Screams & non-screams from the GOP

The Republican Party of No continues to scream about what they think would be the cost of health care reform.

But you never hear a complaining peep from them about the Bush tax cuts for the rich that cost $1.8 trillion -- which is twice the cited health reform costs.

And they don't groan, much less scream, about this kind of spending:

* The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have cost over $1 trillion to date. (Under Bush, they cost each American family more than $25,000.) This year will add between $200 billion and $250 billion.

* We have 16 intelligence agencies (with 200,000 employees) that eat up $75 billion.

* Half of the world's military spending is done by the Pentagon. That's 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of tax revenues.

* We are paying for 750 U.S. military bases in 50 countries.

* The U.S. keeps building or contracting new prisons. About 2.3 million people are now behind bars (1 in every 99) - a larger proportion of the population than in any other nation in the world. The prison system's price tag is more than $60 billion - up from just $9 billion two decades ago

* US detention centers hold about 300,000 migrants. Here in Tucson, the feds pay $6,000 to $12,000 each day to private attorneys who supposedly represent a steady flow of chained migrants who are automatically deported anyway. Just up the road at little Eloy, migrant detention is costing taxpayers between $9 million and $11 million a month. Private prisons are raking in the money in over half the states.

* The walls on our southern border -- breached over 3,000 times -- have cost about $3.5 billion so far. A GAO report last year said it would cost $6.5 billion to maintain them over the next 20 years.

* In the last decade we have paid just one mercenary group, the thoroughly corrupt Blackwater/Xe corporation, well over $1 billion. (The Washington Post reported that "Army Gen. David H. Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Baghdad overseeing more than 160,000 U.S. troops, makes roughly $180,000 a year, or about $493 a day. That comes out to less than half the fee charged by Blackwater for its senior manager of a 34-man security team.")

GOP, once again the grand old party of hypocrites.

Obama: disappointment & hope

I struggle with this almost every day. While the joy of Barack Obama's election remains in my heart, my mind is just not at ease. Not by a long shot.

Even before the election, I was worried about his rah-rah approach to the war in Afghanistan. Now there are 100,000 US troops on the ground. We'll just have to see if those withdrawal dates materialize.

When the president took questions from the House Republicans last month in Baltimore, he finally got tough with all their foolishness. But the GOP continues its (well-documented) barrage of lies, and there is a much stronger repartee from MSNBC than from the White House.

Then there is Obama'e ongoing waving of the bipartisan flag, even after months of the perpetual NO in Congress and a Senate that uses the filibuster more often than it uses the bathroom.

And there is Guantanamo. And the mild response to the Honduran coup. And the new US air base in Colombia. And the snail's pace of immigration reform. There are those Wall St. buddies (who after the havoc they caused are supposedly still deserving of obscene bonuses.)

Yesterday the Justice Department cleared Bush's torture lawyers. They weren't even disbarred. The only verdict: "poor judgment." (This never could have happened in Nuremberg in 1946.)

But I'm not giving up hope. The president remains a very far cry from the war criminal duo that was running the show for eight years.Maybe he has some good surprises around the corner. Maybe he will come up with some good Roosevelt-style, hard-nosed gumption and push the Senate Democrats hard enough to come up with the 51 votes that could give us the healthcare public option after all.

Hope is good.

Eric Margolis, wrote Feb. 7 in the Toronto Sun: "More empires have fallen because of reckless finances than invasion." Here is a synopsis of his article.

* This year Washington's deficit will reach $1.6 trillion, with most of it to be borrowed from China and Japan--countries the US already owes $1.5 trillion. (Margolis points out that to spend $1 trillion, you'd have to spend $1 million per day starting 2,738 years ago.)

* The military budget is almost $1 trillion--$880 billion to the Pentagon, about $70 billion for secret programs, plus military aid to other countries (especially Egypt, Israel and Pakistan), payment to contractors (including mercenaries), covering veterans' needs and $75 billion for 16 intelligence agencies with 200,000 employees.

* So far, the bill for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars is $1 trillion. This year, if you include hidden and indirect expenses, $200-250 billion will be added to the bill.President Obama's 30,000 troop surge will cost $33 billion more. (Margolis adds that the surge amount is more than Germany's total defence budget.)

* "There are 750 U.S. military bases in 50 nations and 255,000 service members stationed abroad... Military spending gobbles up 19% of federal spending and at least 44% of tax revenues. During the Bush administration, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars--funded by borrowing--cost each American family more than $25,000."

Tancredo The Racist, again.

Tea Party folks keep insisting that they are all about taking on bloated government, self-serving moneymongers and various other phonies in Washington and on Wall St. So why don't we hear outrage from them when attendees riddle their gatherings with hate? Everybody knows about those signs held high by xenophobes and Nazifiers and birthers and deathers. Is there any outrage at all?

Last night I watched news footage from the Tea Party convention in Nashville. Former Congressman Tom Tancredo was delivering a not-very-surprising racist rant to the convention audience. He attacked what he calls "the cult of multiculturalism" in the USA and said that because "we do not have a civics literacy test before people can vote in this country, people who could not even spell the word 'vote,' or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House, name is Barack Hussein Obama."

The ensuing applause was as sickening as the rant.

By the way, about 600 tea-baggers paid $549 for admission to the convention. (I don't know if they charged the more than 150 reporters who showed up.) Tea-baggers who cannot afford $549 can be present for Sarah Palin's keynote tonight for only $349.