Flipping the Corrupt Tables

Below is an excerpt from an article in Sojourners Magazine, written by David Batstone. You can read the full article at http://www.sojo.net/. Enjoy...

I just can't stand it anymore! Why? Because corruption passes for ordinary, acceptable behavior in the highest reaches of government and business.

What sends me into righteous rage (caveat to self: we all think our rage is righteous) is how obvious, bald-faced, and public the corruption is. Yet the perpetrators meet no shame or punishment fitting the crime. They laugh all the way to the bank.

I will offer two prime examples. From the start there was no doubt that Halliburton and its subsidiary, KBR, would bilk American taxpayers for work in Iraq. The bidding procedure for supplying troops and constructing infrastructure, both military and civilian, was patently unfair. Due to the lack of real competition, proposed budgets were bloated.

In an April 2003 column titled "The Buck $tops Here," I warned SojoMail readers that crony economics was guiding the funds targeted for reconstruction in Iraq. Here is what I wrote then:
"Looking ahead, the Bush team has requested $2.4 billion from Congress for humanitarian aid and reconstruction projects in Iraq; requests for billions more will follow once the war ends. Big business is lining up to sign lucrative contracts. The bidders represent some of the country's largest construction companies, all of them major donors to political campaigns. Halliburton shows up on the list of corporations that will benefit from the seizure of Iraq's oil wells. Vice President Dick Cheney, of course, was the chief executive of Halliburton before moving to public office."

In light of this public scrutiny, one would imagine that Halliburton would take extra care to execute efficiently in Iraq. To the contrary, within a year reports began leaking out of Iraq that malfeasance at Halliburton had become standard operating procedure. The Pentagon itself issued audits that confirmed Halliburton's dismal performance, and suggested that funds had been misdirected. Pentagon investigators concluded that Halliburton and KBR in Iraq had created "profound systemic problems," "exorbitant indirect costs," "misleading" and "distorted" cost reports, and an "obstructive" corporate attitude toward oversight.

But wait, the news gets worse. This past April, Pentagon investigators revealed that contractors over which Halliburton/KBR have oversight in Iraq are engaged in human trafficking. Low-skilled workers, mostly from underdeveloped nations, are deceived into traveling to Iraq with the promise of a lucrative job. Once they arrive, their passports are taken away and they are forced to work long hours at the most minimal wages.

So we saw it coming, we watched it unfold, and we witnessed the robbers run from the bank with impunity. I JUST CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE!

I feel ire for ExxonMobil, too, though it feels inadequate for the grievous weight of its transgression. No, I am not referring to the nearly $8.4 billion ExxonMobil pulled in over the last quarter - yep, over three months alone - while the average Jane and Joe are getting raked at the gas pump. As it pumps in the record revenues, ExxonMobile's corporate policy practices contempt for the earth.

Paul Krugman wrote a devastating essay in The New York Times in late April denouncing ExxonMobil as an "enemy of the planet." Guess he can't take it anymore either.

Krugman explains how ExxonMobil has deliberately aimed to sow confusion and doubt about the existence of global warming. When the greenhouse effect rose to public consciousness in the 1980s, we faced a paucity of scientific research validating the extent of its impact. Exxon (which at the time had not merged with Mobil) decided to take an aggressive stance, and joined with other oil industry players to form the Global Climate Coalition. The primary purpose of the coalition was to lobby against all significant emissions regulation. Krugman reports that Shell and BP, among other companies, eventually left the coalition once it became undeniable that global warming was in play. Exxon, however, adopted an ongoing strategy to undermine the science of climate change.

Krugman cites a 2004 article in the journal Science that reviews the state of scientific research around global warming. Of the 928 serious, peer-reviewed articles on climate change published in academic journals, he writes, "none of the papers disagreed with the consensus position." Nevertheless, for the past two decades ExxonMobil has seen fit to throw money at individuals and groups offering "alternative perspectives" of global warming skeptics. The company's attitude toward research recalls the tobacco industry studies that suggested that perhaps cigarette smoke wasn't really that bad for you after all.

Is your blood boiling yet? I sincerely hope so, because we need an army of citizens to rise up and declare that THEY JUST CAN'T TAKE IT ANYMORE. The moneychangers have taken over the temple and they act openly and shamelessly. Their greed knows no limits. It's time to flip the tables.