Publisher's Note: The greatest sleazeballs of the 21st century

[PhilipShore]

Pulse of the Twin Cities
Publisher’s Note: The greatest sleazeballs of the 21st century
Wednesday 08 February

http://www.pulsetc.com/article.php?sid=2301

Dick Cheney is trying to push through the Senate a bill that would create a national trust fund for victims of asbestos poisoning. Sounds lovely, doesn’t it? It does until you realize he’s doing it to cover his and Bush’s butts.

A little background:


While he was CEO of Halliburton in 1998 he negotiated the purchase of Dresser Industries for $7.7 billion. The Bush family has owned and controlled Dresser since the 1920s. There’s no evidence of a lot of cash turning over, so it could be assumed that the Bush family got stock in place of cash for the sale. So, it looks like the mouse ate the cat. It looks like Dresser ended up controlling Halliburton.

Cheney said at the time, the merger was a “win-win” situation. The stock market thought otherwise. Halliburton lost more than a third of its value on news of the deal. Some of the liabilities that Dresser brought to the table were 200,000 lawsuits for damages as a result of asbestos poisoning. Halliburton now estimates its asbestos liability at $2.2 billion with about $1.6 of that covered by insurance. Wall Street analysts think it’s much higher, and the stock has taken a hit of about $4.5 billion directly related to the asbestos problems.

[Nite Owl]

1. There is absolutely no end to

the evil these people can inflict. Everytime they do something I think (the optimist in me) that it can't get worse but it never fails to do so.