There has been considerable talk over the last two years from both sides of the aisle about the need for "Entitlement Reform." This is a talking point that is used to turn the tide of public opinion. "Entitlement Reform" brings about a mental image of someone who is not working by choice so that they can live off of the government because they are entitled to do so.
In reality, this has been used as a euphamism for cutting Medicare and Social Security benefits, which we don't actually need to do. The truth is that the United States Defense budget in 2011 was $741.2 BILLION dollars.( US Defense Budget) In comparison, we spent $606 Billion in Social Security benefits, which were more than paid for by the $701 Billion in Social Security payroll taxes collected from the public. An audit of the Social Security and Medicare Trust Fund can be accessed here: Social Security Administration Audit
One fun way that I started educating myself about the federal budget was by Ben Cohen's Oreo video. Ben was one of the founders of Ben & Jerry's. He breaks the budget down using oreo's to represent dollars, which I found to be entertaining and informative. You can watch his video here: http://www.truemajority.com/oreos/ Ben's movie was made during the last Bush administration (around 2006-2007 I think) and at that time the defense budget was $400 Billion per year. That means that during this period of extreme economic downturn when the federal government can't find money to do Anything! they have managed to scrounge up an additional $241 billion for military spending. Doesn't this make you angry? What kind of good could have been done with that $241 billion?
So, homework for you for tonight. Watch Ben Cohen's 3 minute video about government spending and start deciding how YOU think your government ought to be spending your money. After all, you work hard for it.
And tonight's Occupy Wall Street message: Part of the problem with the current federal budget is that it is so complex because it is divided into such a huge web of administrative divisions that it is impossible for you or I to really have any oversight or any say as to what our dollars are spent for. I for one am not okay with my government spending my money for the USDA to negotiate a contract with Domino's pizza for them to add more cheese to their pizzas for the benefit of dairy farmers. Ironically, at the exact same time that contract was being negotiated, another department within the USDA was formulating a recommendation that American's start eating less cheese. So, from OCCUPY - stop allowing corporate interests to influence how our tax dollars are being spent!
Sunday, November 20, 2011
Thursday, November 17, 2011
You disagree with Occupy Wall Street?
As the Occupy Wall Street movement gains momentum, I am increasingly dissappointed in the response I hear coming from its critics in the public. I find that most people are perfectly happy to be spoon fed their opinions by the corporate sponsored media rather than taking time away from Dancing with the Stars and The Biggest Loser to investigate and really form their own opinions. I have taken some time over the past couple of years to become sufficiently outraged, and I'm going to take some more time now to share my outrage with you and I hope that you will spread it and educate everyone else you know about the legitimate reasons that the 99% is justified in its outrage.
Our criminal justice system has been corrupted by private corporate interests. We have allowed our jails to be privatized. In the last decade crime rates have continually decreased while rates of incarceration have skyrocketed. In 2009 New Jersey Judge Mark A. Chiaverelli, Jr., and his colleague Michael T. Conahan plead guilty to accepting more than $2.6 million from the private company running the state's juvenile detention center. These judges sentenced juvenile offenders to exhorbitant sentences in the facility for extremely minor offenses. You can read more about this particular reason for outrage here: NY Times This particular type of corruption means that our government officials and representatives are more interested in creating a situation that leads to increased incarcerations, instead of helping to identify and remove the causes of crime.
Over the past 20 years, (EBT) has replaced paper checks for the delivery of public assistance benefits and food stamps. One reason that EBT systems have become so popular is that states have found that they can save millions of dollars by "outsourcing" the provision of these benefits to big financial firms. In fact, JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States.JP Morgan has contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 states and the District of Columbia. JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes. In addition, JP Morgan also distributes unemployment benefits in 7 states and profits from each unemployment case they process. You can read more about this particular outrage at The Shriver Brief
Monsanto is the company that produces Round-Up. They also happen to have created a genetically modified type of soy bean that is resistent to their own weed killer. This would be fine, except that they also copyrighted the seed. Over the last several decades, Monsanto has agressively used the US legal system to sue small farmers when Monsanto's "inspectors" found its genetically modified plant growing in farms that had not purchased their seeds from Monsanto. Unfortunately, for these small time farmers, it is extremely common for seeds to blow in the wind from a neighbor's farm (who had purchased seed from Monsanto). It seems not to matter whether they find an acre of plants, or one single plant growing in a 20 acre field. They sue the farmer and use agressive legal tactics to starve out the farmer with large legal bills. All the while, Monsanto offers to have this "problem" go away by having the farmer contract to purchase their seed from Monsanto forever and ever amen. This has all been made perfectly legal through a complicated web of laws and legal decisions all bought and paid for with Monsanto's lobbying money. Food, Inc. is a fantastic documentary that tells the plight of farmers fighting against Monsanto and going out of business because of it.
The frozen food industry has recently invested significant lobbying resources to convince Congress that 2 tablespoons of tomato paste on a frozen pizza should be classified as a vegetable for purposes of the school lunch program. The same bill will continue to classify french fries as a vegetable, all because our government officials would rather receive the money from the industry than insure that rates of childhood obesity begin to decline. You can read more about this atrocity here: LA Times
(I am running out of time to list my grievances against the government. But, NOT TO WORRY! Just as soon as I finish my term paper this week, I'll be back with more!)
I am so disheartened by our country's apparent loss of compassion. If a person doesn't have a job, they must be a lazy drain on society. Tell that to the 26% of college graduates who are unemployed. These graduates aren't looking for a handout. They aren't looking for an excuse not to work. They didn't fight their way through 4-8 years of grueling school work so that they could sit around and draw welfare. Unfortunately, our tax policy has continued to encourage American companies to reduce the size of their workforce, reduce the amount of benefits they offer, and move profits and job overseas. And its all well and good to say that "there are jobs available, they just don't want them." Those jobs that you say are so readily available, most paying less than $9.00 an hour, will not begin to put a dent in the student debt wracked up by these graduates, nor will it provide for sufficient housing or health insurance. You can't have it both ways. You can't tell people to go take that crappy job and then also say that people with crappy jobs must just be lazy and not working hard enough so they don't deserve luxuries like health insurance and housing.
Why is it so unbelievable that the Occupy Wall Street movement might be a legitimate protest by people who are fed up with the systematic purchase of their government by corporate interests? Maybe it's so hard to believe because Good Morning America, Fox News, and CNN are telling you that the encampments are filthy, that they are costing cities thousands of dollars and are rampant with crime; when in fact these camps are well organized, completely sanitary and nearly completely free of crime.
It is not a legitimate argument to say that the protesters should "stop wasting the taxpayer's money." I am a taxpayer and I say that I would much rather see my government spend money on police presence as a result of domestic non-violent direct action, than to see trillions of dollars spent on seemingly endless foreign wars. We do not consider the tax money spent on women's sufferage protests, worker's rights protests, civil rights protests, anti-war protests during the Vietnam era, or anti-war protests during the 1st and 2nd Gulf Wars, to be a waste. These protests are not a waste either. We cheer the protests in the middle east as those countries cast off the shackles of oppressive governments, but chastize our own citizenry for exercising the same right. Is the hypocrisy not glaringly obvious?
I hope that my fellow citizens wake up to the atrocities being committed against us by our own government and the corporations that own it. I hope that we are able to collectively turn off the TV and begin to form our own opinions based on our own investigation of how our government functions. I am sincerely freightened by the prospects for our country if we do not.
Seriously, more outrage coming later...
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." ~ U.S. Declaration of Independence
Our criminal justice system has been corrupted by private corporate interests. We have allowed our jails to be privatized. In the last decade crime rates have continually decreased while rates of incarceration have skyrocketed. In 2009 New Jersey Judge Mark A. Chiaverelli, Jr., and his colleague Michael T. Conahan plead guilty to accepting more than $2.6 million from the private company running the state's juvenile detention center. These judges sentenced juvenile offenders to exhorbitant sentences in the facility for extremely minor offenses. You can read more about this particular reason for outrage here: NY Times This particular type of corruption means that our government officials and representatives are more interested in creating a situation that leads to increased incarcerations, instead of helping to identify and remove the causes of crime.
Over the past 20 years, (EBT) has replaced paper checks for the delivery of public assistance benefits and food stamps. One reason that EBT systems have become so popular is that states have found that they can save millions of dollars by "outsourcing" the provision of these benefits to big financial firms. In fact, JP Morgan is the largest processor of food stamp benefits in the United States.JP Morgan has contracted to provide food stamp debit cards in 26 states and the District of Columbia. JP Morgan is paid for each case that it handles, so that means that the more Americans that go on food stamps, the more profits JP Morgan makes. In addition, JP Morgan also distributes unemployment benefits in 7 states and profits from each unemployment case they process. You can read more about this particular outrage at The Shriver Brief
Monsanto is the company that produces Round-Up. They also happen to have created a genetically modified type of soy bean that is resistent to their own weed killer. This would be fine, except that they also copyrighted the seed. Over the last several decades, Monsanto has agressively used the US legal system to sue small farmers when Monsanto's "inspectors" found its genetically modified plant growing in farms that had not purchased their seeds from Monsanto. Unfortunately, for these small time farmers, it is extremely common for seeds to blow in the wind from a neighbor's farm (who had purchased seed from Monsanto). It seems not to matter whether they find an acre of plants, or one single plant growing in a 20 acre field. They sue the farmer and use agressive legal tactics to starve out the farmer with large legal bills. All the while, Monsanto offers to have this "problem" go away by having the farmer contract to purchase their seed from Monsanto forever and ever amen. This has all been made perfectly legal through a complicated web of laws and legal decisions all bought and paid for with Monsanto's lobbying money. Food, Inc. is a fantastic documentary that tells the plight of farmers fighting against Monsanto and going out of business because of it.
The frozen food industry has recently invested significant lobbying resources to convince Congress that 2 tablespoons of tomato paste on a frozen pizza should be classified as a vegetable for purposes of the school lunch program. The same bill will continue to classify french fries as a vegetable, all because our government officials would rather receive the money from the industry than insure that rates of childhood obesity begin to decline. You can read more about this atrocity here: LA Times
(I am running out of time to list my grievances against the government. But, NOT TO WORRY! Just as soon as I finish my term paper this week, I'll be back with more!)
I am so disheartened by our country's apparent loss of compassion. If a person doesn't have a job, they must be a lazy drain on society. Tell that to the 26% of college graduates who are unemployed. These graduates aren't looking for a handout. They aren't looking for an excuse not to work. They didn't fight their way through 4-8 years of grueling school work so that they could sit around and draw welfare. Unfortunately, our tax policy has continued to encourage American companies to reduce the size of their workforce, reduce the amount of benefits they offer, and move profits and job overseas. And its all well and good to say that "there are jobs available, they just don't want them." Those jobs that you say are so readily available, most paying less than $9.00 an hour, will not begin to put a dent in the student debt wracked up by these graduates, nor will it provide for sufficient housing or health insurance. You can't have it both ways. You can't tell people to go take that crappy job and then also say that people with crappy jobs must just be lazy and not working hard enough so they don't deserve luxuries like health insurance and housing.
Why is it so unbelievable that the Occupy Wall Street movement might be a legitimate protest by people who are fed up with the systematic purchase of their government by corporate interests? Maybe it's so hard to believe because Good Morning America, Fox News, and CNN are telling you that the encampments are filthy, that they are costing cities thousands of dollars and are rampant with crime; when in fact these camps are well organized, completely sanitary and nearly completely free of crime.
It is not a legitimate argument to say that the protesters should "stop wasting the taxpayer's money." I am a taxpayer and I say that I would much rather see my government spend money on police presence as a result of domestic non-violent direct action, than to see trillions of dollars spent on seemingly endless foreign wars. We do not consider the tax money spent on women's sufferage protests, worker's rights protests, civil rights protests, anti-war protests during the Vietnam era, or anti-war protests during the 1st and 2nd Gulf Wars, to be a waste. These protests are not a waste either. We cheer the protests in the middle east as those countries cast off the shackles of oppressive governments, but chastize our own citizenry for exercising the same right. Is the hypocrisy not glaringly obvious?
I hope that my fellow citizens wake up to the atrocities being committed against us by our own government and the corporations that own it. I hope that we are able to collectively turn off the TV and begin to form our own opinions based on our own investigation of how our government functions. I am sincerely freightened by the prospects for our country if we do not.
Seriously, more outrage coming later...
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness." ~ U.S. Declaration of Independence
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