Inspiration: D.C. Mayor Arrested for Act of Civil Disobedience

Publicity stunt or not, this took some guts:

On Monday, [Mayor Vincent Gray] and others sat down and blocked traffic on Washington’s busy Constitution Avenue near the Capitol before being arrested and held until the early hours of Tuesday. …

Gray said he didn’t have any guarantees that activism by citizens would work, but he added that change comes about when people get frustrated enough to take action, making analogies to the civil rights movement, the movement to give women the right to vote and recent events in Egypt and Libya. …

Gray and other city leaders said that Washington became a pawn in last week’s budget negotiations. It appears that a deal members of Congress reached Friday to avert a federal government shutdown included provisions that ban the district from spending its own, city-collected tax money to pay for abortions for poor women. The deal would also re-establish a school voucher program that has divided city leaders.

Let’s put this into perspective.  First of all, the issue at stake  is rather bizarre, and illustrates the corrupt nature of our political system.  Why would a federal budget bill include stipulations regarding how a city can spend its own, independently acquired tax dollars?  And more importantly, why specifically target a program which helps impoverished women obtain abortions, or a needle exchange program which stems the spread of HIV?  Clearly, we are observing a recurring theme:  any program which aids the poor and underprivileged must go, regardless of that program’s source of funding.

“Historic” Deal Screws the Public But Retains Massive Military Budget

We all knew the government wasn’t going to shutdown.  We also knew that ordinary Americans were the ones who were going to get the shaft.  Today we have this from the AP, a horrendous source of information but one on which a substantial number of Americans depend:

Perilously close to a government shutdown, President Barack Obama and congressional leaders reached a historic agreement late Friday night to cut about $38 billion in spending and avert the first federal closure in 15 years.

Obama hailed the deal as “the biggest annual spending cut in history.” House Speaker John Boehner said that over the next decade it would cut government spending by $500 billion — and won an ovation from his rank and file, tea party adherents among them.

We know that the enormous $700+ billion budget remained untouched, so where exactly did this $38 billion in cuts come from?