7. februar 2004

Halliburton lists Cheney as "risk factor" You'd think having a former manager in one of the highest political positions in the country is a dream come true for any corporation, but Halliburton has certainly found out that it has its downsides as well. When listing the company's "risk factors", the connection to vice president Dick Cheney is mentioned as a liability. "Since [Cheney's] nomination as vice president," the company said in a recent SEC filing, "Halliburton has been and continues to be the focus of allegations, some of which appear to be made for political reasons by political adversaries of the vice president and the current Bush administration. We expect that this focus and these allegations will continue and possibly intensify as the 2004 elections draw nearer." Many months ago, I pointed out that the intense scrutiny over the relationship between Cheney and Halliburton may actually hurt the company more than the connection benefits it: However, in a recent development, Haliburton lost out on a contract for a massive U.S. government contract for reconstruction in Iraq. It is unclear whether they are out of the contract for business reasons or because of the political fallout of awarding such a huge contract to a business that has close ties to the administration. Pretty obvious really. 6:58:57 PM    comment []

Tony the blogger British prime minister Tony Blair is considering setting up a blog for his reelection campaign. The Labour party is considering giving Tony Blair a weblog as part of its attempt to make its general election campaign an "engaging dialogue with the British people". Douglas Alexander, Labour's election coordinator, told Guardian Unlimited he is considering "all means to communicate with the voters directly" for the campaign, including an election blog. The Labour party strategists, and Blair himself, has already been looking at how the democrats are conducting their campaign. Mr Alexander was particularly impressed by how the Dean campaign translated "virtual activism into real activism" in the early stages of the primaries. But he stressed that Mr Dean's failure to win a single primary, despite being once seen as the frontrunner, shows that the message is more important than the media in an election campaign. Tony Blair has always understood how important it is to control the message. I think the democratic hopefuls, weblogs aside, would do better learning from him. 1:28:52 PM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Jan Haugland. Last update: 02.03.2004; 23:45:01.