Corruption Again

Did you know that the controversial anti-immigration law passed in Arizona this year was the product of lobbying by the private prison industry?

Did you know that the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico was primarily due to Halliburton's use of sub-standard cement?

Did you know that Tea Partiers don't know why they oppose things like Attorney General Eric Holder, they just do as they're told by their Fox News masters?

More to look forward to when the GOP takes the House.

But of course

Of course they did:

The House Energy and Commerce Committee released dozens of internal documents that outline several problems on the deepsea rig in the days and weeks before the April 20 explosion that set in motion the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history. Investigators found that BP was badly behind schedule on the project and losing hundreds of thousands of dollars with each passing day, and responded by cutting corners in the well design, cementing and drilling mud efforts and the installation of key safety devices.

"Time after time, it appears that BP made decisions that increased the risk of a blowout to save the company time or expense. If this is what happened, BP's carelessness and complacency have inflicted a heavy toll on the Gulf, its inhabitants, and the workers on the rig," said Democratic Reps. Henry A. Waxman and Bart Stupak.

Of course, he isn't -- why would he:

Rand Paul, who touts his career as a Kentucky eye doctor as part of his outsider credentials in his campaign for U.S. Senate, isn't certified by his profession's leading group.

He tried Monday to bat away questions about it by calling it an attack on his livelihood, saying the scrutiny stems from his challenge of a powerful medical group over a certification policy he thought was unfair.

The libertarian-leaning Republican helped create a rival certification group more than a decade ago. He said the group has since recertified several hundred ophthalmologists, despite not being recognized the American Board of Medical Specialties – the governing group for two dozen medical specialty boards.

Of course they did. Do:

So, Halliburton creates offshore entities to circumvent the U.S. ban on doing business in Iran, and part of what passes through this truly ridiculous loophole is nuclear enabling technology. All of the profit ends up in a Cayman Islands shell company so there's no U.S. tax burden, and when we have to go interdict a nuclear armed Iran Halliburton gets paid again supporting our military in the conflict.

But of course!

Horror and Halliburton

Hard to take story about a young woman who went to Iraq working for contractors KBR, the Halliburton subsidiary, and within four days of arriving was drugged and gang raped by KBR employees. And that's not the worst of it -- when she reported this crime to her superior, she was locked in a shipping container with two armed guards. Only after convincing one of the guards to let her call her father did her rescue get put into motion. It's all here in this harrowing Rachel Maddow segment.

After refusing to take any action against the rapist employees, Halliburton has been working hard to keep this from going to trial, including trying to get a silencing out-of-court arbitration per the employment contract created under then-CEO Dick Cheney. But it's looking that that's not working for them.

Meanwhile, Sen. Al Franken (D-MN) got an amendment to a massive defense bill passed in the Senate making it illegal for the U.S. government to do business with contractors who deny victims of assault the right to bring their case to court. Seem like a slamdunk, yet thirty Republican Senators, and only Republicans, voted against it. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) called it a political amendment aimed at punishing a company the Dems didn't like. Nice sentiment for the victims from the supposed law 'n' order crowd, list here:

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/07/meet-the-senators-who-vot_n_312976.html

You read that right. McCain (R-AZ) was one of the thirty.

Now there are rumors that powerful senior Sen. Daniel Inouye (D-HI) is looking to strip the amendment from the final bill. There's a denial from his office, but who knows what will happen, with the Pentagon against it.

After all, what matters more, rape or riches?

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/22/frankens-anti-rape-amendm_n_329896.html

Bastards

More outrageous horrors of the Cheney/Bush-style Iraq War, from a subsidiary of Cheney's Halliburton as visited upon a very courageous Jamie Leigh Jones:

Jamie Leigh Jones, now 22, says that after she was raped by multiple men at a KBR camp in the Green Zone, the company put her under guard in a shipping container with a bed and warned her that if she left Iraq for medical treatment, she'd be out of a job.

"Don't plan on working back in Iraq. There won't be a position here, and there won't be a position in Houston," Jones says she was told.

In a lawsuit filed in federal court against Halliburton and its then-subsidiary KBR, Jones says she was held in the shipping container for at least 24 hours without food or water by KBR, which posted armed security guards outside her door, who would not let her leave.

The part of me that is not surprised is the part that believes a private "war services" firm like KBR is going to attract brutal men because those are the only ones who will go into a war zone and risk their lives (whereas the actual U.S. Armed Forces attracts young people looking to better themselves or selflessly serve their country).

The part of me that is shocked wants to see legal and political vengeance against KBR, Halliburton, former Halliburton CEO Richard Bruce Cheney, the perpetrators, enablers and cover-up management.

But what's likely to happen?

Over two years later, the Justice Department has brought no criminal charges in the matter. In fact, ABC News could not confirm any federal agency was investigating the case.

Legal experts say Jones' alleged assailants will likely never face a judge and jury, due to an enormous loophole that has effectively left contractors in Iraq beyond the reach of United States law.

"It's very troubling," said Dean John Hutson of the Franklin Pierce Law Center. "The way the law presently stands, I would say that they don't have, at least in the criminal system, the opportunity for justice."

Congressman Poe says neither the departments of State nor Justice will give him answers on the status of the Jones investigation.

That leaves the civil courts, where the victim has sued. But:

Jones' former employer doesn't want this case to see the inside of a civil courtroom.

KBR has moved for Jones' claim to be heard in private arbitration, instead of a public courtroom. It says her employment contract requires it.

In arbitration, there is no public record nor transcript of the proceedings, meaning that Jones' claims would not be heard before a judge and jury.

Her employment contract. Did it cover rape by fellow employees and imprisonment by management?

Lawless bastards, bottom to top. As MissLaura says on DailyKos in her appropriately incensed diary:

It takes a special something, it seems to me, to say "we don't want to be held accountable for the gang-rape of this woman we employ. Hey, let's lock her up under armed guard without food and water." What was the end game there? Was the intent to let her out once they'd broken her and she wasn't going to report it? Did they even have a plan? And this, mind you, wasn't a matter of the rapists themselves trying to cover up their actions. This was a decision made by someone high up enough in the company to assign guards to a damn storage container.

This is what the government of our country has bought and paid for.

God help this all lead to the end of the GOP practice of contracting out those duties our official armed forces have traditionally handled in order to make shareholders happy and damned be any morality that gets in the way.

As for Ms. Jones, she's acting like a true brave American, having started a foundation to help women like her abused in military or private military situations, and speaking out:

"There needs to be a voice out there that really pushed for change," she said. "I'd like to be that voice."

May she take all the bad guys down.