Ever Wonder What Our Occupations Have Cost? The Taxday Tomgram Special

I don't know how many people in what I would consider my "cohort" read (or even know about) Tom Englehardt. Nonetheless - you/they should. Hell, I don't check his "Tomgram's" nearly as much as I should, but when I do, I'm never disappointed.

Tom's guest blogger for this post is Jo Comerford, NPP's Executive Director. In his post, Jo looks closely at the city of Binghamton, NY, home of the flagship University of the SUNY system, and Matt Ryan as Mayor, an old college buddy of my Mom. After crunching the numbers, Ryan realized that the residents of Binghamton have paid 138.6 million dollars thus far for our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Comerford puts that in perspective:

For a small city with an annual budget of $81.1 million, $138.6 million would be a hefty sum, even in non-recessionary times. For the same amount of money, Ryan could fund the Binghamton city library for the next 60 years, or pay for a four-year education for 95% of the incoming freshman class at the State University of New York at Binghamton, or offer four years of quality health coverage for everyone in Binghamton 19 or younger, or secure renewable electricity for every home in the city for the next 11 years. If he was feeling really flush, he could fully fund one-third of New York State's Head Start slots for one year.

For the same sum, Ryan could also authorize a $2,900 tax refund for every woman, man, and child in Binghamton or pay the salaries of all of Binghamton's hard-hit public school teachers and staff for about two years.

For $138.6 million, Mayor Ryan could hire 2,765 public safety officers for a year, or simply refund the 12 police positions cut in the latest budget contraction and guarantee those salaries for the next 230 years. Ridiculous? These days, no one is laughing in Binghamton or other cities like it.

Pleasant reading, and happy Taxday!

Remember, the good news is that we do have the most progressive tax code in decades now thanks to Obama's tax cuts. (EFF those tea-parties and their propaganda.) Bad news? We still need to analyze our national priorities.

Jo Comerford, Your Taxes and War

If you’re an average American taxpayer, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have, since 2001, cost you personally $7,334, according to the “cost of war” counter created by the National Priorities Project (NPP). They have cost all Americans collectively more than $980,000,000,000. As a country, we’ll pass the trillion dollar mark soon. These are staggering figures and, despite the $72.3 billion that Congress has already ponied up for the Afghan War in 2010 ($136.8 billion if you add in Iraq), the administration is about to go back to Congress for more than $35 billion in outside-the-budget supplemental funds to cover the president’s military and civilian Afghan surges. When that passes, as it surely will, the cumulative cost of the Afghan War alone will hit $300 billion, and we’ll be heading for two trillion-dollar wars.

In the meantime, just so you know, that $300 billion, according to the NPP, could have paid for healthcare for 131,780,734 American children for a year, or for 53,872,201 students to receive Pell Grants of $5,550, or for the salaries and benefits of 4,911,552 elementary school teachers for that same year.