Protest on Natick Common July 24th 2PM
On the 22nd I received a call from a woman who introduced herself as a neighbor to the Peace Abbey. She planned a protest event for Sunday and asked for help in gathering people. Her issue was the threat of a reduction in social security.
The Metro-West Peace Action group responded immediately and helped send a message to Congress.A Wake Up Call
Remember, not only did you contribute to Social Security but your employer did too.
It totaled 15% of your income before taxes. If you averaged only 30K over your working life, that's close to $220,500.
If you calculate the future value of $4,500 per year (yours & your employer's contribution) at a simple 5% (less than what the govt. pays on the money that it borrows), after 49 years of working you'd have about $892,919.98.
If you took out only 3% per year, you receive $26,787.60 per year and it would last better than 30 years, and that's with no interest paid on that final amount on deposit! If you bought an annuity and it paid 4% per year, you'd have a lifetime income of $2,976.40 per month.
Entitlement??
we paid cash for our social security insurance!!!! Just because they borrowed the money , doesn't make our benefits some kind of charity or handout !! Congressional benefits: free healthcare , outrageous retirement packages , 67 paid holidays , three weeks paid vacation , unlimited paid sick days ,
now that's welfare , and they have the nerve to call our retirement entitlements.
Sent from email by several concerned citizens.
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Defense-related expenditure 2012 Budget request & Mandatory spending<br>
Total Spending $1.030-$1.415 trillion
The 2012 Defense Budget Is The Highest Since World War II
Robert Johnson Jul. 19, 2011
Defense spending is at historic highs. And though it's the same size, the same shape, and has the same abilities, the U.S. military costs 35 percent more than it did a decade ago.
A 75 page report released last week, by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments also points out that the DoD spent $46 billion of that total on projects that failed, due to cost overruns or technical glitches.
Because of these failures the military was not modernized as planned and will be forced to achieve that goal in the face of extreme budget cuts. In a statement to Reuters the report's author Todd Harrison said: "This was the opportunity of the decade, to really recapitalize and modernize the military's equipment and that has been squandered. [Now] we're looking at the prospect of a declining defense budget over the next decade and we're not going to have the opportunity to do that again."
The Pentagon faces $400 billion in budget cuts over the next 12 years. The Analysis of the 2012 Defense Budget lists the allocation as follows. The FY 2012 budget requests a total of $676 billion for the Department of Defense (DoD). The base budget for DoD includes $553 billion in discretionary funding and $5 billion in mandatory funding, and an additional $118 billion is requested for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The budget request also includes $19 billion for defense-related atomic energy programs and $8 billion for defense-related activities in other agencies, bringing the total national defense budget to $703 billion.
Adjusting for inflation, the level of funding proposed for the base defense budget in the FY 2012 request is the highest level since World War II, surpassing the Cold War peak of $531 billion (in FY 2012 dollars) reached in FY 1985.
The report also notes that while this is high by historic standards, it's still a consistent percent of overall federal spending.
Building ships that never see service doesn't help the bottom line
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U.S. wars launched since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, have left 225,000 dead and cost up to $4.4 trillion, according to a new study by university researchers that was reported in Defense News.
The Brown University study focused on the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and counterterrorism campaigns in Pakistan and Yemen. Its financial cost estimates are considerably higher than those used by the Pentagon -- which puts the wars' cost at about $1 trillion -- because the researchers included costs in excess of the direct war appropriations, such as projected spending on wounded veterans through 2051.
Massachusetts Scholars for Social Justice
We invite you to join us in the formation of Scholars for Social Justice, a new alliance of higher education faculty members committed to returning economic and social justice to our universities.
As public intellectuals, we all bear the responsibility to speak out for the public welfare, and we recognize that the public welfare depends on the equitable treatment of all and the freedom to dissent in the face of inequality.
Together, we will use our collective voice to advocate for the rights of the students and workers on our campuses, in our communities, and around the world.
As Massachusetts Scholars for Social Justice we can add our voice to the growing movement against the corporate take-over of higher education and of society generally. We hope that you will consider becoming part of this important effort.
For more information, contact Jobs with Justice Higher Education Organizer Gillian Mason at617-470-7409 or emailgillianpmason@gmail.com.
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