Why I’m concerned about OWS
Hubby says the protests are only about the American economy. He says I shouldn’t fret so hard about the economy or the protestors or the whole movement.
I know I worry about things too much. I overthink and over stress. And I see patterns in time.
I see rich people gaining power through their wealth and making laws that solely benefit themselves. I see isolated wealthy in ivory towers not understanding why the “peasant class” are so upset. I see revolution tearing the old system down and starting anew… And allowing a different set of wealthy start the whole cycle again.
I also see Australia, my home, being used again and again as a dumping ground for other nations’ “waste”.
The British dumped convicts here. And any surplus Irish from the Potato Famine (amongst many other problems). The World Wars allowed Europe to dump boatloads of refugees here. America quasi-routinely attempts to dump their dangerous products/expired medicine on us because it hasn’t been banned here yet.
I also know that where the greatest world power leads, Australia tends to follow like a puppy. We, as a nation, have been trailing after America since about WWII, following as many of its own policies as the Australian public would let us get away with in a kind of sycophantic need to be just like the big boys.
I worry because I know some of the major corporations are trying to get a toe-hold over here. There’s already been some upset because we can’t be bought on the issue of fracking to get gas from the ground. Our water is too deep, too precious, and too vital to waste for corporate gain.
Turn a mountain into a hole for coal? Go for it, but keep your fracking hands off our fracking ground water.
I worry because I know that those corporations will try to take advantage of the lag between American action and Australian action in order to dig their avaricious claws into our country, our government, and our way of life.
They’ll either be dumped or foisted off on us. And Australia is almost stupid enough to go for it. Almost.
But we have been standing up a bit more often, for which I am proud. And grateful. We can say ‘no’ to the money-grubbing evil of big corporations.
I’m just worried about whether or not we will.
Tax Receipt Not Going Far Enough
I’ve been seeing a lot of retweets endorsing the idea of a “tax receipt”, a document telling you, the taxpayer, where your tax dollars are going.
I say it’s a good first step.
A better move would be a Tax Vote. You fill out the form declaring whatever and indicate exactly where you want your dollars to go. And list them in order of importance.
THAT would be a government of true democracy.
Just think about it. Left-wing “hippie whackoes” [as folks like Rush love to call us] can vote for education funding, medicine, green energy, etc; while the right-wing “conservative nut jobs” [As us liberals love to call them] can vote for war, refunds for the rich, etc.
And both sides can pretend that all the advantages are coming from their side, whilst all the detriments are coming from the opposite factor.
And if a corporation wants to have a say? Well, they’d better pay their taxes, hadn’t they?
Illustrating things
You can try this at home.
You need: 2 100-piece packets of paperclips [est cost $1.10 ea]
1 lot of free time
One packet represents percentages of the population [PKT 1] and the other represents percentages of wealth [PKT 2].
Find a way to distinguish PKT 1 from PKT 2. You can do this by obtaining different colours/sizes of paperclips or spritzing them with paint. Anything you like. I just kept it straight in my head.
Pick one paperclip from PKT 1 and string 45 paperclips from PKT 2 on it. This is the one percent. Representatives of the one percent include big banks, big corporations, Old Money [Rothschild, Hilton, etc] and the extremely rare individual who was actually able to climb the social ladder all the way to the top.
Now get nine more paperclips from PKT 1 and share out another 45 paperclips from PKT 2 between them. This averages out at 5% of the wealth each. This is the wealthy elite. The people who are very much comfortably well off. Representatives of the 9% include Trust Fund Babies, more corporations and banks, some Old Money, celebrities, senators, and more of the folks who made it on their own merits.
Now get together 53 paperclips. This is the 53% of Americans who pay their taxes. Many of these folks are holding down 3-4 jobs just to break even. Most believe the system they’re supporting will come through for the honest, hard-working etc. and their ship will come in any old day now. These are the “average Joe” to the “wage slave” to the “corporate drone”, depending on where you stand. In essence, these are Everyman.
Now take the remaining 37 paperclips and join them together. These are the people who don’t have enough money to pay taxes. LOTS of these folks are holding down 4-8 jobs, many part-time, just to keep their heads above water. These are the people on welfare, on social security, the pensioners, and the homeless. They are the poor, the weak, the tired and hungry, the huddled masses yearning to be free.
Hey, I think I remember that from somewhere… never mind.
Now take the leftover ten paperclips from PKT 2 and distribute them fairly across the 53% and the poor and desperate 37%.
…uhm…
Yeah, I had that problem, too.
There’s lots of folks from the 37% representing the 99%. They’re the stereotypical “unwashed hippies” the right wing loves to spout about. There’s a goodly portion of the 53% in those protests, too. They’re the ones who’ve realised that the system is rigged to benefit a few, and not the many. Lots have realised that a great proportion of the few who benefit are not, strictly speaking, actual people.
Lots of the 9%, especially celebrities who love a cause, support the 99% because they can actually see how the system is unfair and so forth.
But the 1% who own the media keep telling the 53% to blame the 37% for not getting jobs that aren’t there or they literally can’t do [Try telling a quadra paraplegic to flip burgers sometime. I’m sure it’s hilarious.] or who won’t hire them anyway because they’re too old, too broken, too female, too black, too mentally disabled, or already too busy to do. All the while convincing the 53% to support tax cuts or other laws that allow the 1% to grab even more of the dwindling, metaphorical pie.
Why keep blaming the people who can’t afford to solve the problem when it’s obvious who actually is the problem?
We Need to Take Action NOW
Experts warn we have five years before climate change is irreversible.
It took us ten years to make certain Y2K didn’t happen. We’re already five years behind and you can bet corporate greed is not on our side. Spread the message. We need to fix the environment YESTERDAY.
Why Iceland isn't in our news much. READ THIS - a country has a REVOLUTION, rewrites its constitution using REGULAR citizens & gets rid of its Central Bank & the whole corrupt Fractional Reserve Banking system AND ITS NOT ON WIN TV, 7, 10, ABC, SBS, NBC, FOX, NOTHING! WHY IS THAT I WONDER!?!?
Everyone needs to see this. Occupy your own freedom.
Final installment! For now, anyway.
Last steps of prepping the planters is to place a the cloth over the stones to prevent soil escaping the planter. You can also use any old rag that comes to hand, or dryer fluff if it doesn’t.
I put the lid back on to stop the local wildlife from stealing the cloth.
Why not just put cloth in the bottom, you may ask. Well, stones aid drainage and give water a path to escape. The plants I’m planning to put in those pots are ones that like dryer roots.
If you don’t like the idea of using rocks at all, try it with mesh and cloth [trust me, you NEED the mesh!] and share your results. I’d be interested to know the outcome.
Next step: Making soil.
You need a compost tumbler - they’re available in all sizes at big garden shops - a source of mulch, and a LOT of time.
Step 1: Gather household organic waste. Do not gather things like bones or plastics as they do not rot as easily as the rest of it. As a general rule, if it’s soft and goes rotten, it’s mulch/compost.
Step 2: If possible, gather lawn clippings. If not possible, any old source of cellulose will do. Old newspapers, shredded junk mail, you name it. You need cellulose to absorb the moisture from the other organic wastes.
Step 3: Place in tumbler and tumble. This is some lawn clippings I put in the previous day. As you can see, they still resemble lawn clippings.
Step 4: Add more. Often. In goes the assembled organic waste from today.
Compost takes a LOT of time. Most compost-tumblers I’ve seen have little grilles placed in their construction somewhere for the finished compost to fall out. Just place a convenient vessel underneath and you’re set to gather the compost when it’s ready.
We used an old kiddies’ wheelbarrow that was lying around neglected. You can use anything you please.
According to the instructions for my model, a proper compost can take as little as six days to create. Your mileage may vary, of course.
Compost is, in essence, a very rich soil that plants adore. If you’re planting carrots, you may want to mix in some bark-chip potting mix to prevent mutant carrots from forming.
Me, I don’t give a pink flying crap about getting mutant carrots. For me, that’s more carrot for the buck.
More on my little eco-garden when events dictate.
Welcome back, frugal freedom fighters. This post is showing you the basic preparations for a planter box, or set thereof.
The tools for today are some cheap plastic gutter mesh [the stuff you put in gutters to keep the leaves out] a pair of decent scissors [if you bought wire mesh, use side-cutters!] and the paperclip staples I showed you how to make last time.
Step 1: Measure the mesh to fit, but make sure it fits up the sides of the box a little way.
Step 2: Cut along the joins. You will notice that the mesh does not want to stay where it’s put and tends to spring back on you.
Step 3: Press mesh into shape and weigh it down.
Step 4: Say hello to my little friend. The long side allows you to position the other side for maximum mesh manipulation :D
Step 5: Position staple.
Step 6: Press into the foam. This will kill your fingertips after a while. Not literally, though.
Step 7: Repeat steps 5 and 6 everywhere you reckon you need to keep the mesh in check.
Step 8: Now do the other side.
Put a layer of rocks in the bottom, just enough to mostly cover it.
And now, a teaser. What am I planning to do with that old rag?
Stay tuned, freedom fighters!
The Story of Broke
Annie Leonard gives another powerful, thought-provoking video as a continuation of the “Story of Stuff”. The “Story of Broke” covers where tax dollars really go, and what we can do to invest in the future.
Absolutely everyone needs to see this. Reblog, retweet, share, redistribute and otherwise disseminate.
(Source: fastcoexist.com, via studio630-deactivated20170709)
I’ve learned some things about tumblr, now, so this is a two-parter. Should I make you wait for part 2? We’ll see.
I initially wanted the boxes and setup closer to the washing line [it made sense to me] but hubby put the whole box and dice on some bare-ish earth at the other corner of the house. As you can see from the tool set, it’s going to get weird.
If you don’t want to go to the bother of making staples, you can just use regular staples from your office stapler. I didn’t have any of those that worked, so I went with paperclips.
Creative geniuses will tell you the paperclip has over two thousand uses. This is one of them. And how to make it.
Step one, open a paperclip into a V.
Step two, cut the longest side in half.
Step three, flatten the rest of the paperclip.
Step four, cut the longest side in half. It’s preferable to do the cutting steps inside a walled container so the bits don’t go flying off into inconvenient places.
Step five, Voila! Three planter staples for the price of one paperclip.
Step six, now do all again until your hands are ready to croak.
Then I dragged everything outside, ready to make planter boxes.
Stay tuned for part 2, frugal freedom fighters!
My Continuing Adventures in Frugal Freedom Finding
Keep in mind that I’m rounding out prices and, for everyone’s protection, I am obscuring the shops’ names. Clever readers will be able to figure it out in no time at all, I am certain.
As I write this, I have recently returned from a mat-hunt. Anyone who’s played WoW and does not want to spend a fortune at the Auction House knows what that’s about. You go out grinding for materials, or mats for short.
So here’s the breakdown:
* Coolite foam boxes from Grocery Shop C: Free! [Just spin them a tale depending on the volume you desire, they don’t really care]
* 40kilos of rocks from Garden Shop M: $20
* 2 rolls of cheap-arse gutter mesh (Same shop): $4
* One small flex-tub (Same shop): $5
* Side cutters or wire snips (Same shop): $7
* Impulse-bought set of box cutters: $4
* big packet of 1000 paperclips (10 boxes of 100) from Stationers O: $11
* Compost tumbler I’ve had sitting around for a while: $600 [I think. I got $1000 back from the govt. Yay!]
* Pickets we’ve had lying around for about 10 years: Price forgotten [If you don’t have pickets you can scrounge any old thing to lift your boxes up. You can even use the old “college bookshelf” method of bricks and planks]
* Sweat-equity: (y)our precious, precious time and effort.
It took about three hours to round all this lot up, including finding some stuff I didn’t exactly need for the garden…
I plan on setting up in the afternoon, when hubby will be more amenable to mowing and setting up. That is when I will take some pictures and document everything for my next blog. And that is when all my loyal readers find out what the flying hell I’m doing with all this shite.
Stay tuned, freedom fighters!