Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse

YOU MAY have heard something about a budget crisis in Washington this summer. Were you aware that in the midst of it the House of Representatives passed a military spending bill larger than ever before?

U.S. military spending across numerous departments has increased dramatically during the past decade and now makes up about half of federal discretionary spending. Yet the Defense Department has not been fully audited in 20 years, and as of 2001 it could not account for $2.3 trillion out of the $10 trillion or so it had been given during that time. More recently, President Obama has been waging his “days, not weeks” war in Libya for months without a dime appropriated by Congress, relying instead on the loose change lying around at the Pentagon.

The United States could reduce its military spending by at least 80 percent and still be the world’s top military spender. If the purpose of all this profligacy were truly defensive, wouldn’t a military merely as large as any other country’s do the job? When little cuts around the edges were forced into the discussion, wouldn’t the top priorities for elimination be unpopular wars, foreign bases, nuclear weapons and space weapons rather than health care for veterans? If something shameful were not motivating our self-destructive imperial overreach, wouldn’t the wonders of market competition be given a chance, instead of the current practice of handing out cost-plus contracts to cronies for jobs they are never expected to complete?

Paying our debts
When someone inside the military contracting process gives us a peak at what is done with half our income taxes, we owe that person a debt of gratitude. And the person who has opened the widest crack in the wall of secrecy around Pentagon spending in recent years is probably Bunnatine “Bunny” Greenhouse, who will be speaking in Charlottesville along with more than 20 other experts Sept. 16-18.

In February 2003, just before the United States invaded Iraq, Greenhouse, the chief contracting officer for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, found herself in a Pentagon meeting discussing the terms of an Iraq contract to be awarded to Halliburton, the company for which then-Vice President Dick Cheney had served previously as CEO. Greenhouse whispered to the general running the meeting that she objected to the presence of several Halliburton representatives in the room, and when they had left she recommended against awarding the company a $7 billion emergency, no-bid contract for five years. While it was ludicrous to pretend that a contracting “emergency” would last that long, Congress has continued ever since to fund our wars with off-the-books “emergency supplemental” bills.

Despite Cheney’s claim to the contrary on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sept. 14, 2003, he had been involved in creating that Halliburton contract. This is shown by an email that Time Magazine published in June 2004, as well as by the testimony of political appointee Michael Mobbs. Mobbs had worked with Halliburton to create the need for the contract and then to fill it, much as then Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had, years earlier, created needs for Halliburton’s services that he had then been able to fill as its CEO.

Cheney hired Halliburton to recommend privatizing military services with a company like Halliburton. Halliburton, in turn, hired Cheney to share in the spoils. And then Cheney, while still receiving deferred compensation from Halliburton, made sure his company continued to rake in the profits. This chutzpah was matched only by the Halliburton drivers hauling empty trucks across Iraq and reporting that they had transported “sailboat fuel.”

Greenhouse’s resistance to the corrupt cronyism that predated and outlasted Cheney cost her the job of U.S. Army Corps of Engineers chief contracting officer. This summer she finally was awarded $970,000 in restitution. If that award legitimizes Greenhouse’s concerns in the eyes of many, so much the better. We really should not need a stamp of approval from our government, however, before approving of serious criticism of governmental wrongdoing.

The Greenhouse effect
The lesson that Greenhouse would have us learn is not that the system finally worked, but that it is fundamentally broken. Our representative government is under the thumb of the military-industrial complex of which President Eisenhower warned 50 years ago this year. “In my actions, there were no thoughts of repercussions,” Greenhouse said. “My thoughts were about doing the right things for the best interest of the government.”

Greenhouse eventually sent a letter to then-Acting Secretary of the Army Les Brownlee, which somehow ended up in the hands of Congressional staffers who in turn shared it with media outlets. Greenhouse said she has no knowledge of how the letter got to Congress, which suggests the possible existence of another whistleblower. Such anonymous whistleblowers deserve our thanks as well.

“The following Monday after the letter was received,” Greenhouse said, “Lieutenant General [Carl] Strock, in his introductory statements in our weekly Directors and Office Chiefs Meeting, stated: ‘I understand we have a whistleblower in our midst, but don’t worry about it because the system will take care of itself.’ … He was letting my fellow SES [Senior Executive Service] and Senior Leaders know that he felt that I was a ‘skunk in the park,’ which elevated their fears and their treatment of me. My top secret clearance was taken away. I was moved to a cubicle in Civil Works where I was placed on an over-hire position unknown to me.”  Greenhouse was demoted but told she could keep her SES rank if she retired, which she refused to do.

Greenhouse described to me the contract abuses she witnessed and explained their illegality. “Appropriate laws and regulations are on the books,” she said, “but if contracting officials are continually intimidated and removed from their positions when they highlight improprieties … our laws and regulations are not worth the paper they are written on.”

Asked about the compensation she has been awarded, Greenhouse said, “I feel blessed in that the best and most dedicated lawyers came to my rescue. I am disheartened because the legal process does not provide adequate protection or remedies to federal whistleblowers. I am relieved that my ordeal has come to an end and I take comfort knowing that I would do it all over again because doing what’s right is a sacred duty.”

A call to attention
But the problem remains. “There has been a chill over the contracting and SES communities since my demotion,” Greenhouse said, “and many contracting folks believe if one tries to curb contracting abuse, they will not be thanked, but fired.” Notice the present tense. Greenhouse is not suffering under the delusion that changing the president’s political party transforms the Pentagon.

In fact, retribution against whistleblowers has intensified under President Obama, as exemplified by the cases of Thomas Drake, James Risen, Shamai Leibowitz and Bradley Manning. A Justice Department openly taking its direction from Obama has gone to great lengths to protect and conceal the war crimes of recent years and to prosecute or punish whistleblowers. Drake was prosecuted unsuccessfully for leaking to the public information on the actvities of the National Security Agency. Risen is threatened with imprisonment if he does not betray his source or sources for a chapter in a book he published about an embarrassingly dumb and dangerous CIA attempt to infiltrate Iran’s nuclear program. Leibowitz, too, was prosecuted for whistleblowing. And Manning, who is accused of leaking to Wikileaks more information on what our government has been doing in recent years than has been provided by any other source, has been imprisoned for the past year, often in conditions bordering on torture, without being brought to trial.

We should judge the contributions of someone like Manning for ourselves, without awaiting a government stamp of approval that may never come or may come too late. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote, “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”  We will not be well-informed, however, until whistleblowers are honored rather than punished.

David Swanson, a blogger and author, graduated from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 1997. For more information on the conference please visit MIC50.org

Earlier this year, the United Nations issued a report calling Internet access a basic human right. This came a year after Finland guaranteed its citizens access to broadband Internet. It is regrettable that the United States cannot be on the cutting edge of the movement to grant unparalleled access to knowledge and information to all its citizens, but this lag can be traced to some parties in the nation who still are disputing net neutrality, a virtual necessity for access to the Internet’s social benefits.

Though it is rarely discussed outside of technology circles, net neutrality is an issue with massive implications. The basic principle behind ‘net neutrality’ is that Internet traffic should be treated equally, regardless of type or content. Net neutrality advocates are opposed to the idea of Internet service providers such as Comcast, Verizon or AT&T monitoring or blocking access to content they might find objectionable, or dividing the Internet into tiers that slow down users who pay less than the premium price.

Neutrality, they say, will help keep the Internet an open and innovative space while maintaining competition between ISPs. Government regulation is necessary to preserve this balance, so advocates have asked for the Federal Communications Commission to step in and regulate the activities of the nation’s telecommunications giants. It is not an unpopular position: President Obama is recorded as supporting net neutrality efforts as far back as 2007 and has acted fairly consistently toward that end since his election.

Last December, the FCC adopted the Open Internet Order, demanding transparency and prohibiting blocking or unreasonable discrimination of traffic from ISPs. Some net neutrality advocates such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, however, criticized this compromise and stated that the regulation fails to address several major problems.

While the implications of this current order have yet to be recognized, it also has provoked net neutrality’s standard opponents. House Republicans, far friendlier to the interests of the huge telecom corporations than to consumers, have planned to overturn the regulation through legislation, but a Democrat-controlled Senate and the sitting president make that unlikely to succeed. If anything is going to reverse the recent gain, therefore, it will be court challenges. Virginia Attorney General and University alumnus Ken Cuccinelli has stepped in, as he tends to do, going so far as to say the FCC’s order constitutes the “most egregious of all violations of federal law.” His office is planning on filing a lawsuit against the regulations.

A central conservative talking point is that net neutrality is a “federal power grab,” an attempt to seize control of the Internet. This seems odd when one considers net neutrality advocates want regulation to keep the Internet open and free, but the “power grab” angle remains good for scaring up support. Many so-called “free market” organizations promote this line, such as FreedomWorks, a nonprofit sponsored by the billionaire Koch brothers. The libertarian Kochs often have been accused of “astroturfing,” that is using their immense wealth to fund huge political operations that then are dressed up to look like they are “grassroots” movements driven by average citizens.

So, the visible opposition to net neutrality is made up of three main factions. First, fiercely ideological billionaires who stand against almost any regulation. Second, huge companies such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T that stand to gain if they can block less profitable but data-intensive traffic. And last but certainly not least, career politicians such as Cuccinelli who stand to score big political points by attacking Obama’s so-called Internet takeover.

What happens if this opposition succeeds? Everybody who cannot afford premium connections will have to deal with lagging speeds and, depending on the telecoms’ fiscal analyses, blocked access to certain websites or types of content. Connection quality may improve for premium customers if the companies reinvest their new profits in more high-speed cable, but the “lesser” customers will have to suffer to make it possible.

The United States might not be ready to consider the Internet a human right, but it at least should recognize the importance of providing quality access to such a vast sum of knowledge to common citizens, the masters of democracy. It may be an obscure issue today, but if the anti-regulation lobby succeeds it will be a massive mistake tomorrow.

Sam Carrigan is a Viewpoint writer for The Cavalier Daily.

BESSE Cooper, the world’s oldest person, recently celebrated her 115th birthday. While reaching such an age is a rare feat, the number of centenarians in the United States has grown at a swift rate in recent years. In fact, it is estimated that the U.S. will have more than 600,000 centenarians by 2050. Some scientists even claim the average human lifespan could increase to 150 years within this lifetime.

To put that in perspective, the current average U.S. life expectancy is about 78 years. While on the surface the idea of living for 150 years could be tempting for some individuals, such long life probably would lead to the world as a whole being worse off.

Thanks to rapid advances in science, medicine and anti-aging research, scientists and doctors are getting closer to learning what prolongs people’s lives. By using gene therapy, diet manipulation and other techniques, researchers have been able to lengthen the lives of many different kinds of animals. Similarly, scientists are well on their way to developing transplantable organs grown from tissues outside the human body, which could help replace injured or dysfunctional body parts.

The question is, will almost doubling the current average life expectancy lead to a better world? Living for a century and a half is such a foreign concept at the moment that it is hard to surmise much, but the cons seem to outweigh the pros. Scientists say the most important objective of their work is not just extending the number of years lived, but also prolonging the number of active years a person has. One could therefore remain active for a century or more.

There would be some positive aspects to this. Staving off death for twice as long would allow people to spend more time with family and friends, experience more of the world and explore more interests than before. An increased average lifespan also could boost a nation’s economic prosperity. A higher average lifespan means a greater number of productive people in the workforce, each of whom can produce for a longer period of time.

Enabling people to live longer, however, will not serve as a heal-all for the societal problems we have today. To the contrary, current problems in some nations likely will be exacerbated by increased lifespans in others. Surely the technology needed to keep people alive for record times will be available only in the most affluent nations. These countries are already the ones that are at or near the top of the international life expectancy rankings. Therefore, poor nations will continue to have shorter life expectancies and consequently will find themselves even more economically and technologically disadvantaged.

Increasing the longevity of citizens in the world’s wealthiest nations also will lead to greater demand for natural resources and put further strain on the environment. With concerns about the future availability of food, water and oil, major adjustments are necessary to account for a significant rise in world population. It has been estimated that the world currently is consuming resources faster than it can replenish them at a ratio of 3:2. In other words, we are consuming as if we had the available resources of 1.5 earths. Finding adequate space for a larger population may prove problematic too.

There are still those who doubt the timetable given by confident scientists for when humans will live to be 150 years old. Disbelievers cite recent studies that indicate obesity has led to a decrease in child life expectancies by causing diabetes, heart disease and other health problems. This is not only plausible, but comforting. If humans are to live for 150 years, then it will need to come at a time after we have solved our major sustainability problems. Otherwise, we will lay waste to our planet even faster than we currently are.

Yet whatever one’s views on the potentially drastic increase in life expectancy, the anti-aging accomplishments made by scientists already have or soon will see very positive results in aiding the sick and wounded. Though it will not extend life by a century, the ability to re-grow organs and improve lifestyle through gene therapy and stem cell research will be extremely useful in curing disease.

Hopefully, it will be a while before a healthy person can live for 150 years, but fortunately even a gravely ill person could soon be able to reach the normal life expectancy of 78 years.

Alex Yahanda’s column normally appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at a.yahanda@cavalierdaily.com.