by John Wilcock

“In a country well governed, poverty is something to be ashamed of. In a country badly governed, wealth is something to be ashamed of.”
— Confucius

The Following column ran one year ago.

“With the exception of Romania, no developed country has a higher percentage of kids in poverty than America…That so many leaders of a country with a $17trillion economy tolerate so much misery amid so much plenty—normalizing child hunger and allowing a significant part of the labor force to work fulltime (if not more) and still be unable to pay basic bills—is one of the scandals of our age.”
— Sasha Abramsky in the Nation

SURELY THE SADDEST sight of this depressing era is some poor, old lady sitting alone in her empty apartment wondering if she’ll have anything to eat tomorrow. “The reason is simple” writes Trudy Lieberman. “There’s not enough money from federal, state, or local governments to support most of the country’s meal programs…While funding for home-delivered meals increased 43% from 2001 to 2011, the number of seniors facing the threat of hunger rose 87% in that period. More and more seniors are going hungry”. Clearly, the sequester has made a bad situation even worse with $11.3million less to feed the elderly. The National Foundation to End Senior Hunger (NFESH), says that in the past decade the number of old folk facing this problem has increased by 78%.

“The idea of giving a little bit more of the nation’s vast wealth to the elderly, especially those in dire need, has suffered in the drive by conservative think tanks to demonize old people—the ‘greedy geezer’ meme” Lieberman writes in the Nation. So it was probably no big surprise to those who listened to that loathsome Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein (who earned $26m last year) telling CBS Evening News: “You’re going to have to undoubtedly do something to lower people’s expectation—the entitlements and what people think they’re going to get. Because they’re not going to get it”.

THE PAINTED OUTLAW is not really an outlaw at all, claims the National Review, and motorcycles are no longer for Hells Angels but for Hell’s Dentists and Hell’s Bankers. “There are insurance agents and realtors and Rotary Club members across these United States with a better claim to being outlaws” declares Kevin D. Williamson, who suggests that what fuels their conceit are ample tattoos, once the mark of “(real) outlaws, gangsters, sailors, and other men living on the edge”. Fifty per cent of Americans still believe that getting a tattoo is “rebellious—call it the Johnny Depp effect: outlaw on the street, Disney in the bank”. Why we should admire outlaws at all, says Williamson, is another question, but “Mr. Depp is not an outlaw. He may in fact be the farthest thing from an outlaw it is possible to be: a contracted employee of the Walt Disney Company. A heavily tattooed employee of the Walt Disney Company…Getting a tattoo based on a movie starring you: That’s outlaw”.

YOUR LOCAL POLICE are certainly armed but may also be dangerous charges Radley Bolko. His recent book, Rise of the Warrior Cop, The Militarization of America’s Police Forces, outlines his grievance about the unchecked proliferation of out-of-control SWAT teams which he accuses of having been used to break up charity poker games, shut down legal marihuana dispensaries operating in the open, even serve warrants on people suspected of committing student loan fraud. This kind of overkill, he writes, gained momentum in the 1980s and 90s when Congress began to arm domestic police depts. with military surplus while simultaneously increasing the funding for antidrug efforts. This unanticipated collateral damage turned out to be very good for local police forces because it justified them seizing assets not just of convicted drug offenders but even from people remotely associated with crimes yet never charged. In the Weekly Standard, Mike Riggs said the book called for a return to community polling which required cops to be members of their community and to be on personal terms with the likes of business owners, school principals, and community power brokers. “SWAT teams often introduce violence where previously there had been none”, he wrote, “but police are too vital to modern society to be allowed to determine, without challenge or supervision, the best way to protect our democracy and preserve order”.

AT LEAST THREE governors vying for re-election next year (those of Arizona, Ohio and Florida) are facing a dilemma writes Abby Rapoport. “They all face tough battles for re-election in 2014. By backing Medicaid, they were guaranteed to inspire The Party wrath. By opposing it they would deny health coverage to large numbers of low-income residents, shut the door on billions in federal funding and risk further alienating voters”, The American Prospect columnist writes. Sixteen states oppose expansion but if any of the governors stick their necks out by bucking Tea Party demands, “making policy based on the needs of your state does not amount to certain political death. It might even save you from it.”

Musicians on marihuana (1)

“IT’S A FUNNY THING about marijuana—when you first begin smoking it you see things in a wonderful soothing, easygoing new light” wrote Mezz Mezzrow. “All of a sudden the world is stripped of its dirty gray shrouds and becomes one big bellyful of giggles, a spherical laugh, bathed in brilliant, sparkling colors that hit you like a heat wave. Nothing leaves you cold anymore; there’s a humorous tickle and great meaning in the least little thing, the twitch of somebody’s little finger or the click of a beer glass. All your pores open like funnels, your nerve ends stretch their mouths wide, hungry and thirsty for new sights and sounds and sensations; and every sensation, when it comes, in the most exciting one you’ve ever had. You can’t get enough of anything—you want to gobble up the whole goddamned universe just for an appetizer. Them first kicks are a killer, Jim.

“Suppose you’re the critical and analytical type, always ripping things to pieces, tearing the covers off and being disgusted by what you find under the sheet. Well, under the influence of muta you don’t lose your surgical touch exactly, but you don’t come up evil and grimy about it. You still see what you saw before but in a different more tolerant way, through rose-colored glasses, and things that would have irritated you before just tickle you. Everything is good for a laugh; the wrinkles get ironed out of your face and you forget what a frown is, you just want to hold on to your belly and roar till the tears come. Some women especially, instead of being nasty and mean just go off bellowing until hysteria comes on. All the larceny kind of dissolves out of them—they relax and grin from ear to ear, and get right on the ground floor with you. Maybe no power on earth can work out a lasting armistice in that eternal battle of the sexes, but muggles are the one thing I know that can even bring about an overnight order to ‘Cease firing’.” —Mezz Mezzrow (1899-1972)

[Extracts from The Weed that Changed the World,
an eBook available from Amazon for $9]

THE WILCOCK WEB: “If voting changed anything, they’d abolish it” says former London mayor Ken Livingstone….Compensating for falling wine sales, one Bordeaux wine company is selling rouge sucerre—a red wine mixed with cola….Pouring urine over bacterial-filled fuel cells produces a small electrical current that can be stored, reports Britain’s Bristol Robotics Laboratory which suggests that it might become a practical power source….…If an ‘illegal immigrant’ can raise a huge sum to pay a smuggler, why doesn’t he just buy an airline ticket and enter as a tourist?….. “The ‘g’ is silent—the only thing about her that is,” sneers London columnist Julie Burchill about fellow author Camille Paglia….….England is planning to ban smoking in its prisons where more than three quarters of the 85,000 inmates smoke…..A man hired a Kerryman as an assistant to take phone calls. One day the phone rang and when the Kerryman answered he hung up immediately. ‘Who was that?’ asked his boss. ‘Some fool saying it was a long distance from New York. I told him everybody knew that.’ …Long-famous for his self-important arrogance, Kanye West complained that a carpet was too bumpy in his BBC dressing room, and insisted that it be ironed…….Forbes issue for October 7, devoted to the top 400 tycoons has five glossy covers, one after another: Warren Buffet and Alice Walton (2nd and 8th on the list); Sam Zell (real estate, 110th); Stewart Rahr (drug distributor, 240th) and Michael Rubin (online retail, 218th). All but 61 on the 400 List are billionaires…..“I started out with nothing” reminisces John Gaza, “and I still have most of it left” …. The Sunday Assembly movement has been setting up gatherings all over the world for atheists who need to get together and sit together in contemplation…….. Recycling is getting easier, reports Popular Science, with the increasing number of single-stream facilities in which elaborate systems separate mingled quantities of dumped paper, glass
and plastic… “I’ve been married to a communist and a fascist” Zsa Zsa Gabor recalled “and neither would take out the garbage“….

These Green Grass Flip Tops, fitted with fake grass, cost around fifty bucks a pair from www.firebox.com …..….“An abstainer is a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure” was Ambrose Bierce’s opinion…..This month marks the 40th anniversary of Scientology being granted tax exempt status after a long battle with the Feds….Shark Tank’s Mark Cuban says they shoot 12 hours a day, five days in a row. “A deal that takes ten minutes on TV could go two and a half hours in real life”…Sunday Times art critic Waldemar Janusczak accuses curators of controlling the art world from within “by privileging their creativity ahead of the artist’s”…. How ridiculous closing down the national parks. Why not just leave them open and let people choose whether to enter or not? ….“With knowledge comes more doubt”—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832)

Bakewell (part 2), its mayor, and its pudding…

National Weed (1974, issue #3)

it’s here…