Rethink Afghanistan; The Mayors are Revolting against the Afghan Wars.
According to Rethink Afghanistan the United States Conference of Mayors is calling for a immediate ending to the Afghanistan War.
“The United States Conference of Mayors calls on the U.S. Congress to bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs, promote job creation, rebuild our infrastructure, aid municipal and state governments, and develop a new economy based upon renewable, sustainable energy,” the resolution said, noting that the United States pays $126 billion a year to support the wars that have killed more than 6,000 U.S. troops.
Yet I have to wonder what happened to the money from the stimulus bill. Because according to Rethink Afghanistan spending one Trillion dollars in one year was not enough.
And here’s the big picture: “Local governments shed 28,000 jobs last month, the Department of Labor reported, and have lost 446,000 jobs since employment peaked in September 2008.”
These wars are killing our people, they’re killing our economy and they’re killing our communities. They’re not worth the costs. They’ve got to end.
Or perhaps it as more to do with what happened in shortly after September of 2008. Now what could that be?
ADDED Sporkmaster: Oh and guess who have been helping behind the scenes.
Category: Antiwar crowd, Code Pink, Media, Politics, Terror War
“These wars are killing our people, they’re killing our economy and they’re killing our communities. They’re not worth the costs. They’ve got to end.”
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OEF began in 2001 and OIF in 2003. Didn’t we have month after month of job growth from around 2003 thru 2006? Coincidentally, Democrats took over Congress in JAN 2007. And we’ve been losing jobs ever since. Coincidence?
So it’s not the wars that are “killing our economy” and causing jobs to be lost.
Also, this is as of around JULY 2010:
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When Bush entered office in 2001, there were around 133M people working. When he left in 2009 there were around 135M (down from a 2008/Jan high of slightly less than 138M). During his 8 years, there was a GAIN of 1,080,000 jobs.
When Republicans controlled the house and senate (Jan.95 to Jan.01), the gain over that period was +16,107,000.
When house and senate were split (Jan.01-Jan.03) there were 2,203,000 jobs LOST.
When Republicans controlled house and senate (Jan.03-Jan.07) +6,801,000 jobs were GAINED.
When Democrats controlled house and senate (Jan.07 to now) -6,497,000 LOST.
In the 17 months of Obama -2,979,000 jobs have been LOST.
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There seems to be a trend here, and it has nothing to do with any wars.
What Michael says. It had nothing to do with war, and everything to do with onerous laws and regulations, coupled with draconian taxation, which has driven businesses to take their jobs to other countries. Maine, finally, has a conservative governor, and conservatives control BOTH houses of the state legislature. In the previous years, Maine has bled both jobs, and our youth, who followed those jobs to other states and actually overseas in some cases.
Here’s hoping it isn’t too late for Maine.
You have to remember that these chuckleheads have to find someone or something other than their friends in the political arena to blame it all on. That’s been SOP, because it doesn’t help them get re-elected if they blame themselves and their job killing regulations and rules. So, Bush and wars get blamed with wild, over the top “facts” on how much money is getting spent. They claim that a trillion dollars has been spent; okay, I’ll give them that, but they don’t tell you that is over a 10 year period and Bobo spent $1.2 trillion in less than 6 months that did nothing to help the economy or create jobs. The DoD budget is approx. 17% of the yearly budget and that includes spending on the wars. Where is the other 83% of the budget being spent?
Old Trooper,
Not only that, but those costs they cite for “the wars” include expenses that we’d have to pay regardless of whether we are at war or not. The troop’s pay, healthcare, food and housing all have to be taken care of. We still will have to pay for flight hours, ammunition and other ordnance for training, fuel and maintenance for vehicles, etc.
The military isn’t cheap, but unlike, say, Social Security, Medicare, Food Stamps, Section-8 housing, etc, the military is mandated by the Constitution,. It is a required expense and the moonbats and other leftists simply cannot, or will not understand that part of the equation.
How about the trillions spent on the “war on poverty” over the decades? Have we won that war, yet? Did the draw down on military spending under Carter, Bush 41, and Clinton suddenly bring the Utopian society, these people claim to want, into fruition? How about we stop giving billions to other countries and organizations that hate us anyway? That’s what these morons never want to admit, because it has to be all the fault of those eeeeevil conservatives and the military industrial complex, because that is the usual low hanging fruit and enemy of the hippies since the 60s.
The bigger question is, why should we even listen or give a f&#^ to what mayors have to say about Afghanistan, or any issue of national security or foreign policy significance?
Shouldn’t mayors be focusing on running their cities and delivering for their constituents?
Have all the local-level problems in L.A. or Detroit or wherever already been solved, so that the mayors have the time and mental energy to try to figure out what we should be doing in Afghanistan?
If they want to have a voice on issues of war and peace, they should run for national-level office.
That is all.
“Local governments shed 28,000 jobs last month, the Department of Labor reported, and have lost 446,000 jobs since employment peaked in September 2008.” Good!!! Let’s help them shed some more jobs. Local governments, and I think they’re including everything up to the state level, is as bloated as the feds.
The city I worked for has eight different job titles as an “Administrator”, from director to secretary. But, there are more than one opening in each category. It has three levels of “Building Maintenance Mechanic”, beginning pay $39K, and top pay and two levels of Supervisor over said mechanics. The also have a forester, at $56K a year, and a forestry supervisor, who gets paid the same as the forester.
The police department where I worked has street supervisors, which are sergeants, and supervisors, who are Lieutenants, whose job is to supervise the street supervisors. Those folks don’t answer the calls or do the work.
Ooops, in the second paragraph, after “Building Maintenance Mechanic” at $39K should have been top pay of $44K and “Building Supervisor II” at $51K.
Talk about bloat. Each building run by the city has “maintenance mechanics” and a supervisor, that would be city hall, the police department, the fire department HQ, the water department, the city garage and some of them have two shifts of “mechanics”.
They claim that a trillion dollars has been spent; okay, I’ll give them that, but they don’t tell you that is over a 10 year period and Bobo spent $1.2 trillion in less than 6 months that did nothing to help the economy or create jobs. The DoD budget is approx. 17% of the yearly budget and that includes spending on the wars. Where is the other 83% of the budget being spent?
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A good point that was also made in this article at The American Thinker by Randall Hoven: Iraq: The War That Broke Us — Not
An excerpt:
Just for grins, use the above chart to dissect Christopher Hayes’ statement that our current and future deficits are caused by “three things: the ongoing wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Bush tax cuts and the recession.”
Two of those three things — the wars and tax cuts — were in effect from 2003 through 2007. Do you see alarming deficits or trends from 2003 through 2007 in the above chart? No. In fact, the trend through 2007 is shrinking deficits. What you see is a significant upward tick in 2008, and then an explosion in 2009. Now, what might have happened between 2007 and 2008, and then 2009?
Democrats taking over both houses of Congress, and then the presidency, was what happened. Republicans wrote the budgets for the fiscal years through 2007. Congressional Democrats wrote the budgets for FY 2008 and on. When the Democrats also took over the White House, they immediately passed an $814-billion “stimulus.” (The $814 billion figure is from the same CBO report as the Iraq War costs. See sources at end of article.)
The sum of all the deficits from 2003 through 2010 is $4.73 trillion. Subtract the entire Iraq War cost and you still have a sum of $4.02 trillion.
AW1 Tim do not lump my social security with welfare.. first it is not an entitlement..I actually paid into it and what I get each month, miniscule as it is, is based on those very same payments. It irks me no end that so many just cannot understand that simple fact. Had congress not raped social security for all their pet social welfare projects it would be a self sustaining ponzi scheme.
I admit to not reading all of the article.. the instant I saw the words “code pink” I went and washed my eyes out with bleach.
Had congress not raped social security for all their pet social welfare projects it would be a self sustaining ponzi scheme. ========== Actually, I don’t think that’s true. (That it would be self-sustaining). When it first started out, Social Security had something in the range of (I don’t recall the exact number, but for the sake of argument I’ll use 10) 10 workers paying into the system for every retiree receiving payouts. However, over the years, that ratio dropped and dropped to the point that it would not be sustainable. Also, none of us were ever paying into the system to get back our own money. We have always been paying into a system which uses our money to pay other people. This is not some personal savings program. It’s a program designed to take money from people currently working and give it to people who have retired. People such as myself who have been paying into the system for the past 10 years are never going to see that money. Who does see the money I am paying into the system are recent retirees. None of us were ever paying into a personal government retirement account. All our money has always been put into a big piggy bank and then redistributed to people as they retire. The system was fine in the beginning when there were many, many more workers putting $$$ into the system than there were retirees taking out of it. But the system was always designed to fail once the amount being taken out of the piggy bank was larger than the amount being put in. I read an article a while back that FDR had always intended for Social Security to be reformed eventually down the road, because he knew it would not remain successful. It was not a long-term plan. But, instead of reforming Social Security, the Congress decided to raid the piggy bank for their own spending. So not only did they not fix a flawed system, they made it worse. And this is why the Democrats should be seen as the MF-ing… Read more »
Alpha Papa,
My point was that Social Security isn’t a “right” and it isn’t something that the Constitution requires the Federal Government to provide. FDR decided to use the Federal Government to ensure folk’s retirement funds, rather than letting folks save for their own retirement. There is still quite some legal discussion as to whether Congress had the legal authority to first people into the SS system, and to even establish it in the first place.
Now that it’s here, the question is how to keep it solvent until it can be eliminated. I agree with you. Congress stole that money out of the SS system coffers, and replaced it with IOU’s. Well, those IOU’s are now due.
Yep Mayors conference, how many are dominated by big city liberal boneheads. My guess disproportionally, alot.
It’s all about the numbers. Incorporated areas tend to have a higher concentration of Democrats, unincorporated Republicans. In addition most Mayor’s are looking at shrinking budgets and anemic revenue. They need federal largess in the form of ideological grant money (think cash for “green” transportation improvements) to balance their books. My city (Seattle) just got about $5 million in federal grant money to build a bike overpass in core of the city. They view the wars as taking away from the pool that money comes out of.
#13
In all fairness the SS program FDR built is nothing like the beast it is today. Initially SS was a very affordable program designed to be a minimum needs security net in the last years of life for those who were too old or infirm to continue working. It was never meant to be the retirement subsidization plan it is today.