It's not a Deficit Crisis, it's a Revenue Crisis: Move the Money!

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By: Judith Le Blanc, National Field Organizer

January 17 marked the 50th anniversary of President Eisenhower’s “military industrial complex” speech. As he left the White House, Ike warned the synthesis of the military and corporations in setting government policies would present a growing danger to democracy.

In 1953, at the beginning of his presidency, Ike gave a speech, not often quoted, in which he said, ““Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

Ike’s predictions were not only true then, they define exactly where we are now. The economic crisis, high unemployment and cuts in human services compel us to organize grassroots support for even deeper cuts in the Pentagon budget.

Secretary of Defense Gates announced “preemptive cuts” to head off more aggressive proposals that are being debated among a cross section of elected officials and political pundits.

The latest “shot across their bow” is from President Reagan’s former Budget Director David Stockman, who called Gates’s proposal for a $78 billion “cut” to the military budget a “pinprick” to a military-industrial complex that must drastically shrink for the good of the country. Stockman said, “It amounts to a failed opportunity to recognize that we are now at a historical inflection point at which the time has arrived for a classic post-war demobilization of the entire military establishment.”

To take full advantage of this political moment, Peace Action is helping to organize an array of community and peace groups to form the New Priorities Network. It’s going to take long-term movement building to shift Federal funding priorities from weapons to schools, and waging wars to rebuilding infrastructure.

The New Priorities Network is launching a massive Resolutions Campaign as a tool to galvanize grassroots pressure to cut the Pentagon budget in order to fund human needs.
The aim is to build a community effort by visiting neighborhood groups and promoting educational events and building momentum for city and state bodies and elected officials to take a stand for changing the Federal spending priorities.

Sample resolutions, fact sheets and other materials will be
available soon. The Resolutions Campaign will also provide the opportunity to participate in nationally coordinated local actions throughout 2011.

We can build Peace Action’s membership, reaching communities of color and working families, if we connect with community groups in motion on the economic crisis. Engaging new people, especially those who have not been part of the peace movement, is vital to winning deeper cuts in military spending.

It is not a deficit crisis. It is a revenue crisis. So let’s organize to move the money! For more information on the New Priorities Network and Resolutions Campaign go to newprioritiesnetwork.org.

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Showing 4 comments
  • Activist Resources
    Reply

    I agree that it is essential that we change our national priorities. We must end the wars, cut the military budget, and fund domestic programs. for more on the military-industrial complex, including a video of key excerpts of Eisenhower’s speech,see
    http://wp.me/pVgdW-4R
    For more on the Move the Money Campaign, including a video of Mike Zweig discussing the Campaign on Democracy Now, see http://wp.me/pVgdW-8h
    Peace, –Bob for Peace and Justice Online

  • david opperman
    Reply

    checkout Alex Jone’s DVD ‘Terrorstorm’. It shows very convincingly how phony terror attacks have been fabricated to justify huge military budgets and to steal our constitutional rights. Never forget that the 9/11 ‘terror attacks’ were fabricated as evidenced by the the collapse of the world trade center building #7, a 497′ tall skyscraper that imploded at 5:20 pm on 9/11 and it was not hit by anything.

  • George Shaheen
    Reply

    Not only were the two wars started by deception, they continue to be funded by deception. Why is Gates in charge? The military needs to be cut in half and new weapon systems need to be scrapped. The food in military chow halls in Iraq is better than most restaurants. The only reason kids sign up for the army or air force is because of the massive benefits they offer. The military needs to go back to being the last employer of choice. The intelligence conglomerate needs to be cut and private individual contractors need to be replaced by paid military. Obama took a hand off from Bush is running with it for a touchdown. Rein in elected leaders and hold demonstrations.

  • Roxy et Dias Roxas
    Reply

    These are NOT new priorities. These are the original Democratic Party Platform, of which “anti-Rebecca” and cover ups for Zebra Murders, in San Francisco, California, with the help of the Dirty Black Panther Party, of which Obama is a member of, was never apart of the party of Pres. Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
    Please drop dead with “anti-Rebecca.”
    Go to hell with “Obama-mania.”
    You people look hideous being anti-Native American.

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