Even though Congress is hightailing it out of town for the Holiday recess, you might want to send a message about some of these things. We thank an activist in Oregon for alerting us to the story about federal libraries; you can always make your own email action about these things...

Click here to use the WAND Take Action Center.

Message to West Point
by Bill Moyers | November 15, 2006 by TomPaine.com
This is an excerpt of an excerpt. This is an important speech by a smart man at a critical moment in our history. We invite you to read more. Here is just a bit that relates to WAND's specific mission.

The Bargain

The Armed Services are no longer stepchildren in budgetary terms. Appropriations for defense and defense-related activities (like veterans’ care, pensions, and debt service) remind us that the costs of war continue long after the fighting ends. Objections to ever-swelling defensive expenditures are, except in rare cases, a greased slide to political suicide. It should be troublesome to you as professional soldiers that elevation to the pantheon of untouchable icons —right there alongside motherhood, apple pie and the flag—permits a great deal of political lip service to replace genuine efforts to improve the lives and working conditions—in combat and out—of those who serve.

Let me cut closer to the bone. The chickenhawks in Washington, who at this very moment are busily defending you against supposed “insults” or betrayals by the opponents of the war in Iraq, are likewise those who have cut budgets for medical and psychiatric care; who have been so skimpy and late with pay and with provision of necessities that military families in the United States have had to apply for food stamps; who sent the men and women whom you may soon be commanding into Iraq understrength, underequipped, and unprepared for dealing with a kind of war fought in streets and homes full of civilians against enemies undistinguishable from non-combatants; who have time and again broken promises to the civilian National Guardsmen bearing much of the burden by canceling their redeployment orders and extending their tours.

You may or may not agree on the justice and necessity of the war itself, but I hope that you will agree that flattery and adulation are no substitute for genuine support. Much of the money that could be directed to that support has gone into high-tech weapons systems that were supposed to produce a new, mobile, compact “professional” army that could easily defeat the armies of any other two nations combined, but is useless in a war against nationalist or religious guerrilla uprisings that, like it or not, have some support, coerced or otherwise, among the local population. We learned this lesson in Vietnam, only to see it forgotten or ignored by the time this administration invaded Iraq, creating the conditions for a savage sectarian and civil war with our soldiers trapped in the middle, unable to discern civilian from combatant, where it is impossible to kill your enemy faster than rage makes new ones.

And who has been the real beneficiary of creating this high-tech army called to fight a war conceived and commissioned and cheered on by politicians and pundits not one of whom ever entered a combat zone? One of your boys answered that: Dwight Eisenhower, class of 1915, who told us that the real winners of the anything at any price philosophy would be “the military-industrial complex.”...

Please read more, it's worth it...

Federal library budgets facing ax
By Tim Reiterman| Los Angeles Times | Full article, click here.
December 10, 2006

...When he learned that federal officials were planning to close the library, Mather was stunned.

"It is completely absurd," he said. "The library is a national treasure. It is probably the single strongest library for space science and engineering in the universe."

Mather is one of thousands of people who critics say could lose access to research materials as the government closes and downsizes libraries that house collections vital to scientific investigation and the enforcement of environmental laws.

Across the country, a half dozen federal libraries are closed or closing. Others have reduced staffing, hours of operation, public access or subscriptions...

Officials say the cutbacks have been driven by tight budgets, declining patronage and rising demand for online services. And they say leaner operations will improve efficiency while maintaining essential functions. "We are trying to improve access and . . . . do more with a little less money," said Linda Travers, acting assistant administrator for the EPA's Office of Environmental Information.

Although hundreds of federal libraries remain open, critics say the downsizing, especially at the EPA, demonstrates the Bush administration's indifference to transparent government and to scientific solutions to many of the country's most pressing problems.

Congress's Inaction Threatens Funding
Avoiding Spending Bills, Hill Causes Crunch
By Jonathan Weisman and Lori Montgomery
Washington Post | December 17, 2006 | Full article, click here.

The Republican-controlled Congress's decision to adjourn a week ago before completing many of the spending bills that finance the federal government will reverberate in ways large and small, such as understaffed U.S. attorney's offices, delayed renovations at the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut and a scuttled global nuclear energy exchange.

Republican leaders left behind just enough spending authority to keep the government operating through mid-February, less than halfway through the 2007 fiscal year that began Oct. 1. Democrats have signaled that when they take control of Congress in January they will extend that funding authority for the remainder of the year based largely on the previous year's spending levels, which will result in many cuts in programs...

The collapse of the budget process was a long time coming, with roots stretching back to the Republican revolution of 1994. But this year, the system finally buckled under the weight of the president's austere spending recommendations, a difficult election year and the Republican leadership's efforts to placate both its most ardent conservatives and its endangered moderates.

Congress was able to pass only two of its 11 annual spending bills, those that fund defense and homeland security. Republicans punted spending measures for virtually every one of the government's domestic programs to the Democrats who assume control Jan. 4. Then last week, Democrats announced they would punt, too. A joint House-Senate resolution -- rather than carefully tailored spending bills -- will keep the government open through the end of the fiscal year, Sept. 30, largely at last year's levels.

The consequences will be substantial...