At a press conference in Chicago yesterday, President-elect Barack Obama named former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack as the next Secretary of Agriculture, and Colorado Senator Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior.
The Borgen Project has informative statistics on addressing global poverty.
$30 billion ends world hunger
$550 billion is the US Defense budget
This organization has the ability, resources, and policy-makers to suppress the threat of global poverty by enacting legislation here in the US, which is tied to the United Nation's Millennium Development Goals. Please support organizations such as The Borgen Project so that we may rid the world of poverty.
Unfortunetly------if Democrats DARE to try and cut defense budget, you can bet the Republicans will start with their big rant how Democrats are weak on Defense, and scare everyone to the Right!
I agree it is ridiculous to try and be the biggest swagger-er in the world, but unfortunetly the Repugs have convinced the American public it is necessary.
We need to make the connection between getting out of oil, the internal combustion engine and national security. See Edwin Black's website. We should help GM fund the building of vehicles like the Volt. The military industrial complex has been a cancer upon the infrastructure of this nation since the end of WW II, and Eisenhower knew it. It has been too much of what Seymour Melman called "The Permanent War Economy." Getting free of Middle East Oil is a national security issue. Leaving our infrastructure tied to the flow of oil in the Middle East is insane. The new technology for autos is at hand. There's a GM assembly plant being closed in my state. The plant should be converted to produce the Volt. Just Google "Military Industrial Contracts" and you'll find your home brand people like GE and Honeywell listed, among other familiar names. Defense research and development also takes away
development and improvement of so many domestic products. So, is it any wonder they are made some where else, in some other country where R & D is not sucked into military spending? Diverting funds to become free of Middle East oil is not weak on defense - it is strong on defense. We need to break free from the dumbed down perspectives of the past 8 years and organize our infrastructure in a way that liberates us from the constant threat of war around oil in the Middle East.
The thing is, it's not that defense spending has to be cut, it needs to be re-appropriated.
In 2004, John Kerry suggested expanding the army by two more combat divisions. Bush, either because he was still wedded to the 'Rumsfeld doctrine' of fiscal conservatism as a military strategy, never did that. But if you see how thin our military is stretched now, it is clear that we need them (for that matter the purpose of the national guard isn't to serve as front-line combat troops except in a true national emergency; the National Guard should remain at home so Governors can use them for what they need them for in their various states.)
And with more troops, we need more pay. What we pay full service military personnel is appalling. Some years ago my brother in law (a national guardsman from Colorado) was in Iraq and his unit got a two week furlough. Only, the army just flew them to someplace on the east coast and they had to buy commercial air back home. Keep in mind they were CO national guard, so the army could have still flown them all together, to someplace in Colorado. Higher pay would also help with recruitment goals and would also help local economies in a lot of places.
Some other places we could stand to spend more on the military is in improving infrastructure (no more reports of cockroach infested hospitals or barracks with sewage backing up all over the floor as we've seen the past few years,) and also on veterans services of all kinds.
What we don't need are more billion dollar warplanes that are of limited use in the kind of intensive guerilla operations that we find ourselves in in places like Afghanistan.
We also need to re-invest in groups like the Peace Corps. There is a reason why so many people hate Americans. It's because when people are starving, what we send them is bombs, or perhaps we send aid to dictators who keep it for themselves and do nothing for their people.
