The Military Machine Is Destroying Our Economy

Navy Commander Leah Bolger is standing trial tomorrow for interrupting a Super Committee hearing to express the 99% position- End the Wars and Tax the Rich! She could face jail time of 6 months.

Leah says she had an epiphany after seeing the exhibit "Eyes Wide Open" mounted by the American Friends Service Committee which dramatically shows the human cost of war. A few years ago, New Paltz Women in Black also organized this exhibit and lined Main Street with boots representing troops who had been killed in the Iraq war.
  

Today, over 6,500 US troops have been killed and 45,000 wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon estimates another 300,000 suffer PTSD and 320,000 have traumatic brain injury Hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians have been killed. Join New Paltz Women in Black any Saturday from 12:30-1:30PM in front of the Library in New Paltz to protest war and violence in all its forms.

In addition to the human cost of war, the cost to our economy has also proved devastating. Military and related "security" spending has roughly doubled in the last decade, now amounting to over $1 trillion a year and representing well over half of all discretionary income. While Congress debates shredding our safety net and causing untold suffering for millions of poor and middle class citizens, we continue to spend $2 billion a month in Afghanistan, fund over 1,000 foreign military bases and outposts (like 238 in Germany, 124 in Japan and 87 in South Korea) and spend millions on weapons systems the Pentagon does not need.

I like to remind people that the day before 9/11, then Sec of Defense Donald Rumsfeld held a press conference to say that $2.3 trillion could not be accounted for in the Pentagon.



Our country spends more on death and destruction than the rest of the world combined. We, the people have to demand a drastic change in our priorities, or face a bleak America- where the needs of the people are sacrificed to feed "the black hole of the military machine."

Join us on Tax Day, April 18- as we protest in front of Post offices across the nation- to end the reckless war spending and to demand that the rich and corporations pay their fair share! Click here to find an action near you. or sign up for the one in Kingston, NY here.