Bad Deeds for 11-30-06

The Bush administration proposed to ease public reporting requirements for companies that handle or release toxic chemicals
That plan – now shelved because of pressure from Democratic senators – would have raised the threshold for reporting releases of toxic chemicals from 500 to 5,000 pounds and allowed companies to report every other year instead of annually, changes that would have had nothing to do with public safety, and everything to do with saving corporate polluters (and the agency itself) millions of dollars

Halliburton Unit Overbilled the U.S. Government
The accusations, made under the federal False Claims Act, included double-billing, inflating prices and providing products that didn’t fit the Army’s needs. The Halliburton unit, KBR, the U.S. military’s largest contractor in Iraq, is at the heart of several other pending False Claims Act cases, and its work is the subject of numerous federal investigations. Congressional Democrats have been particularly critical of Halliburton, which was run by Dick Cheney before he became vice president.

US State Dept. official says Tony Blair and the British are ignored by Bush
Kendall Myers, a senior State Department analyst, disclosed that for all Britain’s attempts to influence US policy in recent years, “we typically ignore them and take no notice — it’s a sad business”. He added that he felt “a little ashamed” at Mr Bush’s treatment of the Prime Minister, who had invested so much of his political capital in standing shoulder to shoulder with America after 9/11.

Regards,

Jim