Friday, January 21, 2005
Social Security for Dummies
(That'd be me.) Curt speaks slowly and makes pretty charts so we can all understand.
posted by chris at 5:10 PM
Our extravagantly wasteful society
Bush's inauguration yesterday cost $40 million. While it was all private money, the Center for American Progress looks at what else that money could have bought:
200: Number of Humvees outfitted with top-of-the-line armor for troops in Iraq that could have been purchased with the amount of money blown on the inauguration.
22 million: Number of children in regions devastated by the tsunami who could have received vaccinations and preventive health care with the amount of money spent on the inauguration.
1,160,000: Number of girls who could be sent to school for a year in Afghanistan with the amount of money lavished on the inauguration.
26,000: Number of Kevlar vests for U.S. soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan that could be purchased for $40 million.
$290: Bonus that could go to each American solider serving in Iraq, if inauguration funds were used for that purpose.
But hey, a big party that shuts down 100 blocks of DC and then sticks the city for the bill, is much more important that all those things.
posted by chris at 2:32 PM
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Thursday, January 20, 2005
Coming from him, that sounds like more of a threat than a promise
Bush Pledges to Spread Freedom
I'm sure Iran's just a little freaked out right now.
posted by chris at 10:49 PM
By the numbers
The Numeralist runs down the numbers of Bush's first four years. And this guy got re-elected?
posted by chris at 6:12 PM
There is no crisis
A new website has been set up to fight Bush's push to dismantle Social Security. You can join their listserv, learn more about the issue, take various actions and join the fight to protect one of the most useful and beloved social programs in this country.
posted by chris at 11:19 AM
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Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Some songs for the Inauguration
Welcome to the Occupation - R.E.M.
Masters of War - Bob Dylan
Conservative Christian, Right-wing Republican, Straight, White Male - Todd Snider
The Star Spangled Banner - as performed by Jimi Hendrix
Fight the Power - Public Enemy
Christ for President - Woody Guthrie/Wilco
That's Right (You're Not from Texas) - Lyle Lovett
Ich Bin Ein Auslander - P.W.E.I.
Chocolate City - Parliament
Impeach the President - The Honeydrippers
The Revolution Starts Now - Steve Earle
UPDATE: A couple more from Doug:
Big Brother - Stevie Wonder
You Haven't Done Nothing - Stevie Wonder
posted by chris at 9:12 PM
How to make the tsunami tragedy all about US
Asia's tsunami disaster provided a "wonderful opportunity" for the United States to show compassion with relief efforts that reaped "great dividends" on the diplomatic front, Secretary of State-designate Condoleezza Rice said.
Rice's remarks, made at her Senate confirmation hearing, drew a sharp rebuke from Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer who accused her of insensitivity to last month's catastrophe that claimed some 168,000 lives across the Indian Ocean.
Rice, the outgoing national security adviser, made clear in her opening statement Washington's hope of consolidating its influence in the region, following up on the goodwill generated by US military help and financial aid for tsunami victims.
She's saying 226,000 deaths across numerous countries is a "wonderful oppotunity." Sickening.
(edited for expanded commentary)
posted by chris at 3:08 PM
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Tuesday, January 18, 2005
Eradicate global poverty . . . or buy more guns?
Global poverty can be cut in half by 2015 and eliminated by 2025 if the world's richest countries including the United States, Japan and Germany more than double aid to the poorest countries, hundreds of development experts concluded in a report Monday.
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In 1970, the world's nations agreed to provide 0.7 percent of their gross national income for development assistance, and that figure was reaffirmed by the U.N. conference on financing development in Monterey, Mexico, in 2002.
So far, only five countries have met or surpassed the target — Denmark, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. Six others have made commitments to reach the target by 2015 — Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Spain and Britain.
But 11 of the 22 richest donors according to the Paris-based Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development are far from the target and have not set timetables to reach it — including the United States, Japan and Germany.
If all 22 rich countries come up with the money, more than 500 million people can escape poverty and tens of millions can avoid certain death in the next decade, the report said.
If the countries kept up the 0.7 percent level of aid-giving for another decade, it said, "by 2025 extreme poverty can be substantially eliminated" for the remaining 500 million people surviving on a dollar a day.
UPDATE: The US spends about 0.15 percent of its Gross Domestic Product on development aid. In 2003, the US spent 3.7 percent of its GDP on the military. Some may say that the figures should be reversed, but those people don't seem to understand that we've got a never-ending war on! (Not that eradicating poverty might go a long way to reducing the terrorist threat around the world or anything...)
posted by chris at 1:13 PM
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Monday, January 17, 2005
The Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
I am convinced that if we are to get on the right side of the world revolution, we as a nation must undergo a radical revolution of values. We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
A true revolution of values will soon cause us to question the fairness and justice of many of our past and present policies. On the one hand we are called to play the good Samaritan on life's roadside; but that will be only an initial act. One day we must come to see that the whole Jericho road must be transformed so that men and women will not be constantly beaten and robbed as they make their journey on life's highway. True compassion is more than flinging a coin to a beggar; it is not haphazard and superficial. It comes to see that an edifice which produces beggars needs restructuring. A true revolution of values will soon look uneasily on the glaring contrast of poverty and wealth. With righteous indignation, it will look across the seas and see individual capitalists of the West investing huge sums of money in Asia, Africa and South America, only to take the profits out with no concern for the social betterment of the countries, and say: "This is not just." It will look at our alliance with the landed gentry of Latin America and say: "This is not just." The Western arrogance of feeling that it has everything to teach others and nothing to learn from them is not just. A true revolution of values will lay hands on the world order and say of war: "This way of settling differences is not just." This business of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation's homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into veins of people normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody battlefields physically handicapped and psychologically deranged, cannot be reconciled with wisdom, justice and love. A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.
America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.
April 4, 1967, at a meeting of Clergy and Laity Concerned at Riverside Church in New York City.
posted by chris at 2:35 PM
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Sunday, January 16, 2005
Washing his hands of Iraq
President Bush said the public's decision to reelect him was a ratification of his approach toward Iraq and that there was no reason to hold any administration officials accountable for mistakes or misjudgments in prewar planning or managing the violent aftermath.
"We had an accountability moment, and that's called the 2004 elections," Bush said in an interview with The Washington Post. "The American people listened to different assessments made about what was taking place in Iraq, and they looked at the two candidates, and chose me."
This guy does not live in the same reality we do.
UPDATE: Nov 2 exit polls showed that voters who cited Iraq as the most important issue voted overwhelminly for John Kerry.
posted by chris at 1:32 PM
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