SuicideGirls/TheMudflats – One Small, But Expensive, Step for Mankind (And 10 Other Things That You Could Do With A Trillion Bucks)
For SuicideGirls/TheMudflats
Republican Presidential contender Newt Gingrich wants to build a colony on the moon by the end of his second term.
I’m assuming you’ve probably already heard about this… but I’m still going to let it set in.
Just another minute…Please really let it set in that the former speaker of the house back in the ‘90s that was booted out of the Congress for ethics violations, paid a $300k fine, has had 3 wives, got paid over a million dollars from Fannie and Freddie for being a ‘historian’ wants to build a colony on the moon at the end of his second term.
Oh, not the whole colony on the moon thing…I’m talking about the fact that he thinks he’s going to have not only a first term, but a second one.
Ok. So now that you’ve wrapped your head around that – let’s ponder the putting people on the moon thing, for permanent like.
I’ll wait for you. The man who wants to cut pretty much every social program from the country’s budget would like to, it seems, at government expense send a bunch of people from Ohio to the moon (look it up, like every freaking astronaut is from Ohio, it’s weird). You know, cause flights to the moon are cheap as shit….I think Southwest has a hub there now.
Well not exactly.
It’s actually estimated to be INCREDIBLY UNBELIEVABLY EXPENSIVE (note to editor, keep the caps)…like solve world hunger expensive, like Iraq War expensive – well, actually, not that expensive.
Slate.com estimates the cost would be around a TRILLION DOLLARS.
Yes, that’s trillion with a T.
(Why do I have the unconscious need to place my pinky finger to the edge of mouth every time I type ‘a trillion dollars’… damn you Michael Myers)
Let me type that out for you.
$1,000,000,000,000
That’s four f**king commas.
Ok, so let’s ignore the absurdities of it all and have some fun with the money.
After we’ve all had our turn in the Scrooge McDuck money vault – let’s get spending.
10 Things You Could Do With A Trillion Bucks
2. Pay For 7,541,478 Very Expensive Divorces
3. Employ 16,666,666 Full Time Janitors For A Year
4. Buy 128,865,979,381 Copies of Saul Alinski’s Rules for Radicals
(Enough for about 1/3rd of the US Population.)
5. Pay Off 1/15th Of The National Debt
6. Pick Up The Tab For The “Additional Cost” Of “ObamaCare” For About 10 Years
(This, of course, doesn’t take into account many different factors that would save the country money.)
7. Pay For Private Health Care For 299,065,420 Americans For One Year
(Albeit, calculated at an average cost of $13,375 per family of four.)
8. Pay For The Infrastructure For California’s High Speed Rail Network – Ten Times Over!!!
(And we only need to do it once, so we’d have created lots of jobs and still have oodles of cash to spare. Studies show that for every $1 billion spent on infrastructure remediation creates between 18,000 and 34,000 jobs – via Barry LePatner, author ofToo Big to Fail: America’s Failing Infrastructure and the Way Forward.)
10. Pay Off Everyone’s Student Debt
(“If you erase the debt record, we all go back to zero.”)
And one extra…
I’m required by contract (not really) to mention that you could also buy SuicideGirls subscriptions for every American for the next 94 years! [I think we could arrange a special bulk purchase ‘buy 94 get 100 years’ deal for the US government – Ed!]
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Zach D. Roberts is a photo/video journalist who’s work has been seen in the Observer, The Guardian Online, TheNation.com, The Minnesota Independent, among others. For the past 5 years he’s been working as a researcher/producer for Greg Palast. He produced several DVD’s and news pieces for the BBC’s Newsnight show. Zach edited Palast and RFK Jr’s Steal Back Your Vote comic – which had nearly 100,000 downloads and print copies distributed throughout the world). Currently he works regularly as a video producer for Jamie Kilstein and Allison Kilkenny’s CitizenRadio.
Zach has been detained in New Orleans by Exxon Mobil security, threatened with arrest over three dozen times but has never been arrested. In 2010 he met Sarah Palin while working on his soon to be released first feature length documentary ‘The Rogue Candidate: Sarah Palin’s Real Alaska.’ While in Alaska he broke several stories via TheMudflats.net. For more visit his website, Facebook, and Twitter.
Missing the Library… #OWS
“Food Stamp President” – BS all around
“food stamp president” – It’s bullshit expression that is also racially coded – But trying to use the numbers that Sharpton is using on his show “PoliticsNation” – 14.7 million (Bush 8 years) to 14.2 Million (Obama 4 years) to prove that Obama hasn’t had more Food stamp recipients is also bullshit.
Though – it’s not completely Obama’s fault that over the same 8 years he’ll have likely double the number that Bush had – under Bush’s years the formula changed and took effect for the most part under Obama’s first years…
Read more on it at Reason
http://reason.com/blog/2012/01/23/bush-and-obama-the-food-stamp-presidents
SOPA explained.
This will stay here for a while.
#D17 Protest and My Arrest
#D17 Protest and My Arrest, a set on Flickr.
My #OWS Arrest at #D17
For SuicideGirls.com and TheMudflats.net
My wrist hurts.
Photo by CS Muncy
Really more that it possibly should. This is not good. I’m a writer, a photographer, I like to shake people’s hands. I need my wrist functioning.
And I’m not even arrested yet.
It’s 12 o’ clock and there’s maybe 100 people here…and that’s including the press. #D17 is not looking to be all it was cracked up to be, like an ‘N Sync reunion when Justin doesn’t show up. (It was intended to be a celebration of the 3 month anniversary of the Occupy Wall Street movement and its encampment at Zuccotti Park, and was supposed to be marked by a reoccupation in New York at the nearby Duarte Square, a vacant plot of land owned by Trinity Wall Street, a parish of the Episcopal Diocese of NYC.)
It’s freezing, well, maybe not that bad, but I’m underdressed for the occasion, wearing a light jacket and no gloves or a hat. An hour and a half into standing around at Duarte Park in Lower Manhattan – I thought I’d be running after occupiers and dodging kettling nets.
Read the rest here.
In the Paddy Wagon heading to Central Booking
Should note, this is not my video.
In the Holding Cell at One Police Plaza
My Work in a New book by Alternet: The 99%
The 99%: How the Occupy Wall Street Movement Is Changing America
by Don Hazen, Tara Lohan, Lynn Parramore
Click here to buy it now
Provocative, fresh, and profound, The 99%: How the Occupy Wall Street Movement Is Changing America reveals how in a tiny park, a bold idea broke through to broad public consciousness: that regular people can take on the entire economic and political system.
Journalists, eyewitnesses, artists, teachers, union leaders, rappers, progressive icons and ordinary citizens follow the spark of hope as it leaps from city to city, state to state, and across the ocean, igniting a new conversation about our society and the future. They share the sights, the sounds, and the solidarity of the early days, and take you on the drama-charged journey from the concrete of lower Manhattan to the mass marches and the police violence that swept across the globe.
Experts delve into the root causes and long-term trends that have driven the movement, from economic inequality to the corrupt influence of money in politics.
Created in less than a month by the editorial team at AlterNet, featuring dozens of participants, experts, and the inspirational every day people who have made OWS a success, The 99% is the first comprehensive look at the incredible phenomenon that has made the hope of a better life possible for millions.
EDITORS: Don Hazen, Tara Lohan, Lynn Parramore
CO-EDITORS AND CONTRIBUTORS: Joshua Holland, Tana Ganeva, Sarah Jaffe, Lynn Parramore, Sarah Seltzer, Adele M. Stan, Kristen Gwynne, Lauren Kelley, Julianne Escobedo Shepherd, Rania Khalek, Nick Turse.
CONTRIBUTORS ALSO INCLUDE: Eve Ensler, Arun Gupta, Naomi Klein, Noam Chomsky, Amy Goodman, Roberto Lovato, Rose Ann DeMoro, Nelini Stamp, Tom Engelhardt, Eliot Spitzer, Robert Johnson, Thomas Ferguson, Nomi Prins, Robert Greenwald, Leo Gerard, Yves Smith, Charles Eisenstein, James K. Galbraith, Pam Martens, Les Leopold, Immortal Technique, Manissa McCleave Maharawal, Melanie Butler, Yotam Marom, J.A. Myerson, Anna Lekas Miller, David Graeber, Richard Kim, Tamara Draut, Alex Pareene, Andrew Leonard, Stephen Lerner, Lisa Kaas Boyle, Jennifer Sacks, Mikki Brunner, Barbara Schneider Reilly, Christina Gonzalez, Derrick Crowe and more.
