Bad investments
by David Atkins ("thereisnospoon")
As the Solyndra non-story picks up steam in the news media, it might be worth remembering this:
Osama al-Nujaifi, the Iraqi parliament speaker, has told Al Jazeera that the amount of Iraqi money unaccounted for by the US is $18.7bn - three times more than the reported $6.6bn.
Just before departing for a visit to the US, al-Nujaifi said that he has received a report this week based on information from US and Iraqi auditors that the amount of money withdrawn from a fund from Iraqi oil proceeds, but unaccounted for, is much more than the $6.6bn reported missing last week.
"There is a lot of money missing during the first American administration of Iraqi money in the first year of occupation.
"Iraq's development fund has lost around $18bn of Iraqi money in these operations - their location is unknown. Also missing are the documents of expenditure.
"I think it will be discussed soon. There should be an answer to where has Iraqi money gone."
And maybe more importantly this:
U.S. taxpayers spent a lot of money on the soldiers, but the Pentagon paid Halliburton to do the work. The company billed the military top dollar knowing that the brass would look the other way. The gravy train finally ground to a halt when two brave members of Congress inquired about the results of the internal audit.
Two, almost none of the money that American taxpayers provided for reconstruction was spent because the rules were too stringent for the CPA's taste.
And three, we dished out Iraqi money to companies like Halliburton like it was going out of style because the United States government knew that neither Congress nor the United Nations would ask us difficult questions about what we were doing with other people's money. Equally importantly, Bush officials were worried that the new Iraqi government might ask us difficult questions about their money once they gained any modicum of power. So they were eager to spend the money while they could.
Or this:
Excess billing for postwar fuel imports to Iraq by the Halliburton Company totaled more than $108 million, according to a report by Pentagon auditors that was completed last fall but has never been officially released to the public or to Congress.
In one case, according to the report, the company claimed that it had paid more than $27 million to transport liquefied petroleum gas it had purchased in Kuwait for just $82,000 - a fee the auditors tartly dismissed as "illogical."
A few lessons to learn from this:
1) Republicans scaring up the Solyndra "scandal" while supporting the Iraq War, Vice President Cheney, and no-bid Halliburton contracts are pretty much tied for history's biggest hyopcrites; and
2) This is what happens when the government subcontracts private companies in the free market. Sometimes things go bust. Sometimes companies go under. Sometimes there may even be fraud involved, although there is little indication that deceit and fraud were operant in the Solyndra case.
3) We have learned what Republicans are willing to invest money toward. Perhaps the media might want to ask Republicans if the freedom to fail is also part of the free market. Evidently, big banks are allowed to implode the economy while getting free money from the government, but the government is not allowed to invest in green technology firms that might fail from time to time at a tiny fraction of the cost. When the NHS subsidizes testing for new pharmaceuticals that don't end up working, is that also a boondoggle of "government waste and abuse"?
God forbid any of the oil companies currently receiving lucrative tax-free subsidies go bankrupt. That would be waste on top of waste.
This sort of thing is probably where the media fails most to do its job: asking follow-up questions based on the implications of certain assumptions and talking-point-based attacks. Asking probing questions is part of my job description as a focus group moderator. It comes fairly naturally. Attorneys are even better than researchers at identifying logical contradictions or reductio ad absurdum implications of certain statements. But whatever they teach in journalism school these days, it isn't how to how hold people accountable for the sum total of their political worldview.
You can't talk about the Solyndra story while ignoring the epic scale of the Halliburton story that dwarfs it both financially and especially morally. You can't talk about the Solyndra loan without asking why the government is forced to invest in risky private companies to do the jobs that need doing in the first place. And you can't talk about the Solyndra loan without asking how and in what ways it fundamentally differs from government investments in risky industries that conservatives do support.
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