I Cogitate
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Guns, Tax Cuts, No Butter - oh my!
This gist of the following will probably be lost or, at best, dissed by individuals who favor the invasion of Iraq and submit to absolutely no qualms about it but I ask that those fitting such a description at least finish what is written here and ponder what is contained before reacting.
The title of this blog entry comes from one of the questions asked during the Vietnam War--that being how to simultaneously afford an expensive military campaign and an extensive array of social services without encountering enormous deficit spending.
And President Bush has thrown the equation an additional factor with his agenda of tax cuts.
According to the latest analysis from the authoritative Jane's Defense Industry, the United States will spend as much of its budget on defense costs as the rest of the world combined next year!
Some call it a rightwing implementation (conspiracy for those so enthused) to 'starve' government spending on 'programs and services' so as to reduce or eliminate such due to lack of funding availability. But before blithely dismissing such talk, answer this: what other President has cut taxes during an obviously expensive war (on terrorism) that has no expiration date? World War II last 4 years--this current campaign is open-ended. What other President asked no sacrifices be made by the American public during conflict?
Regardless of the political damage, isn't it more important to the country that President Bush stand tall and tell the American public that the homefront is going to get threadbare, and why, in exchange for his efforts to make the United States safer? Better yet, shouldn't President Bush offer the American public a stark choice--restore the tax cuts in order to adequately fund roads, schools and the such. Isn't it disingenuous to offer a financial rebate, fund a war and not address our decaying infrastructure, especially in a time of greater economic competition? A long term vision for America may not be the most politically viable path but what is most moral: doing what is best for President Bush'sshort term political prospects or what is best for this country?
Consider this excerpt from an article by Dan Harper from the Santa Cruz Sentinel (amazingly, a former community college instructor of mine):
April 24, 2005top
Santa Cruz Sentinel
Dan Harper - "The Demise of America"
"My wife and I drove over the hill on Highway 17 last week, and near Los Gatos, on a curve, we came across a young bicyclist waving frantically, urging us to pull over. We were in the fast lane with heavy traffic so I couldn’t pull over. Beyond the arm-waving cyclist we could see a couple of women bloodied, limping and needing help.
Alice got on our cell phone and dialed 911 while I continued to drive. There was no friendly operator. Nothing. A few minutes later she got a recorded message saying that all operators were busy. She waited and called again. There was no answer. We called repeatedly until we got to Palo Alto, our destination. No 911 operator ever came to our assistance.
We had to hope some other driver, who came upon the accident, had better luck with his cell phone. But the 911 emergency services were no help to us. We had never called in an accident before, but this encounter made us wonder if the system worked.
The truth is that many of our public services have broken down or they are underfunded. The closing of three of the Salinas public libraries because of chronic budgetary problems is an example. Most of us believe in the power of reading and the importance of Andrew Carnegie’s vision of free public libraries. But proper funding for libraries everywhere has been systematically starved.
And our schools are badly underfunded. Our grandson’s Aptos grade school is one of the best in the county, but it must stage dinners, sell T-shirts and hawk cookies and popcorn after school just to get by...
...The National Priorities Project has broken down the cost of the Iraqi war for individual communities in America. According to NPP calculations, Santa Cruz County has had to give up 613 Santa Cruz teachers for one year because of this war. Incidentally, according to them, the money spent on the war would fully fund a global anti-hunger program for six years. Increasingly we are a broken down society supporting a first-class army..."
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