The rich get richer…
Here’s something to think about while you’re doing your Christmas shopping for cheap crap from China made by slaves:
According to the latest report, the richest 10% of adults in the world own 85% of the world’s assets. The richest 1% own almost half. Down at the bottom end of the pyramid there’s a neat reversal of that latter figure: the poorest 50% of the world’s adults own barely 1% of global wealth.
If we could just get rid of the slave problem and the debt issue and the whole Global Capitalist Evil Empire thing, then I’d say we ought to keep sending our dollars to China in exchange for cheap crap. Great way to re-distribute wealth.
Meanwhile, here in Walmart Nation (which has one of the most inequitable wealth distributions on record), the government has found a novel solution to the domestic hunger problem: renaming it. Writhe Safely reports:
The USDA has
solveddisguised the crisis of American hunger by re-naming it “very low food security.” Every year the government issues a report showing access to food, using the word “hunger” to describe the state of Americans who don’t know where their next meal is coming from. No more. The lead author of the report says “hungry” is “not a scientifically accurate term for the specific phenomenon being measured.”
“Mom! What time’s dinner? I have very low food security!”
30 Responses to “The rich get richer…”
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gordo says:
Look at it this way: now that there are no longer any hungry Americans, Bush no longer has to spend all his time feeling compassion for them. That frees him to do the important stuff, like cut off the drug benefits of low income Medicare recipients, prevent the VA from helping mentally ill veterans, and limit payouts to nuclear workers sickened by radiation and toxic materials.
So really, this is just another example of Bush getting his priorities straight. I think he’s done such a good job, we should all send him some tasty pretzels.
December 6th, 2006 at 2:08 am EST -
Paul Tergeist says:
prevent the VA from helping mentally ill veterans..
-gordoI don’t know whether I am mentally ill or just fucked over by the government. They trained me, sent me to Vietnam, put me in harm’s way, gave me a special ID card that said, basically, that I could be anywhere I happened to be and I could be doing whatever I happened to be doing; they sprayed me with Dioxin, patched up the holes in my space suit from flying metal and then…..THEN…when I got back, denied that I had ever even been in a combat zone and they still deny it to this day.
Oh sure I was in the Nam…..and sure, I was assigned to ‘unspecified counterinsurgency operations’. And sure, I have a few scars from something or other. But that doesn’t prove I was in combat. So I wasn’t. I had, among other decorations, a Combat Action Ribbon. It was revoked by someone, AFTER I had got it, and no one told me until 30 years later. A fucking ribbon worth two cents that will never matter to anyone but me, because I have no family, and I don’t even have that.
Oh, and the papers and things I took off the people I didn’t come into contact with? Inadmissible. I guess they sell bloody top secret orders written in Vietnamese on Ebay. My “special” ID card? The government never issued anything like that.
I spent my entire life trying to help people and get justice for victims of horrible crimes, and I admit they were almost all women who had been brutalized and victimized by men. I wanted to catch those men and kill them myself but, of course, I never did.
And the only thing I have to remember is Tex Watson and the girls. Luzers and killers, every one.
You guys will please excuse me tonight. I am having a breakdown.
Vi, please delete this as soon as you see it.
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ehj2 says:
Long sigh.
Now I’m stuck on two posts. The other one being the sex worker post, where I’m struggling to find words that tread lightly enough to acknowledge the courageous voices of a painful conversation without disturbing it.
This medium (the blogworld) has incredible strengths, and one of them is that people can be incredibly present at the same time they remain relatively hidden. And sometimes the poetry of their deeply experienced lives shines through.
Paul, when I wrote qui vive (a sentinel’s challege to determine a person’s political sympathies) at the heading of post directed at you several days ago, I hadn’t yet visited your site (quo vadis “whither goest thou”), nor did I then know you had once been a military sentry for the world. While apropos of approximately nothing (and what you might spuriously claim a tautology), if we listen hard to what you write, you come through pretty clearly and bonellis (beautiful).
Pax, pacis, peace.
p.s. we can see, Paul, that this is your echo and acknowledgement of that other poignantly painful sex worker conversation. Hey. We may be subtle, but we’re crude.
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Burrow says:
I’ve been yelling about low food security for about the past week. (Food stamps out till the 7th, no money, little food in house)
I’ve been joking about putting a government type alert on my blog but instead of terror alert have it be my food security level. Right now we’re about an orange.
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Paul Tergeist says:
It’s Pearl Harbor day. 65 years ago, hundreds of flying yellow demons rose up from the land we know as HELL ON EARTH and fell upon America’s bastion of peace in the Pacific: Pearl Harbor!
Because of them, my father had to go to Germany and occupy it…..and impregnate my mother…an act which, I am ashamed to admit, might have happened in Ireland since having sex in France is a disgusting thought, even now.
So, because the FRENCH farmers refused to start growing POTATOES as part of a well-balanced crop, WWII was inevitable.
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ehj2 says:
WWII was inevitable.
-Paul TergeistWhy are you crying about WWII? If it wasn’t for WWII, America would still be a little backward colony and France would still rule the world.
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Infidel says:
The rich get richer…
WWII was inevitable….
hmmmmm. -
Paul Tergeist says:
Why are you crying about WWII? If it wasn’t for WWII, America would still be a little backward colony and France would still rule the world.
-ehj2I meant WWI was inevitable because of the French farmers. Have no fear, after the reign of King George Amerika ia once again be a little backward colony. Taxation without representation. It’s deja vu all over again.
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Infidel says:
Deja vu all over again, is that like decapitating someones head?
1% own half, but I’m all me! ME and I fear any mortal person wishing to do me bodily harm. Pander to me! ME and become one of one per cent. One percent is alot. If there is a billion people, one hundred million have to divide up half the worlds riches- so it isn’t easy to build consensus even among, perhaps especially among the rich one percenters, and in non-capitalist societies I bet it is more like nine tenths of those society’s riches are held by the one percent.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Deja vu all over again, is that like decapitating someones head?
-RaulNo. You’d know it if you saw it.
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Paul Tergeist says:
Deja vu all over again, is that like decapitating someones head?
-RaulNo. You’d know it if you saw it..
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Paul Tergeist says:
OK, how cool is this?
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Paul Tergeist says:
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
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Infidel says:
Thanks Paul,
Somebody should get rich for:Sentinal $XXX,000,000 if they cut it out.
Hole in the earth $XX.00
Tsunami on the Sun $XXX,000,000,000,000,000,000 if they keep it up.
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Paul Tergeist says:
I am absolutely sure this is going to get me banned from this blog, but I want to know who the role model is for young girls. Is it the Goddamn patriarchy, or is it these crack-whores?
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BloggerNoggin says:
Paul, the role models for the young women you’re speaking of is you, your fathers and grandfathers, your woman you chose to have child with, her mom and her moms mom and grandkids etc.
Quit playing the blame game, be a man and lead the followers, lead the leaders and follow the truth. You aren’t no dummy, the truth is an easy habit, it’s just a matter of dropping old habits. Sometimes they’re the hardest to break -
Paul Tergeist says:
I didn’t choose to have a child with anyone, so that argument is out. You tell me not to play the blame game right after you accuse me and my progenitors of being responsible for Britney’s actions? May I have some of whatever you are taking? It’s gotta be REAL good stuff.
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Violet says:
Paul, why do you keep trying to get me to ban you? I thought you liked it here.
Anyway, the votes are in: you’re not funny. In principle there’s nothing wrong with your brand of humor, so I think the problem is in your execution. You need to revise your shtick.
A general reminder to all: this is a not a Beginner Feminist blog. You need to have a basic understanding of feminism and patriarchy if you want to comment here.
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richard cherry says:
vi – yadder yadder – get to the bit we all want to hear ‘how are we going to execute Paul????’
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Violet says:
Suggestions?
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richard cherry says:
leave it to him; he’ll come up with something weird because deep down he knows he’s bad and wants to be punished. even his sins aren’t original.
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Infidel says:
…”why, I wouldn’t touch him with a 32 1/2 foot pole”…
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Violet says:
Oh I know: Polonium 210.
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Infidel says:
In the voice of Vincent Price, in the spirit of Dr.Suess’s Christmas.
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Infidel says:
Not Vincent Price, (smack self on head), Boris Karloff!
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Violet says:
I think the lyric goes,
“I wouldn’t touch him with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole”
And the singer was Thurl Ravenscroft I believe (though the spoken narration was Boris Karloff)
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Infidel says:
Damn your good!
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Paul Tergeist says:
Oh I know: Polonium 210.
-VioletBad idea. But then the whole ‘Polonium as an assassination vector’ was a bad idea.
I just finished teaching my sixth basic firearms and personal self defense class for women of the Or those which I say are mine. But you know, a pyear. I understand that teaching women to actually take responsibility for their own safety is not the same as talking about misogyny, but making a woman the physical equal of any man and instilling in her the confidence she needs to control her own destiny is all I can do and I caint do nomore.
And I respect that when one posts on someone Else’s blog it’s the netiquette thing to respect their views. “Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.”
I respect every-one’s right to an opinion. It’s the opinions I disagree with, especially my own.
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Paul Tergeist says:
As a surprise to absolutely no one, that didn’t make any sense. This won’t either, but at least most of the sentences are complete.
I just finished teaching my sixth basic firearms and personal self defense class for women this year. I understand that teaching women to actually take responsibility for their own safety is not the same as talking about misogyny, but making a woman the physical equal of any man and instilling in her the confidence she needs to control her own destiny is all I can do and I caint do nomore.
Man, I picked a bad year to start showing symptoms.
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richard cherry says:
this man can’t cut and paste and they let him teach people about guns!
put that bloody polonium down paul – no it’s NOT popcorn.
now why is america such a mess again?
