Obama?
The last person to alert. Hypnotized by the power elite from youth, he'll never reduce military spending.

If we had followed what was proposed over the last 40 years, we wouldn't be in the pickle we are now.

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists and the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.”

~ Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890-1969) 34th President of the United States

Psssst, Mr Obama. There's no such thing as guns AND butter. It's in fact guns OR butter.

It's MomsDay, Mr Obama. My kids cannot digest guns. Can yours?

This is about priorities. Where your money is spent speaks volumes about what one regards as what is REALLY important – in their beliefs, in what they regard as important not just in their own lives but what they believe is important in the lives of others.

Regardless of what politician say, where they allocate a nations wealth and resources says volumes about what they are really about. Do the American people count in this game? From the way the money is being spent it appears they do not. That will become the legacy of this administration. The people have the power to change that if they so choose. IT IS YOUR CHOICE.

It took Eisenhower a while to get it, but when he did, he really did. He funded a People to People program which sends geeks abroad to connect with other geeks over things like refractory depression and what to do about it. I know because I went on one of these trips to China in 2001 with 50-some other Oregonians (with a few Californians snuck in somehow). Sandwiched between my own family members with major challenges and working in what is called mental health, I was looking for every tool ever tried against depression. I was richly rewarded The ordinary Beijingian expert had already fielded tourists from everywhere and knew what everybody was doing. They were trying it all out in practice. It was fascinating. I have a trip journal I marvel over every once in a while. If anyone reading this gets an Obama ear now and then, whisper this in it. And I want a beer with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. Met him on the street in Boston. He was very nice to a star-struck Oregonian.

It is that simple. Cutting Defense is merely one of three steps.

Cut Defense by 50%.

Tax wealthy multinational corporations at the same percentage rate that folks like you and I pay.

Tariff goods made overseas.

I understand corporate/GOP/Walmart apologists can't fathom taking steps to strengthen America and fortify US jobs, but the majority of us are ready to make these changes.

Steve, I would add: Extend the social security tax to include all levels of income, instead of simply the bottom tiers. :) Otherwise, great!

A few years ago in Spokane's Riverfront Park, a friend (Marianne) and I, observed US death (military) recruiters in the packed summertime park. Among other things, they were painting camouflage on the faces of pre-school children. At one point a recruiter handed a rifle to a boy who looked about 17 and allowed the boy to raise it and sight it across the top of the crowd, down the meadow towards the clock tower and the river. Marianne and I were distributing flyers against the genocidal wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We were approached by one of the propagandists (recruiters) who after a brief exchange went back to his recruiting site and got on his cell phone. Within a few minutes, we were approached by Spokane Police who attempted to intimidate us out of our constitutional rights to free speech and assembly.

A couple years later on 7/4/07, in the same park, a joint terrorism task force composed of Spokane Police, FBI, and other law enforcement--acting on the pretext of a complaint from organizers of a Clear Channel Communications event, assaulted and arrested 17 young people who had and were expressing an agenda. (Turns out at a trial 10 months later, the police had withheld video evidence of their wrong doing and the case was dismissed and a lawsuit appears to be pending against them).

As long as we are spectators at the empires display of its shock troops and murderers of civilians in far away lands, we are lost. What is going to be interesting is to watch the same US "left", which is unwilling and incapable of getting behind a Nader or McKinney or other left candidate, as it is confronted by a right which has no qualms whatsoever about organizing, voting, and electing extreme right wingers. And what a laugh they must get out of watching the "left" rally to elect establishment figures like Obama, who may yet adopt as his own John McCain's "Bomb, Bomb Iran" slogan.

Obama has become, in effect, the mouthpiece of the Pentagon. Remember when we used to claim that our military was under civilian command? Now it is clear that Obama is taking orders from the Pentagon. And, as becomes clearer with each passing week, the Pentagon is deep into planning for perpetual war, the only way of insuring the survival of our empire.

Two simple things the world must do to end this madness:

1. A global 2010 Jubilee forgiving all debts of individuals, corporations, countries, etc., and a 'gift' of $1 million (dollars, any country's, or even a global, currency) to all of earth's inhabitants. Money is just numbers on a piece of paper, we will all have the same amount to start... All public works (utilities, food, water, health, energy, prisons, etc.) will become permanently de-privatized and non-profit. The next Jubilee will be 2050. We are 10 years late, it should have been 2000.

2. A requirement for corporations to hire their own security forces (Xe, etc.) when they wish to plunder & pillage other countries, kill their citizens, and steal the income from their resources. Our own troops can come home and protect us (and our public 'works') from the corporations.

How about requiring all elected federal officials to subsist on only their own salary and savings for the duration oftheir time in office and a period of two years thereafter? We might see how government functions without the influence of big money. We might like that, too.

Jack E. Lohman writes: "Nothing is going to change until we have public funding of campaigns." Sad but true. In particular, until we have public funding of campaigns... we won't have the kind of politicians who would support public funding of campaigns. To quote a great American author: "That's some catch, that Catch-22."

JFK, RFK, MLK: it's not just the military, it's also bankers, big ag, and big pharma who use war to continue living in the manner and manors to which they have become accustomed. If Obama were to buck them thoroughly, they might kill him, but eventually it would get figured out. The thing is, if you entertain bullies while you are taunting them, sometimes they let you live because they are bored with sycophants. Macho can admire the macho of sticking it macho's figurative eye. Why do you think Colbert and Stewart are still in business? Obama could talk trash if he wanted. You gotta die some time anyway. Why not go out in a blaze of glory?

Hello Mr Pitt.

So, now you tell us? Lots of perceptive people from both sides of the political spectrum have been telling us this for years and years. But it seems the Power Elite, as mentioned so well in earlier comments to your post, has the bit so firmly in its teeth and the 90% of the populace who haven't got a clue, can't process well enough to find the clues are kept that way by the same Power Elite who run the DOD, banks, Fed, and nearly every other agency of the federal government. That same Power Elite is not about to tolerate some smart aleckey 10% of the population upsetting their apple cart. If it ever gets better it is likely to be very messy in the process. We have been warned and warned, from Jefferson, Madison, Eisenhower and many others. Good luck to us all. We are going to need it. History does not come down in our favor.

These things cannot land "conventionally" because the rotors would strike the ground. I was in Beaufort NC while they were undergoing x- flight testing. The best they can do is to place the rotors at about a 45 cant relative to the runway.
Just thought you might like to know.
cc

The V-22 is a great example of our corrupt military complex. It costs over $120 million each, is unsafe, and can only lift a quarter the payload of similar size helos. The facts are here:
http://www.g2mil.com/scandal.htm

The rank and file in the military are expected to be willing to give up their lives in service of their country.
Why shouldn't the manufacturers of weapons be expected to forgo profit-making in time of war?
That would remove a major incentive for war. The military-industrial complex is far too powerful. There's a moral responsibility on the people and their representatives to regain control over this monster.

Wendell Berry's poem Questionnaire is easy to find on line. It's related, check it out.

"Psssst, Mr. Obama: tap the defense budget. We can be out of this recession in the morning."

But, that would defeat the purpose of buying people in office, which is, of course, to make sure that the wrong people don't get the money.

Our problem isn't so much that we don't have money. Our problem is that we insist on giving responsibility of allocating what money we have to precisely those people who will do so in a fashion that is contrary to the good of the country.

"My God our leaders are stupid!"

Um ... ask yourself who keeps getting the money, and then tell me again which people are the stupid ones.

Within 2 weeks of RFK introducing an executive order that "U.S. Notes" were to be valued as currency, (thereby circumventing the Federal Reserve System, (a private, for profit institution)) he was shot dead.

You decide- fools.

cc

1) Since corporations are now people too, make them pay taxes the same way people have to pay taxes - on their entire worldwide income.
2) Bring back the Eisenhower tax rates.
3) End the wars and don't start new ones.
That'll be a start.

"it's difficult to argue against the necessity of those expenditures"
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It's only difficult if you're a regressive-gliberal-phlegmocrat (RGP).

If you're a reasonably sane, human primate, not so much.

Thank you Mr. Pitt, for reminding me a) why I didn't vote for Status Quobama, and b) why I'm a repentant RGP.

That having been said, recalling the empire's troops and imposing austerity on the imperial war machine would no doubt prove beneficial.

But that's as likely as Hope, Change and Yes We Can.

These days, sites like The Automatic Earth are infinitely more relevant, informative and reality based than these Left-in-name-only store fronts.

--

We live at the end of empire, during the century of contraction, in a culture of make believe.

We are not going to grow, consume and indebt our way out of the problems of growth, consumption and debt.

We got everything we wanted and lost everything we needed.

I made a living doing the dismal science, and so I hardly agree that Mr. Pitt's prescription will "end this recession forever"... even though I absolutely do agree with all his suggestions. The dismal fact is that our economy is addicted to military spending, and has been ever since WWII. Millions of jobs and are directly related to it, and millions more indirectly. So, giving the military/industrial complex the axe will probably double our unemployment rate. If we want to end the recession forever we'll need a sweeping economic makeover -- an endeavour that's totally impossible under Wall Street style capitalism, with "race to the bottom" globalized oursourcing going on. To get on the right track we might start by going to european style capitalism and then doing a sweeping reform of the WTO so it focuses on fair and environmentally sustainable trade instead of just free trade. And while we're in the throes of the readjustment this would entail, we might want to dump the M/I complex, as Mr. Pitt suggests.

Kansas. Once I was hired to write a series of articles about towns in Kansas. As I looked over their statistics and poured over You Tube videos it became clear that the war machine was pumping money into the small towns via military bases and aircraft manufacturing. The war machine is a form of socialism. People have jobs making these useless weapons. The other employer is our gross and unhealthy agriculture system.