Upside Down Spending

I spent today (Wednesday) in the Wayne Morse Federal Courthouse in Eugene, watching and testifying in a hearing to determine whether Pete Seda should be freed from custody while awaiting prosecution on terrorism-related charges. Pete, a casual friend of many years, is accused of laundering money through an Islamic charity to a Chechnyan group that the Feds have designated a terrorist organization. Pete returned voluntarily last week from four years of quasi-exile to face the charges, which makes the central question of this particular hearing—whether Pete’s a flight risk—a little peculiar. There’s more to the story than that. If you can figure out why the Feds have their teeth so deeply into this particular case, there’s a lot of us who’d like to know.

And this has what to do with Taking America Back (TAB)? It’s the venue. The new courthouse, named with no apparent intended irony for Oregon’s icon of the common man’s rights, covers most of a city block and looks like a titanium outpost from Star Trek. This is not a building that says to the people of Eugene “This land is your land.” It looks more like the fortress of an occupying power. But that’s just one guy’s opinion. More specifically and to the point, why exactly are we spending $ 75 million on a new Federal Courthouse (a whole bunch of which, based on my visit today, was spent on gorgeous natural wood paneling and elegant metal sculpture work) while Oregon counties are shutting down libraries, sheriff patrols and health departments? There are lots of ways you could put this question; this version happens to come to me as I recover from the sensory overload of this gigantic, architecturally lush building.

What we have here, seems to me, is one of many concrete (sorry) reasons that so many of us feel our country isn’t ours anymore. And it’s more than a feeling. While our local governments and communities are pushed to and past the breaking point, the federal government cruises along spending tax dollars pulled out of our community with no noticeable restraint or accountability. Every tax $ Congress spends is a $ that cash-strapped communities can’t use for vital services.

This is not rocket science. Consider the way local services are withering on the vine. Consider news stories like the recent admission by the Pentagon that it simply can’t account for two trillion (that’s with a ‘t’) tax dollars. Put them together and we might have the seeds of an agreement, and a big one, among Americans of every political stripe: our public spending is upside down, and life is only likely to get harder in this country if we don’t turn it around. That might be one of the most powerful and actionable elements of the “hidden agreement” I wrote about a few posts down. Which means it can be an important tactic for TAB.

More about this later. Today I’m just struck by how this damn courthouse rubs our face in it.