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War, what is it good for?

  • Posted on January 22, 2011 at 1:01 am

So, I’m looking around on the internet just reading tonight and I noticed Keith Olberman is out. I don’t really care about Keith, so I read on and look for news on the wars.  I never hear much any more about either war, even though there is constant turmoil in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  It all seems pretty much null and void in the minds of the American people.  I sometimes wonder if I am the only person that thinks spending all of this money to blow up a couple of countries is insane!  I came across this site which seems interesting.   http://armscontrolcenter.org/

According to this site, here is the defense budget for 2011 and it does match up with what I have found on the Whitehouse budget website as well.

Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Overview

For Fiscal Year (FY) 2011, which begins on October 1, 2010, the Obama

Administration has requested a base budget of $548.9 billion for the Department of

Defense (DoD). This is $18 billion, or 3.4 percent, above the appropriated Fiscal Year

2010 base budget of $531 billion.

In addition, the Administration has requested $159.3 billion for “Overseas

Contingency Operations,” to fight the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

This brings the Fiscal Year 2011 defense budget request to a total of $708.3

billion.

What I am noticing is that high cost for the two wars.  I looked up the population of Iraq which is around 31.5 million.  California has a population of around 37 million.  What I am getting at is this:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget

Check out the federal budgeted money for California or any state for that matter.  I think there is something wrong with this picture.  That money spent on the wars could really be helpful back over here in our own country.  Of course the conservative Republicans have other ideas.  Here is where you can check out their proposal to reduce spending.  http://rsc.jordan.house.gov/Solutions/SRA.htm

On the two page summary, I noticed many interesting cuts to everything from the arts and humanities to the repeal of the Davis Bacon Act which requires the government to pay the local prevailing wage.  I wonder what’s up with that, less money for the common man, just trying to make a living of course.

The other day I was listening to the Ed Schultz radio show for a few minutes on my way home from school.   Some one was sitting in for Ed.  A guy called in who really cracked me up.  He was on a rant about Senator John McCain and he said McCain has been taken care of by the government is whole life.  This man couldn’t believe McCain’s stance on health care since McCain has essentially been taken care of with government health care his whole life.  I had to laugh because it was essentially true, except for the stint he had when he was a POW.  The politicians in office just don’t get it.  They have everything at their finger tips like money, power, health insurance, great pensions and they just cannot see what has happened to the common worker in America.

The American people need to pull their head out of the sand and figure out what is really going on.

Big business and government combined is a lethal combination for the American worker.  Labor unions have been destroyed over the last forty years.  One of the last of the unions still standing are the teachers unions.  They are the next to go.  This is the way the American people are being programmed right now.  There is a constant drumbeat against the teachers and their unions.  We are being told how poor our education system is and it is the fault of the TEACHERS!  Tenure is a dirty word.  We are being programmed that it is the problem and it must go!  I’m only throwing this out there because as a teacher, I can feel the target on my back and I can see what is going on.  We, the people, are being programmed once again that business is good, privatization is good, and labor unions are bad, bad, bad!

All across the country we have business people getting into government.  Here in Michigan we have our new governor, Rick Snyder, a business guy.  I listened to his state of the state address and he was very short on anything specific in terms of cuts and spending for the most part.  The big thing he talked about was building a bridge to Canada.  Here is a transcript from his address.  http://www.freep.com/article/20110120/NEWS15/110120009/1001/NEWS/Transcript-Read-and-watch-the-State-of-the-State

It had a lot of “fluff” but not much substance.  I expect in April when he gives the next speech he mentioned, we will hear more specifics.  I don’t think his address was much different than most others.  I just would like to know what his plans are for the budget.  He wants to change the small business tax but he doesn’t say how he’s going to pay for these changes.  Some in K-12 education are worried that he is going to take from that budget to give to the public colleges.  I don’t know what is going to happen, but I think it will mean more pain in education whatever is decided.  This year I had to pay 3% more into my retirement with no additional benefit.  Next year it could be more.  We don’t have a contract and we are probably not much different than most schools in the state that are wondering what the budget is going to be.

The other day I was applying for a bus grant to take some of my art students up to the Kalamazoo Institute of Arts and I asked the school secretary what portion of our students was on free and/or reduced lunches.  Our school was around 61% but she said one of the elementary schools is somewhere around 90%.  These are scary numbers.  We need jobs for American workers.  I feel like I’m on a wheel that just keeps going round and round.  War, what is it good for?  What is it really doing for the American people?  We know what it is doing for some corporations.   http://www.presstv.ir/usdetail/160995.html

You must listen to this video because it is so interesting.  The wars will continual until they are financially unsustainable because it is in the best interest of corporations.  War, what is it good for?

Worn Out In Michigan

  • Posted on November 6, 2010 at 11:25 am

These two dance to the same tunes, get married to each other and at the end of the day are friends!

So this week has been really tiring for me.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m recovering from a cold, I have a challenging seventh grade class, I’m busy with an online class or the crazy election results are buzzing in my head!  Maybe it’s everything combined.  My sister claims I’m upset about the election.  I don’t really think so, as I could see it coming like everyone else.  Really what is so different?  Corporate Democrats have been replaced by corporate Republicans.  They are both corrupt and it was hard to really fight for those Dems, because they so easily disappointed all of us.

However, there is a bright spot in this election.  Many of those “Blue Dog Democrats” are gone.  I didn’t care a bit for them.  DINO’s should all become extinct as far as I’m concerned.  I don’t like to see Senator Russ Feingold taken down though.  I guess he’s a casualty of being “Obamatronned”.

President Obama really did everything he could to get rid of many Democrats.  I have really wondered about what he really wanted.  There was so much that he could have done, that he didn’t do.  It’s hard to understand why he made the choices he did in the last two years and why he continues to disappoint so many of us through his leadership style.  He hasn’t lead and that is the problem.  He hasn’t explained anything which hasn’t helped at all.  He’s governed in the image of GW which really frustrates any real left leaning person anywhere.

Yesterday I heard a couple of sixth grade students talking about Obama.  One said to the other, “You don’t want to be a loser like Obama.”  When the eighth grade students held a mock election, Rick Snyder, the self professed nerd, won for governor here in Michigan.  My class of sixth graders erupted in cheers when they heard the news over the loud speaker.  Strangely enough it brought back the same memories of when Obama won the mock election just two years earlier.  I live in a very Republican town.  Obama won our mock election big and so did the nerd win big for the governorship.  The nerd is a Republican.  It seems like the parents of my students here in Sturgis can easily switch from the package Obama was selling to the package that Rick Snyder was selling.

The big thing is both of these guys came in like they were something special that was going to change politics.  Rick Snyder won but of course we’ll have to wait and see what his leadership skills really look like.  We have already witnessed Obama’s leadership skills and unfortunately they are greatly lacking.  I, like most people, don’t have a lot of confidence in what he’s selling.  Earlier this fall Obama addressed the nation’s school children.  It was really well received and I felt like the students really looked up to him.  So I wonder what happened over the last two months that changed for them.  Why did I hear a sixth grader speaking so poorly about Obama when just a couple months before they were so enthralled with him?  I think there must be a lot of conversation going on at home or maybe it’s the constant blasting of the mass media.  Some how in the last couple of months the students I teach vastly changed their feelings about the president.  If Obama’s lost the youth and these young students are future voters, what does he have left?

It’s funny when I think back to the 2008 election and that “package” Obama was selling.  It seemed like everyone was expecting a Democratic victory just as they were expecting a Republican victory during this election.  Obama was handed the election.  Much was done to assist him including dismissing Hillary Clinton.  She was taking all of the “real” Democratic states if you will recall.  The race was very close, much closer than people really want to remember.  The two big states of Florida and Michigan were taken out with the game playing that was going on.  Both of those states were the type of state that would probably have gone for Hillary Clinton in the end.  My vote for John Edwards in the primary was basically stolen.  It was given to Obama on May 31st, 2008 when the Democrats got together and decided how to “handle” us voters here in Michigan.  At that time they even took votes away from Hillary, a very anti-democratic procedure!

Thinking about that election is interesting because it seemed like McCain didn’t have a chance in hell and he wasn’t supposed to have one either.  He was supposed to lose.  It was part of the plan.  Sarah Palin almost made it possible for him to win.  As much as she makes the left crazy a lot of other people are crazy about her.  She turned McCain’s campaign around.  If the October surprise, you know the banking crisis, hadn’t erupted, who knows what would have happened with the election?  The point of all of this is I feel very much like we have been “played”.  Each of these elections we were told how we were going to vote and what was going to happen.  Last time the Republicans were supposed to lose and this time the Democrats were supposed to lose.  I don’t trust politics and I frankly wonder who is really pulling the strings.  Corporations seem to have the control over our votes now more than ever.  We are fed garbage in and we regurgitate garbage out with our vote.  My 6th grade students had all they needed to know about the governorship, the “nerd” won and the “angry” mayor didn’t.  Hmmm, I wonder where they heard those meaningless words.  Candidates are packaged to sell.  Barack Obama was packaged as the “change” agent and Rick “Nerd”, oh I mean Snyder, was packaged as a businessman with both a brain and a plan.  You know the smart guy that’s picked last for dodge ball in school won the election.

As much as the Republicans want to think they’re the cool kids in class right now, they need to remember that next time will probably be the Democrats turn to fool the American people.