Most people agree that times are tough.

Since the bailouts, times are not as tough for the banks, the stock market, the insurance companies, and the corporations that take our money and our jobs to other countries.

But those who have been left out are in trouble. The signs abound: home foreclosures, unemployment lines, hungry people who leave the food pantries empty a few days after the food comes in, lack of books and materials in schools, increased tuitions in the public university systems, which are supposed to be the educational failsafe for the sons and daughters of wage working Americans.

The people who are left out are beginning to become more anxious every day, but they don�t seem to be able to find a solution, because the one (ultimate) remedy is economic change through the political system. But, they have lost faith in the political system.

All they see is corrupt behavior at the national and state levels. Good ideas in Congress and the state legislatures are crushed in the rage to maintain the status quo, because the status quo keeps the money flowing into the coffers of the political class.

It�s working fine for them and the corporations that keep them in line with their �contributions� consider it a small price to pay as the cost of doing business - they pay mere thousands to politicians and make profits in the billions.

America�s wars are tied in closely with the country�s financial woes, and war is the quickest way to transfer wealth, from the people to the top. Historically, this has worked well for a long time and, it has worked in a spectacular way over the past eight years and looks as if that will continue for a while. Even though there is a new regime in Washington, many of the old faces are still in charge, so why should we expect a different outcome?

Republicans like to describe Democrats as �tax and spend liberals,� while in recent years, the GOP, itself, has become �borrow and spend� makers of war. Generally, the Democrats have been more inclined to spend on social and human services programs - although they do pretty well in the war department, too - and Republicans prefer to cut taxes for the rich and the corporations and plan the next war.

America is said to have 700-800 military bases around the world. By any estimation, that alone would place the country among the greatest empires in the history of the world. All of that comes at a price and the U.S. is paying that price now.

�Free trade,� wars, loss of the U.S. manufacturing base, the disparity in wealth, and other factors are just too much for politicians to juggle. We now have the Great Recession. We have economic turmoil. Those who see a light at the end of the tunnel (because of an up tick in the stock market?) are seen as Pollyannas.

The idea that college graduates might not make it to the standard of living as their parents who had lifelong blue collar jobs is enough cause for concern, and people are concerned. The money just keeps flowing out, from families and their communities.

Several states are in trouble, in default. They can�t pay their bills. Local officials are worried about running the water plant, fixing the roads and bridges, keeping the sewage treatment plant in operation, maintaining the schools, taking care of children and families in need, and doing all of the thousands of other things local government does every day to see that lives are lived with the least amount of disruption and dangerous outcomes.

The cost of labor in governmental budgets is usually the largest item. When financial assistance from the federal and state governments diminishes, the place they go to get the money for local government to operate is the property tax. Or the sales tax, which is one of the most regressive taxes, hurting the low-wage workers and the poor hardest.

War and military spending has a profound effect on the taxpayers at every level of government, from towns, villages, small cities, counties, and thousands of school districts across the U.S. For generations, the federal government has guarded its right to tax income (which, when it is fairly graduated, is one of the more equitable ways to tax). The smaller governments don�t have the power to tax income, so they have taxed property and most Americans only have a home to tax.

Rising unemployment and the loss of tens of millions of jobs over 30 years has devastated the ability to use property taxes to raise money for local budgets, but the answer is not to attack the living standards of workers who provide the services. Yet, already, local governments are demanding givebacks and getting the people ready to reduce the number of local workers and to live with reduced services.

Rarely is there ever a discussion at a local government meeting - urban, rural, or suburban - about the devolution of responsibility for funding domestic programs, from the federal and state governments, to the local governments.

Only occasionally is there a discussion about the cost of war and the cost of the military (the U.S. military and defense annual budget is greater than all of the other nations combined) and what that cost means to local government.

There is no rational discussion of these issues because politicians don�t want to do anything to shake up their ordered lives, and the �free press� in America is not willing to cover these as they do the latest celebrity scandal. The most expedient thing for local elected officials to do is cut people from the payroll. If they were in the private sector, it would be easy: just say, �Times are tough. We�re going to close the doors.� And lay off a hundred workers.

But local government is not the private sector and it can not effectively go bankrupt. Services still need to be provided and the most efficiently delivered services are provided by the workers directly employed by government. They literally keep America going.

If the federal and state governments are going to expect local governments to continue to exist, they have to find ways to fund the work they do, without the credit-card-type borrowing from future generations and from China for war that�s been going on for the past eight years.

America isn�t the world�s policeman. It isn�t the world�s militia. Rather, it�s a country in which people want to live a decent life and allow others in the world to do the same. People who provide local public services are not the enemy. They merely are the scapegoats for officials who are too lazy or fearful to open the debate about our national priorities.

The impulse to convert our national treasure into profits for the military-defense industries of Corporate America needs to be curbed. We won�t be able to curb that impulse - and we won�t be able to pay for vital public services - until there is broad and open debate about our national priorities, from the town hall, down to the legislatures and the Congress.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, John Funiciello, is a labor organizer and former union organizer. His union work started when he became a local president of The Newspaper Guild in the early 1970s. He was a reporter for 14 years for newspapers in New York State. In addition to labor work, he is organizing family farmers as they struggle to stay on the land under enormous pressure from factory food producers and land developers. Click here to contact Mr. Funiciello.