For Immediate Release
February 12, 2011
From the Green Party of Colorado
For more information contact:
The leaders of the Green Party of Colorado strongly disagree with Governor Hickenlooper’s reckless endorsement of expanded military spending in Colorado, which he discussed with Fort Carson leaders on Thursday, Feb. 10.
His remarks appear to support the addition of a new helicopter brigade while at the same time acknowledging that the proposed expansion of the Pinon Canyon Maneuver Site isn’t in the card “for the foreseeable future.” But Hickenlooper’s words are a full endorsement of military spending as the underpinning of the economy of El Paso County and of Colorado in general. And by so doing, looks forward to that expansion as a job producing, economy building action.
His unwise connection between military spending and economic growth– including job production — is exactly what is wrong with what passes for economic theory and where it has led us. His pious defense of it all in the name of the bloody sacrifices made by troops in our Standing Army– in unjust, unwise and ineffective wars — and the need for training for these troops to be prepared to meddle in the affairs of other people, is unconscionable.
Military spending earmarks for Colorado will not build a sustainable or just economy. The military is spending huge amounts of tax dollars to advertise themselves as a “Global Force for Good.” They have become just another corporation selling a product. The trouble is that it is we who are spending the dollars to convince ourselves we should not cut the military budget that has grown to at least one trillion a year loaded with interservice rivalry, pork and corruption.
Instead of building an economy in Colorado based upon building up our legions, we should be building an economy that addresses our real dangers of Global Climate Change, environmental degradation, joblessness, and the separation of our society into a two tiered system of very rich and growing poverty. And when Colorado leaders govern for the benefit of the rich and corporate and the military they add to the spiritual death we are experiencing as a nation. A real economy is designed to support the well being of all people of the country, not funnel money to the few very rich and corporate.
