The Hightower Report

One Mother Makes a Difference

Ordinary Americans can make a big difference, even against great odds, when they dare to stand up and challenge the Powers That Be.

Cheryl Harris dared to confront two of the biggest powers: the Pentagon and its favorite corporation, Halliburton. "I'm not going to sit around quietly," she said determinedly early this year. What prompted her defiance was the death of one of her sons in Iraq. Ryan wasn't killed by the enemy he'd been sent to fight – but by the shower in his own barracks. He was electrocuted, apparently suffering a long and painful death.

Cheryl Harris asked questions. She got lies. Army officials blamed Ryan, saying he'd gone into the shower with "a small appliance." She knew her son better than that, so she kept pushing for real answers. With the help of a lawyer, she eventually uncovered the fact that this shower was connected to a water pump that had been improperly wired.

KBR, a Halliburton subsidiary that has been paid $24 billion by the Pentagon to do such basic work in Iraq as electrical wiring, had known 11 months prior to Ryan's electrocution that there were severe electrical problems in that building. KBR officials, however, scoffed at Cheryl Harris, saying that their contract with the Pentagon included no responsibility to prevent such deaths.

Now, though, the corporate scoffing has subsided substantially, for Cheryl Harris' insistent activism reached Congress, which forced the Pentagon to investigate. It turns out that Ryan is not the only victim; 18 of our soldiers have died from electrocution in Iraq. The investigation reveals a pattern of shoddy electrical work, KBR has now been found guilty of "serious contractual noncompliance" for jobs it has done in Iraq, and the Army has recently reopened its investigation into Ryan's death.

All because one mother would not stay quiet. She dared to question authority, then she questioned their answers.

What We Could Do With $700 Billion

With his usual keen insight, George W. recently offered this comment about the Wall Street collapse: "Anyone who makes bad decisions should fail."

One wonders if he ever looks in the mirror.

His own bad decisions aside, however, he's now rushing up to Wall Street bankers who made terrible decisions and is stuffing their pockets with billions of our tax dollars to keep them from failing. Sending an even worse moral message, Bush is attaching no strings to this reward for incompetence and malfeasance. The bankers do not even have to use the bailout money to increase business and consumer loans that would help our economy. Instead, generous George lets them apply the windfall as they see fit – they can fatten their own banks' balance sheets, buy up other banks, or even use it to pay fat dividends to themselves (it's estimated that $250 million from the bailout will go to such executive dividends this year alone).

And these are people who have been trying to tag Barack Obama as a socialist! We're talking about at least $700 billion here, coming right out of our public treasury. Imagine if that sum were invested for public purposes – what could it achieve?

We could repair all of America's deteriorating bridges, roads, and levees – projects that would create a million or more good jobs.

We could launch a "Green Deal" to make all of America's homes and buildings energy efficient – all of FDR's New Deal public works projects, for example, cost only half as much as Bush's Wall Street bailout.

We could replace the Hubble telescope, put a new international space station into orbit, and launch a new Apollo-style exploration of our planetary system – all for less than the bailout's cost.

You might recall that we've always been told that there's no money to do such big American projects. Really? Then where did they find that $700 billion they're now handing out to Wall Street?