A few days ago, I wrote a diary here called “We Need A Marshall Plan Now For the U.S.A.”. In Part II, here, we see how the American thrust for Empire and near perpetual wars since World War II have decimated our country to the point it now resembles a third world country.
Today, August 6th, Glenn Greenwald has an excellent discussion up at his blog called “What Collapsing Empire Looks Like” http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/. Greenwald writes:
“As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make.”
In turn, the New York Times article cited by Greenwald focuses on three different communities. First, in Hawaii, to save money, the government furloughed not its workers but children in schools. Public schools closed on 17 different Fridays: this gave the Hawaiian students, whose school system was even prior to this drastic measure one of the worst in the nation, even fewer academic days making it the shortest academic year in the country.
Secondly, the New York Times article looked at transit cuts in Georgia. In the city of Clayton County, a suburb of Atlanta, the city completely cut down its entire public bus system stranding 8,400 daily riders. Reason: same as in Hawaii: no money.
Thirdly, the New York Times article looked at Colorado Springs, Colorado which switched off 1/3 of its more than 24,000 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and also selling off all of the city’s police helicopters.
So, in Hawaii, Obama’s home state, in Georgia, and in Colorado measures have been taken that are so extreme that the very fabric of those societies has been frayed. This is the 3rd world come to America thanks to our political and business leaders.
They, meanwhile, are doing very well, thank you. Here Greenwald quotes former IMF Chief Economist Simon Johnson who told the Atlantic last year that elites do not suffer in financial crises, ordinary people do:
Squeezing the oligarchs, though, is seldom the strategy of choice among emerging-market governments. Quite the contrary: at the outset of the crisis, the oligarchs are usually among the first to get extra help from the government, such as preferential access to foreign currency, or maybe a nice tax break, or — here’s a classic Kremlin bailout technique — the assumption of private debt obligations by the government. Under duress, generosity toward old friends takes many innovative forms. Meanwhile, needing to squeeze someone, most emerging-market governments look first to ordinary working folk — at least until the riots grow too large.
And isn’t that exactly what we have seen in Bush and Obama’s America? Huge tax breaks to the wealthy and even bailout of debts, in the trillions of dollars presided over by both W. and Obama. Now Obama’s “deficit reduction commission” which he stacked with people hostile to social security will soon call for cuts to that most popular and influential program begun by FDR. But recall too that in his autobiographical writings, Obama did not consider FDR (or even JFK) as his hero: Obama saw Reagan as the man.
Greenwald has updated his excellent blog entry with some news from the Wall Street Journal. In an article called “Back to the Stone Age” that newspaper cites how communities are tearing up paved roads in America and “replacing them with gravel or other rough surfaces as counties struggle with tight budgets and dwindling state and federal revenue.” In other words, America is going backward, not forward under a Democratic president.
The news that the Obama administration is pushing a $20 billion plus supplemental bill for keeping teachers and some other public service workers in their jobs is great news. The Senate has passed the bill and the House will be recalled to vote on it. But like the economic stimulus bill from Obama, $787 billion or so, it is too little too late.
Too much money is being drained out of the country on a daily basis for endless wars. The official DOD budget this year under Obama is 8% higher than W’s defense budget. And of course, this is only the published budget that does NOT include supplementals like the $30 billion supplemental for Afghanistan recently. Nor does it include foreign aid to these areas which is little more than bribes to high officials like the $8 billion Hillary announced recently for Pakistan. Nor does it include the “black budget” for the CIA and NSA and all the other security agencies, some of which we know little or nothing about.
As Greenwald rightly points out, this is the cost of Empire that is helping to ruin the United States. We simply do not have the kind of trillions of dollars necessary to fight wars across the globe and maintain 700 plus military bases worldwide and also deal with our infrastructure, our schools, our hospitals, and our elderly. Now our government, under a Democratic president who gained office by campaigning on change, will begin an assault on the most effective safety net this country has ever seen: Social Security.
We need a Marshall Plan for the United States now. Bring the troops home from Iraq (all of them! and stop funding of mercenaries there which just take the place of our combat troops). Bring the troops home from Afghanistan now. Close down lots of those overseas military bases. Why do we need bases in Germany and Japan, two of our best allies, 65 years after the end of World War II? We need to deal with America’s problems first before we “help” others overseas. We need to strengthen Social Security, not weaken it.