Poverty, Profits, and Politicians

It's all a question of priorities

Yesterday my husband and I drove through a section of our home town that had an incredible number of power poles and lines littering the roadway. I thought of how nice it was in Paris not to see these poles, but my husband noted, "We talked about putting the lines under ground when I was on the city council (early 80's) and decided it was too expensive."

That got me to thinking about all the things we consider too expensive:
1. Teacher compensation that will draw more of the best and brightest
2. Reducing carbon emissions
3. Providing child care and early childhood education to those who need it
4. Insuring basic medical care for all Americans
5. Improving infrastructure, especially public transportation
6. Creating enough affordable housing

The list goes on and on. The key factor is that these items are not considered profitable endeavors for the private sector, and in the public sector we have ideologues who believe the government is not responsible for anything but defense and enabling business profits.

Yes, we do have the money! We just have screwed up priorities. The rich keep accumulating money for the sheer joy of owning more than the next person. The politicians found the money to spend $332,000,000,000 so far in Iraq to produce a state of civil war and a training ground for terrorists. They also spent $352,000,000,000 in interest payments, many of which went to foreign investors.

Please, give me a break! Don’t tell me, "We don’t have the money."