MarcyWinograd's blog

My talented young cousin works as a rocket scientist at a local aerospace plant. She considers herself one of the lucky MIT grads who landed a job in the space end of the aerospace industry.

Her friends, however, are designing drones that sometimes miss their terrorist target, accidentally bombing innocent brides and grooms in Afghanistan.

My cousin tells me about a colleague of hers, a drone-builder, who had a nightmare; she accidentally droned her own bedroom.

“She’s still designing these drones, though,” my cousin tells me. “That’s where the money is, the jobs, in military contracts, in building sophisticated weapons systems.”

What if our engineers, now building weapons, could build solar cities instead? Under the Solar America Initiative, Boeing started the ball rolling, contracting with the Department of Energy to make solar energy competitive with conventional electricity by 2015.

Aerospace conversion could happen – and should for the sake of our planet.

Imagine if in 2010 we did not spend one more borrowed penny to manufacture new weapons, occupy new lands, or recruit new mercenaries. Going cold turkey on military spending would wipe out nearly $1 trillion of our 1.6 trillion dollar deficit. A year and a half of war & weapons abstinence could erase our debt entirely.

The proposed new $1-trillion dollar military budget includes $800-billion for the Pentagon, a 30-billion supplemental to escalate the war in Afghanistan, plus funds to maintain secret black hole prisons; military aid to foreign nations, and money for mercenaries. Requests to approve this unprecedented military budget comes at a time when General Stanley McChrystal is apologizing for Sunday’s NATO air strike in Afghanistan that killed over two dozen civilians, women and children among the casualties.

(Marina del Rey) Congressional Candidate Marcy Winograd (CA-36/Harman) will conduct a Cost of Wars Tour this Saturday, May 15th, as she listens to voters' concerns, rallies support among volunteers and visits with campaign precinct walkers from West Los Angeles to San Pedro. Joining Winograd to talk about the cost of wars and veterans' issues will be Rick Reyes, former United States Marine serving in Iraq, now Latino Outreach Director for Winograd for Congress. The tour precedes a congressional vote on a 33-billion dollar supplemental war appropriation to continue the occupation of Iraq and escalate the troop level in Afghanistan.

Says Winograd, "My opponent Jane Harman has consistently voted for war and occupation, even defying a majority of House Democrats to take us to war in Iraq. Despite her rhetoric, she continues to fund the escalation in Afghanistan where there is no military solution. I urge all members of Congress to vote NO on the new supplemental war appropriation."