[Peace-discuss] The money was there all along

[C. G. Estabrook]

[From the excellent Chris Floyd, a text that might make up one side of a Main 
Event flyer.  --CGE]


*The money was there all along.*

Money to build and generously equip thousands and thousands of new schools, with
well-paid, exquisitely trained teachers, small teacher-pupil ratios, a full
range of enriching and inspiring programs.

Money to revitalize the nation's crumbling inner cities, making them safe and
vibrant places for businesses and families and communities to grow.

Money to provide decent, affordable and accessible health care to every citizen,
to provide dignity and comfort to the elderly, and protection and humane
treatment for the mentally ill.

Money to provide affordable higher education to everyone who wanted it and could
qualify for it. Money to help establish and sustain local businesses and family
farms, centered in and on the local community, driven by the needs and knowledge
of the people in the area, and not by the dictates of distant corporations.

Money to strengthen crumbling infrastructure, to repair bridges, shore up
levies, maintain roads and electric grids and sewage systems.

Money for affordable, workable public transport systems, for the pursuit of
alternative sources of energy, for sustainable, sensible development, for
environmental restoration.

Money to support free inquiry in science, technology, health and other areas --
research unfettered from the war machine and the drive for corporate profit, and
instead devoted to the betterment of human life.

Money to support culture, learning, continuing education, libraries, theater,
music and the endless manifestations of the human quest to gain more meaning,
more understanding, more enlightenment, a deeper, spiritually richer life.

The money for all of this -- and much, much more -- was there, all along. When
they said we couldn't have these things, they were lying -- or else allowing
themselves to be profitably duped by the high priests of the market cult. When
they wanted a trillion dollars -- or three trillion dollars -- to wage a war of
aggression in Iraq, they found it. Now, when they want trillions of dollars to
save the speculators, fraudsters and profiteers of greed in the global market,
they suddenly have it.

Who then can believe that these governments could not have found the money for
good schools, health care, and all the rest, that they could not have enhanced
the well-being and livelihood of millions of ordinary citizens, and helped
create a more just and equitable and stable world -- if they had wanted to?

<http://www.counterpunch.org/floyd10132008.html>