Defend Social Progress Meet Up In Maine Dec. 15

Dear friends in Maine,

We invite you to an important meeting to discuss the "sequestration" and "fiscal cliff" issues coming up in January.  This is another chapter is the ongoing deterioration of the federal government's commitment to using federal tax dollars to support the basic human needs of our people. It is time to "take back our government" by insuring the safety and security of all who live here, rather than emphasizing the needs of corporations and an overreaching military.

We will meet on Saturday, December 15 from noon until 3:30 pm at the Mediation and Facilitation Resources building, 11 King St., Augusta (off State St. at corner with Pat's Pizza, a few blocks south of the State Capitol).  Snow date will be same time on December 16. 

Please bring food to share (or for yourself) while we have lunch and get to know each other between noon-1 PM. The planning meeting will follow. If you are unsure of the location or directions, contact Larry Dansinger at (207) 525-7776.

Reports are already surfacing that President Obama will move quickly to sign a deal with the Republicans in Congress to cut Social Security, Medicare/Medicaid in return for some tax increases on the rich.

On Election Day the Budget for All question won overwhelmingly in all 91 cities and towns across Massachusetts in which it was on the ballot, averaging a 75% yes vote, 25% no -- even passing in towns carried by Scott Brown.  This ballot question called for an end to social program cuts, an end to costly wars ($8 billion a month in Afghanistan), and for increased taxes on the rich.  Clearly the public is seeing these important connections.

We are not proposing to start a new group.  We do think though that by bringing together people who have not worked together in the past we can all be stronger than we are now.  Our new senator Angus King will play a key role in these budget negotiations and we should be developing a coordinated campaign to mobilize the public so that Congress and President Obama hear from the people in Maine soon.

The goal of the meeting will be to listen to one another and discuss strategy options to protect social progress from becoming the victim of the debt crisis in Washington.  By building and expanding our networks we can resist budget cuts to social programs and transfer any cuts to the bloated military.

We hope that your organization will be able to send one or more representatives to this strategy and action meeting.  We will be sharing this invitation with labor, religious, peace, social justice, women’s, environmental groups, and more.  Please feel free to pass this letter on to others who you think might be interested.

The time has come for us to connect the dots to survive and bring greater harmony and equality to our country. The only way we will be able to effectively deal with the massive corporate money now being poured into Washington is to get beyond our traditional single issue organizing and move toward a more cooperative and collaborative model.

We look forward to seeing you on December 15. 

For peace and environmental and social justice,

- Professor Doug Allen, University of Maine (Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine and Maine Peace Action Committee)

- Rev. Bill Bliss (Neighborhood Faith Community, United Church of Christ, Bath)

- Read Brugger (Team 350 Maine)

- Chris Buchanan (Environmental activist)

- Richard Clement (Maine Veterans for Peace)

- Kenny Cole (Maine visual artist)

- Larry Dansinger (ROSC)

- Jacqui Deveneau (Maine Greens)

- Denise Dreher (Pax Christi Maine)

- Bruce Gagnon (Global Network & Bring Our War $$ Home Campaign)

- Betsy Garrold/Bob St. Peter (Food for Maine's Future)

- Judy Garvey/Jim Bergin (Maine Prisoner Advocacy Coalition)

- The Rev. Carol L. Huntington (Deacon, Episcopal Diocese of Maine & Social Worker)

- Jennifer Lunden (Social worker)

- Jessica Moore (Peace Action Maine)

- Rosalie Tyler Paul (American Friends Service Committee, Maine)

- Ilze Petersons (Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine)

- Mike Reynolds (AbilityMaine)

- Richard Rhames (Biddeford City Councilor)

- Judy Robbins (Peninsula Peace and Justice)

- Lisa Savage (CODEPINK & Bring Our War $$ Home Campaign)

- Robert Shetterly (Americans Who Tell the Truth)

- Mary Beth Sullivan (Social worker)

- Rev. Mark D. Wilson (Bath, Maine)

- Donna Yellen (Social worker)

* Groups are listed for identification purposes only

Propping Up A Rotten System Is The Liberal Curse

Image: Occupy NH Primary

One of the the greatest dangers of the thinking error I call "false dichotomy" is the misperception that a loss for one "side" is a win for the other. The multi-billion dollar professional sports industry exists partly to distract us from the killing and enslavement necessary to support our lavish, unsustainable lifestyle, but mostly as a strategy to enforce the notion that dichotomy is fundamental to understanding the modern world.

Potential thinkers fall prey to the error early in life, and are then severely handicapped when it comes to thinking about nuances, or analyzing situations where black vs. white thinking does not apply.

Public education in this country -- at most locations anyway -- reinforces the notion, teaching over and over again how the colonies rebelled and threw off the chains of tyranny imposed by monarchy and colonialism. Our side won!!!

Never mind that the U.S. is essentially the heir of what was at the time the most rapacious of global imperial powers. We're a white supremacist, genocidal, upstart colony riding on the (now subsiding) wave of immense material wealth got by stealing the continent from indigenous tribes. Treaties and other forms of law were used to trick and dispossess our land's former inhabitants, epidemic disease was willfully induced, and brute force relocation was used against the survivors. You can see it as the final act in the old play of Rule Britannia, or the first act in the new play of U.S. global hegemony.

These thoughts are in my mind as Thanksgiving approaches and I am digesting the news about CIA director and ex-general Petraeus resigning over the sort of martial infidelity that shocks no one in this day and age. Compared with acting like a teenager in the oval office with an intern, Petraeus' dalliance seems positively dignified; at least his paramour was an adult with a real job.

It just seems amazingly coincidental that a CIA outpost in Benghazi, Libya was recently overrun and several of its staff killed -- including the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, who was there for reasons we have not and likely will not hear honestly explained. If you've studied history much you know that competition is fierce at the highest levels of rich, predatory empires of any sort. And right now who's in control of military aid flowing from Libya to militants in Syria, which lies along the path to defeating Iran for control of the Persian Gulf?

The dichotomy I'm interested in is the one between spending tax revenues for corporate welfare (buying expensive weapons systems that are the biggest polluters on earth, for instance, or letting hugely profitable entities like oil companies operate virtually tax free at our expense) or spending tax revenues actually taking care of people. As we've seen from the aftermath of hurricane Sandy, which has been like Katrina but with cold weather, government no longer even makes a pretense of responding to people's basic needs. Ditto wealthy organizations like the Red Cross with their own powerful elites.

As the so-called "fiscal cliff" approaches and progressives make ready to cave on reducing the entitlements that are the last safety net for so many in the U.S., I want to go down fighting for economic justice. I respect the Occupy Sandy folks who are exhausting themselves delivering the disaster relief not forthcoming from government by billionaires, but I also know that getting drawn into propping up a rotten system can be a sinkhole for energy and morale.

It's like I heard an activist say in a video organizing students to promote Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions on Israel: Palestinians are not a downtrodden people in need of charity. They are a dispossessed people, in need of justice.

Charity is so much more polite and less challenging, generally. Timid types can participate without fear of being disruptive to the genteel veneer hiding violent repression. Fundraisers where everyone has a nice meal are so much more enjoyable than getting arrested and brutalized by police for exercising the right to speech and assembly, for example.

Coming together for mutual aid can be a powerful movement builder.

But a movement is only worth building if its ultimate aim is to remove the underpinnings of a venal and corrupt system.

Here are anti-austerity protesters in Spain early this autumn. Let's make our own government fear this kind of public rejection of government by and for the wealthy, and austerity for the rest of us.

War Dollars Flow in Wash DC -- While Maine's Poor Get a Whole Lot Poorer

I work with low income youth in the most low income county in Maine. Our guidance director asked a young man how she could help him be more successful in school a couple of years back. He requested a space heater, because he was living in an unheated garage while attending high school and trying to write a novel. That year she had a college professor ask what percentage of students at our school she considered to be "at-risk" and she replied "All of them."

Even those we would consider middle class are one layoff or illness away from financial collapse. There are a few small business owners that constitute the affluent, and almost no professional class at all. Such people move away from our area, and nearly all the manufacturing jobs left for offshore tax havens years ago.

So it was with bitter irony that, on the day the U.S. House of "Representatives" considered spending $642 BILLION on "defense" next year, and a "GOP budget package [that] would cut $36 billion from the food stamp program by reducing benefits and tightening eligibility, $23.5 billion from Medicaid and children's health care, $4.2 billion from hospitals that serve the poor and uninsured, and $2.8 billion from a program that helps homeowners facing foreclosures," Maine's governor rushed to sign into law a budget with these provisions:

 o     Eliminates MaineCare coverage for another 14,500 low-income working parents (those with income between 100-133% FPL). As part of a compromise earlier this session, the legislature already voted to eliminate coverage for 14,000 working parents between 133-200% FPL.  This would double the amount of parents who will have coverage stripped from them and targets parents who are struggling with even fewer resources. 

Cuts to many programs supported by the Fund for a Healthy Maine, including:

o   Cuts $2M of funding for Head Start, which means that 216 very young children will no longer have access to Head Start and the vital supports it provides to these children and their families. Head Start is an investment in these children's future, as it provides early care and education, as well as health, nutrition, mental health, social and family supports;

 

o  Cuts nearly $2M of funding for the Child Care Subsidy Program.  This will lead to a deep cut in the availability of child care vouchers for families with incomes below 250% FPL and will negatively impact 1,400 children. The child care subsidy program helps parents with low income to afford the child care they need in order to work;

 

o  Eliminates funding ($2.6 M) for the Maine Families Home Visiting Program, which will eliminate vital services for Maine's most vulnerable infants and children.  Approximately 750 families will lose services focused on family substance abuse, domestic violence, prevention of abusive head trauma, and the health and safety of children;

 

 o  Eliminates funding ($401,430) for Family Planning; and

 

o  Eliminates $300,000 for dental services for people with low incomes and no other source of dental help.

o  The complete elimination of MaineCare coverage for 7,000 young adults (19 and 20 year olds) who are under 150% of the poverty level.

This last item means that if my school's former student develops pneumonia from living in an unheated garage, his health care will be obtained at the emergency room.

Because this is an emergency, make no mistake about that.

If you're in Maine, join us at the next Bring Our War $$ Home organizing meeting Saturday, June 9 at noon in Augusta. Help confused citizens connect the dots between out of control military spending, and the shredding of programs that support our most vulnerable young people.

What kind of country have we become?

MAYOR KAREN HECK, WATERVILLE, MAINE 
"What kind of country have we become when we are killing and maiming women and children halfway around the globe at the same time were abandoning poor women and children here at home? It's time we stopped this madness and brought our war dollars home." 


Hall of Flags, State House, Augusta, Maine  March, 2012.   Marching Against Fiscal Madness: Fund Human Needs rally and news conference with Occupy Maine and Bring Our War $$ Home campaign.


Videos by OccupyMaine TV



MORGANA WARNER EVANS "WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?"

Sung as the governor looked on:

"Don't believe the governor, don't listen to his lies!
The middle class ain't got a chance unless we organize."




LISA SAVAGE, CODEPINK MAINE
"Bring war dollars home to protect and clean up the environment."

Community Leaders, 99% Speak Out Against Fiscal Madness To Demand: Fund Human Needs, Not Wars

Hall of Flags rally to bring war dollars home to Maine, April 2011

The Maine Campaign to Bring Our War $$ Home and Occupy Maine have announced a rally in the Statehouse Capitol Building Hall of Flags on March 20 from 2-4pm to hear testimony from citizens affected by cuts to vital services and programs. These cuts are presented as necessary by Governor LePage's administration and Tea Party legislators, but are in fact the result of years of excessive spending on the U.S. military and its wars abroad.

The event is intended to remind citizens in Maine that our state's share of war spending since 2001 comes to $3.4 billion. Testimony from local government officials, educators, students and Occupy Mainers will be heard.

Mayor Karen Heck of Waterville released a preview of remarks she plans to deliver on March 20: “I see one of my jobs as mayor as connecting the dots for the people of Waterville between what’s happening nationally and the effects of those decisions on our lives locally and I believe it’s past time to bring our military dollars home. We need that money for our local schools, for our infrastructure improvements and to support people are suffering from budget cuts to education, health and welfare services.”

“Our requests for General Assistance are increasing and local food banks and soup kitchens are serving more people than ever before. We are facing cuts to Head Start at a time when we are only able to serve 23% of those families who are eligible...we need to make our voices heard that spending on the war must stop now,” wrote Mayor Heck.

Representatives from Occupy Maine in Portland, Augusta and Bangor will testify as well. Curtis Cole, a student at UMaine, Augusta who participated in the encampment in Capitol Park until its eviction in December, will speak on March 20 as follows: “The 1% would like us to believe it is in our best interest to spend billions of dollars annually on a defense budget. They would like students to believe that it is in their best interest to maintain funding occupation soldiers’ salaries; they want us to believe that we can ‘suffice’ without quality healthcare, teachers, firefighters, and decent infrastructure. Yet, most of all, they would like society at large to swallow the ultimate lie: that maintenance of the... Military Industrial Complex, is needed for our safety.”

The Bring Our War $$ Home campaign began two years ago in Maine with a rally inside the Hall of Flags in Augusta, and has now spread nationally. Last summer the U.S. Conference of Mayors annual meeting passed a Bring Our War $$ Home resolution, the first time they have taken a foreign policy position since the Vietnam War. Bring Our War $$ Home resolutions have passed in Maine by the Deer Isle Town Meeting, Solon School Board and the Portland City Council. Similar resolutions have also passed city councils in Hartford, Ct, Amherst and Northampton, MA, Eugene, OR, and Los Angeles, CA.

Last fall the campaign held a series of 17 local events in 14 Maine communities, supported by a radio ad campaign featuring Maine's Humble Farmer, Robert Skoglund on five Maine stations from Portland to Presque Isle.

According to Bring Our War $$ Home co-coordinator Bruce Gagnon, "Recent national polls show that 70% of the American people want us out of Afghanistan and they want the $10 billion we waste on that war every single month to be brought back to our local communities and states to help solve our fiscal crisis. We are not going to have an economic recovery as long as we keeping flushing people's hard-earned tax dollars down the endless war hole. We are organizing this action in order to help people apply pressure on all of our elected officials to publicly say - Bring Our War $$ Home."

The Bring Our War $$ Home campaign is waged by a coalition of about twenty groups including CODEPINK Maine, Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space, Veterans for Peace, PeaceWorks of Greater Brunswick, Peace Action Maine, the Peace & Justice Center of Eastern Maine, and the Midcoast Peace and Justice Group.

Contact: Bruce Gagnon (207) 443-9502
Lisa Savage (207) 399-7623

With $662 billion for military, indefinite detention for all

Source: Guardian Bradley Manning hearing -- live updates

Honor Bradley Manning today on his 24th birthday -- his second in custody -- by calling the White House message line to register your outrage at the passage of the worst annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) ever. Number to vent your spleen: 202-456-1111. Why not also call Congress while you're at it? 877-429-0678.

No one in either place cares what you think, but it may possibly relieve some of the intense anger you feel in response to habeas corpus being legislated away under the false pretense of making you safer. It's icing on the cake to have it signed into law by a faux constitutional law professor the 1% hope to scare you into voting for come November. Hey, Obama didn't invent indefinite detention. It's been in place since the outset of the war on terror.

NDAA  also approved expenditures of $662 billion for military, including wars, next year. Polls indicate most Americans don't want war against Afghanistan, didn't want the U.S. doing business as NATO to attack Libya, and don't want more than about 6% of their taxes being spent on the military in any case. Current spending on military constitutes 57% of the pie. What's wrong with this picture?

source: Waterville Morning Sentinel

Of course the outrage over continuing to make defense contractors obscenely wealthy while cutting funds for heating assistance, medical care, and food for the nearly 50% of U.S. residents now living below the official poverty line got muted by the civil liberties issue tacked on to NAAA.

Indefinite detention for all at the whim of the military, or perhaps with some power retained by the president selected by leading campaign contributors, alarmed the few who were paying attention. The Democrat party loyalists pretended to believe Obama would veto it. Now they will probably pretend that his hands were tied and he couldn't veto it. Just like they pretend Democrats oppose gutting social programs even as they agree to do so.  These people are like abuse victims who make excuses for the abuser and return to him again and again and again. Some of them grow quite nasty lately as they can feel the 99% slip away from even a whisper of belief in the false dichotomy Punch and Judy show that national  electoral politics have become.

So let's not pretend that our voting or our phone calls do anything significant to resist the shredding of the constitution, or the bankrupting of the U.S. taxpayer on behalf of Lockheed Martin, et al.

The whole system would grind to a half in an instant if the 99% simply stopped cooperating to uphold it.

Whether they realize it or not, is another matter.

So here's what I'm going to do after making those futile calls. I'm going to get with others that are as concerned as I am, I'm going to listen to their ideas, and I'm going to do my homework on the effective use of nonviolent methods (Gene Sharp documentary Dec. 18 free at SPACE gallery in Portland 7pm).

I'm going to keep working as a citizen journalist to the extent of my abilities. I'm going to watch and share the "Collateral Murder" video from Iraq, the one Bradley is accused of leaking, plus more revelations from Iraq as the ghastly first phase of its subjugation draws to a close.

Citizen journalism is what we depend on now for news. If not for a tweet, how would I know and rejoice that yesterday someone in the courtroom called out "Bradley Manning is a hero!".

If I'm indefinitely detained for speaking out? So be it. We are all Bradley Manning. (Contribute to Manning's defense fund here.)

Why did you come to #OccupyMaine Day 1?

Who's Representing You In Washington?

CODEPINK  in action today 9/13/11!

Medea Benjamin and others hold signs of our times as General Petraeus testifies to Congress in a joint intelligence hearing.

As a major assault on the U.S. embassy, the Afghan national security ministry, and NATO headquarters among other places had Kabul in chaos, here is what your government was doing: listening to the Pentagon.
 

Alli & Jim crashing the Super Committee meeting today.

That is, when they weren't listening to the boy billionaires club, the so-called Super Committee that was formed to raid the big enchilada of pension funds, Social Security. And order up austerity for you. Bring our war $$ home!

War Criminal enabler, lawyer John Yoo was seeing PINK today too!

The Heritage Foundation appearance by the man who wrote the torture memos during the Bush administration attracted Gael and other activists with messages: SHAME ON YOO.

All three of these men represent what is dangerously wrong with our country and the globe it tries to dominate. Endless war on "terror" as if such a thing were even possible. Pretend crisis in order to raid a fat pension fund to keep buying massive amounts of weapons. Pseudo-intellectuals who pervert their education to construct rationalizations for the darkest kind of human behavior. For-profit.

Grateful to my PINK sisters & brothers for being there.

Domestic Insecurity

One in five children in the U.S. officially live in poverty now. In cities, the figure climbs to as high as two out of five. How shameful this seems to me, in light of the money pouring out of our pockets and into the highly profitable business of war. In Charlottesville, VA, for example, taxpayers will be asked to contribute $63.3 million to the Pentagon budget, which would provide 27,933 low-income kids with health care next year.

The mainstream press is increasingly taking notice of the high costs of endless war, as if it had taken a decade to wake up and smell the red ink. Many who don't believe in social progress are joining the antiwar chorus. They don't want to save money in order to, for instance, give 6,414 university students scholarships for a year -- they just want to save money, period.

But how will young people ever pull themselves up by the proverbial bootstraps if they can't read and write competently? For the two decades I've been a public school teacher, every national assessment of future needs concludes that, to compete successfully for the dwindling number of jobs available, students will need at least a high school diploma plus some kind of post-secondary training. Yet public education, chronically underfunded for decades, is again on the chopping block -- with schools closing, teachers laid off, and class sizes climbing. University tuition is skyrocketing from New York to California. Summer job training programs for youth were also cut in lots of the most economically disadvantaged places. (As had been done also in London, Liverpool and Manchester, with riotous results.)

Food insecurity is already at the doorstep of many who thought they were educated enough, or secure enough -- homeowners with careers that brought the elusive health care benefits, suddenly laid off after decades, unable to find a job in their field. Students with enormous debt from their college degrees, working for minimum wage at jobs with no benefits, barely able to make the rent and their education loan payments. Families who had a member with a disease or injury they could ill afford, in foreclosure. Soup kitchens and food cupboards are swamped like never before. And the federal food stamp program, morphed into something called SNAP, now takes weeks or months to apply for.

The federal government's response? Start practicing for urban warfare, apparently. The Jamaica Plain Gazette reported that the U.S. Special Operations Command landed a military helicopter on the roof of a closed elementary school after dark last week in a poor residential area of Boston. No notice was given to the alarmed neighbors, watching men in combat gear descend onto the roof of the building where their children used to go to school.

“We’re from Special Operations,” (spokeswoman) Tiscione acknowledged, referring to the umbrella organization of all four military branches’ special forces. “I’m kind of being vague on purpose. It’s more of a challenge for us when people know who we are.”

(Hey, aren't they the same Special Ops reported to  be carrying out assassinations and renditions in 70 countries worldwide -- without any Congressional oversight?)

Domestic insecurity*, indeed. What are people to do? Burning down buildings doesn't solve much and leaves a poor neighborhood even poorer. Some young people are getting organized, mobbing sites of police brutality like BART subway stations in San Francisco-- and having their cell phones shut down by authorities (but that's another story).

Then there are vibrant cultural responses to rage. CODEPINK's campaign to Create, Note Hate supports artful expressions of what ten years of "war on terror" has brought, and what alternatives might look, sound and feel like, part of a national effort called 10 Years and Counting. Maybe you could get a few hundred friends together and create a dance expressing your yearning for the opportunities offered by higher education like these college students in Chile:

You could write a book, like Buggy, the young adult novel I co-authored about about the poverty draft, and what really turns kids on. You can read a sample on Amazon.


You could help occupy Freedom Plaza in DC this October 6 and beyond. You could organize a Bring Our War $$ Home Care-a-Van to tour your state, finding out what budget cuts have done to your neighborhoods, and how small those are in comparison to the funds lavished on building weapons.

You could study and teach about nonviolent methods of effecting change. Because children living in poverty need ALL of us to pull together and create a better future for the world.

* Domestic Insecurity is a name I lifted from my creative friends the Three Monkeys Art Collective, from their 2004 installation at Fitchburg Art Museum. Grateful for the artists!

30 day Care-a-Van to Bring War $$ Home

From CIA head to the Dept. of "Defense" 

         (image source: blog Who Is IOZ?)

A person could spend all day reading bad news: about the debt ceiling "crisis" "resolution" and how unlikely it is to result in military spending cuts of any significance at all. Despite the deal (whose so-called Super Committee remains unappointed, whose provisions remain unspecified) providing the pretext for hawks like Leon Panetta to sound the alarm that reducing military is a danger of the red alert level.

Israel's best friend U.S. senator Joe Lieberman even announced that the U.S. can't afford Social Security as we have known it because funds are needed for the fight against "Islamist extremists." Who besides AIPAC would believe this kind of nonsense?

I say the writing is on the wall. Regular working people all over the world are waking up to the fact that privatization of common resources doesn't create jobs or housing or educate anybody. It creates massive profits for a tiny percentage of the people, falling expectations for the middle classes, and dire poverty amounting to virtual enslavement for the poor. Israeli young people busted out with tent cities all over the land, and ten of thousands demonstrated in front of the prime minister's residence in Tel Aviv this week. Chilean students took to the streets and braved police water cannons to demand an end to voucher and co-pay based education that leaves them with debt three times the size of their annual salary once they earn a degree.

In Maine plans are underway to embark on a 30 day Care-a-Van to Bring Our War $$ Home, and the line up of events shows an excitingly broad reach. Three college campuses, big cities and small towns, and a chance to organize with Maine's indigenous people await your participation. Here's the lineup to date:

• Sept 10 WERU Maine Grassroots Media Conference at the Unity Center for Performing Arts, Bring Our War $$ Home T-shirt silkscreening workshop
• Sept 11 Portland Linking hands around Back Cove; Orono Peace Group and Peace & Justice Center of E. Maine are planning to do an all day penny poll at the Orono Fair
• Sept 17 Bangor Teach-In collaborative event with the First Congregational Church of Brewer.  Keynote speaker will be Terry Rockefeller from Families for Peaceful Tomorrows. 3-6 p.m. 
• Sept 20 UMFarmington event featuring singer/songwriter David Rovics, focus on tuition hikes and student debt
  
• Sept 21 Waldo film showing; Belfast film showing
  
• Sept 23-25 Common Ground Fair Bring Our War $$ Home tabling (with Veterans for Peace) + Program in speakers tent
• September 25 P&J Center of E. Maine, Bangor film "Scarred Lands and Wounded Lives" 7pm
• Sept 30 Afghanistan war Teach-In "10 Years of war in Afghanistan: What have we learned, what can we do?" Bowdoin College, Brunswick
• Oct 1 BIW vigil in Bath emphasizing drone warfare during Keep Space for Peace Week
• Oct exact date tbd event with tribal community of Penobscot people, focus on environmental and economic justice

And this week our campaign published results of a survey of what people everywhere, including every county in Maine, want public funds spent on:
Mainers Want Tax Revenues Spent on Education, Health Care

Education, health care, and veterans’ benefits were the top choices for federal spending among 1,552 Mainers, according to a “penny poll” conducted in each of Maine's sixteen counties.

In the midst of debates in Washington DC about debt, budget cuts, and tax increases, a series of surveys were held throughout the state of Maine to get local responses to the issue. A “penny poll” was held in every Maine county asking participants, “How would you like your federal tax dollars spent?”

The results from over 1,500 participants in Maine diverge considerably from the actual spending by Congress, but were relatively consistent in different parts of the state.

Participants at shopping centers and post offices were given ten pennies, each representing ten percent of the money in income taxes that goes each year to the federal government. They were asked to put pennies in jars representing the ten largest parts of the federal government’s discretionary budget, the monies that Congress allocates each year. How many pennies participants put in each jar indicated where THEY wanted to see their tax dollars spent, not where the federal government currently spends tax money.

Results showed that education (21%), health care (19%) and veterans’ benefits (12%) were the top choices among the 1,552 people who participated. Those were followed by environment/science at (11%), food/agriculture (9%), both transportation and interest on the national debt (7%), housing (6%), defense (5%), and general government (2%).

“What the public wants its tax money to go toward is very different from where Congress is actually spending it. Education, health care, veterans’ benefits, and the environment/science all received a lot more money than Congress actually spends for them,” stated Larry Dansinger, who compiled the figures. “Defense, including our current wars, nuclear and conventional weapons, pay for our armed forces, and homeland security, gets about 50% of the discretionary budget now, but in the survey that category got just under five percent.”

The penny polls, sponsored by the Bring Our War $$ Home campaign, were conducted by volunteers in a number of Maine towns during the months of May, June, and July. The polls were held at post offices, supermarkets, downtown areas, and other venues frequented by a broad cross section of the public.

“Congress is out of touch with the priorities of most people in this country,” said Lisa Savage, CODEPINK Maine Local Coordinator. “It's time to stop pouring tax revenues into making weapons manufacturers even richer than they already are. The people know this, and they also know that their needs are not being represented in Washington DC.”

For more information on these polls, including individual poll by poll results and locations, contact Larry Dansinger, 525-7776 rosc@psouth.net or Lisa Savage, 399-7623.

GRAND TOTALS OF RESULTS FOR ALL 19 POLLS:
Defense                        
765
4.9%
Education                              
3239
21.1%
Environment/Science                     
1701
11.1%
Food/Agriculture                      
1409
9.2%
General Government                    
352
2.3%
Health Care                             
2909
18.9%
Housing/Urban Dev.                        
994
6.4%
Interest on Debt                             
1058
6.8%
Transportation                        
1094
7.1%
Veterans' Benefits                     
1856
12.1%
Total Pennies: 15,377        
1,552 people took the poll

Tent city in Tel Aviv, one of many protesting declining housing conditions as the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer after years of privatization of public resources. Tent 1948 has a facebook page, and this to say about its intentions: We want this struggle to deal with housing shortage among Arabs and Mizrachi Jews in Israel, both in large cities and in the villages

Dismal Science

Who can understand the bizarre congressional response to the so-called debt ceiling crisis anyway? They build this elaborate model of triggers and super committees and defense spending "reductions" as a pretext for the squawking of hawks, and then wait to see what happens. As the meager social safety net in this country is further shredded to continue massive tax cuts enjoyed by the wealthy.

A path to security it's not.

I live in a conservative, blue collar/lucky to work at all part of the country, but I am hearing from people who hear from people at work: if they cut Social Security, we'll finally start fighting back.

For those of us who agitate for cutting out military spending, it's difficult to keep watch over the right hand while simultaneous watching the left hand shuffle the coconuts rapidly to create confusion. Jean Athey did a good job of making sense of where the bottom line could fall after the show has subsided:

The bill just passed offers two possibilities for potential cuts in military spending...
(1)  Budget caps: This covers FY 2012, which begins in October. The budget caps require that spending not exceed a certain level throughout the government. The budget cap for military spending is contained within the so-called “security” category consisting of the Pentagon, State Department, Homeland Security, and the discretionary part of Veterans Affairs. For FY 2012, the budget cap for “security” spending is a grand total of $5 billion below the 2011 level; analysts have suggested that total “security” spending exceeds $1 trillion. If it is $1 trillion, we are talking about cutting one half of one percent of our “security” spending.  

You can safely bet that the Republican-dominated House and the weak-kneed Democrats in the Senate will ensure that the miniscule $5 billion reduction in “security” spending does not come from the Pentagon, but from our Veterans, from our already hobbled and much-needed diplomatic resources, and from foreign aid. In short, the budget cap will not lead to reductions in bloated military spending... (2) Automatic spending cuts:  If the new Joint Committee fails to reach agreement, the bill calls for automatic 15% across-the-board cuts in discretionary spending, including Pentagon spending. The White House claims that, under this scenario, Pentagon spending could be reduced by as much as $500 billion over a decade. The catch here is that the 15% spending “cuts” for the Pentagon are computed by looking at planned spending (from the Administration’s February 2011 budget submission), not current spending...I don’t know about you, but in my family budget, I define a spending cut as “less than what I spent last year,” not “less than what I was hoping to spend next year.”  But in the Alice-in-Wonderland logic of this bill, money going to the Pentagon could actually increase but be called a “cut” if the increase was less than Obama proposed in his 2011 planning document.

The maximum real cut to Pentagon spending even remotely possible under the bill is less than 1%.

Bring Our War $$ Home is needed now more than ever. Our economy appears to be staggering, and cutting social spending while it does so is reckless. Is capitalism committing suicide? Stay tuned.

Join us in talking to your neighbors about the need for war dollars to come home, and get to work. Do whatever you can do: show a film, hold a discussion, get out in the streets.

Or write a great op-ed like Codepinker Elizabeth Barger, who under the headline CYNICAL DEBT CRISIS RAISES TAXES ON MIDDLE CLASS AND WORKING POOR wrote: "I wonder what it will take for us to get organized?"

source: Changing Winds blog

Rebuild The Dream That People's Voices Matter

While Congress and the President play chicken with the nation's solvency, house parties in thousands of communities around the country will convene this weekend to consider what is to become of our hopes for economic recovery. In an attempt to generate a consensus on our collective future, the grassroots group that helped catapult Obama from the Senate to the White House is meeting again in towns like yours under the rubric “Rebuild the American Dream.”

Cynics will recall that, in the run-up to the 2008 election, MoveOn gathered small contributions that amounted to a sweeping mandate for change – one that few of us continue to believe in. Widespread disgust with the warmongering of the Bush Jr. administration pushed people in the U.S. to demand an end to occupation of Iraq. Alarm at the shredding of funding for public education, health care, alternative energy, environmental protection and the like sent us to the ballet box in droves. There, many held their noses and voted for a platform that promised social spending, an end to at least one war, and the return  of said Dream i.e. the expectation that future generations might be able to work their way to home ownership, health care, and a decent retirement.

Now while debate swirls around the debt ceiling and whether or not the super wealthy ought to be able to buy clever accountants and lawyers to avoid paying taxes, we, the people, are again invited to gather.

That's why CODEPINK is calling on members to “bring the PINK” by their vocal presence demanding recognition for the imperative to bring war dollars home if there is to be any hope of economic progress. Using crowd sourcing, MoveOn generated a short list of what it might take to rebuild a durable promise of prosperity for most. Job creation topped the list, while redirecting military spending to social needs stood at #4.

Building things rather than destroying them is an obvious corrective in lean times. A typical smart (sic) bomb of the type that the Obama administration has dropped on thousands of civilians costs about the same as employing 25 school teachers for a year. Even as a jobs program, building weapons of mass destruction is an epic fail; light rail or energy efficient housing construction would generate employment for twice as many people.

None of this is mentioned by the change agent MoveOn put in office. In fact, in his Twitter town hall recently the President insisted that cutting the military budget was just not an option. In a nod to his campaign contributors the POTUS wrote:

I announced that we were going to begin drawing down troops in Afghanistan and pivot to a transition process where Afghans are taking more responsibility for their defense. 

But we have to do all of this in a fairly gradual way.  We can’t simply lop off 25 percent off the defense budget overnight. We have to think about all the obligations we have to our current troops who are in the field, and making sure they’re properly equipped and safe.  We’ve got to make sure that we are meeting our commitments for those veterans who are coming home.  We’ve got to make sure that -- in some cases, we’ve got outdated equipment that needs to be replaced.

Just prior to Obama's tepid announcement of a gradual drawdown (of the troops he had already surged in) a White House spokesman asked what role the souring of public opinion on the war in Afghanistan would play replied that "it really doesn't play a role."

This was astonishingly honest, if spectacularly ill-informed.

With Noam Chomsky reporting that "80% of the population of the United States believes that the government is 'run by a few big interests looking out for themselves,' not 'for the benefit of all the people,'" can regime change be far behind? Obama will, of course, continue to pretend like his forefathers that we can safely be ignored.

When ABC News correspondent Martha Raddatz cited polling data showing majority opposition to the Iraq war, Cheney responded, "So?" Asked, "So--you don't care what the American people think?" he responded, "No," and explained, "I think you cannot be blown off course by the fluctuations in the public opinion polls."

But pretending will not erase shocking disparities in net worth that cannot be ignored by most of us. In a recent analysis of women's economic status is a much needed reminder that, for many, the Dream never arrived in the first place. In a metric that reflects home ownership still out of reach for many in the U.S., sociologist Mariko Chang found:

“...while white women in the prime working years of ages 36-49 have a median wealth of $42,600 (still only 61% of their white male counterparts), the median wealth for women of color is only $5.”

So get to a Dream house party and say your piece, for what it's worth. Then get into the streets and stay there until our voices cannot be ignored.

Shock Doctrine in Your State Yet?

Because I am on Maine State Treasurer Bruce Poliquin's email list, I received this cheerful message about how the ship is going down and it's all the fault of the pension "debt" burdening Maine. And, by the way, Happy Easter.

I was expecting something of the sort since reading that the U.S. had received a negative rating from Standard & Poor on treasury bonds. Shock doctrine, as you may recall, is Naomi Klein's thesis that the Forces of Greed will jump on a crisis and use the opportunity to line their own pockets at the expense of the people because it's an "emergency."

The real emergency in our state is the failure to tax the rich, to make corporations pay their fair share of taxes, plus shortfalls in federal funds due to the steady drain of Congress spending and borrowing to finance outrageously expensive wars abroad.

The lies being promoted here by Poliquin are to be expected from someone who forgot to change out of his Wall St. dress shoes to attend a public forum at the Skowhegan Community Center when he was running in the Republican primary for governor last year. I am sharing them with you because these same lies are parroted constantly by Fox "News" and other right wing media outlets, and your neighbors are listening. Arm yourself with the facts and look for opportunities to have a conversation about the REAL cause of our fiscal woes.

Water carriers for the Forces of Greed are always going to make misleading arguments. Glaring in this message: that the LePage budget would help solvency of the state's public employee pension funds. In fact, the raids on state employee and educator pension funds are intended to reduce the state's contribution, not shore up the funds. Also that "everyone" will have to suffer to bring budgets into the black. Everyone except Bank of America, Exxon, and the wealthy of Maine who will get to keep an additional $1 million before having to pay any estate tax if LePage and Poliquin's budget passes.

Also, Poliquin is being disingenuous when he claims Maine can't solve the problem like Washington does by printing more money (true about the fed, see a hilarious grim video explaining it here). Maine passed a law requiring the pension fund to be in a certain state of solvency by a certain deadline, and it can pass a law to remove the artificial deadline, too. It can IF it chooses to take a path toward true fiscal health, rather than scaring people into stampeding to the right while slashing and cutting essential programs for the neediest among us along the way.

Here's the email from Poliquin. See if you can spot the conflict of interest as reader Jon Olsen did:

SHOT ACROSS OUR FISCAL BOW

On Monday, global investors delivered what Washington politicians have been unable, or unwilling, to deliver -- seriousness about our surging national debt.

Standard & Poor's, the prominent rating agency, surprised the financial world with its new credit assessment of U.S. Treasury bonds: the previous AAA "stable outlook" was dropped to a "negative outlook."  A negative outlook is not a credit downgrade, but it can lead to one if our federal government's financial situation doesn't improve.  A downgrade would likely cost taxpayers higher interest payments on Treasury bonds sold to raise money to fund government spending.  Investors typically demand a higher interest rate return for buying a lower-credit, higher-risk bond.

There's no free lunch. There's always a day of fiscal reckoning.

Washington has been spending taxpayer dollars at breakneck speed.  Our highly-regulated, highly-taxed domestic economy (vs. other industrialized countries) cannot generate the tax revenues needed to pay for this spending binge.  So, to pay the bills, Washington has racked up a $14 trillion tab -- $14 TRILLION!

To make matters worse, the feds have no plan to pay off the debt. They recklessly print more dollars to pay the interest and principal on the borrowed money (the U.S. Treasury bonds).  This rapid expansion of the supply of money cheapens the value of the dollar, and ultimately leads to inflation - the cruelest tax paid by everyone to purchase everyday needs.

Standard & Poor's critical eye toward the creditworthiness of the federal government pleads for fiscal sanity.  Representative Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), who heads the Congressional Budget Committee, has offered a credible path to retire roughly $6 trillion of debt over the next decade.  Because the fiscal can has been kicked down the street for so long, the solution will be very painful.  Everyone will suffer for the past fiscal mismanagement: retirees depending on Social Security; seniors counting on Medicare; the most disadvantaged needing Medicaid; students hoping for a college loan; businesses looking to grow and hire more workers.  However, as we've seen for many years, not addressing our stifling national debt today means confronting an even bigger problem tomorrow.

What can Maine learn from Washington's mistakes?

First, our state government cannot live beyond its means without consequence.  Second, telling the unvarnished truth about our serious fiscal problems helps to solve them.  And, third, not looking at the next election keeps our priorities straight.

The Maine Legislature is now debating Governor LePage's proposed biennial budget.  It includes fair and reasonable reforms to address the $4.3 billion pension debt to pay the retirement benefits for teachers and state employees.  If adopted, these changes will reduce the debt and spiking annual payments (an updated $409 million this next fiscal year) by more than 50%.  This, in turn, will allow state government to live within its means and adequately fund core services like public education and road repair.

There's no silver bullet to save us from the $4.3 billion pension debt.  Unlike Washington, by law Maine must balance its state budget each year.  And, Augusta can't print money for those tempted to do so.

It's now in the hands of the Legislature.

The Legislature will likely vote on the Governor's proposed budget, with or without adjustments, by early June.  Let's hope everyone in state government has the good judgment and discipline to point this ship in a more fiscally prudent direction.  Maine is a small state.  It doesn't take much to change course.

Now, close your eyes and imagine a state government with its long-term fiscal house in order.  A Maine that spends only what it takes in and pays its bills on time, including the $4.3 billion pension debt.  One that borrows less and balances its books without gimmicks.  One of those handful of states that spends less, taxes less, and regulates less.  A fiscally stable Maine that attracts fiscally responsible entrepreneurs who create jobs for our young workers. A place where quality of life includes a healthy paycheck.

 

Thank you and Happy Easter!

Bruce L. Poliquin

Maine State Treasurer

 

(Bruce Poliquin's comments are as State Treasurer, and not as a trustee of the Maine Public Employees Retirement System)

what solidarity sounds like

Wisconsin workers in their state capital cheer wildly as firefighters enter, technically exempt from the draconian bill their tea party governor sent to the legislature gutting pensions and right to collective bargaining for public workers.

The bagpipes and kilts show the communicative powers of great creative.

The firefighters demonstrate what solidarity among working people looks like.

Can't play the bagpipes or get to Madison on short notice? Use this link to send a message to the powerful, quaking like Camilla behind their bulletproof glass (love the title of the article here): Dear Poor People, Thank You for Going Without Heat So We Can Buy Another Week of War.

Here are some of the people who need to send this letter:

President Obama and CEOs in Silicon Valley Feb 17 dinner toast -- to Wisconsin (kidding).

How to keep going

Ground the drones activists in the Nevada desert near Creech AFB  take a break from protesting to pet some horses.

This picture is the kind of thing I think about when people (often) ask: "How can you keep going with the peace work? Don't you get tired? Don't you get discouraged?" This is when I think, But I meet and get to work with such interesting people all the time! I feel discouraged at shopping malls, not at peace actions.

Yesterday was like that; a bunch of us stood vigil in front of Bath Iron Works, where General Dynamics pays workers to put Depleted Uranium weapons on warships at your expense. Strong youth presence, great energy, a good turnout, and the CEO saw us as he came out of their administration building (a BIW worker standing with us tipped us off to that). Thanks to Smilin' Trees Disarmament Farm for their organizing and their flyer:

"Although we inflict war on countries thousands of miles away, we live in a fantasy in which we don't see or feel the war is raging. But it is raging and children are dying, and this is our responsibility." 

The vigil will continue each Saturday 11:30-12:30 through the season of Advent.

After the vigil a group got together at Addams-Melman House to think about where the Bring Our War $$ Home campaign is headed, at least in Maine. We had some old hands and some new ones that want to bring the campaign to their local communities. Good discussions about effective communications and timing; Martin Luther King Jr. Day will be the one year anniversary of the launch of BOW$H in Maine. Possible actions: more community forums, perhaps with a women's focus in March; more art and image making; more presence in the Halls of Flags at the State House; flight of the green angels; and a possible "instant consensus" tool for examining political lying. Detailed notes will go out to our lists soon via email, and thanks to Sally for that effort.

With a new governor coming into office in Maine who claims he is going to balance the budget, Bruce urged us to communicate with him via the online tool created to gather input from citizens. Leaders who say they are going to balance a state or town budget without addressing the billions of (borrowed) $$$ wasted on wars are just lying, because it won't be possible.

You can't say half of the federal budget is off the table without impoverishing the programs scrambling for the remaining funds, and let's not pretend otherwise.

One Virginia class submarine = the money saved by freezing all federal government workers' pay. Oops, I meant, all federal government workers except the military.

Speaking of pretending, let's not pretend that Amazon.com kicking WikiLeaks off their server is anything less than caving to pressure from the feds. Kind of like you see the King of Spain doing here in the photo accompanying an excellent article in Mother Jones about the inner workings of pressure to protect U.S. war criminals from prosecution anywhere in the empire upon which the sun never sets.

Francis Ford Coppola could have directed this photo op.

Daniel Ellsberg urges us to follow his lead in boycotting Amazon.com (which will hurt me more than it hurts them, for sure) and letting them know why. The farce of vilifying truth tellers like Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and WikiLeaks, while protecting mass murderers from their day in court, continues.

Here's one last photo from the Nevada desert. Where do I get one of these banners??? Dear Santa....