So much for “going quietly into that dark night!” This woman whose youth was in the 1960s & 1970s is in front of the White House protesting US bombing in Syria. There is so much nonsense written about her generation whose gestalt was rebellion against the tyrannies & culture of the Cold War.

We got rid of our beehive hairdos cemented with hairspray, ditched the stilettos, put on bellbottoms & comfortable shoes, & protested & organized for civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, disability rights & against the Vietnam War. Popular historians are now trying to turn us into uptight, blue-nosed prudes but that’s only to make rebellion look like the death of social life, a living hell of joyless Presbyterianism.

In fact, they were exciting days of ideas & ideals & commitment & many, like this woman, continue the gestalt. Many moved toward passivity & cynicism but the legacy of that generation stands tall. Activists like her continue to build antiwar activity despite the weakness of the movement so that when people in the US get off their leaden asses to oppose these wars, there will be an organizational matrix to accommodate growth.

No US bombing in Syria! No US bombing in Iraq! US-NATO out of Afghanistan!

(Photo by J. Scott Applewhite/AP)

When Wolf Blitzer introduced Emma Watson at the UN meeting on Monday, you had to know there was a bag job coming. As one of those movie star goodwill ambassadors for the UN, she was asked to speak at the launch of the “He For She” UN campaign to engage one billion men & boys worldwide in the fight for gender equality. Oh so noble! And oh what a crock!

Watson’s speech reflected a sincere feminist grappling with issues of misogyny–but dealing with them solely as a personal issue & in that regard she was being played by UN officials. The audience she addressed were government officials, minions & enforcers of misogynist & oppressive policies all over the world. They clapped like trained seals at her words which laid out the basic concepts of feminism–but feminism as a personal matter. That takes the heat off governments.

Feminists of the 1960s & 1970s popularized the slogan “The personal is the political” because, to be frank, men can be devastating in their personal treatment of women; they are often patronizing, rude, insulting, demeaning. And they can be rapists & beaters & a lot of other ugly things. Feminism is partially to strengthen women to stand up against his crap & end it in personal lives.

But feminism is also, & maybe primarily, a political ideology that educates about the sources of women’s oppression; the way misogyny, racism, & class interact; & proposes a political program to oppose & end it. Watson’s speech was bereft of transformational politics–& in more ways than one.

Reflecting her elite position in society, she cited Hillary Clinton’s role promoting a women’s rights agenda. But Clinton’s role has always been part of the political attempt (conducted by the UN & governments) to preempt feminism, neutralize it, personalize it but make it a weapon to advance the most reactionary neoliberal agenda, including war & Islamophobia.

Regrettably Watson reflects that part of the feminist movement that is privileged, obtuse to the politics of feminism & its potential for social transformation. In the circles she’s now traveling in, including elite feminists & government officials, it’s all about male culpability, getting women elected to political office (regardless of their stinking politics), & won’t have a thing to do with governments denying reproductive rights, enforcing discrimination in employment, racism in population control programs, forced sterilization of black & brown women, or lack of childcare facilities.

Watson was played but there’s no need to castigate her for naiveté & the blindness that often comes with privilege. There’s also no reason to follow her off a cliff.

(Photo is screen shot from video of her UN speech)

The US Census Bureau just released its annual report on poverty in the US. It’s now 50 years since president Lyndon Johnson proclaimed the War on Poverty (in 1964)–partly to ward off the advance of the Civil Rights Movement. According to The Heritage Foundation, a reactionary “think tank” (using the term loosely since a more appropriate designation would be “propaganda factory for intellectual hedgehogs”), US taxpayers have spent over $22 trillion on anti-poverty programs in that time (not including Social Security or Medicare). They calculate that, adjusted for inflation, this is three times the cost of all US wars since the American Revolution in 1776.

We concur with the Heritage crowd that the US hasn’t much to show for this project & we’d like to know what the hell the US government has been doing with the $22 trillion bucks since it certainly hasn’t “trickled down” past government bureaucrats to the poor. But of course the Heritage crowd only argue this to cut social welfare spending completely so more can be invested in wars. We also know the Heritage crowd is lying through their teeth about the cost of US militarism. They’re certainly omitting the costs of military “aid” to many countries, most notably to Israel, & the costs of nuclear weapons, cruise missiles, & Pentagon programs that allow them to give armored vehicles & arsenals to police departments.

Op-ed writers are full of hand-wringing over the poverty data but it’s observable their pity for the poor usually only lasts a day or two because they have substantial investments to attend to & don’t have a lot of time for mercy. Let it never be said the quality of their mercy will ever be over-strained.

So without further interpretation from fools, let the damning US Census data speak for itself. It is estimated today that over 50 million (one out of six) people in the US suffer “food insecurity.” Not hunger, starvation, famine, or malnutrition, but “food insecurity.” That term is another one of those damn bureaucratic & political evasions to avoid saying outright that a good share of humanity is starving to death. And in fact, when the term was coined at a 1974 UN conference on food, there were several famines, including in Bangladesh & Ethiopia. At the time, esteemed but sociopathic Harvard professors were promoting “triage” for the famine in Ethiopia–meaning since they had no future, it was more merciful to let them die than provide food aid. At that World Food Conference, then US secretary of state Kissinger declared that within ten years no child in the world would go to bed hungry. What he had in mind was likely the triage scheme where children would just be allowed to starve to death, hopefully before bedtime.

There are other damning statistics in the Census Bureau data: 60% of hungry & starving households have at least one working family member. They’re not, as the Heritage gang likely claims, ‘sitting on their asses collecting welfare’ (since they’re not English & their last name isn’t Windsor). Those hardest hit by exhorbitant food prices are immigrants, children, & elderly–not to mention those who go to work hungry so their kids can eat. Most of the children are certainly Black, Latino, & Native Americans but surprisingly the Census data shows that nearly half of those starving are white.

Speaking of food prices, many poor families find it cheaper to feed their kids fast food than buy groceries where a lousy pound of butter today costs over $5.00. Food pantries have long lines of people to get pasta, rice, Ramen noodles, white bread, chips, soda, processed & canned foods. There isn’t a living food on the shelves not just because it’s too expensive but because it isn’t the kind of stuff that fills people up–which partially explains the relationship between poverty & obesity.

While starvation in the US massively increases, the Obama regime is cutting Social Security, slashing the food stamp program to lower benefits & eliminate claimants (over two million), & cutting the free school lunch program. They’re giving most of the dough to the Pentagon but some is going (in a PR stunt) to Michelle Obama’s healthy eating, anti-obesity project in the school lunch program. According to many school officials, the program is a dud because federal guidelines mandate vegetables as the largest portion of a kid’s lunch & the entrée simply a side dish. The kids are leaving the table still hungry. Just because your family can’t afford to buy groceries doesn’t mean you don’t know a thing or two about what fills you up. And it aint broccoli. This scam is not unlike when president Reagan declared catsup a vegetable to lower costs of the school lunch program.

School free lunch programs are often the only meal kids get because the food stamp program is so stingy. When schools let out for the summer thousands of kids prowl the streets looking for something to eat. Soup kitchens are unable to accommodate the demand. If only the kids were just willing to die before school lets out–or bedtime, as Kissinger hoped.

This woman is Jacqueline Christian, a full-time home health aide & mother of two in Houston, Texas. She is saying grace over a takeout lunch from the supermarket. When the food runs out at home, she picks up dinner from McDonald’s dollar menu & tells her two boys she’s already eaten, “just hoping they leave a piece of the burger” for her.

If a government can’t provide food & shelter to millions of people because it’s bankrolling a massive military apparatus & several colonial wars, it might be time to take that government down. A daunting task perhaps but people need to eat.

(Photo is from National Geographic on hunger in the US)

Two of the creepiest & most disreputable US politicians–Bill & Hillary Clinton–are holding their annual Clinton Global Initiative meeting in NYC this week. That the attendees are a rogue’s gallery is no surprise, including the CEO of Monsanto & several other corporate hotshots; Madelyn Albright, of ‘500,000 Iraqi children was not too big a price to pay to achieve US goals in Iraq’ notoriety; the head of NATO; the king & queen of Jordan; & a little group of always-present, sycophantic movie stars like Matt Damon, Leonardo DiCaprio, & Eva Longoria.

The program was notable for the number of women-centered business groups present–not reflecting a commitment to women’s rights, but to making money off women & using women’s rights to peddle US foreign policy, including Islamophobia & wars.

The regrettable part of the program was the award given to Greg Asbed & Lucas Benitez, the co-founders of the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), an organization with impressive achievements in the movement of migrant workers. It’s not certain what that means except that CIW has been compromised.

It might be advisable to contact CIW to express our disappointment & suggest they think twice about their political associations: http://ciw-online.org/contact/

(Photo is Lucas Benitez on left & Greg Asbed on right from CIW website)

The excessive use of force & militarization of US police departments is an issue of the greatest importance to those who value the Bill of Rights. And it isn’t only an issue in the US because the gestalt of neoliberal capitalism is repression of democracy. The guys in this photo are identified variously as military police or riot cops in São Paulo, Brazil, deployed to evict 200 homeless families squatting in an abandoned hotel in the central district of the city. The cops served the eviction notice by knocking down the front gate with an armored vehicle & a barrage of rubber bullets, tear gas, & stun grenades. Media reports say they got aggressive only after evictees hurled objects at them from the windows. Nice try, but you don’t bring that kind of arsenal to an eviction unless you intend to use it. And you don’t come suited up in riot gear. A police official said his force spent two hours trying to cajole the families to vacate the building voluntarily. So when they didn’t agree to go docilely into homelessness, the troops were compelled to try to kill them? Is two hours of sweet talk really sufficient to the task?

Brazil, which continues to spend billions on elite sports stadia (the 2014 World Cup & 2016 Olympics), has a deficit of 6.6 million housing units for its estimated 20 million homeless people. In São Paulo, an estimated 10,000 people sleep rough on the street. According to Brazil’s own research institutions, half the population of São Paulo live in favelas, hovels, makeshift abodes & city officials estimate the shortage of housing units in the city at 700,000. Half the population of São Paulo is nearly 6 million people.

Central Zone of São Paulo (where the abandoned hotel is on a main boulevard) is a business & commercial district (one of the largest in Latin America) undergoing gentrification. Favelas in the area are now frequently set afire as a way to clear the poor out of the area to build chic shopping malls & luxury apartments. Arson & forced evictions have been primary tools for gentrification since urban renewal began in the 1970s & are frequent in the US, Phillipines, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Brazil, Nigeria, South Africa, & many other places.

Brazil has a strong homeless movement both in the rural & urban areas. They’ve been fighting pitched battles with the authorities over occupying abandoned buildings or setting up squatting encampments in abandoned lots. The Homeless Workers’ Movement (or Roofless Movement) employs legal challenges, public protests, mass occupations to demand homeless rights & public housing. The level of their political organization & the sophistication of their demands–not to mention their intransigence–is important to study since homelessness, including millions of orphaned or abandoned children, is a growing abomination in every country.

Housing is a human right!

(Photo by Nelson Almeida/AFP/Getty Images)

When Britain returned the colony of Hong Kong to China in 1997 it was under the policy of “one China, two systems”, meaning the economy of Hong Kong would remain capitalist & China would remain whatever the hell it is–a bastardized hybrid of sweatshop capitalism & state control. This arrangement would remain in effect until 2047. Capitalism under British colonialism was thriving in Hong Kong since in general & contrary to propaganda, tyranny best suits capitalism. None other than Milton Friedman, the simple-minded troll who shilled the most barbaric, antisocial forms of capitalism, thought it represented the apex of capitalist achievement. He claimed, after walking the streets of Hong Kong for a few hours, that there were no exploited workers in Hong Kong. It was a worker’s paradise even if they would be thrown into jail for trying to form a union.

One of the things that should have made the transition a seamless one from the political system of British colonialism to “one China, two systems” is that neither British colonialism nor China were democratic. So certainly out of the malevolence Britain exercised in exiting all its colonies, it sent one of it’s hapless ne’er-do-well politicians to begin reforms easing colonial rule a few years before the formal transition of sovereignty in 1997. One of the reforms was setting up an elective legislature which was really a provocation to China more than a reform because it was likely calculated to encourage anti-communist politicians to pose problems for China especially after the massacre of Tiananmen Square in 1989. The cordiality of the transition was only apparent.

Unsatisfactory explanations are given for why Britain turned sovereignty back to China. Some say it’s because Britain’s 99-year lease on the island ran out. British colonialism isn’t known for its adherence to law, let alone rental agreements. Hong Kong was a colonial enclave known as “the gateway to the West for China’s trade.” It’s wealth was derived from handling billions of dollars in Chinese exports & trade. The withdrawal agreement was masterminded (in 1984) by the British government under Thatcher in collaboration with British & Hong Kong capitalists & China to the economic advantage of both countries. British capitalists could continue to make billions without sustaining the burden of colonial administration.

The current conflict started this past summer when the Chinese government began to backtrack on peaceful coexistence with democratic rights in Hong Kong. Originally, the two countries had concocted Hong Kong Basic Law which included freedom of speech, assembly, press, religion, & the rights to form unions & strike. It also included a pledge of universal suffrage by 2017 for electing the Chief Executive of Hong Kong (a mayoral position replacing the British governor). But in late August, the Chinese authorities laid out proposed electoral procedures which are a one-act farce called “Their Universal Suffrage & Ours” where they control who is elected by strangling the nomination process. After so many years of machinations & deceits around that damn sovereignty, the Chinese government probably thought it could pull off another fast one.

The proposed election procedures are not unlike the US system: candidates for chief executive would not be by popular nomination or political party but by a government nominating committee. It only differs from the US system in that the US has two nominating committees posing as two parties–the Democrats & the Republicans. But in both cases, the elections are rigged so that corporate interests always win & there is no possibility for dissident voices to enter the system. The new procedures actually differ little from the present one in Hong Kong where a committee of 1,200 corporate elite choose the chief executive. Capitalism in Hong Kong doesn’t like to beat around the bush or even tip its hat to democracy but now the massive democracy movement is forcing that to change.

One of the primary things driving the democracy movement is the immense disparity between tycoons & working people in Hong Kong. It’s a small place but Hong Kong has 50 billionaires & an estimated 400,000 millionaires–out of a population of 7 million people. It also has nearly 1.5 million people living below the official poverty line set by the World Bank at US $1.25 a day (based on the cost of living in 1,000 BCE). One reason the troll Milton Friedman admired it so much is that it has almost no social security system; only 14% of people over 60 years-old get any social security so in order to eat they have to keep working into old age. The place is apparently distinguished by the number of indigent elderly people employed at menial labor for only a few hundreds bucks a month.

The miniumum wage in Hong Kong is US $3.87 or £2.40 an hour. That’s 75 cents more than the cost of a quart of milk. An average one-bedroom apartment costs US $1,446. That’s why there are nearly half a million people in Hong Kong waiting for public housing on a waiting list that’s ten years long. And while they’re waiting they live in “coffin homes” or cage homes which are like chicken coops layered on top of each other under the cities multi-million dollar skyscrapers, luxury apartments & chic shopping malls. These chicken coops don’t go cheap; the average is about US $175 a month, which is more than one weeks wage. In short, it’s everything that’s damning about capitalism. Not to mention everything that’s damning about China.

Activists in Hong Kong’s large democratic movement pledged a campaign of civil disobedience to paralyze the central financial district–the jugular of the place. Like every social movement, Hong Kong democracy activists are divided by those with relatively short-sighted demands & those with far broader reform goals. A section of the movement called “Occupy Central with Love & Peace” calls primarily for universal suffrage. That section is massive, including many students, but has a rather equivocal leadership who appear reluctant to go the distance by shutting down business in Hong Kong. But there are many other organizations involved. For many years the political movement there has been impressive & massive in demanding justice for Tiananmen Square; in honoring Chinese labor organizer & dissident Li Wangyang who served 20 years in jail for political activity; in supporting Edward Snowden; in demanding democratic rights. Our fullest solidarity with their movement.

Photo is of 78-year-old Tam Wing Dik who lives in this cage home.

(Photo by Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

Mural street art flourished & played a dramatic role in the Egyptian uprising of 2011–now so brutally repressed under General Sisi, bankrolled by the IMF & armed by the US Pentagon. The murals were political, irreverent, satirical, iconoclastic, radical–& most of all, magnificent. Under the new regime, the murals could not be allowed to stay & have been mostly painted over by the government. (Murals continue to play a role in Yemen, where the uprising has also been beaten back, at least for now.)

This mural is on a street near Tahrir Square, Cairo, where artists use the whitewashed walls for new art works “with modern & Pharaonic motifs”–whatever the hell that means! Is it an artistic protest akin to samizdat, the dissident, often underground, literature under Stalinism in the USSR which masked social criticism even in detective novels & science fiction? Does that Pharaonic stuff suggest military dictatorship stuff? Or is this just an Egyptian guy evoking ancient history? Or is it an artist being a smart-aleck to keep Sisi’s censors guessing?

The Egyptian uprising against tyranny has been seriously set back–at first outsmarted by the Egyptian military & US Pentagon, but now severely repressed. It was a profound social rupture; a defeat of that scope takes time for people to debate, assess, understand, & come back fighting. But one thing became clear from here: if US working people don’t get off their leaden asses in solidarity to oppose US bankrolling & arming of tyranny, social transformation will take longer & be a whole lot harder to accomplish. Not impossible, just harder.

(Photo by Hassan Ammar/AP)

Most animal lovers respond viscerally to seeing animals caged in zoos & we are often accused of anthropomorphizing animals who, the accusers say, operate by instincts & not emotions. We can only hope the accusers never have a dog to gnaw on that prejudice based in the outdated schema of “The Great Chain of Being.”

I have always been most struck by caged gorillas confined to settings constructed of plastic & without the smells & sounds of nature. Most often they sit with their backs to the viewing public, picking nits, looking miserable. A zookeeper I once met while viewing a gorilla explained to me the gorilla was not at all as miserable as he looked; in fact, he was intellectually stimulated every Thursday when they hid his food & made him hunt for it. This is when you’re wishing King Kong will show up.

In a local zoo in St. Paul, MN, I’ve seen parrots, high-strung by nature, chained to their perches in noisy, trafficked areas where their nerves must have snapped from overstimulation. I’ve seen giraffes confined during several winter months to cement rooms the size of a toilet stall where they are unable to turn or sit. And we won’t even talk about what we’ve seen in circuses.

This photographer shot these photos of animals at his local zoo because he was struck by the sadness in their eyes. He wanted to see if “the eyes are the windows to the soul” was true for animals as well as humans. The grieving eyes of animals are the dead giveaway to their emotional lives. Many have also noticed that if you coo to an animal–quietly, soothing, even apologetic–they all respond like children do because they feel (not instinct, but feel) empathy.

This is the eye of an elephant–& there is probably no more abused animal than this magnificent creature. If you look at the entire album, you will see proof that animals do indeed have emotions &, like us, their eyes are the window to their souls”.

http://oscarciutat.com/project/caged/#17

(Photos by Oscar Ciutat)

When the police department in Ferguson, MO, used extreme force & a high-tech military arsenal against the unarmed Black commmunity to prevent them from exercising their rights to assembly & free speech, many public officials (including Obama) & the media acted all aghast & began one of their hand-wringing debates about the militarization of police departments throughout the US. Well it’s about time, even if it is part theater & half-assed, since the problem is not a new one, at least not if you’re Black or Latino.

According to the official narrative in media, the militarization of city cops began with the development of SWAT teams under police chief Darryl Gates in Los Angeles in the late 1960s. SWAT is an acronym for “Special Weapons & Tactics” (originally named “Special Weapons Assault Team”). According to manuals, SWAT teams are to be used for hostage situations, shootouts, when suspects are presumed armed & dangerous, even suicide prevention. According to the media, the US War on Drugs (begun in the 1980s) pushed things out of control so that today SWAT teams execute routine warrants usually but not always under the guise of drug raids. And they do it with battering rams to knock out doors, lobbing grenades & tear gas into homes, & with high-powered rifles. Probably to practice their skills, SWAT teams across the US have performed alcohol inspections on bars; raided bars for suspected underage drinking; performed license inspections at barbershops; raided a gay bar where public sex was alleged; raided Amish farms & food co-ops suspected of selling unpasteurized milk products; raided medical marijuana dispensaries in states where they are legal; raided an organic farm suspected of growing marijuana.

Today the number of SWAT team raids are in the tens of thousands per year & the overwhelming majority of them are in the Black & Latino communities. The truth of the matter is that extreme police violence has always existed in the Black community & SWAT teams are part of a police strategy to maintain social control of the Black community. One need only look at the violence used against the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s, including water cannons, attack dogs, mounted police. Police brutality is what ignited urban rioting in Black communities in the 1960s including the riots in Watts, the Black neighborhood of Los Angeles in 1965.

The media narrative claims Gates cooked up the scheme of SWAT teams after the Watts riots to deal with extreme situations. But the LAPD under the previous police chief William Parker was distinguished for racist brutality in Watts which is one of the issues that ignited the rioting. Gates first tested SWAT teams in a 1969 raid on a group of Black Panthers but they had previously been tested by police in Delano, California north of LA against striking members of the United Farm Workers union. The experience in Delano was used by SWAT teams in the LAPD to hone skills.

Gates was a particularly foul & unapologetic racist & anti-Semite who was forced to resign in 1992 as a result of his mishandling of the Rodney King incident. In 1991, King, who is Black, was viciously beaten by four white cops. A bystander videotaped the incident which put LAPD violence against Blacks under an international spotlight. An all-white jury acquitted the cops in 1992 which led to further rioting in Watts. Gates who held that casual drug users should be shot & claimed Blacks didn’t fare well in police chokeholds because their physiology was different from “normal people” responded to criticisms of his handling of the King case by saying, “Clearly that night we should have gone down there & shot a few people. In retrospect, that’s exactly what we should have done. We should have blown a few heads off.”

Gates was a loose cannon & a thug & likely not the architect of SWAT teams. It’s far more likely the US government–which was terrified of Black rebellion across the country as well as the Civil Rights & Black Power movements–was using Gates & the LAPD to test & develop a strategy for social control of the Black & Latino communities. The so-called War on Drugs was part of that strategy to justify turning Black communities into martial law zones & preempt the Bill of Rights, particularly regarding illegal search & seizure, probable cause, & due process. As a result thousands of Black teens were railroaded into prisons falsely accused or for minor offenses that deserved nothing more than a “tut-tut” & a wink. Blacks kids were sentenced to life without parole for simply smoking a joint.

When the majority of people in the US bought the narrative about Black narco-terrorist gangs & allowed police to run roughshod in the Black community without protest, they allowed a wholesale assault on the Bill of Rights for everyone. This is where that “An injury to one is an injury to all” thing gets played out in technicolor. Because by 1999, at the Seattle WTO protests, the cops came in full commando regalia. Today you can’t even have a protest sing-along in the park without cops showing up in riot gear. The extreme violence that goes back decades in Watts & other Black neighborhoods is a seamless whole with police brutality under the guise of the War on Drugs, with the violent attacks on Occupy protestors in 2011, & with the violent attacks on the Black community in Ferguson.

This photo is a $700,000 armored vehicle recently given to the San Diego Unified School District for kids from preschool to the 12th grade. They were given the “mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle” (MRAP) built to withstand armor-piercing roadside bombs by the Pentagon under the same program which supplied the Ferguson cops with MRAPs, tear gas, assault rifles, grenades, battering rams. Clearly the Pentagon is being over-funded if it has billions of dollars of weapons to give away. But more likely, the program is a scam & is part of US government strategy to contain the social unrest they got an alarming preview of with Occupy & with Ferguson. Handing this vehicle to school cops is a troubling escalation that needs to be nipped in the bud.

Nothing terrifies the rulers of this country more than the rebellion of Black teens & the politicization of the Black community. Economic policy in this country & US military policy is completely dependent on racism. But to those who want to see a world fit for human beings in live & love in, the development of Black rebellion & solidarity with it, is a cornerstone to social transformation. If you want to know where the leadership of social change in the US is coming from, look to the young woman from Ferguson who knelt in the street against a phalanx of MRAPs & a barrage of tear gas.

(Photo of MRAP from San Diego Unified School District)

The Twitter-sphere & social media are a-sputter with indignation at news that Willy & KKKKaty are having a second child who will be raised on the dole, paid for lock, stock, & barrel by taxpayers. Now indignation is a virtue, not an indulgence–& certainly not an emotion to be frittered away every time we’re run around the block by excesses of the 1%. So the question is, what made this news? Because moochocracy has never ever been anything but a glorified welfare class. Their very survival is testimony to the largesse of the welfare system. For those living in nations that trounced feudalism a few centuries ago, it is also testimony to the need for political modernization in England.

The time for indignation over Willy & KKKKaty might be somewhat belated since last year it was announced renovation costs on their four-story 20-room palace were already at $6.6 million & rising. A Buckingham minion explained the renovations weren’t reckless or extravagant since the palace was their one & only “official residence” where they plan to stay for many years to come. A few questions arise: (1) Tell us about those “unofficial residences”. (2) Does Buckingham expect this romance to be unfettered with the nonsense that beleaguered so many earlier dynasts in the same clan? We’d leave gossip to the tabloids except that $6.6 million moves the matter from dishing gossip to grand larceny.

Here’s where indignation might come in handy. While renovation costs were adding up, the British government was making access to welfare benefits much more stringent to trim “widespread abuses” of the system–cleaning up the old “welfare chiseler” scam. Part of the reforms included eliminating benefits for those in public housing who had more living space than government bureaucrats deemed necessary–like an extra bedroom. The so-called “bedroom tax” reform would have evicted thousands, including elderly & disabled people. So in the interests of public accountability, another question arises: Why wasn’t Willy & KKKKaty’s palace included in the bedroom tax reform? Because by the new welfare calculations, they have 16 rooms over the limit & their welfare check an overage of at least $6.5 million. What’s up with that England!?

In this news of the birth of a new welfare chiseler there is a silver lining: the less than redoubtable Harry will be one more step removed from taking over Betty’s role as chief hand-waver of the nation.