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The consent agreement between the state and the city of Detroit grants Bing some powers that are normally granted only to an emergency manager. Specifically, a month after the agreement was signed, Bing gained the power to impose union contracts, but only on unions whose current contracts have expired. This is why July 1 is important: About 80 percent of the city’s union contracts expire that day.

State law says that if the petition is certified, PA 4 is suspended until the vote.

The full court declined to do that, and the appeals court told the board of canvassers to go back and certify the Stand Up For Democracy petition, with the effect of placing the question on the ballot.

Iraq has become an important profit center — contracts there netted the company $900 million for the quarter, 15 percent of its operating budget. The Iraq contracts are cost-plus: the government reimburses the company for its costs, then adds on a profit of 2 percent to 7 percent. Critics say this creates a perverse incentive: the more you spend, the more you make. The Pentagon says this type of flexible contract is necessary in a war zone.

In the mid-1990s, a whistleblower revealed that the company, then known as Brown & Root, had overcharged the government on a contract to convert military bases to civilian uses. Halliburton subsidiary Brown & Root agreed to pay a $2 million dollar fine, but admitted no wrongdoing.

Despite the current controversy, Halliburton does not have a reputation of defrauding the government, says Jim Moorman, president of Taxpayers Against Fraud.

New technologies which are being introduced inside the United States, the UK, and Australia such as vein scanners, biometric employee time and attendance systems, voice recognition devices, andbehavior analysis systems are all geared toward Total Information Awareness of every human being on the planet. Only a totalitarian form of government would desire this information; and only a very determined totalitarian government would actively work toward establishing it. India is only the first nation to openly sweep up its entire national population into such a massive biometric database net. We cannot let our nation be the next.