Swords into Plowshares: an Opportunity to help establish the Dept. of Peace!

Department of Peace Conference, 3-5 February 2006

Dr. Dorothy Maver, Executive Director of the Peace Alliance, a dear ally and friend of PDA, is inviting people from across the United States to a two day conference in Washington for educational workshops and then direct lobbying members of our Congress to establish a Department of Peace. The two days of education and activism will be the Third through the Fifth of February, 2007. This is an excellent chance for us all to interact with religious, political, educational and conflict resolution leaders and joining with Rep. Kucinich, along with Deepak Chopra and Marianne Williamson (two international best selling authors and world-celebrated thinkers) and people from faith, justice, peace, and activist communities in this conference, the culmination of which will be reintroduction of the Dept. of Peace legislation on the House Floor!

A Dept. of Peace is not a new idea, but was introduced during debate on the original US Constitution and the concept of peaceful conflict resolution and arbitration has been a hallmark of recent human civilization, dating from at least 500 BCE in India. The Department of Peace would also include a Peace Academy and address domestic issues such as teaching nonviolent conflict resolution to our children and youth, and addressing such longstanding problems as domestic violence (particularly towards women and children), gang and drug violence, as well as international issues.

The Peace Alliance and its allies include a wide range of individual legislators such as Dennis Kucinich, Maxine Waters, Barbara Lee, Bernie Sanders, and organizations as diverse as the Catholic Pax Christi USA, Amnesty International, American Muslim Voices and the Jewish group Tikkun!

A Dept. of Peace would only be about 2% of the present US DOD budget…2% for peace and conflict resolution rather than wars of choice and further financial engorgement of the military-industrial complex President Eisenhower warned us of in 1961 upon leaving office. Rep. Kucinich has introduced this legislation twice before, and it has never got out of committee, much less been debated on the Floor of the US House of Representatives. However, the people in theory are represented by our Congress, but only by making our feelings known, can Congress be educated and hopefully swayed in the establishment of a new model of conflict resolution and we the people will rest securely in the knowledge that noone bears us collective ill will and consequently address all the other pressing issues that face us such as: alternative and renewable energy, environmental stewardship, tackling Global HIV, and the other problems in the world which war does not solve, but aggrandize them.

By peace, we free ourselves and our resources for the advancement of ourselves, our progeny, and the present as well as our future heritage as members of the human community. Please contact your legislators in Congress and urge them to cosponsor or at least vote for a Dept. of Peace in this 110th Congress.

The First Hundred Hours and the New Congress: Let’s not Forget Energy!

Nancy Pelosi will be our Speaker of the House in just a few days and has already promised 100 hours of legislative initiatives. Let us, while keeping our big picutre firmly in mind — peace, a healthy working America, real democracy, a just wage and fair trade, as well as environmental stewardship — but not ignore our message of energy independence and the promotion of research of alternatives to nuclear, coal and other fossil feuls. A campaign of a very diverse group of governmentalal watchdog agencies, the Dept. of Energy itself, along with environmental educational and activist organizations, as well as alternative energy technology industries are urging a change in our current budgeted energy policies.

Right now much more public money is being spent to “improve” coal standards, develop deepwater drilling technology and a new generation of nuclear reactors and a highly suspect nuclear-hydrogen program’s development to the detriment of increasing conservation, creating an advanced solar, geothermal, wind turbine, and tidal energy non-polluting energy policy.

One agency, the Nuclear Information and Resource Service, issued the following letter urging immediate action in the new Congress regarding our federal energy policy:

Dear Friends:

We are working to build new coalitions of renewable energy groups and trade associations, safe energy and environmental groups, businesses and others to redirect our nation’s energy priorities away from nuclear power and fossil fuels and towards the renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies that can cleanly and sustainably power our future and at the same time address the global climate crisis….

…Our first effort is below: a letter to Congress seeking a budget shift from nuclear and fossil fuel programs to renewable and efficiency programs in the Fiscal Year 2007 federal budgetrces for renewable and efficiency programs for FY 2008.
Because the new Congress intends to act on FY 07 budget issues very quickly, we intend to get this letter to Congressional leaders next week!
We encourage all national, regional and local organizations to sign on. Please let us know by 5:00 p.m., Tuesday, December 26. Please reply to this e-mail with your name, organization, city and state.
Thanks for your help and support!
Michael Mariotte, Executive Director
Nuclear Information and Resource Service
nirsnet@nirs.org 301-270-6477

Indeed, as Mr. Mariotee notes, time is fleeting for FY 2007 budget changes and to begin addressing the 2008!

A remarkable coalition of researchers, advocates and policy experts have joined together to address the budgetary concerns for the First Hundred Hours. These are: Cascade Associates, Environmental and Energy Study Group, Geothermal Energy Assoc., Nuclear Information and Resource Service, Public Citizen, SUN DAY Campaign, and the US Combined Heat and Power Association. In a letter due to be released on 27 December to every member of Congress, they urge the following:

In general, we support what we understand to be Congress’ intent to fund programs in FY’07 at the FY’06 level as being a good starting point for the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) sustainable energy programs.
We believe that it is essential to sustain funding at or above historic levels (i.e., FY’06 and earlier) for the core renewable energy and energy efficiency programs in DOE as well as in other federal agencies.
We also note that as work progressed during this past year on the FY’07 appropriations bills, consensus was reached between the Congress and the White House to expand a number of sustainable energy programs as well as launch several new energy efficiency and/or renewable energy initiatives. We believe these programs and funding levels should be a part of the final FY’07 appropriations bill.
However, we recognize – and fully support – Congress’ desire to not increase overall spending limits and, in fact, to move towards significantly reducing the size of the federal budget deficit.
Therefore, we recommend that any increases in the funding levels for the federal energy efficiency and renewable energy programs be offset by commensurate, or greater, reductions in selected fossil fuel and commercial nuclear power program accounts.
We believe that a shift in federal funding from mature and/or polluting technologies to cleaner, safer, and sustainable energy sources offers the best option for curbing greenhouse gas emissions, reducing oil imports, and addressing the nation’s other pressing energy and deficit-reduction needs within the constraints of a very tight federal budget.

PDA certainly endorses these moves. Not only are many of the present DOE endorsed projects are just continuations of existing technology that are potential polluters and greenhouse gas emitters, but due to their nature, set to further enlarge the tremendous commercial energy corporations’ coffers at the public’s expense.

PDA urges all to contact their representatives and their staff along with the senators and their staff to support a green conservative DOE budget aimed at alternative fuels and saving energy, not continuation of the same failed policy that is geared towards commercial fossil and nuclear corporations.

$100,000 USD per hour towards Iraq; Civil War in Iraq and Congress.

Besides the Republican sex scandal in Washington which has DC and the talking heads abuzz, several recent developments are definitely worthy of comment. We refer not to the latest Enabling Act of the BushCo, Inc. administration re: habeus corpus and unitary executive legislative/executive power, two other events are especially pressing. While many might not immediately assume that the two are directly connected, they are in more than a mere cursory manner. These two are the cost of the Iraqi debacle, known as the “War on Terror” and the US Congress playing politics and local funding politics at that over an international issue, the full and equitable funding of the FY 2007 Ryan White Care Act.

The Los Angeles Times article by Mark Mazzetti and Joel Havemann, entitled “Iraq War Costing $100,000 per Minute,” via the Seattle Times on 3 February 2006 reports the following:

WASHINGTON — The White House said Thursday that it plans to ask Congress for an additional $70 billion to pay for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, driving the cost of military operations in the two countries to $120 billion this year, the highest ever.

Most of the new money would pay for the war in Iraq, which has cost an estimated $250 billion since the U.S. invasion in March 2003.

The additional spending, along with other war funding the Bush administration will seek separately in its regular budget next week, would push the price tag for combat and nation-building since Sept. 11, 2001, to nearly a half-trillion dollars, approaching the inflation-adjusted cost of the 13-year Vietnam War.

At the same time, the intercine civil war in Iraq is claiming as many as 150 victims of torture and murder in a 48 hour period, even during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. News reports of as much of $9 Billion missing from the US Iraq reconstruction project are scandalizing the Iraqis, the US general public and the entire world.

At the same time that all this money is seeming to be the equivalent of keeping out rats by stuffing the holes with paper money, a catfight erupted on the floor of the US Senate and between HIV/AIDS advocacy groups over the funding of the Ryan White Care Act. Hillary R. Clinton (supposed D, NY) took to the Senate floor to basicly say three things: (1) Leave Metro NYC funding alone, since (2)it is the fault of people moving to NYC for HIV treatment from other states that we have the highest case load in the country and (3) that maybe someday soon the other more rural states will get what they need, but NY can’t lose a dime. She does reiterate the fact that a shift in priority needs to occur in the country regarding HIV/AIDS care and that Medicare should be offered as soon as a person presents HIV positive, but that Congress doesn’t seem too interested…

However, as she pointed out, NY doesn’t want to lose any money, claiming that the higher cost of living and more per capita cases in New York means that more monies are required. But what she neglects to mention is that there is a wealth of HIV/AIDS social service organizations that are well funded and organized offering a wide range of services that a smaller city, such as Huntsville, Alabama or Columbia, South Carolina lack.

Sen. Clinton held up the bill for a while, but caved in once the compromise was reached. Had she been more for HIV funding and less for New York, she would have held her breath until she turned blue, ready to filibuster until she fainted from exhaustion.

One blog,
“From the Left,” notes via Jeffery Birnbaum’s WP article on 23 August 2006 that:

Clinton (D-N.Y.) said she opposes the measure because it would lower funding for her home state. But some AIDS groups also see broader political motives at work. Other states that would lose out include California, Florida and Illinois — all places Clinton would need to win if she seeks the presidency. Her critics also note that many of the states that would receive higher funding under the new formula are rural and Southern, which tend to vote Republican.

Birnbaum’s article concludes that she was the only nay in the entire Senate… Quite a few comments came in to this blog, some most virulent towards Mrs. Clinton and the entire AIDS charity network. These include:

Sign the God damned bill Hillary, before no state, including your own, can get a dime of Federal money to treat the epidemic. Tweak it later, add appropriations to other bills, but get the God damned Federal money now before Bush spends every last cent in the US Treasury on Iraq!

and

What is the Gay Men’s Health Crisis thinking by supporting her? These silly queens must be swept away by the Cult of Hillary, just as they are by the Cult of Barbra, Liza, Cher and Mariah.

Time to wake up, gay America! Hillary Clinton is NOT our friend. Never has been and she never will be. Hillary takes care of Hillary.

In the interest of fairness, one must admit that there are defensive comments as well in rebuttal. However, the fact that it appears to be less than Lily White, does give us cause for alarm… Mrs. Clinton has the appearance of counting potential electoral ballots prior to nomination and of making an international crisis one of county lines.

Let us face fact, this Congress, collectively, doesn’t give a proverbial rat’s ass about HIV. If they did, they would fully fund Ryan White, and give up some of the $9 Billion they shat away in Baghdad to contractors that are not rebuilding Iraq and maybe a few hours of the Iraqi Adventure.

HIV funding should be national and not a hodgepodge of self-replicating mini-ministries. The funding should follow the cases and education and outreach should be universal — the same adverts should be in New York and Newark as are in Baton Rouge and Birmingham or Binghampton. The social service organizations and medical clinics should be funded by two criteria: that of case load and that of overhead, not by luck of geography.

The face of HIV is changing, and it is becoming darker and female. It is time for the United States to decide where we want our month of Adventure to go: to Bush’s gulags and fresh cannon fodder on the streets and in the markets of Iraq or to FULL FUNDING for not only Ryan White but active education and social and medical services whether in Brooklyn or Birmingham or Boise.

Noone should play politics with peoples’ lives. It is not only unseemly, but immoral, and just plain old-fashioned bullshit, whether dressed in a senator’s suit or a Talibangelist’s stole.