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The Lancaster Voice
LCPJ-PO BOX 274
Lancaster, PA 17608-0274
631.512.3018
info@lancastervoice.org
www.LancasterVoice.org
To receive email updates (2-3 per
month), email
info@lancastervoice.org
Coordinator of LCPJ, John Schreck,
email
info@lancastervoice.org
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The Big Hand in Your Pocket
 Income
tax day has come and gone. You realize that
there is a big hand in your pocket every
day, but did you realize just what that big
hand is and where the money goes.
Of the US
national expenditures for next year NOT
including Social Security and Medicare, 44%
of the 3 Trillion dollar budget will be for
the cost of war making. Three trillion
dollars is $3,000,000,000,000. Of course,
our children and grandchildren will be
paying a good portion of that since the
debts that were rung up during war times
amount to three times this amount or 9
Trillion dollars, and a goodly portion of
the total costs of government goes to paying
just the interest on the national debt!.
Read more...
Forty-four
percent of that three trillion dollars is
roughly $1.3 trillion. The government likes
to tell you that the military budget is only
about 500 billion dollars, but the total
cost of war-making every year is actually
1.3 trillion dollars. This includes foreign
military assistance, The Veterans
Administration, Nuclear weapons development
and maintenance, the military portion of
NASA, interest on the debt incurred during
wartimes past and does not include the
expected supplemental appropriations for
the wars in the Middle East.
Let's bring
that big number closer to home. Lancaster
county has a population of about 500,000.
That is 1/600th of the US population so
Lancaster county's share of the yearly costs
of war making is $2.16 billion dollars. You
may say that we really don't pay that much
federal taxes here in Lancaster county, but
you
 must
realize that the taxes that businesses and
corporations pay are figured into the price
of products and you are paying federal taxes
with every purchase you make, and a lot of
the cost of War-making is just added to the
National debt each year! .
Can
you visualize how much 2.16 Billion dollars
is? Suppose that you stack $1000 dollar
bills alongside of the Greist Building,
Lancaster's highest building (170 feet
tall), how high would that stack of $1000
bills reach up alongside of the Greist
Building! Each stack of 1000 bills equals a
million dollars.
Get out your
binoculars to see the top of that stack! A
stack of $1000 bills would reach up 720
feet, or 4.23 times the height of the Greist
Building in order to pay Lancaster County's
share of the cost of war-making EVERY
YEAR.!. The expected $150 Billion
supplementary appropriation that is expected
this year will add another 83 feet to that
stack making it over 800 feet or nearly 5
times the height of the Greist Building.!
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