Ari's Planet

The US military budget is around $550 billion. That's nearly as much as the rest of the world combined. Now they want us to give some rich folks $700 billion dollars. As I recall, dealing with global warming should cost maybe 1% or so of GDP, if we start addressing it now, which is a few hundred billion (yes, I should look this stuff up instead of just spouting from memory but I'm hungry right now). Jeffrey Sachs says we owe (based on prior commitments) about $70 billion a year, which is only a few tens of billion more than we currently spend ineffectively, and if we and a few other developed nations ponied up we could get rid of extreme poverty in the world in a couple of decades. He also added up a few other useful domestic social programs, like healthcare and insurance for old age, and came up with a few percent of GDP, basically less than it would cost to get out of Iraq and reduce our military budget. But I guess having a clear scientific consenus on climate change, a workable plan with current technologies (will post later, but you can look it up), several initial international agreements (e.g., Kyoto), and financial incentives is not enough to get our current leaders to act on the problem. Well, if I was walking down the street and found 700 billion dollars I know what I'd spend it on, and it wouldn't be a sham "bailout"--at least look at Kucinich's much more useful proposal or what the Swedes did back in the early 90s when their banks went belly up. Well, I just can't wait for Congress to let me down again.

But even this bailout is unimportant, except as a means to keep people from starving while we get a carbon tax/cap/trading scheme put in place and a few other basic changes so we don't have to evacuate Wall Street in a few decades. At least news here in AU spends 5 minutes telling me about the auction of a dead princess' letters for GBP 10000 instead of 5 minutes with reporters' hair on fire throwing pies at politicians who don't implement carbon emission reductions. Look around you, why is every car not a hybrid getting 60 mpg? Why is your energy not coming from wind power or solar? Why is your home and work building wasting so much energy? How the fuck did GWB manage to waste so much money on hydrogen research while eliminating funding for other relevant programs? It is obscene. Disgusting. I walk around and am disgusted. Yet a TV advertisement for a Honda here extolls the virtues of a 6 cylinder vehicle that can drop to 4 or 3 cylinders--and asks, in that absurd rhetorical manner, "isn't it time you joined the big car revolution"? Huh??? Shouldn't that be "the hybrid car revolution"? The "public transport revolution"? Who in their right mind, buying a new vehicle, would walk into a showroom and not buy a hybrid vehicle?

Apparently McCain's wonderful choice of running mate Palin didn't leave the US until last year. Holy crap! At least Obama tried to get out of the USA. "Barack Obama's two years in the Senate have taken him around the world, from Russia to Iraq to Kenya - an itinerary more costly to taxpayers than any other senator who took office with him. The Illinois Democrat's travels in 2005 and 2006 cost taxpayers nearly $28,000 as he studied nuclear proliferation, AIDS, Middle Eastern violence and more." (Obama most costly freshman world traveler, AP, published on MSNBC site.) Yes, this is totally relevant for how to be president and for figuring out where to put all that money--and it's not into more troop carriers. Obama even studied overseas for four years in Indonesia as a child. (Barack Obama biography.) Heck, I thought I'd throw this in just because I'm traveling and Jeffrey Sachs says this is number 2 on the list of things to do (number 1 is learn about stuff).