Last week, I identified the biggest problem facing our Nation – and that was the Republican party (and don’t ask me why it’s called a party when none of those people are any fun at all). Clearly when a group of people take over a portion of your Nation’s Government and proceed to do things that are destroying it from within – THAT’s a MAJOR problem! Other than the country actually being on fire or sinking into the ocean, it’s hard to imagine something worse than that.
Since we are not on fire or sinking (at the moment – Global Warming is a slow process), we now need to look at the next thing that is causing our Nation to self-destruct which, I believe are lack of adequate (or fair) taxation. I know that this issue has been twisted and framed as a spending issue and yes, we do spend a lot, but not compared to other developed countries. In fact, we collect 33% LESS taxes as a percentage of GDP than the average of 33 OECD nations and that, of course, INCLUDES us dragging down the average!
Not only that but our Defense Spending is LARGER than ALL of the other OECD nations COMBINED. NOT including our $300,000,000,000 annual war spending which is, in theory, temporary – the US budgets $546,786,000,000 per year for the Pentagon, that "Military Industrial Complex" that President Eisenhower warned us would grow to pose a threat to "the very structure of our society." General Eisenhower said:
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the Military-Industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
Two hundred years before Ike, Benjamin Franklin observed that "they who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety." This is not, however, an article debating the size and scope of our military spending…
