“Today, 85 percent of the $400 billion that the government spends to encourage things like home ownership, college attendance, investment and small business ends up in the pockets of the top 20 percent of earners (and half goes to the top 5 percent). Very little ends up helping the working poor. On the other hand, many social benefits cut off when a family’s income rises roughly 30 percent above the poverty line — which is still a far cry from being out of poverty.” (From an NYTimes article titled Out of Poverty, Family-Style)

Think about that.  The government spends money to incentivize the better-off to do what they would be able to do without the subsidy, while they penalize the poor when their income increases.  That is an eye-opening fact, one that puts into stark contrast the policies affected rich and poor in the wealthiest country in the world, and one that should force us to re-think traditional notions of why people are poor.  The truth is that the deck is stacked in favor of those with power.

As the absurdity of our current budget process becomes ever more painful (we cut services to the poor during a recession but refuse to raise taxes on the wealthiest Americans) the extent of our military spending has become that much more egregious.  This quote, by Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was an opponent of the then inchoate military industrial complex, captures what happens when we spend more on guns than on education…

“Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

We are a nation more interested in defense than in what we are defending.  It is time for a new generation of people to emerge that will question–and change–the status quo!

I arose before the cheeks of dawn had had the chance to blush their vibrant hue,

when darkness hung over the world like black ink dripping from a mighty pen. I arose to

find my heart filled to the brim with pain, with joy, with life. Picking up that very pen from

which both light and dark, good and evil emanate, I began to write the story of today–a

tale of great forces entangled in the Cosmic Drama.

At present I am seated on a train. The wheels are humming along the tracks just

as the earth seems to hum as it whirls around the sun, for there is a great joy to motion

that infuses the traveler with the very buzz of existence. Outside my window the curtain

of dawn has begun to lift, revealing the bright orange costumes of actors eager to

astound the audience. What wonders will transpire today? What discoveries? What

ideas spawned and loves consummated?