Category: Randy’s Rants

40 years after Live Aid concerts, famines still plague Ethiopia; ‘Go where the food is!’

~ Randy Seaver ~ 2 Comments

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the Live Aid concerts that were organized to raise both awareness and funding for an especially brutal famine in the northern areas of Ethiopia.

Live Aid was driven and organized by rock ‘n’ roll legend Bob Geldof who was also behind the “Band Aid” single in 1984 that first raised widespread public awareness about the Ethiopian famine.

The simultaneous Live Aid concerts were held in both Philadelphia and London. Many musical superstars performed at the 1985 Live Aid concerts, including Madonna, David Bowie, Queen, Elton John, U2, Bruce Springsteen and many others.

It is estimated that the televised concerts were viewed by a global audience of more than 1.5 billion people. The Live Aid concerts raised slightly more than $100 million for famine relief.

That’s a nice story, right?

Sure, Live Aid was effective at tugging on our heart strings, but if you gather 1.5 billion people and raise only $100 million, that works out to an average donation of 7 cents per person. Adjusted for inflation, that amount would be roughly 25 cents today. It would seem that a lot more people enjoyed the music than the writing of checks.

Starvation remains rampant across Africa (Photo by Mark Odecho/Wikipedia commons)

Call me a cynic, but I did make a small donation.

But here’s the problem, Ethiopia is still – 40 years later — struggling with famine. Nothing really changed. We wrote our checks and called it good, ready for the next video on MTV.

The whole thing sort of underscores a popular sketch performed by the late comedian Sam Kinison.

Kinison would scream at the top of his lungs in pure frustration.

“Stop sending care packages,” Kinison would yell! “Save your money! Someobody needs to show these people that they live in a desert! Food doesn’t grow in a desert! This is sand, see? Sand!”

“If you really want to help these people, send them luggage! Send them U-Hauls! They need to go where the food is!” Kinison would roar.

Kinison’s points may be considered heartless, especially in light of the thousands of deaths attributed to famine in Ethiopia. But his logic is on point.

We may feel good putting a dollar in the Salvation Army kettle during the Christmas season, but we tend to ignore poverty for the remaining 50 weeks of the year.

Do you remember the 1984 Band Aid Christmas song?

An excerpt from the lyrics:  “And there won’t be snow in Africa this Christmas time/ The greatest gift they’ll get this year is life(Oooh)/ Where nothing ever grows . . .”

Duh? Did Boy George and Bono not study geography? Snow is damn rare in Ethiopia, even during the best of times in the nation’s highland regions.

Of course, there won’t be snow in Africa this year, that year or most years. Again, feel-good lyrics designed to pull on our heart strings. Even Boy George admitted in his lyrics “where nothing ever grows.”

According to an April 2025 PBS story, the “margins between starvation and survival are narrowing in Ethiopia,” especially after the Trump Administration decided to freeze foreign aid supplies and essentially shutter USAID.

That decision, PBS says, has had “seismic effects on global humanitarian efforts.”

The U.N. World Food Program is one of the organizations that has drawn vast portions of their budgets from the U.S. government. Historically, the U.S. has been the agency’s biggest donor by far.

Maybe we just need another concert.

Bono was right when he sang, “ Well, tonight thank God it’s them/Instead of you”

Randy Seaver is a cranky, nearly insufferable malcontent living in Biddeford. He may be contacted by email: randy@randyseaver.com

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Do you have “too much?”

~ Randy Seaver ~ 1 Comment

I see a lot of social media chatter about the evils of “billionaires who have far more than they need.”

My question is what about millionaires? If you have a net worth of $700 to $950 million, is that also too much? Do we also loathe millionaires?

Money: The root of all evil?

If we get rid of billionaires and millionaires and redistribute their wealth to the less fortunate, then do we go after the people with a net worth of more than $850,000? Do they also have “too much?” Are they just greedy?

The MEDIAN net worth in the U.S. is roughly $200,000, meaning that half of the population has a lower net worth than $200,000 and half of the population has a net worth of more than $200,000.

Do you really need more than
one television, one computer,
one phone or one tattoo?

Do we use that number? Does anyone really “need” a net worth of $200,000? Furthermore, who decides what is “too much?” If you own an acre of land, do you have too much? Do you really need an entire acre?

Do you really need more than one television, one computer, one phone or one tattoo?

Do you really need more than one car? Do you really need 14 pairs of underwear?

I think we need to be careful when pointing fingers because, eventually, we’re going to be pointing at ourselves.

I do not believe in a flat tax, even thought that (by definition) is the fairest solution.

I am only saying it gets really tricky, really fast when we talk about things such as “fair share,”

Rant over. Peace.

Gimme money, that’s what I want

~ Randy Seaver ~ 2 Comments

There has been a lot of angry talk lately in Biddeford and other communities in southern Maine that are becoming more attractive to people who did not grow up here.

If resentment were a commodity, I would advise you to buy heavy.

Look, let’s get this out of the way before we proceed. Poverty sucks, living near poverty level sucks; and life is not “fair.” Never has been. Never will be. In the times of ancient Greece, some people lived in squalor while others enjoyed luxury.

The Obama’s “summer home” on Martha’s Vineyard . . . lucky!

Today, most people living in Somalia have a much lower standard of living than even America’s poorest citizens. It’s all perspective.

Does that mean we should not care? That we should turn a blind eye to the needs of the less fortunate among us? Absolutely not.

But while we’re all so busy saving the planet and finally making things right, let’s be careful not to trip over our own fucking hypocrisy.

Another disclosure before we proceed, especially for my liberal friends who feel so much worse for “poor people” than cranky old people like me.

1.) I started my adult life homeless, with no job, no family, no home. Hot, sweaty and hungry. I ended up getting government assistance for housing, food, medicine and even college. At the time, I had a minimum wage job. I earned $3.75/ hour as a third-shift janitor at McDonald’s.

2.) Without government assistance, it is more than likely I would not have survived. I believe in government assistance. I believe it is a good use of my tax dollars to make sure that there is a safety net.

So, when it comes to poverty (no air conditioning, no car, no eating out, no phone, no vacations, no television) Been there. Done that. Got the t-shirt.

Today, however, I find this pervasive culture of entitlement to be spreading like wildfire. Expectations are through the roof. So many people talk about their “rights,” but never their obligations.

On a recent social media thread about the cost of living in Biddeford, several people were complaining that “affordable housing” is not really affordable.

I know this is true, and a problem. My youngest kid (28) has been living with us since August and I really . . . really, really want her to find her own place to live. Trust me on this. She has a full-time job and is going back to college, but pickings for housing in Biddeford are slim.

I have suggested that she cannot afford to live in Biddeford, pointing her to Sanford, Limerick and other places in York County that are not yet so gentrified. Apparently, because of my penchant for living in the real world, I am insensitive monster who just doesn’t understand how “tough the world is today.”

Bullshit. The world has always been tough, and always will be.

If you are over 25, earning only
minimum wage, you have made
some poor life choices.

We have first-year teachers and newly-hired police officers who cannot afford to live close to where they work. We do need more affordable housing. Pronto!

But on this social media thread, there were the proverbial whiners. “I’m on minimum wage, Section 8 or whatever. I can’t afford “affordable housing.”

Of course not. You are confusing affordable housing with low-income housing. Just because you can’t afford something, doesn’t mean the other guy can’t.

Moreover, if you’re living on minimum wage ($14.65/hour in Maine), you need to ask yourself some hard questions. Even McDonald’s is starting people at $20 hour. Minimum wage was never intended to be a life-long, livable wage. It is for people with no skills or experience. If you are over 25, earning only minimum wage, you have made some poor life choices.

And it’s time for you to make some changes.

In fact, you need a second job. Wait, what? Yes, a second job. Growing up, my dad had three jobs and my mom worked third-shift in a factory while we slept in a third-floor apartment on State Street in Biddeford.

We did not have air conditioning or a clothes dryer. No microwave. No tattoos, not cell phones, WIFI or cable TV. No streaming services. We had school clothes and play clothes. Everything had to be stretched.

Until I was a teenager, we ate out maybe once or twice a year (Easter dinner or a treat of Bill’s Pizza and Pier Fries during the summer at OOB.) Until, I was seven, my parents did not own a car. My dad finished his teaching degree by hitch-hiking to his classes in Gorham. The poor fucker was working three jobs and had to put newspaper in his shoes because he could not afford new shoes.

But guess what? My parents scrimped and saved every penny, and were finally able to buy their own run-down, fixer upper home in Saco. My sister had dance classes, I took clarinet lessons and was in the Cub scouts.

We were on our way to middle class. Yippie-kay yay, motherfuckers.

My parents’ life was not abnormal. It was like that for all my friends.

What, exactly, is so horrific about having more than one job? I always had two jobs into my mid-30s.

In summary, yes we should have a safety net. My great-grandmother used to get government-issued surplus cheese and canned goods.

But we also need to toughen up. We live in a world of high expectations. We now believe that we should be able to “afford” tats, nose rings and $8 latte macchiatos. We demand more. We all deserve dignity, but don’t want to work for it. We abhor sacrifice.

The government safety net is intended to catch you when you fall, not become a place to take a long slumber while watching the Bachelor.

If your life sucks (and many people do have shitty, hard lives) ask yourself some hard questions. What are YOU going to do to make things better? What are YOU going to bring to the table for society?

In closing, l leave you with the iconic words of John F. Kennedy (He was a president before Trump) “Ask not what your country can do for you; rather ask yourself what can you do for your country.”

Rant over. Peace. And good luck.

Randy Seaver is a cranky, nearly insufferable malcontent living in Biddeford. He may be contacted by email: randy@randyseaver.com

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