political rant #000001

"It Will Be a Great Day When Our Schools Get all the Money They Need and the Air Force Has to Hold a Bake Sale to Buy a Bomber"

We've all seen the bumper sticker. We've all heard the collective metaphorical cringe of conservatives everywhere in response. It's any arch-militarists' worst nightmare.

I have to admit I was rather angry at first when I heard this, though I had heard a more generalized version. Did they not realize that the military is one of the only consitutionally protected uses of federal budget under the power of the president and congress, and that the department of education is not? (Of course, Article I, Sect. 7, Clause 18 ensures the legality of the DOE, but the point still remains that the military was intended to be the major expense of the federal government.)

However, this was before I learned that the military actually does need to use bake sales to fund itself. Thanks, equipment funding cuts! How's that for supporting the troops.

The US military has about 170,000 nuclear warheads, each at least the size of the one that attacked Hiroshima.

It would take less than one half of one percent of these weapons, tops, to kill everyone on the planet.

17.6 Billion. That's how much money we spend to maintain these warheads. That's where your income tax goes.

I hate the Pentagon's bloated budget as much as the next dissident, but we need to set our priorities straight in terms of our budget. We're draining funding for equipment that saves lives, in order to have a greater capability of ending others.

It's lose-lose.

That is all. Go back to sleep, America.  ¶ 10/03/2005 09:48:00 PM