What collapsing empire looks like By Glenn Greenwald

[bobbyw24]

As we enter our ninth year of the War in Afghanistan with an escalated force, and continue to occupy Iraq indefinitely, and feed an endlessly growing Surveillance State, reports are emerging of the Deficit Commission hard at work planning how to cut Social Security, Medicare, and now even to freeze military pay. But a new New York Times article today illustrates as vividly as anything else what a collapsing empire looks like, as it profiles just a few of the budget cuts which cities around the country are being forced to make. This is a sampling of what one finds:


Plenty of businesses and governments furloughed workers this year, but Hawaii went further -- it furloughed its schoolchildren. Public schools across the state closed on 17 Fridays during the past school year to save money, giving students the shortest academic year in the nation.

Many transit systems have cut service to make ends meet, but Clayton County, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta, decided to cut all the way, and shut down its entire public bus system. Its last buses ran on March 31, stranding 8,400 daily riders.

Even public safety has not been immune to the budget ax. In Colorado Springs, the downturn will be remembered, quite literally, as a dark age: the city switched off a third of its 24,512 streetlights to save money on electricity, while trimming its police force and auctioning off its police helicopters.

more

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/gl...08/06/collapse

[lester1/2jr]

this is something I think about alot. People talk about China taking over the world or hyperinflation. That stuff can and may happen but to me it's like look at what HAS and IS happening NOW.

These types of cuts would have been unfathomable ten years ago.

[RCA]

yay!!!!!!!!!!!!

[BenIsForRon]

Of course the bureaucrats in state government cut money to schools instead of the thousands of other wasteful programs they fund.

[RM918]

The comments are a mixed bag, as well. Some of them get it, but I'm seeing a bunch of totally ridiculous things posted there like, "Yes, the empire will collapse because we are not green enough and the only way to fix it is more overspending on windmills!"

[YumYum]

The faster this all collapses the better.