Sad But True: The Proposed 2007 U.S. Budget

Everyone who was perhaps wowed and maybe even got a little misty-eyed at the President's most recent State of the Union speech, read closely what I'm about the write.

The President of the this nation does not give a rat's ass about anything that doesn't have to do with furthering the interests of war mongers, oil tycoons, and HMOs. Period. End of statement.

If you read at all into the President's 2007 FY budget proposal, you should have already forgotten about anything written by the conservative pundits or event the skeptical scientists who were momentarily encouraged by vows by the President to pay more attention to moving us away from oil and all the other pie-in-the-sky bullshit. He didn't mean a single word of it and this proposal, which was well-outlined by the Washington Post today on their website, proves this.

Case in point - Within the text of the President's vow to ween us off of oil and focus on alternative energy sources, he cited that more funding will go to developing safer nuclear technology. Want to know what amounts to in tax dollars? A whopping $250 million, not billion, to go to a "global nuclear energy program". Wanna know how that compares to other ticket items in the budget?

DOD Research and Development allocation - $73.2 billion
DOD Weapon System allocation - $84.2 billion
Dept of State Education and Cultural programs (with emphasis on Muslim awareness) - $474 million

Now I'm all about cultural awareness and everything, but if you stood in front of me and said that you could actually develop better nuclear technology for half of what it costs to boost cultural awareness, I'd be olbliged to laugh and then tell you that you're full of shit.

Oh, by the way, out of the $440 billion that the DOD will get this year, the soldiers themselves will get an astounding 2.2 increase in pay. I think that's about on par with what my mother, who works in retail hardware said she was getting this year. Hoo-rah.

Veterans affairs is getting more money in repsonse to the embarrasing shortfalls that occurred this past year - in exchange, the vets get to pay double their current co-pay as well as an annual $250 prescription fee.

It gets better but I'm going to have to continue this later. I'm becoming ill.