As Our Cities Crumble... Feeding the Beast!

As Our Cities Crumble... Feeding the Beast!

 We live in a very shrewd Military Industrial Empire. Those who run things, the very rich and powerful, created and sustained this phony two party system to divide us and, more importantly, keep the key issues from our consciousness. Rather than have the American public focus on what really ails our nation, they occupy many of us with gay marriage, abortion, immigration and of course the evil entitlements which are ( they say ) destroying our economy. This writer says hogwash! As important as those issues are, they pale compared to what is destroying our economy.

It'll happen pretty soon, when many state and city workers in our biggest municipalities get that letter in the mail. The letter will perhaps inform them that their pension funds are in jeopardy. Many of America's sixty one largest American cities have amassed $ 118 billion in unfunded healthcare liabilities AKA legal promises to pay healthcare benefits to municipal workers beyond the employee contributions to finance these funds. Imagine if we had ' Medicare for All ' to help alleviate employers ( including government ones ) from having to subsidize healthcare? Oh well, that is but the ' tip of the iceberg ' for our economic woes. The right wing would love to have us believe that it is those ' lazy government workers ' that cause all our city and state woes. More Hogwash! There are lazy workers in the corporate world, along with plenty of lazy bosses. What is destroying our cities, counties and states is the lack of federal block grants and revenue sharing to aid them in building better infrastructure. Jefferson County , Alabama, home to the city of Birmingham, filed for bankruptcy protection in 2011 over a $ 3.14 billion sewer bond debt. Menasha, Wis. defaulted on bonds in 2007 it had issued to fund a steam plant which has since closed, leaving the city permanently in the red. Strafford County, N. H. has to regularly borrow money to cover its short term cash needs after it spent 2/3 of its budget on a nursing home, which lost $ 36 million from '04- '09.Taylor , Mich. has a large deficit and is vulnerable due to significant declines in the tax base, and above average unfunded pension obligations- a national epidemic when unemployment surges along with dead end low paying box-store jobs....

I could go on about our cities and their financial strains. First let's take into consideration the public library system throughout our nation. As a young boy in 1960s Brooklyn, N.Y. our weekly school trip to the local library was like going to a Disneyland of books for me. I would spend not only the allotted time browsing at the multitude of books, but I would stay there until it approached dinnertime, and then walk home with a few new books to read. The library was and still is a haven for so many different tastes. Nowadays we have DVDs for free , computers to use, daily newspapers and recent periodicals, meeting rooms available and of course... books. Not as many new books to choose from for the past seven or eight ago at my local Central Florida library, because you see they have been operating at about 70 % of normal budgeting since 2007. The reality is, as with the aforementioned financial woes of the cities mentioned above, that War is hell! In Vermont, their governor proposed a 20% cut in funds to the Vermont Dept. of Libraries. Do you think the trend will get worse? It has to because of our infamous Military Industrial Empire and this beasts need for more wars, weaponry, equipment, troops on the ground and bases worldwide.

If you love what our nation is doing with our so called ' Wars' and occupations in the Middle East, and our over 900 military bases in over 100 different countries... to the tune of over HALF of our federal taxes sent to Uncle Sam... then don't complain. Don't dare open your big mouth to wail about not having enough money for police protection and fire personnel, and ambulances , better equipped schools and safer roads, and of course libraries .Don't bitch and moan about all those extra fees and charges by your localities, or higher property taxes etc. NO! You want to wave the Military Industrial Empire's flag and put the yellow ribbons on your car bumper ( our young troops should never have been sent anywhere overseas these past decades) then go ahead! As the old adage states so clearly: " You can't have your cake and eat it! " You can't have financial stability with these phony wars and bloated military spending.

Here is what could have been done in all those instances that I have referenced above regarding cities in crisis:

Even if but 25% of the military spending was CUT NOW ( equaling over $ 150 BILLION A YEAR ), and that money was sent back to the states and their cities , most of those dire circumstances for ALL of those cities I mentioned would have been solved. Period!

For the cities where the die has not been cast yet, well, they could have used that refunded tax money to do what the people of those towns and their elected officials decided to do. Bottom line: More solvent towns and more solvent citizens. A Great first step, yes? Then stop ' feeding the beast 'with either apathy or cheerleading for phony wars!!

Philip A Farruggio is son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He is a free lance columnist. Philip works as an environmental products sales rep and has been an activist leader since 2000. In 2010 he became a local spokesperson for the 25% Solution Movement to Save Our Cities by cutting military spending 25%. Philip can be reached at PAF1222@bellsouth.net



By Philip A Farruggio

Pro Deo et Constitutione – Libertas aut Mors
Semper Vigilans Fortis Paratus et Fidelis
Joseph F Barber- http://josephfreedomoranarchy.blogspot.com/