Public Budgets

Audio: David Swanson and Coy Barefoot on Debt and Delusions

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Charlottesville Right Now: 7-19-11 David Swanson
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Move the Budget Debate to One of Those Democracies We're Bombing into Place

Imagine how radically different the current debate over the Giant Debt Ceiling Monster would look if we moved it to one of those nations we’re bombing into a democracy. Imagine us all still U.S. residents with the same views we have now, but imagine that our representatives in Washington, D.C., were obliged to give a damn what we thought.

Back on January 3rd, Americans expressed their first choice read more

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Going Neutral on Obama? Not on a Moving Train!

How often have we been told that we can’t have a serious nonviolent movement resisting our government’s destructive path as long as the Democrats are better than the Republicans?

How often have we been told that we can’t back third-party candidates as long as the Democrats are better than the Republicans?

This week has seen an inordinate number of realizations that the Democrats are as bad as or worse than the Republicans. And what has the response been?

Activist groups are proposing read more

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The There's Plenty of Money Act of 2012

112th CONGRESS
1st Session
To highly resolve that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the United States of America.

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
July 12, 2011
A BILL

Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,

SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.

This Act may be cited as the Start Doing Our Damn Jobs Act of 2012.

SEC. 2. STOP KILLING PEOPLE

(a) The combined appropriations of the Department of Defense, read more

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US Mayors Say: Bring War Money Home!

The U.S. Conference of Mayors has just done something it hasn’t done since Vietnam, passing a resolution that supports efforts to speed up the ending of our current wars and calls on the President and Congress to “bring these war dollars home to meet vital human needs.”

Ask Congress and the President to listen.

Events are snowballing. The President is about to announce whether he will violate his commitment to a significant withdrawal from Afghanistan in July. The House of Representatives read more

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Credit Mayor Dave Norris

Unless Rahm Emanuel talks them out of it over the weekend, come Monday the US Conference of Mayors will vote to pass its first resolution since Vietnam calling for the end of war and the re-allocation of all that money to something useful.

Here’s the New York Times:
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/18/us/18cities.html

The first mayor to sign onto this resolution other than the original sponsor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles was Charlottesville, Va.’s Dave Norris. Norris signed on read more

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Congress Finally Finds Its Purse

For years there was debate on Capitol Hill over whether or not Congress could end a war by cutting off the funding. Despite the Constitution’s clarity, and the clarity of numerous precedents, Senator Russ Feingold was obliged to hold hearings to explain to his colleagues what the power of the purse is. That debate is over.

Those who pretended for years they didn’t have the power to cut off the dollar spigot have dropped the pretense. Now it’s purely about whether they have read more

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