end of a fateful year

* The unnecessary disaster in Iraq - the haste in getting into it, the inadequate preparation and resources to pursue it - now partly acknowledged even by the president and his "stuff happens" secretary of defense.
* The mess in an underfunded Homeland Security regime that requires every airline passenger to remove his shoes and risk a humiliating frisking, grants government snoops broad new powers, locks up suspects without legal rights, but can't properly vet its own Cabinet secretary-designee, or those charged with maintaining security for a US military base in the heart of a war zone???
* The huge tax cuts, most of them for the rich, in a professed time of war, which supposedly requires no sacrifice from anyone other than the troops overseas. Among those men and women, even those who make it home in good physical health, a large percentage will need extended psychological help for the emotional battering they've undergone. View the pictures on the Memory Hole today!!!!
* The ballooning federal deficit resulting in large part from those tax cuts, the decline of the dollar to record lows against the Euro and the nation's concomitant decline in economic and political influence. At some point, federal borrowing will require interest rates high enough that they will choke us. They just cut the NSF budget for 05/06 insuring that creationism and intelligent design will not be challenged by actual factual scientific study.
* The ongoing failure to launch a massive energy conservation program through higher auto efficiency standards and higher gas taxes to reduce our dependency on the very regimes that finance terrorism and which represent the most undemocratic forces on earth.
* The growing visa and security barriers to foreign scholars and students, once a mainstay of the nation's economic and scientific superiority, and the shrinking federal support for low income students in the face of the growing technical power and attractiveness of universities in China, India, Canada and Europe. Go overseas to universities, they are cheaper and a lot more fun!!!!!!
* The increasingly dysfunctional health care system, which with every "reform" becomes more costly, corrupt, inefficient and unfair. The fiscally destructive proposals for privatizing Social Security in the effort to take it down the same road. Combining the failure of Medicare with the impending defrauding of millions upon millions of citizens through privitization can only lead to one conclusion: the reactionary radical right are desperately trying to turn the US into a third world country.

"The United States is not stingy," pouted Colin Powell, the outgoing secretary of state. when challenged on this point on Nightline, he classically quoted his edict: we will not go down this road!! There was no mention that the Bush Administration a week earlier proposed cutting back its contribution to the World Food Bank. Nevertheless, following Egeland's challenge, the United States announced it would donate another $20 million in aid, for a total of $35 million. today, the US announced, for some miraculous reason(a pile of bs) that they would immediately donate $350 million. Given that factor of 10x, redue the following math. Canada, with a population of about 11 percent that of the U.S. and a Gross Domestic Product (GDP) about 6 percent that of the U.S., pledged $33 million. Spain, with a population of about one-seventh that of the U.S. and a GDP about 6 percent that of the U.S., quickly pledged more than $68 million in relief, twice that initially committed by the U.S. Australia, with a population about 7 percent and a GDP about 4 percent of that of the United States, pledged $20 million. Japan, with a population about two-fifths and a GDP about half that of the U.S., pledged at least $40 million; the United Kingdom, with a population of one-fifth and a GDP of about 13 percent of that of the U.S. also pledged at least $40 million. France, with a population about one-fifth that of the U.S. and a GDP about one-tenth that of the U.S., quickly pledged $27 million. Also responding quickly, with statements by their leaders coupled with financial and humanitarian assistance, were dozens of other countries. Israel contributed millions and pledged a 150-member medical team; other countries had already been shipping thousands of tons of relief supplies. International aid organizations believe more than $14 billion will be needed for humanitarian assistance, much of it donated by individuals and corporations.

But it's unfair to say the Bush administration is stingy -- it just has different priorities. The White House has so far requested roughly $100 billion for the occupation of Iraq in FY 2005, which translates to about $8.3 billion per month, or over $270 million per day (eighteen times more than the administration's first offer of help to tsunami victims). And that's only Iraq. The US military budget request for FY 2005 was 420.7 billion dollars -- double that of China, Russia, the UK, France and Germany combined. in other words the US will now donate a day and a half's worth of Iraq funding to the tsunami relief. whoa, i don't know if they can afford that.

Of course, perpetual war requires a lavish arsenal so the US spends further billions each year perfecting its weapons of mass destruction. In 2004 alone, a full $6 billion was earmarked for federal biological weapons programs, dedicated to destructive pursuits including bringing back elements of the 1918 Spanish flu (which killed 40 million people) and producing even deadlier strains of anthrax. Meanwhile the US budget for nuclear-weapon activities in fiscal 2004 topped $6 billion, which is twelve times more than it spent on securing/reducing existing stockpiles or on non-proliferation efforts. Also factor in the $10 billion Bush requested in FY 2005 for his failed missile "defense" program, a budget almost double what the Department of Homeland Security pays for the crucial activities of customs and border patrol.