Halliburton reminder

Bob has pulled out one of last year's Arianna Huffington columns. And it's a good one. She wonders why Halliburton is excused from its off-shore tax sheltering while Bush is paying lip service to dissing that pracice.

First, Bush's and Cheney's reps tried to argue that even though setting up shop in the Caymans is a favorite ploy of companies looking to avoid paying their fair share of taxes – Enron had 692 subsidiaries there – that wasn't the reason Harken or Halliburton had done it. Well, pray tell, what was? A desire to rack up frequent flier miles checking on the company headquarters/PO Box? A desperate longing for a bitchin' tan? Cheaper umbrella drinks for company meetings?

...White House press secretary Ari Fleischer even tried the ol' No Harm, No Foul defense, arguing that the reason Bush's company went Caribbean was a "moot question" because Harken never made any money on the Cayman venture. Memo to Fleischer: Arguing that the crime didn't pay isn't a defense.

...These wobbly spin doctors' task was, admittedly, made much harder by the fact that on the same day these tax dodge disclosures came to light, President Bush had spoken out with his usual Dudley Do-Right forthrightness against the very same practice. "We ought to look at people who are trying to avoid U.S. taxes as a problem," he said. Indeed we ought. So why don't we?

Let's start by looking at the problem of the vice president and Halliburton. During the number two's time as the company's number one, the number of Halliburton subsidiaries registered in tax-friendly locations ballooned from nine in 1995 to 44 in 1999. The result? A dramatic drop in Halliburton's federal taxes, which fell from $302 million in 1998 to less than zero – to wit, an $85 million rebate – in 1999.


...Congress is currently [August 2002] considering legislation that will bar the Pentagon and the new Homeland Security Department from doing business with companies that have set up offshore tax-cheat havens since January. Which means that all the corporations that had the foresight to profit early from their disloyalty, depriving the government of $70 billion a year, are A-okay. If something is so wrong on Jan. 1, [2002] what made it right on Dec. 31, [2001]?


I might suggest, Arianna, it could be because it was already decided that Halliburton would be given some very nice no-bid contracts in a war not too far in the future. ("By early March, 2002, a former White House official told me, it was understood by many in the White House that the President had decided, in his own mind, to go to war." source)

....but hey, think what you want....you will anyway.