The Southpaw Spot

Ok, so Vice President Cheney shot another man on a hunting trip. It was an accident. Accidents happen.

The accident took place on a ranch owned by Katharine Armstrong, a long-time friend of the Bush family.

From www.tpj.org:

"In 2004 she [Katharine Armstrong] reported three Texas lobby contracts, led by construction company Parsons Technology and Dannenbaum Engineering, a major contractor for Texas water projects. That year she teamed up with Pioneer Karen Johnson to lobby the Bush administration."

The Vice President was a guest at the home of a lobbyist with an interest in the actions of the administration. I guess there's no law against it. The Vice President is entitled to have friends and stay at their houses.

What gets me is the arrogance of it all. With the Abramoff scandal still fresh, with the House and Senate vowing to make ethical reforms, with the party in power has one of its leaders under indictment, Cheney does not think twice about associating recreationally with someone who lobbies the White House.

Can you imagine Tom DeLay going to eat dinner at Signatures while his case is pending?

It gets better.

According to http://www.ethics.state.tx.us/ Ms. Armstrong represents a group called Parsons Advanced Technologies. Get a load of this, all taken directly from Parson's website.

Parsons continues to be a key player in Iraq
By Kevin Smith Staff Writer
PASADENA -- When it comes to contracts, Parsons Corp. tends to do things in a big way.
And lately, the Pasadena-based engineering and construction firm has been awarded several major contracts
to help rebuild war-torn Iraq. Jim McNulty, the company's chairman and chief executive officer, said it's been a natural progression. "We've been working in the Middle East for over 40 years,' he said. "We've done a significant amount of
work in Saudi Arabia on the oil and gas side of things helping ARAMCO, Saudi Arabia's nationalized oil company.' In the 1960s and 1970s, the privately held company built an entire industrial city on the western side of the
Red Sea called Yanbu, McNulty said.
"All of the oil is on the eastern side of Saudi Arabia and they wanted to be able to send it over in a pipeline across the desert. The city was built to receive and process the oil for use in petrochemical plants and for
importing. We also provided places to live for all the people who work there....'

Over the past 30 years, the company also has done a broad range of design and construction management work in the United Arab Emirates.
"We did design and management for almost every inch of roadway that's been put in place in Abu Dhabi and Dubai,' McNulty said. "Before that it was a very rural area. But both communities have developed over the
last 30 years into two major cities - it's spectacular.'
Parsons and other Pasadena- based engineering firms like Tetra Tech Inc. and Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., have found vast opportunities in the Middle East, according to Jack Kyser, chief economist for the Los
Angeles County Economic Development Corp.
"Iraq's oil industry infrastructure is old and didn't receive good attention under Saddam Hussein,' Kyser said.

Last month, Parsons was awarded a $28 million contract to reconstruct and renovate the Tadji military base and Iraqi Armed Forces recruiting stations. The contract was awarded through the company's Worldwide Environmental Restoration Contract with the
Air Force Center for Environmental Excellence. The Tadji based project - deemed critical to maintaining security in Iraq while its infrastructure is rebuilt -
will include building renovation, repair of wastewater treatment plants and installation of sewer lines.
Major Gen. Paul D. Easton, U.S. Army commanding general for the Coalition Military Assistance and Training Team, agreed.
"A key benefit of completing this project is giving the Iraqi armed forces the facilities they need for the defense of their country,' Easton said in a prepared statement. Parsons will hire and train local Iraqi contractors, suppliers and labor for the project. That contract comes on the heels of another announced earlier in January from the United States Army Corps
of Engineers. Parsons Corp. was part of a team awarded a contract for future work in restoring the oil infrastructure in northern Iraq to pre-war production levels.
The contract, valued at $500,000 to as much as $800 million, covers a variety of services including the cleanup and restoration of oil fields, pipelines and refineries.
The two-year agreement also has three one-year options, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.


Draw your own conclusions.

posted by The leftist southpaw @ 5:23 PM