When it comes to the nation's finances, Kathleen Casey-Kirschling is Public Enemy No. 1. A national milestone - the first baby boomer files for Social Security benefits. These people want to fix it. This woman isn't sure it needs drastic fixing. Neither are these people. If we're worried about not having enough workers to pay for it, is this issue a problem or a solution?
posted by pyramid termite on Oct 15, 2007 - 25 comments

True Majority Weird+political+gadgets: The inventor of Hokey Spokes has teamed up with Ben Cohen (of Ben & Jerry's fame) to add a computerized EL-wire light display system to Ben's family of motorized pigs, which illustrate the relative size of the military, education, and world health/AIDS budgets. All is service of Ben's TrueMajority project. Pics here.
posted by re6smith on Mar 1, 2006 - 10 comments

The National Priorities Project Database provides a dynamic, numbers and graphs comparison of federal and state spending from 1983 to today. Compare labor costs in Louisiana to military spending in Maine, or infectious disease spending in Idaho to hunger in Hawaii. For the political-thread MeFier in your life who has everything, but could use some actual data now and then.
posted by gramcracker on May 13, 2003 - 3 comments

The pursuit of permanent military supremacy. "The question facing all Americans, therefore, is whether the expenditure of hundreds (later thousands) of billions of dollars to defend against hypothetical enemies that may not arise until thirty or forty years from now is a sensible precaution, as contended by the President and Defense Secretary, or whether it eventually will undermine US security by siphoning off funds from vital health and educational programs and by creating a global environment of fear and hostility that will produce exactly the opposite of what is intended by all these expenditures."
posted by homunculus on Jul 22, 2002 - 37 comments