Tag: military spending

Nov. 6 is election day. If you haven’t done it already, register to vote. Encourage others to register and vote. Most of your ballots will be filled with local or state issues and candidates. Voters in the United States need more choices than Democrats and Republicans. If you see the name of a Green Party candidate, I hope you will check them out. Greens believe that people and the health of the planet should be more important than corporate profit.

Even though I am no longer a candidate, I continue to ask the same question of voters: Why do leaders in the Democratic and Republican Parties prioritize military spending over everything else? Cutting bloated military spending would free up funds to help people, not kill them. Greens value people, planet and peace over profit. Leaders in the Democratic and Republican parties do not.

On the Muppets show in the 1970s, Kermit the Frog sang, “It’s not easy being green.” It isn’t easy being a Green Party candidate. There are advantages and disadvantages. I was a Democrat until 2001, at age 50, I registered to vote with the Green Party. Greens value people, planet and peace over profit. Leaders in the Democratic Party do not. I am a candidate for Congress because San Francisco voters do not have an advocate for peace in Washington.

It has been years since large numbers of people marched to protest wars at home and abroad. I think people stopped coming out when they saw that our marches had little impact on spending priorities in Washington. Massive military spending and unchecked sales of arms to other countries have not produced peace. Instead, violence and terrorism increase around the world. March with us. More than 100 Bay Area organizations have endorsed the April 15 rally and march in Oakland.

The bipartisan budget bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump Friday morning marks a new stage in the American ruling class’ drive for social counterrevolution and world military domination. The deal, which reached Trump’s desk only because of support from congressional Democrats, expresses the oligarchic character of American society. Behind the factional mudslinging and mutual recrimination between Democrats, Republicans and Trump, it is the corporations and the military-intelligence agencies that dictate government policy.

My column last month reported on the vote in the U.S. House of Representatives to support HR 2810, the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2018. The vote was 344 Yes and 81 No. Seventy-nine percent of our elected representatives in the House voted for “nearly $30 billion more for core Pentagon operations than President Trump requested,” according to the San Francisco Chronicle, July 15, 2017.

It’s hard to imagine that the country that controls so much nuclear firepower and drops so many bombs every day is unwilling to educate its children and house its own people. As much as I would like to see zero poverty in the United States, I know that the political will for such policies is just not there today. This, despite the efforts of thousands of people just like me all over the country to alleviate the unnecessary suffering of the poor in the U.S.