04.14.11
The Empire’s Dogshit (continued)
One mid-day speech doesn’t make for a fix.
From the Boston Globe, hat tip to Pine View Farm:
Meanwhile, the US Census last year said the rich-poor income gap reached record levels, nearly doubling gaps of the late 1960s. The United States is the richest nation on earth, yet we rank 97th in family-income equality, according to the CIA Factbook. Our inequality is so profound that we rank behind nations we associate with corruption, poverty, oppression, or collapsed governments — Nigeria, China, India, Ivory Coast, Tunisia, Egypt, Burundi, Nicaragua, Bangladesh, Ethiopia, and Greece. The most economically equal country in the world is Sweden.
Even the CIA says the United States is now a nation where “those at the bottom lack the education and the professional/technical skills of those at the top and, more and more, fail to get comparable pay raises, health insurance coverage, and other benefits. Since 1975, practically all the gains in household income have gone to the top 20 percent of households.’’
For all of those “gains,’’ we are sliding backward with each announcement of CEO pay. The gain for a few has become the great American loss.
It was just about exactly one year ago that your host went to work for the US Census. Pasadena is thought of as a well-to-do place. The census disabused everyone working it of that. Its working poor live right next to the wealthy and their upper middle class shoe-shiners in often terrible conditions. And those working the census were either those unemployed from the great recession or struggling to keep their heads above water by working two or three underpaying jobs at a time.
Meanwhile, today from the alleged “weapons of doom” beat aka corporate welfare/jobs programs for arms manufacturing, the underwhelming Maritime Laser Demonstrator!
[An alleged expert named] Gibbon-Brooks said the new laser “absolutely” could be deployed against pirates, but says a sniper rifle could work just as well. He suspects the Navy has bigger hopes for its sea-based laser. The Navy released a video of the test on YouTube. It’s been viewed more than 600,000 times.
“It’s a very, very interesting moment for naval warfare in that we have a whole new genre of weapons,” he said.
“It’s certainly a remarkable step forward. The ability to apply more power in a burst or the ability to manipulate that power is really where I see this going,” he said. “I think if you watch the video and think that’s what they intend to do to Somali pirates in a year, you don’t understand what’s being set out in front of them. It could be used in any type of naval warfare.”
The laser test was carried out by the Navy and Northrop Grumman as part of a $98 million contract.
Six hundred thousand views on YouTube! It’s a viral hit! Whoopie!
Ninety-eight million bucks of swag for Northrop Grumman for, maybe, use against a handful of pirates.
Now, if they’d pitched the laser for use closer to home — like Goldman Sachs, 85 Broad Str (use the satellite photo and magnify) — I might change my tune.