Report by David Swanson
Senator Bernie Sanders spoke Monday in Charlottesville, Va. He said all the right things about wealth and inequality and education, as usual. Yet he managed, as usual, to avoid a little item that takes up the majority of the budget that he and his colleagues decide on each year.
Sanders notes that in the last two years the 14 wealthiest people in the U.S. saw their wealth increase by $157 billion, which is more wealth than the bottom 40% of the country has. It’s also a small fraction of the $1.3 trillion or so that Congress spends each year on war preparations across several departments.
That same $1.3 trillion is also the amount of total accumulated student debt, yet it can be spent each and every year on a criminal enterprise without comment.
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org and campaign coordinator forRootsAction.org. Swanson’s books include War Is A Lie. He blogs at DavidSwanson.org and WarIsACrime.org. He hosts Talk Nation Radio. He is a 2015 Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.