SuperLowBudge

I just read that they're mad at John Mellencamp for speaking out. I am 56 years old, and I am SO sick of them telling VOTING MEMBERS OF SOCIETY to stay out of politics. Who the hell do they think they are? Especially when we're in danger as a nation because of these absolute ghouls.

An open letter from 2012. Fourteen years, and the situation has only gotten more dire.

𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐫 𝐖𝐡𝐢𝐭𝐞 𝐂𝐡𝐫𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐢𝐚𝐧 𝐋𝐚𝐰𝐦𝐚𝐤𝐞𝐫: 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐀𝐫𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐆𝐞𝐭𝐭𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐀𝐰𝐚𝐲 𝐖𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐈𝐭?

August 20, 2012

Dear White Christian Lawmaker,

I just don't understand how you're getting away with it. Has the nation gone so numb at this point that no one is willing to stop you? Have people forgotten that as state leaders you are not endowed with any sort of divine status? Put simply, you aren't actually allowed to legislate based on your personal religious beliefs, signing bills into law based on nothing but scripture. Not any more.

𝘊𝘰𝘯𝘵𝘪𝘯𝘶𝘦𝘥 𝘰𝘯 𝘋𝘪𝘢𝘳𝘺 𝘰𝘧 𝘢 𝘓𝘰𝘸 𝘉𝘶𝘥𝘨𝘦𝘵 𝘚𝘶𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘰:

“So many of my friends post about how they feel about the present economy. I wonder how they would feel if, in the future, they were one of the fortunate ones who was earning a lot more money. Would you still be angry with them for having more than you? Would you still think they should pay more than they are now? Would you still think your money should support those who don’t have, because they aren’t ambitious as you?” (August 24th, 2012, Author Withheld)

When I saw this aggressively ill-informed post on Facebook 14 summers ago, I was gobsmacked. Four questions posed, four examples of total ignorance about the growing wealth gap in America, and the liberal reaction to the problem.

I live in Boston. The minimum wage in Boston was $8 in 2012 (federal minimum was $7.25.) The average rent in Boston 2012 was approximately $913 per month. In 2026? Average rent is $3,673, and upwards of $4k for two- and 3-bedrooms. That’s well over a 300% increase. Minimum wage? $15 in Boston — that’s an 87% increase. Simply put, rent outpaces income spectacularly.

Federal minimum wage in 2026? Still $7.25. While the nationwide average rent for a two-bedroom apartment in 2026 has jumped to $1,795. A 96% increase over 2012 rates. Forget about buying. It’s out of reach for most people.

When you factor in the exorbitantly high prices at the pump, at the supermarket, healthcare, and all the other necessities of life, it’s clear to anyone that late-stage capitalism cost-of-living is outpacing income.

Oh, but not for the big corporate CEOs. Oh no. According to the Economic Policy Institute, “CEO-to-worker pay has skyrocketed over the last six decades. In 2024, CEOs were paid 281 times as much as a typical worker — in contrast to 1965, when they were paid 21 times as much as a typical worker.” And according to the Harvard Law School Forum On Corporate Governance, “As CEO compensation increased, so did the gap between executive and employee pay. Equilar 500 data shows that the median CEO pay ratio rose from 210:1 in 2024 to 219:1 in 2025, a 4.3% increase. Growth was also recorded at both the 25th and 75th percentiles, signaling a broad-based expansion in pay disparities across large public companies. The rising pay ratio suggests that compensation growth for CEOs continues to outpace gains for the typical employee, further widening the divide between executive and workforce earnings.”

Four questions posed, four examples of total ignorance about the growing wealth gap in America, and the liberal reaction to the problem.

"I wonder how they would feel if, in the future, they were one of the fortunate ones who was earning a lot more money."

"Would you still be angry with them for having more than you?"

"Would you still think they should pay more than they are now?"

"Would you still think your money should support those who don’t have, because they aren’t ambitious as you?”

Here’s what I wrote in 2012 to “Author Withheld.” I wish I were wrong. I really do. But the proverbial writing was on the wall. On this #ThrowbackThursday, let’s take a look back.

_______________________________________

Life in the Lower 99 (Published August 24, 2012)

In any other political climate, the litany of wrongheaded assumptions in this rant would leave me astonished. As it is, I know that any conservative voter could have written it. Living quite comfortably in a suburban cashmere-lined bubble, in their heart of hearts these people actually believe that those less fortunate are just jealous. I’ve had that said right to my face. “You’re just jealous.” Well “your just jealous” is probably what they say, let’s be real.

What’s actually happening is this: those without a sufficient grasp of the democratic social contract are unable and/or unwilling to mentally align themselves with the plight of friends and neighbors living at or below the poverty level. Like school children that join in with the bully, they grasp at a chance to align with the privileged. And also, clearly, they don’t seem to understand what taxes even are, or how it’s all supposed to work. Let’s break it down.

"Why should people who are well to do be punished for working harder to make more?"

This is one sentence with a smattering of ideas that don’t connect with anything. Who is talking about wealthy people being “punished” here? All we’re saying is kill the tax loopholes and shelters that are siphoning the lifeblood from our economy and lining the pockets of people who have almost as much money as God. We need everyone’s contribution or else there isn’t enough in the kitty here. And what the hell do you mean “for working harder.” I work my ass off, so did my parents. People are having to work two, three jobs just to put food on the table, struggling to keep up with how fast their kids’ feet are growing. How dare you suggest that anyone without mansions and yachts just didn’t work hard enough. It would be a personal insult if it weren’t so stupid.

"Would you still think your money should support those who don’t have, because they aren’t ambitious as you?”

Excuse me, ambitious? See above.

"Would you still think they should pay more than they are now?"

Yes. Of course I would. Do you think my belief in the concept of “fair share” changes depending upon my personal share? That’s an appalling point of view, frankly. The reason that Mitt Romney only pays 14% in taxes has zero to do with how “hard” he has worked, lady. In fact that guy never had to put in a hard day’s labor in his life. Martin Sheen put it, “He was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.” When income is in the form of capital gains, and those earnings are not taxed at the same rate as my paycheck, that means these people get to keep a significantly larger percentage of what they earn.

"Would you still be angry with them for having more than you?"

Average Americans are not “angry” about top 1% “having more.” We’re not toddlers, what’s wrong with you? Of course there will always be families who’ve done well for themselves, that can leave behind a legacy of wealth that shore up generations. And naturally there will always be average families living modestly as well. That’s not even close to why we’re “angry.”

Here’s what we are, okay?

We are pissed off because our former robust democracy has transformed into a sick oligarchy. As a nation, thanks to this brand of upside-down, backwards thinking, we’ve exchanged “we the people” for an economy and society controlled by about four hundred guys, give or take.

We are outraged that the wealthy have the means to insert politicians into power. These conservative money-backed politicians are mere puppets of the elite, ready with a “yes” vote on any bill that will empower the elite, a sweaty grip on the red pen to abolish any initiative designed to gut our basic American freedom.

We are astonished that people like you think it’s totally fair game to essentially rig the system in one’s favor, to purchase policy that rewards wealth and obliterates the poor and the middle class. The people whose political seats have been paid for by the 1% have craftily engineered the tax code to siphon off funds that should be bolstering our nation’s infrastructure. They have set up tax shelters where there should be homeless shelters and women’s shelters. The Federal Reserve just came out with a report in black and white that shows what we have been saying for twelve years: the median net worth for the middle class family has dropped steadily since there was a Democrat in the oval office, and has plummeted ever further into the abyss since 2007; during the same time period, over 90% of all new income was earned by the top 1%. That means 99% of people shared the remaining 10%. Does that sound right to you? That most of the American people are grimly trudging along, battling ever-higher housing, fuel, education, health expenses and growing poorer every year? And it’s not because they are less “ambitious.” And it’s not because they’re “jealous.” It’s a rigged system. “Loophole” is never defined as a positive thing. And that does not sound right to me.

We are incensed because the politicians who themselves feel safe with their top-rated health insurance (for themselves, and their families, and for life by the way) are empowered to decide what “affordable” health care means, doggedly slashing programs and insisting that privatized medicine is the answer. Everyone knows that “privatized” is code for “you get what you pay for,” and going by that logic, all of the ailing rich will be treated while the poor will simply crawl off to some hole in the ground to die. Cancer isn’t bad enough, we should also become destitute and homeless?

We are furious that the economy is in an unnecessary recession. Those of us with jobs are facing the highest food and housing costs ever, many haven’t had a salary increase in years, Many are under-employed. I have brilliant friends with college degrees who are driving cabs and working the till at the supermarket. It wasn’t the 99% that caused this recession. It was the greedy 1%, and now they want to fix it by taking even MORE from us. These people bullied their way into the big chairs, voted consistently to make sure the rest of us would need to struggle just to maintain the basics, and it all came to a head when there was no other option but to approve that sickening $700 billion bailout through the TARP program, plus the Federal Reserve provided $16 trillion to your schoolyard bully’s gargantuan corporations. The media gave it a cute title (Too Big To Fail) and a jingle and a graphic and then talked about Angelina Jolie some more.

“The enormous bets they made on worthless, complex, and exotic financial instruments went bad, and they stuck the American people with the bill,” wrote U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders in June of this year. Senator Sanders also wrote that “the wealthiest 400 individuals own more wealth than the bottom half of America, 150 million people…the top 1 percent own 40 percent of all wealth, while the bottom 60 percent owns 2 percent…Incredibly, the bottom 40 percent of all Americans own just 0.3 percent of the wealth of the country.”

"I wonder how they would feel if, in the future, they were one of the fortunate ones who was earning a lot more money."

You guys, I found the prettiest desk chair on Facebook Marketplace. It was a 3-minute Uber ride away. We picked it up last night. It's perfect, I love it so much.🥰

The only problem with having been hunting for a new chair online is the dreaded avalanche of ads for chairs I'm getting and will get until the end of time. I'm telling you, retargeting has to be the dumbest martech (marketing technology) they ever came up with, and I am over it. In 2014 and for nearly three years I worked for a martech start-up. We were literally collecting and writing profiles of every tech tool to gather in a massive database for marketers. I did content generation, wrote the blog & newsletter, was content team leader, website power user (UX), and did R&D. You wear a lot lot of hats in a start-up. Anyway, for those years I was immersed in all the tech tools marketers use to convert us all to paying customers, essentially. There were over 5000 tools. And this was BEFORE AI. Retargeting? That's when ads follow you around the web showing you the thing you just looked at, whether you Googled for it or visited a store's website or mentioned it in a social media post. Supposedly retargeting, part of the wider marketing scheme of "personalization," aids in conversion rate. Conversion is the last part of the sales funnel when you actually click and purchase whatever thing. Sure, retargeting (and personalization as a whole) might help sales. They all show proof of this, percentages of users who converted. They know where you're going online, they know what you're shopping for, they know when you're stalling on the thing in your shopping cart. They hate that. They start emailing you, man.

But the damn tech isn't smart enough to know when you already converted! I BOUGHT a chair yesterday. Stop hounding me with every freakin' chair in the world for the love of God. This is what people mean when they lament that the internet has changed for the worse compared to the old days. In the beginning, you were free to just...browse the web. Jump ahead a few decades, and here come all the tools that go along with personalized marketing. They track our every click, like, upvote, etc. They think they're creating such accurate profiles of us, and they think they know what to do with all that data. They tell us it's all for our benefit, they tell us it tailors content, messages, and ads to our individual preferences, behaviors, and characteristics. Bullshit. It's not helpful. It's not appreciated. They don't know us. It's annoying af and I wish there was a way to opt-out of any kind of "personalized" internet malarkey. Here's a prime example to illustrate the benefit of a web personalization opt-out tool. I used to do a lot of freelance writing and editing (and I hope to return to it). Writing and editing for multitudes of clients means a lot of research online, on a wide variety of topics. Man, I can't even think of all the freelance writing and editing jobs I did. I wrote press releases for video companies (everything from cameras to post-production), I wrote about an online source for digital comic books, edited a book on style (fashion), a few mental health clinical worksheets (on Anorexia and Bulimia in teens, on blood injury phobia), content for a party planner's website, business and leisure travel tips for something I cringe to report they called "bleisure," Kickstarter campaigns, artist profiles, resumes...

Well. You can imagine the array of "personalized" content I was favored with...who, I wonder, does the big data marketing beast think I am?

It definitely helped to switch from Google to Duck Duck Go for a search engine, on Firefox that lets you turn off AI. I did that on May 26th, 2026 when Google announced they were switching to an all AI search engine. Nope. Not only that, but "to do things like recommend a YouTube video you might like" Google started accessing our "images, files, audio and video" from our transactions. I beg your finest pardon? Uh, no you're not. That day I switched to another, non-invasive platform instead of Gmail, Google Docs, and Google Calendar. My blog is still on Blogger, but I did two things--I downloaded all the years of Blogger content up until May 26th, and I started duplicating the entries on Diaryland. 

Excuse me, let's go back to that, where Google is invading our privacy "to do things like recommend a YouTube video you might like." Yeah, no. I have lots and lots of friends who do that for me. I do not need you to recommend anything for me, Google. Who asked for that?! GTFO of my files. That stuff is nunya bizness, it's not there for you to sell to marketers for "personalization," and that goes double for training your AI using my private files. Honestly, are you crazy? 

Anyway. I bought a chair.∎

Joe "onlyone" Kowalski is a studio maverick who's been working out of Boston since 2001. He programs all the synths and plays all the instruments. One of onlyone's records is The Great Capsule. Joe describes it as "an epic post-rock instrumental combining familiar and fantastical sounds to tell their story." To me it sounds like if Beefheart and Trent Reznor collaborated, with Eno consulting with his Oblique Strategies. Chaotic at times, then mellow, with an awesome melodic motif. Wild and completely riveting.

Don't forget this. Charlottesville. This happened in 2017. It was horrifying. Look at these faces. They literally want to kill my friends. I wrote about it in the blog, in an essay called "Say No To Every Nazi." It begins:

"Right now in Trump's America, there are Nazi-like mobs marching for their right to rid America of "defectives" and "take back their country." They wear no hoods or cloaks. They fly Confederate flags high, they call for violence and preach freedom. These are people who view the concept of diversity and equal rights as a direct threat to them, personally. "You will not replace us! Jews will not replace us" is their paranoid battle cry. They chant "If it ain't white, it ain't right." If you're not with them, you're traitors and "libtards." They are proud Republicans, and they have heard the "Make America Great Again" message loud and clear."

Dear Trump acolytes. We "libtards" told you. We warned you. It was clear from the beginning. NOW LOOK WHERE WE ARE! If you voted for this, with all due respect, F you.

Millennials think they're the first generation to be tech literate?

I was 14. My brother was 10 and played a lot of sports. I remember that because on that day, he had an accident on the field and my parents took him to the hospital. They sat in the waiting room. There were two elderly black gentlemen sitting across from them. My mom heard one of them say to the other, "You know, we lost Marvin." 

A certain entry in my blog from 2017 is rising in the rankings, I wonder why (I don't wonder, that's sarcasm). The first Women's March. It's titled "The Revolution Will Be Digitized (Because F**k This Guy)." It begins, "Every generation needs to find a way to come to terms with its dark years. Slavery, Chinese encampment, Japanese persecution. Here is what people have been asking themselves throughout the recorded history of humans: "If I were alive during [mass persecution of any one group] and saw what was happening, what would I have done?" Three weeks into the Trump administration, you no longer have to wonder what you would have done. What you are doing right now is what you would have done."

You guys. Today, on a random Tuesday of no particular significance, I'm sharing what I wrote about my husband Joe Kowalski. He's my favorite person. I hope that point comes across. He's magic.