Halliburton, the oil services company so despised by leftists, has moved its headquarters to Dubai. You think they would be glad that the evil Halliburton was leaving America. However, you can’t satisfy the anti-capitalists.

enator Hillary Rodham Clinton and other leading Congressional Democrats sharply criticized Halliburton on Monday for relocating its chief executive to Dubai, suggesting it was possibly part of an effort to dodge American taxes and investigations.

Halliburton, an oil services company based here, said it would remain legally incorporated in the United States, and that the transfer of David J. Lesar, its chairman and chief executive, was merely a response to the growing business opportunities in the Middle East and nearby areas.

But that did not stop many powerful Democrats from expressing skepticism about the motives behind the move, arguing that it may presage a wholesale move of Halliburton’s corporate headquarters out of the United States and not merely for business reasons.

They vowed to hold hearings on the matter and jumped at the opportunity to link the move to Vice President Dick Cheney, who led the company from 1995 to 2000. They also sought to revive charges that the company mishandled, through its military contracting subsidiary, hundreds of millions of tax dollars in Iraq.

“I think it’s disgraceful,” Senator Clinton, who is running for president, told a news conference in the Bronx, “that American companies are more than happy to try to get no-bid contracts, like Halliburton has, and then turn around and say, ‘But you know, we’re not going to stay with our chief executive officer, the president of our company, in the United States anymore.’ ”

First of all, a brief note, the military contracting subsidiary, KBR, has been spun off.

Now as for avoiding American taxes, if Halliburton’s CEO did not take any and all measures to reduce the amount of money taken by taxes, he would not be doing his job. The job of a corporate CEO is turn a profit for the company’s shareholders. Taxes are an operating expense. Dubai happens to have no corporate income tax, therefore Halliburton’s CEO is doing his job by moving his company to a country with no taxes. If the United States wants to keep existing corporations and attract new ones from overseas, Congress must address the issue of corporate taxation. However, under the new Democratic majority, I just don’t see that happening except for raising corporate taxes.