of those we have to decide between.

I just wish I had the opportunity to cast my vote for John McCain instead of either of the two poor choices I am given.

He admitted to perjury to the tune of losing his bar license and admitted to sexual harassment to the tune of $800,000+. Perjury was criminal; the sexual harassment was civil. If Clinton is not your boy, why would you declare his accused rape and admitted sexual harassment "getting some on the side"?
If Halliburton and Cheney's involvement are being investigated as you state (and I know they are), why complain about lack of investigation? That's nonsensical.

As for conservative bias, I consider myself a progress liberal. Try again.

Business/politics in America are inseparable and always have been
Ok, listen up Samantha.


The Business of America IS Business.

Thank you goodnight, I'm here all week.

As for conservative bias, I consider myself a progress liberal. Try again.

I beg you to go to google and type in progressive liberal (I assume that's what you meant?) because just based on your posts - you're definitely not.

Thanks for telling me what I am (though I did have a typo on progress vs. progressive although they have the same root). Try again. Internet postings convey very little of who a person is.

Dear Gulor:

"What's Good for General Motors is Good for the Country", as the slogan went, eh?

I agree with you that big business has always had it's fair share of influence over government, but you'd have to concede that the amount of that influence has waxed and waned over time, and the pendulum has nearly reached (I certainly hope!) it's apex again (the last time it reached at this extreme being in the 1920s). The massive deregulation of the banking, securities, communications, and other industries, started by Reagan in the 1980s, kick-started us on this latest path of consolidation of capital and control into fewer and fewer private hands; the ludicrous treatment of lobbying groups as individuals for the purposes of the interpretation of 'free speech' laws, and the subversion of our regulatory agencies by the systematic removal of their budgets, personnel, and teeth, as well as the shameless packing of the leadership of those agencies by CEOs and other higher-ups in those industries by the current administration, has pushed the consolidation of control/influence in this country to a new level, at least for the greater part of the last century.

In regards to my claim (possibly tin-foil hat inspired to some) that this potentially 'presents a threat to national security', think about what happens when the economic interests of privately owned corporations conflict with the public interest, or the soverignty/national security interests, of a nation. If that company is multinational, and possesses sufficient economic and political clout, just who *is* it beholden to, if we lack the will to regulate them? At what point do we become beholden to them, and lose control of our own destiny with regard to some areas of public policy because of this? Think about, say, the oil and gas industry, or Microsoft for that matter ;), for a moment...

With regard to the original subject of this thread, that some of these industries turn their profits when we are engaged in military operations, and that our current vice president has close ties with a specific such company (Halliburton) whose dealings with our government have been both incestuous (the no-bid contracts) and unscrupulous (having received those no-bid contracts, they then proceeded to gouge the government on top of it) is, to say the least, troubling, especially given the 'reasons' we are in Iraq in the first place (the 'war' having been voluntarily, willfully, and unilaterally started by this administration). It's been almost 45 years since a retiring President Eisenhower warned us of the dangers of the then budding Military-Industrial Complex; I think it's fair to say that we're, at least to some degree, seeing those in action. And while we're on the subject of Halliburton in Iraq, it's worth noting that in September of last year, just a few months after the occupation, local Iraqi contractors and businessmen were lining up for their piece of the reconstruction pie, hoping to be hired to work infrastructure and other rebuilding projects, and showing up at proposed bidding auctions. Unfortunately for them, the vast majority of those jobs had already been outsourced to Halliburton and a few other large foreign private contractors, leaving them to squabble over the scraps that were left, and contributing to Iraq's 60% unemployment rate (and I don't think I need to belabor what a protracted 60% unemployment rate does for unrest). Cronyism and greed, pure and simple, drove that decision, and it cost us immeasurably in terms of lost Iraqi goodwill.

/incoming longwinded rambling alert - I'm feeling both loopy *and* chatty tonight)

Getting back to the media's complicity, or at least its very curious tendency to 'look the other way', at these goings on (Haliburton, insert corpo/government shacking up scandal here), does anyone else remember those quaint little bits we used to see on TV, gone since before a few of the contributors to this board were born, the editorials about one issue or another, followed by the message "The opinions expressed by (advocate) are not those of station XQYZ. As required by law, time is alloted for opposing viewpoints..."? Up until 1987, the public airwaves in this country were just that: the *public* airwaves, and even though stations might be privately licensed (fyi, television stations do *not* 'own' their frequencies, they get to use them free of charge), they had certain obligations to the public, as they were using a public resource that was considered to belong to the citizenry. Television and radio stations that obtained a broadcasting license from the FCC were required to spend at least some of their on-air time acting in the public interest (those 3 hours of 'children's core programming' that they are still required to air, for example), and part of that obligation included requiring them to "afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views of public importance.", otherwise known as the Fairness Act. (in the interests of avoiding yet more verbage, I'll skip how some partisan groups used the Fairness Act in an attempt to censor the media in the 1970s)

In 1987, the FCC, under pressure from then-president Ronald Reagan, abolished the Fairness Act, and Reagan subsequently vetoed the bill when Congress attempted to reinstate it. It is interesting to note that when the digital airwave spectrum became usable, the FCC (under the Clinton administration for the 1900 mHz auction, early Bush for the 700mHz auction) took this public resource, which was estimated to be worth 80+ billion dollars, and licensed it away as well, permitting companies who were already at their maximum number of stations/markets to participate, and making no requirements that they spend any time serving the public interest, either (and those ownership rules were relaxed again last year if I remember right). Over and over again, over the last two decades, the government's 'shepherding' of the public trust has given way to a totally hands-off approach that has resulted in acquisition after acquisition, consolidation after consolidation, and a concentration of the 'voice' over the public airwaves in fewer and fewer hands (just out of curiosity, did anyone see the only-aired-once-before NBC pulled it in outrage 'Mediaopoly' cartoon that Robert Smiegel (TV Funhouse) did for Saturday NIght Live several years ago? I laughed my fool head off at it and would pay good money for it if anyone has a copy :) ). Ironically, legislation that *has* come out of the FCC in recent years (such as the (cough) Communications Decency Act) has sought to curtail, rather than encourage, the right of its citizenry to access and use the public airwaves (now including the Internet) for public discourse. This has occasionally produced such absurd results as breast cancer survivors on AOL being forced to adopt the name 'Hooter Cancer Survivors' for their chatroom because the word 'breast' was being censored...

Oh my, this really has gone on too long :). I've tried not to go too partisan with this, because I think that this is an American problem, not just a Republican (or Democratic) problem, but I think it's fair to say that this administration has taken the 'executive power grab' to new heights, and the amount of hubris that they have displayed, and the shamelessness with which they have manipulated the public while conducting the greatest restructuring and consolidation of power since the Great Depression is truly shocking. Why haven't the Democrats responded, or the media cried out? It's multifactorial, I think, but primarily because it's simply *easier*, on many (profit and career making) levels, not to...

I lost my mouse a little while ago (and have to figure out how to post this without one!) so guess it's time to stop for now). Flame on, if ya wanna...

Regards,
Nydia Ywalmoriel
Past Coercer - Autonomous Collective
P.S. The stupid program keeps making me take out smilies, and all I have to work with is the 'tab' key. So I apologize for the low smilie quotient of this post...

I guess all that would concern me more if I thought the government could manage things better than private concerns. Having worked for the government (US Army) and having worked in private industry, my preference is with generally putting things in the hands of private industry. When you are concerned with profit and a bottom line to keep your job, you tend to pay more attention to details. I am not a proponent of "nationalizing" most resources for that reason. The government has an abysmal record of handling many concerns (see Department of the Interior- Bureau of Indian Affairs) for an example of why I don't want economic resources handled by bureaucrats.

As far as the economic concerns of a few companies influencing public policy (or even wars), again, they always have. If it can be shown that Bush (or even Cheney) is receiving payments from Haliburton in return for policy decisions for instance, then certainly legal action/impeachment would be appropriate. However merely having friends/advisors from said companies due to past familiarity or even employment does not constitute fraud or corruption in my opinion. Every person meets or knows folks from their encounters in the workplace who they admire, trust and listen to. Should they ignore such people in favor of people they don't know or trust if they happen to come into a position of power? I don't think so.

Did Cheney influence matters to give Haliburton an edge in the Iraq rebuilding contracts? I think he obviously did and it might shock you to learn I am not overly concerned with that. IMO Haliburton was clearly qualified to do the work that needed to be done. Did he start a war just to get those contracts? I think the idea is ludicrous. It would have been much easier and more profitable to simply cut a deal with Saddam like other countries did.