Let's make a list.....

 

 

So let's count the ways we build community. How many different ways do we help take care of one another?  Let me start a list and you can add to it.

• Public parks (local, state, and national)
• Public sewer & water systems
• Roads, bridges, sidewalks
• Public radio & TV (although they learn too far toward promoting the corporate agenda these days)
• Public libraries
• Public schools
• Public financing of elections
• Public hospitals
• Public banking
• Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security
• Public transportation
• Post office
• Airline control towers
• Public welfare relief programs
• Snow removal from public roads
• Coast Guard (Even Republicans like the Coast Guard.  Just last week a pro-Trump 'boat rally' in a Texas lake got out-of-hand and a bunch of the boats began to sink due to all the waves created by their mega-power boats.  So as they faced danger and possibly death, the Repubs called on the 'government' to bail them out. Some stories are just so precious as they illustrate blind hypocrisy.)   

• Pentagon?  (I'm ambivalent about this one but the public does pay for it even though the weapons industry is a profit making syndicate.  A minimal defense of our shores and borders would be sufficient protection for the American people.  What we have now is pure offense - should be named 'The Offense Department' that serves their corporate masters.)
• Public utilities (More than 2,000 publicly owned electric utilities in the United States provide up to 25 percent of electricity that Americans use. Because public utilities commonly keep salaries under more control than private utilities, customers pay up to 14 percent less for energy from public utilities. In smaller municipalities, profits from cooperatives and public utilities make up a large part of city budgets. Such organizations are also on the leading edge of developing green energy initiatives, and some expect to be producing up to 35 percent of their energy via renewable sources by 2020.)
  
• Student Loans and Grants 
• Garbage collection, public landfills and recycling programs
  
• Fire departments, paramedics and other emergency services
• Environmental protection programs (as challenged as they are by the corporate polluters.)
• Justice, courts, prosecutors and jails (All publicly financed but largely used by the corporate oligarchs to suppress the poor, the weak, and people of all colors.)
• Urban planning departments (Where raging battles are underway between developers and those who do want to design a sustainable way of living.)
• Museums (Many museums are privately owned by organizations and groups, but many are also taxpayer-funded state, national, and federal museums.)
• CIA & FBI (We would be better off without either of them.  Imagine how much tax payer $$$$ we'd save....)
•  Corporate/Business Subsidies (This is the type of socialism that is acceptable to the Republican party. Your tax dollars are given to big corporations to do things that often they should not be doing - like fracking, making weapons, oil spills, cancer-laden pharmaceuticals, and lots more.)
• Veteran's (VA) Health Care (I use the VA at Togus, Maine and it is really great.  But everyone should have access to free health care - thus I support Medicare4All!)
• Free school breakfast & lunch programs (Increasing as America is collapsing more and more children are going without food every day.  Fortunately they get some food at school.  But with the current pandemic and many schools closed, how will they get those meals?  These are the kinds of things our nation should be funding rather than the CIA, endless war, and tax subsidies for Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and company.)

There are alot more examples of how our collective taxes are used for good and for bad.  The reason why politics is important is because the 'government' will do with your money what ever those who are running the show tell them to do.  Thus the need to stand against the corporate domination of politics in America.  It's your money.  It's our future at stake.

Bruce