Everything that you wanted to know about the Cost of War, but were afraid to ask:

In case you haven't been there lately, or ever,  you really need to check out the Cost of War website at:

http://costofwar.com/      

Provided by the National Priorities Project  ( http://www.nationalpriorities.org/ ),

the website not only offers a running tally of the trillion plus dollars spent in Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, but also contains a list of social service and education trade-offs that have been neglected in the meantime.  For example, taxpayers in Hartford, Connecticut will pay $47.9 million for proposed Afghanistan war spending in FY2011. For the same amount of money, the following could be provided:

 

36,407 Households with Renewable Electricity-Wind Power for One Year

or

598 Elementary School Teachers for One Year

Stop the Lunacy

In its Pledge to America  (  http://pledge.gop.gov/ ) the Republican Party has revealed just how archaic its foreign policy will be if it regains control of  Congress. Most pertinent to this blog is the following section dealing with missile defense.

Fully Fund Missile Defense
There is real concern that while the threat from Iranian intercontinental ballistic missiles could materialize as early as 2015, the government’s missile defense policy is not projected to cover the U.S. homeland until 2020. We will work to ensure critical funding is restored to protect the U.S. homeland and our allies from missile threats from rogue states such as Iran and North Korea.


 Give us a break.   While the bipartisan Sustainable Defense Task Force
(  http://www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1006SDTFreport.pdf  ) is calling for missile reductions, the Republicans are again playing the Iran and North Korea fear cards and promising to spend more on outlandish missile contracts.  Instead of sinking additional funds into an already outrageous defense budget, we should be dramatically trimming military spending and investing some of the savings in programs such as Mark Hecker's  Reach Incorporated  which  improves reading skills, across ages, by hiring and training adolescents to tutor elementary school students in need of additional support.  It is time to reinvest in our people, not in more weapons of mass destruction.  Please visit the Reach website, and consider a donation,  at:

http://www.reachincorporated.org/about_us.html










            

Amending the Constitution to Support Sustainability

Several years ago,  I began lamenting the fact that the United States' Constitution doesn't charge the federal government with  stewardship of the natural environment.  But only recently, while reading John Ikerd's  Sustainable Capitalism: A Matter of Common Sense (Kumarian Press, 2005), did I come to realize how thoroughly this oversight - understandable in the 18th century, but intolerable in the 21st - perpetuates the  extractive and exploitive economic practices that are degrading the earth. 

It will be a long, tough slog, but some sort of sustainability amendment must get incorporated into the Constitution.  In Sustainable Capitalism (pp. 151-152), Ikerd offers a Bill of Rights for Sustainability.  In future posts I'll address his recommendations in detail.   For now, please consider obtaining  Ikerd's 
book (available at Amazon and other online booksellers).  You can also check out a synopsis of his ideas at the following link:

http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/Korea%20-%20Sustainable%20Capitalism.htm

American Friends Service Committee is Drumming up Support for the Sustainable Defense Budget

I was cheered today to receive an email from Paul Lems and Mary Zerkel of the American Friends Service Committee requesting support for Barney Frank's and Ron Paul's effort to cut nearly a trillion dollars from the defense budget by 2020.  You can link to the AFSC's website page about this initiative at:

http://support.afsc.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=10681.0&dlv_id=13521 

Mural panel on the cost of war by Jessica Munguia, part of AFSC's upcoming Windows & Mirrors exhibit.

Redirecting Military Spending Towards Urban Education

As I have previously written, the report of the Sustainable Defense Task Force   (See:   www.comw.org/pda/fulltext/1006SDTFreport.pdf  )
clearly pinpoints  billions of dollars thatcan be trimmed from the U.S. defense budget without sacrificing national security.   We need to develop the political will to make these cuts.  We also need to identify priority areas for reinvesting these savings. Green technology is one such area.  Urban education is another.  The drain on our society from our inability to provide high quality education for inner city youth is so well documented that it need not be further described here.  What I intend to do over the coming years is direct readers to model programs worthy of substantial tax dollar support.


One such program is the Academy for College Excellence developed by Diego Navarro at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz, California. A graduate of Harvard School of Business and a stickler for data-based evaluation, Navarro has created (and is now in the process of replicating) a program that lights a fire and stimulates success among community college students seemingly doomed to failure by all prior indicators.


The Academy for College excellence has an excellent website, which you can reach by clicking:
http://academyforcollegeexcellence.org/    
Please check it out to get a rich understanding of this remarkable program.  Also, if you wish, you can donate to the Academy now.


Donn

Reinvesting Military Savings

          Defense spending feeds our largest government funded jobs program, the armed forces and  its supplier industries.  As military costs are reduced, it will be important  to invest in areas that will stimulate the U.S. economy while enhancing environmental sustainability and increasing our social capital. Alex Salkever's article in  Environment 360, Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies'
exceptional online magazine (  http://e360.yale.edu/  ), explains how government incentives are being used to support small wind power. This is a model for the type of innovation that we need on a large scale.  The direct link to the article is: 
http://e360.yale.edu/feature/with_a_boost_from_innovation_small_wind_is_powering_ahead/2294/

Please check it out.

Donn