Saturday, April 24, 2010

Deleted POST: In reply: Military Expenditures - 19% of total budget (2010), 59% of discretionary spending (2011)

Posted April 23, 2010 9:19 AM (AmPow blog time) And subsequently (4/27/10, I think) deleted, along with the whole damned post. (See 4/29 update, appended)
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In reply to: American Power: Long Beach City College Premier of Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story [UPDATE 4/29/10 - Apparently that post--and thus all links to it--have fallen down the memory hole. Here's a link to a cached version from April 27th, 2010: American Power: Long Beach City College Premier of Michael Moore's Capitalism: A Love Story (cached version). Please use that link, instead.], and in particular, this passage:
"Notice this banner at the table, showing defense spending as percentage share of federal expenditures. Communist demonstrators had the same banner at the March 20 ANSWER protest in Hollywood (and of course it's pure propaganda, since military expenditures for 2010 are expected to total 19 percent of budgetary outlays)"
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While I can't read the fine print in the photos to be sure, I suspect that 59% refers to the amount of discretionary spending devoted to military expenditures, as proposed in the 2011 budget -- (though I believe I also read that that was the amount of discretionary spending devoted to the military in the 2008 budget, as well).:
"59% is the percentage of the proposed 2011 discretionary budget targeted for military spending. This does not include all the budgeted spending, just the programs that get approved every year. Some groups argue if you look through the fine print of the budget that figure could be pushed even higher. It’s likely they are right.
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This Federal Budget Pie Chart for 2011 uses figures from the proposal that President Obama presented to Congress in February 2010. You can see the plan online at www.whitehouse.gov/omb."
- Budget Details : One Minute for Peace
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UPDATE - 4/29/10 - Not only was the comment to American Power removed, the whole post was deleted, which is some serious moderation for content.

While I'd like to think Professor Douglas made it go bye-bye on my account--the result of my thrashing and trashing his dishonest bullshit about the military budget in this comment, perhaps--I have a feeling it had to do with his nasty treatment of his cow-orkers in this one... I'd think there'd be some rule against doing that kinda thing, regardless of where one works... ...but especially anyplace that relies on folks believing the "employees"--the faculty of LBCC--is competent and open to intelligently discussing and debating a variety of political and social ideas and ideals, including those with which they personally don't agree. Whether one agrees with Donald Douglas's political biases and observations or not, it doesn't project a good image of any of the professors named (including Dr. Douglas) or of the college itself to have a professor calling his colleagues "communists" and "lesbians" and "far left indoctrinators," for all the world to see.

Regardless of the reason, it was moderated away, and can only be found at that cache link posted above (and on the screencaps of it that I'll post, should I ever notice that the cache link is dead, as well...)

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