Mid-Missouri

Peaceworks

Working towards peace and sustainability

Show Me a Peace Economy


Peace Economy? What is it? Why do we need one? How do we get there? These are some of the questions Peaceworks is out to explore in 2012. We encourage you to join us in working for a sustainable economy that puts all to work with meaningful, productive employment.

Today’s economy is highly militarized, but it wasn’t always so. Prior to World War II, the United States demobilized after each war. For the past seven decades, however, our economy has been on a permanent wartime footing. We’ve squandered tax dollars like a drunken sailor on shore leave. While our population is only 4.5 percent of humanity, we pay for nearly half of the planet’s military expenditures. U.S. bases ring the world—more
than a thousand of them—with a presence on every continent, on every ocean, in the skies and outer space.

Hundreds of billions expended each year on the Pentagon has led to under-investment in other areas. We see crumbling infrastructure, failing schools, and a nation falling far behind Europe or China in efforts to transition to sustainable energy technologies. And our wars and weapons are not making us more secure.

Overall military spending, not counting interest on the debt, is now in the range of $870 billion a year. When we factor out the $117 billion earmarked for the Afghan and Iraq wars, our non-war 2012 military spending level, inflation adjusted, is higher than all military spending during the peak of the Vietnam War (when we had more than half a million troops deployed in southeast Asia). For more info, visit National Priorities Project and War Resisters League.

Diverting so much money, year after year, away from productive investment is deeply problematic. It’s clearly not our only economic problem, however. A Peace Economy needs to be a Just Economy. Currently, we face a seriously flawed tax code and a structural deficit. Tax cuts for the wealthy leave us with too little revenue to pay our bills. We face growing inequality, with the growth in income over the past three decades going overwhelmingly to the richest Americans. Meanwhile, working class and middle income citizens face mountains of debt and, if they are lucky enough to be employed, a paycheck that barely keeps pace with inflation.

A movement for a Peace Economy would address these concerns and reject the bipartisan push for austerity. While selective cuts in spending, particularly in the military budget, are desirable, the effect of general spending cuts, at a time when the economy is already severely depressed, is a prolonged period of profound dislocation and real suffering for tens of millions of people.

As Sen. Bernie Sanders said recently in a Senate Budget Committee hearing, “This country does in fact have a serious deficit problem, but the reality is that the deficit was caused by two wars — unpaid for. It was caused by huge tax breaks for the wealthiest people in this country. It was caused by a recession as result of the greed, recklessness and illegal behavior on Wall Street. And if those are the causes of the deficit, I will be damned if we’re going to balance the budget on backs of the elderly, the sick, the children, and the poor. That’s wrong.”

We invite you to join Peaceworks in our work for a more peaceful, just and sustainable economy. Please check out our upcoming Peace Economy Film Series and our People’s Economics class. Consider joining our Peace & Justice Committee. Please contact us for more info. Positive change will only come when enough of us seriously engage the system in a sustained way. Join us.

BUY NOTHING? BUY SOME THINGS? BUY ETHICALLY.

As almost everyone knows, this Friday, Nov. 25, is "Black Friday," the day that kicks off the orgy of American consumerism known as the "Holiday Season." It's a day of "door-buster" sales and stampedes at malls and big box stores around the country.


Many are rightly critical of the excesses of seemingly mindless consumption. Some, led by the Adbusters Foundation, have attempted to remake "Black Friday" into "Buy Nothing Day," a day to take a holiday from consuming. For more info on BND please see http://www.adbusters.org/campaigns/bnd  and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buy_Nothing_Day


We, here at Peaceworks and the Peace Nook, respect the sentiment of BND. We also recognize that the answer is not to avoid all shopping on one day of the year, but rather to change our relationship with consumption more thoroughly. And to do so year round, rather than on one particular day.



We all need to consume some things. Most of us certainly can consume less. And most can make changes in the mix of what we consume, as well as reexamine our attitude towards consuming, so that it's a more deliberate process, rather than one that is spurred on by advertising and the manipulation of our desires.



It seems to us that we each need to find our own healthy balance. Some of the general suggestions we might offer regarding gifts and the holiday season include: 

  •   Buy local, when possible. Support your community.
  •  Buy durable goods that are produced in a sustainable fashion. Avoid excessive packaging and products whose production involves significant environmental pollution.
  •  Buy things that are made using fair labor practices, and, when buying imported goods from developing countries, look for Fair Trade items. 
  • Support non-profits and organizations doing good work (this includes making donations in the name of a loved one in lieu of buying things, especially for folks who might already have more things than they need)
  • Give of yourself. This can include making at least some of your gifts yourself and also giving services (e.g. babysitting, massage, help with chores, etc.).

SUPPORT THE PEACE NOOK:  The Peace Nook, the non-profit store operated by Peaceworks, meets a number of these criteria. We are local and non-profit. We offer Fair Trade imports and environmentally friendly products.

We are here for you, our community. We wouldn't be here without your support. We really hope you will choose to patronize the Nook during the holiday season, as your purchases at this time of year are critical to our financial health and therefore to Peaceworks ability to do educational and advocacy work.

If you are observing BND, we respect this choice. We hope to see you when it works for you to come down to visit the Nook on a different day.

If you are not observing BND, and would like to visit us this Friday, we will be open. No, we won't have any 4 a.m. door-busters, but we'll be keeping our usual 10 a.m. to 9 p.m. hours.

We thank you, our community, for 21 years of support and are hopeful that your support will continue and grow. In many ways, shopping at the Peace Nook is a gift to the community.

 

Sunday: Join the Peace Contingent in Holiday Parade

Here's an opportunity to come out for peace doing something fun and social. It's this Sunday afternoon, Nov. 20, gathering at 2:30 p.m. Bring friends. Bring family. Bring anyone you know who's for peace and loves a parade, especially not just watching, but being in one.

Join Peaceworks and our Columbia Peace Coalition peace advocates in a walking and cycling contingent in Columbia's annual Holiday Parade. This is a wonderful, positive way to put our desire for peace before our community.

We welcome participants of all ages. We are especially e
ncouraging parents and grandparents to bring children, as they represent our hopes for a peaceful, just future. Strollers and wagons are most appropriate.

We should aim to gather by 2:30 p.m. The parade starts at 3 and, as the route is short, less than 3/4 mile, we should be done by 3:30. Our contingent is the parade is #4-D. We are to form up just west of the Doctors' Park Building on the corner of E. B'way & William on the south side of Broadway, about three blocks east of College Ave. If this is at all confusing, please give us a call at 573-875-0539.

Invite friends. This is a fun event and the more the merrier.
You can use our Facebook event to invite your FB friends at http://www.facebook.com/events/310803062265064/

SUPER COMMITTEE? WHAT’S THE STORY? WHAT CAN WE DO?


BASIC BACKGROUND:  As part of the agreement this past summer to lift the debt ceiling, Congress and the Obama administration agreed to a seriously flawed deficit reduction process. They established a Super Committee (formally, the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction), and charged this small group with coming up with a plan to cut at least $1.5 trillion out of the projected deficit over the next decade.

There are 12 committee members, three Democrats and three Republicans from each house of Congress. They are supposed to come up with a plan that at least seven of the twelve can agree to by Nov. 23. If such a plan is agreed to, this will then be sent to Congress for straight up or down votes (no amendments) in both houses. If either the committee cannot come to agreement, or if their proposal is not supported by both houses, then an automatic cut of $1.2 trillion, half from the military and half from non-military spending will go into effect. (More on the committee at www.deficitreduction.gov)

WHAT’S WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE?  There are several serious flaws in the process:

1)  The economy is in the midst of a deep economic downturn, with real unemployment and underemployment close to 20%. Cuts in government spending now, putting more people out of work, would seriously hurt the chances for economic recovery, prolonging the misery so many are now living through.

2)  Due to repeated tax cuts, benefiting primarily the most well to do and large corporations, we have what economists call a “structural deficit,” meaning that even at full employment, we fail to collect sufficient taxes to cover our expenses.

3)  While there is some wasteful spending, primarily in the area of wars and bloated military budgets, as well as subsidies for dirty energy, most of our government’s programs serve the interests of the vast majority of citizens. Social insurance programs, environmental and consumer protection, education, transportation, nutrition, housing and more should not be on the chopping block.

4)  Balancing the budget, at full employment, should be a priority, but this entails increasing revenues. It can be easily done by rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy, eliminating tax loopholes benefiting corporations, treating unearned income as income, taxing capital gains at the rate that wages or salaries are taxed, and/or putting a tax on financial transactions. Unfortunately, the six GOP members of the Super Committee have all signed a pledge not to support any tax increases, period.

5)  This means that the committee, should it agree on anything, will be coming back with a recommendation that relies entirely, or almost entirely, on cuts, most of these to essential programs and services. The GOP is reportedly looking for $2.2 trillion in cuts, significantly more than is mandated, much of this to essential programs. Those who are now hurting—virtually all of us, working people, the elderly, students, the unemployed—all will be hurting more if these draconian cuts are passed.

5)  It’s not just the Republicans who are putting social insurance and other essential programs on the chopping block. According to our friends at NOW,  “Not to be seen as tax-and-spenders, the Democratic members are reportedly proposing a whopping $3 trillion spending cut. The Democrats' plan would cut the Social Security COLA, make deep Medicare and Medicaid cuts, and not raise close to enough revenues to even have a balance between budget cuts and new revenues.

“Super committee members are reportedly ready to shrink your Social Security retirement and disability benefits by reducing the cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) and are proposing to carve a big chunk out of Medicare, placing a higher burden on seniors to pay for increasing health care cuts. A Medicare cut would also be imposed on health care providers, meaning that fewer doctors would want to care for seniors.”

THE 99% or THE 1%?  TIME TO OCCUPY OUR CONGRESS?

Over the past three decades, almost all the growth in real income has gone to the most wealthy among us. Wealth and power are both now more concentrated in the hands of a few than at any time since the Gilded Age. It is this trend, brought into sharp relief by the financial collapse, that has spurred the emergence of the Occupy Movement. 

There are many threads that tie together the broad dissatisfaction so many are feeling. It is not just that the big banks were deemed “too big to fail” while working people—the little guys—were foreclosed upon. It’s not just that not a single top bank, brokerage or insurance executive has been convicted of anything, despite their obvious deception and manipulation, all of which fueled the bubble and the crash. It’s not just that tens of millions are underwater, deeply in debt due to untenable mortgages and home equity loans. Nor is it simply that tens of millions more are buried under a mountain of student loan debt even decades after finishing school.

Besides all of this, many millions of us are aware that the political system is a stacked deck. Who gets nominated and who gets elected is largely determined by money. With the well heeled doing most of the giving, they’re getting most of the access. So, when Congress is preparing to make major cuts that will affect all of us who make up the 99%, it is outrageous, albeit not shocking, that the 1% end up with far more input than the rest of us put together do.

(It is no surprise that the Super Committee is listening more to powerful corporate leaders than they are to us. Forbes magazine published an interesting piece, “Who's Buttering Up Deficit Super Committee Members With Donations” showing just how much this select group of legislators has been raking in. See: http://www.forbes.com/sites/afontevecchia/2011/08/16/how-much-and-from-who-have-deficit-super-committee-members-received-donations/ )

WE NEED YOU TO JOIN IN SHIFTING THE BALANCE TO THE PEOPLE:

It doesn’t have to be this way, but for it to change, we all need to make some noise. We might not all need to physically “occupy” Congressional offices, but it sure is a help when we show up there regularly, and in significant numbers. That’s why Peaceworks and our Peace Coalition allies have been turning out daily, for nearly four weeks now, for noon-hour “Deliver a Message” meetings with the staffs of Sen. Claire McCaskill and Sen. Roy Blunt.

We’ve been urging our senators to call on their Super Committee colleagues to pursue a much different, more progressive, agenda that includes significant additional taxation levied on those who can afford it, ending the wars and making deep cuts in other wasteful military spending, cutting subsidies to polluters, and keeping their hands off our needed programs.

WE NEED YOU TO JOIN US:  Now, as the Super Committee moves into the home stretch, it’s imperative that we crank up the volume. We need many more people to join us for the 45 minutes it takes (noon to 12:45 p.m.) to make these daily visits. It would really help for the numbers to increase daily, right up until Nov. 22.

It would be great if you could contact us in advance at 573-875-0539 or mail@midmopeaceworks.org to let us know you’re coming, but it’s also fine to just show up any weekday you can between 12 and 12:05 at the Wabash Bus Station at 10th and Ash in downtown Columbia. (Note: Friday, Nov. 11 is a federal holiday, so the offices will be closed.)

IF YOU CAN’T ATTEND IN PERSON:  We urge everyone to communicate with our elected officials. You will find addresses, phone numbers and web links for both Missouri U.S. senators, and all three House members who represent mid-Missouri at http://blog.midmopeaceworks.org/p/resources.html  Please call and write to them today.

CONTACT THE COMMITTEE MEMBERS DIRECTLY: None of the 12 Super Committee members are from Missouri, but given their central role in making decisions that impact everyone in this country, it’s a good idea for all of us to be calling and writing them too.


Super Committee Members and Contact Links for Senators:

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), Senate co-chair  http://murray.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=ContactMe
Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-TX-5), House co-chair
Sen. Max Baucus (D-MT)  www.baucus.senate.gov/contact/emailForm.cfm?subj=issue
Sen. John Kerry (D-MA)  www.kerry.senate.gov/contact/
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ)  www.kyl.senate.gov/contact.cfm
Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH)  http://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/contact?p=contact-form
Sen. Pat Toomey (R-PA)  www.toomey.senate.gov/?p=contact
Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA-31)
Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI-4)
Rep. James Clyburn (D-SC-6)
Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI-6)
Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD-8)

House members do not take e-comments from people living outside their districts. They can, however, be called by phone and all their numbers are available at http://house.gov/representatives/


BECOME A MESSAGE AMPLIFIER: Share this message with friends, family, neighbors, work colleagues, co-parishioners, fellow students, friends on Facebook, etc. Urge everyone you know to recognize our common interest in stopping this awful assault on everything that our government does that’s good.

We urge you to remind folks that we’re talking about clean water and safe food, national parks, school lunches, housing for the needy, social insurance programs like Social Security and Medicare for all of us, and so much more.

Some want to shrink government so small they can “drown it in a bathtub.” Most of us in the 99% recognize that this serves powerful corporations, and harms the rest of us. Time to say “No Way!” and put Congress on notice that they can vote to gut all these programs only at their own peril. If they want to be reelected, they need to start listening to the people who elected them, not just their wealthy contributors.