Political culture and the military-industrial complex

Throughout my childhood, I heard references to the Military-Industrial complex. Growing up military, I usually heard them from the Left, from environmentalists and pacifists. Imagine my surprise when I took International Space Politics & Technology, and discovered that the phrase came from a Republican. President Eisenhower, in fact, and a World War II General.  (Everything seems to come back to World War II.)

Number crunching

There's a video going around, Wealth Inequality in America.

It reminds me of a sermon I heard at the UU church in Lafayette, Indiana, when I was an undergrad.  The co-speakers were talking about poverty.  There's this persistent myth, that people are poor because they're lazy.  The women pointed out that the poor are working their hineys off just trying to get by.

That fit, with what I saw in my senior year of high school, when my parents were working three jobs each.  Dad had a full-time day job, a part-time afternoon job, and then a part-time evening job.  Mom's schedule was very similar.