How many dead kids does it take to make an elected official give a shit?

"Like a lot of jokes, it's not a joke."  -Noam Chomsky

So... just so we're clear.  What exactly is the cutoff point?  For what, you may ask?  Dead kids.  And no, this isn't some kind of elaborate dead baby joke, so hear me out.

In any given situation, there is a point at which a condition or behaviour becomes so egregiously unacceptable that something must be done to eliminate it.  So.  We can call the massacres of our children by radicalized lunatics, fascists and supremacists "School Shootings.".  But that really deflects the reader or listener's attention from the victims.  Someone went in and shot up a school, people say. 

No they didn't.  Someone went into a school and shot a bunch of children.

That sounds a lot more unacceptably horrible, doesn't it?

Cos it is.

They're not school shootings.  They're children shootings. 

But I digress.  If only a little.

THIS IS AN AR-15.

So.. having established that these murderers are engaging in children shootings, let's get back to the original point.  These child murders have been allowed to continue by allowing radicalized horrible murderers access to fully automatic military assault weapons.  The president as a matter of fact RESCINDED regulations that kept people unbalanced enough to want to buy a machine gun and shoot a bunch of children from... getting one.  Some of these murderers, in fact, had entire arsenals of weapons purpose built for murdering as many people as they possibly can in the shortest amount of time.  This is a situation that can be addressed and acted on by our leaders.  And it has not.  They have worsened it.  Not improved it.



Ergo, we have not reached the amount of murdered children for our eminently bribe-able leaders to give a damn about the situation. 

Therefore... there must be a finite amount of murdered children that is acceptable to our current elected officials.  This is the amount of dead kids that they're just hunky-dory fine with.  Doesn't matter if it's your dead kids.  My dead kids.  Anyone's dead kids but their own kids.  As long as they're your dead kids, they are just fine with accepting the NRA's check, having a drink and going on with their day.

Furthermore, if there is a finite acceptable number of murdered children, there must be a number at which that acceptable number becomes unacceptable.  So.  The question now becomes, how many dead kids does it take?

It sounds like a slogan meant to arouse an emotion.  Something a newscaster might show you footage of.  Protesters in the streets of Washington DC with signs reading "HO-HO-HO, HEY-HEY, HEY, HOW MANY OF OUR KIDS MUST BE KILLED BY THE KKK?"  You know.  Right before the news cuts to an ad about something to do with Mesothelioma, or an accident lawyer.  Since when you're in an 'aroused' state, you are easier to sell things to.

It's not a slogan.  It's a valid and grisly question. 

How many dead children is it acceptable for insane people to shoot dead with assault rifles before something is done?

Am I being insensitive and crass?  Should I ask the question in nicer terms?  Should I be more politically correct when it comes to discussing children being shot in the head/vital organs by some white supremacist with an AR-15 military assault rifle?  Given that the situation has been allowed to continue, perhaps I should not give an eighth of a damn about the hurt feelings of a congressman or senator whose allegiances have already been bought by the NRA.  You know.  The people responsible for the lack of regulations that allowed the sale of those weapons to the dead children's murderers.

Being nice about it, or socially acceptable, doesn't seem to have helped the situation.  The implication from those that offer their thoughts and prayers on a regular basis is that I should react in a socially acceptable manner to the concept of children shootings.  Cos all that praying and thought has surely stopped these massacres, amirite?  Sitting and pretending that's helping will end this national nightmare forevermore, won't it?  I should just go on with my life, as though madmen, racists and nazis shooting children with assault rifles is now something that should be considered normal.  And if I'M a bit upset about the idea that kids should have to set up gofundme sites to be able to afford bulletproof body armor for school, then suddenly I'M the asshole.

What is the reasonable response to a government who only pays lip service to thoughts and prayers for our children slain by domestic terrorists with a de-facto official sanction?  Should I be expected to provide a reasonable response?  Surely some form of response is demanded here.  The corpses are piling up and the government is making it EASIER to get weapons like these.  If the question is "How many dead kids does it take before you give a shit?", then we need to make them sickeningly aware of how many kids are being murdered.  Essentially some litmus test that will cause a government creature to (A) decide they give a shit.   Or (B), that they don't give a shit about the regular mass murder of our children in the public eye.

I propose we start throwing the corpses of our dead onto the steps of congress.  Or we could just chuck em over the fence at the White House.

Okay, RELAX.  NOT actual corpses, cos honestly they'll just use that as an excuse to arrest us.  Then they get to call US the radicalized lunatics.  You know.  Instead of the people who murdered our children.

What we do is make or buy blank life-sized rag dolls of our murdered kids.  And then start chaining them to the stone columns of national monuments.  Or maybe we just chuck em over the fence at the White House.  If you're lucky, you won't quite throw it hard or high enough and it gets stuck on the spikes so that the secret service has to climb up there and take them down..  There's a nice little bit of symbolism for you, one supposes.

We can paint the things with red dye where they were shot.  We can write their names and their stories on the things.  We can pin their portraits to the dolls' faces.  Have their friends and aggrieved loved ones sign the dolls.  Dress them in the clothes of our beloved slain.  Make them not be faceless statistics that can be sanitized and ignored. 

These were our children.

They were real.  They mattered. 

And let's not do something stupid with them.  Like filling them full of blocks of gray clay with wired ticking alarm clocks attached.  Let's not sew very anthrax-like sachets of flour into the things so that they exhale white powder when squeezed.  The point is not to terrorize.  The point is to put a palpable face and presence on the numbers they substitute for our murdered children.  Let's not let them make US the terrorists.  We've had our children slain.  They don't get to make us the aggressors in the bargain. 

And some of you out there may say, "What about just using babydolls?  Or maybe we plant a flag on our congressman's front lawn or leave bouquets or funeral wreaths.  Again, not the point.  The idea is to make them aware of our loss.  We make an example of the people who want to ignore that loss.  We're not trotting out the corpses of our kids to get attention.  We're trotting out effigies of our loved ones to focus attention on those who allowed this to happen.  We show them how many of our children were murdered in a way that cannot be dismissed, sanitized or converted to a more socially ignore-able piece of symbolism.  We show them the 'bodies'.

We assemble a march of survivors of these children slayings.  We march them right up the Mall in Washington DC.  And we leave them on the Capitol Building steps.  If their security will let us, we bring them into the congressional gallery and drape them over our representatives' heads for C-Span to film.  We can leave them piled on the pavement in front of the Washington Monument if they deny us access to our leaders.  We leave them face up in the water in front of the Lincoln Memorial to drift and float.  We literally leave a pile of bloody bodies for them to clean up.

What?  Too much?  We're supposed to be nice about this?  Our kids are being shot to pieces, and we're supposed to be civil?  They're suggesting we get our kids body armor and bulletproof backpacks for fucksake.  As though kids on school lunches or parents on foodstamps can afford to buy a new set of body armor for GROWING kids every year.  Our leaders are literally on the take and taking amounts of money large enough to have paid off the slain's student debt if they'd lived long enough.  Sometimes in amounts that would have paid for the murdered child's college 5 times over.

Don't worry.  I'm sure that congress-creature's stately home or very shiny luxury car was worth the blood spilled by our dead kids.

So.  We ask the question.  How many dead kids before we act?

We show the entire world how many dead kids we have already.

We ask again. 

How many dead kids are acceptable before it becomes unacceptable?

And the moment any of our leaders suggest that even one is acceptable to preserve the freedom of insane domestic terrorists to enter our schools and slay our children with military grade assault weapons, they need to be removed from any form of representative government.  This is the answer of a creature who wants to normalize the slaughter of children in the name of profit, and benefits only themselves and murderers.  At this point, they are unfit to represent any of us.  Because we already know the answer to this question.

There is no acceptable amount of dead children before action must be taken.

Say it again for the people in the cheap seats.

There is no amount of thoughts and prayers that are acceptable instead of action to prevent another children shooting. 

There is no amount of sanitization or normalization that will erase the grief of the parents of slain children. 

There is no acceptable amount of incompetence or feigned helplessness on the part of the government that was trusted to educate those kids without the possibility of their getting shot to death.

There is no acceptable amount of bribery money that makes not acting to stop the murder of children okay in the name bearing arms under the aegis of the oft misinterpreted 2nd amendment.

There is no acceptable loss when it comes to our children being shot.

There is no acceptable loss when it comes to our children being shot.

There is no acceptable loss when it comes to our children being shot.

How many times must this be repeated?

The horror is that it needs to be said at all.

What Percent of a Congressman's Salary Should Your Minimum Wage Be?

For those of you better at math than I am. I have this idea that the minimum wage should not just be 15 per hour, but it should also be index linked to a certain percentage above what is considered a poverty wage. But how to implement it?  What do you link it to?  Here's a little background.

Right now, the 2017 standard for a poverty wage is $12,060 for one person. So... a 100% raise still brings that wage to 24,120 per year. That's still just 11.60 per hour. Great.  I still need a roommate and food stamps if I'm living on my own.  That's if Big Ears McHeartless can stop trying to eliminate that while abusing himself by his bootstraps and a copy of Atlas Shugged.

15 per hour, as with the 15.dollar minimum movement is $31,200 a year. That's all before taxes mind ya.  And you're still lowballing the average citizen compared to his or her productivity growth.  Most studies I see of how the minimum wage should have grown if it was to maintain parity with the growth of productivity suggest that the minimum should be at least $20.00 to $22.00 per hour. Which, assuming $20.00 hr, nets you a yearly wage of 41.6 grand.  That sounds a lot more like you could afford your own apartment, do a car payment, pay your school loans AND eat.  Right?

So... get this. Multiplying $12,060.00 by 3.5 gives me a number of $42,210.00 per year. Which is roughly, $20.29 per hour. That's about right for the wage we OUGHT to be getting as a minimum from all the companies that have grown fat on our stolen productivity. So I'm thinking if I want to come up with legislation that index-links the minimum wage to what is currently considered to be a poverty level of income, then the minimum should be set to 350% of the current standard for a poverty wage.  However...

There's a problem with this.  I'd predict that what is considered to be a poverty wage could be gamed by a corrupt leadership. If everyone's making 350% of the poverty wage, then 42 grand a year / $20.30 an hour becomes the new standard for the minimum on which that percentage is based.  So wages and prices recursively spiral each other out of control.  And then the companies and corps start charging more for everything cos it's what the market will bear and what they can get away with if everyone is feeling more flush and confident in their spending. Yes? So you can't index link it to the poverty index. So what do you link it to?

It was either this or a movable goal-posts image.  And I dislike sports.

 You'd want to link it to a statistic that the companies couldn't fudge or manipulate, but is also indicative of the current cost of living in the economy to make sure that while the companies are getting their best bang for their buck out of their employees, that the employees are also not underselling themselves or giving away the store. So... You can't index link that to inflation. Cos inflation rates are going to be affected by the wage itself. You can't link it to the median wage of company owners, cos the 1% skews those numbers too wildly. And while I wouldn't mind a nice percentage per year equal to a 1 percenter's corporate salary, I'm thinking my local comic shop owner wouldn't be able to hire people at that kind of minimum wage. So what do you link that to in order to get a fair wage?  Who gets a nice bit of compensation and regular raises based on the cost of living?

Well, whose salaries ARE set that makes a good median that Wall Street can't manipulate to their own advantage? Who has a salary and is directly answerable to the people?  How about the salary of US representatives or congressmen? They make $174,000.00 a year. (Part-time no less!)  25% of congress' current wage is $43,500.00. That's $20.91 an hour.  And that comes nicely close to the $20.00 to $22.00 an hour that the minimum should have grown to had it kept pace with corporate profits over the last 40 years while the minimum wage has remained stagnant.  That's a wage where there's no variance; and one person's income isn't able to skew matters off the true. It's not gonna make the business owners scream bloody murder at anyone but Congressmen directly responsible for the minimum wage. (They're not gonna be so hot to raise their own salary unreasonably if it raises EVERYONE'S wage with them are they?)  Think 20.91's a lot?  Denmark's minimum is $25.00.  AND they get 35 hour weeks.  They're skipping along just fine.  Think prices will spiral?  Have a look at Washington state's record on that since they raised theirs to 15.  Or Australia's.

So... You index link the minimum wage to 25% Congress' current rate of compensation. And that percentage can be raised or lowered with the current rate of inflation if say... the businesses try to lobby to lower congressman's salaries to lower the minimum wage and cut their costs. Ay... cost of doing biz in the US. Somehow I doubt you'll get a congressman to vote to lower his own salary. There's no one more mindful that their salary meets the cost of living more than a congressman.

Of course they may try and lower the index linked percentage of their salary, but I imagine that's going to go over like a whore in church isn't it? I can see the headlines now. "Paul Ryan thinks you're 80% less worthy than him. And that you should be paid like it." There's nothing will mobilize people like being told they're not as worthy as someone else. Or that you shouldn't be paid as much. And it takes the focus off of how much the different sexes or races get paid on average. Essentially we are all worth, monetarily, at least THIS percentage of what our elected leaders make. And if they want to say we're worth less % of their salary, I hope they're willing to stake their office on it. What do you think folks?