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Tax Day in America: A People Without a Vision Will Perish
How does it feel to know that nearly 60% of your tax dollars this year will pay for our present and future wars, not for your family’s or communities’ needs?
Our nation is in trouble, and the diagnosis is as old as the Bible, which warns that “A people without a vision will perish”. Our nation has lost its way, and its people are in trouble. People continue to lose their jobs, services, and economic security, while we spend ever greater sums in the disastrous pursuit of global military supremacy.
Consider: the combined debt of our fifty states is $140 billion. That’s a lot of money, about what we spend annually for the self-defeating “wars of choice” in Afghanistan, Iraq and now Libya. They will likely have cost $3 trillion by the time our grandchildren finish paying for them.
Our nation spends roughly as much for war and war preparations as the rest of the world combined. Does that buy real security? Our people suffer the highest infant mortality rate of any industrialized developed nation, and infant morality is a key indicator of a nation’s societal and future economic health. We’ve suffered a tsunami of housing foreclosures, and we have yet to find our way out of the “jobless recovery” from the country’s greatest economic crisis since the Great Depression.
What about the cost health care and human services? That’s just 7% of the Federal government’s discretionary spending. Education: what our children need to find jobs and a critical foundation of any democracy? That’s just 6%, and unlike other “developed” nations, most of our graduates begin adulthood with staggering debt from their college loans.
Between tax cuts for the rich and continuing increases in military spending, our communities have been set on the path of de-development, with catastrophic consequences. With the national cuts in block cuts and other spending reductions mean that in the world’s richest nation, we must suffer cuts in health care and programs for the elderly and disabled. Education is increasingly essential, but head start is being reduced, teachers are being laid off by the thousands, class sizes growing, and Pell Grant loans that working and middle class students need for college are withering. Police and fire fighters are losing their jobs, while job training programs are cut.
The budget surplus that President Bush the Lesser inherited from President Clinton didn’t evaporate magically. It was mugged in the back alleys and dark corners of the White House, Congress the Pentagon and K Street. Bush’s tax write off for the super rich, extended by the last lame duck Congressional session, took $2.5 trillion from our communities. $2.5 trillion! That’s quite enough to ensure decent housing and health care for all, to educate our children, to build the infrastructure fueled by sustainable energy that our nation needs to be competitive in the 21st century, and to be paying down the national debt.
The Pentagon’s budget, far and away the world’s largest a decade ago, has doubled since 9-11. Meanwhile our people enjoy less real security. Despite President Obama’s pledge to work for a nuclear weapons free world, $185 billion has been committed to modernize the country’s preparations for nuclear war. Plans are afoot to replace our fleets of Trident nuclear submarines and nuclear bombers. Two decades after the Cold War, we still spend more than $100 billion a year to deploy hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops around the world on an estimated 1,000 foreign military bases, including more than 100 across Japan and more than twice that number in Europe.
When your only tool is a hammer, every problem is a nail. Instead of seeking diplomatic or nonviolent solutions to the Libyan crisis, for example urging our Turkish allies to mediate the crisis or urging the Pope, the heads of the Councils of Churches and other renowned religious leaders to serve as human shields, we launched hundreds of cruise missiles and B-2 bomber attacks in yet another unnecessary and very uncertain “war of choice.”
Fifty years ago, outgoing Republican President Dwight Eisenhower warned that the “subversive tentacles” of the “military industrial complex” created to fight two world wars were undermining U.S. democracy. A half century later they are undermining our real security as well.
As anyone who has traveled or lived in Western Europe knows, by cutting our military spending we can enjoy a higher and more secure standard of living. It’s time to refocus our vision and to reorder our priorities.
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39 Comments so far
Show All"Fall of the Roman Empire"
http://www.rome.info/history/empire/fall/
There were several reasons for the fall of the Roman Empire. Each one intertweaved with the other. Many even blame the initiation of Christianity for the decline. Christianity made many Roman citizens into pacifists, making it more difficult to defend against the barbarian attackers. Also money used to build churches could have been used to maintain the Roman empire.
Decline in Morals and Values
Public Health
Political Corruption
Unemployment
Inflation
Urban decay
Inferior Technology
Military Spending
Out of the above, which one is the US missing again?
What do you specifically mean by the first two?
Decline in Morals and Values- who's morals, who's values
Public Health- the abysmal state of the "insurance industry", fat people? What?
Thanks
I'll attempt to answer sLiMsHaDy; The nation's collective morals and values are in very poor shape, from the top on down. There are many moral individuals still in the USA, but the morality of our government, institutions, and corporations is increasingly suspect. Our values and morality are also very confused, with certain issues set-up as moral tests, the 'passing' of which actually shows how very immoral many of these positions actually are. The USA is morally rotten, to the core, despite the fact that many Americans remain generally 'moral'.
Public Health; I'm not sure what you are saying here, but our public health is detioriating at a record pace. Our food is contaminated, we are drugged into numbness and submission, diabetes and ADHD are epidemic (largely due to our diets), 40+million of us have little access to good/preventative health care (it's likely more of us). Need I say more?
Yes, thank you. Your definitions flesh it our very well.
"The budget surplus that President Bush the Lesser inherited from President Clinton didn’t evaporate magically."
The budget surplus Democrats are always bragging about came about as a result of the Silicon Valley boom and the Housing boom. It was a chimera. We are seeing now what happens when an inflated economy comes down to Earth. If the author imagines Clinton was a great savior of the middle class and the poor--and that Bush was just the opposite--he is grossly mistaken. Both men saw to it that working Americans were flushed down the toilet. Clinton with NAFTA, deregulation, and his government downsizing and Bush with his tax cuts. If we are going to have a discussion, let's start with that.
Tell this to GE! They call the shots in this country.
Not just them, but they're part of the Committee to Subvert the Country and Grab All the Money.
I like to analogize the powers behind the curtain pulling the strings as the 5 families of the corporate/bankster mafia.
1. Banksters/Insurance/legal/RE
2. MIC
3. BigOil
4. BigAg (ADM, Cargill, Monsanto, Con-Agra et al.)
5. BigPharma/Chem
"Give me control of a nation's money and I care not who makes her laws."
Mayer Amschel Rothschild
We can argue which "family" is most powerful, but it ought to be crystal clear that these are the puppet-masters and the politicians are merely paid whores and shills.
Everyone should pull all their fiat paper money out of the Banks (we aint gettin any interest anyway) and buy just one silver eagle or maple leaf silver coin. That would crash the banksters and force an overhaul of the financial system. At the same time a nation-wide peaceful general strike and protest would be the most effective means to force the Oligarchy to pay attention.
Don't forget number 6 on the list. The Prison/Industrial Complex and the War on Drugs.
If the bankers were in trouble, the government would just bail them out again. They can afford money for education, roads and bridges, social programs----but hell who knows but that the bankers might need the money down the road?
I would bet they are as reckless now as they were before the last bailout. We don't count. Not until we TAKE what is, after all, ours anyway.
My reply is not original but it is real:
John Lennon Revolution Lyrics:
You say you want a revolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
You tell me that it's evolution
Well, you know
We all want to change the world
But when you talk
about destruction
Don't you know that you
can count me out?
Don't you know it's gonna be
Alright?
Alright?
Alright?
You say you've got a real solution
Well, you know
We'd all love to see the plan
You ask me for a contribution
Well, you know
We are doing what we can
But if you want money
for people with minds
[ Find more Lyrics on http://mp3lyrics.org/1BOa ]
that hate
All I can tell is,
brother, you'll have
to wait
Don't you know it's gonna be
Alright?
Alright?
Alright?
You say you'll change
the constitution
Well, you know
We all want to change your head
You tell me it's the institution
Well, you know
You'd better free
your mind instead
But if you go carrying
pictures of Chairman
Mao
You ain't gonna make it
with anyone anyhow
Don't you know it's gonna be
Alright?
Alright?
Alright?
Alright?
Alright?
Alright?
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolution_%28song%29
----------------------------
"Revolution" was inspired by political protests in early 1968. Lennon's lyrics expressed doubt about some of the tactics. When the single version was released in August, the political left viewed it as betraying their cause. The release of the album version in November indicated Lennon's uncertainty about destructive change, with the phrase "count me out" modified to "count me out, in".
----------------------------
What are you trying to say? That you're against violent protest? That it doesn't matter what's going on in the world because it's "gonna be alright"?
The line about carrying around Mao's Little Red Book is what resonated with me at the time.I've always despised rigid, lock-step ideology of any stripe, left or right-and I was amazed that his ideology could gain any traction at all in leftist circles in the US. There are probably a few Maoists out there yet: maybe one will show up on CD and denounce me for my petty bourgeois capitalist lickspittle running dog ways.
Since the plutocracy now skims so much money out of the U.S. military empire, it is hard to see how that cycle will be broken. Better to sacrifice education, infrastructure, the Middle Class-- anything but that immense terminal feeding frenzy.
Not sure that Rome is the ideal analogy since it was quite remarkable in its staying power despite corruption, militarism, insane leadership, Christianization, etc. People forget that the Eastern Roman Empire at Byzantium lingered on for another 1000 years until finished off by the Turks: the Seljuk Turks gobbled up most of Anatolia, and he Ottoman Turks delivered the coup de grace when they seized Constantinople in 1453.
Historian Kevin Phillips delves into the parallels of the U.S. with the Spanish, Dutch & British Empires -- and their respective collapses from their high water marks in a series of books.
http://hellenicbookclub.blogspot.com/2010/03/american-theocracy-by-kevin-phillips.html
http://www.salon.com/technology/how_the_world_works/2008/04/14/kevin_phillips_bad_money
Historian Paul Kennedy has also written succinctly on the way that military empires tend to corrupt and hollow out great nations in his book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,966718,00.html
http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/12/06/specials/kennedy-powers.html
Neither of these historians are radicals or even progressives. Kennedy extols the virtues of 'free market' capitalism and Phillips comes with a noteworthy conservative political heritage. They can hardly be accused of harboring 'anti-American leftist' views although both share some of the identical concerns troubling writers such as Dr. Gerson.
The words "immense terminal feeding frenzy" seems to be a very apt description of the state of military things right now.
The "immense terminal feeding frenzy" lasted quite a while for the Spanish Empire. In fact, they were in a state of decline for roughly 300 years (with time out for a resurgence in the second half of the eighteenth century). You could say, in fact, that most of Spain's imperial history was one of decline.Hopefully, things will move more swiftly here, and we will go 'poof' like the Soviet Empire in a short time-soon. Still, I wouldn't bet on it. A more likely outcome would be a US with vastly diminished international clout, yet still an important country, with a very large economy: a second, or third-among equals. Ha.
"estimated 1,000 foreign military bases, including more than 100 across Japan a"
The correct term is "bases and facilities". Looks like the report the "100 bases in Japan" includes communication facilities and all sorts of "annexes" that cannot be really called bases.
The 1000 base myth has been started a while ago and the number includes all US Embassies that have a contingent of Marines assigned to to protect them.
Anyway, the man has a point. Cut all military spending to zero then there's only about 200 billion left to cut to balance the budget.
Chalmers Johnson wrote a book, "The Sorrows of Empire," which was published a few years ago, that tallied more than 735 U.S. military bases around the world. He was only counting the known bases, not the secret ones. I'm not sure where the 1,000-base figure comes from, but it doesn't seem too exaggerated to me.
"As anyone who has traveled or lived in Western Europe knows, by cutting our military spending we can enjoy a higher and more secure standard of living. It’s time to refocus our vision and to reorder our priorities."
While Gerson's heart is in the right place, he is dishonest in his characterization of Europe with respect to its own national security and who paid for the vast majority of it throughout and beyond the decades of the Cold War.
The reason many European countries were able to build and maintain such comfortable welfare States was because the U.S. tax-payer was paying for the vast majority of Europe's Cold War defense umbrella, maintaining large permanent bases, expensive weapons systems and armed forces in Europe to this day. The European countries and peoples who benefitted from this largess were quite content to let the U.S. and its taxpayers do the heavy defense budget lifting for 50 years.
This situation has gradually changed since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, but the U.S. still spends huge sums on EU defense.
The entire world needs to be less militaristic and to spend far less on military forces and systems if human civilization is to survive global degeneration of the biosphere coupled to massive over-population.
America's subsidizes the defense of others. . . I love that myth.
Yep. It is the opiate of the masses. Repeat it enough and the people who do so never have to admit their stupidity and the great con foisted upon them.
The Brits and the French each had enough nukes-and the capacity to deliver them-in the glory days of the American Imperium in Europe-the fifties and sixties, and could have handled a Soviet attack on their own. They had the ability to blow up Moscow and Leningrad, and the Soviets had the ability to destroy London and Paris. Result: checkmate, with or without the American "umbrella". The US remained in Europe as an occupying power. The Brits and the French did not have the ability to both defend themselves ,and project power throughout Europe and the Med-which is why the Americans were there in the first place. Last European attempt to project power American style was the 1956 invasion of Suez-which was shut down by the Americans. History abounds in ironies.
Thank you so much for calling the thing what it is.
"A People Without a Vision Will Perish"
Is the people's vision the same as the oligarchy's?
"Our nation spends roughly as much for war and war preparations as the rest of the world combined."
And even that's an understatement. The rest of the world's war/military spending is chiefly motivated by the global threat of US imperialism.
The military industrial complex is a fear based industry. Fear has been with us from the beginning. It's helps keep us alive. Like hunger or the sex drive it cannot be ignored. The question has always been the same. How do the nonviolent protect themselves from the violent? Civilization is the nonviolent in control of the violent. The human race is not civilized. We need a leader to show us the way. It will be a long time coming. As a race we are very immature and fearful.
So WHY do you all keep paying this blood money to the cabal in the form of taxes knowing full well you are supporting the continuation of everything you decry? If everyone were to just STOP paying this illegal tribute to Caesar, it would all fall apart, a very good thing indeed. Take away their ability to enslave you, stop being afraid, stand up and say no more, I AM Sovereign! Stop paying income tax, that is really the bottom line, but how many have the courage to take that step? Much easier to complain about the situation, but mail that envelope anyway. They have got you cowed and sniveling in a corner, but only if you let them scare you into compliance.
It is the forced contributions, income taxes, for the Pentagon protection racket scheme of; fund US, the Pentagon, for protection or else. The purpose of the Pentagon is to protect the worldwide assets of the INTERNATIONAL CORPORATISTS WEALTHY PREDATORY CAPITALIST WELFARE KINGS many of which pay no taxes.No protection with taxation.
The IRS is the goon squad for the Federal Reserve, an illegal private corporation that engineered the take down of the economy, they are criminals and you still send them your hard-earned and dwindling dollars. Why do you give them the power to fleece you? Sheeple, indeed!
Everyone who signs a tax return is complicit in all the wars, the economic downfall, the poverty and hunger, and everything else the corporate elite bankrolls.
America is a hell of a country in which to take a vow of poverty.I suspect there are millions of taxpayers who under-report income, report income as capital gains, or otherwise tweak their taxes-or contrive to pay as much of their taxes as they can locally. You need a certain amount of financial sophistication and some cajones to do this.
I suspect you're pissing straight into the wind, Dr Gerson, if you think America as a whole is going to 'refocus vision and re-order priorities ' anytime soon, or ever. I fully expect that the United States will have to be brought to its knees very literally, or completely destroyed, before there'll be the kind of smartening up to refocus and re-order. You are after all, talking about a country in which, on a mass level, there's apparently only focus on penis size and re-ordering of sufficient quantities of weapons, soldiers and ammo to keep up the incessant U.S. terrorizing of the rest of the world and the domestic front.
With the kind of insanely obscene military and military-spending pornography going on, what can you say about a country in which the exposure of Janet Jackson's nipple gets national outraged headlines while an imbecilic criminal illegally in the White House is illegally catapulting the country into an illegal war to enrich his buddies without it being protested in the streets on a significant level; and in which hundreds opf thousands will practically stampede each other on interstate highways to get to football games, but peace demonstrations and anti-war rallies are treated as a threat to national security, and the small numbers that did show up outside the White House last Dec. 16 were promptly hauled off to jail?
Judging by what's presently going on with Obushma and these goddamned evil right-wing pieces of shit in Maine, Wisconsin, Washington and pretty much everywhere else, the people WILL perish, because (a) they are being murdered literally, economically, politically, figuratively - you name it - by the hypermasculinized, hypermilitarized tumor that grows like the Andromeda Strain in a country afraid of all the wrong things and in love with all the wrong things and demonizing all the wrong things; and (b) with notable and acknowledged exceptions, on an individual and on a group basis, they're too goddamned ignorant, apathetic, poortly educated, fat, sick, lazy, mind-controlled and xenophobic to get off their asses, wake the fuck up and put their considerable potential muscle behind therest of us who actually know what must be done. But for this, they must throw away their cherished comic books and their Captain Fucking America mentality and be prepared to fight, with blood if necessary, for the absolute essentials: a DOWN-SIZED, DOWN-FUNDED MILITARY, SOCIALIZED HEALTHCARE AND SOCIALIZED EDUCATION.
Anything less and you can bloody well get used to the people perishing in large numbers, as they're already doing - world's worst infant mortality rate, as only one example - and the death of your country.
Of course, all of this does not hinge on the likes of Obama getting on the right side of history all of a sudden. FORGHET THAT PUPPET - HE'S A LOST CAUSE. And forget that other vicious pus-filled infection known as the Republicans or the tea party. There's a special place in hell reserved for that mob. Only the masses getting their heads out of their arses will have a prayer of changing the tide - and chances are that as soon as a movement gets to any size, some Jesus-Industrial-Complex representative will weasel in there again and fuck it up.
50 WISCONSINS, RIGHT NOW, EACH ONE PREPARED TO LET IT GET VIOLENT IF NECESSARY, THOUGH IT IS HOPED THAT IT WON'T COME TO THAT. BUT IF IT DOES, DEAL WITH IT
All true. South Africa, The British in India, Those in power will not give in as long as they see any possibility at all that they can hold on to their illegitimate power.
And it IS illegitimate. Those who bailed out the banks, perpetuate the wars, refuse to help even the most needy here at home----they are NOT getting their "powers from the just consent of the governed".
This government has become as illegal as the one in Libya. We don't live in a democracy. Why try to bring democracy to Libya when it is dying here at home?
Prov 29:18 JFK
Why do the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing?---Psalms
The super rich will take care of us once they own everything, right?....right?
The issue as I see it is the great concentration of power in the very few. The bottom line is that the top 1% do not have enough wisdom, knowledge, or creativity to wield that power in a way that is good for the human race. The power needs to be spread out amongst everyone, and everyone needs to take responsibility for it.
Currently we have large corporations that have large amounts of power and take care of a great many of peoples needs. People have become "lazy" and let these corporations dictate and teach to them terms and in return the people don't have to take responsibility for the logistics of getting things done. Heck, we don't even have to interact with the other people in our communities anymore as all of our food and goods are trucked in from long distances by some large corporation. All we have to do is shop.
I believe there are many smart and creative people who could contribute much to the problems our world faces, yet instead of trying to mine for this creativity, we manipulate each other and horde resources and ideas. I am a fan of Open Source as it has demonstrated that when you open technology to the eyes of the many, it can become more robust and secure. I believe now that people's biggest threat is that hording and secrecy of information. These top 1% act worse than 3 year olds that won't share their toys. We live in a world with so much abundance and technology yet more and more of us have to work more, not less, to get by. (Not that we need a lot of the crap we buy anyway)
While the efforts of the top 1% to spread empire and manipulate others with misinformation will continue, I believe there are other options for those of us that can see the writing on the wall. If there were enough people to gain solidarity we could share resources, ideas, technology, act as communities, interact with each other, take responsibility for our own needs, and avoid using the large corporate system.
We live to work to pay taxes to finance endless wars and protect our rich from the burden of paying taxes. That's all that America is today.