$32 Million Per Houe
Today's show was dedicated to Dr. Martin Luther King, who was assassinated 50 years ago--on April 4, 1968.
Today's show started with a two-question quiz:
- What entity spends $32 million/hour, 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 52 weeks per year?
- What do they spend this enormous amount of money on?
I offered some possibilities, such as stock trader, real estate developer, mega corporation, gambler. But research showed that none consistently spent this much money, at least not without generating revenue to support these expenditures.
We needed to look further to identify the real spendthrift--the US government, the entity that has spent (and continues to spend) $32 million per hour on the military to fight the war on terror. Yes, the military, where no weapon is too expensive to build, no war opportunity to crucial to be missed, no bomb to costly to drop and drop and drop.
And all of this spending happens without the revenue stream to fully cover expenses. Yes, your tax money foots a lot of the bill. Since 2001, every US taxpayer has spent $24,000 to fight the war on terror. Is it because many of us recoup a portion of these expenditures in wages, employed as active duty military or for military contractors, and through our private investments and investment accounts that we are complicit with the US war making machine--all we see are the benefits, blinding us to what war really is.
AND WAR IS WASTE. It destroys places, the environment and, most importantly, people.
One year before his death, April 4, 1967, MLK spoke out against the evils of militarism at the Riverside Church in NYC. He understood that racism, poverty and militarism were the three evils that needed to be addressed.