Pentagon offense spending to climb

I was at a local school board meeting here in the San Francisco Bay Area last night and it was a dismal affair. What had been meetings of hundreds a few weeks ago has been whittled down to a hundred or so as the strategy of wearing the populace down takes effect.

The board presented its recommendations for dealing with the budget which were naturally cuts in the quality of education and layoffs. A representative of the CSEA spoke and thanked them for doing a good job, it was quite sickening. The board cried their crocodile tears as they are about to implement the cuts, at the behest of the corporations that control both political parties in the state and country. People who asked for votes pledging to fight for quality education find themselves acting as the agents of the corporations in dismantling it.

The cuts are presented as a fait accompli by the politicians, the media and the Union officials and the attendees were the few remaining members of the public who took the time to come to a meeting to find out how bad they will be and where the ax might fall.

The board made it clear that they will be back for more next year if the California economy doesn't improve and anyone that reads the big business press knows the answer to that.
Their strategy, like that of all these bodies, is one of damage control. They see themselves simply as the manager's of the funds disbursed by the politicians acting on behalf of the Wall Street. At no time do they even consider themselves as representatives of those folks who get up and go to work every morning.

Along with Union officials, the politicians' big excuse is that there is no money, that they have to be "fiscally responsible". They completely capitulate to the propaganda and ideology of the bankers and their political representatives.

I made the point that you'd have to be in a stupor the past six months not to have seen that there is no shortage of money, it is simply a matter of priorities.

The Financial Times reports today that the Obama administration is increasing defense spending by $200 billion over the next two years, and will be keeping some 50,000 troops in Iraq beyond the pullout dated suggested.

The paper also observes that the Pentagon war machine ranks 17th largest economy in the world if ranked as a country, between the Netherlands and Turkey. Obama has "resisted calls to reduce the main defense budget" the paper reports as the bill for what is really offensive wars rather than defensive protection will be $533.7 billion to support a military climbing to 547,400 this year.

The US will be spending $21,046 a second on the military by 2010.

We must reject this nonsense that there's no funds available for quality education