Their return on investment has been a success.

Lobbying is said to be a specialized and highly sensitive form of art. These days, some of the greatest lobbying artists on earth work for Big Oil. Their works influence Congress and the Bush Administration on taxes, regulation, contracts, and environmental policy. It’s difficult to quantify their effects on regulation and policy through a diary, but information on their contracts is easily available and can be displayed in a simple fashion.

Companies retain lobbyists based on performance, so how effective have Big Oils’ lobbyists been with securing federal contracts in the past 7 years?

Have you ever wondered why...

... it has been the practice of the major media to avoid mentioning oil in connection with military activity in Iraq; something also common in the Congress, all following the lead of the Bush administration.

UPI.com

Shouldn't we all be shocked then? Shouldn't we be shocked to learn, after the US - British led invasion of Iraq to save the world from the dangers of Saddam's non-existant WMDs, struck Iraq with a shock and awe which was to have become the centerpiece for a GWOT, that as Reuters  reported on Tuesday:

Iraq opened its giant oilfields to foreign firms on Monday, putting British and U.S. companies in pole position five years after U.S.-led troops invaded the country to oust Saddam Hussein.

Today's Washington Post has a front-page, above-the-fold article on the backlog of 900+ qui tam (False Claims Act) cases alleging fraud against the government.  http://www.washingtonpost.com/...  I know about this first hand because for the past two years, before joining the Government Accountability Project, all I did was bring Iraq reconstruction fraud cases.

The flagship BBC documentary program "Panorama" Tuesday is to focus on the loss, fraud, bad accounting and corruption in US Iraq war spending that could amount to $23 Billion.

A BBC press release introducing the program claims:

For the first time the extent to which some private contractors have profited from the conflict and rebuilding has been researched by Panorama using US and Iraqi government sources.

Based on information from these sources, the programme can reveal that as much as $23billion is not properly accounted for in Iraq.

The program is scheduled for showing at 21.00 BST on BBC1.

UPDATE: I have added by rough notes of the content made as the program was transmitted on Louise's more recent diary. Regrettably there appears to be little not already familiar here. The U tube links do not appear to work outside the UK so I have removed the front page one to allow this addition.

I was surfing around the internets and found this story at Truthout.org.

Remember all those right-wing propagandists wringing their hands over how the media was not reporting all the good things that were going on in Iraq? Well, it turns out that many of the "good things" -- reconstruction projects that were supposed to get Iraq back on its feet -- never happened. In other words, there was nothing to report.

From CNN.com:

The U.S. government paid more than $1.7 million in defense contracts over the last decade to companies owned by leaders of Warren Jeffs' polygamous sect, with tens of thousands allegedly winding its way back to Jeffs and his church.

The Pentagon had contracts with three companies with ties to Warren Jeffs' polygamous sect.

In fact, some of the deals were made after Jeffs was named to the FBI's "Most-Wanted List" and remained in place while he was on the run.

CNN has learned that between 1998 and 2007, the United States Air Force and Defense Logistics Agency purchased more than $1.7 million worth of airplane parts from three companies owned by members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which practices polygamy.

Well, Dubbya is closing in on the end of the most criminal regime since the Reagan Years and he is doing his best to secure his friends some going away money.
The MSM has not advertised it, but there is a new I.D. for terminal workers in our ports-called T.W.I.C. Its a brilliant program, it's like a work license .Of course, the same government that brings us the DMV won't cover the National Workers Card. The I.D. costs $132.50, consists of a simple questionaire and fingerprinting. Sounds good right? Lockheed Martin got the contract, costing the government and Dock works across the country millions. Awesome,the privitization of Katrina helped so much that our National Security has been privitized as well.
Big Oil is also reimbursing their employees for the cost of the I.D. and are set to receive a nice tax break for allowing their workers to get cancer!

    In 1993, amidst banking scandals which were tainting the reputation of the Democratic official of Kentucky's seventh district, the decision was made to incorporate district seven into district five, into the loving arm of...Hal Rogers?!

we had a meeting for our union contract and when it came time to vote we did not vote. There are claims that 70% voted for the contract it seems strange then why all those people are yelling?

CTU Contract Meeting Aug 31, 2007

With Tests schedualed for this week, has anyone addressed the issues of the defective pumps purchased from Republican funders, or how the combination of the two would work?

Just when you thought the US couldn't do more damage to the "freedom and democracy" brand, there is a new shocker.  Ho-hum.  So jaded I am that Yet Another Outrage(tm) just can't light me up...I'm already at full burn!  Turns out that it appears that our palatial Superduper Mega Embassy of Peace and Freedom(tm) in Baghdad not only is riddled with false/faulty wiring (gasp!) but that it may well be being built with the labor-friendly practice of press gangs (otherwise known as "slave labor" or "forced labor").

OrangeClouds115 asked, so ...

The typical American wage worker hasn't gotten a raise in somewhere around thirty years:

[From the report], "A New Social Contract: Restoring Dignity and Balance to the Economy":

In 2000, the average high-school educated workers age 25–29 started out earning about $5,000 less real income and could expect slower growth in earnings than those who entered the labor force in 1970. Workers with some college started about $3,500 behind their 1970 counterparts.

Thing is, the typical American farmer or rancher isn't doing much better. (pdf) As the profits of food processors, meat packers and agribusiness firms have soared, farmers and the rural economies that center around them have been methodically and systematically crushed.

We've known for a while that no-bid and limited-bid contracts issued by federal agencies for recovery projects in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast have been dominated by uber-companies like Shaw and Halliburton.  Yesterday, PolitCalypso touched on the subject in the diary Buying Up the Coast for Fun and Profit--LOTS of Profit, citing the head-spinning report from CorpWatch on how those companies have "cleaned up" in the cleanup process.

Now, the GAO reports that one of the ways these large companies profited so handsomely was to bend--and break--the rules of the contracts requiring local, disadvantaged and small business to receive subcontracts.

Join me subfold for more details.

Any fan (or closet fan - hey we all understand guilty pleasures) of modern pop culture knows that The Smoking Gun can be counted on for the most unforgiving glimpses into the lives of celebrities.  Among their usually more mundane stories is to leak contract riders evidencing the outrageous demands from such stars as Jennifer Lopez, Paul McCartney, and "Screech" from Saved by the Bell.  They even gave us a peek in to the neuroses of the most disgraced Vice-President in U.S. History.

To this list of victims we can now add Rudy Giuliani, and what an insight it is!

The barefaced hypocrisy of the US Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable and other big business groups is astounding when you consider the double standards most business leaders compel upon the rest of America.  Especially when it comes to their opposition to contracts with their employees.
Journeying down memory lane, the recent uproar over the $210 million Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli took home with him is still fresh in our minds.  While ordinary Americans and shareholders reacted with unanimous outrage, you would have been hard pressed to hear hardly a word of this from the rest of corporate America.

In 1972, Exxon, BP and Shell were kicked out of Iraq by Saddam Hussein who nationalized the oil industry.
After hundreds of billions of tax dollars and hundreds of thousands of deaths and serious injuries, BushCo is close to getting those contracts back for 'em.
http://www.dailykos.com/...

Lee Raymond, former CHM Exxon, spoke ad nauseum, e.g. here: http://www.exxonmobil.com/...
and here:
http://www.exxonmobil.com/...

The recent Pentagon report Measuring Stability and Security in Iraq covers the electrical power situation with a combination of spin and understatement:

Oil production and electricity generation have improved since August 2006, but the security situation, maintenance deficiencies, and management issues have adversely affected distribution and delivery of these essential services.

Last February IEEE Spectrum published a great article (Re-engineering Iraq) that mapped out the situation much more realistically:

"It would be hard to find another endeavor, anywhere, anytime, in which so much was asked of engineers, personally and professionally. Never before has so vast a reconstruction program been attempted in the face of enemy fire or managed in the shadow of geopolitics, where infrastructure itself became a battleground."