Image: Granny D
SNOOTY TALKS WITH POOPY [aka poor folks]
“Why would you tell me to read a book about fucking poor people,” Ivanka once asked her friend, as reported by that former friend Lysandria Ohrstrom at <https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2020/11/ivanka-trump-was-my-best-friend-now-shes-maga-royalty> .
SNOOT: Good question!
POOP: I have a problem understanding your values.
SNOOT: No news you’ve got problems.
POOP: So you feel the same way as Ivanka?
SNOOT: Reading about failures is for the birds.
POOP: The poor are failures at…?
SNOOT: Upward mobility; power; belonging; the elite; money; prestige; status; fame…the way they dress
POOP: How about honesty?
SNOOT: Honesty is for the gullible, ignorant, and those who don’t know how to read the playbook.
POOP: Honesty’s no good?
SNOOT: They have to be protected from honesty; they might panic.
POOP: Who are these poor people, anyway?
SNOOT: Oh, you know–dropouts, addicts, gender-scramblers, blacks, refugees, the homeless, convicts, dirt farmers–the undercrust in general.
POOP: Are there no more good people?
SNOOT: Oh sure–Warren Buffet, The Koch brothers, the Waltons, Jeff Bezos, …I just read that one monied gentleman charges people $6500 to be airlifted out of Afghanistan. You see, the poor can’t even pay for their own lives. Who’d want to read about such losers?
POOP: What about the “salt of the earth” folks?
SNOOT: Peons! You know what to do with peons, don’t you?
POOP: Don’t say it.
SNOOT: If we paid everybody a decent salary, our corporations would fail, and they are the backbone of our economy..
POOP: How did your corporations get so strong-armed?
SNOOT: It’s a wonderful story. Let me tell you…. In 2009 SCOTUS heard arguments in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission and decided the lawsuit in 2010, to give corporations, Unions and other groups the right to pump as much money as they wanted into the political system. It became law in 2010. It was a matter of freedom of speech–corporations could count as people, too, since they’re made up of people, and they have more money than the individual people, or any other group. See how clever we can be?
POOP: Sounds clever, but not democratic.
SNOOT: Of course it’s democratic! Didn’t you hear what I just said? Corporations are people, too, and have a lot more clout!
POOP: But isn’t that double counting?
SNOOT: No prob. It passed, that’s what counts.
POOP: What Supreme Court members voted to do that?!
SNOOT: Thought you'd never ask….The justices responsible for passage were Anthony M. Kennedy, John G. Roberts Jr., Antonin Scalia, Samuel A. Alito, Jr. and Clarence Thomas.
POOP: That was 2010? What was Granny D doing that year? SNOOT: Who? POOP: Thought you'd never ask…. Granny D turned 100 years old three days after the 2010 passage of the Citizens United ruling. That is especially sad.
SNOOT: How so?
POOP: Between the ages of 88 and 90 she walked 3200 miles, from California to Washington D.C. for campaign finance reform. Campaign financing was already a problem, even before Citizens United.
SNOOT: Smatter of opinion.
POOP: ….and she demonstrated at the nation’s capitol!
SNOOT: Got arrested, I hope.
POOP: According to Wikipedia, she did get arrested, and said “Your Honor, to the business at hand: the old woman who stands before you was arrested for reading the Declaration of Independence in America’s Capitol Building. I did not raise my voice to do so and I blocked no hall. But if it is a crime to read the Declaration of Independence in our great hall, then I am guilty.” The judge sentenced Granny D and her companions to time served and a $10 administrative fee. From <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doris_Haddock#Arrest_at_the_Capitol>
SNOOT: Oh.
NANMYKEL.COM 