There is no crisis, there's a lack of courage.

We need to do two things, first start taxing the rich again. If we simply go back to the tax rates that were in effect when the middle class was strong and growing; when this country actually built infrastructure and pushed the envelope on scientific discovery, we could do all those things again.

Combine that with shifting spending towards things that benefit society and not the military and amazing things could happen. However, our representatives are all looking out for their own class interests and have no courage to do the right thing.

Some facts worth note:

http://www.sipri.org/media/pressreleases/milex
According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, The USA has increased its military spending by 81 per cent since 2001, and now accounts for 43 per cent of the global total, six times its nearest rival China.

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Off-the-charts income gains for super-rich
http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_thelookout/20110408/ts_yblog_thelookout/of...
the 30 years following the Second World War were a time of broadly shared prosperity: Income for the bottom 90 percent of American households roughly kept pace with economic growth.

But over the last 35 years, there's been an abrupt shift: Total growth has slowed marginally, but the real change has been in how the results of that growth are distributed. Now, the bottom 90 percent have seen their income rise only by a tiny fraction of total growth, while income for the richest 1 percent has exploded by upwards of 275 percent.

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