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Security Spending Primer:Getting Smart About The Pentagon Budget
How do people influence federal spending decisions and stop fighting over smaller and smaller “slices of the budgetary pie”? What will make our nation more secure? National Priorities Project is proud to release the Security Spending Primer: Getting Smart About The Pentagon Budget. (PDF Document) This Primer is a is a “one-stop-shopping” resource and has two main goals: ~ to provide comprehensive, easy-to-understand information on the complexity of the federal budget process; and ~ to help build the capacity of people across the United States who want their voices and their priorities to be heard in the debate over federal spending in general and military spending in particular. Even though federal spending and policy priorities have an enormous impact on individual lives, the budgeting and policy-making process remains mysterious to most Americans. NPP believes that good, concrete information strengthens social change work. In order to make our federal government more accountable, people – especially those most affected by social inequities – must play a central role in identifying the changes essential to creating better lives for themselves and future generations. They must have access to accurate information that supports effective strategies. The Primer answers the most frequently asked questions about, and supplies the most commonly requested information on, the Pentagon budget and U.S. military spending and is based on decades of experience in military budget analysis. It contains 16 two-page fact sheets on topics ranging from nuclear weapons to the employment impact of U.S. military and domestic spending choices to the military cost of securing energy. We designed these fact sheets to be read separately or as a group. We have also included a host of resources: organizational contact lists, sample NPP tools, resources lists, a glossary and more. Key findings in the primer include: ~ Total spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan will exceed $1 trillion February/March 2010. From FY 2001 to FY 2008, federal grants to state and local governments increased 0.57% for every 1% increase in total federal budget authority. Yet, during the same period, federal military expenditures increased 1.47% for every 1% in total federal budget authority. In other words, as the “budgetary pie” increased, the defense slice got bigger and fatter and the “grants to the states” slice of the pie got smaller. ~ Even without including current war allocations, U.S. military spending is at its highest level since World War II. This takes into account the war-time budgets of Vietnam and Korea. Despite rhetoric to the contrary, the Obama Administration is not cutting defense. In fact, the Pentagon budget is projected to grow25% over the next decade. ~ This is an unprecedented period in our nation’s history. Two wars, staggering national debt, the economic crisis and an impending climate crisis make these extremely challenging times. At the same time, President Obama endeavors to respond to the sweeping mandate for change. NPP is indebted to our collaborators in this project: Frida Berrigan, Senior Program Associate of the Arms and Security Initiative at the New America Foundation Ruth Flower, Associate Executive Secretary for Legislative Programs at Friends Committee on National Legislation ( FCNL) Miriam Pemberton, Peace and Security Editor of Foreign Policy in Focus at the Institute for Policy Studies ( IPS) Heidi Garrett-Peltier, Research Assistant at the Political Economy Research Institute ( PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Robert Pollin, Professor of Economics and founding Co-Director of the Political Economy Research Institute ( PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst Susan Shaer, Executive Director of Women’s Action for New Directions ( WAND) For more information: Jo Comerford, Executive Director (jo@nationalpriorities.org, 413.559.1649) Chris Hellman, Director of Research (chris@nationalpriorities.org) National Priorities Project www.nationalpriorities.org
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Roy Rogers' Horse Saves Health Care
Wednesday, 16 September 2009
The Senate cannot pass a health care bill with a public option. The House cannot pass a bill without one. The public wants a public option. The insurance industry wants a private mandate. The White House is in trouble on this and is calling upon the Senate to find a way out of this dark passage.
So, Boys and Girls, return with us now as the Senators will take a page from out of the old West. They are going to do what cowboy hero Roy Rogers did when he got in a jam: Call for Trigger, the Golden Palomino. Trigger, the trusty steed who rode to glory against those phantom cattle rustlers who sold insurance against physical harm, provided however that the small town marks bought the stolen beef.
In this scene Trigger will come off his mount of glory at the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in Branson, Missouri and gallop to the mount of glory on Capitol Hill, rear up a dazzling 24ft, and by his sheer electrifying presence rescue the US Senate and the Administration from today's rustlers.
It is Washington, DC, so they promptly slap on a confused Trigger a corporate blanket with corporate logos from insurance companies: Pre-Existing Trigger. Lower Cost Trigger. Patient Access Trigger. The Senators will jump on this horse and ride straight for the sunset. Giddy-up Trigger, past that broken down Public Option dray horse. Gallop into the conference committee with full force. Charge!
I am carried away by prospect of rescue by the one horse I can believe in. Sadly, Trigger will never save us from the rustlers. He'll just stand there, mounted, in all of his spectacular equine power ever poised to spring into action, ever ready to hustle out the rustlers, or something like that.
Thank you.
Dennis
http://kucinich.us/index.php
Sept 16, 2009
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| 2009-08-31 04:42 |
| So, yanno? I'm a nurse. It's my job: sometimes (often) I worry about our (communal) health... |
| Public |
| despair work, economics, environment, ethics, health, hope, native american issues, nurse-intuitive, nursing, political science |
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What I watched on TV tonight at work:
Water's Edge: Profits and Policy: Behind the Rising Catastrophe of Floods
Mountain Top Removal ( Wiki article ) ( series on youtube )
I have some thoughts about it all, but cannot avoid sinking into horrid and vicious cynicism- and while that might feel good for a moment, it's not an appropriate response for someone with my education and background. I'm trained to look at this from a community health perspective: as an RN, I have an obligation to do just that. Risk management, genetics, environmental safety- those are all within my purview as a nurse. So it behooves me to stop, just a moment longer, marshall my thoughts, and organize them so that I can pursue this with some clarity.
Because right now? I'm just pissed.
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Via ![[info]](http://www.insanejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) jadelennox, Mike Gronstal explaining why he is effectively blocking the move to amend the Iowa Constitution.
Here, if the video won't work for you.
Transcript here.
Polite, thoughtful, reasoned, and very very clear. I think I'm in love with this guy.
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Free Obama ringtone
"Let it be said by our children's children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God's grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."
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So it's probably no secret that, once Kucinich was out of the race, I supported Obama.
And it's probably no secret that I've got some major disappointments about the Bush years, and that I'd like to see criminal proceedings against members of that administration.
That said (and don't defriend me until you finish reading- come on now, fair's fair)- that said, I think it's important to say this:
Someone had to be that President. It was gonna happen- someone was going to be the one who pointed out what Twain said, what Eisenhower said: if we let the military and the corporations own the country, then we don't. There's money to be made in fear, in hate, in anger, in war and raining pestilence, and corporations care about money. And corporations, Departments of Defense (War), are big, are impersonal, don't care on the individual level. They can't afford to.
But we can. We can, and we have to.
So. Someone had to carry the weight of showing just.what.happens when we don't. It was almost Clinton- he signed NAFTA, he signed GATT, he signed Don't Ask/Don't Tell- but he was too pretty, too charming, and the weight of that got slimed off him with impeachment-over-foolishness. He could have been nailed for Afghanistan, for Somalia- but the opposition let themselves be distracted by the sleazy side of him, and thus: the weight was still there to be carried.
So George did.
Not elegantly. Not intelligently. But he carried it, and his administration made sure that we, the people, learned all over again that it's our government, not the Department of Defense's government, not FEMA's, not General Foods' and Bechtel's and the NRA's and FMC's or whoever they are today, the corporations that make weapons and sell them to anyone (that's prostitution, not business), that destroy farmland in the name of mechaniculture and agribusiness (that's not dominion over the earth, that's just waste of what's been given to us in stewardship), that steal work a person can do for profits an entity that exists only on paper can reap.
Someone has to manifest the shadow- the Imperial America (Manifest Destiny, anyone?), the "Leader of the Free World" that can't free its own people from poverty, starvation-posing-as-affluence, from ignorance-induced fear. Someone had to, and George did.
I don't envy him. I think he could have done that more intelligently- I think he had criminal advisors and took the easy way out, and I hope he pays. I hope they all do.
I don't condemn him. The shadow was going to be manifested- it had to be- and now it's happened. I surely condemn what he let happen on his watch, just as I condemn Clinton- a Rhodes scholar, for fuck's sakes- for being a vain, pompous idiot and wasting glorious opportunities. Someone had to manifest that, too, and damn, but he did a good job.
So let's get on with the rest of it. Let's get on with educating our people, with sorting our differences, with making a real country out of this huge experiment called a Representative Republic. Let's each represent what we believe in- if it's that God's on our side, then be a representative of the most humane, most compassionate version of that you know (Mother Teresa said once, when asked how she did so much, that "I do what is in front of me. I trust to God to do the rest." He can handle the big scale. We need to do what's in front of us). George H. W. Bush said he counted on the 1000 points of light to carry this country through- isn't now a good time to light up, to come together and light up the shadow of America, and really let this country shine in a way it never has before- not by denying the worth of others, but by celebrating it and working together?
I like Kucinich, for all he says he saw a flying saucer. Hell, I talk to ghosts, and more than once told Death to wait for a patient of mine- better the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God (or as the Quakers say, "so I do affirm") than to lie. Before Newton and Descartes were the saints and the mystics; before Mao and Lenin the grace of poets and farmers; before the 500 years of planetary war and slavery and commerce we could claim to be separate, but we are all related now- your history is my history, and my planet is yours, and even though I can only live where and when and in relation to this now that I'm experiencing, I can acknowledge yours.
We're here, now. Obama's being sworn in today. Whether it's for four years or eight, change is gonna come. How do you want to be part of it? Where do you stand? It's not about him, although it is- it's about the arc of this country, this experiment, this dream- and it's about who you want to be, in that moment before you die, when you say "This is who I was, this is what I did." In that moment when the truth is all you have, what do you want it to be?
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Register here for November Vote
I may sometimes find Michael Moore abrasive, but his activism is energizing.
I'm more progressive than not. More optimistic than not. But damn, even if you plan to vote McCain/Palin, work to get out the WHOLE vote where you live, willya? everyone. People who agree with you, people who don't.
Work the polls. Yeah, I know it most likely only pays a fraction of what you earn in your workday but come on- it's part of your right to a representative government to make getting that representation ("Hiring your representatives") happen. [California polls information.]
Anyway.
Don't let CNN and NPR be your only sources of news. Get the facts. Dig. Read the Constitution and Bill of Rights. Go to your State's website and learn about election processes in your state. Get involved.
(and for my non-US friends, please, urge your US friends to get involved. Please, please please do not be among the good people who let bad shit happen. "Fight, fight, against the dying of the light...")
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from our poli sci text
"Did you know... that an aide to President George W. Bush gave this succinct description of federal priorities? "It helps to think of the government as an insurance company with an army"?
no, i did not know that.
or, i did, but not in words.
oh, ow.
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