Published: 2/8/2013 by the Augusta Free Press

Published: 2/12/2013 by the Capital Times

Published: 2/14/2013 by the Great Falls Tribune

Valentine’s Day was taken over long ago by cards and flowers, candy and dinners. It is now a cash cow holiday for merchandisers. In addition, for many, it has become a day to honor women and girls in a fresh way. V-Day, introduced to the world by Eve Ensler in 1998, demands an end to violence against women and girls.

Ask anyone and they would no doubt admit that they would love to be loved every day of the year, not just on one day. Ask anyone if they think violence is a way to show love and the answer would be no. Yet one in three women on the planet will be raped or beaten in her lifetime. That amounts to more than 1 billion women and girls.

This Valentine’s Day, the V-Day movement is sponsoring ONE BILLION RISING to spread awareness. One suggestion for all those participating in this V-Day Rising is to send a letter to lawmakers demanding that they prioritize legislation that protects women and girls from violence.

Congress determines how our tax dollars are spent. President Obama, in his inaugural address, exhorted, “You and I, as citizens, have the power to set this country’s course. You and I, as citizens, have the obligation to shape the debates of our time — not only with the votes we cast, but with the voices we lift in defense of our most ancient values and enduring ideals.”

You might be weary of the sequester, fiscal cliff, deficit and debt palaver. But this is your chance to have a say in what you want saved in the federal budget. Many programs that protect women and girls are in that budget. Right now, the Violence Against Women Act is being debated. VAWA programs have enhanced federal, tribal, state and local responses to domestic violence, sexual assault, dating violence and stalking, and other laws support lifesaving emergency shelters and services for domestic violence and other crime victims.

Does anyone doubt that domestic violence shelters, rape crisis centers, children’s services, prevention, community outreach, and other state and local programs that provide services for victims and families are needed? Does anyone think that states or charities alone can organize, pay for and deliver all these services? In fact, states and communities depend on the federal funds to help support their local efforts. All of this is on the chopping block.

If we could end violence against women and girls, that would eliminate the need for these services and their costs. Even Obama’s budget for 2012-13 is $26 million less than is needed to cover the needs, according to the Campaign for Funding to End Domestic and Sexual Violence.

For every service and cost today, there must be a reduction in spending or a new tax. A new tax is unlikely at best, but reductions are possible. The Pentagon has made headlines for being out of control in its spending habits: cost overruns are legendary; a lack of an audit is incredible; unneeded weapons systems astonish us; high ranking military with huge staffs loom over the needs of veterans and force structure.

The problem is that Pentagon contractor lobbyists and CEOs are protecting their own oversized incomes and driving dollars to be spent on costly Cold War era weapons that even the Pentagon and military leaders dismiss as outdated and unnecessary. Instead, we need a smart defense that is sustainable and addresses 21st century security needs. With this smarter, fiscally responsible approach at the Pentagon, we could save dollars we need to invest in ending violence against women and girls.

On Valentine’s Day, I’ll join with the 1 billion people around the world, men and women, boys and girls, raising our voices against violence. I’ll also be calling on my congressional representatives to make responsible budgeting choices that support 21st century security needs including an end to violence against women and girls.

Click here or here to see WAND staff celebrating One Billion Rising!

Published: December 4, 2012 by The Hill's Congress Blog

Republished: December 22, 2012 by NJ Today

With the campaigns over, our leaders must roll up their sleeves and get to work on the serious financial decisions facing the nation. Congress has known for more than a year that automatic budget cuts and tax increases loom in January, but they’ve left all the work to be done at the last minute. They need to hear from us that we expect them to make a balanced deal to preserve programs that strengthen our nation while making sensible budget cuts to programs that are wasteful or unnecessary.

As state legislators, we battled to maintain critical investments in our states as revenues plunged with the start of the Great Recession. We provide many services to our communities in partnership with the federal government, so the possibility of further deep cuts to these programs is of great concern. Education, health care, housing, and transportation, along with an array of lesser known but equally important programs, are critically important to meet the needs of our citizens.

These programs are especially important right now as people still face significant struggles to recover from the down economy. Millions have lost their jobs, or face the daily fear of layoffs, decreased hours and reduced wages. It’s often said that we can’t afford to meet these needs and rebuild the economy, but really we can’t afford not to. It’s simply a question of government spending priorities that serve the greater good versus a handful of special interests.

Our leaders must recognize the need for investments that promote jobs and build the economy, even as we cut back on spending. Unlike most other areas of spending, the Pentagon budget has grown unchecked for the past decade. But it is not clear that these dollars are the investment we need for the 21st century. Reshaping Pentagon spending, which currently eats up more than half of the discretionary spending that Congress allocates annually, will be crucial to any deal on the federal budget.

America maintains a large and expensive nuclear arsenal from the Cold War era. For the cost of just one new nuclear submarine, we could provide body armor and bomb-resistant Humvees to all our troops overseas, house and treat every homeless U.S. veteran, and still have $2.2 billion left over to pay down debt. Our troops and security should come before pork-barrel programs.

Our national security priorities must include a reduction in drawn-out expensive wars with massive price tags and lasting negative effects felt here at home and in the nations where wars are waged. We are still stuck in Afghanistan – America’s longest war. We need an exit strategy that focuses on a political solution in Afghanistan, with particular concern for the welfare of women and children.

Responsibly reshaping Pentagon spending would free up money for much-needed investments here at home. Programs that keep us safe, like border security, disaster relief, and air traffic control, and programs that are investments in our long-term economic stability, like education, all face cuts in the coming year. Necessary funding to state and local communities is also on the chopping block. This November and December, we must urge our leaders to find a balanced approach to the so-called “fiscal fiasco” that does not exempt Pentagon spending at the expense of crucial domestic programs.

We are at a critical crossroads in deciding how we as a nation want to spend our money and build our economy. Do we want to invest in education? Roads and bridges? Safe communities and safe borders? Or do we want to continue pouring money into wasteful programs that the Pentagon doesn’t want or need? Will we reshape the Pentagon budget to address 21st century threats, or continue to waste money on Cold War-era weapons?

The good people of Georgia and all fifty states are relying on Congress to find a balanced approach to put us back on the path to prosperity. Our vote on November 6 expressed a belief that Americans, working together, can craft solutions and rebuild our national economy. The votes have been counted. Let’s get to work.

Published: December 25, 2012 by the Cambridge Chronicle & Tab

And, besides, we are not exempt from questions about our own human rights policies -- the use of drones, our inability to ratify the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, and our growing and unchecked Pentagon budget that allocates funds to war and defense contractors instead of vital programs that address healthcare, hunger, child abuse and education, for example.

Steve Rothstein, president of the Perkins School for the Blind, said that he could not sleep if he were one of the senators voting no. When he explained that 4.5 million children in the world cannot go to school because they are blind, I could only think of our neighbor’s child who is a student at Perkins and has made great progress there.

It is time to join the rest of the world and work for the goals that represent our better selves.

I and my fellow advocates at Women’s Action for New Directions will be watching and hoping for another vote in the next Congress. Next time, let’s get it right.

Published: October 25, 2012 by the MetroWest Daily News and the Framingham TAB

Again, ignorance is effective. But blaming the U.N. for anti-Americanism is a dangerous way of shielding the public from some of the very real opposition to our actions in the world: the invasion of Iraq, for example. And let’s not forget how important the U.N. is to cleaning up the mess we helped make for women and children in Afghanistan. U.N. Resolution 1325 “urges Member States to ensure increased representation of women at all decision-making levels in national, regional and international institutions and mechanisms for the prevention, management, and resolution of conflict.” Our President has expressed his support for this resolution with his executive order to institute the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security.

So let’s have a U.N. Day that echoes with strong support for the world’s longest attempt to subdue fear and ignorance in all its countries and build a mutual support system for peace and security. Let’s make sure Washington knows our budget priorities and understands the vital role of women in peace processes. And let’s remember that world problems such as hunger, war, climate change, and human rights demand an organization containing all the world’s countries.

Once again, this letter travels to our waste-basket.

Published: August 30, 2012 by The Worcester Telegram & Gazette

Labor Day and school openings seem to go together. For me, it’s time for the social welfare policy course I teach at the Boston University School of Social Work each fall. Throughout the semester I will hear stories from students about their clients who desperately need jobs, housing, education, food, and health care.

Evidence the students present will show that the services and programs designed to help them climb out of poverty continue to dwindle. The narratives are heartbreaking, and often horrific. They are accounts of people who would do anything to improve their lives, make changes, and leave the poverty, hunger, homelessness, joblessness, and loneliness behind.

When, in 1894, Congress enacted legislation making Labor Day a national holiday, the intention was to celebrate the social and economic achievements of American workers and the contributions workers have made to the prosperity and well-being of our country. The hard truth is that our current national unemployment rate is 8.3 percent. Not all Americans who want to work are working and almost one in four American children is living below our national poverty line. Things clearly need to improve in this country for the unemployed and the working poor in order for all of us to truly be able to celebrate the intended meaning of Labor Day.

These sobering statistics can change if we reprioritize how we spend our federal dollars. Two minutes’ worth of federal spending on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan would pay for two high school graduates to attend Boston University for four years each. Two minutes of war. Two undergraduate degrees.

The $16.6 billion in taxes from Massachusetts that went into the Department of Defense’s FY2012 budget could have funded 1.9 million Head Start slots in Massachusetts for a year. Currently, more than 20,000 children who should be enrolled in Head Start in Massachusetts, are not.

Taxpayers in Boston paid $1.3 billion toward the FY2012 Department of Defense budget. For the same amount of money, more than 16,000 Boston elementary school teachers could be hired full-time for one entire school year.

Some say cutting the Pentagon budget means military industrial complex jobs will be lost. However, a shift in dollars to create jobs in other employment sectors would both increase the number of jobs and employed Americans, as well as increase the value of those jobs to our country. This makes good political and economic sense.

The University of Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute studied how many jobs could be created with $1billion of federal spending; the reality is that investing our tax dollars in education, health care, mass transit, weatherization, or middle-class tax cuts, creates more jobs than Pentagon spending does.

We are spending more than $30 billion per year to maintain our oversized and outdated nuclear weapons arsenal. There are many expensive weapons that the Pentagon does not need or want, but Congress votes to keep the funds flowing anyway. There are ridiculous cost overruns and wasteful spending on military contractors. Procurement scandals are almost the rule rather than the exception.

This spring, Americans learned of a $17,000 oil pan made by a politically connected defense contractor. Defense lobbyists work for corporate self-interests that result in congressional dysfunction.

Congress needs to stop appropriating limited dollars as pork for well-heeled defense industry contractors.

With automatic “sequester” cuts (a plan to cut federal spending over the next decade) scheduled to go into effect in January 2013, it is time to critically examine our Pentagon budget. It makes up 56 percent of federal discretionary spending and has increased every year since 1998.

Some members of Congress want to exempt the Pentagon budget while domestic programs like public education, mass transit, medical research and clean energy are slashed even further. It is far more important to our security to ensure that our economy is prospering through job creation based on innovation and entrepreneurship, than it is to stockpile nuclear weapons and line the pockets of overpaid defense contractors.

This Labor Day, let’s celebrate our economic achievements as a nation, as we have many. Let’s also shift our priorities as a nation. Let’s move forward with a budget and spending plan that is driven by American values like hard work, equal opportunity, humanitarianism and democracy. Let’s get people trained and retrained, and employed and better employed. Let’s pay for programs and projects that help get people out of poverty and into jobs.

And let’s put an end to this outdated, excessive, militarized spending.

Sharon Zimmerman is the deputy director of Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND), an adjunct professor at the Boston University School of Social Work, and sits on the board of Greater Boston’s Association of Parents, Friends and Families of Lesbians and Gays (PFLAG).

Published: August 8, 2012 by The Register-Guard

By Sandy Pappas

Published: July 25, 2012 by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency

OPINION

MINNEAPOLIS (JTA) -- As July ends and we wind down the Three Weeks before Tisha b’Av, we mourn the destruction of both Holy Temples. Unfortunately, this is not the only destruction that bears remembrance.

This August marks the 67th anniversary of the only time that nuclear weapons were ever used in warfare. The United States tested the first nuclear weapon in July 1945 and dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9 that year.

These events spawned the nuclear race, with 2,056 nuclear weapons tests conducted worldwide and new and more deadly weapons developed at a fast and furious pace. At the peak of the Cold War there were some 70,000 nuclear weapons.

Even though the numbers of nuclear weapons have decreased since the Cold War, enough of them are still around to blow up the planet. Ninety percent of the weapons are in the United States and Russia. America continues to rely on strategic plans, targeting and alert status settings that were conceived during the Cold War. We also spend billions of dollars each year to maintain our oversized arsenal.

In December 2010, the U.S. Senate approved the ratification of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with the support of our military leadership and bipartisan support from 71 senators, including all 13 Jewish senators in office at the time. New START reduced U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals and established a foundational process for verifying these and future reductions.

It is in America’s best interest to further this nuclear downsizing.

The Obama administration has been working on a plan to establish new policy guidance for the purpose, size and structure of U.S. nuclear weapons. Further reductions and a change in strategies are needed to meet 21st century security needs. As President Obama said in March, “We have more nuclear weapons than we need. I firmly believe that we can ensure the security of the United States and our allies, maintain a strong deterrent against any threat, and still pursue further reductions in our nuclear arsenal.”

Other security experts agree. In April, Gen. James Cartwright, former vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and commander of U.S. nuclear forces under President George W. Bush, called for an 80 percent reduction in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. Further, Senate Armed Services Committee chair Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said in June, “I can’t see any reason for having as large an inventory as we are allowed to have under New START, in terms of real threat, potential threat. The more weapons that exist out there, the less secure we are rather than the more secure we are.”

Like Levin, I favor more security and fewer nuclear weapons. American leadership must take action to minimize nuclear dangers. Our nation should lead by example, first urging further reciprocal Russian nuclear reductions, then engaging other nuclear weapons countries to make reductions. We also should ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty to permanently end nuclear testing worldwide. Taking these steps will position the U.S. to effectively lead the world in thwarting new nuclear weapons development and combating nuclear terrorism.

We ushered in the nuclear era 67 years ago. Now we must do our part to help the world find a safe exit.

(Sandy Pappas, a state senator from Minnesota, is a founding member with her husband, Neal Gosman, of the Shir Tikvah congregation in the Twin Cities.)

Time to hold a magnifying glass to national security spending

This Fourth of July, as we celebrate our nation’s independence, we need to think about what programs will do the most to guarantee our freedom and strength for years to come. Our nation‘s Pentagon budget has grown unchecked since 1998 at a cost of trillions of dollars to taxpayers. And now the news from Washington is devastating, draconian cuts to essential investments while the Pentagon gets yet another boost.

Pentagon spending includes spending on wars, nuclear weapons, and military construction. Our nation’s greatness and future security are not served by a bloated nuclear arsenal, unnecessary weapons systems, and endless war. Our future will be best served with investments in education, jobs, healthcare, science and technology and a clean environment. To make those cuts we must cut bloated Pentagon spending.

As president of the Women Legislators’ Lobby (WiLL) and a Georgia State Senator, I work with a network of women from across the country. My fellow state legislators are battling budget shortfalls year after year. After 9-11, state budgets have taken on massive new costs for homeland security measures. National Guard and other returning veterans need state and local services. The women state legislators who are a part of WiLL understand that increases in Pentagon spending mean their strapped state budgets get further shortchanged. With the impacts of this great recession and the end of stimulus funding, states cannot afford the devastating cuts that would come with the Ryan Budget or the planned sequestration cuts to nondefense spending.

The Ryan budget increases Pentagon spending for the coming year by $8 billion more than what was agreed to last August in the Budget Control Act. That difference would be paid for by slashing even further every other funding priority.

The House approach also exempts the Pentagon from the looming automatic sequestration cuts by taking more from all of the other programs and investments. Congress will have to slash from k-12 and higher education, national parks and clean water programs, medical and scientific research, clean energy – you name it. Everything would be cut while the Pentagon trough gets filled.

We all want a common defense that works. We agree that veterans and their families deserve the best in recognition of their sacrifice. They also deserve to come home to a strong, vibrant economy with plenty of job opportunities.

What we don’t want are redundant and unnecessary weapons that don’t address today’s security needs, mismanaged projects that go far over budget due to lack of Pentagon audit, and defense industry lobbyists lining their coffers at our expense. Former Defense Secretary Gates says, “We can't hold ourselves exempt from the belt-tightening. Neither can we allow ourselves to contribute to the very debt that puts our long-term security at risk."

What we do want are jobs. Some claim that cutting excessive Pentagon spending means losing good jobs. On the contrary, economic studies have shown that federal investments in any other category, including education, healthcare, or clean energy, create more jobs than federal dollars spent in the military sector. These are the sustainable jobs that we need for our future. Let’s choose teachers, doctors, nurses, first responders, home weatherization, and wind turbines over building bombs that we don’t need and can’t afford.

It’s time to hold a magnifying glass to Pentagon spending. Other domestic spending is equally important to the future of our nation. Jobs, education, health care, a clean environment, safe roads and bridges and mass transit, are all a part of our national security.  These are essential components of fulfilling our nation’s obligation to secure a bright future for America.

Many domestic, religious and nonprofit groups agree and are speaking up. Even fiscally responsible conservatives are mobilizing. If we are ever to rid ourselves of ghastly cost overruns, end exorbitant contractor fees, stop no-bid contracts, and massive, unnecessary weapons systems, shouldn’t we hold the Pentagon accountable for its spending?

Congress must responsibly reduce Pentagon spending. This Independence Day, we will truly let freedom ring if we have a budget that makes investments in the future rather than continuing wasteful Pentagon spending. Let’s send that message to our members of congress.

-Nan Grogan Orrock, WiLL President and state senator in Georgia