While you were sleeping

 

I hope everyone got a good night’s sleep some time in the last 24 hours. If you did get 8 hours rest, I wanted you to know that according to Oxfam International, while you were sleeping, Pfizer made $8,000,000 in profits in those 8 hours from “its” vaccine (with research funded, in part by our tax dollars) and in that same eight hours, an estimated 2,300 people died of COVID worldwide.

At the same time as you and I were hopefully snug in our beds, as many as 30 Americans under the age of 65 died because they didn’t have healthcare while the health insurance companies in the US made more than $33,000,000 in just 8 hours.

In those same 8 hours, the richest man in the universe, Elon Musk, made $82,000,000 so he can take joy rides in space, while, according to CARE, fully ½ of the population of Afghanistan is facing acute hunger as they lay down to a fitful rest.

And the rest of the US’s 703 billionaires (who collectively, with Musk, now have more wealth than the bottom 50% of the country’s population) socked away some $700 million, almost all of which is tax free, while they slept, because, when you are a billionaire, your money makes money without you putting in an ounce of effort. In the meanwhile, our underpaid teachers (and healthcare workers, and grocery store workers, etc., etc.) are probably not getting that 8 hours to rest, as they work to keep the country functioning despite the pandemic.

And finally, in that same 8 hours, the Pentagon will spend $710 million (about ½ of which goes directly to big corporations) and in the near future even more, as the military-industrial complex, which a Republican President warned us about 61 years ago, demands more “defense” spending from a compliant Congress following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. That’s the same Congress that can’t find the wherewithal to fund an anemic Build Back Better plan.

If you don’t see what I’m getting at, then you must still be sleeping.