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While I understand that there are greater costs to the
War in Iraq than monetary amounts can show, it is one valid measure. It
has been said that budgets reflect our priorities.
In my town, our annual school budget is $55 million
and our share of the cost of the war in Iraq is $87 million (about 1.5
times the school budget).
We all know that not everybody wants to think about
the war in terms of human suffering. Many have grown spiritually numb to
any number of dead "enemies." My hope is that this financial
accounting is just another perspective that can be used to crack the
wall of apathy in the world out there. Perhaps it will motivate some
people to do "one more thing" to stop the madness. Perhaps it
can help shake another person out of complacency and complicity.
The bottom of each flyers shows the calculation
including the key census data used to perform the allocations (State
share of Federal Tax Revenues, town median household income, number of
households in town).
It is my hope that these will be distributed around
the state. With an earlier version (when the cost was much lower), I
stood outside the polling place for our town budget referendum and
handed out a few hundred copies.
Go forth and speak out!
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