Re: WENDELL BERRY: The Agrarian Standard

[Terrafutura]

       With the Pentagon being the largest source of  bureaucratic waste, abuse and corruption in the federal government, having maintained a military tax-fueled budget which has averaged 300 billion dollars a year since 1948 and considering the administration of George W. Bush is requesting $396.1 billion for the military in fiscal year 2003 ($379.3 billion for the Defense Department and $16.8 billion for the nuclear weapons functions of the Department of Energy), this is $45.5 billion above current levels, an increase of 13 percent, also 15 percent above the Cold War average, to fund a force structure that is one-third smaller than it was a decade ago, I am concerned that the aforementioned "death bed" is an insidious crypt frighteningly more undead than dying. In all, the administration plans to spend $2.1 TRILLION on the military over the next five years. The budget plans, if approved by Congress, would lead the nation back into deficit spending in FY'03 - for the first time in four years. With aerospace/defense contractors such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin and General Electric usurping some half a Trillion dollars in sales since the mid-eighties, all of which are among the world's most powerful companies, I am uncertain of this impending mortality. With mega multinational corporations based right here on American soil generating revenues such as Walmart's 219 Billion dollars in 2002 and Philip Morris with 73 Billion dollars as well as Citigroup's 112 Billion dollars and Merck's(pharmacueticals) 47 Billion dollars, I am alarmed that if corporate economy is nearing the pearly gates, US spending citizens are largely unaware, unconcerned and irrefutably aloof to that speculation.
       Yes, there is a reason for the media's repressive slant on the economic viability of responsible associative economics and the valuable contributions made from our conscientious cottage industry sector as well as grassroots social and political movements-$$$. The profits are alive and well and as long as mainstream media works for their advertisers/patrons such as Ford Motor and General Electric and as long as medical doctors remain hypocritically-oathed pharmaceutical reps and corporate farmers continue the rape and humiliation of our planet by doing the industrial, war-based, economically incestuous government's bidding to produce depleted, demoralized garbage to fill our decaying bodies with (this includes the so-called organic industry which caters to the small percentage of the upper pyramidal populus of this country and further more the world who can actually afford the stuff.)
       I am not convinced that Microsoft nor Exxon nor Boeing nor AOL/Time Warner nor Pfizer (not to be confused with Pfeiffer) nor the 495 other inappropriately economically endowed machines on Fortune's hall of shame are dutifully lined up to meet and greet St. Peter just yet. Collapse is imminent, however. what we do now will prepare for the fall. If not in this lifetime then the others...

Peace be with all,
Caine Rose