Rudiger is a graduate student in urban planning and a member of
the Environmental Coalition.
By Kevin Rudiger
Last week’s incident involving a United States spy plane
and Chinese fighter jets gives Americans a rare peek into the world
of military reconnaissance. But hard as it may be to believe, there
are a lot of important problems which apparently are slipping under
the radar of the U.S. high-tech spy apparatus.
Maybe if the United States focused its listening technology on
South Los Angeles, they would find overcrowded schools, children
with no textbooks and underpaid teachers. Since the technology on
the plane was apparently top of the line, maybe they could find
that one in four workers in Los Angeles are still so poor that they
qualify for government assistance.
Maybe the feds could dispatch some highly trained agents to
ferret out the fact that the richest one percent of Americans today
own 40 percent of the nation’s wealth. Finally, perhaps, we
could use our billion-dollar spy satellites to document the fact
that almost 60 percent of the working poor in Los Angeles do not
have health insurance.
Sadly, of course, the reality is that all of these problems are
already known. We don’t need reconnaissance missions with
billion-dollar spy planes to solve them.
But while the United States continues to spend billions spying
on governments around the world, people in the country and around
the world are undernourished, underhoused and undereducated.
 Illustration by ERICA PINTO/Daily Bruin The next time you
hear a proposal for universal health care (like the kind they have
in Canada or all over Europe) dismissed as pie-in-the-sky or just
“too costly,” remember that as we speak, the United
States is flying million-dollar reconnaissance missions ““
using the money of poor people here to spy on a country filled with
more poor people, a country that “can’t afford”
luxuries like social services.
This is not an issue of Democrats or Republicans. Don’t
think for a minute that G.W. just started up this program after
taking office. This is an issue of priorities for both corporate
parties, which continue to place military spending and the economic
health of the military-industrial complex over the health and basic
human needs of the world’s population.
The United States, currently spends more than $280 billion a
year on the military. With all the rhetoric in Washington about
cutting bureaucracy, politicians in both parties seem to have
forgotten about the military ““ the most bloated and
unaccountable bureaucracy possible.
The Bush campaign focused on so-called quality of life issues
for military personnel. But the proposed spending for the year
2002, out of a budget of $324.8 billion, provides only an
additional $4 billion to increase military pay, $4 billion for
housing programs and $1 billion for targeted military compensation
programs (Council for a Livable World, www.clw.org/pub/clw/index.html).
Clearly everyone, including those in the military, deserves a
living wage. But clearly this budget is about billion-dollar
bombers, not personal pensions.
Over six years, President Clinton approved an increase in
spending of $112 billion for the Pentagon. Yet, in 1996, the
government’s General Accounting Office found that it would
cost $112 billion to “renovate and upgrade” the
nation’s schools. Children in Los Angeles’ overcrowded
and dilapidated schools don’t have to wonder which priority
won out.
The National Priorities Project reports that, this year, for
every dollar paid in Federal taxes by a resident of Los Angeles, 22
cents go directly to the military and another 7 cents go to paying
interest on the debt which is directly attributable to the
military. Meanwhile, 3 cents go to education, 2 cents to housing
and 2 to protecting the environment (www.natprior.org).
Former President Eisenhower warned of the
“military-industrial complex.” Today, that complex is
arguably more powerful than ever and is charging ahead with plans
to build new weapons systems which threaten global security, and
cost billions and billions of dollars. Meanwhile, millions of
Americans go without health care and receive an inadequate
education.
The crew of the spy plane in China has now been released. But
they are returning home to a country being held hostage by an
out-of-control military bureaucracy, while it’s
infrastructure ““ both physical and human ““
crumbles.
By this time, most of us will have dutifully sent in our taxes
to the federal and state government. There is no April 15 deadline
for sending a message of a different sort: No room exists for
expensive reconnaissance missions or billion-dollar bombers as long
as the poor in the United States and around the world don’t
have access to basic human necessities. This may seem like common
sense to you, but the actions of Congress, the president and the
military bureaucracy, make it clear that it is anything but obvious
to them.
Visit http://www.webcom.com/peaceact/
to find a variety of concrete and easy ways you can make your voice
heard. Equally as important, you must simply never again believe
statements that indicate that programs for health care and
education are “too costly.” The incident in China alone
shows us that we have the money. It is all a matter or
priorities.