Congress, of All Groups, in the Way of Shrinking Government Spending

This news just hit today:

The Pentagon is once again asking Congress to let it close military bases, and Congress is once again expected to say no

A Washington ritual: Pentagon, Congress at odds over bases

Some things about our government are so difficult to imagine, let alone accept. This is certainly one of those.

All Republicans in public, government office sing out that we must cut spending. They all say we're spending our way to insolvency and bankruptcy. It's common and repetitive as can be. You can nearly not go a day without hearing one of these people decrying our spending and the huge size of our government.

And of course, the biggest source of spending in our national budget is none other than the Defense Department. We spend most of our entire budget on Defense/defense and we also, far and away, spend many times over what all other nations combined on that very same thing, defense. 

It's a huge waste.

It's gargantuan spending, it's wasteful, as I said, it's obscene, it's unaccounted for since the Pentagon isn't held accountable for this money. It is, in the end, immoral and makes no sense, fiscal or otherwise.

So, then, we come here, today, and the military themselves realize we should and even must close some unnecessary, wasteful bases.

But Congressional representatives, plenty of them Republican, say no.

How does this make any sense? Again, how does this make any logical sense, fiscal or otherwise?

And the truth is, of course, it doesn't.

We have to end this. We have to put a stop to this. And cutting this spending, this wasteful military spending, will make the nation stronger.

Please go to this link and write your Congressional representatives. Tell them we must do the right and smart and responsible thing and close these unnecessary bases and cut this wasteful military spending.

Contacting the Congress: 

A Citizen's Congressional Directory

Thank you, in advance. Let's do this. It's an election year. They're much more likely to be responsive to us this year than any other.

Let's cut government spending.

One more reason we shouldn't go to war with Iran

Look at this map. Besides the fact that we're already in too many wars internationally and that we've lost far too many American soldiers, this is how many bases we have, surrounding Iran.

Each red star represents a military base. Enough, you think?

China: This is why we spend so much on defense?

China is famous--notorious, infamous, really--for polluting their air, water and soil across most of the entire country. Then, they suppress their people's speech and movements and who knows what all. Poverty is still rampant across the huge nation, etc. Now? What's in the news? There's this article: Top of Chinese wealthy's wish list? To leave China BEIJING (AP) — Chinese millionaire Su builds skyscrapers in Beijing and is one of the people powering China's economy on its path to becoming the world's biggest. He sits at the top of a country — economy booming, influence spreading, military swelling — widely expected to dominate the 21st century. Yet the property developer shares something surprising with many newly rich in China: he's looking forward to the day he can leave. Su's reasons: He wants to protect his assets, he has to watch what he says in China and wants a second child, something against the law for many Chinese. Despite more economic freedom, the communist government has kept its tight grip on many other aspects of daily life. China's leaders punish, sometimes harshly, public dissent and any perceived challenges to their power, and censor what can be read online and in print. Authoritarian rule, meanwhile, has proved ineffective in addressing long standing problems of pollution, contaminated food and a creaking health care system. "In China, nothing belongs to you. Like buying a house. You buy it but it will belong to the country 70 years later," said Su, lamenting the government's land leasing system. "But abroad, if you buy a house, it belongs to you forever," he said. "Both businessmen and government officials are like this. They worry about the security of their assets." So why do I bring this up? This is the country we're supposed to be afraid of so we keep spending 700 billion dollars per year on "defense"--read: the "military-industrial complex"--but we don't otherwise have enough to pay our bills, educate our citizens and give them good health care and roads and sewer systems and other important infrastructure. It's insane. We have to stop spending so much on defense. It's unnecessary and it's ignorant. There's a lot more in the article, too, you may want to see, spelling out their many problems. Find it here: http://news.yahoo.com/top-chinese-wealthys-wish-list-leave-china-065826880.html

Who is the "war monger", anyway?

There is a fascinating new study of the former Soviet Union's population out right now, that shows its population is decreasing, and strongly, by the millions.

I heard of it this morning on NPR but after doing the most rudimentary search on the internet, I found--quickly and easily--that this has been going on for some time.

I'll get into some data in a second but what this means is, I think, that we can and should stop "fighting the last war"--the Cold War--and start thinking in new, intelligent, positive, current-moment ways. If we did and do, I think it's painfully obvious we can--and again, should--decrease our military budgets and spending.

After all, it's the military budgets of the former Soviet Union that was, in part, to blame for its collapse, if we'll remember.

That data:

"Russia's population has fallen by 6.6 million since 1993, despite the influx of millions of immigrants, according to a U.N. report released last year, and by 2025 the country could lose a further 11 million people."

"Recent Kremlin efforts to reward women for having more babies have caused a surge in the birth rate, the U.N. has said, but won't make much difference in the long term."

"Population levels in many developed countries have stagnated and are expected to fall by 2025, but Russia's population, currently around 142 million, has been in retreat since 1992. Russia's mortality rate is among the highest in the developed world, with average life expectancy for males at barely 60 years."

"For reasons that are not fully understood, Russians suffer very high levels of cardiovascular disease. But most experts blame the country's overall high death rate on alcohol. Drinking has been linked to everything from liver disease to Russia's high number of murders, suicides and fatal accidents."

Oh, and here's a beauty. Does the following sound familiar, ladies and gentlemen?

"The U.N. has also urged Russia to overhaul the health system to provide more efficient care..."

It surely sounds as though we have a lot more in common with these people--our former enemies--than we think.

The fact is, I think we could and should work with these people, yes, for the betterment of their country for peaceful, humanitarian goals and put little American flags on everything we do.

If we would tie ourselves in their minds to bettering their country, they would see us in a new, positive light.

The additional fact is, our country grossly overspends our GNP and GDP on military hardware.

It's obscene.

It's stupid.

The military industrial machine has taken over our government and our country and we need to wean ourselves off this section of our production.

The US, folks, spends $623 billion per year (as of FY08) on our military budget.

The entire rest of the world spends $500 billion.

Is this not insanity?

Who, exactly, is the "war monger" here?

The number 2 position is China, sure, and as of what must be the latest, most accurate data--FY04--they spent $65 billion.

$65 billion vs. our $623 billion.

You know what this means?

This means China is far more able to spend on infrastructure and on business and--here's a novel idea--their people than we are because they aren't filling warehouses with guns and bombs.

Who do you think will be better able to succeed, financially, in this scenario? The country stockpiling weapons or the nation bettering their country?

Let me suggest we get a heck of a lot more rational and merely cut the military budget in half--down to a mere $300 billion dollars--and put the balance into oh, I don't know, how about health care and schools and roads?

And while we're at it, could we look into finally get out of Germany and Italy, too?

Doesn't that seem to make a heck of a lot more sense than the insanity we're perpetrating now?

Link to stories:
http://www.voanews.com/english/archive/2006-03/2006-03-08-voa62.cfm
http://geography.about.com/od/obtainpopulationdata/a/russiapop.htm
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=113490614
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/spending.htm

TERRIFIC Question (from/at alternet.org)

Will the Last Superpower Recognize In Time What We Must Do to Save the Planet?

By David Korten, YES! Magazine. Posted June 27, 2008.

In a time when the old order is shattering, a global movement is emerging to challenge the use of war as a tool of statecraft.

The Last Superpower and an Opportunity to End War
David Korten


Cheap oil provided an energy subsidy that defined the wars, economies, settlements, values, and lifestyles of the 20th century. The result was a century of wasteful extravagance and inefficiency that encouraged us to squander virtually all Earth's resources -- including water, land, forests, fisheries, soils, minerals, and natural waste recycling capacity. We are now waking up to the morning-after consequences of a brief but raucous party. These include depleted natural systems, unsustainable economies, an obsolete physical infrastructure, and a six-fold increase in the human population dependent on the diminished resources of a finite planet.

Cheap oil also fueled a zero sum global competition for access to resources -- particularly cheap oil -- and for the military superiority required to secure that access. The United States combined the global projection of military power with the global projection of economic and cultural power to achieve unchallenged global dominance as the sole reigning superpower.

Cheap oil is no more and the global projection of military and economic power it made possible is no longer viable. In May 2008 the price of oil hit a new high of $135 a barrel in contrast to the historic inflation adjusted price of $27.00. We are only beginning to awake as a nation to the reality that our reign as a global superpower is coming to an abrupt end. (See the summer 2008 issue of YES! Magazine.) If we hold to business as usual, we will exhaust what remains of our power and credibility in a bloody and violent no win-competition to consume the last tree, fish, drop of oil, drink of potable water, and breath of clean air -- sealing our own fate as well as that of our species.

A Defining Challenge

According to the scientific consensus, to avoid driving Earth's system of climate regulation into irrevocable collapse we humans must achieve at least an 80 percent reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050 and possibly sooner. Less noted is the corresponding imperative that to avoid irrevocable social collapse, we must simultaneously achieve an equitable allocation of allowable emissions to meet the essential needs of every person on the planet.
This presents a particular challenge for the United States. As the world's leading producer of green house gases, our emissions reduction must be closer to 90 percent.

There is no place in this equation for war or the global projection of military power. Beyond the fact that military planes, ships, and vehicles are gluttonous consumers of oil, the central activity of warfare is to kill and maim people and destroy critical infrastructure to impair capacity for normal life. The collateral damage includes massive scale toxic and radioactive environmental contamination that renders growing portions of our crowded planet uninhabitable. The more we humans war the more certain our ultimate collective demise.

The Last Superpower

The United States is well positioned to take the lead among nations in renouncing war as an instrument of national policy and dismantling the means of conducting war. We account for roughly half of world military expenditures and our military expenditures account for more than half of the U.S. federal discretionary budget to the neglect of major education, health, infrastructure, and environmental needs.

Yet the only military threat to our domestic security is from a handful of terrorists armed with box cutters and a willingness to die for their cause. We face a greater danger from our own children brandishing guns in our schools than from any opposing army. If a band of terrorists were to attack us with an atomic weapon, it would likely be delivered in a suitcase or packing crate. Such threats share in common the simple fact that even the mightiest military force in the world offers no protection. The solutions depend more on strengthening our families and communities, than on increasing military budgets.

Military science has long recognized that the use of conventional military force against an unconventional enemy that blends in with the civilian population is futile, even counterproductive, because the inevitable collateral damage fuels resentment and increases the numbers and commitment of the enemy. In the case of the United States, it drains our resources, divides us as a nation, weakens our moral standing in the world, and creates more unconventional enemies -- as our fruitless occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan currently demonstrates.

Getting Smart

The greatest threats to U.S. security come from weather chaos, oil dependence, disruption of food supplies, water scarcity, domestic gun violence, profligate borrowing, and a collapsing dollar -- threats increased by our current military security policies.

This is the moment for a pragmatic turn from military security to smart security. Among the potential starting points, two stand out as particularly promising. The first is a call by establishment insiders like George Shultz, who was U.S. Secretary of State under Ronald Reagan, to dismantle all the world's nuclear weapons (see Sarah van Gelder's interview with George Shultz).

The second is an emergent social movement calling all the world's parliaments to adopt the principles of Article 9 added to the Japanese Constitution following World War II. In the official translation it reads:

ARTICLE 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.(2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

Italy and Germany adopted similar, but less stringent, provisions following World War II. Each renounced war as a sovereign right.

A Global Movement

In May 1999, 6000 global citizens gathered in The Hague for what at that time was the largest peace conference in history and issued The Hague Appeal for Peace. Among other measures, they recommended, "every Parliament should adopt a resolution prohibiting their government from going to war, like the Japanese article number nine." On Japanese Constitution day, May 3, 2008, over 8,000 Japanese gathered in Tokyo for the Global Article Nine Conference to Abolish War where numerous international speakers endorsed a call to the parliaments of the world to adopt national equivalents of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution.

A Smart Security Policy for the United States

The experience of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates the folly of responding to terrorism with conventional military force and affirms the validity of Article 9. Public awareness of the costly failure of these misadventures has created a moment of opportunity for the U.S. peace movement to build popular political support for a Smart Security policy that renounces war as an instrument of foreign policy and sets forth a plan to:

Dismantle the obsolete machinery of war that is depleting our national treasure,
Convert our war economy of the past to a green economy of the future,
Mobilize our human and materials resources to address the real threats to our security, and
Work with the other nations of the world to do the same.

It is an opportunity to at once increase our security, improve the quality of our lives, and regain a position of principled global leadership.

A Just Foreign Policy, the Summer 2008 issue of YES! Magazine.

Find the original article at this link:
http://www.alternet.org/audits/89452/?page=entire