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fatalezr · 1 year

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San Merido - Part Nine

Helen knew every eye in the room was on her as she puffed on her cigar and thought. For weeks, she has been formulating her grand plan to take total control of San Merido but she knew that rushing in and making the decision to go ahead with the scheme would not be wise. She considered the plan again from multiple angles while she smoked the sweet tobacco that used to belong to Rico Martinelli in Pacific City. She remembered wasting him like it was only yesterday and the feeling of satisfaction at seeing her rival defeated. She made up her mind.

"OK" she said, "but we have to be ready for a counter move at any moment. The remaining Berlucci's and Carbone's will not take this lying down, they will know what we're doing and they will respond".

Annie, Suzy, Ruth and Nellie nodded at her, concentrated expressions on their faces. The new Mayor of San Merido, Susan Grant, looked to the Police Commissioner that her and Helen had appointed, Ezekiel Fraser. He was a tall man and he looked resplendent in his uniform. His appointment had caused a national stir as the first African-American Police Commissioner in a major city but he was also fiercely committed to the causes that Helen and Susan believed in.

He nodded. "I have men I can trust," he said, "I'll get them in place and we'll make the arrest and take them down to the ferry. We can do this Ms. Monroe, we can rid the city of these bastards once and for all".

Helen turned to her lieutenants. "Annie, make sure we always have at least one car following on the route at all times. Suzy, get the women ready - we'll take all of us to the island tonight. Ruth, tell your dock contact to get his ferry ready for us. Only men he trusts on board. Nellie, spread the word amongst our network of informants, we need everyone to be ready". She stood and buttoned her pinstriped jacket. "Ladies, gentleman, let's bring this system crashing down".

The room leaped to their feet and began walking and hustling from the room, her lieutenants conversing whilst the Mayor and Police Commissioner did the same. Helen watched them go and smiled - she was on the verge of creating what she dreamed of, a diverse empire that broke the traditional patriarchy of the mafia-held cities. Her team had done well. The Berlucci and Carbone gangs had been slaughtered through their relentless campaign of assassinations. They controlled their money, their supplies and there was no doubt that Helen and her gang now had the upper hand. However, she knew that whilst the two mafia dons lived, they would still wield influence and two days ago one of the grocers she had invested in had been torched.

Since Ezekiel Fraser's appointment as Police Commissioner, he had, at Helen's direction, promoted loyal men and women, including appointing the city's first female detective. He had directed them to building a case against the Berlucci and Carbone families, finding several incriminating documents when he searched the offices of the FBI task force that Helen had eliminated. It may not be enough to convict at trial, but it had been good enough to issue arrest warrants for both dons and many of their remaining loyal men.

Arrest would be good enough for Helen - she knew that once imprisoned she could take care of the rest. San Merido had recently opened a notorious new jail on Juarez Island in the middle of the bay, and it would be used to house the prisoners overnight at least before they got lost in the federal justice system, or more likely, freed by a corrupt judge and conniving lawyers, and disappear. One night would be good enough though. They would use that opportunity to strike.

Helen returned to the work in her office. Her businesses, both the legal and the illegal, were making money, and the reduction in small business taxes that Mayor Grant had brought in had allowed them to thrive even more. The Mayor had already announced funding for several infrastructure projects and Helen's company was already in prime position to land parts of the contract. It would be a crowning achievement for her - building a large bridge across the bay with a team of men and women of every colour and creed imaginable, paid a fair wage for their labours and free of the exploits of the mafia families. It would show the country and the world a new way was possible.

About an hour later, a knock on the door to her office came and she welcomed in Paulette, one of several proteges they had recruited in the city. "I just had word" she told Helen, "the police have made the arrests. Both family heads, about two dozen muscle and remaining lieutenants".

"Good," Helen said, thanking the young French woman. Now all that was left to do was wait. She received regular updates from her crew and as the evening drew in and the ferry carrying the Berlucci, Carbone and their gangs arrived at Juarez Island, the bar around Helen began to fill up with women in pinstripe suits, cleaning their guns, fixing their ties and readying themselves for this decisive battle.

------

Helen looked around the assembled women on the boat, all in pinstriped suits, all standing regimented like an army with Thompson submachine guns at their side. The ferry was moving across the water with no lights on and Juarez Island was only a short distance away, the imposing walls of the multi-levelled jail clearly visible along with the water tower to its side.

"Ladies" Helen said, addressing her troops, "tonight is our moment of victory in San Merido. The burden of the Berlucci and Carbone families on the people of this city has held sway for too long. Tonight we set this city free towards its glorious future!" She saw some of the women nodding and continued. "Inside those walls are hardened criminals, rapists, murderers, drug pushers, and those who have feasted on women in the past, all guarded by a corrupt set of officers who set them free at the first opportunity". She loaded a magazine into her own Tommy gun. "Slaughter them all!" she commanded.

The women cheered and shouted before starting to load their own guns, getting ready for the assault. Helen watched them until she was interrupted by Nellie hurrying over. "Helen, you need to see this" she urged and showed her to the portside of the boat.

Linda, another of the younger recruits in the gang that Suzy had found during the bank robbery, was standing in her pinstriped suit with a set of binoculars in her hands. She handed them to Helen and pointed her in the right direction. Underneath the night sky, Helen could see two small boats, both filled with about a half dozen men in suits and carrying Tommy guns and heading towards the other side of Juarez Island.

She smirked. "Of course" she said, "I anticipated this might happen. The remaining Berlucci's and Carbone's are attempting to reach their kin and set them free before we have a chance to move. Helen looked at their position once more. They would reach the island a little before the two boats of men. She searched out her lieutenants and gathered them together. "Annie, Ruth, I want you to lead our forces up to the prison. The guard's quarters are en route - make sure you surround it and give them no escape. Suzy, Nellie, we'll take some of the women and create a welcome party for our guests".

Annie and Ruth grinned at one another while Suzy and Nellie picked a small number of women - Linda, Paulette, Maggie and Daisy to join Helen in killing the mobsters who were heading to the island.

Their ferry docked with the island and Annie ushered the majority of the women off first, leading the way from the dock towards the guards houses on the way to the prison entrance, keeping quiet under the still night sky. Helen watched them go, then set off around the front of the island towards the other side, picking their way along the rocky and dusty path.

They made no noise, not wanting to alert their enemies that they were coming. Helen could hear the men talking as they approached their position. The other side of the island was undergoing some construction and foundations had been dug to construct another new wing for the prison. Helen ducked behind a few bricks as she heard the noises and signalled for the rest of the group to do the same.

"Tie the damn boat up already!" one man was saying.

"Hey, keep your voice down, fucking ass" someone said.

"Yeah, so should your boss, then we wouldn't be in this mess. I always say - never trust a fucking Carbone" another man piped up.

"Hey fuck you!" another man shouted and there was a large clamour as the two sets of men jostled, each wanting to represent their own family. Helen smiled - the detente between the two families was in tatters, as were their gangs.

"Cut it out!" an authoritative voice eventually said, "let's just get the bosses, get the guys and get the fuck out of here. No more fucking surprises". That elicited some agreement from the group and Helen saw her chance.

"SURPRISE BOYS!" she shouted as she rose from behind the half-constructed wall, Thompson submachine gun in her gloved hands with the butt resting on her shoulder to give her maximum accuracy with her shots. There were some exclamations of shock but her finger was already on the trigger. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. She unloaded on a couple of men who had their own Tommy guns in their hands, cutting them down in their stomachs with ease. The group looked like a motley bunch, mainly inexperienced young men in suits more used to intimidation than a real firefight. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. She fired more rounds into another two men.

To her side, the rest of her welcome party sprang into action, Nellie and Daisy putting their guns to their shoulders whilst Suzy, Maggie and Linda emerged and shot from the hip, spreading their shots wide to hit as many men as possible as their hips twisted from side to side. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Their weapons roared into life and the stunned men began to scream as bullet after bullet hit them indiscriminately. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. The two families were finally united in pain and suffering as the men were cut down and Helen smiled. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. She added accurate bursts here or there into the group where needed, cutting down any man who looked to be reaching for their gun or being a threat.

The group quickly reloaded and advanced on the fallen men. Helen picked a couple of guys in grey suits that had been ripped in many places by the storm of bullets and fired at their heads. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Suzy giggled as she did the same, BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM as did the other women. Helen saw a burning passion and desire in the eyes of the recruits. Maggie looked like a young Suzy as she fired down into the men's heads. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Nellie and Daisy were also smiling as they shot, looking pristine in their black shirts and white ties. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Linda's eyes were wide with pleasure and she was moaning softly as she emptied a magazine into an older man's head, BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM, pulverising it and turning it to little more than a gory mess that seeped into the soil of the island.

"Good work" Helen congratulated the women around her, "now let's get back to the main group, we have more to do". She knew their shots would have been heard all over the island. They picked their ways over the rocks until they saw the guards house. Annie and Ruth had got the women surrounding it in a circle, Tommy guns raised. Lights in the house were going on and across both floors Helen could see men stood at the windows with their hands raised in surrender. She smirked as she knew what order Annie would give.

She listened and heard Annie give the command: "Ladies, waste them!" BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Two dozen Tommy guns burst into life and started pummeling the building. The men with their hands up cried out in pain as they were cut down, defenseless against the onslaught. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Each woman shooting unloaded their full magazine into the building, lighting up air in front of them as their guns sparked and pushed bullets into walls, doors, windows and more, smashing everything in their paths. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Each woman used a full magazine of bullets before reloading.

Annie started pointing at some of the women to go inside and finish the job, Ruth leading them in. Helen led her group to join Annie, the occasional burst of BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM from inside the guard house proving that Ruth and the four women she had taken with her were executing the remaining guards and leaving no-one alive. "How did it go?" Annie asked Helen.

"As expected" Helen said, "we won't have any troubles from outside the prison tonight". She looked up towards the main block of the Juarez Island prison. The guards inside were doubtless scared. There were a couple of tall towers around the central courtyard that had machine guns but they faced inwards, towards the prison and not the outside. "Keep your guard up as we approach the gate" she warned Annie.

Her lieutenant nodded and together they began marching up to the front of the prison, Annie, Daisy and Nellie with their guns high on their shoulders, scanning for any sounds of movement. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Nellie was the first to fire, shooting a guard who appeared in the gatehouse with a revolver in his hand. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. There were a few more bursts as her team used their accurate shooting to mow down a couple more guards who had appeared in windows before they reached the front of the prison and the gatehouse, two dead bodies inside testament to the women's shooting.

Helen could already hear the sound of banging from inside the prison. Every inmate was awake and hollering, stamping their feet and banging their cups against the bars of their cells, presumably anticipating that the shooting outside was going to lead to their release. Annie found the controls for the main gate of the prison inside the gatehouse and pulled the lever that began swinging the heavy iron gates open. The noise grew as they did.

The gates revealed four guards with rifles, standing in a line in uniforms, presumably ready to try and stop any intruders. As soon as they appeared the line of women spearheaded by Suzy opened fire. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Their Thompson submachine guns were no match for the men with rifles, who crumpled to the ground with pained and anguished expressions as Suzy roared with laughter and her gun roared with the sounds of death. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM.

Helen began giving orders to her army, directing them into each prison's block and floor, each door opening to a cacophany of shouts and noise from the inmates. She stepped into C block to the right of the gatehouse. There was a guard inside in the middle of the block on his hands and knees, pleading for mercy whilst the grey jumpsuits of the inmates mocked him on all sides. Helen smirked before her and Maggie began hosing the broken man down. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM.

His death sparked even more noises from the inmates who now saw the pinstripe suits of the women. Helen didn't care who any of these men were - they were all scum in her eyes. Some even began to wolf whistle as she adjuster her fedora on her head and revealed her shining red hair underneath. As she reloaded her Tommy gun, she looked at Maggie again - the young woman looked hungry and ready for what was to come, not wearing a black shirt and white like Helen and instead showing some of her black silk brassiere underneath her jacket instead.

They both faced towards a wall of inmates and the men started to cower, their confidence broken as they saw the barrel of the guns turned towards them. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. The cells were small and the men had nowhere to run as Maggie and Helen pummeled them. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. She smiled in satisfaction as she murdered them where they stood, changing magazines and finding more occupied cells now filled with frightened inmates.

Maggie was moaning in pleasure in between pulling the trigger and killing each inmate. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM "Mmmm". BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. "Yeah..." BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM "Oooooh". She went from cell to cell, changing magazine when she needed to, until their floor of the block contained only corpses in the cells.

The banging of the prisoners had now been replaced by the sound of Tommy guns executing them. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. The sound echoed off every wall and on every floor as the women worked their way through the prison blocks. Helen sauntered through the prison, watching her army at work, looking how each woman might choose to take a wide stance and hose several men at once or others might laugh and concentrate their fire on one cell before moving to another. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. The sounds were like the most beautiful orchestra she had ever heard.

As she approached the infamous D Block where the two mob bosses would be held, Helen took out a cigar and smoked it, feeling the tobacco warming her throat and lungs. She waited by the door to the blocks entrance, smoking, until all of her army had joined her and every woman had a fresh magazine in their Tommy gun. She kicked the door to the block down herself.

"Freeze!" she heard two guards in front of her yell, standing in the block with revolvers, the last line of defence. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Helen shot from the waist without impunity, giving neither man an opportunity to pull the trigger. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM, BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. She finished them with headshots before reloading again.

D Block had San Merido's most notorious criminals inside. There were 30 cells occupied in total, the men inside of them looking around fearfully, especially the lieutenants of the mafia bosses who had been picked up that day. On the top floor of the block, Helen laid her eyes on her two prize targets - Benito Berlucci with his round balding head and Andrea Carbone with his white moustache, both in the grey prison jumpsuits. She picked the cell key doors from the pockets of the guards she had shot and told Suzy and Nellie to bring her down Carbone and Berlucci.

Suzy and Nellie did so, unlocking the cells and forcing the two men downstairs with their hands on their heads. They both knelt in front of Helen with a lot of resigned defeat in their eyes. "You..." Berlucci finally said, "you're Helen Monroe?"

She nodded. Andrea Carbone spoke up next. "We....we surrender, Ms. Monroe. This city is yours".

Helen giggled, then laughed out loud, her voice filling the chamber. "HAHAHA!" she roared, "oh gentlemen, gentlemen, I know the city is mine, but I'm afraid I don't do surrenders. Ladies, to your positions". She leaned close to both men. "I want you to see what will happen to you both".

The women in her retinue took up a position outside each cell, one woman to one prisoner, Tommy gun at their waist. Berlucci and Carbone looked at each in fear. They knew what would happen next. "FIRE" Helen commanded.

"Yes" Helen said to the two mafia bosses, "that is now your fate. We're going to fill you with lead and laugh and take pleasure from it. Now get against the wall".

The two men looked like ghosts with the fear in their eyes as they realised what was to come. They stood on shaking legs against the wall as Helen's army formed a semi-circle, their 28 barrels turned towards the two men, who gulped as they realised their fate was to be pulverised by 1,400 bullets.

"Ladies...." Helen said, pausing to draw out the agony for Berlucci and Carbone, feeling each woman's energy as they waited for the final order, "waste them!"

BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. Berlucci and Carbone jerked, thrust, juddered and then started to shed skin, bone, matter, organs and more as they were dismantled by the onslaught of bullets. Within seconds their heads and bodies had been opened. BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM-BAM. The women tracked them to the ground, ripping their ragged jumpsuits and erasing any solid part of the two men as if they were ghosts that had never existed.

When the firing stopped, Helen breathed in some more of her cigar as the women around cheered, clapped, touched themselves, kissed, moaned and more, each person experiencing the euphoria in a different way. Helen looked around and smiled. Her takeover of San Merido was now complete. The city was hers and hers alone to do as she wished, with a loyal Mayor and Police Commissioner.

She stepped out of the prison and looked across the bay. She already had plans for Mayor Grant to build a giant bridge connecting San Merido to the north of the bay. It would be an outward symbol of the power of the city but Juarez Island would forever stand as a testament to the real power in the city - her, Helen Monroe and her gang.

#thetakeover #sanmerido #hitwoman #killer woman #female assassin #femme fatale #mafia story

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orphancookie69 · 1 year

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Societal Rant: Election Day

Anyone getting their mail in voting ballots and then putting their “I Voted” stickers on their computers and water bottles? Good for you, you voted. I am a young person and mostly feel like my vote doesn’t count. Let’s talk about this.

While I am a young person, I have people I talk to that are younger than me. They are old enough to vote but don’t think their vote counts. While I totally don’t disagree with them, they are wrong.

Our political system is one of the best in the world, but isn’t it crazy to think that we have this many problems with a relatively good system? I would say, without apology, that we need to shake up majorly to fix it...or even start over. When I vote for a politician...you know the people supposed to represent the interests of the little guy in the big office according to the majority? That vote feels like a waste. They say what you want to hear, or what they think you want to hear, and then don’t give a damn about what you want. They are in the position to work on their agenda, and any money source funding said agenda.

Does that mean I shouldn’t vote? Kind of. Like, we have a two party system and we need to have more parties, but votes to any non democratic or non republican nominee, that really has no chance of winning-is kind of a waste. But, let’s say you have someone like Trump on the “Republican” ticket and Biden on the “Democratic” ticket....and you don’t like Trump-a vote away from him helps someone other than him run the country. You are just one person, but what is an ocean but a massive group of drops? We still have the issues of ones own agenda, plus an ongoing war between Democrats and Republicans in our “balance of power” that can keep or help any president in their agenda.

But, the presidential elections happen every 4 years and presidents actually have term limits. There are other elections, for the judicial branch and the legislative branch. Senators don’t have term limits, and really that could do with changing. But what about all those mailers and commercials for the propositions?

Vote for the propositions. As a young adult, even an old adult, these things have more direct effect on you. Like one of the propositions to bring music back into school but at a heavy heavy bill. Like yes, I want music in school-but we need to be working that in within an existing budget not adding more money. Why? Because there is no such thing as a free lunch. The lunch that is free to one, cost someone elses money. The money for that propostion has to come from somewhere, it is usually taxes. And once they take the ever increasing taxes from you-there is no accountability to make sure the schools use that to add a music program back.

The propositions for Fall 2022, I voted essentially all “no” on. The wording of the flavored tobacco one was heinous. We voted to not allow flavored tobacco to be sold, and it was about to be implemented. But before being implemented, we got the chance to “revote” on whether or not we really wanted it in place. I don’t know about you, but I know too many people with smoking problems because it tastes like a girl scout cookie.

When doing your research on the political propositions-read the book, ask your self how you feel about it (don’t let anyone tell you how to vote), and if confused look up news coverage that shows both sides of any one issue. Vote and then mail it off. There are in person options if you don’t trust mail, but ignore that “election fraud” crap. Also, always consider the source-I hate to say it, but isn’t it always the loser or power hungry political group saying the system is rigged?

Wonder where you stand on the political spectrum? Odds are you do not completely camp in Democratic or Republican. Me, I am more in the Green Party than D or R. Never heard of the Green party? Before I took this quiz, same. Figure out where you stand on either, or both, on these sites:

https://www.isidewith.com/

https://www.politicalcompass.org/

Sign up to vote, be an independent, if need be, and make your vote count. The more we take control of our lives, as much as one is able to do that, the more of the life you get to live that you want for not only you-but the generations to come.

#rant #election day #i voted #mail in ballots #pixabay #government #democracy #democrat #republican #propositions #america

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epacer · 2 years

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School Matters

Inside a classroom in a bungalow at Johnson Elementary School on Sept. 14, 2022

San Diego Unified Is Asking Voters for More Money. Here’s What They’ve Done with the Last Three Bond Measures.

In November, San Diegans will vote on the latest bond measure brought by San Diego Unified – its fourth in 14 years. Some of the priorities included are eerily similar to those in past measures, as are the claim it won’t increase the taxes of San Diego homeowners. Here’s the long view on why the district argued it needed each bond measure, and how the money was spent.

Proposition S and the Shadow of the Great Recession

In 2008, San Diego Unified put Proposition S, the “San Diego School Repair and Safety Measure,” on the ballot. It was pitched by supporters as a badly needed cash infusion to “fight urban decay in San Diego City schools.” Like November’s Measure U, the district also claimed that since it was essentially replacing 1998’s Prop MM, the existing tax rate wouldn’t increase.

Opponents argued it was a second mortgage on San Diegans’ homes that came at a time when Prop MM was still being paid down. “Will they try for a third, a fourth, or fifth, just because they can? You bet they will,” wrote Pat Flannery, a political gadfly, in a 2008 letter.

Voters approved the bond, allowing the district to levy up to $66.70 per $100,000 of assessed property value to pay for projects like removing asbestos and mold, fixing unsafe school drop-off and pick-up zones, installing security systems, renovating classrooms and replacing portable classrooms. Another significant program launched with Prop S that continues to this day was the i21 classroom initiative, which promised to refresh classroom technology every five years.

But when the Great Recession hit, property tax revenue tumbled. Faced with a revenue shortfall, the district delayed some projects, which drove up the interest it owed. Struggling with a lack of a consistent source of funds to keep up with repairs, the district in 2010 opted to delay paying back some of its bonds.

By 2011, the housing market crash had so diminished revenue that district administrators were pushing SDUSD to halt construction, with some officials projecting that the money coming in would only be enough to continue to pay off MM. A continued lack of consistent revenue from the state, a ballooning number of IOU’s, a credit rating downgrade and a looming budget deficit prompted largely by staffing costs left the district considering closing over a dozen schools. In November it decided against the closures, but the board floated a new bond.

Prop Z — Stadiums And “Whole Site Modernizations”

Amid its financial turmoil, the district argued a new bond, though it couldn’t go to staff pay, would free up funds entangled in construction and renovation that could then go to staff – which made up over 90 percent of its costs.

The district also argued that it would be able to save on costs like energy and water by upgrading school infrastructure.

At the time, homeowners paid $67 per every $100,000 in assessed value, but all that revenue was paying off projects already completed. Swamped with debt, the district had no way to tap into the $1.7 billion it was still allowed to borrow via Prop S.

Or, the district said, voters could approve another bond measure, along with a property tax increase – now dubbed Prop Z, which ultimately passed. After years of fiscal chaos, which included a budget deficit as high as $120 million, the layoff of 20 percent of its teachers and the district nearing the brink of insolvency, there was a bit of optimism. Statewide, Proposition 30 also raised funds for education.

But from 2009 to 2015, 43 percent of what the district had spent to modernize schools went to new stadiums and athletic facilities, while some repairs had to wait until the district embarked on a “whole site modernization,” a process that brings schools up to code and repairs all major issues at once. By 2015, the district completed only six of the roughly 140 whole site modernization projects voters had approved.

Gone were the warnings of the danger of asbestos-ridden classrooms in Prop Z’s messaging. In fact, the district asserted, asbestos was never really a risk anyway. The district argued stadiums needed to be ADA compliant, that they provide a sense of pride that increases test scores, that if some schools had nice stadiums, all schools should and the bleakly political logic that sometimes curb appeal simply wins out.

“The things that people want to prioritize aren’t always the things we need to prioritize,” former SDUSD board member Scott Barnett said at the time. “It’s about what the parents want and what the politicians want. Look, you can’t do a ribbon-cutting on new plumbing, right? But you can do it on a new stadium.”

By 2016, SDUSD had spent $1 billion in funds from Props S and Z, but only $200 million had gone toward projects considered major repairs or renovations to existing facilities, and during that time the condition of SDUSD schools actually got worse. But even as facility conditions improved somewhat, they didn’t amount to the improvements originally projected, and the district telegraphed the need for much more funding.

In 2017, SDUSD found elevated lead levels at fixtures in three schools. Replacing plumbing at one of those schools, Emerson-Bandini Elementary, had been highlighted as a reason to pass both Props S and Z. Yet none of the $1.7 million spent at the school – like hundreds of thousands that went to a turf field and solar panels – went to plumbing. The district insisted those projects didn’t delay plumbing fixes, which they’d planned to take care of during a whole site modernization project that ultimately kicked off in 2019.

So began the era of Measure YY.

Measure YY – Déjà Vu All Over Again

Like Prop Z, Measure YY levied a new tax of $60 for every $100,000 assessed property value. The similarities didn’t stop there. Measure YY’s spending priorities bore a striking resemblance to those from the past two bond measures and included classroom renovations and security improvements – priorities the board has listed for yet another bond measure four years later. The district argued that even given new statewide investments in schools, it needed the bond to offset budget cuts made during the Great Recession, despite its budget rebounding years earlier.

But the key selling point to YY was providing kids drinking water safe from lead. Despite promises to repair and upgrade plumbing with past bond money, and the district spending hundreds of thousands to test taps and replace ones found to have higher-than-allowed lead levels, the district said it needed additional funds to finish the job.

District officials also argued that though there was still billions left from the previous two bond measures, estimates of the costs of repairs exceeded that amount, so a new bond measure would be needed at some point. Voters ultimately approved Measure YY, making the district three for three in bond measures over a decade.

The district touts major bond-funded construction and renovation projects completed in recent years as evidence of the benefits of previous bonds and its ability to spend funds in a fiscally responsible manner. Maureen Magee, SDUSD’s communications director wrote in an email that a total of 195 projects have been completed since the passage of Prop S, including over 100 new classrooms and career and technical education facilities, nearly 100 playfields and an entirely new elementary school in Mission Valley.

They also include the $180 million rebuild and restructuring of struggling Memorial Prep that gave Logan Heights its first ever high school. There are also over 100 projects at some point in the design and bid or construction phase, and the condition of district buildings has significantly increased in the past five years, with district officials projecting continued increases over the coming years. SDUSD’s also added at least some filtered drinking water outlets at every school districtwide.

Magee has also argued that previous bond measures have allowed the district to save money, citing reduced energy and maintenance costs from updating outdated facilities. SDUSD projects its solar installations will produce 50 percent of its energy needs by the end of the year, saving around $6 million annually.

Now, with November’s Measure U, the district is hoping despite its share of bond spending controversies, the projects it has completed are enough to convince voters to extend the winning streak. *Reposted article from the VOSD by Jakob McWhinney, October 5, 2022

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og-cinnamon · 3 years

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please read this! it's urgent!!!

hello all! i haven't been here in very long, but i don't know what to do anymore. there hasn't been a strike this big in many years, and there has been little to no international exposure to my knowledge, so i hope some of you can read this, and try to help!

you may or may not know this already, but the situation in Colombia is pretty bad right now. because of the pandemic, unemployment rose by a stupid amount, and poverty got way worse than it already was: yesterday, about 40% of the entire country's population got reported to be in poverty. that's about 20 MILLION people living in extreme poverty.

added to these (really bad already) conditions, the government has reported there's not enough money to keep the country working for more than two weeks. this is not because there actually isn't any money. there's not enough money for governing because of ongoing, old corruption in the government; and because our president, IN THE MIDDLE OF THE THIRD PEAK IN THE SANITARY CRISIS, decided he should get himself some war planes for literally no reason.

as a way to resolve the fiscal deficit caused by the government, the government decided to draft a tax reform, according to which middle and low class citizens will have to pay a 19% added value tax for anything they buy, especially including basic goods such as meats, grains, fruits and vegetables- pretty much anything you need to eat. aside from that, there will be a 19% added value tax on gasoline (further increasing the prices on food), basic services (water and electricity supply, and internet in middle class households) and even funerary services in the event that you die. if this reform gets passed, WE CAN'T EVEN DIE WITHOUT BEING CHARGED TAXES FOR IT, EVEN IF THE ALREADY EXISTING SHIT CONDITIONS MAKE IT IMPOSSIBLE TO LIVE IF IT PASSES.

naturally, there was generalized outrage when the reform got announced, and so, on april 28th a national strike against the reform began. it's been three days of marches already, and i have never seen everyone come together like this to repel the reform: indigenous people, farmers and truck drivers are blocking national highways all over the country, many of my fellow students have been marching nonstop all the while, bus drivers are blocking highways in Bogotá. this never happens, so it's that bad.

however, this outrage has been met from day one with police repression, and the government has been blatantly ignoring the people's demands. on april 28th, a 13-year-old got shot and killed because he kicked a policeman. on april 29th, a girl lost her eye because a policeman shot her in the face while she was standing in the midst of a peaceful protest.

today, on april 30th, 7 people have been confirmed to have been murdered in a police shooting during one of the marches; there are about 300 people illegally confined in a stadium by the police; one of my best friends has had two tear gas bombs shot into her house for no reason.

the list of disappearances keeps growing, and no one knows what the death toll is; the media keeps covering it all up by bringing attention to the people burning fires on highways and breaking into banks, but there are no official reports on all of what's happening yet.

the president has said he won't lift the reform no matter what, but the strike will continue until it does, and we're terrified. this is the biggest strike in years, but influential government officials are even asking policemen to shoot people even though they're not even meant nor allowed to carry many of the guns they're using, and the national health ministry is threatening to stop vaccine supply to one of the most covid-affected areas of the country.

i haven't even gone out to march, because i live in a high risk household and vaccines haven't been delivered to a significant degree yet and so i'm scared of covid; but i'm still genuinely fearing for my life and my family's. my friend's house got flooded with tear gas because the police felt like throwing a tantrum. who knows what's next?

what's even wilder about all this is that i haven't seen any international exposure, even though it's the exact kind of thing that deserves exposure; besides, at this point i believe the government will only cave through international pressure.

please, i beg of you, if you read this please reblog it, repost it, do whatever; get informed on what's happening, please help us make it trend. the world needs to know, please help spread the word!

MAY 2ND UPDATE:

as of right now, there are no official reports on the past few days' brutality. however, most unofficial human rights organizations claim the death toll is 35, that there have been 45 seriously wounded people, and that there have been 31 disappearances. in response to that, the president threatened to militarize the main cities last night and said it was a way to defend citizens' integrity; what has been evident, though, is that the main threat to the population is police abuse.

this morning, some things happened as well: first, the largest Colombian syndicates (truckers and taxi drivers) announced they'll be going on strike tomorrow and contributing to the blockage of main highways all over the country.

after this was announced, the president announced that he will order the Congress to scrap the reform, and that a different project will be worked on. by previous experiences, this just means that they'll find a way to rephrase the reform so it's a bit more agreeable, but ultimately get us to the same place; aside from that, a reform to the health system will continue regardless of the tax reform's state.

bear in mind the nationwide health system is on the brink of collapse as it is, because even after a year of the pandemic and counting, there hasn't been enough funding to guarantee biosecurity nor treatment: in departments such as Chocó, or the entire Caribbean region, service is precarious at best. further cuts on its budget would be beyond catastrophic.

this obviously means the strikes won't stop, but with militarization seeming imminent (unless the army goes on strike as well, which has been rumored but I find unlikely), and the nonstop rise in police violence, there are no guarantees to human rights nor protest safety.

please help us keep spreading the word!!!

#28A #noalareformatributaria #police brutality #colombia #paro nacional #urgent #help needed #idk what to tag so this gets seen but god #signal boost #update #important #paronacional2m

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usafphantom2 · 2 years

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In the Pentagon's new proposal for 2023, USAF will start retiring the F-22 and buy more F-15EX

The proposal presented would reduce the fleet by 250 old aircraft and bring more than 82 new ones.

Fernando Valduga By Fernando Valduga 03/28/22 - 10:51 PM in Military

The U.S. Air Force is asking Congress to retire 150 aircraft in its 2023 fiscal budget, including 33 of its advanced F-22 fighters, but would also deliver 100 remotely piloted MQ-9 Reaper aircraft to another government agency and buy more than 82 other new aircraft, including an accelerated purchase of F-15EX Eagle IIs. Find out everything here.

A planned purchase of the F-35 fighter would be reduced by 15 aircraft, as the service awaits a more advanced model.

For the 2022 fiscal budget, of the 201 legacy types that the U.S. Air Force (USAF) asked to retire, Congress allowed the service to sell all except 42 A-10 attack jets.

USAF leaders signaled that, after due diligence and market research, they will probably seek to buy the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail as a replacement for the E-3 AWACS. They threw cold water into the notion of a competition for a second modern tanker, indicating that they will probably keep a modified version of Boeing's KC-46 Pegasus. And it will also reduce the purchase of the HH-60W Combat Rescue Helicopter on 75 aircraft instead of 113, saying that it will have enough aircraft for the mission after this year, given the changing nature of the search and rescue in combat.

Two new unmanned aircraft among the "operational imperatives" of USAF Secretary Frank Kendall - an unmanned tactical escort for fighters and an unmanned bomber of strategic range - appear in the budget only as research and development projects. Together, they are called the Autonomous Collaborative Program and are funded at $113 million, but are not yet a purchase program.

DIVESTMENTS

The 2023 tax budget request seeks retirements from the following aircraft:

A-10 Thunderbolt II

The U.S. Air Force calls for the withdrawal of 21 jets from the National Air Guard facilities of Fort Wayne, Indiana, and the transition of the unit to 21 F-16 fighters.

F-22 Raptor

Of its 36 F-22 Block 20 - which are used for training and not configured as frontline combat jets - the USAF intends to retire 33, which will reduce the fleet from F-22 to 153 planes. Kendall, in a budget summary embargoed on March 25 to the press, said it would not be profitable to upgrade the aircraft to full combat capacity, since the F-22 should gradually come out in about 10 years. He said that the economy will be applied directly to the Next-Generation Air Dominance (NGAD) family of systems, which will fill the F-22.

The affected aircraft “are being used for training now, but they are not capable of combat,” Kendall said. “So, we see an efficiency, effectively, in removing these aircraft at this time.” However, the USAF asked for $344 million to upgrade the sensors and other systems in the remaining Raptors in fiscal year 2023.

E-3 Sentry AWACS

The USAF wants to retire 15 aircraft at Tinker Air Base, Oklahoma. The E-3 has become difficult to maintain, with low mission rates, and Kendall said the service will make a market research due diligence and make a decision "within the coming months" about the possibility of seeking the E-7 as a replacement. Only 16 AWACS will remain, but the U.S. Air Force did not say when they will be eliminated completely.

E-8 Joint STARS

The budget plan provides for the retirement of eight JSTARS in 2023 and four more in 2024, with funding "redirected to emerging ISR (intelligence, surveillance and recognition) resources that can operate in highly contested environments," said a spokeswoman for the service. Kendall suggested that these features can be widely provided by space-based assets.

"Basically, both the JSTARS fleet and the AWACS fleet are aging and need to be replaced," Kendall said.

C-130H Hercules

The USAF would give up 12 C-130 from Maxwell Air Base, Alabama, but is buying four new C-130-J30, in a net reduction of eight aircraft. USAF's chief budget officer, Maj. Gen. James D. Peccia III said that the C-130s will be filled with the new MH-139 helicopter.

T-1 Jayhawk

The U.S. Air Force is introducing new simulation and training techniques to avoid the need to re-motorize or replace the T-1, relying on the T-6 for the newly determined actual flight hours. The aircraft will be redistributed among the training bases for undergraduate pilots and will be eliminated as new simulation and training equipment is put online.

KC-135 Stratotanker

The U.S. Air Force intends to retire 13 KC-135 refuelers from the Guard and Reserve, converting units that lose aircraft to the KC-46A Pegasus. The service will assume "a measured amount of risk" in the interval between the departure of the old aircraft and the arrival of the new one, a spokeswoman said. Four of the KC-135 will come from March Reserve Air Base in California and nine from McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst Joint Base in New Jersey. Kendall referred to this alienation as a "modest" reduction, but recognized that "we will need some congressional cooperation on this."

MQ-9 Reaper

Kendall said the USAF is "taking 100 MQ-9 drones and transferring them to another government organization". He didn't specify the organization. "This emerges as a divestment, but it is not a change in capacity," he said.

PURCHASES

The purchase list of new aircraft for USAF is a little smaller than the divestment list.

F-35 Lightning II

After several years requesting 48 F-35s - and receiving 12 more each of these years by Congress - the U.S. Air Force is requesting only 33 F-35s in 2023.

There is "a entire collection of reasons" for the reduction, Kendall said. First, the performance of the Tech Refresh 3 update of the F-35 "is not what we wanted," he said, and the TR3 is the basis for the Block 4 version of the jet, which USAF has long said it prefers to buy. The U.S. Air Force is investing some additional money in the Advanced Engine Technology Program (AETP) that could power an updated F-35, sees an opportunity to accelerate the F-15EX and continues to invest money against the Next-Generation Air Dominance program. After investing in these areas, in the context of "TacAir's entire portfolio", Kendall said that reducing the F-35 makes sense.

In addition, "if you look further at the FYDP (Defense Plan for Future Years) that we will provide, the numbers rise again," he said.

Asked if the U.S. Air Force remains committed to hunting, Kendall said, "Of course".

"We have been in production for 15 years and will build the F-35 probably another 15 years. So, absolutely yes." Kendall said that the F-35 will continue to be, as the Chief of Staff Gen. Charles Q. Brown Jr., the "cornerstone" of the tactical fleet "in the near future. So there's no doubt about it."

Kendall noted that AETP is an expensive development program, and the USAF is still courting "partners" among the other services to share the cost and benefit of a new engine.

F-15EX Eagle II

The U.S. Air Force doubles its 2022 order from 12 Eagle IIs to 24 in 2023.

Kendall said Brown wants to “replace the F-15Cs as soon as possible,” and the availability of the F-15EX makes this possible. "He said it was in the order of six months to a year in terms of time to replace these aircraft, which are aging very quickly," Kendall said, referring to the time required to transition from an F-15 squadron to an F-15EX squadron instead of the F-35.

"It also provides some operational features," Kendall added. “It is really a type of 4.5 generation aircraft, but it provides more weapons transport capabilities, in large letters, than the F-35. Therefore, for the homeland's defense mission and for some anti-aircraft defensive applications abroad, it has desirable resources, operationally."

Peccia said that the F-15C/Ds will retire completely by fiscal year 2026.

"One of the fundamental things that motivate me in the operational imperatives in the TacAir area is the accessibility of future force," Kendall noted. If we are just buying NGAD, which is a very expensive platform; F-35s for $80 million per copy; and F-15EXs for $80 million per copy; we can't support the U.S. Air Force. Therefore, we also have to get a combination of low-cost platforms." These, he said, are part of the research effort for Autonomous Collaborative Programs.

B-21 Raider Bomber

The fiscal year budget of 23 increases by $1.7 billion to start the initial low-cost production of the B-21 bomber, but Peccia said he could not reveal how many aircraft this will involve. At the time of the program launch, USAF officials said that the low rate would probably involve five aircraft per year for several years.

KC-46A Pegasus

The U.S. Air Force increased its purchase from 2022 from 14 to 15 in 2023, adding $220 million to additional aircraft and raising the rate of KC-46 to the extent already planned. Kendall said he thinks the USAF will probably remain with the KC-46 while planning its next installment of tanker purchases.

"We had a KC-X, Y and Z scheme," Kendall said. “As we analyze our requirements later, [they] begin to look more like a modified KC-46 than a completely new design.” Although the USAF does its "due diligence" and market research on other options, such as Lockheed Martin's LMXT version of the A330 Multi-Role Tanker Transport, Kendall did not offer optimism about a new refueler contest.

"I want to be very transparent about it," he said. “I think there is still the possibility of competition out there, but as we analyze our requirements, the probability of a competition has decreased.” He said that the USAF will make some decisions "in the coming months" and "decide where we want to go".

HH-60W Jolly Green II

The U.S. Air Force's plan was to buy 113 HH-60W helicopters for combat search and rescue (CSAR), but the USAF said it would "complete the purchase" with 10 more aircraft by 2023.

"This will take us to 75 helicopters," Peccia said. Kendall said that, given the shift of focus to the Indo-Pacific, the need for the HH-60W has decreased.

"It has been reduced," he said. "the scenarios we are most concerned about are not the same as before." The HH-60W was a good counterinsurgency solution, but it does not meet the requirements against opponents of the same level.

"The acts of aggression as we are seeing in Europe, or we may end up seeing in the Pacific with the challenge of rhythm, puts us in a very different scenario, from a combat rescue point of view."

Last August, the head of the Air Combat Command, General Mark D. Kelly said that aviators descending in disputed areas of the Pacific may have to get to a place where they can be caught, since the threat of air defense will be so challenging to manage a rescue.

MH-139 Grey Wolf

The U.S. Air Force is buying five MH-139 in fiscal year 2023. Peccia said they were in the 2022 budget, but they had several certifications yet to be completed. This is already done, or will be in the "next months", and the program can continue, he said. The goal remains to buy 80 of the Grey Wolf helicopters. The helicopter will replace the old UH-1Ns, which are used for security in the USAF nuclear missile fields, VIP transportation in the Washington and Japan Air Force District, and survival, evasion, resistance and escape training.

Source: Air Force Magazine

Tags: Military AviationF-15EXF-22 RaptorUSAF - United States Air Force / U.S. Air Force

Fernando Valduga

Aviation photographer and pilot since 1992, he has participated in several events and air operations, such as Cruzex, AirVenture, Dayton Airshow and FIDAE. He has works published in a specialized aviation magazine in Brazil and abroad. He uses Canon equipment during his photographic work in the world of aviation

Cavok Brasil - Digital Tchê Web Creation

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

July 19, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

This morning, on the Fox News Channel’s Fox & Friends, personality Steve Doocy told viewers to get the coronavirus vaccine because it would “save your life” and noted that 99% of the people now dying from Covid-19 are unvaccinated. Brian Kilmeade answered that not getting the vaccine is a personal choice and that the government has no role in protecting the population. “That’s not their job. It’s not their job to protect anybody,” he said.

It is, of course, literally the job of the government to protect us. The preamble to the Constitution reads: “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

But Kilmeade’s extraordinary comment cuts to the heart of the long history from the New Deal to the present.

In the 1930s, to combat the Great Depression, Democrats under President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had offered a “new deal for the American people.” That New Deal meant that the government would no longer work simply to promote business, but would regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, and promote infrastructure. World War II accelerated the construction of that active government, and by the time it was over, Americans quite liked the new system.

After the war, Republican Dwight Eisenhower rejected the position of 1920s Republicans and embraced the active government. He explained that in the modern world, the government must protect people from disasters created by forces outside their control, and it must provide social services that would protect people from unemployment, old age, illness, accidents, unsafe food and drugs, homelessness, and disease.

He called his version of the New Deal “a middle way between untrammeled freedom of the individual and the demands of the welfare of the whole Nation.” One of his supporters explained that, “If a job has to be done to meet the needs of the people, and no one else can do it, then it is the proper function of the federal government.”

In this, Eisenhower and his team were echoing Abraham Lincoln, who thought about government at a time when elite southern enslavers insisted that government had no role to play in the country except in protecting property.

As a young man, Lincoln had watched his town of New Salem, Illinois, die because the settlers—hard workers, eager to make the town succeed—could not dredge the Sangamon River to promote trade by themselves. Lincoln later mused, “The legitimate object of government is ‘to do for the people what needs to be done, but which they can not, by individual effort, do at all, or do so well, for themselves.’…Making and maintaining roads, bridges, and the like; providing for the helpless young and afflicted; common schools; and disposing of deceased men's property, are instances.”

So Eisenhower and his fellow Republicans were in line with traditional Republican values when they declared their support for an active government. But those who objected to what became known as the post–World War II liberal consensus rejected the idea that the government had any role to play in the economy or in social welfare.

In 1954, William F. Buckley, Jr., and his brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell, Jr., made no distinction between the liberal consensus and international communism when they defended Wisconsin Senator Joe McCarthy for his attacks on “communists” in the U.S. government. They insisted that the country was made up of “Liberals,” who were guiding the nation toward socialism, and “Conservatives,” like themselves, who were standing alone against the Democrats and Republicans who made up a majority of the country and liked the new business regulations, safety net, and infrastructure.

That reactionary mindset came to dominate the Republican Party after 1980, and now, forty years later, a television personality is taking the stand that the government has no role in protecting Americans against a worldwide pandemic that has killed more than 600,000 of us.

And yet, the idea that the government has a role to play in the economy remains popular, and this is creating a problem for Republicans. As soon as they took office, President Joe Biden and congressional Democrats passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan without any Republican votes. About 60% of Americans liked the plan, and it is likely to be more popular still now that checks from the Child Tax Credit extended in it began hitting parents’ bank accounts on July 15. Even before that, at least 26 Republicans were touting the benefits of the measure to their constituents while neglecting to mention they voted against it.

Now, Congress is negotiating a two-part infrastructure plan. Biden and the Democrats have worked hard for three months to get at least 10 Republican senators to agree to a $579 billion measure that would provide hard infrastructure like roads, bridges, and broadband. Negotiators are still hammering out that agreement and Democrats are making concessions; yesterday, Ohio Senator Rob Portman, a Republican, told CNN that a provision to pay for the package in part by enforcing tax laws against those ignoring them bothered Republicans enough that negotiators cut it.

And yet tonight, leading Republicans said they would not vote to advance the bill on Wednesday, citing the fact it is not fully written. Since both parties regularly move their measures forward under such circumstances, many Democrats simply see this as a delaying tactic to try to kill the measure before Congress starts a month-long break on August 6. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has said for weeks that he would bring the bill up in mid-July.

If the bipartisan bill fails, the Democrats can simply fold the provisions in it into their larger infrastructure bill that they intend to pass through budget reconciliation, which cannot be blocked by a filibuster. This larger, $3.5 trillion measure includes funding for human infrastructure, such as childcare, and for addressing climate change. It also will move corporate taxation from the 21% established by the 2017 tax cut up to about 28%. (It was 35% before the 2017 tax cut.)

The Democrats need to get these measures through because they are facing serious financial deadlines. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2019 suspended the debt ceiling—the amount the country can borrow—only until July 31 of this year. And the budget needs to be hammered out by September 30. If it isn’t, government funding can be extended by a continuing resolution, but in the past, Republicans have sometimes chosen to shut down the government instead.

All of this will take place while the House select committee to investigate the January 6 insurrection will be holding hearings. Today, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) made it clear he intends to disrupt those hearings: three of the five people he named to the committee—Jim Banks (R-IN), Jim Jordan (R-OH), and Troy Nehls (R-TX)—voted to challenge the election results in Pennsylvania and Arizona, thus helping to legitimize the Big Lie that led to the insurrection.

McCarthy made Banks the ranking member, suggesting that he expects House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) to reject Jordan, but there is already outcry at the idea of any of these three investigating events in which they participated. Already, Banks has indicated that he is not really interested in studying the events of January 6, saying tonight that Speaker Pelosi “created this committee solely to malign conservatives and to justify the Left’s authoritarian agenda.”

McCarthy’s other two appointments are Kelly Armstrong (R-ND), and Rodney Davis (R-IL).

In today’s struggle over the nature of government, the Democrats are at a disadvantage. They want to use the government to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty, just as Lincoln and FDR and Eisenhower advocated. To drive their individualist vision, though, all the Republicans have to do is stop the Democrats.

—-

Notes:

https://www.thedailybeast.com/brian-kilmeade-says-its-not-governments-job-to-protect-anybody-from-covid

https://www.mediamatters.org/coronavirus-covid-19/defending-people-who-dont-want-get-vaccinated-brian-kilmeade-argues-its-not

https://news.yahoo.com/senator-bipartisan-infrastructure-bill-loses-171317546.html

https://capaction.medium.com/25-and-counting-republicans-who-voted-no-but-took-the-dough-68fbf11df957

https://www.crfb.org/blogs/upcoming-congressional-fiscal-policy-deadlines

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/19/gop-infrastructure-deal-500166

https://www.opensecrets.org/news/2021/07/senate-democrats-unveil-reconciliation-progressive-aim-at-moderates/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/jim-jordan-four-other-republicans-chosen-by-house-minority-leader-kevin-mccarthy-to-serve-on-panel-investigating-jan-6-riots/2021/07/19/85c6b534-e8df-11eb-8950-d73b3e93ff7f_story.html

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#politics #Heather Cox Richardson #Letters From An American #history #government #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP #New Deal #COVID-19

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mostlysignssomeportents · 3 years

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Ant, Uber, and the true nature of money

The US election news has largely overshadowed a seismic moment in global finance: Ant, a fintech company that spun out of Alibaba/Alipay, was scheduled to have the world's largest IPO, topping even Aramco, the Saudi sovereign wealth fund.

Then Chinese regulators canceled it.

As Yves Smith writes in her excellent Naked Capitalism breakdown, the consensus narrative on this is capricious Chinese regulators changed their minds and jerked the rug out from under Ali's billionaire owner Jack Ma.

The reality is a lot chewier.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/11/china-takes-step-against-securitization-consumer-borrowing-with-suspension-of-ant-ipo.html

To understand it, you need to understand the difference between the Chinese and American "money story." In the US, there is widespread, unquestioning faith in the fairytale that money predates the state and is separate from it.

In this story, people come together to trade but are plagued by disparate goods: if I want to pay for your chickens with a cow, how do you make change? They spontaneously decide that something (gold?) is money and price their cows and chicks in it.

Then, governments come along tax our gold away, and then to add insult to injury, governments abandon gold and insist that paper is as good as gold, print too much of it and crash the economy!

This probably sounds familiar to you, but it's just not true.

The actual historical reality, supported by history, archaeology and anthropology, is that governments created money by creating tax. The first "money" was the Babylonian ledgers that recorded how much of their crops farmers owed to the state and their creditors.

Money took a leap forward with imperial conquest: emperors solved the logistical problem of feeding and billeting their occupying soldiers by charging the occupied a tax that had to be paid for in coins stamped with the emperor's head.

They paid the soldiers in these coins, and demanded that their conquered populations somehow get the coins in order to pay their tax, with violent consequences if the tax wasn't paid. So the people sold food and other necessities to soldiers to get the coins.

Money, in other words, is how states provision themselves, and it derives its value from the fact that you have to pay your taxes in it. Governments spend money into existence by buying labor and goods from the public, and then tax it out of existence once a year.

The money the government spends, but does not tax, is the public's money - the money left over for us to transact. All the money in circulation is the sum total of all the money the government spent but didn't tax - that is, the government's deficit is the public's asset.

When governments run "balanced budgets" (or budget surpluses), they remove money from the economy, leaving the public with less to spend. That can be a good thing - a way to fight inflation, which is when too much money chases too few assets.

Low government spending slows growth by taking away the private sector's ability to spend. When the private sector is at full employment, when it is buying all the stuff that's for sale, you need to do something to keep inflation at bay.

During WWII, the USG competed with the private sector for stuff and labor. Uncle Sam spent lots of new money into existence, paying people to build munitions - but then convinced people to buy war bonds, burying that new money for years to come.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2019/07/taxes-for-revenue-are-obsolete.html

But when governments run so lean that there isn't enough money in the economy for the private sector to buy the stuff it needs, it seeks out other forms of money, like bank loans (which generate interest income for shareholders - one reason the market likes austerity).

In theory, bank lending is tightly regulated. Banks are the government's fiscal agents, creatures of the state, only able to trade because of a government charter. But when there isn't enough money in the system, unregulated banks spring into existence.

Another word for "unregulated bank" is "fintech" (h/t Riley Quinn).

And now we're back to China and the money story. Chinese finance regulators have always treated money as a public utility, to be spent or withdrawn to accomplish public purposes.

During the country's rapid industrialization, regulators loosened the flow of money to allow for rapid capacity-building, directing the country's productive capacity to building factories that would multiply that capacity.

But when they shut off the spigot and told factory owners that their future growth would come from making and selling things, the wealthy rebelled and sought out money from unlicensed banks or banks that were willing to break the rules.

This led to a string of subprime debt crises over the past five years, as regulators crushed these wildcat money-creators as fast as they popped up.

https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2016-02-17/china-s-600-billion-subprime-crisis-is-already-here

China's 1% fought back. They emigrated:

https://www.macrobusiness.com.au/2012/08/rich-chinese-flee/

They used cryptocurrency (aka fintech) to evade capital controls, inflating the Bitcoin price-bubble and the Vancouver/Sydney/etc real-estate price bubble as they laundered their money and stashed it in safe-deposit boxes in the sky:

https://www.ft.com/content/bad16a88-d6fd-11e6-944b-e7eb37a6aa8e

As China's shadow economy ballooned it also grew in criminality. There was the wave of Chinese debt-kidnappings, which became so widespread that hostage-taking was described as "China's small claims court."

https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/08/chinas-police-think-hostages-arent-their-problem/

No wonder regulators fought back.

China's regulators didn't win a decisive victory, but they retained enormous control over their money-supply, and that REALLY paid off when the pandemic hit and they suspended all debts, rents, and taxes and mothballed the entire productive economy.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/01/cant-pay-wont-pay/#jubilee-now

Contrast with the US where the finance sector is an industry, not a public utility. Finance flexed its political muscle and diverted nearly the whole stimulus to itself, then crushed the productive economy by demanding debt service and rents.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/09/michael-hudson-how-an-act-of-god-pandemic-is-destroying-the-west-the-u-s-is-saving-the-financial-sector-not-the-economy.html

The ability to use finance as a utility is one of China's crucial assets, and it defends that asset ferociously. And THAT'S why the Ant IPO got killed. Ant's major source of income is short-term, high-interest lending, what Chinese regulators call "pawnbrokering."

China's pawnbrokers are a $43B shadow banking sector, and the country's regulators have been cracking down on them for the past year.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-03-12/china-is-said-to-scrutinize-43-billion-pawn-shop-lending-boom

$43B is a drop in the bucket of China's shadow economy (valued at $9T!), but it has real metastatic potential.

Ant's innovation is to fintechify the pawnbroker industry, by tying it to apps (on the front end) and to a US-style debt-brokerage (on the back end).

IOW: Ant's business model is that desperate people use an app to request and quickly receive high-risk, high-interest loans.

Then Ant sells the loans to "investors" (AKA "securitization"). Converting debts into income streams for third parties is the true basis of the finance industry. It's the means by which socially useless intermediaries extract ever-mounting rents from the productive economy.

And as Smith writes in her breakdown, the fact that Chinese finance regulators weren't going to let Ant explode his mass-scale, app-based payday-lending pawnbrokerage is not a surprise. They've been telling Jack Ma this for MONTHS, publicly and privately.

Ma thought he could simply bull his way past the Chinese regulators - that because he runs Alibaba and its subsidiaries, that they would defer to him. But the whole point of a finance regulator is NOT to let the finance sector write its own rules.

That's because bankers will cheerfully set the whole economy on fire to turn a buck (see, e.g., America).

Ant was on track for the largest IPO in world history due to investors' appetite for converting Chinese money from a public utility to a private enrichment vehicle.

So yeah, you're goddamned right the Chinese regulator wasn't going to let him do it. Their whole JOB is to not let him do it.

If you read this far, you may be asking yourself why, if governments don't need taxes to fund programs, they bother to tax at all?

There are two important reasons. The first is to fight inflation, by removing existing money from circulation so that when the government spends new money into existence to pay for the things it needs, that money isn't bidding against the existing supply.

But the other reason is to deprive the wealthy of the power that money brings, lest they use that power to pervert policy. Jack Ma's billions are what got him to the brink of a disastrous IPO for his unregulated bank.

And the US election demonstrates just how badly public policy fares when concentrated money is brought to bear on it for parochial purposes. Take Prop 22, the California ballot initiative to allow Uber and Lyft to misclassify their employees as independent contractors.

No on Prop 22 is a no-brainer. Vast numbers of gig workers are full-time employees, not contractors, and Lyft and Uber and other gig economy companies have pioneered labor misclassification as a tactic for paying literal starvation wages.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/10/14/final_ver2/#prop-22

And yet, Prop 22 passed, thanks to the largest-ever spending on any ballot initiative in California history: $205 million ($628,854/day!), spent pn 19 PR firms (including Big Tobacco's cancer-denial specialists).

https://jacobinmag.com/2020/11/proposition-22-california-uber-lyft-gig-employee/

The spend included a bribe to the NAACP Chair's consultancy that made sub-minimum wage jobs with no benefits for people of color (the majority of gig workers) seem like a blow for racial justice.

All told, Uber/Lyft's campaign outspent 49 out of 53 CA House races COMBINED.

And it was a bargain. Lyft and Uber have stolen $413m from California's employment insurance fund since 2014 - and that's just one cost they ducked through this victory. Far more important are the savings they'll realize on worker safety and job-related death claims.

The gig economy companies are the epitome of the financial economy destroying the productive economy. None of these companies turn a profit, after all - all they do is destroy actual, profitable businesses.

Currently the entire restaurant sector is being laid to waste by Postmates and Uber Eats (even as both lose vast sums):

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/19/we-are-beautiful/#man-in-the-middle

And the workers who lost out with Prop 22 are being "chickenized" - having all the risk of operating a business shifted onto their side of the ledger:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/07/14/poesy-the-monster-slayer/#stay-on-target

(No surprise, one of Prop 22's signature achievements was denying workers the right to unionize).

The desperation of chickenized workers is downright dystopian:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/02/free-steven-donziger/#phone-trees

and chickenization (not automation) is the major cause of falling wages:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/17/on-face-interaction/#zombie-robots

Lyft, Uber, Postmates, and the whole gamut of gig economy companies are all haemorrhaging money. Uber alone lost $4.7B in the first half of 2020. That's how you can tell they aren't tech companies: tech companies profited during the pandemic.

Gig-economy companies aren't part of the productive economy - they're part of the finance economy. They rely on investors, not profits from delighted customers, to stay afloat. They make nothing. They destroy everything: workers' lives, productive businesses.

They will never be profitable. Ever.

Take Uber. The company only exists because the Saudi royals amassed so much money that they could bend reality. The "Saudi Vision 2030" plan calls for the creation of new sources of post-oil wealth.

To that end, the Saudis have poured money into the Softbank VC fund, which then supported global-scale, money-losing, predatory businesses in the hopes of securing a monopoly (or, failing that, unloading the company onto dazzled suckers).

When the company IPOed last year, it had already lost $10b. It loses $0.41 on every dollar you spend on your fare. And yet, the Saudis got away clean, off the backs of investors who assumed that a pile of shit this big must have a pony under it somewhere.

Some believed the company's lies about the imminence of self-driving cars. Uber is not going to make a self-driving car.

https://pluralistic.net/2020/09/30/death-to-all-monopoly/#pogo-stick-problem

Some believed the company's lies about profitability via growth. It can't grow to profitability. By its own disclosures, profitability depends on every public transit system in the world shutting down and being replaced by Ubers. #Nagahappen.

https://48hills.org/2019/05/ubers-plans-include-attacking-public-transit/

The Saudi strategy - and its punishing, economy-destroying reality-distortions - are exemplary of what happens when government let too much money accumulate in unaccountable, private hands. Prop 22 will kill and starve workers, and the public will pick up the pieces.

The businesses that profit from these deaths and immiseration will fail anyway, but not before their major backers and top execs make hundreds of millions or billions.

Recall: the Ant IPO was set to smash the existing record: Saudi Aramco (AKA the money behind Uber).

Meanwhile, all the blood and treasure squandered on Prop 22 - the $205m spent on the Yes side, the $20 spent by unions on the No side - won't save Uber or other gig economy companies.

Not only are they bleeding money, but as Edward Ongweso Jr explains, "Uber is losing legal challenges in France, Britain, Canada, Italy," turning drivers into employees or allowing "lawsuits reclassifying them as such."

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3annmb/proposition-22-passes-in-california-but-uber-and-lyft-are-only-delaying-the-inevitable

And other US states - NY, MA, NJ - are working to end the misclassification of Uber drivers and other gig workers.

Permitting Uber and other gig economy companies to flout the law did not make the economy better. All it did was transfer more money to the wealthy.

And the money they wealthy amass is converted to political power, usurping money's role as a public utility and converting it to a means to seek private gains at public expense.

#pluralistic

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imaginetonyandbucky · 4 years

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The Buy In

Chapter 10: Epilogue

by @dracusfyre

"I feel like you're going to try to sell me a time share," Bucky said, studying the bland conference room Tony had reserved. It looked like probably every other conference room Bucky had ever been, as if they were all ordered out of the same catalogue; beige walls, carpeted floor that had the feeling of being beige while actually having flecks of red and blue in it, and the tables and chairs with wheels on them so they could be moved easily. Tony had even pulled down a screen and to all appearances, was setting up for a powerpoint presentation.

"It's all about presentation, Mr. Barnes," Tony said. He picked up a clicker and a red dot appeared on Bucky's chest, then started moving around in what Bucky eventually recognized as a heart shape. "Gotta know your audience and what they'll respond to. Too fancy, and they'll be scared off. Not fancy enough, and they'll feel like they're being scammed. A hotel conference room fits neatly inside that middle ground."

"You've put a lot of thought into this," Bucky said. He glanced at the clock, saw that they had a few minute before people were supposed to arrive and dipped his head for a quick kiss.

"Well, yeah," Tony started, but then there was a knock on the door. Tony opened it to see that part of the security detail started bringing in the refreshments for the meeting, coffee and donuts and croissants and other breakfast-style food that people would probably pick at and leave mostly untouched. "Natasha helped," he continued, poking at the refreshments table and rearranging everything slightly. "She's better at that side of things, the headology, as she calls it."

"I can see that." Bucky watched Tony putter. Looked like Tony was nervous, which was kind of adorable. "So you can't even give me a sneak peak at what you're talking about today?"

Tony shook his head. "For right now, you're a potential investor, not my lover."

"Ok, ok," Bucky said. He realized he was following Tony around as he puttered aimlessly and made himself stop. "So I got to see KT today. Brought him his laptop so he could start catching up on homework."

That made Tony stop rearranging the plates and napkins and turn to Bucky with a smile. "Good! So that mean's he is doing well?"

"Yep. Should be out of there soon. Any update on Rumlow?"

Tony's smile turned evil. "From what I hear, he's had a run of bad luck lately, such a shame. He lost his service pistol, which, you know, big no no. And did you know someone stole his patrol car, spray painted it, and left something unmentionable smeared on the seats? Then did the same with his personal car, which was found laying upside down in front of his apartment building?"

With a force of effort Bucky kept his face blank. "Strange."

"Very strange," Tony agreed. "Insurance didn't even pay out, mysteriously enough. Apparently they had dropped his coverage the day before and he hadn't gotten the notice yet."

"Crime in this city is getting really out of hand," Bucky said seriously. "He's lucky it wasn't something worse."

"Oh it will be, give it time."

There was that smug look again that Bucky loved, and he started to sneak another kiss when there was another knock. This time the security guard was escorting people inside, a middle-aged Black couple that looked around cautiously, like they were expecting the conference room to contain something nefarious. Bucky straightened immediately, trying to look professional, and smiled at them as Tony welcomed them inside, calling them by name and offering them a warm handshake. There was a steady stream after that, until the conference room was about half full.

"Hello everyone, let's get started," Tony said, taking a head count and looking at the clock. "All of you are here because you either were recommended by a friend or a family, or I sent you a personal invitation. Thank you for being willing to join me today for this presentation, and please save your questions for the end. As you all know, my name is Tony Stark, genius billionaire playboy philanthropist, and in this presentation I'm going to ask you for money." Tony grinned as almost everyone laughed. "Then I'm going to tell you what you're going to get for your money, and then I'm going to explain how you're not even going to notice that your money is gone."

As interested as Bucky was in the presentation, he kept getting distracted by watching Tony effortlessly charm the room, making eye contact with each person and joking just enough to keep people interested without derailing his speech. It was a warmer, more authentic show than what Bucky had seen at the Policeman's Ball and it made Bucky's heart turn over with affection as he watched. KT had been right when he said that the buy-in speech could make you a believer; not just in the astonishing amount of benefits that Tony offered to people who agreed to the buy-in, but because Tony's enthusiasm for the project was contagious.

"So why do you need our money?" One guy interrupted. "If you've got so much of it?"

"Good question," Tony said. He leaned against one of the tables, putting his hands in his pocket and crossing his legs at the ankle. "Yeah, the majority of the start-up money came from me. Since this organization is technically a nonprofit, I get to write it all off of my taxes, the way rich people often do. But I ask for your money because if I paid for all of it, then it would belong to me, wouldn't it? The whole point of this enterprise is to build ownership and equity in the community. You own the health clinic and the child care centers, the retirement homes and the apartment complexes. Not only does it mean you get to decide what to do with them, but it means that you start having a place at the same table that all of the billionaire developers and well-connected real estate moguls do."

"But the stuff about the taxes and stuff, where we just hand it all to you, that's tax fraud, isn't it? Which is illegal?"

"Well, yes, in a way," Tony said honestly. "You avoid paying taxes the same way rich people avoid paying taxes, by finding loopholes in the tax code and driving semi-trucks through them. But also, I'm the criminal, not you. If we get caught, I'm the big bad con artist that scammed honest folks like you out of your hard earned savings. There will be a class action lawsuit after the criminal proceedings, my lawyer will fight hard but not too hard to defend my assets, then they will eventually get divided up among all my victims in the kind of feel-good, good guys win story that is made for Hallmark TV. In the mean time, my job is to help the community fund the type of social welfare projects that the government should be doing but isn't, by taking from people who don't deserve it and giving it to the people that do. Which the government should also be doing but isn't."

"So this is like, socialism," a young woman said in accented English. "Instead of paying the government taxes, we give that money to you, and you like, do all this stuff with it."

"Pretty much. Grassroots socialism with a capitalist veneer. I like to think of it as stone soup, from the kid's story."

"But why?"

"Because it's the right thing to do," Tony said, like it was obvious. Bucky hid his smile in his hand and hoped he didn't look too besotted; he'd sat all the way in the back for a reason. "I don't know else to say it. Why should I have so much when others have so little? I give a lot it away, because there really are so many problems that can be solved by throwing money at them, but some can't. Some need systemic change, which means empowering people, which is what I'm trying to do. That's why it's a buy-in, and not a handout." There was still some obvious reluctance among the group, and Tony's smile turned a little sad. "Look, I get it. You are used to people promising a lot and not delivering. And you think this sounds way too good to be true, right?" No one really answered, but the way they kind of avoided Tony's eyes said a lot. "Let me tell you a story.

"So I've been donating regularly to the free clinic on 17th for a while now. A few years ago, there was a kid volunteering there because he wanted to go to medical school. But he was in a shit position - his parents made too much money to qualify for the grants and needs-based scholarships, but not enough to actually afford tuition or even qualify for good student loans. So the doctor in charge of the clinic emailed me and told me to do something useful with all of the blood money I was getting from Stark Industries, and so I did. I paid for his entire education, and he came back and is currently the head physician at the rehab clinic. So if you want there to be a catch, if you need there to be a catch so that you can believe what I'm telling you, then that's the catch - you have to try to give back at least as much as you were given."

There was a long, thoughtful silence after that, and Tony wisely let it sit for a while instead of trying to fill it with words. "You don't have to answer now," he said after a few moments. "The forms that you would need to fill out for the buy-in are right here," he added, tapping a stack of papers next to him. "Take one with you, and think about it. Any last questions?"

"Yeah, I got one," the young woman said. "I heard you stole Jeff Bezos' car, is that true?"

-------------

A/N: If you enjoyed this story, come find me over at @marveltrumpshate where I will be participating in auctioning off TWO fanfics! One auction is a fic with art (with @massivespacewren) as WrenFyre and the other is a solo fic as Dracusfyre. All the money goes to a good cause of your choosing, so I hope to see you there!

#tony stark #bucky barnes #tony x bucky #winteriron #no powers au

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billehrman · 3 years

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Markets Hate Uncertainty

There are many questions out there today: when will the Delta variant peak; will opening reaccelerate; will shortages end; will supply line issues abate; will inflationary pressures ease; will the Fed begin tapering; will Congress pass an infrastructure bill and raise the debt limit, and when and if will Federal Chairman Powell be reappointed. That’s quite a lot of uncertainty, and there’s more to factor in. The successful investor must formulate an opinion on each. That is why each week, we believe the greatest value we can bring you is to discuss issues and what is happening overseas, to help you develop your investment outlook.

After taking a top-down global economic, financial, and political view, we then take a bottom-up approach analyzing industries/companies searching for the best investment opportunities. Our approach is analytical and systemic. We attempt to take emotion out of the decision as best, which is not easy at times, we can especially if our conclusions point to going against the grain. We invest with a 12 to 24-month time frame while the market is dominated by day traders who rely on charts and momentum, which creates unusual opportunities for us at times. Several long-term investable trends are apparent today, such a digitalization, the cloud, the web, security, EV, going green, 5G, and infrastructure spending, but patience is necessary as the rewards come over a few years, not months, weeks, or days. Do you have the patience to be an investor?

Let’s look at each of these issues, including an update on current economic data points, then formulate a market opinion including a view on interest rates, and finally discuss the sectors we emphasize in our portfolios. We continue to focus on shortages and supply line issues as overcoming them is pivotal to accelerating growth next year and beyond.

The spread of the Delta variant continues to impact global growth. Fortunately, the number of cases here and abroad continues to decline on a 14-day basis, although deaths continue to increase here but are falling abroad. More than 5.83 billion doses have been administered globally across 184 countries at a rate of 30.3 million doses per day. In the U.S., 382 million doses have been given so far at an average rate of 787,751 per day. At this pace, it will take six months to cover 75% of the global population, which should be enough for herd immunity. Studies indicate that a booster shot slashes the rate of covid infections and restores waning immunity. We must vaccinate the unvaccinated, including children. Fortunately, there will be ample supplies of doses available over the foreseeable future to vaccinate the world, including booster shots six months after being vaccinated. We also need to worry about the upcoming flu season. Get your flu shots too. While we are learning to live with COVID, the opening will slowly reaccelerate here and abroad as we move through the fall, which will naturally help the global economy.

We expect no change in Fed policy next week or a proposed time frame for tapering to begin. There are tremendous crosscurrents in the economy from a slowdown in travel and leisure, an increase in unemployment claims, a turndown in high-frequency data, and the end of extra unemployment benefits. On the other hand, we have strong capital spending, higher industrial production, and retail sales. The Fed has a dual mandate: reducing unemployment and controlling inflation. The last employment report was a big disappointment while the rate of change in the CPI slowed in August. The jury is out whether higher inflationary pressures will be transitory. Powell thinks so, as do we. He wants the economy to run hot rather than risk taking the punch bowl away too soon. Also, the Fed knows that their policy will have little impact on shortages and supply line issues. If the economy improves over a few months and employment numbers improve again, we expect the Fed to announce tapering in November and begin by the end of the year or early 2022. We expect them to finish tapering by the fall of 2022 and start hiking the fund's rate by mid-2023 if the data points support the move. Remember that tapering and a negative real funds rate are NOT tightening. Finally, Powell seems to be gaining ground in the Senate for his reappointment as Fed Chairman with bipartisan support. Even Chris Dodd and Barney Frank (remember Dodd-Frank?) support Powell’s renomination.

Biden and his party are pushing hard for their vast $3.5 trillion-dollar social infrastructure bill as well as hiking the debt limit. Highlights of the Ways and Means proposal to pay for the bill include: top capital gains increases to 25% from 20%; maximum corporate rate rises to 26.5% from 21%; increases carried interest holding period to five years from three; cut some estate tax discounts; cuts tax rate for small businesses to 18%; crypto subject to wash rule; and a Medicare surtax on high earners. The package is expected to raise $2 trillion. The Dems are looking for $700 billion in revenue and cost savings from Medicare drug price changes and $600 billion from faster economic growth. Democratic Senator Manchin and other moderates are against this enormous social spending and tax bill, a deal-breaker for the Dems which dooms Biden’s economic agenda. Fortunately, he needs a win as his poll ratings are hitting new lows, so we believe that he will support the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, in the end, without tying it to his $3.5 trillion social infrastructure bill. This bill could be on his desk within a month, which would be a pleasant surprise for the market benefitting specific sectors tied to infrastructure.

Recent data points continue to be a mixed bag: industrial production increased by 0.4% in August despite shutdowns caused by Hurricane Ida; wholesale sales increased 2% in July while inventories rose only 0.6%, bringing the I/S ratio to new lows at 1.25; monthly retail sales increased a surprising 0.7% in August and are up over 15% from a year ago; the CPI increased only 0.3% from July and excluding food and energy the core inflation index rose only 0.1%, the smallest gain since February; and finally, the Phili and Empire Manufacturing surveys were robust. On the other side, unemployment claims rose to 332,000, an increase of 20,000 from the previous week; small business optimism fell to 99.7, and the August PPI index rose 0.7% and is up 8.3% year over year while the core PPI increased 0.6% and 6.7% vs. last year. Shortages and supply line issues are continuing to penalize sales and production while increasing inflationary pressures. We do not see improvement for both problems until mid-2022, but by then, we see higher sales/production/margins and lower inflation.

While the outlook for the Eurozone, India, Australia, and Japan have improved, China’s economy has not begun to recover from the outbreak of the Delta variant. ECB President Christine Lagarde said, “unprecedented monetary and fiscal aid and more vaccinations have brought the region to a point where it is recovering more rapidly than anticipated and output should reach pre-pandemic levels before the end of the year.” Most Japanese firms see the economy recovering to pre-pandemic levels in FY2022. The Japanese economy grew by 1.9% in the April-June quarter. India’s economy is expected to expand by over 7% this year and more next year, while Australia could expand close to 4% in both years.

On the other hand, China's outlook has slowed over the last month due to the outbreak of the Delta variant and needs additional monetary and fiscal stimulus to reaccelerate. So far, the government has targeted programs for smaller businesses and pledged additional support using local government bonds. We expect the Bank of China to announce another cut in the reserve requirement soon plus additional stimulus programs to boost consumption, which has been hit far more than production. The financial problems of Evergrande, a huge developer in China, will force the Bank of China to inject trillions into the domestic economy to prevent a Lehman moment. Foolishly, the government continues to release industrial commodities from its inventories, including oil, to put downward pressure on inflation just as global demand increases and supplies are tight.

Investment Conclusions

As indicated by the latest bull/bear ratio, market psychology has turned decidedly bearish, which is interestingly a contra-indicator, meaning that it is an excellent time to be nibbling at the market. It helps that inflows continue at a record pace; corporate deals and buybacks are nearing prior peak levels; dividends are increasing at a record pace; we have record excess liquidity in the trillions; the earnings yield compared to 10-year bond yield has never been wider; operating profits/margins/cash flow are increasing to record levels, and the Fed is our friend. Of course, there are negatives. We are worried about COVID, excessive federal spending, taxes that hurt our global competitiveness and investing in America, the buildup in government debt, excessive speculation, the political climate in America, geopolitical risks, and the power of fringe factions.

We maintain a positive view of the financial markets over the next 12-24 months based on an improving global economy as put the coronavirus in the rear view mirror; shortages and supply line issues abate; record operating profits and cash flow; accommodative fiscal and monetary policies; continued record flows from abroad keeping a lid on our interest rates; and trillions of excess liquidities still in the financial system. The preconditions for a market top are not present, but there can always be corrections like now.

As always, it is where you invest that counts. We maintain a balanced approach between growth, mainly technology and value. We like to invest where the government is our friend, so we own sectors that will benefit from the infrastructure bill, increased capital spending, and higher high-tech defense spending. While we expect the yield curve to slowly steepen, we do not expect the 10-year treasury yield to get much above 1.80% over the next year, which is good for stock valuations.

Markets detest uncertainty, creating opportunities for true investors with a positive longer-term outlook. The key has always been to remain patient, which most can’t do, and always maintain reserves.

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brightbeautifulthings · 3 years

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Our Revolution: A Future to Believe In by Bernie Sanders

"In my view, we have got to send a message to the billionaire class: 'You can't have it all.' You can't get huge tax breaks while children in this country go hungry. You can't continue getting tax breaks by shipping American jobs to China. You can't hide your profits in the Cayman Islands and other tax havens while there are massive unmet needs in every corner of this nation. Your greed has got to end. You cannot take advantage of all the benefits of America if you refuse to accept your responsibilities as Americans."

Year Read: 2020

Rating: 4/5

Thoughts: I'm really proud of myself for finishing this because I don't often read nonfiction and it's an intimidating 450 pages. That being said, it's also very accessible. Sanders keeps up a conversational tone that's easy to follow, and while his points are well-researched and well-supported by evidence, they're never too complicated for the typical reader to grasp. After providing a brief history of his upbringing and his rise in politics, the first section of the book follows the historic campaign for presidency funded entirely by grassroots support. He spent so much time meeting with ordinary people and having meetings in small towns, places most politicians never even glance at. It was unprecedented, and while Sanders ultimately didn't win the candidacy, I think we can still consider it an amazing success in getting his agenda out there. Part of the reason we talk about things like a $15 federal minimum wage and universal healthcare like they're things that can actually happen in the near future instead of like wild leftist/socialist ideas is because Sanders put those ideas out into the world, one small town at a time, and made them acceptable. I hope more potential politicians look at all the hard work he and his campaign put in and realize it's possible to do the same. He already left a blueprint for it.

The rest of the book covers Sanders' platform in detail, and it's one of the things I really admire about him. I liked Sanders before, but I like him even more now. There's no smoke and mirrors with him. He's not a millionaire or funded by millionaires. He's just a Jewish guy from Brooklyn who spends more time talking about the issues than trying to get funding or blindsiding his followers with fancy rhetoric--something I wish more politicians would focus on. I don't care about Hillary Clinton's e-mail scandal or where Donald Trump is having his New Year's Eve party. I want to hear what politicians stand for and what they're going to fight for, and Sanders is all about that. He cares about poor people, rural people, working class people, people of color, LGBTQ+ people, veterans, sick people, people with disabilities or mental illness, the elderly. All those populations that get ignored and overlooked, Sanders has legislation to protect them. Further, he shows that progressive politics are good for everyone, urban and rural alike, which is something Democrats have largely failed to bring together. It was overwhelming, at times, to read about a politician who cares so much about people and isn't separated from them by money and media, and I'm glad I read it at the end of The Orange Menace's reign of terror, when hope actually feels possible again.

There's a big, 100-page section in the middle of the book about economic reform. While it's the hardest part of the book to get through, it's also the most necessary, since pretty much all of Sanders' ideas circle back to this main issue. It's totally bonkers for the super rich to own so much of the country's wealth while huge numbers of families in America don't know where their next meal is coming from. Sanders can fund pretty much every welfare program in the book, combat climate change, and have enough money left over to make college tuition free, all without raising taxes on middle and working class people. Holding the super wealthy and major corporations accountable would fund all of it. One of the best parts of Sanders' rhetoric is that it's all backed by actual science and research, which feels like a small miracle in this era of spin and misinformation. Parts of the book made me so angry I wanted to throw it against the wall, not because of Sanders' agenda, but because of the terrible things our country has done (and continues to do) to its most vulnerable populations. I learned a lot, and I would encourage both readers interested in grassroots politics and ones who feel totally disenchanted by the current political system to pick this up. It's well worth reading.

#book review #bernie sanders #our revolution #a future to believe in #nonfiction #politics #progressive politics #4/5 #rating: 4/5 #2020

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loveafterthefact · 4 years

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Love After the Fact Chapter 7: A Spark of Electricity

Keith makes a new friend and discovers he’s been committing tax fraud his entire life completely unknowing 🤣

First Previous Next

Keith stirs. It hadn’t occurred to him that sharing a bed with Lance might be to his benefit, but he finds it better than being alone. He’s spent a few decaphoebs of his childhood alone already.

Being alone as a kit does a lot of damage. It can make the kit skittish and paranoid. It impedes their ability to express themselves, both verbally and through body language. Especially body language. It leads to depression and antisocial behavior.

And it makes sleeping difficult. Kits are instinctively driven only to sleep when their older littermates or parents are around. It keeps them safe. As such, having a full-grown, larger Altean sleeping only a few dashes away does a lot for him.

It can’t repair what was done to him as a small kit crying on a cliff’s edge for his father to get up and climb back up to find him, but it helps.

Except now he's alone, curled up by himself beneath the warm blankets. Or is he alone? There's a static sound, a flash behind his eyelids, a curse. Keith opens his eyes.

A small girl, an Olkari, is fussing with a panel in the wall. Much like himself, Keith can't imagine that she's an adult. But when she turns around, she wasn’t exactly a child, either. More adolescent. But extremely small.

“Oh, great, you’re awake! Keith, right? That’s what Lance said you like to be called.” Seemingly benign.

“Who are you?” Keith asks, blinking sleep and tangled hair from his eyes.

“Pidge. I’m the resident tech expert around here. I’m modifying the lighting system so that you can adjust it from your datapad. There was a glitch, unfortunately, which Lance picked up earlier when he went to adjust it for you before he left. My fault. Happens to the best of us. I’d fix it the ‘normal’ way, but the Castle isn’t Olkari tech, so old-fashioned way it is! Besides, I don't mind it. I actually like doing it this way.”

Normal way? This is the normal way! Keith sits up. “I don’t have a datapad.”

Pidge holds up a piece of glass with a white border around it. “Now you do.” She tosses it onto the bed. “I’m almost done with this. Just give me a second. Then I’ll help you set it up. Can you read Altean?”

“No.” He can, but the girl doesn’t need to know that. Keith busies himself with tracing the embroidery on the duvet cover.

“You're a terrible liar, but that's your business. That’s fine. I can program the pad to translate everything into Galran for you. We can even go old school and use a handprint scanner to unlock it, if you want. Only you and Lance would be able to get into it.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Lance said that Hunk and I are to make you as happy and welcome as possible and since we’re friends, I’m happy to oblige.”

“We’re friends? Who’s Hunk?”

“Lance, Hunk, and I are friends.” Pidge pressed the sparking tool back to a wire. “You are... a potential friend. Lance says you seem alright.”

“I’m flattered,” Keith deadpans. Pidge laughs. She’s not... so bad. Nothing here, minus the people Lance calls ‘courtiers’, are too terrible. And the Altean food. That’s terrible too. Also the clothes.

There's a lot that's terrible.

“Be nice, and maybe I’ll make you a body modification so you can taste sweet things?”

“You can do that?” Pidge nods, replacing a panel in the wall, work seemingly complete. “But you’re... just a girl? Like, a very young girl.”

“Nonbinary, actually. But yes, I am quite young.” Pidge smiles, removing the magnifying lenses from their eyes.

“Oh. Sorry. I-” Keith had assumed that most species followed the laws of the Alteans. he'd assumed his species was unusual.

“No worries. Just try to remember for the future and we're all good.” Pidge gets up from the floor, coming to sit on the bed like it's their own. “So, you wanna turn that datapad on?” Keith sucks on his lip, ears wilting as he inspects the datapad for a button. “Here. Gimme.”

Keith hands the datapad to Pidge, blushing beneath his short facial fur. The Olkari shows him a small button on the side, turning it on and handing it back to him. They spend the next varga showing him how to use it, how to translate texts, how to access the castle’s documents. They even show him how to tap into video feeds they’ve set up to spy on the kings in Alfor’s laboratory, though they warn him that not everything that happens in there is alchemy. At least not in the traditional sense.

Apparently Coran likes to visit. Also? Gross.

After all of that, Keith finds himself just... chatting with the young Olkari. They poke him and prod him and shine a flashlight in his ears. They ask probing questions about his personal biology and what purpose such trimorphism might serve.

“Well, it used to be that child-bearing and care was more of a... communal thing? We didn’t always form the strong bonds with our mates that we do now. But since our trimorphism doesn’t hold any disadvantage, our biology hasn’t changed.”

“That. Is so cool.” Pidge fiddles with another panel in another wall while Keith makes note of which foods he likes from the sampler he’s just received for breakfast. “Keith?”

“Hm?” Keith looks up from a small bowl of deep green beans, licking the corner of his mouth. Pidge turns, absently playing with the end of his tail. They’re a cute little thing, Keith decides. Inquisitive. Benign. A kit, like himself.

“How old are you?”

“Just nineteen decaphobes. Turned nineteen a few movements ago.”

“So you’re just a pup. Like me.” Keith nods, gesturing for them to continue. “Why would Zarkon marry you off, then?”

“Didn’t like my dad. Different perspectives, I guess? My father wanted to focus more on internal growth; Zarkon wanted to focus on expansion. They had a falling out.” Keith twitches his tail, watching the inquisitive Olkari chase it with their honey-colored eyes. “It happens sometimes. Anyway, I think he wanted me gone. Bring back sad memories, I guess.”

“How did you end up with him anyway?”

Keith’s ear wilt, tail stilling. “My father... died. Zarkon sent me to live with a friend, Takashi. He's basically my littermate.”

There was so much more to it than that, but Keith didn’t want to talk about it. Pidge narrowed their eyes at him, and Keith knew they could tell he was hiding things. Finally, they nod.

“Well, at least Zarkon didn’t hold your father against you.”

“No, he didn’t. He hoped I would be happy here, I think. He worries about me.” Keith tucks his legs up to his chest. Pidge hums, reaching out to touch a tangled lock of Keith’s hair. They begin working the knots out of it.

“I’d worry too, if my child nephew was married off to the likes of Crown Prince Lancel. He’s got quite the reputation. Or did. Adam says everyone was astounded when he showed up to hold court today. Especially King Coran. King Alfor's heart probably stopped when he heard about it.”

“What does Lance normally do?” Keith latches onto the change of topic.

“Hm. Runs all over. Flirts. Goofs off. Goes hunting. Flirts some more. The people like him as a person, but they don’t care for him as their crown prince. Y’know, because a crown prince becomes a king, and a king needs to like, do stuff. Other than the local prostitutes.”

Keith grins just in time for the door to open for Lance himself, followed by Adam toting a stack of tablets.

“Okay... question one,” Lance mutters, nose stuck in his own datapad. “What the quiznak are taxes?” Adam sighs, exasperated.

Pidge gives Keith a significant look. “Do you want to laugh or shall I?”

“As his spouse, I claim that right.” Keith dissolves into quiet laughter, the Olkari following suit.

“Oh, great!” Lance vaults over the back of the couch with a comb. “You two are getting along. Pidge, Keith. Keith, Pidge-”

“We’ve already done that,” Pidge informs him.

“Excellent! Anyhoo, Keith, your hair is a mess. Come here.” Lance doesn’t wait for a response, instead taking one lock of Keith’s hair at a time, starting at the ends and working his way up.

"...Thanks. I'll- I'll get it cut. It's inconvenient like this."

"No, don't you dare. I need you to keep it." Adam looks like he might throttle Keith. "Do you have any idea how difficult it will be to endear you to these fops? The cuter and more harmless you look, the better."

"Gee, thanks," Keith grumbles. Pidge snickers, going through the pockets of Lance's... what is it with Altean clothes? Lance has pants, but then a skirt in the back? What's even the point of that? He also had a cape? Nevermind. Pidge searches in the pockets of his pants.

Keith allows Lance to do as he likes since the comb doesn't hurt. He occupies himself chatting amicably with Pidge, taking comfort in the blunt openness and bright enthusiasm that they exude. Lance joins in, braiding a red-and-gold ribbon into Keith’s hair. The seamsmaster has assigned Keith an aesthetic and run with it. But the braid looks pretty, so whatever.

If only the matching wardrobe were more comfortable.

Hair done, Keith climbs up into the loft, watching from above as Adam and Pidge team up to teach Lance about taxes. He likes Pidge. Likes how sweet Lance is with them, giving them bits of junk he’s found lying about, letting them sit in his lap and scan the soft scales on his face with some device. He yelps when they try to stroke them against the grain. Pidge, unaware that it would hurt, apologizes immediately. Lance just waves it off, the same way Pidge waved off Keith's misgendering earlier.

These people. They're so easy-going. Adam is a tight-ass, but he's definitely overworked and probably overtired. Lance and Pidge seem to take offense to little, brushing off accidental hurts like one might brush off a drop of rain. Keith likes them well enough, but he's content to do so from his loft, where he can't be disappointed if they don't like him back.

Instead, he listens. And learns. Apparently, taxes are an allotment of money taken from the citizens to fund the crown. Who knew?

Living in the woods like a wild animal is not taxable. Keith smirks, realizing that he's technically a life-long criminal.

Wait until Lance finds out.

#LoveAftertheFact #LAtF #klance #galtean au #altean lance #galra keith #adashi #altean adam #galra shiro #voltron legendary defender #vld

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jhaernyl · 4 years

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So my ninja taxes are predicated on a handful of concepts, one of which is a big straying away from canon bc I cannot rationalize why Konoha works the way it was if we don't change Hashirama and Madara's motivation for founding the village.

If they really had started their village So That Children Would Not Have To Fight And Die then there is no fucking way that Konoha would have ended up the way it did, not even from the beginning.

Children would not have been allowed in the field, full stop.

My reasoning, instead, went that Hashirama and Madara looked at how hard life was for their older relatives, the ones that got injured too much to fight again but didn't die, the ones that went blind or deaf and had to be cared about from the rest of the Clan and possibly thought themselves a burden on the other members of their nomadic society, respected "Elders" who weren't necessarily old but who couldn't fight anymore and who dealt with a slew of PTSD complications that might have barred them from even interacting with children and teaching them, further making them feel inadequate or who possibly left the Clan to go into civilian careers where they could settle down in one place, get more or less regular medical care as needed and thus sort of 'left' the Clan behind.

(As a side rant I would like to add that the reason why Madara and Hashirama wouldn't focus on the 'children shouldn't be soldiers' is because that while child soldiers definitely do happen in the real world, in the contest of the Naruto framework it didn't make sense for the time Madara and Hashirama were in to send children as young as the manga told us they were to fight against full-grown adults the way the manga depicted them doing.

I can buy the occasional genius being put into battle way too young (cough Tobirama cough) as long as it came with other factions being anything in the range from impressed-but-somewhat-disapproving to downright appalled at the age the kid was thrown into the field but not it being a systematic thing, because the infant mortality rate would be too high and unsustainable so I think it would make more sense, especially given their ages when they meet, if Madara and Hashirama older brothers died rather than their younger ones.

Hashirama and Madara are supposed to be SEVEN YEARS OLD when they meet and yet somehow both of them are the eldest of their siblings, with Tobirama being the second eldest to Hashirama and Izuna being somewhere around Tobirama's age supposedly, and both have already lost three younger brothers to battle against the opposite faction? Huh huh, sure Kishi, whatever you tell yourself to feel edgy.

No, it makes more sense to me that they were middle children who both became Heir because their older siblings either died or were crippled too bad to continue fighting and that was followed by frustration/rage/depression/sense of being rejected / feeling of uselessness in relation to their war-like Clan whose tradition and Leader Are In The Field kind of leadership demanded an able-bodied shinobi to lead them and that shaped them and informed their ideas for and dreams of an ideal village where that wouldn't be the case and where their younger feelings shouldn't have to feel that was going to be the end they were going to one day meet unless they died in battle.)

So Hashirama and Madara looked at that and they went "That's not what I want for my brother/cousins/uncles/aunts/relatives / etc." and so their dream was to create a place where a shinobi would be supported (the way many self-made shinobi at the time weren't, unless they joined the Clan and, as said above, even joining a Clan didn't necessarily protect them in the long run, depending on their specific situation) beyond his or her or their utility in the field, where they wouldn't have to leave the Clan and their support network to settle somewhere safer, (Tobirama, in the background: where their health and minds could be looked after so that they would not snap and go insane and have to be mercy killed.)

Which allows for the focus of the village to be on a very Japanese-appropriate taking care of your Elders who have already contributed to your society and can still have more to contribute in the way of teaching young ones without having to die in the battlefield or feel themselves become 'burdens' (which they aren't but they might still feel like) and reducing the weight of care on the families by having a support system to person and families be something organically built into the Village’s structure, in more ways than taxing but also through the taxes levied.

It also allows for a spiralling effect being present towards having more people and time to devote to training the young and thus, especially once the Ninja Wars happen and create that sort of constraint on society, leading to younger graduation classes because that can happen as a slippery slope kind of situation where no one means to send young kids into battle before they are ready but if you are sending the older teens and adults into battle, then the younger kids can take over in-village missions that would otherwise be given to adults, right? And if they are doing in-village missions, why not missions right around the village, not too far from it, with their jonin sensei coming along to ensure their safety? They are not being put at risk, they are just being helpful to the system while still being safe.

And that slides into 'well they can do missive runs to safe places on safe routes, we are not putting them in danger, they are just covering for the kind of thing that the adults are too busy with the war front to do' and then slowly and slowly inch down until it becomes 'bring cargo to the back of the lines, far away from the front line, so that we are sure it gets there safely and then they can help the adults escort the wounded back, reduce the number of people we have to discharge from duties where they are needed and there are still enough adults around that it’s safe enough.'

As I said, a slippery slope.

Starts small and over time it gets normalized and slides down inch by inch.

Back to topic, the focus is on looking after those who get injured and/or need to retire means that two of the main taxes being levied are the Injury Insurance Tax (IIT) and the Invalidity, Old Age & Survivors Tax (IOS) which works like the national funds do in Italy.

It's something that you invest in, just in case you will need it later. Almost all ninja end up needing the IIT funds, at some point during their career, while recovering from injuries and being unable to run missions (thus reducing the stress on ninja on the monetary side and sometimes making life easier for the medics, because patients who know that they will get paid while they work to get back to 100% are patients who might be less likely to book it out of a window at the first instance) and all ninja who are not on a suicidal bend and actually looks forward to managing to make it out and retire can look at the IOS as a support system that will one day help take care of them, should they be too damaged / too old / not able to be around children to make out a living by having a profession/teaching children, etc.

The IOS being something that they have put money in during their service to the village, this also avoids the mental trap of being seen as a charity because it's not you accepting charity from someone else. It's you reaping the reward of that money you sacrificed for so long and set aside exactly for this specific occurrence.

It's not a handout but rather one of your rights that you are expecting/requesting/demanding to be granted to you as promised, so it skips quite a few mental traps that might otherwise prevent them from accepting the help they are being offered.

There are fixed percentages for how much you get taxed depending on rank because the higher you get, the more money you make and the more danger you are exposed to so you both can afford to be taxed higher and you are undergoing higher risks, so you are more motivated to invest into taxes that will give a return when something happens.

Clan ninjas are especially invested in the system and joined under the clear assurance that the village would look out for them if they look out for the village and have a higher investment in wanting their retirees to be supported and looked after properly since that was one of the reasons Konoha got founded to begin with and they were attracted to the security it was supposed to offer.

They get taxed an extra on the IIT and an extra on the IOS in all categories because living in a Clan gives you all sort of advantages that people outside of a Clan don't have and thus you are expected to have the funds to be able to afford that extra and being part of a Clan you have plenty of people around you that are benefiting from the system which goes to show you that it's worth investing in it.

Everyone pays a not indifferent amount of their paycheck to the village in general, upfront, and that amount of money is part and parcel of being part of the Village.

The Village provides for you in many ways, including allowing you to be part of the village and take their missions at all along with things like the free healthcare, but for the village to be able to afford to provide for you, the Village needs the funds and so your missions get taxed and what you get taxed on is fed back into the natural circle of the village's economy.

That is especially important during wartime when funds are going to be depleted way faster than they would normally be and a lot of missions you would see during peacetime fall to the wayside / cannot be taken on by you so you wouldn't see an income from them so you have to be offered a different kind of Wartime Paycheck if you are deploying in the field on the frontline in one long stretch rather than on a mission-back-to-Village-have-time-off-to-train-and-relax-and-get-some-TLC-get-another-mission-back-to-Village-again-etc. basis.

So every ninja pays a specific tax amount to the Village and then Clan ninja give another cut to their Clan because of societal obligations to your Clan and because the Clan provides for you and all Clans pay a general tithe to the village in the form of being taxed based on the number of members they have, the space they occupy and what percentage of whatever it is they produce (poisons and antidotes for the Yamanaka, medicines for the Nara, preserved food for the Akimichi, insect-related products for the Aburame, etc.) gets handed over to the Village to be used for everyone (the rest they keep to store or sell as they prefer).

Being part of the Clan is a privilege and a duty and part of it is contributing to the Clan, which is both a remnant of before the Villages were formed and how the Clan maintains their specific level of independence from the Village. Some Clans will ask more of you, some Clans will ask less and leave more in your pocket, it depends from Clan to Clan.

It's not all detractions, tho, though there are a few more that go to hit non-Clan, non-Clan-affiliated ninja. The Village provides you with basic kits and as they get depleted you can just go to the quartermaster and get refills issued without paying. If you go out to shop, you get discounts (calculated monthly based on medium earnings, the family of origin, living situation, taxes paid, quality material, economical support you have or don't have, etc.) on goods that you might need to use as a ninja and, if you are from a Clan, you get discounts within your own Clan or allied clans.

Orphans, especially ones without Patrons to look after them who are still underage or who are of age but do not yet have a trade to fall back on / are unable to be at least chunin ranked, are given a base monthly stipend and then they receive extra money on top of that basic stipend depending on their needs. Food needs, training material needs, age, family situation, your rank, how long have you been your rank, clothing needs as identified by the wear and tear of your gear as witnessed by your rank's quartermaster, if you need feminine hygiene products, etc.

On top of a basic food allowance, there are also extra food categories are organized based on whether you are pre-pubescent, pubescent or adult (the amount of food a growing kid vs a growing teenager vs an adult needs varies), what kind of diet do you need for your, for civilians, apprenticeship or, for ninja, training and development.

Are you focusing on your physical skills rather than your chakra skills? Non-chakra intensive diet. Are you working with a lot of Jutsu / genjutsu / training to expand your pool of chakra? Chakra-intensive diet. Are you doing both? Okay, file for both. Your sensei needs to confirm and vouch for your request.

Depending on what you are doing, who your sensei is and what he has you doing and what brand of skills you are focusing on (which influences which kind of foods you will need), the 'very chakra-intensive' / 'very non-chakra intensive' and the 'extreme chakra-intensive' / 'extreme non-chakra-intensive' diets are something you might need to apply for.

Someone like orphaned teenager Maito Gai would definitely hit the 'extreme non-chakra intensive training diet' category because he is doing extreme taijutsu training but given that he also needs to develop and train the amount of chakra necessary for summoning, he'd also be able to apply for 'very chakra-intensive training diet' whereas someone like Kurenai, who is a genjutsu mistress and relies less on her physical abilities, would go for the 'extreme chakra-intensive training diet' box possibly with a side of 'chakra-intensive training diet' if she's keeping up with something more than the barest levels of physical conditioning.

Plus depending on what kind of things you are doing, you might qualify for more than one category of the same type. Let's say you are Minato and you are working on fuck off giant Jutsu (extreme chakra-intensive) but you are also working on finicky, control-based sealing work that requires a different use of your chakra but is also exhausting in its own way (chakra-intensive) but you also need to work your ass off on your speed and reflexes (extreme non-chakra intensive) to keep up with your in-development Jutsu technique without getting disoriented / splatter yourself against trees along with the general physical training you do (non-chakra intensive).

Depending on what your schedule is and what you are doing, you will eat different quantities of food and you will need different types of food as well so if you can convince your sensei to sign off on it, you just apply for whatever you think you need the most or you go big or bust and try to apply for all categories if you think you can get away with it.

And then there's the housing tax if you live in Village housing for ninjas (with the expected wear and tear for being somewhere ninja lives and thus often needing repairs that are given to you free of charge because you are already being taxed for occupying a ninja-specific living space with all that comes with it).

There’s also whatever you (if you are an orphan) owe to the orphanage and/or academy (calculated based upon the resources spent to house and feed and clothe and wash and train you accordingly to your potential).

A lot of the housing thing and owed-to-orphanage/owed-to-Academy debts are predicated upon whether or not you have or not a Patron or a Clan sponsoring you or relatives who might not have been able to take you in (due to age of the relative or other issues) but could help pay for your upkeep and studies and if you do have someone which kind of person they are, what kind of agreement is in place and what kind of economical support they have been able to give you.

Aaand I'm going to stop there for right now because I've been typing about taxes for an hour and a half and I need a break XD

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quakerjoe · 4 years

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The DNC is a fucking JOKE. Climate Change reforms that won’t be in full swing for a decade? Fuck that! WE ARE OUT OF TIME! On top of that, they’re presuming that they’ll keep power long enough to see this through. The next GOP leadership will shitcan all of it and the effort will be useless.

No M4A? During a PANDEMIC? When we’re all losing our coverage? We’re all about to lose our homes? Fuck this party.

A $15/Hr min. wage by 2026??? Fucking IDIOTS! By then, we’ll be needing over 20 an hour for THAT to be a livable wage!!! Their platform makes ZERO promises. It’s all LIP SERVICE with no substance! No wonder they lose all the fucking time. At least the evil, racist, ignorant GOP has the goddamn decency to fuck us to our faces. Here’s the article in full. You need to read this bullshit:

Democrats on Tuesday night officially approved a new party platform, outlining a sweeping set of policies on key issues including health care, climate change and the economy.

But the platform also reinforced divisions among the party’s moderates and its liberal wing, which has expressed disappointment that the official Democratic agenda does not support “Medicare for all,” the universal, single-payer health care proposal championed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont that has become a pillar of the progressive movement. Some refused to vote for the platform as a form of protest.

A largely symbolic document, the party platform does not contain specific legislation or binding commitments. Taken as a whole, however, it provides a broad look at the party’s agenda and the principles and values that Democrats, including former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr., embrace.

The platform was written by a drafting committee that included members from the party’s progressive and more moderate wings. The Democratic National Committee’s platform committee then voted on the platform before sending it to all of the delegates who voted remotely on whether to approve it.

Last month in a parallel process, six Biden-Sanders “unity” task forces gave their own broad policy recommendations to the platform committee. The recommendations amounted to a collection of broadly accepted liberal policy proposals — much like the new platform.

The coronavirus pandemic remains front of mind for many Americans, and Democrats signaled in their platform that responding to the crisis is a top concern. It is the first full policy section of the platform.

Many of the proposals are broadly consistent with what Democrats have so far supported, including increasing funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and providing more aid to state and local governments for initiatives specific to Covid-19, such as contact tracing.

Democrats also support free coronavirus testing and treatment for everyone, as well as free vaccines when they become available. And they want to expand paid sick leave and unemployment insurance to help workers impacted by the health crisis.

Health care

The section on health care is something of a catchall that broadly outlines Democrats’ desire to bring down the cost of prescription drugs, reduce health care costs and improve the quality of care. While it nods to Medicare for all, it stops far short of backing it.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the party’s stance on health care is how exactly it plans to expand coverage. Borrowing language from Mr. Sanders, the platform asserts that “health care is a right for all.” But it seeks to secure universal health care through a public option, not Medicare for all.

“Democrats believe we need to protect, strengthen and build upon our bedrock health care programs, including the Affordable Care Act,” the platform reads. “Private insurers need real competition to ensure they have incentive to provide affordable, quality coverage to every American.”

The economy

The section of the platform that is devoted to the economy blends and borrows ideas from across the Democratic Party’s ideological spectrum. There are echoes of Mr. Sanders (“The U.S. economy is rigged against the American people”) and wonky subsections that address “Curbing Wall Street Abuses” and “Tackling Runaway Corporate Concentration” — issues highlighted repeatedly by Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

Over all, there are few surprises here. Democrats, for instance, support raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2026, a policy already widely backed across the party. They want to invest in infrastructure, including high-speed rail.

Democrats also support aggressive steps to encourage homeownership by increasing affordable housing and by giving a $15,000 tax credit to first-time home buyers, among other initiatives.

Perhaps most notably, the platform promises to “reject every effort to cut, privatize or weaken Social Security.” The pledge is particularly relevant following President Trump’s push to cut payroll taxes, which Democrats said could jeopardize the funding stream for the popular government program.

Climate change

The party’s platform sets aggressive goals of eliminating carbon pollution from power plants by 2035 and achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions for all new buildings by 2030, with the goal of achieving net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050.

But the platform makes no mention of the “Green New Deal,” a sweeping congressional resolution to combat climate change that is widely supported by the party’s progressive wing. It also does not call for an end to fossil fuel subsidies — an omission that has frustrated activists — although Mr. Biden’s plan does.

Other highlights

The Democratic Party platform is filled with promises, many of them grand and somewhat vague.

But the lengthy document does contain several specific endorsements, such as supporting statehood for Washington, D.C., and a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants.

Interestingly, Democrats want to “fast-track this process for those workers who have been essential to the pandemic response and recovery efforts.” The party also wants to end for-profit detention centers and instead “prioritize investments in more effective and cost-efficient community-based alternatives to detention.”

Here is a look at some of the other proposals:

Criminal justice and racial justice

Democrats want to “overhaul the criminal justice system from top to bottom.” But notably, the platform does not include support for defunding the police, which has become a rallying cry for some activists amid the nationwide reckoning over racial justice and police brutality. Instead, Democrats support “national standards governing the use of force” like banning chokeholds. The party also wants to eliminate cash bail.

Democrats support decriminalizing marijuana and legalizing its medical use. But the platform advocates for leaving it up to the states to determine whether to legalize marijuana for recreational use — a position that disappoints many progressives.

Education

Democrats support making public colleges and universities tuition-free for students whose families earn less than $125,000. The proposal does not go as far as the plan proposed by Mr. Sanders, which stipulates tuition-free public colleges and universities for everyone. The platform, however, does support making community colleges and trade schools tuition-free for all students.

Democrats also want to “ban for-profit private charter schools from receiving federal funding.”

Foreign policy

Democrats support a two-state solution that would establish an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel. Democrats also believe Jerusalem should remain the capital of Israel. Some activists have expressed disappointment with the platform because it does not criticize Israel’s “occupation” of Palestine.

#democratic national committee

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

January 14, 2021

Heather Cox Richardson

“Come Wednesday, we begin a new chapter.”

So said President-Elect Joe Biden tonight as he laid out a plan for a $1.9 trillion emergency vaccination and relief package to get the country through and past the coronavirus. The Trump administration created no federal program for the distribution of the coronavirus vaccine, leaving us woefully behind where we need to be to get our population vaccinated. And the virus is spreading fast. Over the past week, we have had an average of almost 250,000 new cases a day of coronavirus, with daily deaths on either side of 4000. We are approaching 390,000 recorded deaths from Covid-19.

Biden’s plan calls for $50 billion to ramp up Covid-19 testing, including rapid tests, and to help schools and local governments establish regular testing systems. It calls for an investment of $30 billion in the Disaster Relief Fund to make sure it can provide supplies for the pandemic.

It starts by addressing the pandemic, for both Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris believe that until people are comfortable circulating again, the economy will not rebound. But the plan also calls for federal support to rebuild the economy, a reflection of the ongoing crisis that in the last week led 965,000 Americans to turn to unemployment insurance for the first time, joining more than 5 million who have already filed claims.

The plan calls for $1400 stimulus checks for individuals, expanded unemployment benefits through September, an end to eviction and foreclosure until September 30, $30 billion to help people meet payments for rent or utilities, and a $15 minimum wage. Biden is calling for aid for child care, a $3 billion investment in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), and $350 billion for state, local, and tribal governments to support front line workers.

Biden laid out his ambitious plan even as fallout continued from the January 6 insurrection in Washington, D.C., when Trump supporters tried to overturn his victory in the 2020 election. Today the FBI continued to track down and arrest rioters, while the pro-Trump faction of the Republican Party continued its attempt to wrest control from establishment Republicans.

But while Republican lawmakers are calling for “unity” to deflect attention from the riot and to avoid accountability, Biden used this speech, at this time, to calm tensions and call for unity to move all Americans forward.

He emphasized, as he always does, that he wants to be a president for all Americans, not just those who voted for him, and that if we work together we can accomplish anything. He tried to appeal to disaffected Republicans by highlighting his plan to bring manufacturing jobs back to America, as well as to create new, well-paying jobs in new fields and in long delayed infrastructure projects. To reach out to religious voters who were horrified last week by the vision of those who self-identify as Christians calling for the death of Vice President Mike Pence, Biden emphasized the morality in the plan: a good society should not let children go to bed hungry.

He made a sharp contrast with the current president, not only by sharing an actual plan to confront real problems, but also by empathizing with Americans who have lost loved ones to the pandemic and who are hurting in the stalled economy. “Every day matters, every person matters,” he said.

But Biden’s plan is far larger than a way to address our current crisis. It outlines a vision for America that reaches back to an older time, when both parties shared the idea that the government had a role to play in the economy, regulating business, providing a basic social safety net, and promoting infrastructure.

That vision was at the heart of the New Deal, ushered in by Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt after the Great Crash of 1929 and the Depression that followed it illustrated that the American economy needed a referee to keep the wealthy playing by the rules. Government intervention proved so successful and so popular that the Republican Party, which had initially recoiled from what its leaders incorrectly insisted was communism, by 1952 had adopted the idea of an activist government. Republican President Dwight Eisenhower added the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare to the Cabinet on April 11, 1953, and in 1956 signed into law the Federal-Aid Highway Act, which began the construction of 41,000 miles of interstate highways.

While this system was enormously popular, reactionary Republicans hated business regulation, the incursion of the federal government into lucrative infrastructure fields, and the taxes it took to pay for the new programs (the top marginal tax rate in the 1950s was 91%). They launched a movement to end what was popularly known as the “liberal consensus”: the idea that the government should take an active role in keeping the economic playing field level.

The liberal consensus was widely popular, these “Movement Conservatives” turned to the issue of race to break it. After the Supreme Court unanimously declared racial segregation in schools unconstitutional in the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision, Movement Conservatives warned that an active government was not defending equality but redistributing the tax dollars of hardworking white men to grasping minorities through social programs.

By 1980, Movement Conservatives were gaining power in the Republican Party by calling for tax cuts and smaller government, slashing regulations and domestic programs even as they poured money into the military and their tax cuts began moving money upward. By the 1990s, Movement Conservatives had gained the upper hand in the party and, determined to take the government back to the days before the New Deal, were systematically purging it of what they called “RINOs”—Republicans in Name Only. They would, they said, make the government small enough to drown it in a bathtub.

As they dragged the country toward the right, Republicans pulled the Democrats from the New Deal toward reforms Democratic lawmakers hoped could attract the voters they had lost to the Republicans. “The era of big government is over,” President Bill Clinton famously said, although he continued to protect Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid from Republican cuts.

The Democratic defense of an active government was popular—people actually like government regulation, social welfare programs, and roads and bridges. But Republicans continued to be determined to get rid of the liberal consensus once and for all, insisting that true liberty would free individuals to organize a booming economy. Trump’s administration was the culmination of two generations of Republican attempts to dismantle the New Deal state.

But now, the dangers of gutting our government and empowering private business to extremes have become only too clear. For four years, we have watched as a few privileged business leaders got rid of career government employees and handed their jobs to lackeys. The result has been a raging pandemic and a devastating economic collapse, as money has moved dramatically upward. Even before the pandemic, the Trump administration had added 50% to the national debt despite cuts to domestic programs. In the 2020 election, Trump offered more of the same. Americans rejected him and chose Biden.

Biden’s speech tonight marked a resurrection of the idea of an activist government as a positive good. He is calling for the government to invest in ordinary Americans rather than in the people at the top of the economy, and is openly calling for higher taxes on the wealthy to fund such investment. “Asking everyone to pay their fair share at the top so we can make permanent investments to rescue and rebuild America is the right thing for our economy,” he said. Unlike the New Dealers and Eisenhower Republicans of the mid-20th century, though, Biden’s vision is not centered on ensuring that a white man can take care of his family. It is centered on guaranteeing a fair economy for all, focusing on an idea of community that highlights the needs of women and children.

The idea of a government that supports ordinary Americans rather than the wealthy was first articulated by Abraham Lincoln in 1859 and was the system the Republicans first put in place during the Civil War. They paid for the programs with our first national taxes, including an income tax. After industrialists cut back that original system, Republican Theodore Roosevelt brought it back, and after it lapsed again in the 1920s, his Democratic cousin Franklin rebuilt it in such a profound way that it shaped modern America. With that system now on the verge of destruction yet again, Biden is making a bid to bring it back to life in a new form.

It is a new chapter indeed, but in a very traditional American story.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #sedition #insurrection #January 6 2020 #political #civil war #history

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disillusioned41 · 3 years

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In late-night votes just hours after nearly 5,600 pages of legislative text were released, the U.S. Congress on Monday approved trillions of dollars worth of government funding and coronavirus relief that will temporarily avert a catastrophic expiration of key benefits, send $600 direct payments to many Americans, and provide billions of dollars in handouts to the rich.

The entire Senate Democratic caucus and every Republican but six voted for the roughly $900 billion coronavirus relief legislation, which was paired with a $1.4 trillion spending package that will fund the federal government through next September. Just two House Democrats—Reps. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii)—voted against the coronavirus relief portion of the sprawling package (pdf), which President Donald Trump is expected to sign.

"I voted against the latest Covid-19 relief legislation because it is woefully inadequate in addressing the needs of people," Tlaib said in a statement late Monday. "I have watched as many of my colleagues rush to provide billions to corporations and wealthy individuals, while admonishing the needs of the majority of families."

"I have watched as many of my colleagues rush to provide billions to corporations and wealthy individuals, while admonishing the needs of the majority of families." —Rep. Rashida Tlaib

"Republicans continue to do all they can do to poison our society further with corporate greed, while abandoning the very people they are supposed to be working for," Tlaib added. "This is evident by the inclusion of the 'three martini lunch' tax giveaway."

The tax deduction for business meals was one of several giveaways to wealthy Americans stuffed in the mammoth legislative package, which was made available to read Monday afternoon after reported computer issues delayed its release. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) was one of several lawmakers who publicly expressed outrage at the lack of time lawmakers were given to read the bill before voting on it.

"Members of Congress have not read this bill. It's over 5,000 pages, arrived at 2 pm today, and we are told to expect a vote on it in two hours," tweeted Ocasio-Cortez, who voted against a rule paving the way for speedy passage but ultimately voted yes on the coronavirus aid portion of the package. "This isn't governance. It's hostage-taking."

While the contents of the measure are still being combed, progressives noted and denounced the inclusion of billions of dollars in gifts to wealthy Americans—benefits made more obscene by the bill's inadequate relief for people who are hungry, sick, unemployed, and facing eviction.

"Pathetic," said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), pointing to the bill's $120 billion handout to rich business owners and other provisions that will disproportionately benefit the wealthiest people in the country during the most unequal recession in modern U.S. history.

The Vermont senator voted for the relief legislation, noting that "the average family of four will receive a direct payment of $2,400."

"While including these direct payments ultimately improved this bill, given the enormous economic desperation that so many working families across this country are now experiencing, there is no question but that this legislation did not go anywhere near far enough," Sanders said in a statement.

The $900 billion coronavirus relief package is a far cry from what economists say is necessary to bring the faltering U.S. economy out of recession and provide meaningful relief to the increasingly desperate public amid rising poverty and a major hunger crisis. Some economists are calling for a roughly $4 trillion package, warning that anything less would result in "permanent damage" to families and the economy.

On top of the paltry direct payments—for which millions of vulnerable people will not be eligible—the newly passed bill provides a non-retroactive $300-per-week federal boost to unemployment insurance and an 11-week extension of UI benefits, an extension accompanied by more burdensome documentation requirements for applicants who are already struggling to navigate rickety state systems.

"Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues have stonewalled state and local aid, along with survival checks that meets the scale of the crisis. This is a collective failure in helping Americans in their time of need."—Rep. Ilhan Omar

"States will be asked to implement a significant number of new rules for these programs for a law that will only last 11 weeks," noted Andrew Stettner, a senior fellow at The Century Foundation. "In reality, many workers won't receive the benefits until well into this short period—and at that point, the states will be forced to cut it off once again. Worst of all, Congress will be setting itself up for another 10 million-plus worker benefit cut off that will start in mid-March, before the new administration and Congress can be reasonably expected to pass another round of relief."

"Congress has given itself little choice but to immediately get to work on the next economic stimulus package as soon as President Biden and the 117th Congress take office," Stettner added. "That package must build on the CARES Act and include key reforms to make sure benefits are available as long as the economy remains constrained by this disastrous pandemic."

Robert Greenstein, president of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, also raised concerns about the too-short duration of relief and pointed to the bill's inadequate sick and family leave provisions. "While the agreement continues the tax credits for employers established under the Families First Act for providing coronavirus-related sick days and family leave," Greenstein said in a statement, "it doesn't extend workers' right to take that time off, leaving that to employers' discretion."

"A likely result," Greenstein warned, "is that a substantial number of workers will be unable to stay home when they are quarantined or ill or will be unable to balance work and family care-giving needs when schools are closed or a family member has Covid-19."

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who voted for the final relief package, said late Monday that she is glad the legislation will provide direct payments that were not originally on the table as well as billions of dollars in funding for schools.

"But that doesn't mean this package is anything close to enough," said Omar. "Six hundred dollars is not close to sufficient to cover eight months of lost wages, food, or rent expenses... Mitch McConnell and his Republican colleagues have stonewalled state and local aid, along with survival checks that meet the scale of the crisis. This is a collective failure in helping Americans in their time of need."

#Common Dreams #us politics #covid-19 #coronavirus #pandemic #stimulus bill #economy

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