Being the Change I Wish to See

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

written by joubess \\ tags: American priorities, federal budget, National Priorities Project, spending equals priorities

Pres. Obama speaks at NAACP 100th Anniversary

July 16, 2009 was the 100th anniversary of the founding of the NAACP, the oldest civil rights organization in the U.S. Yet on this day, and during this week, the GOP members of the Senate committee holding Judge Sonia Sotomayor’s Supreme Court confirmation hearings were all about race.

Sotomayor’s record, experience and other qualifications seemed to have little bearing on her confirmation. It’s ironic that she is a shoe-in for the appointment given her long record and experience on the Federal bench, and that the Senate has confirmed her twice over the past two decades for Federal judge-ships.

Judge Sotomayor at Senate Confirmation Hearings

I don’t know why I’m shocked, given I live in South Louisiana where racial prejudice is a common occurrence. Nevertheless, I am shocked that in 2009 anyone would go on TV and defend the white race as the race against which discrimination is the problem, and that racial diversity and affirmative action have no place in building our society to be stronger and better than it was in the past.

Pat Buchanan clearly fell down on his debating skills last night on The Rachel Maddow Show. I never agree with him, but Pat is usually great at debate. He usually gets all his facts right and supports his position well. Last night, he didn’t have a defensible argument of any sort, and his examples were essentially fact-free.

Please watch the following video of Mr. Buchanan’s argument:

How Rachel keeps her cool with Pat is beyond me. I would have beat the crap out of him by now. Perhaps it is best that we are made aware that these beliefs and attitudes are still clearly in existence in America today. Maybe it is best that we know we still have a lot of work to do on racism, and by giving Pat a forum, Rachel is making that point crystal clear.

Pat’s arguments are all opinion-based. He believes white people built America and fought in our major wars. Pat said persons of color had nothing to do with any of it. Please watch the following video where Rachel Maddow corrects Pat’s “facts”.

For his argument to be affirmative action is the deliberate discrimination of white males, and that anyone who benefits from affirmative action automatically is not qualified to enter educational institutions such as Princeton or Yale, and is automatically not qualified to serve on the Supreme Court is beyond reason.

Affirmative action is not a gender or racial quota program, nor does it advance unqualified women and minorities over more qualified white males. It’s only function is to assist equally qualified women and minorities to be given a preference in education and jobs. Equally qualified, meaning if a woman or minority candidate is equally or better qualified for a job or admission to a school, the minority candidate should be hired or admitted before the white guy. This is not unreasonable given women and minorities were denied access to jobs and education for centuries because they were women and minorities. Women still earn 78% of what men earn in equal positions with equal experience.

Judge Sotomayor had some affirmative action help getting into Princeton, but once there, her performance was completely up to her, and she performed brilliantly. She was a summa cum laude graduate from Princeton, meaning she graduated in the top 10% of her class. Once you’re in, no affirmative action program helps you get good grades. You’re on your own. I seriously doubt her admission to Yale had anything to do with race or gender since she graduated so highly in her Princeton class. She went on to serve on the Yale Law Review, another position that has nothing to do with affirmative action.

That Pat would presume to lecture Rachel on working class white people being discriminated against is almost laughable if he didn’t believe what he was saying. Given his family and status, I seriously doubt he even knows anyone who is a white working class person. That’s my opinion. Rachel grew up in a middle class family and attended public school, went to Stanford University on scholarships and then received a Rhodes Scholarship and earned her Ph.D.

Rachel spent some years being dirt poor while she finished her Ph.D. She had to work at a plethora of minimum wage and hard labor jobs until she finished her doctoral dissertation. I have known many graduate students, and they are extremely poor, unless their parents are helping them financially.

In the past couple of years has Rachel gotten a break and made her radio show and TV guest appearances into a rock star career with MSNBC. She impressed Keith Olbermann, and he helped her get the exposure and recognition she needed with the top brass. She kept his ratings while he was on vacation when she subbed for him last summer. She had a mentor in her corner, but she had to perform to get where she is.

Pat was far more privileged than most of us, though he doesn’t have his own TV show. His parents afforded his Georgetown University education, from which he did not graduate cum laude, meaning in the top 30% of his class. He wasn’t a Rhodes Scholar. Rachel had to work for everything she has become. She likely didn’t benefit at all from affirmative action. She went to college in 1990 when women entering college was commonplace. She has likely faced discrimination because she is openly gay.

Pat Buchanan is showing his racial fear in his column and in his television appearances this week through open racial hatred focused on Sonia Sotomayor. I hate to tell him that the demographics of the United States have changed significantly since the 1950’s. We are close to the tipping point where whites will no longer be the majority race in America. Racism is a dangerous path for the GOP to take because if they don’t win Latino, Asian and African American voters, they will never rise to power again.

Pat Buchanan and other whites with his opinion had better wake up and smell the coffee because their lily-white America doesn’t exist anymore. It isn’t reality and it isn’t fair. Americans are all supposed to be equal, but in the eyes of Pat Buchanan, some Americans (white men) should still be more equal than others (see Animal Farm by George Orwell).

Photo Credits:
President Obama: Chicago Sun-Times
Judge Sotomayor: Huffington Post.com

Technorati Tags: affirmative action, Barack Obama, NAACP 100th Anniversary, Pat Buchanan, Rachel Maddow, racism, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court Justice Senate confirmation

written by joubess \\ tags: affirmative action, Barack Obama, NAACP 100th Anniversary, Pat Buchanan, Rachel Maddow, racism, Sonia Sotomayor, Supreme Court Justice Senate confirmation