.
I just saw this from CNBC that shows a simple slideshow (courtesy of the National Priorities Project) of how federal tax dollars are actually spent. I'm going to say this and try not to express any outrage. Simply by the numbers.

Out of every dollar, here is how much goes toward the following expenditures:

BUDGET CATEGORY	CENTS PER DOLLAR
Military:	42.2 cents
Health Care:	22.1 cents
Interest on Debt:	10.2 cents
Anti-Poverty Programs:	8.7 cents
Education:	4.4 cents
Government and Law Enforcement: :	3.9 cents
Housing and Community Development:	3.3 cents
Environment, Energy, and Science:	2.6 cents
Agriculture, Commerce, and Transportation:	1.5 cents
International Affairs:	1.0 cents

The US government spends:

• about five times more for war than for helping the poor.
• about nine times more for war than for educating its youth.
• over 2600 times more for war than for research on renewable energy.

And from here, regarding funding for solar energy development, the Bush administration requested from Congress $11,068,000 LESS in 2008 than was enacted in 2007. Likewise, he requested over $9 million less for wind energy, $5 million less for geothermal (actually requesting zero dollars!), the exact same amount for and even asking for $20 million less for biomass research (which I find less inspiring than the first three anyway).

Excluding the biomass, all of these combined (<$210 million) are slightly more than 1/3 of their budget request for fossil fuel R&D ($567 million), and about 1/4 of the budget request for nuclear power ($802 million) That says something about energy priorities. What do we say about a president who works against a positive trend? I haven't had words for a long time, but they wouldn't be words I'd use in front of my mother. I'm always uncomfortable using negative words around my mother. I want her to see me finding the positive things and praising them. Go, solar! Hooray for wind! Go, geothermal, go tidal power!

lyrics: "Jesus would never forgive what you do." from Masters of War, by Bob Dylan

colors: pick a pie chart color theme

mood: tired

chant/prayer/mantra: love your neighbor


pax hominibus,
agape to all,
joel

Labels: economics, environment, renewable energy, war and peace

Dear Mary Jane,

I imagine this Janice Hahn may be a good candidate, however I will not be helping Organizing for America now or in 2012.

I am entirely disenfranchised with the right/centrist agenda Barack Obama has been pursuing.  His policies have amounted to making "Change We Can Believe In" the saddest hollow promise I've ever heard in my 42 years.

Specifically, his budgetary policies continue to serve the wealthy corporate investors in a fashion similar to George W Bush including offering to trade away social security; he is continuing to invest our military in wars upon wars rather than pursue more peaceable solutions; his administration flip-flops on the drug war, muddying the legal waters while continuing to harass moral and innocent people in medical need, using taxpayer dollars as if they are criminals; and he has done astonishingly little to support renewable energy, compared to subsidies for fossil fuels and nuclear. 

Therefore, his name attached to your request does not inspire me to help you unless he truly becomes "The Change I Thought I Was Believing In."  Please send him this message--I voted for him in 2008, but he and any Democratic candidates he supports have squandered my good faith, and lost my support for 2012.
,
With peace and real hope,
Joel

"You never change things by fighting the existing reality.
To change something, build a new model that makes
the existing model obsolete."
 -Buckminster Fuller (Architect and Geometrist)

Labels: changing the prison paradigm, classism, drug war, peace, politics, renewable energy, USA, war and peace