WAR PROFITEERING & THE REPUBLICAN CULTURE OF DECEIT

By way of Dailykos …

A few months back the Boston Globe broke the story of Dick Cheney’s former firm, Kelly Brown & Root (formerly of Halliburton) contributing to the Republican fed culture of deceit and corruption. In a few words, KBR avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in Social Security and other taxes by claiming that more than 21,000 employees worked for a Cayman Islands subsidiary that had neither a phone number, nor an office (although it did exist in a computer file in the Cayman Islands).


Here’s what the Boston Globe wrote:

Kellogg Brown & Root, the nation's top Iraq war contractor and until last year a subsidiary of Halliburton Corp., has avoided paying hundreds of millions of dollars in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring workers through shell companies based in this tropical tax haven.

More than 21,000 people working for KBR in Iraq - including about 10,500 Americans - are listed as employees of two companies that exist in a computer file on the fourth floor of a building on a palm-studded boulevard here in the Caribbean. Neither company has an office or phone number in the Cayman Islands.

The Defense Department has known since at least 2004 that KBR was avoiding taxes by declaring its American workers as employees of Cayman Islands shell companies, and officials said the move allowed KBR to perform the work more cheaply, saving Defense dollars.

Sure, the practice of off-shoring a firms business to avoid paying taxes isn’t illegal. It’s just shameful. And in this case, war profiteering (like this case) and tax-dodging slaps every American soldier and U.S. taxpayer in the face. And did I mention that KBR has no bid contracts that help provide it with 8 times the amount of work than its nearest competitor?

Fortunately Senator Kerry and Senator Obama jumped on this story. They just forced President Bush to sign legislation effectively closing this Cayman Island loophole. Beachmom from Dailykos has been following the story and has all the links here.

My only question now is whether we can get President Bush to sign on to legislation that will ask KBR to retroactively pay back the taxes they dodged over the years with their war-profiteering activities.

Think about it. If the Bush administration can fight for “retroactive immunity” for his telecom buddies (who illegally helped the government spy on Americans) they should also be prepared to support “retroactive tax responsibility” for his war-profiteering buddies … don’t you think?

- Mark