The David Herald
March 11, 2010
March 11, 2010
I read the news today, oh boy... Sitting today's headlines on the scales of Lady Liberty, I imagine warning buzzers and I see red flags, both kinds of red flags. One is a warning. I am stunned. And one offers a solution.
The first news piece tells me that over 300,000 homes are in foreclosure each month for nearly a year. (http://www.themoneytimes.com/featured/20100211/foreclosures-exceed-300000-11th-straight-month-id-10100126.html) “...With the modification program failing to rescue home owners... up 15 percent compared to the same period a year earlier... Nevada reported the highest number of foreclosures for the 37th consecutive month... one in 95 households received an auction notice...” The article concludes with statements that foreclosures may be on the rise.
In New York City alone there are nearly a record 40,000 homeless people.(http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-brosnahan/patersons-record-cut-duri_b_492240.html)
What is the cause of the poverty that is sweeping up the United States? Could it be bailouts and subsidies sent to Wall Street and mega-banks corporations or to the government itself? (http://readersupportednews.org/opinion/82-economy/1220-the-sham-recovery) The trend harmonizes with the legacy of resource extraction, ie harvesting all the forests, all the coal, all the gas, all the iron, all the copper, etc ad infinitum including the wealth of common property and workers’ incomes. I wonder how long can such corporate greed and injustice go on?
I imagine tremendous progress if American wealth was applied instead to the welfare of the citizenry. With a relatively substantial budget, perhaps one like the Pentagon, with corporate movers and shakers out of the way, I imagine a well-subsidized citizen-driven system of universal education, a well-subsidized system of health care, a thriving agricultural system and energy production heavy on solar power and local sustainability.
Today's headlines continue.
"With his decision to boost defense spending, President Obama is continuing the process... that began in late 1998 - fully three years before the 9/11 attacks on America. The FY 2011 budget marks a milestone, however: The inflation-adjusted rise in spending since 1998 will probably exceed 100 percent in real terms by the end of the fiscal year." (http://www.fpif.org/articles/the_pentagons_runaway_budget)
The article goes on to explain "...The rise in spending since 1998 is unprecedented over a 48-year period. In real percentage terms, it's as large as the Kennedy-Johnson surge (43 percent) and the Reagan increases (57 percent) combined... current spending is above the peak years of the Vietnam War era and the Reagan years... the Obama administration plans to spend more on the Pentagon over the next eight years than any administration since World War II... The most ready explanation is ...the War on Terrorism...... these activities presently claim less than 20 percent of the Pentagon's budget... Take today's wars out of the picture entirely and the rise since 1998 is still 54 percent in real terms."
Another news piece (http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2010/02/pentagons-black-budget-tops-56-billion/) explains how much money we're discussing. “The Defense Department just released its king-sized, $708 billion budget for the next fiscal year. Much of the proposed spending is fairly detailed... helicopters the Pentagon plans to buy... troops it plans on paying... about $56 billion goes simply to “classified programs,” or to projects known only by their code names... That’s the Pentagon’s black budget.”
Meanwhile the faltering economy fails to bail out critical public systems. Around the country schools and universities are in peril, in death throes, or already demolished.
Today's news features threatened teacher layoffs in Los Angeles.
(http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2009/01/scores-of-teach.html)
Another article tells us that school districts in Kansas City are facing bankruptcy. (http://www.nbcactionnews.com/news/local/story/KC-District-Faces-Bankruptcy-Without-Significant/2E5kE_ksvkOUwTbqCLTRyw.cspx?rss=764)
I think the education system is too important to fail, even more important than mega banks and government sized corporations that are deemed too big to fail. While corporations' prime responsibility is to make direct cash profit, public education is better suited for bailouts due to a higher call to public service. Bailout dollars can be found in the Pentagon budget and other inflated economies that support the corporate sector. We can see that teacher layoffs are life-saving efforts by the school districts themselves. Why should they go through this?
I believe we might find some answers with a peek back into history.
(http://iws.ccccd.edu/kwilkison/online1302home/20th%20century/depressionnewdeal.html) Sadly, instead of learning from history and devising better answers we see that history is in a repetitive loop.
Does this sound familiar? “The ever-growing price for stocks was... the result of greater wealth concentration within the investor class... Wall Street began... a dangerous aura of invincibility, leading investors to ignore less optimistic indicators in the economy... speculating in stocks further inflated their prices... the illusion of a robust economy... In October 1929... the house of cards collapsed in the greatest market crash seen up to that time.”
President Hoover offered up a failed trickle-down bailout to the citizenry via Wall Street. So FDR was elected and the era of New Deals began. The Works Project Administration, the WPA, began as did Social Security. Unions were stabilized. Huey Long proposed a guaranteed household income for each American family. World War II provided jobs and propped up the economy. Veterans returned to benefits that enabled education, housing and more. This history gives us a model that can be sharpened for effectiveness today. I think we can do without the warfare. In the '30's democratic socialists powered reform. But this populist voice was subdued and Wall Street returned to power. Trends turned to give us the experiences of the past half century.
It's a simple democratic principle that government is in place to serve the citizenry. Corporations on the other hand should be organized for public service but, as they are, are self-serving. Sadly, much of their profit-making is more than innocent marketing. The citizenry is repeatedly burdened by overzealous destruction of resources that is accomplished with threats, lies and posturing. The expenses, often including life-and-death health issues, are shouldered by communities and future generations, injustice that is shrouded in the rhetoric of externalities.
Yes, I could go on, I'm not done yet. I think I'll go outside to spit. Anyone care to join me?
-David Harold Hopkins
