In another brilliant move, our government wants to turn control of our borders over to private companies. The protection and defense of borders is considered important to most nations, but not the U.S. of A! We’re just looking for another way to make our sweet corporations more cash, even at the expense of security.

The best news of all is that America’s best friend, Halliburton, is going to get a piece of the pie. Halliburton has contracts to oversee the expansion of the federal government's capacity to detain immigrants. I’m sure Halliburton will do it’s best to keep down costs while being really, really nice to the immigrants. Does not at all sound like a situation ready for abuse.

In May the government asked for bids from Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Ericsson and Northrop Grumman to build a "virtual fence" of unmanned aerial vehicles, ground surveillance satellites and motion-detection video equipment along the border. Meanwhile, Blackwater Inc., a private security firm of mercenaries, is negotiating to train U.S. Border Patrol officers.

What could possibly go wrong if military contractors and private mercenaries control the borders? Just think of all the exciting possibilities once the federal border patrol is removed from public scrutiny and it disappears into the black hole of corporate rule. And all the exciting profit to be made from human misery. Why send immigrants back quickly, when you make more money by holding onto them? And you can use your Washington lobbyists to create harsher anti-immigrant laws and divert more funding to needless electronic border surveillance. It’s a Goddamn cash cow just waiting to be milked!

Halliburton has been a lightning rod of criticism for the Bush administration since the beginning of the Iraq war, and a symbol of Republican crony capitalism and favoritism in its reconstruction. Democrats have challenged the multi-billion dollar no-bid contract that Halliburton was awarded in assisting in the reconstruction of Iraq as being the direct result of having had Dick Cheney as its CEO before he became vice president. And after getting the contract Halliburton came under further scrutiny as allegations of widespread fraud and overcharging to steal taxpayer money mounted. Conservatives bristled at the accusations, often making the claim that Halliburton was the only qualified contractor for the job, hence the no-bid process that gave it to them. The army apparently disagrees, and has ended the exclusive, lucrative deal for Halliburton and will open the door to bids from competing firms.

Better prices is the key here. The decision to award such an enormous contract without any sort of competitive bidding process has never been adequately defended, and a bill that would increase oversight on government contractors like Halliburton was tabled by a completely partisan vote where Republicans used their senate majority to prevent investigations of the alleged frauds perpetrated by companies like Halliburton. It's not clear why a political party whose major economic platform lists "Restraining spending by the Federal Government" as its first priority would refuse to at least investigate a contractor accused of wasting tens of millions of taxpayer dollars unless there were some political ulterior motive involved. Fortunately the army seems to be more focused on getting the job done than brownnosing any major Washington pols and so they've ended Halliburton's monopoly on the reconstruction effort. The GOP controlled Congress could learn a thing or two from that example.