EXPLOITING BUSH

Which means Bush exploiting us, his entire run as president has ALL
been about exploitation. He is the reverse Robin Hood, stealing from
the poor (and middle class) and giving to the rich. The amazing part is
how obvious he has been and how few have called him on it. But now we have a caller who doesn't hold back - Hillary! In an article she says:

In the past few years, the number of corporations flocking to places like the Cayman Islands to evade U.S. taxes has exploded. One of these companies, former Halliburton subsidiary KBR, has used offshore tax havens to avoid paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal taxes. To no one's surprise, instead of cracking down on KBR, the Bush administration has rewarded the company in April of this year with a 10-year, $150 billion contract in Iraq.

Too bad she doesn't mention Halliburton skipping off to Dubai. I think any company that leaves America should no longer get government contracts, but Halliburton still has one that is cost plus 10%. Are you clear on what that means? Halliburton merely has to submit an expense report, they then get all that money plus 10% profit. So their motivation is to spend as much money as they possibly can on every project in order to make more profit. It's the kind of deal every business would dream of.

There appears to be no crisis, tragedy or disaster immune from exploitation under the Bush administration. The examples of the waste, fraud and abuse are legion -- from KBR performing shoddy electrical work in Iraq that has resulted in the electrocution of our military personnel according to Pentagon and Congressional investigators, to the firing of an Army official who dared to refuse a $1 billion payout for questionable charges to the same company.

KBR is responsible for the deaths of over a dozen military men fighting in Iraq by electrocuting them in poor built showers. I am not kidding even though I know that sounds unbelievable, but that is what America has become, the land where corporations rule and can get away with anything. Imagine this during WWII, people would be going to jail. She goes on to talk about how much money we can get back in government coffers simply by putting a stop to this abuse, no need for tax increases at all:

While touting fiscal responsibility, President Bush and his administration have lined the pockets of political cronies like Halliburton and Blackwater. While calling for earmark reform, the president has allowed no-bid and questionable contracting throughout the federal government to dwarf earmark spending by a 10-to-1 ratio.

If we're going to get serious about putting our nation's fiscal house in order, let's talk about putting an end to billions in no-bid contract awards to unaccountable contractors. Let's talk about the number of lucrative contracts and bonuses being paid for duties never performed, promises never fulfilled, and contracts falsely described as complete. And let's talk about reforming the federal contracting system so that we can take on the real waste, fraud and abuse in our federalgovernment.

I won't go into details but everyone should follow the link and read the whole article. As I was reading it I was thinking about how light weight all the VP candidates for Obama are that the press has been batting around. Only Hillary brings serious chops to the table. There has also been a rumor that she is suddenly high up on the short list again, so maybe Obama is starting to see that too. Each candidate might bring in his state, maybe, or white people, maybe. But Hillary is the only candidate who had 18 million people vote for her. This is not a maybe, this is hard fact.

And the traditional role of the VP candidate is as the attack dog that the presidential candidate can't be. We all know Hillary would be great at that. And Obama could give her special projects to take care of so he doesn't need to worry about them. He could hand over the whole health care mess, or set her up to deal with the corruption she talks about in the article. Hell, she can do both. Imagine her as Obama's Dick Cheney, the idea is positively scary.

The more I think about it the more I like it.