Granny Pedrolina Paige Delaparrucca

Day Job:

Activism and Concerns:

Activism? No, they must mean passivism … wait isn't that pacifism …? Oh, well, I give up on this one …, or how about laptop activist?

I certainly do have a list of concerns:

• Guilt by taxation:

  Our taxes are supporting what has clearly become an Orwellian Perpetual War,a war with no clear ending conditions. The following Orwell quote seems vaguely appropriate too:

  Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac.

  Who might that be this time around?

• One trillion-plus dollars a year for the Department of Perpetual War™:

  Here is Obama 2012,a perfect continuation of the Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, and Bush II budget priorities: 59% for the Department of Perpetual War™, roughly ten times the amounts spent on unimportant issues such as health, education, and the environment. A freeze is on all discretionary spending, except for the Department of Perpetual War™.

  

  This pie chart (see here for more) comes from National Priorities Project and it seems to be the most recent one; also look at Security Spending Primer.

• Fatalities of US health care system: 100,000+ per year:

  As the graph shows, the yearly difference between the French and US health care systems is 45 per 100,000 population, which translates into 110,000 US fatalities each year. It is considered respectable to object to spending a trillion dollars once, over a period of ten years to fix the American health care system, while every year the US spends an estimated trillion dollars on the military and its weaponry,

  Source: Commonwealth Fund Results from the National Scorecard on U.S. Health System Performance, 2008. By now they even have an updated version.

  Here is the explanation for these priorities:

  A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.

  (Martin Luther King)

• In terms of sheer numbers, this is what Granny Paige should be concerned about:

  For the first time in history, it is now within our reach to eradicate world poverty and the suffering it brings. Yet around the world, a billion people struggle to live each day on less than many of us pay for bottled water. And though the number of deaths attributable to poverty worldwide has fallen dramatically in the past half-century, nearly ten million children still die unnecessarily each year. The people of the developed world face a profound choice: If we are not to turn our backs on a fifth of the world’s population, we must become part of the solution.

  (from The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer)

  Why be a Granny:

  Granny Paige has always been a raging fan of the ragingly outrageous, and, yes, there still are these great plans: The White Plans of the Sixties. (Maybe the US of A will be ready for those come 2020?) But Bertrand Russell of Tribunal fame has to share some of the blame.

  And …

  Granny Paige is dedicated to his family, physics, and the lute and its song, in a dance of ever-changing priorities.