Molly Ivins: Escape from the pickle factory

[Dudley_DUright]

Leap I lightly, with the grace of a gazelle, over such mundane news items as indictments at the White House and Supreme Court nominations. All the better to continue my crusade to focus attention not on what's wrong, but on how to fix it.

Forget, for a carefree and frivolous moment, the manifold failings of the only president we've got. Instead, let's see if we can figure out how to get out of this pickle. More than one pickle, I grant you -- this administration is a pickle factory. Thinking helmets on, team.

<snip>

On a panel in New Haven, Conn., the other night, Ray Suarez of PBS answered the "How do we fix it?" question with the proposal that we make K-12 our top priority. He suggests this would have so many unexpected side effects -- ranging from science to race relations -- it would effectively be a revolution.

I'm not asking you to endorse that idea, but do consider the astonishing magnitude of such a shift. It's difficult to get a compete grasp on how much we spend on the military, since not all of it is under the Department of Defense. The Department of Homeland Security, for example, pays for much of the "war on terror." But basically, the Pentagon is now getting about $500 billion a year, or 52 percent of the discretionary federal budget -- according to the Center for Budget Priorities.

Business Leaders for Sensible Priorities, whose purpose is to educate the public on how the federal government spends our money and what priorities are, suggests cutting 15 percent from the military budget and redirecting it. The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation says we now spend more on our military than the rest of the world combined spends on theirs. There is no country that could conceivably defeat us militarily, though we certainly do manage to get ourselves stuck in some unpleasant places. Anyone who has watched the poor National Guard getting called back to Iraq again and again can figure out quite a bit of this money is not being well spent.

more..

http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?itemid=19819

As an educator, it is hard for me to argue with this proposal, but it will never happen with the government under republican control.

[babylonsister]

1. Oh, that Molly, always telling the truth...! nt

[firefox]

2. California spends more on prisons than education

Molly Ivins says Here's a starter: I would like America to be a country where we spend more money on educating people than we do on the military.

How about spending more on education than prisons. In California when the budget crunch called for cutting spending they laid of like 100,000 teachers while ignoring the abuses of the prison industry that is so powerful meaning that California spent more on prisons than primary education.

[Briar]

3. There's a Norwegian expert

who argues that you can divide countries into those who choose to spend money on social policies and those who choose to spend it on prisons. The US (and increasingly UK) spend it on prisons and let the social problems which cause criminal behaviour to grow without check. The Nordic countries (especially) seek to prevent such behaviour at source and have far lower prison populations as a result.

Of course, there is another factor. If you believe poeple are "born bad" and must pay the consequences of their "bad choices" then presumably you think interfering in such soul-defining processes opposes the will of Providence is unGodly. So making life too easy for the "bad people" would be a "bad" thing to do. Why spend the money of "good" people on such evil policies? (I'm just trying to get into the heads of godly Conservatives.)

[mrcheerful]

4. Gee don't you wanna be safe?

Lets get tough on crime, build prisons and warehouse citizens, then after a few years kick them out on the street with little or no support, give them a parole agent to harass and threaten them, but ignore everything that caused the problem in the first place seems to be an acceptable quick easy fix. Look at how stream lined the Judaical system has become, plea bargains make up 90% of convictions and public defenders push clients to accept plea bargains, even if the person is innocent.

Then because none of the poor can afford good lawyers like the R. Kelly's or Michael Jacksons out there can, thats called justice. And keeping the people safe from predators and other low life scum, they even have numbers to show how well it works, yet ignore the numbers that show their numbers are wrong.

Why bother fixing the real problem, we got quick easy fixes that make it easier to build prisons and cut education from those that need it the most.

[ixion]

5. I love Molly...

she has such wounderful common sense. :loveya:

I've been preaching social reformation through education for 20 years now... nice to know that I'm not the only one with that idea these days.

[cornermouse]

6. Kick

:kick: