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OpEdNews Op Eds    H3'ed 3/16/17

City to Vote on Resolution Opposing Trump's Budget

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David Swanson
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Whereas Mayor Mike Signer has declared Charlottesville a capital of resistance to the administration of President Donald Trump. [i]

Whereas President Trump has proposed to move $54 billion from human and environmental spending at home and abroad to military spending [ii] , bringing military spending to well over 60% of federal discretionary spending [iii] ,

Whereas part of helping alleviate the refugee crisis should be ending, not escalating, wars that create refugees [iv] ,

Whereas President Trump himself admits that the enormous military spending of the past 16 years has been disastrous and made us less safe, not safer [v] ,

Whereas fractions of the proposed military budget could provide free, top-quality education from pre-school through college [vi] , end hunger and starvation on earth [vii] , convert the U.S. to clean energy [viii] , provide clean drinking water everywhere it's needed on the planet [ix] , build fast trains between all major U.S. cities [x] , and double non-military U.S. foreign aid rather than cutting it [xi] ,

Whereas even 121 retired U.S. generals have written a letter opposing cutting foreign aid [xii] ,

Whereas a December 2014 Gallup poll of 65 nations found that the United States was far and away the country considered the largest threat to peace in the world [xiii] ,

Whereas a United States responsible for providing clean drinking water, schools, medicine, and solar panels to others would be more secure and face far less hostility around the world,

Whereas our environmental and human needs are desperate and urgent,

Whereas the military is itself the greatest consumer of petroleum we have [xiv] ,

Whereas economists at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst have documented that military spending is an economic drain rather than a jobs program [xv] ,

Be it therefore resolved that the City Council of Charlottesville, Virginia, urges the United States Congress to move our tax dollars in exactly the opposite direction proposed by the President, from militarism to human and environmental needs.


[i] "Signer Declares City a 'Capital of Resistance' Against Trump, Daily Progress, January 31, 2017, click here

[ii] "Trump to Seek $54 Billion Increase in Military Spending," The New York Times, February 27, 2017, click here

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David Swanson is the author of "When the World Outlawed War," "War Is A Lie" and "Daybreak: Undoing the Imperial Presidency and Forming a More Perfect Union." He blogs at http://davidswanson.org and http://warisacrime.org and works for the online (more...)
 
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