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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHow to Fund an American Police State
Read the whole article. We are in serious, serious trouble.
Occupy, because the assault on us is bipartisan.
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2012/03/05-2
How to Fund an American Police State
Real Money for an Imaginary War
by Stephan Salisbury
At the height of the Occupy Wall Street evictions, it seemed as though some diminutive version of shock and awe had stumbled from Baghdad, Iraq, to Oakland, California. American police forces had been militarized, many commentators worried, as though the firepower and callous tactics on display were anomalies, surprises bursting upon us from nowhere. [ AP)] Police move in on Occupy Oakland protesters (Photo: AP)
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So much money has gone into armoring and arming local law-enforcement since 9/11 that the federal government could have rebuilt post-Katrina New Orleans five times over and had enough money left in the kitty to provide job training and housing for every one of the record 41,000-plus homeless people in New York City. It could have added in the growing population of 15,000 homeless in Philadelphia, my hometown, and still have had money to spare. Add disintegrating Detroit, Newark, and Camden to the list. Throw in some crumbling bridges and roads, too.
But why drone on? We all know that addressing acute social and economic issues here in the homeland was the road not taken. Since 9/11, the Department of Homeland Security alone has doled out somewhere between $30 billion and $40 billion in direct grants to state and local law enforcement, as well as other first responders. At the same time, defense contractors have proven endlessly inventive in adapting sales pitches originally honed for the military on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan to the desires of police on the streets of San Francisco and lower Manhattan. Oakland may not be Basra but (as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld liked to say) there are always the unknown unknowns: best be prepared.
All told, the federal government has appropriated about $635 billion, accounting for inflation, for homeland security-related activities and equipment since the 9/11 attacks. To conclude, though, that the police have become increasingly militarized casts too narrow a net. The truth is that virtually the entire apparatus of government has been mobilized and militarized right down to the university campus...
SunsetDreams
(8,571 posts)is the solution?
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)The solution is to get the money out of the political system. To demand it now, and to refuse to be distracted or diverted or to have the subject changed. We must demand this change, because we don't have representation anymore.
They have this power only because the people have given it to them. But now they are working on structures to ensure they can keep it even when the people no longer consent.
Learn from history. Stop it now.
TheKentuckian
(25,029 posts)Or more of how to build the will to do so, really. There is a tremendous sacred cow aspect that is tough to unravel, too many refuse to take action or even increase accountability in any way until it would be too late.
sad sally
(2,627 posts)JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)It isn't a matter of whether we need to spend money to insure our security, our safety. It is a matter of how much we need to spend and what we should spend it on.
It is ridiculous to spend money on some of the technical toys we have been spending it on when our schools need money and can't get it.
Where are our values?
RC
(25,592 posts)And people still believe we were blind-sided by Osama bin Laden.