I had no idea this project existed, but The National Priorities Project celebrated their 25th anniversary in October 2008.

Here is a 12 minute video about the project and those who work on it:

America’s priorities are made very clear and very real by how our government spends the money we pay in taxes. NPP follows that money all the way to the local level. If we don’t have a handle on where the money is going and what it means in human terms, we can’t change the nation’s priorities.

To most of us, the federal budget is so huge it’s like Monopoly money. The amounts are unfathomable. If we break those numbers down into chunks we can swallow, we can understand how they effect our lives. We can only change the nation’s priorities when we get the people involved on a grass roots level, but we can’t do that if they are lost about what the numbers really mean for each of them.

We can’t reduce and eliminate the military/industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us about in his 1960 farewell speech if we don’t know what is being spent on Cold War projects. Between now and then, President Reagan brought back the military/industrial complex in a huge way at the expense of everything else in the U.S. federal budget.

This year, for the first time in a very long while, Congress finally cut something out of the Pentagon’s budget. They put an end to the production of F-22 fighter planes that the Pentagon doesn’t want, the Air Force doesn’t want and the rest of the military doesn’t want.

It’s all very far from over, but that one change to a different priority in military funding is a start in the right direction. The wars we fight now are guerrilla wars on the ground, not country-against-country where both have a full compliment of military mite. Al Qaeda and the Taliban don’t have a Navy or an Air Force. We don’t have dog fights with them. F-22′s are for dog fights. That money can be spent on other military needs, such as F-35 fighters that support guerrilla ground troops.

I am not against equipping our fighting soldiers with the best that we can get them. But we need to make sure what we are providing them is in fact what they need to improve their safety, performance and allow them to win more quickly in the type of warfare they have to fight today.

By critically reviewing what the military spends money on, it can result in some budget savings by equipping them with what they really need rather than continuing to produce weapons, ships, guns, and planes designed to fight the Soviet Union. Should a hot war arise against Russia or China someday, we have the capability of nationalizing all our production facilities to produce what that type of war would need. They did it in 1940 with the technology of the time. We can sure as hell do the same type of thing today if we have to.

In the meantime (should this type of war ever happen again), we don’t have to be completely prepared for a large scale, nation-to-nation, conventional, hot war. The money being spent on those projects can be used to rebuild infrastructure, reduce poverty, improve education, provide jobs, develop alternative energy and fund health care for every American.

What is the federal budget doing for your community and what has been cut from it since Reaganomics? Visit NPP and find out. Then start a dialogue with your family, friends, neighbors, coworkers, state legislators, governor, Senators and Representatives. Armed with the numbers and where the funding is going v where it is needed, we can have meaningful conversations, discuss much smarter policies (which dictate where money is spent), turn this country around and get it going in the right direction for a new century and a new millennium.

Lets start the discussion in the comments.

Sources:
National Priorities Project
Media Education Foundation

Technorati Tags: American priorities, federal budget, National Priorities Project, spending equals priorities

Hi folks! This is a long post, nearly 2000 words, with 3 videos, so grab a drink or snack and get comfortable before you continue.

President Barack Hussein Obama was inaugurated on January 20, 2009. He enjoys a whopping 83% approval rating. When Bush left office on the same day, he had a 22% approval rating.

The above video was just a snippet of the poor attitude GOP leaders carry. Many Republicans have voiced significant dismay with the direction the party has gone and is going. They haven’t left the Republican party, it has left them. I haven’t left the Republican party, it left me, and now I’m leaving it.

So what went so wrong and why?

I think four things are at the center of the GOP’s demise:

• The GOP aligned themselves with the evangelical, religious right, which accounts for 20% of the American population. They made these people their base. This population likes to tell others what they should do when they don’t follow their own beliefs anymore than “regular” Christians, those of other faiths and non-believers.* This group is advocating for rewriting the U.S. Constitution to make it more like the Bible, something our Founding Fathers went to great lengths to guard against in the strict separation of church and state.
• The GOP became intolerant of anyone who doesn’t think the way they do or anyone who doesn’t agree with them. They are a party of “their way or the highway”.
• Their leader, George W. Bush, willingly exchanged liberty, American values and the rule of law for some unknown and unmeasurable margin of national safety which I do not see as making us safer. If anything, Bush has made us less safe.
• The GOP has believed that government is not the solution to our problems, government is the problem ever since Ronald Reagan was President. Why would we want to elect anyone to a government position if they believe this? They are ideologically opposed to government playing an appropriate role in society. But we have a government and it is supposed to work. Under these people it can’t work because they don’t believe it can work effectively, and they purposefully don’t make it work effectively.

The 2008 Presidential Campaign

The Presidential campaign underlined so clearly that the GOP has become unprincipled and has dived into the gutter. They spent their time and money smearing President Barack Obama instead of coming up with new ideas and new solutions to our problems. Barack Obama was running for President and John McCain was the guy who didn’t want Barack Obama to be President. There was nothing in McCain’s campaign of substance about what he had to offer America, except perhaps more of the same of George W. Bush.

That they thought it is okay to attack an opponent’s patriotism and character instead of his stand on the issues is completely unconscionable. That John McCain slandered William Ayers and continued to do so even though public records clearly indicate Dr. Ayers was tried and acquitted of any crimes is wrong. That the GOP thinks it’s wrong for anyone born in the U.S., no matter what their racial heritage, to run for president, including someone of the Islamic faith, is despicable. Those actions are not America’s values and they certainly are not Republican values, at least not the Republican values with which I grew up.

The GOP’s Hubris

The Republicans seem to want a royal-like control of the government, all its money and other resources, free reign over the economy, and the power to give even more power to certain individuals they bless with that power. Even though they preach smaller government and government is the problem, it seems to grow under GOP Presidents without bound. That’s hypocritical.

If anything, the GOP has become un-American in its thinking and actions. They want all the power and money, and anyone who might need help needs to help themselves because if you aren’t putting more money in the wealthiest pockets in the country, you’re of no use to them. Of course, now that trickle-down economics and the gutting of banking and investment regulations have thrown us into an economic recession to rival the Great Depression, they aren’t as rich as they used to be. They are being paid back in the most effective way possible, hitting them in their bank and investment accounts.

The Rush Limbaughs of the country seem to think we surfs, a the middle class, owe them our hard work to line their pockets. Why anyone listens to this comedian is beyond my understanding.

The GOP is no longer for limited government, peace through fire superiority, the party of ideas and principles, and reasonable progress. It is now for a bigger, socialist government to help the richest of the rich, invasion of our privacy without checks and balances, increasing power in the highest offices of the land, racist, raping the environment at every turn, in favor of torture and “the ends justify the means” thinking, and starting wars in countries that haven’t attacked us. That’s outright imperialistic. Anyone who isn’t for them is against them and is an enemy, as demonstrated in the indefinite detentions of “enemy combatants” without charges.

Compassionate Conservatism? NOT!

What about our obligations to each other? What about compassion for those less fortunate than we are? They call a middle class tax cut welfare. What about the redistribution of wealth from the other classes to the rich? In a time when the rich are richer than ever before, the amount of charitable giving has decreased significantly. How is anything supposed to trickle down when no faucets are turned on at the top of the sink? Trickle down economics doesn’t work. It has never worked and it won’t work in the future because of the greed of the rich.

I know one thing. If they don’t change their ways it will be a long, long time before they are able to rebuild the party and regain any power. Why do I care? This country is built on a two party system of government where the opposing parties are supposed to help keep each other in line. Right now, staying in line has to come from the Democrats who also have all the power. Perhaps the far more open government President Obama is leading will provide the necessary checks and balances from the American people without the need for an opposing party. If that happens, I’m not sure the Republicans will ever be able to rebuild the party.

Change Has Come To America

The Obama campaign machine has morphed into a grassroots volunteer organization at usaservice.org where people can search for local volunteer and service projects in their communities. President Obama is doing something many recent Presidents have failed to do, ask the American people to give, sacrifice and become part of the solution. No Presidents since John F. Kennedy and Jimmy Carter have asked the American people to help.

President Obama can’t change the country alone and neither can the government as a whole. We the people have to work together and President Obama asked everyone to join him and work toward helping others in our communities and solving as many of our own problems as we can.

Significant, lasting change comes from the bottom up, not from the top down. It helps the bottom up approach if the top assists in making the job easier by providing programs and resources to use in making the changes that need to be made.

The Obama Administration has already, in its first few days in power, reversed some of the most egregious violations of justice committed by the Bush Administration by ordering the closing of Guantanamo Bay prison, closing the CIA’s secret prisons off shore, forbidding torture techniques to be used by any agency, and the halting of the kangaroo tribunals that were a sham of legal trials. It is also in the process of seriously beefing up its diplomatic corp, the State Department.

The GOP lost all its power in the House of Representatives and a great deal of power in the Senate in this election. There are currently 58 Democrats in the Senate and there may be 59 when the Minnesota Senate election is finally settled. It takes 60 votes in the Senate to prevent a filibuster.

There are at least a couple of centrist Republicans who got the message sent by voters in this election that we are tired of them not cooperating and getting things done. I believe and seriously hope the Senate will not be bogged down with Republican partisan tactics to slow legislative progress just because they might be able to get away with it. I abhor violence, but if any of these bozos start a ridiculous filibuster, I hope someone will slug him or her in the chops.

In 2010, several Republican Senators will be retiring from office, opening their seats to potentially be filled by Democrats. If that happens a lot will be riding on the success of the Democrats, but if they succeed, and I believe they will, the Republicans won’t be able to use the Democrats’ record against them to win elections. The GOP will have to stop being a party of finger pointers and naysayers, and become a party of real constructive force in the political arena or they will never regain leadership in America.

In closing this post, I must say I am most ashamed of Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, from my home state. He is a pathetic character since being caught both in Washington DC and at home with prostitutes. So much for Republican right-wing family values. He is also proving to be one of the most obstructionist Senators in that body of legislators. I didn’t vote for him and I sure won’t be voting for him in the next election, should he choose to be foolish enough to seek re-election with his horrible behavior.

*References:

Ethics and Religion

Technorati Tags: Afghanistan war, Bush-Cheney, GOP in Exile, Guantanamo Bay prison, Iraq war, Obama Administration, Republican party problems

Auto Fuel

There is one silver lining to the huge economic cloud that has been looming over our heads for a year and won’t be blowing away anytime soon. With high gas prices and then huge job losses, many people drove less this year. Less driving means less oil consumption and less carbon dioxide production. It also means less of a human contribution to global warming.

I personally purchased 9 fewer tanks of gasoline this year compared to last year. I get about 240 miles per tank of gas where I live in mostly city driving, so I drove about 2,160 fewer miles this year than last year. When gas prices were so high during the first 3 quarters of 2008, I made a concerted effort to combine trips and reduce the amount of driving we had to do. I didn’t change our “less driving” habit when gas prices dropped over the last 3 months. I plan to continue to keep the total number of miles I drive per year as low as feasible for environmental reasons. At first I did it for economic reasons, but we live just fine and drive less. We are going to continue to drive less.

Electricity

Many of us have begun to migrate to compact fluorescent light bulbs and increased the air conditioning temperature 1-2 degrees in the summer and decreased the heating temperature 1-2 degrees in the winter. A lot of us have also been more conscious about opening windows on temperate days instead of turning on the A/C. I know I’ve paid a lot more attention to fixing draft problems and making sure everything is sealed better than I ever have in the past.

I also made some small but beneficial changes in the way I do laundry. I wash the colored clothes in cold water, but I still wash the white clothes in hot water with a cold rinse. At the end of the spin cycle, I turn the dial around and run the load through a second spin cycle. Then I dry the clothes with my electric dryer using the automated sensor feature instead of timed dry, and I added two dryer balls to the dryer. The balls help fluff the clothes, cut static and reduce drying time. Between two spin cycles, dryer balls and using the sensor setting, we reduced the amount of electricity we use per month significantly.

I reviewed my electricity and natural gas consumption on our November bill and found we consumed on average 17.5 fewer kilowatt-hours of electricity per day in November 2008 than in November 2007, or 428 fewer kilowatt-hours in November 2008 than in November 2007.

We consumed the same amount of natural gas during the same time periods, so we didn’t see any savings there. It probably has to do with the fact that we have an old gas hot water heater. An on-demand unit would use far less gas and only produce hot water when it was needed.

Economically, our utility bill hasn’t gone down, but it hasn’t increased, so we are making significant progress in energy savings given that rates increased over last year.

Selling Power Back to the Electric Company

As soon as we can spare the money, I plan to install some solar panels on the back side of the roof and perhaps a small wind turbine on the back side of the garage to sell some power back to the grid during sunny days and anytime it’s windy. I also plan to replace my old windows with more energy efficient windows. My house still has the original windows it was built with in 1964. We also likely need even more insulation in the attics than we have now, and we have at least R-22. R-30 would be better. There is still plenty of room to add more.

If everyone installed just one bank of solar panels and installed one small wind turbine, the increased power available during peak daytime hours would mean that our electric power plants would not have to increase power generation to cope with the rising demand for electricity. New, more efficient, environmentally friendly technologies would then have more time for development and scale-up to handle our electricity demands in the future.

Electrical Grid Infrastructure

Infrastructure needs to be sexy starting now. Really sexy. I see an electrical infrastructure future that is much like our decentralized computing power. We used to rely on big, mainframe computers and we logged into them from remote terminals. Now our computing power is contained within the PCs that sit on our desks and in our homes, and spread worldwide around millions of servers that contain the internet. The company I use to host my blogs and websites, HostGator, converted to 100% wind power in 2008.

I see our electrical utilities able to grow more slowly if every new home is built more energy efficient and with power generation technology. Older homes need to be retrofitted to produce at least some of the power our households consume. If we all sell power back to the grid during the day, we take some of the burden off the centralized system. Eventually we may be able to take most of the burden off centralized systems and rely more heavily on local power generation on each building that uses power. In 100 years wind and sun will likely generate the vast majority of the electrical power we use.

We need to invest in America’s infrastructure, so if it takes sexy to make that happen, here is an audio attitude adjuster to help you get started:

Have a listen: infrastructure purr (By Rachel Maddow)

Technorati Tags: decentralized electricity generation, electricity consumption, energy usage, Environment, gasoline consumption, infrastructure purr, natural gas consumption, Rachel Maddow, solar panels, wind turbines