Okay conservatives, read my analysis and tell me what you think.

It is the assertion of many conservatives that the private sector is the best for handling virtually everything. The theory, to my understanding, (and correct me if I'm wrong) goes something like this:

1. Private corporations want to make profit, therefore they will run their businesses in the most efficient manner possible.

2. Private corporations are always at the risk of their consumers punishing them for amoral behavior, because they can immediately "vote with their dollars" and therefore are run in the most moral manner possible.

3. being that these two things are the case, the public sector will always be less efficient and less ethical than private corporations, both wasting tax dollars from citizens, and doing an incompetant, shortsighted job to boot.

With me so far? Or is my premise on these things wrong?

Assuming I've got it right, then how do you explain the reprehensible behavior of Haliburton in Iraq?

I watched hearings this weekend on their various practices, and I was appalled at their behavior.

They have killed soldiers indirectly by letting things fall of the backs of trucks for greater profitability elsewhere, not to mention selling weapons to potentially US unfriendly groups.

They have killed soldiers DIRECTLY by improperly de-toxifying water used in their shower facilities (17 dead from this incident.)

They have threatened the health of soldiers by shipping edibles and ice in trucks used to cart corpses around without cleaning in between.

They have gouged US taxpayers and Soldiers alike by overcharging for food, laundry, and other services, not to mention occaisonally charging for services not even being used.

They have displayed repeated belligerent behavior to their own employees when any dissent is expressed.

Et ceterra, et ceterra, et ceterra.

So where's the invisible hand of the market in an example like this? They have no competition, no legal jurrisdiction to be prosecuted in, no incentive to do good work, and no incentive to even be efficient.

How would the public sector, either our government or the Iraqi government do a worse job than these guys?

Last March, the Boston Globe reported that KBR — one of the top profiteers of the Iraq war — has avoided paying more than $500 million “in federal Medicare and Social Security taxes by hiring its workers through shell companies” based in the Caymen Islands.

Today, the Globe reports that another Pentagon contractor, Virginia-based MPRI, has also established offshore havens that have the appearance of avoiding payment of millions of dollars in Medicare and Social Security taxes and also evading scrutiny from the IRS:

In March 2005, one of the Pentagon’s most trusted contractors - Virginia-based MPRI, founded by retired senior military leaders - won a $400 million contract to train police in Iraq and other hotspots. Two months later, MPRI set up a company in Bermuda to which it subcontracted much of the work. […]

A year earlier, MPRI headed a joint venture that won a $1.6 billion contract to provide US peacekeeping forces in Kosovo and elsewhere. Three months later, MPRI set up a company in the Cayman Islands to do the work.

But tax lawyers say that MPRI appears to be avoiding the payment of roughly $4 million dollars a year in Social Security and Medicare taxes for the police-training contract alone and is sidestepping scrutiny by hiring workers through offshore entities based outside the jurisdiction of the Internal Revenue Service.

MPRI has hired “roughly” 400 employees through the Bermuda shell company, but the company also avoids taxes by hiring its workers as “independent contractors.” But experts, and even MPRI employees themselves, say their work would unlikely “pass the IRS test for self-employment.”

Georgetown professor Albert Lauber said […] that genuine independent contractors come into a job with their own equipment, require little training and oversight, and generally get the job done on their own schedule.

MPRI’s police trainers, who asked not to be identified, said they do not work that way. One former trainer working for MPRI in Iraq said that police trainers in Baghdad received letters at the end of 2005 saying that they might experience a brief disruption in their payments because “payroll was being moved to Bermuda to satisfy US tax code.”

The letters became a running joke among the trainers. “We said, ‘What do you mean, to avoid tax codes?‘” the former trainer recalled.

The Globe notes that as a result of MPRI’s practices, “workers cannot receive unemployment compensation when their jobs end and may be deprived of other protections under US law.”

Whay to go AHOLECrowley!!! You succeded in cutting and pasting another article to up your posting count to 6446!! You have done this without giving an opinion of yourt own rearding anything!! You should be congradulated!! I still have confidence in ya!! Come on you can do it!!! We are all routing for you. Put together somethoughts of your own and type them in. Maybe you can have your mommy type them for you.

You wanker!!

WHo now you are up to 6447 with another succesful post of a web link!! You are amazing and an insporation.

You Wanker

Sorry, I'm not following why you posted this. Is this meant to be a further example of corporate failure? Or instead an example of corporations failing under the yolk of government pressure?

The war in Iraq is a sham.

The war in Iraq is an international travesty.

The war on terror is a hoax.

Biggest scam in world history.


All Chickenhawk Republicants should enlist to fight Arabs in the ME, and work without pay.

You were defeated in Iraq by Republicans. lol

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Environmental profiteering is the biggest threat to the American people.

if we had a privatized law enforcement division and the so purpose was to catch and deport (illegal) aliens i'll bet you a million dollars they would succeed far better than the so called border and immigration police we have now under the government control,so there is one example of privatizing that would work if polititions would think outside of the box!!

Two things were defeated in Iraq...

One Million "liberated" civilians, and American pride.