Grimes: U.S. wasting money in terror war

I went to my post office box and the mail was there, including letters postmarked just one day earlier. Newspapers mailed the night before were also there.

I got my Social Security check this month and it didn't bounce.

The garbage in the garbage can disappeared not long after the can was left at the curbside.

I drove to the store on paved streets through traffic-light regulated intersections. Children were playing in the schoolyards and schools were in session.

The last time I had to call 911, an EMT team arrived within minutes.

Despite the record snowstorm in some states, daily activity struggles on. The lights come on again. The TV works. The computers do their miracles.

In short, the government isn't broken, as some polls, politicians and media outlets proclaim. The fact is that the government of the United States of America and its state and local offspring perform more functions efficiently and effectively than any governments in the world, and I am fed up with the whining that "the government is broken," "the system is broken" and "we need a revolution."

Admittedly, too many Americans are in economic distress, but the loudest complaints are coming from Americans who are still doing fairly well, or even spectacularly.

The so-called "tea party" movement appears to be made up of middle- to upper-middle-class families, who mainly don't want to pay taxes and rant about federal budget deficits. They want a free lunch, and want someone else to prepare that lunch.

Deficits occur when governments spend more than they get in revenues. At the national level, about 80 percent of government expenditures go for the military, Social Security and Medicare.

Of those, the easiest to cut would be military expenditures. The United States spends twice as much on the military as China, the next highest nation, even though the U.S. already has the most advanced weapons, the best aircraft, the largest navy and by far the most nuclear weapons. The United States also is engaged in two armed conflicts, which is two more than Russia, Japan, Great Britain, Germany or any other First World nation.

Make no mistake - wars are very costly, not to mention the cost in human lives and limbs that military personnel are suffering every day.

Personally, I don't think Afghanistan is worth a single American life. This count