other important issues of our time<\/a>.<\/p>\nback to the op-chart. this is just a proposal for redistributing the $144.4 billion (that’s $500 out of each american’s pocket, by the way) spent on iraq on things that might, in a star trek alternative universe kinda way, make america…. safer.<\/p>\n
it’s a graphic, and i’m not sure how long the times will leave it available, so i’ll summarize here:<\/p>\n
plan a:
\n$144.4 billion to invade, occupy and rebuild the nation of iraq.<\/p>\n
plan b:
\n$7.5 billion for port security
\n$4 billion to expedite upgrades for the coast guard
\n$2 billion for improved cargo security
\n$10 billion for anti-missile countermeasures on american airlines
\n$5 billion for baggage screening machines
\n$240 million for walk-through explosives detection machines
\n$7 billion for 100,000 police officers
\n$2.5 billion for fire departments
\n$350 million for integrating emergency communications systems
\n$3 billion to secure major roads and railways
\n$30.5 billion to secure weapons-grade nuclear material around the world
\n$2.25 billion to expedite the nunn-luger cooperative threat reduction program
\n$24 billion to add two divisions to the army
\n$15.5 billion to double active-duty special operations forces
\n$8.6 billion to rebuild afghanistan
\n$11 billion to finance crop conversion in afghanistan
\n$10 billion for development assistance in the neediest countries.
\n$775 million for public diplomacy<\/p>\n
now, i can’t say i completely agree with these spending priorities, but it’s interesting to see what “plan b” might look like… and then to think about the potential results (or consequences).<\/p>\n
the problem is that congress would never approve $144.4 billion in debt-funded spending without a war – so we’d never be able to implement a $144.4 billion “make america safer” effort that looked anything like this at all. and this is why america isn’t, i think, safer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
it’s taken me too long to get to this one, but i need to wrap up the blogging for the day and i want to leave on a political (as opposed to spam) note. last week, the new york times ran an op chart prepared by michael pan, amanda terkel, robert boorstin, pj crowley, and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rojisan.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}