I now own "Brown & Root" steak knives!

[Lisa]

No kidding. I was rummaging through a box of cutlery in a local thrift store here on Vancouver Island, looking for a "new" paring knife. (This is actually a good way to pick up quality kitchen utensils for maybe a tenth of their original price, if you don't mind things not matching ... I've picked up chef-quality carving knives and stainless-steel saucepans for <$5.)

Anyway, I noticed a bunch of steak knives with "Brown & Root Safety Award" on them. I first heard about this company on DU ... Iamspartacus and some others in the know clued me in on them even before they got one of those Iraq rebuilding contracts courtesy their pal Dick Cheney.

Here's a recent thread about them.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=17166&mesg_id=17166&page=1

I wondered if there could be another company by this name ... then I realized, who else would be handing out matched sets of STEAK KNIVES? Anything so ostentatious (and these days, politically incorrect)!

They are really crappy knives, by the way. Shoddy plastic handles and thin, flimsy metal (with hard-to-sharpen serrations to make up for the poor temper). No surprise that they were discarded, seemingly without being used ... though I am wondering how they made it all the way to Canada.

I bought them (25 cents each), and not being inclined to use them (when I do eat steak that's too tough for regular knives, I'd use a (French!) Thiers-Issard knife, way better) -- I have been giving them away to anti-war friends as novelty letter-openers.

[ameriphile]

1. I know this is horrible, but...

I'm picturing this knife set covered with a mixture of blood and crude oil.

[TheBigGuy]

2. Brown & Root had a perhaps more 'honorable" past...

I think this company started out in engineering and construction and project management.

If I recall right its first big contracts, where they really got started and made their money, was on things like public works...irrigation and reclamation and flood control projects...during the New Deal.

So, basically 'feeding at the public trough" as they where a govt contractor, but building things that needed to be built.

I also thought there was some connection between them and LBJs career in Texas poltiics. Not sure about that.

[I AM SPARTACUS]

3. NO...NOT HONORABLE... been feeding at the trough since '48...

http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2000-08-25/pols_feature2.html
<snip...>
Herman Brown's huge bet on the Mansfield Dam just keeps paying off. It made Brown a rich man. It secured the future of his company. And it led to other big projects that provided the funds to elect Lyndon Johnson to the U.S. Senate in 1948 and the White House years later. Today, 63 years after Johnson helped secure federal funding for the dam, it appears that the modern descendent of George Brown's Brown & Root may once again be propelling a Texas politico toward the White House. Call it fate, dumb luck, or clever politics. Whatever it is, Brown & Root, arguably the most famous construction company in Texas, is once again near the center of a presidential race. And the company's political connections are once again paying big dividends.
<snip...more>

p.s. thanks, Lisa...lotsa folks have been keeping tabs on Halliburton KBR...

And about those knives - save 'em, they'll make a great prop for a tale to your grandkids...like the Halliburton stock certificates that I have - I'm looking forward to when they are worthless so that I can frame them with the newspaper headlines about Cheney's impeachment, perp-walk, and incarceration