Philip A. Farruggio -- World News Trust
Nov. 27, 2014
Yes, it is holiday season once again.
The stock market has just set all time highs. Black Friday will, as always, see the mobs of shoppers out there in line to get those great bargains. The malls will be filled once again with folks looking for Christmas gifts for loved ones.
Many of our neighbors will conduct their annual obsession with the act of giving; so much so that many organizations will actually refuse anymore donations… unless of course they are in the form of cash. Isn’t Thanksgiving such a wonderful time?
Should we all be thankful that throughout our great nation, public services have been cut? Why? Well, the states and their cities simply do not have the money to sustain them.
You see, for decades in our country, we had this thing called Revenue Sharing, whereupon the federal government took some of the revenues it obtained from us, and sent it back in the form of Block grants: loans that did NOT have to be repaid. Our states and cities used this money to help fund roads, infrastructure repairs, school construction, library budgets, hospital needs, local police and fire protection, food banks, homeless shelters, housing for the low income, food stamps and of course Medicaid.
Guess what? There is little Revenue Sharing anymore. How can there be, when more than 50 percent of our federal tax money goes for military spending? It costs we the people, we the taxpayers, more than $1 million a year to keep a soldier in Afghanistan (the soldier, by the way, only sees about $20,000 out of that moolah).
In my county in Florida, the cost of a handful of soldiers would make up the 33 percent cut in the library budget per year (since 2007, by the way). If we closed the majority of our more than 800 military bases in over 100 different countries, and returned the soldiers, airmen and sailors home along with all that equipment and weaponry, our needs here would be remedied.
It is time for all the working stiffs of America to wake up and realize that we are living in an empire that is failing… unless you are part of the millionaire class. Forget all the countless issues that so many of you are married to and focus on but two:
The revenue received from such a maneuver would fuel the fires of economic recovery for all. We could argue at a later date about all the countless injustices of this corporate Military Industrial Empire.
A mass of working stiffs descending upon the offices of their Congress people throughout America would be a great beginning for real Hope and Change… not the kind our current Two-Party Monolith has been selling us.
So, on this Thanksgiving 2014, stop being a Republican or Democrat, or conservative or progressive… just be the working stiffs that you are, and think like one!
PA Farruggio
November 26, 2014
Philip A. Farruggio is son and grandson of Brooklyn, NYC longshoremen. He is a free lance columnist [found on Nation of Change Blog, Truthout.org, TheSleuthJournal.com, Worldnewstrust.com, The Intrepid Report, The Peoples Voice, Information Clearing house, Dandelion Salad, Activist Post, Dissident Voice and many other sites worldwide]. Philip works as an environmental products sales rep and has been an activist leader since 2000. In 2010 he became a local spokesperson for the 25% Solution Movement to Save Our Cities by cutting military spending 25%. Philip can be reached at