The Wordsmith's Forge

Sometimes, military spending is a good thing. Other times, it turns into a giant rathole that can absorb any amount of money with no discernible benefit.

Dean Baker | Massive Defense Spending Leads to Job Loss
Dean Baker, Truthout: "There is a major national ad campaign, funded by the oil industry and other usual suspects, to convince the public that measures to reduce greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and slow global warming will result in massive job loss. This ad campaign warns of slower growth and the loss of hundreds of thousands of jobs, possibly even millions of jobs, if some variation of the current proposals being debated by Congress get passed into law ... However, the oil industry's scare stories about job loss never put it in any context."

There's an interesting discussion over on crowdfunding about whether a donate button constitutes begging or something else altogether.

For what it's worth, I tend to use "donate" here either as a general term, or referring to small amounts of money going toward a particular project or to making it possible for me to spend more time writing. I use "sponsor" referring to funds that cover a complete work, such as a whole poem. Both have perks, but they're a little different -- any donor with LJ account gets put on my Donors group for a couple of months, and can read the special donor-perk posts; I also list all donors associated with a project. Sponsors get an extra perk: nonexclusive reprint rights to the sponsored piece. That means if you buy a whole poem from me, I treat you like an acquiring editor who can publish it somewhere, such as on your blog, in addition to it appearing here on mine.

So I'm not begging here; I'm busking and selling. If you like what I'm doing, you can buy some of it, or you can give me money so I'll have more time to write. If you like a particular subject, and you consistently throw money and/or compliments toward it, you will increase the amount of it in the world. You can be a patron of the arts. You can be an editor. And I'm not just proud of my writing; I'm proud of you, because I have a tremendously cool audience doing marvelous things. You folks are my rocket fuel.