The People vs. the Profiteers by David Rose Essay

The People vs. the Profiteers by David Rose - Essay Example He works incessantly on the behalf of Americans, based in Orlando. Halliburton would be a company, as well as other private contractors, that are operating in Iraq, somehow using the money of the American tax payers. Grayson is fighting a battle against some of these private contractors, many of which are major companies such as Halliburton, plus an oil company that former Vice President Dick Cheney served as the chief executive officer for several years. However, another enemy that has jumped on board is the United States Department of Justice. While Grayson has worked in several cases where there was fraud, the Department of Justice stepped in his way when it came to trying to expose companies of fraud during the Iraq war. This is a political venture and a scandal. When considering political science in this nature, if the President or any members of his Cabinet, or Dick Cheney were aware of these things that were going on by using American money to operate business, then something should have been done. It was the administration lying to American taxpayers about where their tax money was going. It was not used to fight the war in Iraq, clothe children in the United States, help the poor or the elderly. Instead, it was money to help the rich become richer. Ironically during the war, Halliburton became very valuable with their stock jumping significantly from the start of the war to 2006. The CEO netted at least $30 million in compensation. What a crooked world we live in. As oil enthusiasts, Cheney and George W. Bush, of course they were going to help some of their buddies become more rich by operating in Iraq. One might say that it is rather coincidental that Cheney happened to be a former CEO of one of the companies in question. It seems as if it was no coincidence after all. The money was there and it was secretly slid over to these corporations. The Department of Justice is more than likely trying to step in to try to keep the scandal behind closed doors. It is similar to any other scandal that occurs on a national level that somehow ties to the administration. Nixon's expose with Watergate was one of the major blunders of that administration. This one is on a different scope entirely and affects millions. The article by Rose introduces the audience to one of Grayson's clients, Bud Conyers, just a middle aged man in Oklahoma who just so happened to be an independent contractor working in Iraq. He was a driver for company, Kellogg, Brown and Root, a major construction company. Prior to the war in Iraq, the Pentagon awarded money to restore the Iraqi oil industry and another that provides logistic support services to the American military. When Conyers was asked to repair a refrigerated truck in Baghdad, he found something that is jawdropping. While an engine is required to control the refrigeration from a truck, this one that had been out of operation for a couple of weeks of course would not be keeping anything inside of it cool and there seemed to be a rancid smell coming from it. Upon opening the refrigerated portion of the truck, Conyer saw pieces of a total of 15 dead Iraqis. The bodies had come from a mortuary unit of the United States mortuary sector. While it is not unusual for something like this to happen, it is clearly stated by governmental regulations that once a truck has been used to haul corpses, it can not ever again haul items for human consumption such as food or drink because of the possible diseases that could be

Two Questions 3 Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 500 words

Two Questions 3 - Essay Example Because of his inability to exert proper cost control, Lopez was relieved of his responsibilities in 2008, and Gabriella Garcia became head of Consumer Products Research. Garcia vowed to improve the performance of CPR and scaled back CPR’s development activities to obtain favorable financial performance reports. In terms of profit, Garcia did a better job than Lopez as a result of scaling back the project development. When profits are low and management is looking to cut costs, spending significant amounts of money on research and development is not the appropriate tactic. R&D is expensive and, as the timeline of two years from project initiation to implementation under Lopez demonstrates, there is no return on investment reflected in the financial statements until well after the products are brought to market. During times of low profit margins, development has to be scaled along with cost initiatives to keep management and investors satisfied. Even though Lopez developed good ideas, his efforts at cost control failed because there was no actual cost cutting and no immediate impact on revenues. While it could be argued that, given enough time, Lopez’s management would have yielded greater profits at lower costs. Management’s focus on profitability, however, precluded the comp any’s ability to focus on R&D to the extent that Lopez intended. Garcia, however, reduced—but did not eliminate—development while simultaneously focusing on cutting the costs related to current market offerings. This had an immediate impact on the company’s profitability and management was no-doubt pleased with the results. The issue here was time. It does take time to develop innovative products and bring them to market. This effort, however, cannot be the sole focus unless the company is currently in a strong financial position and can absorb the R&D costs until the new products are in place. Simply stated, the company could not afford