Defense Budget Wrecks Middle Class Economy. Permanent War Threatens Our National Security and Well Being.
JACQUELINE MARCUS FOR BUZZFLASH
We are told by Congressional leaders that we must sacrifice. Republicans want to end Social Security. Schools haven’t the funding to stay open for five days in most states. Seven hundred or more national parks have been shut down because of lack of Federal funding. Most states are broke. Millions of children are starving in our country, but there are billions of dollars available for the Defense contractors. Defense Secretary Robert Gates just asked Congress for $33 billion dollars in addition to the $10 billion dollars a month and the $700 billion before that—and the $500 billion before that…Perhaps Mr. Gates would like to strip the elderly from their Social Security funds for that $33 billion, and then kick them out on the streets so that the defense contractors can continue to live the extravagant life they’ve grown accustomed to?
Indeed, no one insists that weapon contractors sacrifice for the economic sake of the country. On the contrary, whatever amount they ask for—they get.
There is something terribly and morally obscene about this picture.
History has shown that when the few rich and powerful rulers horde most of the wealth, it inevitably produces extreme poverty for the masses. A country that is dirt poor is an ugly and dehumanizing sight. To make a long repetitive history short, this form of unequal distribution of wealth nearly always results in a two class system: The few get rich and the masses are left with nothing. No one, however, admires the rich under these circumstances. They are despised and hated.
What made the United States the envy of the world, the beacon of light to other countries was our middle class economy.
I suppose my generation, growing up in the 1980s, was the last generation to witness the strength and prosperity of the middle classes. Then came Reaganomics, policies that virtually took a sledgehammer to the middle class way of life by favoring corporate welfare at the expense of safety regulations, humane social services, jobs, unions, workers’ rights, health protection and worst of all, our environment.
Our natural parks were turned into natural gas and coal drilling mines, our national forests were opened to the lumber industries with the green light to clear-cut for quick profits, our beautiful oceans were turned into oil wells. This industrial, greedy attack on our national forests, rivers and oceans didn’t create jobs. What it did do is pollute our streams and lakes; the Gulf of Mexico oil spill proves the tragic point.
Through the 1980s-1990s, it appeared as though our middle class workers were doing well. President Bill Clinton’s policies of providing more educational college grants, promoting high tech professions over the polluting industrial energy companies and balancing the budget certainly gave a boost to the economy. But there are long-standing complaints about his decision to go with the fast-track NAFTA trade deal, which he later regretted because of its lack of safety regulations to protect workers and the environment; it ended by making things worse for American workers because, once again, this agreement benefited big corporations, no environmental regulations, at the expense of American middle-class jobs easily outsourced to countries such as China, India, the Philippines…
Despite the pro-corporate hammers that have been steadily hacking away at our middle classes, the worst sledgehammer that is virtually obliterating the middle class economy is the all consuming Defense funding for the weapon contractors: Boeing, Raytheon, Halliburton, Lockheed, to name just a few.
While states are going belly-up from lack of Federal funding for our schools, roads and infrastructure, which would provide new jobs, while millions of Americans are desperately falling into poverty, while Congressional leaders think of new ways to cut Social Security and other public services, and while millions of children are going hungry, Defense Secretary Robert Gates is threatening Congress “for $33 billion to support the added financial costs of President Barack Obama's new strategy for the war in Afghanistan, now the longest conflict in U.S. history.”
The request is based on deceit and exploitation. It is not used to defend or to protect the soldiers. The “new strategy” is the same strategy: Make the weapon contractors billionaires.
Mr. Gates: Do you know how many starving children in the United States we could feed with that $33 billion dollars? Do you know how many schools and hospitals we could build with that money? The cost of one weapon alone could feed every hungry child in this country.
California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger reduced Government workers’ salaries to minimum wage because the state has a $30 billion dollar debt. Everyone’s mad at the Governor but no one talks about the real reason why the state is in debt: No Federal funding. Eighty percent of our Federal tax dollars is going straight into the pockets of the super rich weapon contractors in the name of “Defense”. It’s the biggest and most sinful hoax ever played on the American people in the history of this country even when times are good, but draining the budget to maintain their extravagant lifestyles when our country is sinking deeper and deeper into poverty, when the middle classes are being forced out of work and their homes—is disgusting and shameful. It’s beyond greed. It’s unspeakably cruel.
When the Federal Government provides sufficient funding for the states, jobs are created for rebuilding our infrastructure, schools, parks, highways and hospitals, which in turn stabilizes the economy for the middle classes. Conversely, when the Federal budget is being robbed by thieves like Robert Gates who promises his greedy group of war-monger bandits to come through for them, expect the middle class foundation to collapse because there is nothing left to support that economic structure.
I question President Obama’s motives for hiring the same politicians from the oil, weapon and Wall St. corporate elite to work in the White House with him. Change you can believe in? It’s become an embarrassing joke for this President. We all scratched our heads when he kept Bush’s Robert Gates on to serve as Secretary of Defense, but when he hired Ken Salazar, well known for his oil and natural gas drilling deals, to be Secretary of the Interior, the idea of changing things became a fading campaign echo.
It’s not as though there weren’t good choices out there: environmental lawyers from the Sierra Club and Earth Justice would have made a huge difference in changing the old industrial guard for the new green guard. Do you remember Obama’s love for the Kennedy family? Why didn’t he hire Bobby Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Interior?
It’s been predicted that these same old war and industrial policies are driving the middle classes off the cliff for good. It’s happening. There are little Hoovervilles popping up around the country everywhere; poverty and homelessness are escalating; the homeless are pitching tents or living in their vehicles. The numbers are unclear because this is a mute subject in the media. But I’ve seen the homeless with my own eyes. I can no longer recognize my own country.
Instead of dealing with the dire problems of overpopulation, global warming and the creation of new jobs—these “serve only the super rich policies” are severely adding to the problems. Oil is needed to keep the Defense money machine going. This explains why the U.S. Military Complex wants total control of the Middle East. Without oil, their power and wealth are dead in the water. The oil and weapon industrialists are dependent on each other. Without the military complex, it’s unlikely that the oil companies would be as powerful as they are today.
By contrast, since European countries, such as Denmark, don’t have a military beast of burden to carry on their backs, they’re able to provide health care, free college, day care centers and many more social services in a capitalistic system. Plus, they can more easily shift to green technologies without the weight of an oil industry oppressing them.
Ask yourself what we could do to lift our country to a high economic standing for the middle classes if we had just thirty percent of the defense funding to work with? If we had $10 billion dollars a month for investments in green jobs, for restoration of cities, parks and schools…
The Military Defense broke our middle class economy with their inflated war budget, compliments of a corrupt and cowardly Congress, but even during this current Depression, the Pentagon and Military contractors will make absolutely no sacrifices, their hands greedily stealing all our tax dollars from the Federal budget while Americans are losing their jobs and homes and millions of children are going hungry in this country. The few jobs that they create are not worth the massive damage they’re causing to the rest of the economy. In other words, 95% of the country has to sacrifice so that 5% in the Defense Weapon industry can live high on the hog.
There are no words to describe the damage they’re doing. There is nothing patriotic about making a great country poor as dirt. It’s evil to the core. Congress must stand up to Gates and say: ENOUGH! We cannot afford your murderous weapons! Feed the starving children and rebuild the infrastructure. That’s how you defend and secure a country.
****
A Highly Recommended Documentary at the Buzzflash Progressive Market:
If you build a military/corporate alliance that consumes billions of dollars, you need wars to fight. Otherwise, you can't justify spending all that money on sweetheart contracts to companies like Halliburton and Lockheed. And then, they wouldn't be able to give campaign contributions to elect politicians who start the wars and give out the contracts.
"When war becomes that profitable, you are going to see more of it," says Chalmers Johnson in the documentary.
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Don't pay any attention to that man behind the curtain, Dorothy!
It's interesting that Buzzflash takes a strong stand on the problem of paying for the military-industrial complex without any willingness to go at the root of these two wars. The evidence is irrefutable that the destruction of the World Trade Center (WTC) in New York, the foundation of our justification for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, was not accomplished by 19-boxcutter-welding-Arabs. Three of the seven buildings in the World Trade Center (WTC) were blown up on 11Sept2001.
Even with the full-court effort made by the real 9/11 perpetrators to destroy all physical evidence of this likely traitorous act, every American and likely most of the world's citizens can still recall those collapsing buildings. The memory of the wave of debris falling straight down from the 95th floor--as though there were no support underneath the 95th floor--is seared into our collective memory. The notion that the first three steel frame buildings ever to sustain symmetrical, total structural "collapse" could be caused by a 50-minute fire on a couple of floors on buildings designed to absorb plane strikes and to withstand days of fire is physically impossible--especially since building 7 wasn't even struck by a plane.
The crash of a bomber into the Empire State Building during WWII didn't come close to bringing down that building. However, it did prompt cities to beef up their building codes to cover that eventuality. In the nine years after 9/11 nearly every city in the country has tacitly acknowledge that relatively small fires (in three buildings) and a plane strike (in two buildings) didn't bring down WTC buildings 1, 2 and 7. They acknowledge it by not moving to rewrite their building codes for this event.
The horrific and calculated murder on 9/11 of thousands of innocents is the foundation for all the fears still trumpeted daily from most of the country's media outlets. Why is Buzz so willing to stand forth on so many less important issues and leave the one chink in the armor of the enemies of democracy alone?
There are many stripes of patriots in this country. Unlike Buzz, I believe that patriots--whatever their stripe--will rise to this emergency for our democracy, provided they actually have the information. The number of people behind this horror that is still in the process of wrecking our country has to be very small. If the Buzzflashes and Drudges of the world rip back the curtain over 9/11 there will be a non-partisan democratic house-cleaning of the kind never imagined by the people who did this. In the mean time, the people who murdered 3,000 Americans in New York on 11Sept2001 are still walking tall, talking big, and spending large among us. And, that is--in part--Buzz's fault.
Andy, your "Conspiracy" fascination ENABLES your enemies!
Andy, your "Conspiracy" fascination ENABLES your enemies!
there WAS NO pre-staged EXPLOSIVES SABOTAGE on 9-11...
watch ANY DEMOLITION movie, they DRILL INTO EVERY column, and place their explosives INSIDE the columns.. merely placing explosives NEXT to a column will NOT destroy that column.
The REAL CONSPIRACY is EVEN EASIER to see & explain: Bush, Cheney, Wolfowitz, and Mossad KNEW the 9-11 hijackers were coming, but ALLOWED THEM TO GET THROUGH, to get their "New Pearl Harbor" EXCUSE to attack, invade, & occupy Iraq.
YOU and other "conspiracy" buffs are suggesting that HUNDREDS and THOUSANDS of pounds of explosives were placed in these buildings, with NO ONE NOTICING!
That makes regular citizens and residents/workers in those buildings ACCOMPLICES!
So, EVERY TIME you write your "massive pre-planted explosives conspiracy" stuff, DICK CHENEY THANKS YOU, for DIVERTING attention from his ROLLING OUT RED CARPET for 9-11 hijackers.
As hard as it is to believe...
Veracity,
Unfortunately there was plenty of time and opportunity to install the explosives that were needed to bring the buildings down. Towers 1 and 2 were under-occupied, so there were lots of empty floors and spaces where access to the core columns and the outer support wall would have been easy. There was also an elevator upgrade during the year prior to the destruction of the buildings that gave further access to the core columns. Finally, power was shutdown (silencing all security systems) to one of the towers the weekend before 9/11.
It wasn't necessary to drill into columns to place the charges since demolitions now use "cutter" charges that are wrapped around columns. These cutter charges are made with a highly specialized explosive called Thermite that actually ignites hot enough to melt steel extremely quickly. There was nothing else in the building that would burn hot enough to melt steel--including the kerosene jet fuel and the office furniture and papers. NASA thermal photos of the 9/11 site from space weeks after the event showed heat hot enough to melt steel still emanating from the site. Witnesses reported pools of molten steel in the basements of the ruins of all three buildings. Thermite was found in the WTC dust.
Everyone saw the buildings fall--extremely symmetrically and extremely fast--straight into their own footprint. That is a physical fact that cannot have been produced by either the airplane strikes or the fires. (Note that building 7 didn't have an airplane strike and still collapsed as though there was no support under the roof.)
It is hard to believe that anyone would participate in such a calculatedly cold and murderous act. However, there was plenty to motivate the small number of people needed to carry this out. The WTC (just signed to a new lease months before the event) was a money-losing business that was facing a $2 billion dollar retrofit needed to get rid of the asbestos used to fireproof the steel in the original construction The two insurance payouts were worth billions to the investors. The files needed to prosecute the Enron California energy fraud case and the World Com fraud case were destroyed in the collapse of building 7. Without the evidence in those files the cases will never be prosecuted. Only a portion of the gold reportedly stored in the vaults of the building was ever recovered. And, there were potentially billions made in the days leading up to 9/11 by short selling on stock markets all over the world the stocks of companies that were negatively affected by 9/11 (airlines and insurance companies). Finally, in addition to cold hard cash and escapes from prosecutions there was enormous political benefit that accrued to people who had already expressed (in the Project for a New American Century white paper) the need for a "new Pearl Harbor" to further their political agenda.
As difficult as it is to believe, there is little doubt that the people who planned and carried out this heinous act are walking around free today and are not in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Andy, all media outlets shy away from dealing with 9/11 Truth
It isn't just Mark Karlin who believes that self preservation is far nobler than speaking truth to power. Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! stays clear of 9/11 Truthers as does "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy"s Greg Palast. The only national figure who has even come close to dealing with 9/11 Truth is Michael Moore who made the movie "Fahrenheit 9/11" which tiptoed around the scientific facts that the official story is a complete fabrication. Michael Moore supports NYC Coalition for Accountability Now.
In 2009, NYC CAN led a ballot initiative in New York City that would have established a local commission to conduct an impartial, evidence-driven investigation into the events of September 11, 2001. 80,000 New Yorkers signed the petition, far exceeding the requirement for the proposed City Charter amendment to be presented to the voters on the November ballot. However, the City of New York refused to place it on the ballot citing legal insufficiencies in the petition, and the State Supreme Court ruled in the City’s of favor. Standing on the shoulders of 80,000 New Yorkers whose voices were silenced, NYC CAN carries on in pursuit of the answers that every American deserves.
Think globally, act locally.
Is It Better To Be An Ostrich?
As with the Kennedy Assassination, those on the Left of the political spectrum, for the most part, have remained silent in the face of a considerable number of anomalies in the Government's explanation of what transpired on 11/22/63 as well as on 9/11. Is it self preservation or is it a refusal to entertain even the possibility that one's frame of reference for understanding historical events is almost completely irrelevant.
As an addendum to what Norm has stated, In August of 2004, a Zogby International poll indicated that 49.3% of New York City residents and 41% of New York citizens "overall" say US Leaders "knew in advance that attacks were planned on or around September 11, 2001, and that they consciously failed to act." The poll, released on August 30, 2004, also found that 66% called for a new probe.
In May of 2006, a Zogby International poll showed that 42% of Americans were more likely to agree with people who believe that "the US government and its 9/11 Commission concealed or refused to investigate critical evidence that contradicts their official explanation of the September 11th attacks, saying there has been a cover-up."
In July of 2006, a Scripps Howard and Ohio University poll concluded that, "Thirty-six percent of respondents overall said it is "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that certain federal officials either participated in the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon or took no action to stop them", and "sixteen percent said it's "very likely" or "somewhat likely" that the collapse of the twin towers in New York was aided by explosives secretly planted in the two buildings."
In September of 2006, an Ipsos-Reid poll found that 22 percent of Canadians believe "the attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, had nothing to do with Osama Bin Laden and were actually a plot by influential Americans."
In October of 2006, a New York Times and CBS news poll showed that 28 percent believed that members of the Bush Administration were mostly lying about "what they knew prior to September 11th, 2001, about possible terrorist attacks against the United States."
These poll results are courtesy of the "Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice" website.
Can these poll respondents be so cavalierly written off as nothing more that tin-foil hat wearing conspiracy buffs?
In order for one to formulate anything even approaching an intelligent plan to alter the future, one must have a firm grasp on what has already transipired.
hmm...So Nelson and David Rockefeller had the prescience...
back in the Sixties to have Freemasons posing as members of the various building trades unions plant plastic bombs throughout the superstructure of the World Trade Center towers so at exactly 8:46 am and again at 9:03 am EDT September 11, 2001 when the American and United Airlines planes struck respectively, Jay Rockefeller pushes a button in a secret location, known only to him, detonating both towers.
And you buy that?
ET Spoon
ET, You forgot to phone home...
ET,
I love slimey snakes like you. You lie in the grass ready and waiting to strike at every honest person that questions corrupt authority.
You must know that Buidlings 1, 2 and 7 were undergoing maintenance for 6 months prior to 9/11? You must also know that George Bush brother Marvin Bush's company Stratecom was in charge of security for those buidlings during that time up to 9/11?
Maybe you can tell us how Enron was an honest company and that BP really is doing everything they can to mitigate the damage they have done to the Gulf Coast?
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That's it, attack me, Norm. Call me names, buddy
Best why to weaken the loyal opposition, divide and conquer.
And for your information, Norm, I've read quite a bit on the September 11, 2001 attacks and if there was any "grand conspiracy" it was one of omission. National Security adviser Condoleezza Rice, you do remember that gap-toothed bitch, don't you, Norm, was given reams of information on al Qaeda's intentions and she failed to act.
And if there is anything sinister about the events of September 11, 2001 and its aftermath it's the verifiable fact of the long time business and personal association between the Bush family and the Binladen family and the also verifiable fact that George W. Bush bungled, deliberately perhaps (?), the capture of Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora in December of 2001. But that is as far as I'll go, Norm. No plastic explosives. No all the CEOs in New York City leaving town.
But rather than calling me names why don't you scroll down to my original post on this topic, Norm. And unless you're some twenty or thirty-something slacker living in mom's basement you probably have a mutual fund, a 401k, an IRA of some sort. That makes you part of the conspiracy, Norm. Me too! In one way or another we're all funding the American way of war and padding our retirement fund by it.
So go ahead, Norm. Call me names for my First Amendment right of questioning a conspiracy nut. That's your First Amendment right. But it won't get Lloyd Blankfein, Jamie Dimon or any other of those Wall Street banksters any closer to being frog marched to Gitmo. And that's my dream, Norm.
ET Spoon
ET is a provacateur
ET go home and don't come back.
You deliberately muddy the waters that the rest of us try to clarify. 9/11 was an inside job. Why bring up the Rockefellers? George Bush was president and his brother Marvin Bush was responsible for security at the WTC Tower Complex. What do the Rockefellers have to do with anything?
You're not interested in the facts.
ET go home and don't come back.
p.s. I'm not your buddy!
Capitalism=Endless War??
Chuck38
I am a 72 y.o. Naval Veteran. I live ONLY on my Social Security each month, which I worked 50 years to EARN that Social Security. Cut it off and I'm on the streets!!!!!!!!!! Thanks a lot to the F--k--g GOP, the party of GREED and NO!!!! Yet they cater to all the special interests which keep THEM rich!!!
It is appearing to me that in order for Capitalism to exist, the US must be in a constant state of war!!! I hope to hell that I'm wrong in this.....
Unfortunately, war is the engine which drives our economy
Really now, you can forget all the Reagan bullshit that the economy of the United States is a "service" economy, businesses that produce no tangible product being the bedrock of the economy, or the Clintonian bullshit that the economy is consumer-based, buying Chinese-made crap at Wall Mart is all we need do to keep the economy healthy. Our's is a war economy.
If you are a Boomer, my g-g-g-g-er-a-tion, or a GenXer with a 401k, IRA or even an old fashioned employer-provided pension plan take a look at the prospectus some time. I'm sure most if not all of the corporations listed on the Top 100 Defense Contractors for FY 2009 from the Washington Technology Web site are part and parcel of your retirement account. Besides the usual suspects, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and so on, there are corporations that at first glance should have nothing to do with defense contracting and The Pentagon. I mean why does the military need the services of the auditing and tax avoidance consulting firm Deloitte and Touche LLP? Verison, AT&T, Midwest Research, Rockwell Collins Inc., Sprint Nextell Corp., and on and on it goes. A list for the same period from the Military Technologies.net Web site lists Johns Hopkins, Treasury Secretary Timmy Geithner's alma mater, and MIT, Noam Chomsky's employer of long standing, 44th and 59th respectively. Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. and The Bahrain Petroleum Company, erroneously listed as the Bahrain Nation Oil Co., are also getting Pentagon money.
Moreover we must remember that organized labor is still very healthy at major defense contractors like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northop Grumman. Recently the IAM District 751 representing Boeing workers in the St. Louis area ratified a new contract. Union negotiators crowed, "Your negotiating team made gains in job security, lump sum, progression, pension, and COLA. We held the line on health care and got language to protect the employee’s portion from rampant inflation. The job guarantee language is unprecedented. There are no takeaways and many pluses in the offer." In the anti-labor climate that has enveloped this country for the last thirty years the St. Louis IAM's success is a small victory for organized labor. However Boeing's St. Louis facility manufactures the FA-18 Hornet and the C-17 military transport plane. So do you suppose these guys and gals will vote for a politician who might do away with their jobs?
That union victory is ultimately paid for from your tax dollar, a fact that does not seem to faze the most ardent small-government, Ayn Rand-loving, anti-union tea bagger. For while your average tea bagger wants to crush every union in sight they'll live with unions at defense plants because its for "national security." Nor does it seem to faze the average tea bagger that defense contracting, i.e. the military-industrial complex, is the antithesis of "free market" capitalism. But again it is in the "interest" of "national security" so they'll live with that too. The GOP loves tea baggers because they are too stupid to figure out they're being fleeced. Imagine a group of American citizens who willingly approve of all sorts of military adventurism and outrageously inflated defense expenditures while at the same time egg on Republican politicians to cut the social safety net which they will themselves be falling through. That's patriotism for you!
The American way of war is not about winning. It hasn't been since Vietnam. War is that profitable.
ET Spoon
An Expanded View
The problems discussed in the article started prior to Ronald Reagan but since the true history of what has transpired in this country is denied to even those that are considered educated, it is understandable that the author regards his administration as the beginning of the decline. The United States turned from a country that was seeking peace and accommodation with other nations with which it had political differences into the American Empire in late 1963. While most histories will state that Johnson carried on with the causes important to JFK, most notably in civil rights, Johnson immediately began to escalate the conflict in Vietnam where as JFK was in the process of disengaging. There is no doubt that this is the correct analysis of what transpired since the historical record is available to those that are willing to do the research. No chief executive has had both the requisite amount of power as well as the the inclination to buck the military-industrial complex since JFK nor is one ever likely to be in a position to do so again. That is how firmly entrenched the elite Neo Confederate power structure has become since the days of Camelot. President Obama is just the latest object lesson in impotence. Some of us are of the opinion that the grand American experiment with democracy has already been concluded.
IT Isn't an Accident
I grew up in the 50s and 60s - I was 10 when JFK was elected.
If you haven't read it already, get your hands on Report from Iron Mountain. It has always been discounted as fiction, but take the time to read it and see how the recommendations in the report track pretty well with what has happened in this country.
The conclusion was that permanent peace, basically, wasn't good for making money.
And Bubba was no bargain. If he hadn't added the Social Security funds in with the general fund his 1998 budget would have been in deficit instead of being barely balanced. His failure to forcefully fight the Republicans when they wanted welfare killed is the biggest failure of a Democrat since Johnson lied us into Vietnam with the Tonkin Gulf lies.
There are no good Democrats and there are no good Republicans. Once they get into office that's it for them; getting reelected is their sole purpose. If you don't know that by now you haven't been paying attention.
We have become a military culture; our main export is WAR
This article reminds me of two important and powerful paragraphs (below) from a Peace & Sanity Activist's 2005 Book called: "Come Together Right Now" by Bruce Gagnon, (globalnet@mindspring.net), P. 158:
"The U.S. is being turned into a military culture. Our role, in the new world corporate order is going to be to export security. That means we won't have well-paying industrial jobs in America anymore. We will send our kids off to foreign lands to suppress opposition to corporate globalization. The military is where our kids will find work as endless warriors. You think we are hated in the world now... you haven't seen anything yet.
We've got to use every opportunity to bring this resistance message to the public. We can't sit on our fluffy laurels and fancy titles any longer. We've got to get into the garden and get our hands dirty. We've got to get into the soil of this nation and mix it up. We can't wait for our hired gardeners, like Hillary Clinton, to do it for us. We can't trust that Hillary will plant the kinds of seeds we want in our garden. We've got to take on the job ourselves. The time has come to get real".
Bipartisan economic treason
Note that the plundering of the peoples' wealth continues under both Republican and Democratic control.
NAFTA couldn't have been passed without the support of both these corporate-financed parties. The rich control both corrupt parties through the "contributions" of their corporations. Their politician keep their taxes low.
The Green Party doesn't accept corporate money, and wants to tax the rich. They've also been long supporters of Medicare for all, and other policies that help PEOPLE, not corporations.
Your Green-Party vote will help to build a non-corporate alternative to the parties of the rich that have been committing economic violence against the non-rich for 30 years. It only takes a few percentage points to make a statement that we're going to fight back against this oppression.
VOTE GREEN!
A More Basic Question Is Why Are Americans So Uninformed?
Jacqueline,
I wholeheartedly agree with your essay, but it begs the question, "Why Are Americans So Uninformed?" Yes, they send their sons and daughters to fight in these endless oil securing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yes, they wave their flags on Memorial Day, 4th of July and Labor Day while suffing their faces with hamburgers, hot dogs and beer. Yes, they love to blame the Mexicans for flooding the borders and jacking up their property taxes to pay for the Mexican kids free education and medical care.
But if most Americans were informed to "connect the dots," they would be clamoring for prosecution of George W Bush and Dick Cheney for war crimes. They would be clamoring for rational funding of their school systems. They would be demanding that the US Government stop subsidizing US corn growers who dump their crops at below market prices in Mexico driving Mexicans to leave their land and head north to America.
In America, Corruption is King. Until the Corruption King loses its mouth piece, the corporate media, the American Middle Class will continue to lose ground to the king.
Note: Buzzflash is a great media outlet that very few Americans even know about and even less frequent on a regular basis. If only 5% of Americans knew about Buzzflash, America would be an informed country.
Several reasons why we are so "uniformed"....
Norm, I think the reason Americans are so uninformed, - is because we are "bred" to be that way. Corporations and our government - both don't really want us to be educated, or they would encourage scholarships and government support for an affordable college education for as many people as possible. Why is college so important? - Because it opens up your mind to the opinion and achievement of others, in all fields. Most of all, it gives you the tools necessary to question, share opinions and to "think for yourself" - .. to be able to read and research the truth, ....How many Americans actually read nowadays, especially any book of substance? Read anything at all? Generally, we are only fed "cool-aid" of different flavors from TV and the corporate owned media.
Also, our culture saturates us with the phony importance of "football, movies, shopping and TV" - which indirectly assures that we will all remain "economic slaves" - to the system.
There is no time, energy or money left for the average person to actually be informed, to "think" and actually get involved in their own democracy. We have been castrated, our spirits are all but broken, our minds have been stolen by Madison Ave, and we have no valid place to even voice our opinions, even if we wrote an op-ed article in every newspaper in the country and 100% of everyone agreed with us - .... Ultimately, ... So what? There is no where to go from there, nothing to join, nothing to sign, nothing that makes a difference - ... so why bother - is the general feeling from most average Americans, I believe. The feeling is - as Michael Jackson sang in one of his last songs: "They don't really care about us!". If they did,.... "they" (our government and American corporations) - would keep American jobs/ingenuity in America, they would create affordable education & housing for everyone, they would get away from the insanity of a war economy, they would help bailout the American people, rather than Wall Street corporations who got us into this mess, and who are still giving offensive million dollar bonuses and balloon good-bye packages, while the rest of us lose our jobs and our homes. If they cared, they would do everything possible to help all Americans partake in their democracy, creating what our Founding Fathers envisioned, a country "Of, For and By the people!". They are afraid of that. Afraid of what would happen if Americans woke up and took charge of our own country!
However, there is one thing we CAN do: work to severely restrict, change and perhaps even eliminate campaign financing. The airways - belong to us, not NBC, CBS, Clear Channel Radio, etc. The oil beneath our feet belongs to us, not to BP, Haliburton, or anyone else. To begin with, we the people, have to put all our focus and energy into serious campaign finance reform - or we can just kiss this country, and what it once stood for - good-bye!
Rucy, think globally, act locally
Rucy, You need to find like minded people in your local community who share your values and then get yourself elected. I'm considering the Green Party after having no luck getting involved with my local Democratic Party. Yeah, their nice people, but they don't share any values with me. They don't seem to have any problems with the rampant corruption we have in our current system. Building inspectors taking bribes, illegal speed traps on mismarked highways, false prosecution for political purposes, etc... This corruption is endemic to our 2-party political system. The fish rots from the head, but reform starts from the bottom. Michael Moore got involved in the Michigan community he lives in and he stopped cold Bart Stupak from blocking Healthcare Reform. Michael Moore even got Bart Stupak to not run again for Congress. Now that is what we all need to do to effect change in America. If we had 50 Bernie Sanders in the United States Senate, we would no longer have a corrupt US Congress.
Defense budget
With half of their country occupied by the Soviet Union and a huge Soviet army at their doorstep, the German defense budget was about 2% of GNP. Why? Some will say it's because the U.S. had forces in the other half but do you really trust anyone that much? I say it's because 2% is approaching the upper limit of what a peace time democracy can spend and still have strong economic growth and and a good quality of life for it's citizens. If you add the black budget numbers to the published numbers you can see why we are in the toilet.
So true, so well spoken
You brought us all to the moment.
Frankly, it doesn't look good.
Let's face it, Obama failed us like all the rest.
Now what?
Thank you for this wonderful commentary. It is rich beyond words.