On Class & Wealth

I've admired Barbara Ehrenreich ever since I read about how she worked as a hotel-maid to experience & expose the actual social-class relations between Maid & Mistress. (Mistress expected Maid to tipple & steal, but not have a Ph.D!)

Generally, Americans don't want to admit that social-class position rules this society like any other; & so a great many Americans prefer to imagine they're 'middle-class' - a presumption that's now being relentlessly eroded.

Once Americans realize how & by whom, they should have an overdue re-awakening; but what they'll do about it (post FDR vs Reagan, Clinton vs Obama) remains to be seen. Meanwhile:

Many think Social Security & Medicare are the 3rd-rail. The Tea Party thinks it's levying totally unnecessary Taxes.

It's much more than that. It's also about the disparity of 'wealth' & where that puts each of us as members of a spectrum/hierarchy of classes (fiscal, material, occupational, technical, etc. )

Speaking of 'wealth', how many people admire Warren Buffet? Bill Gates? Because of what they do with their wealth? To & for...whom?

Where CHENEY Hid

WHERE {CHENEY} [HID]

exVPOTUS CHENEY now

admits he hid [in a bunker]

under his DC home "behind

a massive steel door secured

by an elaborate lock, w/a

narrow connecting hallway

lined with shelves filled w/

communications equipment,"

& @ Camp David, Maryland

& wayback home in Wyoming

(27 AUG 11, Santa Clara CA)v5

DISPARITY

When you think of it

(if you do think of it),

money's relative:

tiny amounts of money

prime the dry sumps

of crushing poverty;

obscene money creates

overwhelming disparity.

FINANCIALLY: CHINESE

Current Chinese academic research reveals:

Chinese companies have a genetic disposition
affecting their financial performance; although
generally, genetics affects only 25% of one’s
financial decisions, by buying Chinese you
increase that percentage & by contracting
with Chinese manufacturers, you participate
in Chinese finance. Chinese genes add value.

(17 AUG 11, Santa Clara CA)v3

Tea Party trumpets

The Tea Party trumpets

from delusional peaks:

The rich & tax-free

deserve H-2B!

(15 AUG 11, Santa Clara CA)112

CRUEL RULES (ctd)

Whose rules are the Cruel Rules? Are they religious?

Where belief (in something) is required; religion may not be.

You can now be a capitalist even in Communist China, but you cannot promote Falun Gong (a 'traditional' religion which is severley outlawed for irs fallacious science) which means that in Communist China political belief is separated from economic belief & religious belief.

In western capitalist countries, spiritual religion may be a matter of personal option, but capitalism is nonetheless the reigning state economic religion. Capitalism can be severe (notoriously so in empires' colonies) & is becoming increasingly so in these times of economic distress which I call The Time of Resolve, whose 3 Cruel Rules

Only the least expensive get paid.

Only the most efficient survive.

Only the most productive prevail.

apply in this case in the present world crisis and might be more severely applied under The Tea Party. Does this make the Tea Party religious? Economically yes, but not religiously as normally understood. The vulgarly assertive use of 'religiously' to mean absolutely or stringently is a corruption of the term. If those 3 rules seem acceptable to you, you are definitely not a Christian, no matter what you claim.

(TBC)

CRUEL RULES

CRUEL RULES

In the coming Time of Resolve

cruel rules will run the world:

Only the least expensive get paid.

Only the most efficient survive.

Only the most productive prevail.

Cruel rules permit some to survive

a starkly inhumane world.

We will not be asked to believe;

we will only be told to behave.

(11 AUG 11, Santa Clara CA)v5

ignorant newsreaders

Ignorant newsreading TV anchors

act astonished that The Market

can fall, & then rise, & then fall

as tho they’d never seen it do it

throughout every media-day.

They imagine The Market’s

gross numbers constitute

a colossal bank account,

not a fluctuating lottery,

junk bonds only as real as their

derivatives' underlying assets.

(10 AUG 11, Santa Clara CA)v4

TV programs

Note on ME & TV programs

Here are the TV shows I’ve been an avid viewer of.

While living (1979-2003) in relatively wealthy ivy-league college town Wellesley MA, 2010 pop. 27,982, “Northern Exposure” delighted me. Its small Cicely AK somehow felt like Wellesley where I was media-active (regional & town newspapers, college radio, cable TV, civic-symphony, one-off opera, 20 yr anti-war vigil).

“The Gilmore Girls” set in a small CT town 10 mi from Hartford, due mostly to its fast dialog : “Talk fast. Life is short.” which Carolin probably saw appealing to me because I have 5 planets in Gemini; obvious class-relations; Yale story-line.

Now that I live alone in Jesuit-college city Santa Clara CA, 2010 pop.116,468, I occasionally watch "House", Burt Wolf's "Travel & Traditions" (deft research), Food TV's "Simply Ming" (Tsai) who owns "Blue Ginger" restaurant in Wellesley Sq. (that I never went into when I lived there) & "America's (VT) Test Kitchens" (my daughter Maya & grandson Asha live in Putney.)

OCEANOGRAPHERS

QINGDAO’s STATUES

There’s a statue garden

in the eastern Chinese

coastal city of Qingdao

with 7 life-sized statues

of Chinese oceanographers.

There are no such statues

anywhere else in the world.

(Qindao faces Korea.)

08 AUG 11 ( Santa Clara CA)v3

AAA ratings

AAA ratings

The next time you need a AAA rating,

B advised that AAAnybody

can buy as many initial capital As

as they like in the Yellow Pages where

U can B as A as U sAy U R.

(08 AUG 11, Santa Clara CA)v2
on The New Verse News
www.newversenews.blogspot.com
Tues. 09 AUG 11

Reggie on the run

If I'd wondered what Reggie might do if he got loose, I found out yesterday, when frightened by a leaf-blower, he jumped down from my walker, popping the clasp that attaches him to the long yellow nylon lead-out, & ran swiftly all the way back to my building & stood at the door, obviously hoping to get back in. I was right behind him all the way, picked him up, took him into the building, into the elevator & up into my apt. Now I know what he'll do if he ever gets loose again - run home (esp. if frightened or hungry.) Anybody that observed us probably thinks I chased him home - but I didn't have to. He ran as fast as he could, a few steps ahead of me all the way.

In the Gazebo

We were sitting on the continuous polygonal bench of the big gazebo at Santa Clara Plaza Park that surrounds the Family Reading Library branch.

We were reading our own books - Ginny, her own paperback of BEING HAPPY by Talden Ben-Shar, I, a damaged library discard of THE KING OF MADISON AVENUE - David Ogilvy and the making of Modern Advertizing, by Kenneth Roman, former chairman & CEO of Ogilvy & Mather. Reading about Ogilvy cast me into a false present, actually the past, indistinguishable from our present, because great modern advertizing (cf. Apple's "Big Brother") achieves quasi-eternality if the original product disappears and only the ad remains. Ginny read encouraging quotes to me from her book about 'failure' not being what it's alleged. (It's really more like a necessary rehearsal.)

A friendly grounds-keeper told us the whistling birdcall we could hear above us was a mother hawk teaching her fledgling to fly; down here, below her, a defiant battered skinhead played dominoes with an admiring friend at a cement table, as he had the last time we were there. A light breeze cooled us.