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Wednesday, September 21, 2016 The Nugget Newspaper, Sisters, Oregon
The Bunkhouse
Chronicle
Craig Rullman
Columnist
Billions and
billions
$3.5 billion.
That’s how much money
the United States gave to
Pakistan in 2011. Since
2007, there has never been
a year when we sent them
less than a billion green-
backs. Many of those years
it was considerably more.
That’s our money, yours and
mine, that one White House
and Congress or another has
forked over to an unstable,
essentially borderless Islamic
Republic, year after year, for
“economic and military aid
and development.”
That’s a lot of our billions,
and those are public figures,
so we can assume the hard
number is much higher. I
keep wondering what we are
getting in return for that kind
of expenditure.
So this weekend, while
battening down a few things
around our place in “get it
done before the snow flies”
mode, I kept wondering what
it might look like if we had
taken some of those tens of
billions and reinvested them
in ourselves — our own chil-
dren, our own development,
our own future.
What if we had gone
completely nuts and decided
that we could have used
those billions redesigning
our public-education sys-
tem so that it resembled
something like the world-
class institutions they have
in Finland, or Switzerland,
where becoming a teacher is
third only to the medical and
legal professions, where the
competition for jobs is fierce,
and the students keep reap-
ing the rewards of instruc-
tors who make a salary com-
mensurate with their national
importance.
Just a thought.
What if we had spent a
few of those billions on the
Pine Ridge Reservation, in
South Dakota, which is an
on-going national disgrace.
With an infant mortality rate
300 times the national aver-
age, an unemployment rate
that has remained consis-
tently at 80-90 percent, and
where the median income is
somewhere in the neighbor-
hood of $3000 a year, Pine
Ridge represents a cata-
strophic failure in our moral
clarity.
Perhaps the City of Flint,
Michigan, could have a few
of those billions that we
gave to Pakistan — a coun-
try chock full of people who
despise us — for new water
pipes.
Maybe we could have
used a few of those billions
to fund cancer research, or to
find a cure for ALS.
We all understand the
geo-political necessity of aid
programs. No superpower
that doesn’t fund them will
be a superpower very long,
and we might all agree that
being a superpower has its
decided advantages. For one,
we get to argue about things
half of the world doesn’t
even have the luxury to think
about.
But I wonder how much
of this we can actually afford.
As of this morning, the
national debt stands at about
$19 trillion, according to the
big debt clock. That’s about
$60k to every citizen, and
$163k to every taxpayer,
should the bill come due.
What’s particularly trouble-
some is that no one run-
ning for president seems to
be talking about it. Except,
perhaps, the libertarian guy,
whose years of hot-boxing
with Cheech and Chong
finally caught up to him
when he couldn’t remember
what Aleppo is.
And so Pakistan keeps
getting their billions. And
they aren’t alone. Israel
gets $4 billion. Egypt and
Afghanistan get about $1.5
billion per. Kenya, Nigeria,
and Tanzania each clear
about a half-billion per year
of our tax dollars.
Each year they line up
with their hands out, and
the President looks over the
heads of our own citizens
while forking over the bil-
lions. Congress has some-
thing to do with this, of
course, but with an approval
rate currently at 11 per-
cent it’s hard to believe that
anyone cares what they are
doing anymore.
The United States is a
generous country. In 2013,
the U.S. — that’s you and
me — gave 4.9 million met-
ric tons of food to the rest
of the world. We give a lot
of that food to North Korea,
a country so backward and
depraved it regularly threat-
ens to turn the world into a
“sea of fire.” We did that so
they wouldn’t work on their
nukes anymore, and so last
week they tested another
one.
Our food donations to the
world represent 51 percent
of the world’s food dona-
tions. It represents 46.2 mil-
lion beneficiaries — hungry
people — in 56 different
countries. That’s food on
top of the money we dole
out. We did that, whether
we knew it or not, while
some of our own citizens
go hungry and homeless,
and without the resources to
even begin thinking about
how to improve their living
conditions.
Maybe we can start think-
ing about foreign aid a little
differently. Maybe we can
put our countrymen first,
and reassign those billions to
address the needs of our own
country. Maybe we could
make teachers as appreciated
as athletes, fix a few roads
and bridges, and dive into
Appalachia and the Great
Plains to help our citizens
who are struggling in a new
world economy.
We are spending the
money, so why not spend it
on us?
I’m not too interested in
affixing blame for the con-
ditions we keep finding in
our own borders, or listening
to the morally or politically
righteous as they run through
that weird new kabuki known
as “virtue signaling,” which
is a kind of Facebooky, self-
conscious and toe-dipping
temporary political bravery.
I am, however, interested
in getting them fixed, and
with an increasing sense of
urgency.
Blazin Saddles
Ryder Redfi eld
Rachel Knauss
Th e Open Door
Jessie Curry
Life.Love.Yoga.
Audrey Tehan
Riley & Will Newport
Paige Bruguier
Myrna Dow
Linda Peck
Skydive Awesome
Th e Fly Fisher’s Place
Th e Cottonwood Café
FivePine Lodge
Face Oasis & Body Care
Kery & Ted Eady
Piper Lucas
Th ree Creeks Brewing Co.
Ronda Sneva
Talia Gavin
Crux Fermentation Project
Tracy Curtis
Lake Creek Lodge
Deschutes Brewery
Edie Shelton
Lori & Doug Hancock
Kerani Mitchell
Central Oregon
Bungee Adventures
Cinder Butte Meat Co.
Keith McCathryn
Sey-Lah-Vie! Studio
Randall Tillery
David Yoder
Bob Burgess
V
V
Thank You to the Community of Sisters
for Making the Fundraiser for
Justin Veloso a Smashing Success!
Ron Sparks
Melinda Witt
Sage & Lynne Dorsey
Lois Worchester
Jeff Smith
Kris Rerat
Th e Kelleher family
Lori Hancock
Frank & Kathy Deggendorfer
Debbie Newport
Sue Burck
Brad Tisdel
Victoria Bochey
Dennis McGregor
Peggy Tehan
Helen Schmidling
Danny & Kelly St. Lawrence
Jack Nagel
Gary & Katy Yoder
Kathy Nagel
Stefan Redfi eld
Andy Armer
TR McCrystal
Daniel Cooper
Erin Borla
And to anyone we may have
accidentally overlooked!
Randy Redfi eld
Mimi Graves
And the many volunteers
Jennifer McCrystal
who made the event an
Les & Lori Cooper
amazing success!
Megan Leisy