MEDIA ROOTS- Considering the escalation of the war against whistleblowers, it’s getting more rare to see a lone wolf sacrifice their standing from within the system to do the right thing. Amy Goodman writes for TruthDig about the case of Bunny Greenhouse, former employee of the US Army Corps of Engineers, who courageously blew the whistle on her agency for awarding Halliburton subsidiary KBR a no bid 7 billion dollar contract before the Iraqi invasion even occurred. Instead of being rewarded for exposing the revolving door criminality of political and corporate profiteering within her agency, she was harassed and demoted from her position.

Abby

***

TRUTHDIG– “War is a racket,” wrote retired US Marine Major General Smedley D Butler, in 1935. That statement, which is also the title of his short book on war profiteering, rings true today.

One courageous civil servant just won a battle to hold war profiteers accountable. Her name is Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse. She blew the whistle when her employer, the US Army Corps of Engineers, gave a no-bid $7bn contract to the Halliburton subsidiary Kellogg, Brown and Root (KBR) as the US was about to invade Iraq. She was doing her job, trying to ensure a competitive bidding process would save the US government money. For that, she was forced out of her senior position, demoted and harassed.

Just this week, after waging a legal battle for more than half a decade, Bunny Greenhouse won. The US Army Corps of Engineers settled with Greenhouse for $970,000, representing full restitution for lost wages, compensatory damages and attorneys’ fees.

Her “offence” was to challenge the KBR contract. It was weeks before the expected invasion of Iraq, in 2003, and Bush military planners predicted Saddam Hussein would blow up Iraqi oilfields, as happened with the US invasion in 1991. The project, dubbed “Restore Iraqi Oil”, or RIO, was created so that oilfield fires would be extinguished. KBR was owned then by Halliburton, whose CEO until 2000 was none other than then Vice President Dick Cheney. KBR was the only company invited to bid.

Bunny Greenhouse told her superiors that the process was illegal. She was overridden. She said the decision to grant the contract to KBR came from the office of the secretary of defence, run by VP Cheney’s close friend, Donald Rumsfeld. As Bunny Greenhouse told a congressional committee:

    “I can unequivocally state that the abuse related to contracts awarded to KBR represents the most blatant and improper contract abuse I have witnessed during the course of my professional career.”

The oilfields were not set ablaze. Nevertheless, KBR was allowed to retool its $7bn no-bid contract, to provide gasoline and other logistical support to the occupation forces. The contract was so-called “cost-plus”, which means KBR was not on the hook to provide services at a set price. Rather, it could charge its cost, plus a fixed percentage as profit. The more KBR charged, the more profit it made.

As the chief procurement officer, Greenhouse’s signature was required on all contracts valued at more than $10m. Soon after testifying about the egregious RIO contract, she was demoted, stripped of her top secret clearance and began receiving the lowest performance ratings. Before blowing the whistle, she had received the highest ratings. Ultimately, she left work, facing an unbearably hostile workplace.

After years of litigation, attorney Michael Kohn, president of the National Whistleblowers Centre, brought the case to a settlement. He said:

    “Bunny Greenhouse risked her job and career when she objected to the gross waste of federal taxpayer dollars and illegal contracting practices at the Army Corps of Engineers. She had the courage to stand alone and challenge powerful special interests. She exposed a corrupt contracting environment where casual and clubby contracting practices were the norm. Her courage led to sweeping legal reforms that will forever halt the gross abuse she had the courage to expose.”

The National Whistleblowers Centre’s executive director, Stephen Kohn (brother of Michael Kohn), told me:

    “Federal employees have a very, very hard time blowing the whistle … I hope it’s a turning point. The case was hard-fought. It should never have had to been filed. Bunny did the right thing.”

According to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joe Stiglitz, the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan alone will exceed $5tn. With a cost like this, why isn’t war central to the debate over the national debt?

Two-time congressional medal of honour winner Maj Gen Smedley Butler had it right, 75 years ago, when he said of war:

    “It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious [racket] … It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives … It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many.”

As President Barack Obama and Congress claim it is Medicare, Medicaid and social security that are breaking the budget, people should demand that they stop paying for war.

• Written by Amy Goodman, Denis Moynihan contributed research to this column

© 2011 Amy Goodman; distributed by King Features Syndicate

Photo by Flickr user geekvsmachine

JURIST– The Casa de Maryland immigrant rights group filed a challenge Monday to a public referendum over a Maryland law providing in-state tuition to undocumented college students. The group filed the challenge in the Maryland Circuit Court for Anne Arundel County after opponents of the Maryland DREAM Act collected enough signatures to put the law to a public referendum. Casa de Maryland and eight other individuals are challenging the referendum for two main reasons.

First, they argue that the DREAM Act will result in state tax money going to fund the tuition breaks making it an appropriations measure not subject to repeal by referendum. Second, they argue that over 57,000 signatures on the petition for the referendum are invalid because of the computer system used to collect them. Many of the signatures were submitted through MDPetitions.com, which downloads and prints a “Pre-Filled Petition” that only needs to be signed and mailed in. The website prints out the form with the voters’ information exactly as it appears in their voter registration, necessary for the signature to be valid. But the plaintiffs argue that such a system is invalid because the petitions do not have sufficient verification to be valid under state law:

There are sound policy reasons for requiring … the petitioner signer to fill in his or her own information on the form, rather than allowing that information to be filled in by someone else. Anyone—including someone other than the voter—could have the website generate a “Pre-Filled Petition Form” with that voter’s information pre-printed, both in the signing block and the circulators affidavit. The user (who is not the voter) could then print out the form, sign the voter’s name in the signature space and in circulator’s affidavit and mail the form to MDPetitions.com for submission to the Secretary of State and State Board.

Supporters of the referendum collected over 100,000 signatures [Baltimore Sun report] with broad bipartisan support: 63,487 Republicans, 32,397 Democrats and 12,628 independents. The DREAM Act narrowly passed the Maryland legislature in the final hours of the spring session.

The Maryland DREAM Act is currently suspended pending the public referendum. In order to be eligible for in-state tuition, undocumented residents would have to have attended at least three years of high school in Maryland and show their parents had filed tax returns to the state. The US Congress has considered a similar but more far-reaching bill [legislative materials; text], also entitled the DREAM Act, that would provide a path to permanent resident status for some high school graduates who enter the military or enroll in a college degree program.

Read more about Immigrant Rights Group Challenges Public Referendum to Overturn Maryland’s DREAM Act.

© 2011 Jurist

Photo by Flickr user DreamActivist

GUARDIAN– An activist who became a hero to campaigners for disrupting a Bush administration auction for the oil and gas industry with $1.8m (£1.1m) in bogus bids was sentenced to two years in prison on Tuesday.

Read more about US Eco-Activist Jailed For Two Years

© 2011 The Guardian

Photo by Flickr user 350.org

UNITE HERE– As University of California Regents prepare to vote for another tuition hike next week, students and workers gathered July 8, to protest drastic higher education cuts, while corporations like Disney win generous tax breaks.

Students and workers targeted their protest at media CEO Monica Lozano, who is the publisher of La Opinion newspaper and a University of California Regent. As a UC Regent, Lozano has approved seven recent tuition hikes, while simultaneously serving on the Disney corporate board, which last year won millions in potential tax breaks.

One such tax break, an Enterprise Zone distinction in Anaheim, could bring Disney more than $1 million in tax savings just by hiring 100 employees throughout the year, including student summer hires.

Students called on Lozano to reject the latest UC tuition hike. UC tuition and fees will top $11,000 per year this fall.

“As a UC Regent Monica Lozano is assisting in the devastation of California higher education, while getting paid by Disney, which is getting huge tax breaks,” said Joe Silva, a UCLA student. “Disney made $4.4 billion in net profit last year — does it really need a tax break?”

Disney paid Lozano $246,911 in 2010 to serve on its board.

Gov. Jerry Brown had proposed the repeal of the Enterprise Zone program, which costs the state roughly $465 million a year in tax revenue, but doesn’t create jobs, according to a study by the nonpartisan California Budget Project.  However, in the final budget deal passed on June 28, the Enterprise Zone tax breaks were left in tact, while $650 million was cut from the UC system, $650 million cut from CSU system and $400 million cut from community colleges.

Read more about Students, Workers Protest Higher Ed Cuts, Corporate Profits

© 2011 Unite Here! Local 11

Photo by Flickr user Jim DeLa

COLOR LINES– What began as a hunger strike among inmates of the isolation wing of California’s Pelican Bay prison has turned into a statewide display of solidarity. A number of prisoners in Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Unit, California’s highest-security complex, refused their state-provided morning meal on Friday to protest the inhumane conditions of their confinement. Inmates in the Security Housing Unit spend 23 hours per day in soundproofed, windowless cells. Their daily hour of exercise is walking around a small, walled space. The intent is to keep prison-gang members and those considered dangerous to others separated from fellow inmates.

Despite original claims by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation that the hunger strike was limited to fewer than two dozen Pelican Bay inmates, spokesperson Terry Thornton said yesterday that the weekend had seen a peak of 6,600 protesters. According to Thornton, there are currently around 2,100 prisoners declining meals. Thirteen of California’s 33 penal facilities have counted protesters among their inmate populations and it appears that the sentiment of solidarity is spreading beyond state borders. On Friday, a number of those incarcerated at Ohio State Penitentiary refused their food trays for a full 24 hours.

Molly Porzig, spokesperson for Critical Resistance, an organization dedicated to developing alternatives to incarceration, highlighted the significance of the strike’s timing. “California has been ordered by the Supreme Court to release prisoners due to the neglect and overcrowding in the state’s prisons. They recognize that the conditions of California’s prisons are absolutely atrocious.” Additionally, Porzig pointed to the state’s recent budget, which includes $140 million in overtime for guards, especially those in SHUs. “California is demonstrating that it prioritizes prisons over education, parks, health care, keeping our libraries’ doors open and other things that our communities need.”

The strikers’ demands include better food, warmer clothing and a phone call each month. They also hope to end the unit’s debriefing policy, which allows inmates to leave the unit in exchange for information about the actions of other gang members and prisoners. “Its an incredibly dangerous system for prisoners and their families because of retaliation,” said Porzig. “On the other end, all someone needs to do is point a finger at you and you’re in SHU indefinitely.”

Read more about Thousands of CA Inmates on Hunger Strike.

This video explains what the Pelican Bay Hunger Strike is all about, with former prisoners detailing why prisoners are protesting, how this action relates to a history of prisoner-led resistance, and what people outside prison can do to support the hunger strike.

This video was made by a coalition called Prisoner Hunger Strike Solidarity. For updates on the hunger strike, check out: prisonerhungerstrikesolidarity.wordpress.com

© 2011 Color Lines

Photo by Flickr User Ben Kraus