Our Tax Dollars are Going Where?

America is deeply in debt and there are fear-mongering rumors going around about deep cuts to services that many of our most needy citizens depend upon, such as Medicare and Medicaid.

In 2008, a conservative estimate of total direct US aid to Israel is almost $114 billion—that’s right, billion with a B. This is according to an article written by Shirl McArthur, a retired U.S. foreign service officer, in the November 2008 issue of The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs. A breakdown of this by type of aid and year can be found along with citations of the original sources in the original article. http://www.wrmea.com/component/content/article/245/3845-congress-watch-a-conservative-estimate-of-total-direct-us-aid-to-israel-almost-114-billion.html

That much money could fund a lot of neighborhood clinics, subsidize mountains of school lunches, make needed improvements to the conditions in every veteran’s hospital in this country, or shore up our aging system of dams and bridges—yet it buys Apache helicopters and tear gas canisters that are regularly used as weapons of aggression against unarmed Palestinian refugees.

As an American citizen who just wrote a substantial check to cover my income tax obligations for 2011, I am concerned.

As an educator who sees images of school children passing by American made tanks on their way to school, I am concerned. How can a child focus on learning in conditions like this?

As a person who contributes to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency to help their efforts to provide for the refugees, I am concerned by the waste of their limited resources.