poverty

There are more than 300 million people in the USA. 492 of them are billionaires. That represents roughly 16 millionths of 1%. In decimal form that’s 0.0000016, or as a fraction, 16 over 1 million. This is not the 1% the Occupy Movement imprinted on (some of) the national consciousness. Even an innumerate person can understand that represents a teeny, tiny, microscopic portion of our supposedly democratic, equal opportunity, propaganda spouting world’s most deadly military killing machine in history.

Jeff Drones for Dildos Bezos . . .  The TakeOver . . . The End Times . . .  Useless Collective Consumerism . . . The Empire is Daft and Dangerous!
Oh, hell, I’ve been challenged to write some positive stuff on the DV blog, like, what, five straight blogs in a row that are all hopeful, positive, about the real heroes and heroines and hard-working people who never get their day in the limelight, day in court, or 15 petrabytes of fame.

If you haven’t yet heard of Ron Unz, you may soon. The conservative, successful software developer, theoretical physicist from Harvard and former publisher of the American Conservative magazine is launching a California initiative that asks voters in November to raise the state minimum wage to $12 per hour (it is now $8 an hour and is going to $9 an hour by July, 2014).

In recent weeks protests against the elected president Nicolás Maduro have captured the imaginations of corporate media outlets and wealthy expatriates alike.

Keane Bhatt, a Washington, D.C.-based activist and writer, and a contributing editor to the North American Congress on Latin America: Elite forces in Venezuela and the US are determined to undermine the accomplishments of the Bolivarian revolution.

Here, a few column inches below my preface — the short article, on organizing, tied to, well,  the wimpy American broke-back mentality that we have to ask for fairness, beg, negotiate with felons, murderers, the corporate elite and their wannabe followers and side-lined thugs.

A recent report released by the United Nations Development Programme (UNPD) at the end of January offers further confirmation about the role inequality has played in stifling economic recovery and preventing meaningful social reform; and the solutions outlined by the study are no less a deviation from mainstream proposals in calling for redistributive policies, increases in social spending, collective bargaining, and changes in social and

[Note: Again, real national-level news from a small town, Spokane, in a small state, Washington. This is published now at Spokane Living Magazine. Great photos by my daughter, Makenna. A community college student in Spokane. What more does the world want than a radical revolutionary who write kick-ass better-than-that-Hunter/freak/Thompson AND also does straight ahead journalism?]
More Bang for the Public Safety Buck: Criminal Justice Commission Pushes a No New Jail Thesis

It is a point of historical controversy whether or not when told that French peasants did not have bread to eat, Marie Antoinette uttered the phrase “Let them eat cake,” an even more inaccessible and scarce food for poor people. But what is certain and should be beyond controversy is that in response to the capitalist implosion that shattered so many lives, Obama and the corporate democrats have demonstrated a policy attitude as cavalier as the French queen. Over the last five years, they have offered neither bread nor cake or anything other than false hope and empty symbols.

The question is no longer what, the question is when.
Very soon, income inequality in the United States will reach such a critical level it is likely violence will be viewed as an acceptable response to America’s social ills.
Unlike Depression Era bank robbers, assaults will be aimed at soft human targets. After all, who uses cash anymore?