Raise your hand if you're surprised by this.

[unixronin]

Halliburton hired for storm cleanup

The Navy has hired Houston-based Halliburton Co. to restore electric power, repair roofs and remove debris at three naval facilities in Mississippi damaged by Hurricane Katrina.

Halliburton subsidiary KBR will also perform damage assessments at other naval installations in New Orleans as soon as it is safe to do so.

KBR was assigned the work under a "construction capabilities" contract awarded in 2004 after a competitive bidding process.  The company is not involved in the Army Corps of Engineers' effort to repair New Orleans' levees.

(link from james_nicoll)

Tell me with a straight face that nobody saw THAT coming.

Comments

[johnkzin.livejournal.com]

Which makes it sound as if Cheney has no vested interest in seeing that Halliburton doesn't continue to thrive. If their profits go up, he gets X. If their profits go down, he still gets X. So why would this cause him to give them preferential treatment, right?

But he does have a vested interest: if the company fails, he could lose that income. The fact that they owed it to him in a deferred disbursement doesn't change that it is a vested interest. He very much wants and needs to see the company succeed, because if it doesn't, he wont get his money.

I'm not saying he IS playing favorites. I'm just dispelling this myth that the arrangement of his deferred income makes him unbiased. That's simply untrue. It is less severe than if his income was tied to their profits, but it is still non-zero.