Flap,

I wish I could say something hopeful or encouraging,

but I am at a loss!

I agree the world is spinning out of control,

all of it on the back of the almighty dollar!

I am one of those aging hippies,

that used to think we could change it all,

 but I don't see this in any generations since.

I think they feel they really have no power!!

 

The fact is many of the young people in this country

are backing Bush,

just in the off chance they will somehow come out ahead

on the social security issue.( which I will rant about soon)

or for some unknown reason to me.....

Young Republicans,

buying into the ladder climbing status quo,

 of the wannabes and ladder makers.

 

I am at a loss............

 

Your not alone, many Americans are only one paycheck

 from kissin the sidewalk!!

and they voted for

Bush because of his stance on Gay Marriage

( like he can do anything about this issue anyway.was just sheer politics)

and they bought the Shit!!!

Ex

FlapJ  -- I can't diagree with much of your perspectives but its old old news to me (not to minimize it!)..The History of Mankind has been drenched in blood, power struggles (tribal),misinformation, greed & self-centredness(sp?)..We can see back to our earliest times --way back in the supposed "Garden of Eden", where man/woman had anything their hearts desire --but what did they do? They chose to do the one & only thing they were not supposed to do---THIS is the NATURE of MAN--never satisfied, even in paradise..& even though mankind has progressed beyond our wildest imagination when it comes to Science, Technology etc --Man has almost made no progress Spiritually or ethically....Yes, African Americans have more rights & women have made progress--but on a fundamental level of Human Empathy in action & not just in word, I see a very SELFISH world that is behaving unbelievably short-sighted---The enemy today is not really Communism, Nazism, Islamists, America, North Korea etc--The TRUE enemy is BIG BUSINESS & its special interest groups & lobbies--These are the people (& we're ALL responsible) that allow Africa to starve as they die of AIDS & ethnic cleansing--that need the Middle East to be in constant turmoil--that won't help their own people (even Americans) with Medical Insurance, education, drug abuse,jobs, BECAUSE there's nothing (no money) in helping the above people & situations...They need us for only one reason--to be CONSUMERS.....But you know what? I'm not gonna let it ruin my day--I take care of my own family & friends & my own backyard FIRST & then I try my best to help others...I'm not gonna give the bastard Big Busness assholes the pleasure of grovling to their tunes & I'm not gonna let them force me into a cave like a hermit----KNOWLEDGE is the answer to all of mankinds problems--whether they be Addiction, pollution. racism, starvation, unemployment etc--ONLY "Knowledge" can cure our ignorence---& ignorence is the cause of Racism, pollution etc---So I try to continue to learn about  people & the world & above ALL--Don't lose your sense of humour (which includes the ability to laugh at ones self....)

                         Indigo

Agree that the big corporations are the ones who are truly running things and who have only one goal- to obtain more money and more power.  And they're awfully good at it, and it's awfully scary.

 

Saw Hotel Rwanda and while I've worked in that country (prior to the war) and understood what happened there, seeing the movie shocked me into thinking how could we (the world) stand by and let that happen.  Cambodia, Darfur, how many other places?

 

After WWII people said never again but it's happened over and over again and when it happens in places that have no "strategic" value, no one really gives a shit.  Just a lot of heart-rending after the fact.  Working in the refugee camps in Darfur last fall brought it all home again, no one has a human interest to stop these things from happening.  And I don't understand why not.  It's a stain on all of humanity to allow these tragedies to occur and occur again and again.

 

Every year millions of babies die from diseases that are so easily treatable, millions more are being infected with HIV, the list goes on and on.  Over the last 10 years the situation of child survival in developing countries has actually got worse- fewer children are being immunized, fewer who get sick are being treated, child mortality rates are rising.

 

Most people think we (the US) spend too much money to help the rest of the world when we have so many problems here at home.  A recent survey showed that most Americans believe we spend about 10 percent of our GDP on helping other countries when it's actually less than .1 percent.  The amount we spend is miniscule.  Granted, it's more than other countries do in terms of dollars (except Japan), but in terms of percentage of GDP we rank behind 10 - 12 other countries.

 

Read an interesting article yesterday about HIV/AIDS in Uganda, where I worked in the late 80s early 90s.  Uganda's been touted as Africa's great success.  And it turns out that the reason HIV has declined there is because most of the people infected have died!  The Bush policy of abstinence, behavior, and condoms (so-called ABC program) has proven a dismal failure.  Behavior has barely changed at all, the number of people abstaining has decreased, the avg. no. of sexual partners has increased, the only part of the equation that's working is condoms.  Yet groups that receive fund to work in these countries are not allowed to emphasize condom use- in the belief that it promotes under-age sex, sex outside of marriage, etc.

 

Same argument that's used in schools in the US when dealing with sex education.  Don't talk about birth control cuz it will only lead to increased sex among youth.  Yet every study contradicts this.  Just one more example of this administration's willingness to overlook science and cling to it's narrow ideology.

 

Well, sorry for the rant, but on the other hand, it's great to have a place to rant!

 

Marco

God thats horrible Marco..about HIV AIDs in Uganda.  And babies mortality.

What can I do?  Besides pray and give $?

luv,

sue

Sue praying and donating money (if you can afford it) is about it- but you need to be very careful about who you donate to.  There are lots of scam artists out there as well as many well-intentioned groups that just don't use money very wisely.  Just last week a group was judged not competent to run a program for HIV/AIDS by a government committee that evaluates these things and decides who gets funding for these programs.  Bush and/or his advisors intervened and directed that the funding be given to this particular group anyway- cuz they follow his model (which doesn't work) not to mention that they have very close ties to the Bush family.  This is public  and common knowledge among those who work in the field; it was written up in the Washington Post- it's not some far out conspiracy theory or Bush bashing without facts.

 

Just wanted to add to my prior rant that Bill Gates foundation alone gives more than the US gov't to HIV/AIDS and to child survival and uses it far more efficiently than the gov't does.

 

And Claude, I do agree that we need to take care of all the problems we have in this country- poverty, lack of education, racism, addiction, the list of social ills goes on and on, but IMO it's not an either/or proposition.  If just a tiny percentage of what we spend on the military were directed toward this country's ills as well as those of people in developing countries, we could make lots of progress.

 

The problem is that it's the powerless, voiceless people whether in the US or in other countries that are affected the most.  And other than mouthing some platitudes and spending (relatively) small amounts of money for the problems both here and in poor countries, no one really cares enough to do what needs to be done.  I do believe that if our gov't cared we could solve most of this countries problems and bring a decent standard of living to a good part of the world- not overnight, but with a concerted effort it could happen.  But it doesn't benefit those who make the decisions and so nothing (or very little) gets done.

 

Marco

So this is how the pie is cut up..or is it?

 

 

The pie chart below is the government view of the budget. This is a distortion of how our income tax dollars are spent because it includes Trust Funds (e.g., Social Security), and the expenses of past military spending are not distinguished from nonmilitary spending. For a more accurate representation of how your Federal income tax dollar is really spent, see the chart  below this one.

 

 

 

Real way the pie is divided:

 

 

34%Human Resources

18% Past Military

30% Current Military

12% General government

6% Physical Resources

Top Pentagon Contractors (billions of dollars)
rank 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10	company Lockheed Martin Corp. Boeing Company Northrop Grumman Corp. General Dynamics Corp. Raytheon Company Halliburton Company United Technologies Corp. Science Applications Int. Corp. Computer Sciences Corp. Humana Inc	2004 contracts 20.7 17.1 11.9 9.6 8.5 8.0 5.1 2.5 2.4 2.4	2001 contracts 14.7 13.3 5.2 4.9 5.6 0.4 3.8 1.7 0.8 0.4

 

HOW THESE FIGURES WERE DETERMINED

hese figures are from a line-by-line analysis of detailed tables in the “Analytical Perspectives�?book of the Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2006. The percentages are federal funds, which do not include trust funds �?such as Social Security �?that are raised and spent separately from income taxes. What you pay (or don’t pay) by April 15, 2005, goes to the federal funds portion of the budget. The government practice of combining trust and federal funds began in the 1960s during the Vietnam War, thus making the human needs portion of the budget seem larger and the military portion smaller.

“Current military�?includes Dept. of Defense ($427 billion), the military portion from other departments ($106 billion), anticipated “supplemental allowance�?($25 billion), and an unbudgetted estimate of supplemental appropriations ($85 billion). “Past military�?represents veterans�?benefits plus 80% of the interest on the debt. Analysts differ on how much of the debt stems from the military; other groups estimate 50% to 60%. We use 80% because we believe if there had been no military spending most (if not all) of the national debt would have been eliminated. For further explanation, see box at bottom of this page.

Continued:

http://www.warresisters.org/piechart.htm

 

Hey Sha- interesting look at the budget, but IMO it's distorted in it's own way.  I don't think it's fair to use Human Resources as one category- I'm assuming HR is total spending on salaries of people working for the gov't plus benefits.  Does the HR include HR of people in the military, those working in medicare and medicade programs?  If not then those should be separated out of those expenses.  Or if HR in the chart does include military, medicare, medicade salaries and benefits then it's still distorting the true cost of those programs by underestimating them.

 

To me, the chart is comparing apples and oranges- human resources are a substantial part of all gov't programs and depending on how it's calculated could include salaries and benefits of contractors as well.

 

So the chart is comparing programs (military, medicare, medicade) with things that aren't programs- IMO it doesn't give a clear picture.  IMO you need to look at how much is spend on each program and compare those, OR break it down to areas like HR, capital expenses, and comparable categories.

 

One last comment- I noted above the small percentage that is spent on foreign aid (less than 1 percent).  The bigger secret is that virtually all of that (about 80 percent) is spent on US human resources and companies.  For example- the companies I worked for got much of their money from the US foreign aid budget.  That money, which is designated as foreign aid paid my and thousands of others salaries, we were required to fly on US-based airlines so the money stayed in the US and were supposed to stay in US owned hotels where possible. 

 

So, as a specific example, a project I worked on had a budget of $20 million, but less than $1 million of that actually went to people or organizations overseas.  Most of it went into our salaries and benefits, the airfare we paid to American owned airlines and American owned hotels.  So even the tiny portion of the budget called "foreign aid" for the most part stays in the US.

 

Marco