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About Eugene weekly. (Eugene, Oregon) 1993-current | View Entire Issue (March 29, 2007)
TO THE EDITOR men, women and children of Iraq.” The way I look at it, every dollar I take from the government is one less dollar spent paving roads, damming rivers or killing people. I don’t like the current socio-politico- economic system, and I want to participate in it as little as possible. That means I don’t work much — at least not in the sense that most people think. And when I do “work,” I prefer jobs that are under the table and off the radar. Sure, a bed would be nice, a desk, some chairs, a few plates, maybe a couch. But I’m not going to spend money on them. One fewer desk bought is one fewer tree chopped down in the Amazon. One fewer couch is one fewer batch of toxic foam rub- ber polluting the skies of Thailand. Maybe I will buy something — a mir- ror. The next time someone judges me based on my lifestyle, thinks I’m lazy, cheap, selfish, unhappy or just plain crazy, I can hold a mirror up to their face. If you want to judge someone’s actions based on the common good, maybe you should look at your own. Wes Ecowright Eugene PEACE DIVIDEND The U.S. Department of Justice esti- mates the ratio of cost of violence to cost of prevention to be 7-1. By my calculations, a U.S. economy based on violence preven- tion and peace-building could eventually realize an annual “peace dividend” of $1.2 trillion. The Illinois Center for Violence Prevention estimates direct and indirect costs of interpersonal violence in the U.S. at $425 billion per year. The president’s budget proposal (FY08) includes $666 bil- lion in current military spending. $425 + $666 billion = $1.1 trillion. Using one eighth of that for prevention ($136 billion) could save the U.S. economy $955 billion. We would still have $530 billion for de- fense, over three times the combined mili- tary spending of Russia, China and the six “rogue” states. The need for a huge military machine would decline rapidly as world despera- tion, the root cause of violent conflict, is regarded seriously. An annual investment for 10 years of $59 billion would provide shelter, health care, AIDS control and the elimination of starvation and malnutrition for everyone on the planet. As the need for a military declines over many years, the interest on the national debt attributable to military spending and the costs of veteran benefits ($300 billion) can be added to the peace dividend, to- talling $1.2 trillion annually. It makes “cents” to establish a cabinet- level Department of Peace (HR 808). If Americans can risk complete incineration of the planet with thousands of nuclear weapons on hair trigger alert, certainly we can find the courage, and perhaps the san- ity, to open our fist. David Hazen Eugene WORK OF COLD HANDS To sum up Jennifer Levin’s nice long letter (3/8) dissing anti-“Savage Love” let- ter writers: PRUDERY is even worse than RUDERY. It is unfortunate that so many of our laws, secular and religious, are written and passed by the bony hands of prudes in- stead of by the warm hands of decent folk enlightened by natural and scientific real- ity. Sex is simply Nature’s prime force for living progress, but it cannot work well with so many greedy folks destroying the natural and social environments. Bob Saxton Eugene RING THEM BELLS If nothing else is ever taught in our pub- lic school system, two particular subjects should come before anything else: democ- racy and fascism! Having lived next to a neighbor who grew up in fascist Germany, I was im- pressed by his comparison of America today to Hitler’s Germany during the 1930-40s. Before he died a few years ago, he told me he was alarmed by the move- ment from democracy to fascism that was taking place under the Bush administra- tion. If our public schools were to concen- trate on democracy and fascism before anything else, perhaps our younger genera- tion would be able to politically under- stand our nation is now teetering on brink of the same disaster that ultimately de- stroyed Germany in 1945! The alarm bells are ringing with little time to spare! John Fluent Eugene CONTROL FREAKS To all the readers who have written in to disparage Dan Savage and his nationally MARCH 29 2007 7
