| Friends,
Yesterday, TomDispatch.com ran the following piece featuring NPP's numbers. This prompted an interview on Democracy Now! this morning. Watch the interview at http://www.democracynow.org/2009/10/21/cashing_in_the_war_dividend_as.
Earlier in the week, Yes! Magazine also posted an article: http://www.yesmagazine.org/peace/8-years-of-war-and-what-do-we-get.
Be well,
Jo
***
From TomDispatch, it's not just Goldman Sachs cashing in its chips while so many Americans are in trouble, the USS War Dividend is also leaving the harbor with the Pentagon aboard: Jo Comerford, "Cashing in the War Dividend, The Joys of Perpetual War" http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175129
Jo Comerford, a TomDispatch newcomer and the executive director of the numbers-crunching National Priorities Project in Washington, offers a dizzying tour of Pentagon good times in our bad times. She begins her first TD post this way: "So you thought the Pentagon was already big enough? Well, what do you know, especially with the price of the American military slated to grow by at least 25% over the next decade?" If the Pentagon's wishes are granted -- and they usually are -- we're talking about another $133.1 billion added to the Pentagon budget over the next ten years, and that's just for the baseline defense budget, not counting the billions in war-fighting extras that we know will also be there.
Twenty-five percent? What else is growing at that rate in our society? Not much. In her short, staggering, sardonic piece, Comerford lays out in easy-to-grasp numbers just what the good times mean in Pentagon terms -- and what the bad times mean for us. In doing so, she offers a striking challenge to the priorities Americans consider key at the moment.
To give but an example, the $915.1 billion spent so far on the Iraq and Afghan Wars could theoretically translate into "the annual salaries of 15 million teachers or 20 million police officers or for 171 million Pell Grants of approximately $5,350 each for use by American college and university students."
Comerford concludes: "So let's break a bottle of champagne -- or, if the money comes out of a state budget, Coke -- on the bow of the USS War Dividend! And send it off on its next voyage without an iceberg in sight. Let the corks pop. Let the bubbly drown out that Harvard University report indicating that 45,000 deaths last year were due to a lack of health insurance."
I hope this one amuses you and gives you chills at the same time.
Warm regards,
Tom (Engelhardt)
TomDispatch.com
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