by Glenn Greenwald
As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make. This is a sampling of what one finds:
Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further -- it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation.
Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.
Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age: the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its police helicopters.
There are some lovely photos accompanying the article, including one showing what a darkened street in Colorado looks like as a result of not being able to afford street lights. Read the article to revel in the details of this widespread misery.
10 comments:
Wow. I wonder what it will take before people wake up? What will be the tipping point, I wonder?
A spiritual awakening is what's needed. I may sound crazy but I think the awakening will happen. I'm hearing about this awakening more and more so I know I'm by no means alone. Alas, it is faith, no fact to back, just faith. I'm not even sure I'm capable of sustained faith but I'm on the bandwagon none the less.
Anna, that's a good question -- one I grapple with on almost a daily basis. I suppose "tipping-points" vary by degree and with who you are -- your situation in life. One thing that's certain is that change, induced incrementally and over large spans of time, creates tipping-points that seemingly never are reached. The complete domination of our culture: politically, economically, socially, etc., by multinational corporations, has occurred this way. If the massive changes in the last 100 years...hell, the last thirty years...had occurred in the span of a few weeks, my guess is the tipping-point of most Americans would have been reached long ago. Even a frog will stay in a pot brought to a slow boil -- until it's too late.
Dion, I totally agree -- a spiritual awakening, however you conceive of it, is probably the only recourse. I'm not speaking of the kind of spiritual guidance from some nebulous being or entity "out there" somewhere, but rather the awakening of that core of our being within; the listening to ourselves, not through the mind but through presence. Eckart Tolle speaks at length about this in his two books, A New Earth and The Power of Now. If you haven't read either, I highly recommend both, and suggest you start with the former. From his website, the following passage describes it as "[b]uilding on the astonishing success of The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle presents readers with an honest look at the current state of humanity: He implores us to see and accept that this state, which is based on an erroneous identification with the egoic mind, is one of dangerous insanity." I think it's one of the most important books I've read during my lifetime.
No, you don't sound crazy at all -- just on the road to enlightenment. Best of luck and thanks for visiting my new blog, and especially thank you for your thoughtful comment.
I go way back with Eckhart Tolle. I enjoy falling asleep listening to Eckhart Tolle most nights. Not that I find him boring by any stretch, but I've listened so often, his voice calms and puts me out like a light.
When dreaming I've been experiencing a reoccurring dream... I'm waiting for an event of some kind to start. I'm getting excited!!! Or are my thoughts and dreams just a form of mid-life crisis.
Recurring dreams generally have a significance - what that is will resonate with you when you realize it.
Mid-life crisis? Possibly, but to me it sounds like the dreams pertain to something else.
Shades of Rome! Our biggest problem is not the corporations but big government who acts with immunity. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank should be prosecuted for the regs they imposed on the banks.
We ought to look long and hard at the Department of Education with an eye to totally dismantling it along with the teachers unions who have no interest in education but their own agrandizement.
HOw can anyone in their right mind comment on a Salon article
I dunno -- you just did? ;-)
Sometimes the truth is too difficult to accept, isn't it? It's easier to hold on to delusions of grandeur than to accept that things aren't really as you were taught in school...by your parents...in another time.
Stay with me, Anonymous, I'll have you marching in the streets against corporate colonialism in short order. Just keep reading...with an open mind. Take the red pill. Leave the blue pill behind and see things as they really are. You'll become enlightened.
One other thing, Anonymous...
Our government acts with immunity because it's directed to do so by multinational banking and corporate interests. That's a fact. Our government leaders (and I use that term very loosely) follow the dictates of their corporate masters. If that's not obvious to you by know, you're just not paying attention.
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