I saw this sign and the question it posed and decided to pose it to you all. We, as taxpayers pay for these things...wars, education, etc. Why is it that there is always money for war but not for education--or universal healthcare?
Wars are started for political gain and profit. Education is an expense that politicians do not make a buck on. If politicians had to fight the wars they start their would be less war and more education.
Jack, I think you're right. It's the young, often uneducated men and women who go off to war because that is maybe the only way that they can afford to get an education.
In my country, many people ask exactly the same question... why there are money for war, but not for education or health care. Maybe because of politicians' greed and short-sightedness.
Sveta, maybe it's a question that all people in countries around the world need to ask their governments. There would be less wars if that was the case.
Because the education system has gone to h e double hockey sticks in a hand basket. i do not support public education, or MOST of the teachers who teach.
Bad, out of control, health care is a problem of the private sector, not big government. Education is a problem of big government, but it is a State funding situation.
Every previous war has increased taxes, so that the current generation can pay for it, up until now, that is. We put the last two on a credit card.
Bottom line? Because world government is still unbalanced, with mostly male energy in leadership positions. When women make their great sisterhood surge and take up their 50% of planetary leadership, then we'll stop having all these spiritually uninitiated adult-child rogue male warmongerings. Btw, in order to keep the poisons (vengeance, martyr dramas, etc) circulating, there must be a worship of the false god, MONEY. Money worship requires blood sacrifice, torture, prisons, warmongerings, wilderness destruction, etc etc.
Eisenhower had the answer with the military/industrial complex. It's pretty hard to concentrate education money so that it enriches a few fat cats.
I teach college classes at a federal prison complesx-probably the only prison higher ed program in the system. My question is: Why is there so much money for prisons, but not nearly enough for education. Alternatively, why is there so much money for punishment, but not for prevention. Yet another alternative: Why is there money to keep people IN prison, but hardly any to get them out, i.e. rehabilitation?
I think Carolian may have overstated the gender divide a bit, but I do think males invest more of their sense of pride in war than females do. On the other hand, I think a nation headed by females might go just a far to protect her cubs from what she perceives as a threat to them.
Perhaps for the same reason that the military enjoys a large budget and at the same time the Veteran's Hospitals and systems are in such poor condition. Not their priority.
***Jack, I think you're right. It's the young, often uneducated men and women who go off to war because that is maybe the only way that they can afford to get an education. Carla G., Feb 2, 2009, 2:06pm EST ***
Where do you get these ideas? People that enlist in the military are not a bunch of dummies blindly going off to war. I see stuff like this all the time, and it is just plain not true. I'm sure there are some examples of this in anything, but by far the men and women I served with were smart, becoming highly trained professionals, working on millions of dollars worth of equipment etc. Please don't help perpetuate this myth. Take care.
Old Europe? they had the common sense to throw out all their religious zelots, their criminals and prostitutes....and now they are civilized...we on the other hand have Georgia and the South.......where they all ended up....sorry to any progressive liberls down there.....we're with ya!
I'm sorry, I didn't take too much time reading the above comments and if I missed one with my idea of why, then I apologize.
I'm of the opinion that it is not the politicians per se but rather those who have been allowed to buy them with contributions. This would be the lobbiests representing the mega corporations which make mega bucks from war as well as the large media corps for the same reason. Then there are the large pharma corps and their strangle hold on health care in this country. I'm not sure which of them are the worst offenders but all are insidious and responsible for destroying our country.
We must make enough noise to entrench political campaign financing overhaul and break the hold lobbiests have on the federal government, and perhaps even on the supreme court or we will never have education and health care reform.
The men vs. women in power topic is an interesting one. When 911 happened, I remember a social scientist saying that women were in a white hot rage, while men were frustrated, and thus mad in an acting out fashion. Soon enough, though, women cooled down (after the period when Hillary voted), and could distinguish the good guys from the bad guys in Afghanistan. Men found ways to remain frustrated, etc.
I think we need to examine the issues of power and greed. Children (education), the poor, the disabled, and the elderly (education, health care) have no power or political clout. The wealthy send their children to the best schools and colleges. They can afford the best medical care. They get the most tax breaks and pay the smallest percentage of their income on all of the above.
Politicians are among the above group, as are lobbyists, big business, etc. (You get what I mean) The old adage "when the economy gets bad, you need a war to get the money flowing again" comes into play. Why waste money on children, the poor, the sick and the elderly? Bush wanted his war, he got his war, and we all paid dearly. So I guess THAT war was a bad idea. But he doesn't think so, nor do his allies in congress.
So the cost of wars, plus the cost of poorly educated people, plus the cost of health care are now tripled (my theory) by the tremendous cost of our financing illegals to stay in this country and avail themselves freely of our education, housing and health care, but they don't even get to go to war to help us defend ourselves.
So where do we start? I heard tonight that they are considering lowering the mortgage rates to 4%. Who will apply? Who will get them? Surely, not the folks with no jobs that were just laid off and fired. They wouldn't be deserving since they have no income. That is the current flavor of the so-called stimulus or "recovery" program being fought over in the Senate. So once again, the "able-to-affored" will be given another break (low interest rates) and the deserving won't qualify. After all, it was their fault in the beginning for taking out loans they couldn't afford. And if they didn't understand ARM's and all the small print, that was their fault too.
Carla, you have a knack for getting me started. Sorry about the ranting. Jim, you are right on. Prevention, education, and health care are costly but necessary. Unfortunately, no one makes money on these, except insurance providers, drug companies and large corporations. And the lobbyists intend to keep it that way.
I think if an alien from outer space popped in to see how we live, he would be appalled at how much the egos of leaders guides them into a sort of self-destruct mode, when the human instinct is clearly to survive.
We forget, when supporting those who see it as their job to milk the nation for finance for arms and equipment, that there are enough natural disasters, some of which might be put at the feet of human activity, which need dealing with in order to survive anyway. In fact, I believe that some leaders think, for most of the time, that they are bigger and better than the effects of weather, volcanoes, earthquakes and storms. We should never be surprised at what nature throws at us. We should be prepared and armed with plenty of early warning systems as well as designing where to live with at least an eye on the larger view.
We are not invincible. Naivety is not an excuse to waste energy and resources.
Take a look at the red - blue electoral map. Note that blue areas are mostly urban and educated. Red areas are mostly rural, less educated and more supportive of a less sophisticated (or nuanced, or detail oriented) idea of why we are going to a given war. This is not to say that everyone within either of these areas is like this, but wars generally are begun with sham propaganda or false flag or false PR promotion -- almost always: Viet Nam and the Gulf of Tonkin, Granada and the students Reagan said were in danger, Gulf War I with the phony incubator babies the crying Kuwaiti girl told the Congressional panel about -- who was later revealed to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador and had been coached to give the false testimony (which wasn't under oath) by Hill & Knowlton, the White House PR firm, and the Dominican, Panama, and so many others. My point, albeit far reaching (and probably not the intentional design of government) is that if government were to enable more education in the public, there would be less support for war (or at least the kinds of wars or military conflicts we've been involved in over the lifetimes of just about anyone who might read this.)
The government doesn't have the same kind of motivation for education that it does for the corporate defense industry (Eisenhower's Military Industrial Complex), nor will education serve what any administration seems to think will be the nations interest, as well as invading or controlling the political destiny of other countries through invasion or war.
Robert: "if government were to enable more education in the public, there would be less support for war",
Yes! I believe that is true. Nations that are not as well educated seem to flex their muscles in the use of military to show their power. Our ranking as a country in terms of education has gone down over the years. It's embarrassing. And why aren't we teaching our kids how to negotiate when we have conflicts? I've seen so much cowboy mentality in the U.S. over the years at the national level and in our schools with the kids.
Yes Carla, it's tragic when the average American kid in school has the objective of being a pants dropping hip hopper, and the average Chinese kid has the objective of being well versed in all major chemical formulas.
A vast difference in culture and also role models, Robert. I think that Obama is a real inspiration and role model to children of color now and that is a good thing. It's not just about athletes and hip-hoppers anymore.
Yes Carla, one of the real tragedies for black youth is that in ...say, South Central LA, or the south side of Chicago, or Harlem, black kids are held back by their own culture just in terms of speech. Speaking in correct or effective (for the larger world) english = sissy or not worthy of respect. In Compton, for example, if a kid were to say: "I'd like to speak with you about an important matter." He'd get laughed at or find himself in a heap next to the curb. While I'm not big on role models, a black man who speaks effectively and demonstrates what a person can do with that in life is a very good thing.
Robert, you hit the nail on the head. I work in the South. Almost everyone there supported Bush and his war. But they didn't know what Haliburton was, didn't realize France supported and paid (at least a good part) for the American Revolution. I couldn't find anyone who had ever heard of the apartheid in South Africa. It was embarrassing! I don't think one can critically look at current events without understanding past events. This is how we keep making the same mistakes over and over!
I get tickled when people read past my 50-50 male-female leadership proposition and think I'm advocating all-feminine rule. No way! In order to be sane, we need that balance-point. Right now we don't have it, and we are not a sane nation.
Once again - noting our overabundance of prisons, weaponry sales for big profits by our already tax-fat military, and the ongoing torture school/assassination/international interference programs paid for by - oh God - by our taxes - Hey! It's money-worship. That's the false god stuff.
But take heart: WeThePeople happen to have an immense, overwhelming power resource at hand: grassroots heart meditation and/or prayer - simply asking for order (some say "Divine Order"), for the highest good of all. Focusing the intent of our hearts on that thought. Letting the crusty old mental hell-garbage fall away from it - Letting our Heart Harmony grow and bloom and shine and radiate to all other nations. We can do it. It's within the power of WeThe People.
Because wars are funded through the constitution in Article 1 Section 8 and congress is authorized to "borrow" as much money as it wants without having to apportion and our government officials can do no wrong and we willfully hand over our money regardless of how unnecessary or illegal the war is.
Education is funded for the most part through property taxes with the exception of the DoE which receives funding through FICA. FICA is also where much of the money comes from to poison our foods and water, finances educational institutions to promote policy not to educate, develop and produce drugs for the profit of private companies, keeps our prisons full of people who don't belong there (real criminals with real victims are paid for through property taxes therefore the first released), drug our children and on and on...
What congressman was busted for saying [when asked this question] that; ."...because most will eventually become soldiers and soldiers don't need educated to stand at the frontlines and fire a gun.....but they do need to know who the enemy is or is not" Man! I wish I could remember who it was that said that......people scalped him for it but he had a point if you think about the whole picture and not just a piece here or there.
Why is there money for war? Because "people" don't get to vote on whether or not their willing to pay for a war. The politicians who design the wars for us to unwillingly spend our tax dollars on, are being paid by the people who make profits selling merchandise to the government. Everything from uniforms to shoe strings, humvees and MREs. Haliburton springs to mind, immediately. No bid contracts? Are you kidding me? Always follow the money. Always. The profits push the politics. Always.
Prison profits should be addressed in an article all its own. It is a worthy topic.
We need a more powerful education lobby, if we're going to continue with lobbyists at all. And we need to hamstring the lobbyists that belong to the warmongers.
What would be wrong in outfitting a seriously large peace corps? Sending them with food and technology and water purification possibilities for other countries? Hell, we could start by practicing right here. We have areas in the U.S. sadly in need of pure water, technology, power grids and bridge upgrades, communications, and civic improvements. Oh, wait. That's what Obama wants to do. My bad. I do love My New Prez. I back him, so far, 100%.
The community, as a whole (meaning all the people in each community) needs to invest in the schools that serve their children. There should be no "state" funding for schools. All the school money in one big pot--not divided out based on who pays what real estate tax percent. ALL children, and all school districts should benefit from All tax dollars All across the nation. Then, perhaps Mississippi and Georgia and Alabama might have a fighting chance--but I think we need to move our teachers around a little. I bet there's a few GA teachers who would love to teach in Chicago, and a lot of NYC PS teachers who would love to move south to teach "them rebel ideas of theirs" in the south.
Mix it up. Keep it clean. Monitor and watch over the processes...and fund it. Fully fund education. There is no excuse NOT to.
Good article, Carla. Thanks for the opportunity to RANT once again. Wilka
Please provide details below to help Gather review this content. If it is found to be inappropriate and in violation of the Gather Terms of Service, action will be taken.
Please select the part of the post you are reporting.
Please select why you are reporting this content.
Please enter a description.
You have successfully submitted a report for this post.
rate
email
print
link to this page
Comments: 50
Hugs and blessings - S.
It's obvious that you support ignorance, or you wouldn't make such a stupid statement.
And this isn't your post, so you can't delete my response.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Carla;
Is it any wonder that we're so far behind countries that give more resources to education?
Every previous war has increased taxes, so that the current generation can pay for it, up until now, that is. We put the last two on a credit card.
Btw, in order to keep the poisons (vengeance, martyr dramas, etc) circulating, there must be a worship of the false god, MONEY. Money worship requires blood sacrifice, torture, prisons, warmongerings, wilderness destruction, etc etc.
We're waking up. We can do it - YES WE CAN.
I teach college classes at a federal prison complesx-probably the only prison higher ed program in the system. My question is: Why is there so much money for prisons, but not nearly enough for education. Alternatively, why is there so much money for punishment, but not for prevention. Yet another alternative: Why is there money to keep people IN prison, but hardly any to get them out, i.e. rehabilitation?
Carla G., Feb 2, 2009, 2:06pm EST ***
Where do you get these ideas? People that enlist in the military are not a bunch of dummies blindly going off to war. I see stuff like this all the time, and it is just plain not true. I'm sure there are some examples of this in anything, but by far the men and women I served with were smart, becoming highly trained professionals, working on millions of dollars worth of equipment etc. Please don't help perpetuate this myth. Take care.
Old folks start em
young folks fight em
they continue to be popular
shows we have not got any smarter despite rubbing elbows with Jesus and lots of other saints and peaceful non believers.
;-)
I'm of the opinion that it is not the politicians per se but rather those who have been allowed to buy them with contributions. This would be the lobbiests representing the mega corporations which make mega bucks from war as well as the large media corps for the same reason. Then there are the large pharma corps and their strangle hold on health care in this country. I'm not sure which of them are the worst offenders but all are insidious and responsible for destroying our country.
We must make enough noise to entrench political campaign financing overhaul and break the hold lobbiests have on the federal government, and perhaps even on the supreme court or we will never have education and health care reform.
Politicians are among the above group, as are lobbyists, big business, etc. (You get what I mean) The old adage "when the economy gets bad, you need a war to get the money flowing again" comes into play. Why waste money on children, the poor, the sick and the elderly? Bush wanted his war, he got his war, and we all paid dearly. So I guess THAT war was a bad idea. But he doesn't think so, nor do his allies in congress.
So the cost of wars, plus the cost of poorly educated people, plus the cost of health care are now tripled (my theory) by the tremendous cost of our financing illegals to stay in this country and avail themselves freely of our education, housing and health care, but they don't even get to go to war to help us defend ourselves.
So where do we start? I heard tonight that they are considering lowering the mortgage rates to 4%. Who will apply? Who will get them? Surely, not the folks with no jobs that were just laid off and fired. They wouldn't be deserving since they have no income. That is the current flavor of the so-called stimulus or "recovery" program being fought over in the Senate. So once again, the "able-to-affored" will be given another break (low interest rates) and the deserving won't qualify. After all, it was their fault in the beginning for taking out loans they couldn't afford. And if they didn't understand ARM's and all the small print, that was their fault too.
Carla, you have a knack for getting me started. Sorry about the ranting. Jim, you are right on. Prevention, education, and health care are costly but necessary. Unfortunately, no one makes money on these, except insurance providers, drug companies and large corporations. And the lobbyists intend to keep it that way.
We forget, when supporting those who see it as their job to milk the nation for finance for arms and equipment, that there are enough natural disasters, some of which might be put at the feet of human activity, which need dealing with in order to survive anyway. In fact, I believe that some leaders think, for most of the time, that they are bigger and better than the effects of weather, volcanoes, earthquakes and storms. We should never be surprised at what nature throws at us. We should be prepared and armed with plenty of early warning systems as well as designing where to live with at least an eye on the larger view.
We are not invincible. Naivety is not an excuse to waste energy and resources.
Peace.
The government doesn't have the same kind of motivation for education that it does for the corporate defense industry (Eisenhower's Military Industrial Complex), nor will education serve what any administration seems to think will be the nations interest, as well as invading or controlling the political destiny of other countries through invasion or war.
Yes! I believe that is true. Nations that are not as well educated seem to flex their muscles in the use of military to show their power. Our ranking as a country in terms of education has gone down over the years. It's embarrassing. And why aren't we teaching our kids how to negotiate when we have conflicts? I've seen so much cowboy mentality in the U.S. over the years at the national level and in our schools with the kids.
Once again - noting our overabundance of prisons, weaponry sales for big profits by our already tax-fat military, and the ongoing torture school/assassination/international interference programs paid for by - oh God - by our taxes - Hey! It's money-worship. That's the false god stuff.
But take heart: WeThePeople happen to have an immense, overwhelming power resource at hand: grassroots heart meditation and/or prayer - simply asking for order (some say "Divine Order"), for the highest good of all.
Focusing the intent of our hearts on that thought.
Letting the crusty old mental hell-garbage fall away from it -
Letting our Heart Harmony grow and bloom and shine and radiate to all other nations.
We can do it.
It's within the power of WeThe People.
Education is funded for the most part through property taxes with the exception of the DoE which receives funding through FICA. FICA is also where much of the money comes from to poison our foods and water, finances educational institutions to promote policy not to educate, develop and produce drugs for the profit of private companies, keeps our prisons full of people who don't belong there (real criminals with real victims are paid for through property taxes therefore the first released), drug our children and on and on...
."...because most will eventually become soldiers and soldiers don't need educated to stand at the frontlines and fire a gun.....but they do need to know who the enemy is or is not" Man! I wish I could remember who it was that said that......people scalped him for it but he had a point if you think about the whole picture and not just a piece here or there.
Why is there money for war? Because "people" don't get to vote on whether or not their willing to pay for a war. The politicians who design the wars for us to unwillingly spend our tax dollars on, are being paid by the people who make profits selling merchandise to the government. Everything from uniforms to shoe strings, humvees and MREs. Haliburton springs to mind, immediately. No bid contracts? Are you kidding me?
Always follow the money. Always. The profits push the politics. Always.
Prison profits should be addressed in an article all its own. It is a worthy topic.
We need a more powerful education lobby, if we're going to continue with lobbyists at all.
And we need to hamstring the lobbyists that belong to the warmongers.
What would be wrong in outfitting a seriously large peace corps? Sending them with food and technology and water purification possibilities for other countries? Hell, we could start by practicing right here. We have areas in the U.S. sadly in need of pure water, technology, power grids and bridge upgrades, communications, and civic improvements. Oh, wait. That's what Obama wants to do. My bad.
I do love My New Prez. I back him, so far, 100%.
The community, as a whole (meaning all the people in each community) needs to invest in the schools that serve their children. There should be no "state" funding for schools. All the school money in one big pot--not divided out based on who pays what real estate tax percent. ALL children, and all school districts should benefit from All tax dollars All across the nation.
Then, perhaps Mississippi and Georgia and Alabama might have a fighting chance--but I think we need to move our teachers around a little. I bet there's a few GA teachers who would love to teach in Chicago, and a lot of NYC PS teachers who would love to move south to teach "them rebel ideas of theirs" in the south.
Mix it up. Keep it clean. Monitor and watch over the processes...and fund it. Fully fund education. There is no excuse NOT to.
Good article, Carla. Thanks for the opportunity to RANT once again.
Wilka