Filling in the blank

Back in the final days of December while you were busy scrambling to buy presents for everyone on your list and trying to figure out how you were going to pay for it all, Congress was busy too.

On December 15^th H.R. 6523 Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 was introduced to the House of Representatives. This legislation, reported to be the largest single military spending bill ever, commits $725 billion for war spending this year alone.

The bill includes $158.7 billion (declared) for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as up to $75 million for training and equipping counter-terrorism forces in Yemen, $205 million for Israel’s “Iron Dome” defense system and $11.6 billion and $1.5 billion for security force development in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively.

The bill also ensures that, despite Obama’s earlier pledge, Guantanamo Bay will not be closed any time soon.

After agonizing over this legislation for all of two days, the House overwhelmingly passed the bill (see vote roll call here) 341 to 48 with 44 Congressmen and women not casting a vote.

Then, two days before Christmas Eve, the Senate passed the bill unanimously, sending this massive war spending legislation on to the desk of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Barack Obama for his signature (pending at the time of this writing).

So as Americans were busy spending money they didn’t have on useless toys they didn’t need, Congress was doing the same. This all took place during the media orgy of faux tolerance when suddenly gay men and women were told that they could now openly serve in the military without fear of being threatened or ridiculed (until at least January 2, 2011).

"During these final days of 2010, Americans didn't ask and Congress didn't tell."

Ditto for the media. Little attention was paid to the rubber stamping of this remarkable amount of money with media outlets (like this FOX News report) emphasizing the restrictions the bill places on closing GITMO, choosing to add a reference to “nearly $160 billion for wars” in the third paragraph, with the overall $725 billion mentioned only in the eighth paragraph down.

There was however some serious discussion of this in RT News, a global multi-lingual Russia-based news outlet,  here and here, but how many Americans caught that?

When I discovered that my supposedly “far left Democrat” Congresswoman Rep. Mazie Hirono (HI- Dist. 1) voted in favor of this bill, I came to fully realize that, as it has been stated before, the left wing and right wing of our government, a perennial hawk, beat in unison, assuring an uninterrupted flight towards permanent militarism at the expense of its own citizens. I searched her website for some indication or explanation that Rep. Hirono had voted for this bill for some good reason, but I could find no reference to the bill whatsoever, not even under “recent votes.”

Then yesterday I came home and found a nice tri-color three-fold mailer from Rep. Hirono in my post box. In it, she writes about “working with you” (me??), traveling the District, creating a clean energy economy, creating education opportunities, getting Hawaii back to work and supporting “sustainable island-grown and Hawaii-made products.” Yet something —  something rather important — was missing.

You guessed it! Mazie Hirono’s lovely flier, so full of good news about “preparing our children to qualify and compete for the jobs of the future” (as a guard outside Kabul’s yet-to-be-built Camp Forever) and “creating (camouflage?) green jobs,” lacks any reference to war, military or defense spending.

What the brochure does have is lots of pictures of Mazie wearing hard hats and leis, small business owners and high school students smiling and being “sustainable,” but no absolutely zero mention of GITMO, Yemen anti-terror funding, Israeli air defense, or the hundreds of billions of dollars she voted in favor of spending on wars and militarism.

Gee, how curious…

Perhaps she was busy. Perhaps her PR people managed to squeeze “Education,” “Energy,” “Agriculture,” “Infrastructure,” and “Environment” onto the mailer, but when it came to long, space-eating words like “WAR,” they simply ran out of room.

But I’ve found that with just a few minor adjustments, the same flier can be modified to include this important topic without disturbing the flow or aesthetic charm of Mazie Hirono’s mail-out piece.

In fact, I’ve found that it can be done in a way that leaves a nice open space where she can outline and explain just what H.R. 6523 Ike Skelton National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2011 is.

I’m guessing that a lot of Hawaii voters have never heard of this bill or how she and her colleagues voted and how that money, which might otherwise have been spent here at home, will instead be used.

Here, I have provided a space for the good Congresswoman to fill in the blank.

This reproduction of Rep. Hirono's recent mailer includes popular priorities like "education, energy, agriculture, infrastructure and environment, yet it neglects to mention the $725 Billion military authorization bill she recently voted in favor of.