Small-City Mayor Takes on the Pentagon -- War Spending Should Be Spent on Americans, Not on Killing

[kpete]

Source: AlterNet


Small-City Mayor Takes on the Pentagon -- War Spending Should Be Spent on Americans, Not on Killing Afghans
We don't just have a revenue problem in this country -- we have a values and priorities problem.
April 12, 2010 |

Matt Ryan, the mayor of Binghamton, New York, is sick and tired of watching people in local communities “squabble over crumbs,” as he puts it, while so much local money pours into the Pentagon’s coffers and into America’s wars. He’s so sick and tired of it, in fact, that, urged on by local residents, he’s decided to do something about it. He’s planning to be the first mayor in the United States to decorate the façade of City Hall with a large, digital “cost of war” counter, funded entirely by private contributions.

That counter will offer a constantly changing estimate of the total price Binghamton’s taxpayers have been paying for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2001. By September 30, 2010, the city’s “war tax” will reach $138.6 million -- or even more if, as expected, Congress passes an Obama administration request for supplemental funds to cover the president’s “surge” in Afghanistan. Mayor Ryan wants, he says, to put the counter “where everyone can see it, so that my constituents are urged to have a much-needed conversation.”

In doing so, he’s joining a growing chorus of mayors, including Chicago's Richard Daley and Boston's Thomas Menino, who are ever more insistently drawing attention to what Ryan calls the country’s “skewed national priorities,” especially the local impact of military and war spending. With more than three years left in his current term, Ryan has decided to pull out all the stops to reach his neighbors and constituents, all 47,000 of them, especially the near quarter of the city’s inhabitants who currently live below the poverty line and the 9% who are officially unemployed.

..............................

It was in the context of this kind of local pain that Ryan was stunned to discover just how much of Binghamton’s taxes were going to the military and to our distant wars, and how little was coming back to Binghamton in the form of aid and services. “When I first saw the cost of war numbers and made the connections,” Ryan remarks, “I had to wonder if we're ever going to get our priorities straight as a nation. It's like we're facing an attack on government. As a mayor, I can see so clearly what increased federal spending could do for the people of my city.”

Read more: http://www.alternet.org/story/146408/small-city_mayor_takes_on_the_pentagon_--_war_spending_should_be_spent_on_americans%2C_not_on_killing_afghans_

[Lost4words]

1. K & R!

[MadHound]

2. Good for him, that's an excellent idea

Our country is in a recession, our infrastructure is crumbling, states are quickly approaching bankruptcy, yet we're spending billions on a couple of illegal, immoral wars. This is insanity.

Time to bring the troops home and take care of our own country first.

[boobooday]

3. THANK YOU SIR.

:hi:

[Dont_Bogart_the_Pretzel]

4. K&R

[wroberts189]

5. Let me be the 6th KNR/nt

[Captain Hilts]

6. Binghamton is not small and it's the Blue States subsidizing Red states that's his problem.

NY gets back 79 cents for every dollar to DC. Mississippi gets back DOUBLE what they send to DC: $2.02.

So, Ft. Drum funding isn't draining Binghamton, Mississippi and Alaska are.

[No Elephants]

7. Presidents didn't know when to withdraw U.S. troops in the 1860's either.

[Brickbat]

23. YES.

I hate being all "+1," but I have nothing to add to your comment.

[No Elephants]

8. I just fell in love with a mayor I never heard of before. (Never saw that coming.)

[Echo In Light]

9. Rec 13

[Soylent Brice]

10. K&R

[BeFree]

11. I'll vote YES on that!! n/t

[HCE SuiGeneris]

12. Cut the defense budget by half and our budgetary concerns

become a whole lot more manageable.

The "defense" spending is killing more than just "us".

[chill_wind]

16. Yes. And this should make anyone ill--

Afghanistan..
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x8133337

But far worse, even, are the years, now, of human costs. I was looking for "The Memory Hole" website the other day (Russ Kick's old site). I was wondering if it was still around. It is. He had a huge catalogue of the Abu Ghraib images that I stumbled upon while there, and even though I'd seen many or most of them before, they were horrifying to see once again. When is the last time most of America even saw the worst of them? We've put it out of collective conscience.

We've squandered and spent ourselves drunk and insane on war spending and slaughtering. It is madness.

[amborin]

28. .

[chill_wind]

13. YES!! I was just talking about those counters yesterday

in another thread.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=103x529353#529452

www.costofwar.com

(my sig line)

He's the first?? It's time. Way past time. Good news and may there be many to follow in his example.

K & R.

[Mojeoux]

14. My New Heros! K &R n/t

[CL455W4R]

15. That's my mayor

I don't know how well this counter will go over in a town like ours whose tiny middle class is dependent on jobs at Lockheed and BAE to keep them from falling into poverty themselves

[chollybocker]

17. They should install these counters along the highways.

Cost of War: $959,827,092,827,331.27.

Your Speed: 72 mph.

SLOW DOWN.

[florida08]

18. absolutely

and a great idea. Along with that counter we need one showing the contractors and how much they're grossing


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

[rucky]

19. I hope this catches fire!

in every city across the nation.

[malaise]

20. Bravo Mayor Ryan

:yourock:

[feslen]

21. Good for Mayor Ryan!

but like it or not, America's been doing this for years..America loves to fight, well, our government does anyway.

[The2ndWheel]

22. As long as they keep paying

That's the important part. As long as nothing actually changes, and all that's happening is that people are just being reminded of what's going on, but not really protesting it, then they can decorate all sorts of things, on all kinds of places, and have plenty of conversations, and nobody in power will give a damn.

[Uncle Joe]

24. Kicked, but too late to recommend.

Thanks for the thread, kpete.

[Jackpine Radical]

25. I emailed Hizzoner thusly:

Thank you for your courage.

You have never heard of me, and before today I had never heard of you. However, I want to salute you for your brave stand against the insanity of wasting our "sweat and blood and tears" on a disastrously unwinnable and pointless military campaign. Let us devote our creativity and people and treasury to our own betterment rather than squandering them in this futile attempt to regulate the affairs of peoples on the other side of the globe--people who never asked to be regulated by us. Let it not be said that they hate us for our freedom; we have precious little of that, and our pittance is being steadily eroded. Rather, they hate us for our imperialism. And we have plenty of that.

{Jackpine}

[chill_wind]

27. I love that! n/t

[ensho]

26. agree

nt