It is Our Duty to make changes

I have to start this topic today with a factoid that I believe is truly under-reported by our media and unchecked by our political structure: the Defense Budget is projected to be over $550 Billion next year, WHICH IS MORE THAN THE COMBINED DEFENSE BUDGETS OF EVERY OTHER COUNTRY ON EARTH!

There are so many examples of fraud, profiteering, corruption, incompetence, waste and abuse that it would require a herculean effort on the part of the American People to flush the defense contractor cesspool down the toilet.  So what are we waiting for?

Let me give you one example that should help to spell out the magnitude of the problem.  A couple of weeks ago, the Pentagon announced it was going to see the first test flight of the new F-35 Fighter Jet.  This multinational effort had already cost the US Taxpayers $265 BILLION and the first plane was barely getting off the assembly line!

Can anyone, ANYONE out there explain to me what they are making these planes out of these days? Lets look at some other purchases that can be made for this amount of money:

• If gold is trading at $450 an ounce today, that amount of money would purchase over 35 million pounds of gold ($7,200 per lb/$265B).
• If an Ivy League University costs $200K for four years, this money could send 1,325,000 students through their programs.
• If a State University program costs $50K for the same four years, this money could send 5,300,000 students to college.
• If a community college program or tradeschool program goes for $6K for a two year degree, this money could send over 44 MILLION people to college.
• The average cost of a fast food meal is $5 per person.  This money could purchase 53 billion meals, or 173 meals for every American man, women and child.
• My electric bill averages $130 a month when averaged on a yearly basis ($1560 per year).  This amount of money could pay my electric bill for the next 169,871,794 years, or pay the vast majority of residential bills for over two years for every home in America.
• To convert a household to complete solar systems costs around $15K per home.  This amount of money could outfit 17,600,000 homes in the US. I can't even begin to estimate the savings in electric bills that would generated, not to mention pollution reductions.
• In an interesting parallel, its possible to produce hybrid cars for that same $15K per vehicle.  This would bring 17,600,000 clean cars onto the roadways at no charge to the consumer as long as they turned in their gas hogs.  With five years of spending at these levels, the US could drop its imports althogther and finally buy our balls back from Saudi Arabia.
• With the median price for a home in Fresno at $280,000 this money could purchase 946,428 homes for residents of this country.
• That $265 Billion equals $833+ for every man, woman and child in the United States. This is just one project and it is small potatoes compared with the rest of the spending thats going on. The words of Ike are echoing throughout the empty town halls and voter booths these days.

I am fairly confident that if the Founding Fathers were able to see our plight today, they would be sincerely disappointed in our present stewardship of their gift to us.  I also believe that they would be clamouring for revolution or revision of the current system before it strangles us all to death with so much red ink that we collaspe every market on Earth.

Thomas Jefferson said it best when he declared "it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.  He would probably have his phone illegally tapped and be followed by the FBI on a regular basis!

What a mess we've allowed to gather on our doorstep my friends. What a mess indeed. This is going to take a certain amount of will power that I personally question the existense of in our great Nation as we have become a group of selfish, self-serving instant gratification bunch that rarely does anything to disrupt the status quo anymore.

I guess we are going to find out the hard way when the economy crashes around our ears just how good we had it and how poorly we've managed to retain it, thanks largely to our own selfishness and due to the reckless abandon of the Republican party as they made every campaign contributing corporation in their rolodex filthy rich on arms supply contracts, oil price gouging, removal of competition for prescription drugs, and the list could go on.  With our spend it now, save it when I'm dead attitude, we have placed more of our capital into the hands of other countries than we've ever done at any time in the past.

Where does this ride stop, I want to get off before its too late!

IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security