Instead, we could have built 2,630,942 additional housing units.
Instead, we could have hired 5,063,778 additional public school teachers for one year.
Now these numbers, of course, don't cover the costs of the destruction of Iraq or the estimated 250,000 civilians who have died there.
It doesn't cover the costs in human life of "coalition forces" now estimated at 2529. A Casualty Count website http://icasualties.org/oif/ has lots of other numbers about the wounded which may be understated because those shipped "out of country" are not always counted
In his book, Imperial Crusades, Saul Landau describes the Pentagon budget. He writes:
The 2005 defense budget - the word "defense" has become a joke in the post Cold War world - will reach $500 billion (counting the CIA), $50 billion higher than 2004. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the next ten years, the armada of aircraft, ships and killer toys will cost upwards of $770 billion more than Bush's estimate for long-term defense.
He also notes, "As Associated Press' Dan Morgan reports (June 12 2004, Tallahassee Democrat), the Pentagon "plans to spend well over $1 trillion in the next decade on an arsenal of futuristic planes, ships and weapons with little direct connection to the Iraq war or the global war on terrorism."
And so it goes. Ever upward! There is no bottom line to the bottom line. Much of this is financed not only with taxes but loans from China, Japan and other creditors who will probably never be repaid.
Meanwhile, two million Americans went bankrupt last year with many unable to because of a bi-partisan supported "Bankruptcy Reform" bill. (Interested industries spent $154 million in lobbying for it. Home foreclosures are up. College loans are going up at month's end. Credit card debt is strangling millions of American families. The military has been targeted by payday lending scams. The credit squeeze impacts us all.
It's only money. Or is it? During the Vietnam war, we used to speak of the choice as guns or butter? Today, margarine and other spreads have replaced butter while the social safety net is in shreds and no one -- least of all most Democrats -- are even talking about the real bill we are all paying for the lack of good schools and health care.
It is time for the news to stop using words. Let's only talk in numbers. Make every newscast a math class. Maybe then Americans will start getting it -- and getting rid of the people who are getting them.
We are about to celebrate Independence Day as a people increasingly dependent on a bad deal that many us don't even recognize.
In God We Trust has been replaced by In Debt We Trust. Our flag doesn't run -- except in red ink. The bill is coming due.
Instead, we could have hired 5,063,778 additional public school teachers for one year.
Now these numbers, of course, don't cover the costs of the destruction of Iraq or the estimated 250,000 civilians who have died there.
It doesn't cover the costs in human life of "coalition forces" now estimated at 2529. A Casualty Count website http://icasualties.org/oif/ has lots of other numbers about the wounded which may be understated because those shipped "out of country" are not always counted
The 2005 defense budget - the word "defense" has become a joke in the post Cold War world - will reach $500 billion (counting the CIA), $50 billion higher than 2004. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that over the next ten years, the armada of aircraft, ships and killer toys will cost upwards of $770 billion more than Bush's estimate for long-term defense.
He also notes, "As Associated Press' Dan Morgan reports (June 12 2004, Tallahassee Democrat), the Pentagon "plans to spend well over $1 trillion in the next decade on an arsenal of futuristic planes, ships and weapons with little direct connection to the Iraq war or the global war on terrorism."
And so it goes. Ever upward! There is no bottom line to the bottom line. Much of this is financed not only with taxes but loans from China, Japan and other creditors who will probably never be repaid.
Meanwhile, two million Americans went bankrupt last year with many unable to because of a bi-partisan supported "Bankruptcy Reform" bill. (Interested industries spent $154 million in lobbying for it. Home foreclosures are up. College loans are going up at month's end. Credit card debt is strangling millions of American families. The military has been targeted by payday lending scams. The credit squeeze impacts us all.
It's only money. Or is it? During the Vietnam war, we used to speak of the choice as guns or butter? Today, margarine and other spreads have replaced butter while the social safety net is in shreds and no one -- least of all most Democrats -- are even talking about the real bill we are all paying for the lack of good schools and health care.
It is time for the news to stop using words. Let's only talk in numbers. Make every newscast a math class. Maybe then Americans will start getting it -- and getting rid of the people who are getting them.
We are about to celebrate Independence Day as a people increasingly dependent on a bad deal that many us don't even recognize.
In God We Trust has been replaced by In Debt We Trust. Our flag doesn't run -- except in red ink. The bill is coming due.
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