grrrrr

[winterbadger]

Vice President Dick Cheney received $178,437 in deferred pay last year from Halliburton Co., the Texas oil-field services company he once headed that has since received billion-dollar government contracts in Iraq.

The White House on Tuesday released the 2003 income tax returns for both Cheney and his wife, Lynne, and President Bush and his wife, Laura.

Cheney's office said the income from Halliburton -- which was close to his salary as vice president -- was in no way linked to the financial health of the company. A Halliburton subsidiary is under investigation for possibly overcharging the U.S military for fuel supplies in Iraq.

(snip)

The Cheneys reported taxable income of $813,226 in 2003. They paid $258,779 in taxes in withholding and estimated tax payments, but only owed $253,067 and thus were eligible for a $5,712 refund but decided to apply that to their 2004 taxes.

Cheney reported $198,600 in vice-presidential salary for the year.

from CNN

Comments

[faerlyn-darkelf.livejournal.com]

Bleh. Sucks to be in the trenches.

[dwarfrage.livejournal.com]

Can I ask what the issue is? Admittedly, the 178K from Halliburton is eye-brow raising, but you can probably find that on both sides of aisle. And it wasn't exactly unknown. And they paid roughly 31% of their income in taxes, which is within the ballpark of what I paid, and the general brute force method of estimating of 1/3 is within a couple of percentage points.

So what's the issue? The fact they make a lot of money? That's what rich and influential people do, they make money.

[winterbadger]

The fact that he's being paid substantial sums of money by Halliburton while he's head of an administration that's giving them billions of dollars in federal contracts, contracts that are under investigation by the Justice Department. At the very least, it creates an appearance of impropriety; at worst...