#incoming letter

[belovedapollo]

outgoing letters to penpals 💌 reblog is ok, don’t repost/use

[a-shooting-jade]

anyone wanna be penpals? we don't even have to send each other letters physically. we can write them out and make them look all pretty and just send the photos of the letters.

I just wanna get into writing letters and reconnecting with the idea of taking time to really think about the person you're writing to, and having something tangible to show for it. I think that'd be pretty neat

[cat-likes-to-write]

I wrote a letter to a brand new pen pal today.

[vervainandmoon]

Saturday morning writing to one of my long time witchy pen pals.

[kelpermoosee]

Sneak peek of this stupid comic because maybe if I talk about it, it’ll motivate me to finish faster 😭

[bleedingcoffee42]

Dick spends hours on that report and Nix takes it, gives him shit about it, and then folds it up and shoves it in his pocket so when it gets turned in it's all unprofessional. He watches him do it too.

Like, whatever you want beautiful. Nobody else in this world could take my homework and ruin it like that, but as long as it's your breast its rubbing against, it's fine.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 16, 2025

Heather Cox Richardson

Jan 17, 2025

In his final address to the nation last night, President Joe Biden issued a warning that “an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedoms, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.”

It is not exactly news that there is dramatic economic inequality in the United States. Economists call the period from 1933 to 1981 the “Great Compression,” for it marked a time when business regulation, progressive taxation, strong unions, and a basic social safety net compressed both wealth and income levels in the United States. Every income group in the U.S. improved its economic standing.

That period ended in 1981, when the U.S. entered a period economists have dubbed the “Great Divergence.” Between 1981 and 2021, deregulation, tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, the offshoring of manufacturing, and the weakening of unions moved $50 trillion from the bottom 90% of Americans to the top 1%.

Biden tried to address this growing inequality by bringing back manufacturing, fostering competition, increasing oversight of business, and shoring up the safety net by getting Congress to pass a law—the Inflation Reduction Act—that enabled Medicare to negotiate drug prices for seniors with the pharmaceutical industry, capping insulin at $35 for seniors, for example. His policies worked, primarily by creating full employment which enabled those at the bottom of the economy to move to higher-paying jobs. During Biden’s term, the gap between the 90th income percentile and the 10th income percentile fell by 25%.

But Donald Trump convinced voters hurt by the inflation that stalked the country after the coronavirus pandemic shutdown that he would bring prices down and protect ordinary Americans from the Democratic “elite” that he said didn’t care about them. Then, as soon as he was elected, he turned for advice and support to one of the richest men in the world, Elon Musk, who had invested more than $250 million in Trump’s campaign.

Musk’s investment has paid off: Faiz Siddiqui and Trisha Thadani of the Washington Post reported that he made more than $170 billion in the weeks between the election and December 15.

Musk promptly became the face of the incoming administration, appearing everywhere with Trump, who put him and pharmaceutical entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy in charge of the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, where Musk vowed to cut $2 trillion out of the U.S. budget even if it inflicted “hardship” on the American people.

News broke earlier this week that Musk, who holds government contracts worth billions of dollars, is expected to have an office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building adjacent to the White House. And the world’s two other richest men will be with Musk on the dais at Trump’s inauguration. Musk, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, and Meta chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg, who together are worth almost a trillion dollars, will be joined by other tech moguls, including the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman; the CEO of the social media platform TikTok, Shou Zi Chew; and the CEO of Google, Sundar Pichai.

At his confirmation hearing before the Senate Committee on Finance today, Trump’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, billionaire Scott Bessent, said that extending the 2017 Trump tax cuts was "the single most important economic issue of the day." But he said he did not support raising the federal minimum wage, which has been $7.25 since 2009 although 30 states and dozens of cities have raised the minimum wage in their jurisdictions.

There have been signs lately that the American people are unhappy about the increasing inequality in the U.S. On December 4, 2024, a young man shot the chief executive officer of the health insurance company UnitedHealthcare, which has been sued for turning its claims department over to an artificial intelligence program with an error rate of 90% and which a Federal Trade Commission report earlier this week found overcharged cancer patients by more than 1,000% for life-saving drugs. Americans championed the alleged killer.

It is a truism in American history that those interested in garnering wealth and power use culture wars to obscure class struggles. But in key moments, Americans recognized that the rise of a small group of people—usually men—who were commandeering the United States government was a perversion of democracy.

In the 1850s, the expansion of the past two decades into the new lands of the Southeast had permitted the rise of a group of spectacularly wealthy men. Abraham Lincoln helped to organize westerners against a government takeover by elite southern enslavers who argued that society advanced most efficiently when the capital produced by workers flowed to the top of society, where a few men would use it to develop the country for everyone. Lincoln warned that “crowned-kings, money-kings, and land-kings” would crush independent men, and he created a government that worked for ordinary men, a government “of the people, by the people, for the people.”

A generation later, when industrialization disrupted the country as westward expansion had before, the so-called robber barons bent the government to their own purposes. Men like steel baron Andrew Carnegie explained that “[t]he best interests of the race are promoted” by an industrial system, “which inevitably gives wealth to the few.” But President Grover Cleveland warned: “The gulf between employers and the employed is constantly widening, and classes are rapidly forming, one comprising the very rich and powerful, while in another are found the toiling poor…. Corporations, which should be the carefully restrained creatures of the law and the servants of the people, are fast becoming the people's masters.”

Republican president Theodore Roosevelt tried to soften the hard edges of industrialization by urging robber barons to moderate their behavior. When they ignored him, he turned finally to calling out the “malefactors of great wealth,” noting that “there is no individual and no corporation so powerful that he or it stands above the possibility of punishment under the law. Our aim is to try to do something effective; our purpose is to stamp out the evil; we shall seek to find the most effective device for this purpose; and we shall then use it, whether the device can be found in existing law or must be supplied by legislation. Moreover, when we thus take action against the wealth which works iniquity, we are acting in the interest of every man of property who acts decently and fairly by his fellows.”

Theodore Roosevelt helped to launch the Progressive Era.

But that moment passed, and in the 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, too, contended with wealthy men determined to retain control over the federal government. Running for reelection in 1936, he told a crowd at Madison Square Garden: “For nearly four years you have had an Administration which instead of twirling its thumbs has rolled up its sleeves…. We had to struggle with the old enemies of peace—business and financial monopoly, speculation, reckless banking, class antagonism, sectionalism, war profiteering. They had begun to consider the Government of the United States as a mere appendage to their own affairs. We know now that Government by organized money is just as dangerous as Government by organized mob.”

“Never before in all our history have these forces been so united against one candidate as they stand today,” he said. “They are unanimous in their hate for me—and I welcome their hatred.”

Last night, after President Biden’s warning, Google searches for the meaning of the word “oligarchy” spiked.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[cryptidnotes]

some older incoming & outgoing snail mail ♡

[ask-victor-grantzcampbell]

Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday, Victor. Do you have any plans for today...? @theunconcernedembalmer

Any plans? No, I don't have much due to only recently coming back so my load is rather empty this year.

[bunnyunderthebed]

hey (with the intention to bleed out in your arms)

hi (with the intention to writhe in pain under your weight)

hello (with the intention to allow your form to eviscerate me)

[belovedapollo]

oh the joy of getting a letter from a new penpal 😌 reblog is ok, don’t repost

[bebe-benzenheimer]

next complete letter courtesy of xitter's melbearer

Carmen, I’m still here. Thank you for your letter. At times, I feel so isolated in front of that small fire that I forget people are listening. It’s usually just me up there, a watcher without a partner - trying to keep myself awake by noodling on this instrument. So I speak to someone, to all of you. I’m glad to know you hear it, and more importantly that it’s important. I’m embarrassed to admit that I fell asleep for a second last night. I was so worried of dozing off again, that I didn’t play music, just stood at attention all night, looking over the hill. I don’t want to miss the signal. I haven’t lost faith in the plan, and I know the signal is coming, but some nights it’s hard to stay awake. I’ll keep playing. Sometime, if you’re not too tired, I would love company. Four eyes are better than two – and they should give us the sign any day now. Steadfast, Soren

[cat-likes-to-write]

Envelope Art

[purposeful-flop]

istg some people act like lance killed d*niel’s firstborn or sum

[travelinginenvelope]

November 22nd 2024

Incoming from my penpal from Ukraine

[eri-pl]

or maybe Manwë is a chocolate chip and Melkor is a raisin