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paolos83blog · 2 years

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Which Keanu Reeves character would struggle the most to get insurance?

Keanu Reeves has been a meme multiple times throughout his career. This includes three decades of saying “woah”, a transcendent cameo in “Always Be My Maybe” and photos of him just generally looking sad.

Keanu broke out in 1986 with “Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure” and cemented his starhood with major action roles like “The Matrix” and “John Wick.”

As the internet’s obsession with this elusive man grows stronger, it seemed only natural I ask the experts here at Policygenius the burning question we’ve all had about Keanu Reeves: Which of his characters is the least insurable?

I turned to Jake Roszkowski, a senior case management associate at Policygenius who has seen “Point Break” dozens of times, and Patrick Bell, a senior sales associate who has never seen “Point Break,” but knows a lot about buying life insurance. With the advice of these experts, I dove in.

Methodology

I bet you didn’t expect a methodology section. Some of us take these things seriously. Keanu Reeves has 99 acting credits to his name, according to the Internet Movie Database. To narrow it down, I stuck to his most popular films, based on box office gross. I also threw out movies in which Keanu plays himself (sorry “Always Be My Maybe” fans) — I assume he has insurance IRL. I also tossed out movies that took place so far in the past that insurance didn’t exist (sorry “47 Ronin” fans).

That got us to the following 11 characters, whom I ranked from most to least insurable.

11. Kevin Lomax, ‘The Devil’s Advocate’

Kevin Lomax is an attorney who takes a job at a big-time New York City law firm. Also, his boss is Satan.

Aside from that, Lomax is an excellent candidate for insurance.

“As a lawyer, he’s going to get the top occupation class for disability insurance on any carrier,” Roszkowski said. “That means his rates will be super affordable.”

He can also expect to get good life insurance coverage.

10. Alex Wyler, ‘The Lake House’

Alex Wyler is an architect staying in a lake house who is corresponding with a woman two years into the future. While that’s weird, Wyler should be fine insurance-wise.

“White collar occupations like that get good rates,” Roszkowski said.

“I don’t think there’s any issue with time travel,” Bell said. Good to know!

9. Shane Falco, ‘The Replacements’

Shane Falco is a disgraced college quarterback that lives on a boat and collects scrap metal for a living, until he gets signed to play for a professional football team during a players’ strike.

As a professional athlete with a high income, Falco would have to go to a specialty carrier for disability insurance, Roszkowski said. As a football player, he should be able to get life insurance, but may pay a higher rate because of the health risks of the job. (Learn more about how star athletes do insurance.)

8. Thomas Anderson aka ‘Neo,’ ‘The Matrix’

Thomas Anderson works a regular old desk job inside the shared simulation of the world known as the Matrix. So he’s probably be a good candidate for both life and disability insurance, Bell and Roszkowski said.

On the other hand, Neo escapes from this illusion into a post-apocalyptic society in which he’s leading a desperate battle against evil machines.

In this scenario, “We can assume insurance companies don’t exist,” Roszkowski said.

7. Jack Traven, ‘Speed’

Jack Traven is a SWAT officer for the Los Angeles Police Department. While police officers don’t usually pay extra for life and disability insurance, SWAT officers are an exception. While Traven wouldn’t be denied outright, he’ll have to pay extra for both life and disability insurance.

6. Johnny Utah, ‘Point Break’

Like Shane Falco, Johnny Utah is a former college quarterback. Unlike Falco, Utah has found success in his adult life, as a rookie FBI agent. Utah goes undercover, and as part of assignment, takes part in surfing and skydiving, dangerous hobbies that are frowned upon by many disability insurance carriers, Roszkowski said. Plus, Utah has a pre-existing condition: A college knee injury that still bothers him.

At best, Utah will be limited in any attempt to get disability insurance and any coverage he gets will exclude knee injuries, Roszkowski said. Skydiving will make life insurance more expensive as well.

“The knee injury depends on if he takes pain medication for it,” Bell said. If he does, it could lead to higher rates.

5. Ted, ‘Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure’

Ted is a high school student who uses a time machine to improve his grades in history class. As Bell said before, time travel is no big deal when it comes to insurance. But Ted is a minor, which makes him a bad candidate for insurance because he has no income to protect.

“So the only coverage he’s eligible for is whole life,” Roszkowski said.

4. Klaatu, ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still’

Klaatu is an alien.

“We can assume that he’s not a United States citizen, which may cause barriers to coverage,” Roszkowski said.

Green card and visa holders can get life insurance, but I don’t believe Klaatu applies for a travel document in the movie. Maybe it’s in the deleted scenes.

3. Conor O’Neill, ‘Hardball’

Conor O’Neill is a gambler who is deeply in debt. To repay it, he coaches a kids’ baseball team, for some unknown reason. Coaching is fine, but most insurance companies will likely frown on O’Neill’s gambling.

“That’s probably something they consider pretty risky because if he loses all his money they’re not going to get paid,” Bell said.

2. John Wick, ‘John Wick’

John Wick is a former assassin who gets sucked back into his old life because his dog dies. Over the course of three movies, he gets shot or stabbed many, many times.

“That’s a hazardous occupation,” Bell said. So hazardous, Wick would get declined outright for life insurance or pay an exorbitant price, bulletproof suit notwithstanding.

1. John Constantine, ‘Constantine’

John Constantine is a detective who specializes in the occult, which I guess is a job? He’s got a lot going against him when it comes to insurance: One, he’s attempted suicide. A history of depression isn’t a complete road block to life insurance, but severe cases can lead to denial. Two, he has terminal lung cancer. Three, he is a chain smoker.

In general, the healthier you are, the better a candidate you are for life and disability insurance. Without (spoiler alert) divine intervention John Constantine has terrible odds of getting coverage.

“That’s a decline,” Bell said.

Credits: Myles Ma

Source: https://www.policygenius.com/life-insurance/news/keanu-reeves-insurance/

Date: July 5, 2019

#areteautomation #lifehealthadvisors #healthtips #stayhealthy #knowledge

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mohluskiepedard · 4 years

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Rating ATLA Characters literally only from what I’ve seen in fandom

or: posts that probably shouldn’t be on my writeblr except I don’t have a sideblog

the context here is it’s half midnight and I have never seen ATLA except I have opinions now apparently so here we go whoop de do-

I’m also not actually rating them like numerically that’s too much work i’m just stating opinions I know I’m a fraud

AANG

- A child? - A son? - he is Baby. but also. he has had It Rough - would make the updog joke - has unspeakable power or smth and everyone says he’s better than the Korra girl who comes after him but honestly tastes like sexism to me - doesn’t kill people because he’s like twelve, right? he’s like twelve so he refuses to kill people - I stan honestly - less twelve year olds should kill people - Some people say his name WRONG and they are BAD but i don’t actually know what the right way or the wrong way is so. have fun w that yall - lived in peace unTIL THE FIRE NATION ATTACKED

KATARA

- She is also like twelve??? - Is everyone here twelve - Cortana?? Katana?? Catbug?? - She has good hair, - Her mother is dead??? her mother is dead n she has a brother but she cares about her mother being dead WAY more than him (or apparently the entire fandom??) - Badass - She seems soft. good. sweet - she’s a water breather or whatever??? her brother is NOT but he is a meme - I love her

SOKKA

- NGL looks like a fuckboy - The meme brother! does not do the water things, but he has an aXe??? - dates BAMF lady - ngl until I talked to my ATLA watching friend I thought he canonically dated Zuko - kinda mad he doesn’t - I haven’t actually seen anything about him except like. in zuko ship posts and also Suki appreciation posts - joined the white lotus not-a-cult by accident??? - dark ATLA tumblr show me more Sokka posts - is his name prounounced the same way as Soccer or isn’t it I need to know - HIS FIRST GIRLFRIEND TURNED INTO THE MOON - (AND THAT’S ROUGH, BUDDY) - He and Suki are a good ship, but also, Sokka Has Two Hands

SUKI

- the BAMF herself - she says STOP in that photo but also to sexism - Rlly all I see of her in fanon is abt her teaching Sokka to drink his respect women juice and I appreciate her doing that but also it’s sad she never gets talked about outside of what she did for a man - I hope she has other badass moments w/o him it would suck if she didn’t - she is NOT the girlfriend who turned into the moon, she is the one who didn’t - I don’t know much else about her ATLA Fandom y’all should appreciate her more

ZUKO

- Look at him... my son... - He has a good redemption arc - he and his sister are evil lesbian and redeemed gay guy??? - has a straight canon ship but should’ve been with Sokka this boy is gay - I Want To Protect Him - That’s literally it - he has a cool uncle and his dad sucks - people ship him with Katara and I Do Not Get It that’s his sister in law except not really - “We don’t trust Zuko’s change of heart” [the next day] “so Zuko is my closest friend now,” - His dad was like “fuck up the avatar to prove your worth to me” and Aang was like “counter argument you already have worth and we should fuck up your dad” and I think that’s beautiful - he becomes the fire man and he’s very good at it - Zuko for President 2020 - in the words of myself, half an hour ago: “ I was like "that kid with the burn on his face seems like a sad but then happy mlm who needs found family" and I was RIGHT” - took too long to find a happy picture of him :( Zuko rights NOW please - His mother’s story got compared to an OC of mine and all I can say is oh no and they deserve better based on that alone - I have had Zuko for five minutes but if anything else happens to him I will kill everyone in this throne room and then myself

TOPH

- She is badass but like also will murder you while laughing maniacally? - for some reason reminds me of Nott from Critical Role, another show I Have Not Seen - Is blind but gets more out of making jokes abt being blind than she would from being able to see - “Sight is just a cheap tactic to make weak benders stronger!!!” - Literally the opposite of Aang and has killed many people?? - She Can Tell When You’re Lying. But I do not know how and Am simply mildly threatened by this - Therapist: Toph’s ability to know if you’re lying isn’t real and can’t hurt you. Toph’s ability to know if I’m lying: - She and Zuko.... buddies??? - if not they should be - tiny sad boy needs friends like toph

AZULA

- Evil Lesbian Culture - [BDG Voice] You committed a war crime! Oopsie! - took be gay do crime too literally - her and Zuko have accurate sibling writin except instead of “you ever want to murder your sibling for breathing in the same space as you,” being a Joke Azula took it seriously - okay but with a name like azula she should be the blue bender this ANNOYS me she should NOT be red bender - AZULa - AZUL - IT MEANS BLUE - She was half of y’alls gay awakenings and it SHOWS - Should have maybe been redeemed too??? Jury is out no one knows - Was she gay for Ty Lee or wasn’t she I can’t tell how much of that Audio is a joke - IS SHE ALSO TWELVE??? IS EVERYONE HERE TWELVE?? IS THIS TWELVE YEAR OLD COMITTING ATROCITIES?

UNCLE IROH

- A Good Man - Finally, Some Good Fucking [Adult Figures] - he has the tea. literally and figuratively - Ozai is like “and I will permanently disfigure my son and throw him out” and Iroh is like “What The Fuck, Ozai,” thus voicing the entire audience’s thoughts - Literally the only adult in this that I trust - I? I love him. this is all I have to say. my love for him is unending. Some1 protect this man from all harm - he’s Zuko’s uncle (and also Azula ig) but he does not seem related to Ozai. is it just a theme in this family that one sibling is chill and one sibling commits horrendous atrocities against your fellow human beings or - something happened to his son???? :((((( I Don’t Want Him To Have Suffered Like This

OZAI

- A BAD MAN - Uh Oh (stinky) - THE WORST OF THE MEN - I do not like him - Bastard man. nasty. committed war crimes and then went “but what if - get this - i also abused my son,” - I would like him to Not Be Like This - by Like This I mean present and alive - :/

TY LEE

- She’s NOT the There Is No War In Ba Sing Se lady and I don’t know why i thought she WAS but until I looked up her photo I thought that was her - She looks like a sweetheart tho - I hope nothing bad happens to her???? - talks about auras??? or smth??? let her vibe - She would talk animatedly to me about warrior cats if she was in my year seven class and I was sat alone and I would understand none of it but appreciate her anyway - if azula bullies her I’ll be :( at Azula and Azula will not care because she has Mommy Issues and therefore is slightly unhinged - She seems like that one kid with no trauma vibing at the edge of [every other kid having trauma] and not really getting it but trying her best - Is she also twelve?????? She maybe looks twelve

CABBAGE MAN

- HIS CABBAGES - fulfills my favourite trope: ordinary person repeatedly has life disrupted by the inconveniences of relying on actual children to save the world - probably has a campaign post canon for letting trained adults fix the worlds’ problems in the future - or sets up the Very First Cabbage Insurance Company - look at him. he loves his cabbages so much. you go you funky lil cabbage man

ALSO THE MOST IMPORTANT ONES MOMO

- LOOK AT HIM HE’S SO GOOD - small. fluffy. big ears - Lord Momo of the Momo Dynasty: his Momoness - a Good Boy...

APPA

- he looks so soft... - he can fly but he just does it by??? vibing through the air?? motionless??? iconic - I saw that one post about mishearing it as Abba and thinking he was Aang’s dad and he looks like he would be a good stand in dad ngl - he’s so LORGE - a chonky boy - love him

that is everyone I have heard of it and if I left someone out it’s a sign that y’all should talk about em more bc I have no clue they exist put more ATLA On my Dash ig I’ll do Legend of Korra ig maybe apparently that one has canon wlw and i love me some canon wlw

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mostlysignssomeportents · 4 years

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Zuck calls Apple a monopolist

The copyright scholar James Boyle has a transformative way to think about political change. He tells a story about how the word "ecology" welded together a bunch of disparate issues into a movement.

Prior to "ecology," there were people who cared about owls, or air pollution, or acid rain, or whales, and while none of these people thought the others were misguided, they also didn't see them as being as part of the same cause.

Whales aren't anything like owls and acid rain isn't anything like ozone depletion. But the rise of the term "ecology," turned issues into a movement. Instead of being 1,000 causes, it was a single movement with 1,000 on-ramps.

Movements can strike at the root, look to the underlying economic and philosophical problems that underpin all the different causes that brought the movement's adherents together. Movements get shit done.

Which brings me to monopolies. This week, Mark Zuckerberg, one of the world's most egregious, flagrant, wicked monopolists, made a bunch of public denunciations of Apple for...monopolistic conduct.

Or, at least, he tried to. Apple stopped him. Because they actually do have a monopoly (and a monoposony) (in legal-economic parlance, these terms don't refer to a single buyer or seller, they refer to a firm with "market power" - the power to dictate pricing).

Facebook is launching a ticket-sales app and the Ios version was rejected because it included a notice to users that included in their price was a 30% vig that Apple was creaming off of Facebook's take.

https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/28/21405140/apple-rejects-facebook-update-30-percent-cut

Apple blocked the app because this was "irrelevant" information, and their Terms of Service bans "showing irrelevant" information.

This so enraged Zuck that he gave a companywide address - of the sort that routinely leaks - calling Apple a monopolist (they are), accused them of extracting monopoly rents (they do), and of blocking "innovation" and "competition" (also true).

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/pranavdixit/zuckerberg-apple-monopoly

Now, there are a bunch of Apple customers who consider themselves members of an oppressed religious minority who'll probably stop here (perhaps after an angry reply), and that's OK. You do you. But I have more to say.

Apple is a monopolist, sure, but more importantly, they are monoposonists - these are firms with "excessive buying power," gatekeepers who control access to purchasers. Monoposony power is MUCH easier to accumulate than monopoly power.

In the econ literature, we see how control over as little as 10% of the market can cement a firm's position, giving it pricing power over suppliers. Monopsony is the source of "chickenization," named for the practices of America's chicken-processing giants.

Chickenized poultry farmers have to buy all their chicks from Big Chicken; the packers tell them what to feed their birds, which vets to use, and spec out their chicken coops. They set the timing on the lights in the coops, and dictate feeding schedules.

The chickens can only be sold to the packer that does all this control-freaky specifying, and the farmer doesn't find out how much they'll get paid until the day they sell their birds.

Big Chicken has data on all the farmers they've entrapped and they tune the payments so that the farmers can just barely scratch out a living, teetering on the edge of bankruptcy and dependent on the packer for next year's debt payments.

Farmers who complain in public are cut off and blackballed - like the farmer who lost his contract and switched to maintaining chicken coops, until the packer he'd angered informed all their farmers that if they hired him, they would also get cancelled.

Monopsony chickenizes whose groups of workers, even whole industries. Amazon has chickenized publishers. Uber has chickenized drivers. Facebook and Google have chickenized advertisers. Apple has chickenized app creators.

Apple is a monopsony. So is Facebook.

Market concentration is like the Age of Colonization: at first, the Great Powers could steer clear of one another's claims. If your rival conquered a land you had your eye on, you could pillage the one next door.

Why squander your energies fighting each other when you could focus on extracting wealth from immiserated people no one else had yet ground underfoot?

But eventually, you run out of new lands to conquer, and your growth imperative turns into direct competition.

We called that "World War One." During WWI, there were plenty of people who rooted for their countries and cast the fighting as a just war of good vs evil. But there was also a sizable anti-war movement.

This movement saw the fight as a proxy war between aristocrats, feuding cousins who were so rich that they didn't fight over who got grandma's china hutch - they fought over who got China itself.

The elites who started the Great War had to walk a fine line. If they told their side that Kaiser Bill is only in the fight to enrich undeserving German aristos, they risked their audience making the leap to asking whether their aristos were any more deserving.

GAFAM had divided up cyberspace like the Pope dividing the New World: ads were Goog, social is FB, phones are Apple, enterprise is Msft, ecommerce belongs to Amazon. There was blurriness at the edges, but they mostly steered clear of one another's turf.

But once they'd chickenized all the suppliers and corralled all the customers, they started to challenge one another's territorial claims, and to demand that we all take a side, to fight for Google's right to challege FB's social dominance, or to side with FB over Apple.

And they run a risk when they ask us to take a side, the risk that we'll start to ask ourselves whether ANY of these (tax-dodging, DRM-locking, privacy invading, dictator-abetting, workforce abusing) companies deserve our loyalty.

And that risk is heightened because the energy to reject monopolies (and monoposonies) needn't start with tech - the contagion may incubate in an entirely different sector and make the leap to tech.

Like, maybe you're a wrestling fan, devastated to see your heroes begging on Gofundme to pay their medical bills and die with dignity in their 50s from their work injuries, now there's only one major league whose owner has chickenized his workers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m8UQ4O7UiDs&list=FLM6hLIAIO-KfsNFn8ENnftw&index=767

Maybe you wear glasses and just realized that a single Italian company, Luxottica, owns every major brand, retailer, lab and insurer and has jacked up prices 1,000%.

https://www.latimes.com/business/lazarus/la-fi-lazarus-glasses-lenscrafters-luxottica-monopoly-20190305-story.html

Or maybe the market concentration you care about it in healthcare, cable, finance, pharma, ed-tech, publishing, film, music, news, oil, mining, aviation, hotels, automotive, rail, ag-tech, biotech, lumber, telcoms, or a hundred other sectors.

That is, maybe you just figured out that the people who care about owls are on the same side as the people who care about the ozone layer. All our markets have become hourglass shaped, with monop(olists/sonists) sitting at the pinch-point, collecting rents from both sides, and they've run out of peons to shake down, so they're turning on each other.

They won't go gently. Every Big Tech company is convinced that they have the right to be the pinchpoint in the hour-glass, and is absolutely, 100% certain that they don't want to be trapped in the bulbs on either side of the pinch.

They know how miserable life is for people in the bulbs, because they are the beneficiaries of other peoples' misery. Misery is for other people.

But they're in a trap. Monopolies and monopsonies are obviously unjust, and the more they point out the injustices they are EXPERIENCING, the greater the likelihood that we'll start paying attention to the injusticies they are INFLICTING.

Much of the energy to break up Big Tech is undoubtedly coming from the cable and phone industry. This is a darkly hilarious fact that many tech lobbyists have pointed out, squawking in affront: "How can you side with COMCAST and AT&T to fight MONOPOLIES?!"

They have a point. Telcoms is indescribably, horrifically dirty and terrible and every major company in the sector should be shattered, their execs pilloried and their logomarks cast into a pit for 1,000 years.

Their names should be curses upon our lips: "Dude, what are you, some kind of TIME WARNER?"

But this just shows how lazy and stupid and arrogant monopolies are. Telcoms think that if they give us an appetite for trustbusting Big Tech, that breaking up GAFAM will satiate us.

They could not be more wrong. There is no difference in the moral case for trustbusting Big Tech and busting up Big Telco. If Big Tech goes first, it'll be the amuse-bouche. There's a 37-course Vegas buffet of trustbustable industries we'll fill our plates with afterward.

Likewise, if you needed proof that Zuck is no supergenius - that he is merely a mediocre sociopath who has waxed powerful because he was given a license to cheat by regulators who looked the other way while he violated antitrust law - just look at his Apple complaints.

Everything he says about Apple is 100% true.

Everything he says about Apple is also 100% true OF FACEBOOK.

Can Zuck really not understand this? If not, there are plenty of people in the bulbs to either side of his pinch who'd be glad to explain it to him.

The monopolized world is all around us. That's the bad news.

The good news is that means that everyone who lives in the bulbs - everyone except the tiny minority who operate the pinch - is on the same side.

There are 1,000 reasons to hate monopolies, which means that there are 1,000 on-ramps to a movement aimed at destroying them. A movement for pluralism, fairness and solidarity, rather than extraction and oligarchy.

And just like you can express your support for "ecology" by campaigning for the ozone layer while your comrade campaigns for owls, you can fight oligarchy by fighting against Apple, or Facebook, or Google, or Comcast, or Purdue Poultry...or Purdue Pharma.

You are on the same side as the wrestling fan who just gofundemed a beloved wrestler, and the optician who's been chickenized by Luxottica, and the Uber driver whose just had their wages cut by an app.

#pluralistic

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deeisace · 4 years

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Hm. It's a pity I'm not clever enough to plan a museum heist, it means I can't write this Leverage White Collar crossover :/

What I have got is,

So that Mortensen real estate scandal thing

Let's say it's a foreclosure relief scam, right, except that Mortensen is a higher-up in the bank or whatever that the victims' mortgage is with, and also (via several shell companies, etc) the party that goes and asks for the foreclosure relief payment - double evil! Let's say Mortensen is an Erik-with-a-K, shall we

Right so, the FBI know this is what's going on, and have spent years trying to prove it but can't (there's a reason it's called the Mortensen real estate scandal), the money is too well hid

And enter Leverage, targeting Erik-with-a-K Mortensen for the above reasons - their plan fails, somehow - say, Parker's rope snaps, or Sophie's distraction of a security guy doesn't work cs he's gay and at the start of his shift (paying attention), or Hardison can't breach that last firewall, or something, I don't know

So they get caught out, and Mortensen turns the FBI on to them in a "don't look at me" sort of way - and in the way that that mafia guy did with the healing book of hours in i-forget-which series of White Collar - nobody's happy about this, and Neal complains, but Peter has an "innocent until proven guilty" line - well, not innocent at all, but they can't get away with not helping - and so they have to at least give an image of trying to track down this group of con artists

They get home to El, ot3 domestic fluff, then she gets her regular call from her brother, who is vaguer even than usual about his week, and she worries if he's feeling alright (he's had trouble in the past)

Next day, Peter and Neal go into work - Diana says, they've found a CCTV recording of one of the con artists that Mortensen turned them onto - they go to look at the screen, and Peter is shocked to see it's El's brother - Nate Ford!

The facial recognition hasn't come back with a name yet, and Peter manages not to let on to Diana and Jones - but Neal realises there's something wrong, and they have a whispered conversation in Peter's office about what to do - the upshot of which is they ring El, and she invites Nate and Sophie to dinner the next night, to talk out what on earth is going on

So, the story of the beginning of Leverage comes out over dinner, and they try to puzzle out what to do about Mortensen

So they can't get to the proof of the scam - in a lock box in a bank under a false name, the target of Leverage's con that went wrong - but, fortunately, I guess, Mortensen is evil in other ways, too, that they can prove - and use to finagle a warrant for proving the real estate scam - and something something forged art heist something

Hardison works together with Neal and Moz, making the props and disguises, and Neal and Parker get to jump off a building together, Parker and Hardison's FBI agent aliases make an appearance (Diana does not trust them), Sophie gets to pretend to be a toff, Leverage ot3 visits Hardison's Nana June (there is hat stealing and a cooking rivalry/friendship), Parker and Mozzie talk about Mr Jeffries and their shared experience of being in care with him in Detroit, there's some sort of "oh same" ot3s moment - probably El and Eliot both being like "I signed up for looking after these idiots", a bit of El getting to know her sister-in-law (likewise Peter getting to know his brother-in-law - probably in a law enforcement/former insurance man "how did my life become this" way, and Neal and Nate (and Neal and Sophie, too) getting along in a "we are very clever" way), Neal and Parker having "that's like taking candy from a baby - a very easy thing to do" I-stole-this-thing 'hypothetical' one-upmanship, Neal and Sophie fuckin about with linguistic programming or whatever that's called (to the annoyance of Eliot and Peter), Eliot "you never know when you're gonna have to fight aliens" Spencer gets along surprisingly well with Mozzie (he might humouring him more than anything, but he can confirm/deny several conspiracy theories through being the origin of them, so there's that)

Oh many other things, I bet

I'm not writing it, at least not currently, but I've a good image in my head of it all

#leverage #white collar

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creepingsharia · 3 years

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California: Egyptian Immigrant Who Drove Car Off Wharf Killing His 2 Autistic Children Gets 212 Years Prison

As we noted in 2018: California: Egyptian immigrant charged with fraud after driving off pier, killing two autistic sons

Illegal visa scofflaws, sham marriages, insurance fraud. Honor killings. This story has it all. Except the murder charges.

Elmezayen and Diab came to the U.S. in 2000 and overstayed their tourist visas, prosecutors said. Both married other partners in hopes of becoming permanent residents. Elmezayen has acknowledged his was a sham marriage.

And:

A witness in this NBC video at the time of the killings said it looked intentional and the man acted a little strange, like he didn’t really care.

Elmezayen collected more than $260,000 in insurance payouts for the deaths and wired more than $170,000 back to his native Egypt, prosecutors said.

More details omitted from most U.S. media and the DOJ press release but reported by some international news:

Ali F. Elmezayen, an Egyptian national, also was ordered to pay $261,751 in restitution to the insurance companies that he defrauded.

On April 9, 2015, Elmezayen drove a car with his ex-wife, Rehab Diab, and his two severely autistic sons, 13-year-old Elhassan and 8-year-old Abdelkarim, off a wharf at the Port of Los Angeles. The site of the crash was a loading dock and worksite for commercial fishermen.

DOJ press release below:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Thursday, March 11, 2021

Hawthorne Man Sentenced to 212 Years in Prison for Scheming to Collect Insurance Proceeds by Intentionally Killing His Children

LOS ANGELES – A Hawthorne man was sentenced today to 212 years in federal prison for intentionally driving his ex-wife and two disabled sons off a wharf at the Port of Los Angeles into the ocean – drowning the boys who were trapped in the car – to collect on accidental death insurance policies he had taken out on their lives.

Ali F. Elmezayen, 45, was sentenced by United States District Judge John F. Walter, who, in imposing the maximum sentence allowed by law, noted Elmezayen’s “evil and diabolical scheme” as well as the “vicious and callous nature of his crimes.”

“He is the ultimate phony and a skillful liar…and is nothing more than a greedy and brutal killer,” Judge Walter said. “The only regret that the defendant has is that he got caught.”

Judge Walter also ordered Elmezayen to pay $261,751 in restitution to the insurance companies that he defrauded.

During a nine-day trial in October 2019, a federal jury found Elmezayen guilty of four counts of mail fraud, four counts of wire fraud, one count of aggravated identity theft, and five counts of money laundering.

“Fathers are supposed to protect their children but instead, Elmezayen drove his boys straight to their certain death in exchange for cash,” said Kristi Johnson, the Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles Field Office. “The defendant maliciously planned the death of his autistic sons and gave them virtually no chance of survival. The investigation that led to today's sentencing won’t give them their lives, but affords them justice in death.”

From July 2012 to March 2013, Elmezayen bought from eight different insurance companies more than $3 million of life and accidental death insurance policies on himself and his family. Elmezayen paid premiums in excess of $6,000 per year for these policies – even though he reported income of less than $30,000 per year on his tax returns. Elmezayen began purchasing the insurance policies the same year he exited a Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceeding.

After purchasing the policies, Elmezayen repeatedly called the insurance companies – sometimes pretending to be his ex-wife in whose name he had obtained some of the policies – to verify that the policies were active and that they would pay benefits if his ex-wife died in an accident. Elmezayen also called at least two of the insurance companies to confirm they would not investigate claims made two years after the policies were purchased. These telephone calls were recorded and were played for the jury.

On April 9, 2015, 12 days after the two-year contestability period on the last of his insurance policies expired, Elmezayen drove a car with his ex-wife and two youngest children off a wharf at the Port of Los Angeles. The site of the crash was a loading dock and worksite for commercial fishermen.

Elmezayen swam out the open driver’s side window of the car. Elmezayen’s ex-wife, who did not know how to swim, escaped the vehicle and survived when a nearby fisherman threw her a flotation device. Two of the couple’s three sons, who were 8 and 13 and who were both severely autistic, were strapped into the car and drowned. The couple’s third son was away at camp at the time and was not in the car at the time his father drove it into the water.

Elmezayen then collected more than $260,000 in insurance proceeds from Mutual of Omaha Life Insurance and American General Life Insurance on the accidental death insurance policies he had taken out on the children’s lives. He used part of the insurance proceeds to purchase real estate in Egypt as well as a boat.

“[Elmezayen] murdered his disabled children and attempted to murder his ex-wife for money,” prosecutors wrote in their sentencing memorandum. “After years of physically and emotionally abusing his ex-wife and neglecting the children, [Elmezayen] bought $3.4 million in insurance on their lives, waited for two years so the insurance companies would not contest his claims, and then drove them into the ocean, leaving them to drown. That was [Elmezayen’s] fraudulent scheme. It was also premeditated murder.”

In addition to posing as his ex-wife in communications with the insurance companies without her knowledge, following the crash, Elmezayen repeatedly lied to law enforcement officers and insurance companies. He also lied in subsequent civil litigation he filed concerning the crash – about the extent of the insurance he had purchased on his family, and specifically about whether he had insured his disabled children’s lives. He also attempted to persuade witnesses to lie to law enforcement and say he had given the insurance proceeds to charity.

FBI agents arrested Elmezayen in November 2018 and he has been in federal custody ever since.

“Today Ali Elmezayen was held accountable for his actions, which directly led to the tragic death of his two sons. It is unthinkable that any father would jeopardize the lives of his family for his own financial gain,” stated Special Agent in Charge Ryan L. Korner of IRS Criminal Investigation. “IRS-CI is proud to work alongside our law enforcement partners to help bring some closure to this horrifying scheme.”

The FBI and IRS Criminal Investigation investigated this case. The Los Angeles Police Department, the Los Angeles Port Police, and the Los Angeles City Attorney’s Office provided substantial assistance in this case.

This matter was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorneys Alexander C.K. Wyman of the Major Frauds Section and David T. Ryan of the Terrorism and Export Crimes Section.

#Islam #Muslim #Sharia #Jihad #Legal #Law #News #Media #Politics #Religion #Immigration #Travel #Terror #Finance #Fraud

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violetsystems · 3 years

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#personal

I did not get to see the Fortnite extravaganza last night due to an encryption error on their servers. It was more something to stay out of trouble than anything. I did place number one earlier for the first time ever after a year of playing. But this is probably mostly due to the performance of the machine I've built and upgraded over time. I've learned to understand in almost everything when it is not about me. Being an optimist in a hopeless situation trains you to look on the bright side. The bright side these days is that home on the inside is mostly private. I did have to fight off a wasp that flew down the venting in my bathroom before the broadcast. It's an old house I tell myself. Then I decide to leave my apartment and wait for the bus to go to the Home Depot. Maybe I wanted to build a real fort? I really just wanted to get some bug spray and some more fly tape to deal with a problem myself. But waiting for the bus is a whole other problem these days. Especially when everybody seems to want to make your public appearance an excuse to chip away at your ego. I finished watching the Snowden movie last night. It was great timing. The quote about the Nuremberg trials is too real. How they tried the regular people next. The ones just doing their jobs. The other quote was something about pressure points. I have been under extreme pressure lately without much guidance or semblance of civil rights. I've complained about this weekly on a blog for years only to realize nobody really cares or understands the level of what I put up with. This sort of desensitizes you after awhile. You begin to accept that American society is just the way it is. Mostly because it is still run by rich white men who have figured out layers upon layers of gaslighting. I caught a small part of the Ronan Farrow documentary on HBO where he was being followed by Weinstein because of his work. He had interviewed a private eye who worked for a company called Blackcube. This private security company hired local detectives to get around issues with jurisdictions. The PI eventually turned to the FBI because he was disturbed about the work he was doing to the free press in America. The FBI asked his business then hung up on him. This is how it came to be that Ronan Farrow interviewed his surveillance. The gaslighting never goes away. There are so many reasons for people to watch you. So many special interests. So many mobs. Gangs. Powerful organizations. Snowden really buries the hatchet. What if the government you trust doesn't represent you anymore? What if it's caught doing the same bad things over and over like an abusive spouse? What can you do when the state department holds the key to your entire identity? If this sounds like the plot of a Bond film, it is more or less what I live from day to day. So it's better for me to lay low and keep focusing on crypto mining than write the play by play nobody would believe.

I write to make sense of something that is beyond broken. In that, it can be a little exhausting for everything to sort of work but not follow through. My passport delayed in the mail. A wasp crawling in from the attic into my bathroom as I get ready for a stream. Stores mysteriously closed and locked when I walk around the corner to get distilled water. Friends who text suspiciously a year later asking how I'm doing after they took my job. A thermostat that is set for 73 that on a good day reads 78. A cracked floor I'm afraid to say anything about for fear of the rent going up. A gang of neighbors who watch my every move but say nothing. A city full of gangs that assault me passively aggressively on the train on my way for groceries. I fear sometimes if I cry uncle that it would cut off the good parts. The secret communication and narratives that I have protected for the good of all things I care about. It's like the world says "if you can be free to do that, you've gotta let us be the judge." And after watching how the NSA and government literally tracks every literal thing you do, how can we call any of this freedom? It's a sales pitch I get it. Freedom to live in debt and be all that you can be. I don't live that way anymore at all. But I don't live much when I'm expected to stay in my home for over a year and pretend that the hidden plan will work out in my favor. I have no life to speak of other than my cat, a blog and some weird unstated agreement that gets hijacked, manipulated, intimidated, and pressured. You'd have to wonder who applies the pressure. If I had to put a finger back on it, it's a sad reality. It's not just the government. It's everyone. It's greed. It's selfishness. It is mediocre people scared of not being in control of anything you say or do that might upset the fragility of the lie this country is built upon. It's the sober reality that America is going off a cliff with nothing to show for it except a smile strained so fake it's starting to scare me. Nobody listens. Everyone points the blame. Everyone deflects. And I just sit here alone to some extent. No new friends other than the ones I write to from week to week. I do consider this space safe enough to say that. And yet I wonder how much anyone reads them. Do the people who follow me every time I walk out the door read these as deeply? Their reading comprehension must be garbage. What do I have to say to make it stop? What magic words do I have to say to reverse this invisibility? You were right? I'd rather stay invisible. This neighborhood walks around in trucker hats with crowns spelling out cocaine in bold italic as if it's the constitution. I'm supposed to lay low and realize the laws of the jungle. No opportunity. No jobs. No freedom. No justice. And a wasp flying around in my bathroom.

Will I be ok? My net income hasn't really changed since last fall. I'm sure this year will be a fun tax year. But it is the first time I own my own business with books to balance and spreadsheets to toggle. My health insurance works but the drama behind it is worse for wear. I'm more scared I might be hunted and murdered because someone is jealous of me than the fear of going broke. And even then for fear of it being used as a "CIA pressure point" I just shrug it off like a model on a catwalk. This experience for me is worse than hell. It's a silent wall of shame and coercion that makes this country feel like Nazi Germany. All the while the bully keeps telling you this is for the best. It's so much worse in other countries according to them. And if you speak up or rock the boat, they will find you. This is America 2021. A country that can't look itself in the mirror or read a paragraph or two to understand it has failed people like me. It just waits for us to die. To lay low in an epidemic of pure vapidity. It's no wonder I invest whatever I have overseas and in the future. I do believe there's no way to survive this alone. And yet I do believe that people pushing their way into my life year after year with nothing to show for it is worse. If we were being real about it, my resolve broke over a week ago. I submitted an anonymous tip to the FBI. I know I probably shouldn't write about it here. For fear of more retaliation. I'm more afraid of being stung by a wasp in the bathtub than a city I've suffered through for decades. But on the real, when enough is enough and there is no reply what can you rely on anymore? Yourself. I don't have a whistle to blow. I don't have an opinion that matters. And that is the lie about America. That any of this really means anything. That talking about it and explaining it succinctly on the internet changes anything when diabolic men still control everything. When women live in fear more than men can imagine. Fear of being harassed. Fear of losing control over their own body. Fear of competing for a livable wage. Fear of not being free in a country claiming to be the center of the universe. I don't know any other fight left to fight. As a man I see nothing but wrong, lies, evil and pain. Nobody looks in the mirror. Nobody starts to change things in themselves first. Nobody except me. Yeah, I'm laying low. It's 2021. The patriarchy is everywhere. They've learned to talk over you again with the same old double speak. What are you going to do about it? Here's an idea. Ready? Okay, $19 Fortnite card, who wants it? And yes, I'm giving it away. Remember; share, share share. And trolls, don't get blocked!" <3 Tim

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generation1point5 · 3 years

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Late-Stage Capitalism in America

Every day I power up my workstation, my internet browser shows me company news talking about its profits and growth. I find little pride in it. Gratefulness, sure, but not pride. The alienation of labor and the material value of money minimizes any impact.

For a few months now I’ve been experiencing the effects of the gig economy first-hand, and it’s little more than a step up from what I imagine many in retail and other necessary jobs that keep society functioning have to deal with on a much worse scale and on a similar basis. I’m lucky to be working at a company that offers, for its demands, a decent benefits package that has sufficient medical insurance coverage. It has not cut any of these things in the face of the pandemic, and has continued to hire and grow. It’s probably because they are still a cheaper alternative for tech giants to outsource it’s more menial labor to without having to pay benefits for their own fleet of employees. That thought alone is a dark one.

In just a few years of my adulthood, I have come to recognize the inherent instability of the capital economy as it has evolved. There is no such thing as job security, even if that job is our social security; only by working are we given a chance to be covered by modern medicine, or the hope of retiring someday instead of laboring until our dying breath. In working to live, we are living to work. In capitalism, you are a human doing, not a human being.

There’s something to be said about the ideals we were raised with also. I imagine part of it was likely a response to the developments of capitalism in the past century. Even back then, it’s not difficult for me to imagine that those who succeeded and gathered a comfortable means of life during that era realized that they had spent much of their life away, and that what remained was too-little for them to really make the most out of what they truly wanted in the world. Money is a fickle thing; it offers stability and security, up to a certain point, but it will never bring about fulfillment. At least, that was the impression of the teachings I had received. To have a stable financial base is essential, but it isn’t sufficient.

The most damning thing to the current model is that at the top of the pyramid you have people with wealth and the means to explore nonmaterial pursuits freely, usually at the cost of many below who have neither the time nor the money to enjoy either of these things. The classic capitalist mantra is that of a meritocracy; you work harder and smarter, and you receive your due worth. This is a lie. I’ve seen co-workers and friends work shit hours and give the best of themselves to managers who get paid more and have neither the time nor the emotional capacity to be truly receptive to the needs and well-being of their employees. Even the best-intentioned businesses have an obligation to turn a profit, and this will always come first when push comes to shove. In cases like a global pandemic and massive social and economic unrest, this is usually the case.

It is becoming increasingly difficult for me to reconcile the human experience as I have come to value it and the necessities of living life as the global economic model has made it out to be. Of course, any conservative would tell you that this has always been the case, and argue that it either will or even should be the case. There is an often subtle and pervasive notion that capital economic principles are equivalent to scientific laws of nature, rooted in immutable patterns of behavior inherent in the human species. There is a truth in that; if there weren’t exploitable patterns, then we would never have a use for marketing research and other business arms that focus on psychology. But like anything in the human sciences, these rules are soft; there are exceptions, and nothing is certain. Behaviors can be changed, through conscious effort and collective individual action. This very fact is the basis for progress, and progressivism in general.

There is a moral component to all this that I think millennials have a strong affinity towards. More than any other generation, I think millennials have, for all their (and my own) pessimism have refused to embrace cynicism as a guiding principle in societal interaction; we recognize the need for organization and unity as a necessity, even as we recognize and call for the need for principled action without compromise that leaves another group out. We want to expand the good and minimize the evil. Most cynics would follow-up this notion by arguing that there is not a strong consensus of what is good and what is evil; for me, the intention alone is enough.

I used to be a political cynic until the past four years. That changed not because of bettering circumstances, in fact quite the opposite. I recognize now the necessity for hope and a striving towards an ideal, even if it is never fully grasped, much less realized. The cynicism and the modern politick that has emerged from the principles of restricting vice has been insufficient to deter the concentration and continuity of economic and political power among the richest and most out-of-touch people in the country, whose decisions often shape the fates of many not only in the US, but around the world as well. There needs to be an overhaul; there needs to be a return to altruism and virtue in governance, and a return to the cultivation for goodwill to all in broader society. Individualism will never achieve that. Neither will capitalism.

I do what I must to survive, but I will always set my sights on working towards a point where I feel like I’m living.

#personal #blogging

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agenpkvgames · 4 years

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Politicians Want to Protect us From the Evils of On-Line Gambling Part 1

This is part 1 of a multipart series of articles regarding proposed anti-gambling legislation. In this article I discuss the proposed legislation, what the politicians say it does, some facts about the current state of online gambling, and what the bills really propose.

The legislators are trying to protect us from something, or are they? The whole thing seems a little confusing to say the least.

The House, and the Senate, are once again considering the issue of "Online Gambling". Bills have been submitted by Congressmen Goodlatte and Leach, and also by Senator Kyl.

The bill being put forward by Rep. Goodlatte has the stated intention of updating the Wire Act to outlaw all forms of online gambling, to make it illegal for a gambling business to accept credit and electronic transfers, and to force ISPs and Common Carriers to block access to gambling related sites at the request of law enforcement.

Just as does Rep. Goodlatte, Sen. Kyl, in his bill, Prohibition on Funding of Unlawful Internet Gambling, makes it illegal for gambling businesses to accept credit cards, electronic transfers, checks and other forms of payment, but his bill does not address the placement of bets.

The bill submitted by Rep. Leach, The Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act, is basically a copy of the bill submitted by Sen. Kyl. It focuses on preventing gambling businesses from accepting credit cards, electronic transfers, checks, and other payments, and like the Kyl bill makes no changes to what is currently legal.

According to Rep. Goodlatte "While QQ Online is currently illegal in the United States unless regulated by the states, the development of the Internet has made gambling easily accessible. It is common for illegal gambling businesses to operate freely until law enforcement finds and stops them."

In fact, American courts have determined that the Wire Act makes only Sports Betting illegal, and even then only across telephone lines. Very few states have laws that make online gambling illegal, some states and Tribes have taken steps to legalize online gambling, and even the Federal government recognizes some forms of online gambling as being legal.

Goodlatte himself says his bill "cracks down on illegal gambling by updating the Wire Act to cover all forms of interstate gambling and account for new technologies. Under current federal law, it is unclear whether using the Internet to operate a gambling business is illegal".

Goodlatte's bill however does not "cover all forms of interstate gambling" as he claims, but instead carves out exemptions for several forms of online gambling such as state lotteries, bets on horse racing, and fantasy sports. Even then, his modifications to the Wire Act do not make online gambling illegal, they make it illegal for a gambling business to accept online bets where a person risks something of value "upon the outcome of a contest of others, a sporting event, or a game predominantly subject to chance", except of course if it is a state lottery, horse race, fantasy sports, or one of a few other situations.

The truth of the matter is that most online gambling businesses have located in other countries specifically to avoid the gray area that is the current state of online gambling in the US. As a result, there is little that law enforcement can do to enforce these laws. Trying to make the laws tougher, and providing for stiffer penalties, will not make them easier to enforce.

As well, most, if not all, banks and credit card companies refuse to transfer money to an online gambling business now, as a result of pressure from the federal government. As a result, alternative payment systems sprang up to fill the void.

Senator Kyl is equally misleading in his statements. From his proposed bill, "Internet gambling is primarily funded through personal use of payment system instruments, credit cards, and wire transfers." But as we already know, most credit cards in the U.S. refuse attempts to fund a gambling account.

Also from the Kyl bill, "Internet gambling is a growing cause of debt collection problems for insured depository institutions and the consumer credit industry." If the credit card companies and other financial institutions in the U.S are not allowing the funding of gambling, how can it be "a growing cause of debt collection problems". And since when do we need legislation in order for the financial industry to protect itself from high risk debt. If the financial industry was accepting gambling debts and these gambling charges were a problem for them, wouldn't they just stop accepting them?

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hachama · 5 years

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Second Democratic Debate Analysis, pt. 1

Like last time, I’ve (finally) read the transcripts. I read the fact-checkers’ analysis. I have ranked them.

Also like last time, due to the size of the field, I’ll be splitting my analysis into four groups. This first one will be the Please Do Not Make Me Vote For Them group:

Good news! Due to candidates dropping out, it’s a shorter list!

Biden, Williamson, Delaney, Ryan, and Bullock

Under the break, I’ll be analyzing their debate performance, how effectively they represented themselves on the issues, and how much I hate them, in reverse order of preference. Let’s begin.

17) Bullock

Governor Steve Bullock did not make an appearance in the first set of debates, and now I know why. He is the Shirley Exception made flesh. “Surely no one would actually use our laws to hurt someone. Surely if someone is really a good person they won’t face terrible abuses. Surely not…” Stevie, these are things that are currently happening. These are facts.

Those who read my analysis of the first debates should know that I do not accept any luke-warm “healthcare choice” arguments, and Steve is full of those, too.

He’s very worried about other candidates campaign promises being unrealistic, and says that it’s important to listen to “real Americans,” as if democratic socialists and the majority of Americans who support universal healthcare aren’t “real” enough for him.

As if that weren’t enough, he also argues in favor of some of the abuses of immigrants, as a deterrent to immigration.

To his credit, he supports treating gun violence as a public health issue, including research by the CDC into causes, which could inform actually useful gun control policies. He wants to see Citizens United overturned, which is also good. But not good enough.

16) Ryan

Representative Tim Ryan has the distinction of being one of the candidates I hated entirely in this debate. I agreed with none of his points, and most of my notes contain profanity. He introduced himself as New and Fresh, playing on his youth (he’s 45. The average age of the democratic candidates is 54. There are 4 people running who are younger than Tim) without offering much substance.

He opposes decriminalizing the border. On healthcare he seems to think we can’t make healthcare better for everyone because then unions won’t have anything going for them which is just… He thinks letting businesses “buy in to medicare” is a good idea, and all I can hear is “privatize the social safety net and let companies decide whose grandma actually deserves to have proper care when she breaks her hip.”

I’m not saying Tim is evil. I’m saying he’s spineless and would let bad things happen because it’s too much work to stop them.

15) Delaney

Representative John Delaney joins Tim Ryan in the dubious category of “I hate you and everything you stand for.” The only reason he ranks slightly higher than Tim is because someone had to. Their scores were the same level of shrieking profanity.

John thinks that reminding everyone that he was the youngest CEO in the history of the New York Stock Exchange is a good thing, showing that he has absolutely no idea what democrats are looking for in a candidate. Surely, we should trust him! He sold his soul early and has abided by the contract for so long!

He is another candidate decrying “unrealistic” campaign promises. He reiterated his concern that Medicare for All would underfund the healthcare industry in America, he considers it an “extreme” policy proposal, and called it an “anti-private sector strategy.” Yes, John, because the private sector’s profit motive has been working so well, let’s all continue dying so that small groups of people can make lots of money off of the price of insulin. Fuck you.

14) Williamson

Marianne Williamson’s contributions were blessedly brief and infrequent. She supports public campaign funding, which is great, but she also spent an entire minute on “I have concerns” without once proposing a solution, referred to the American healthcare system as a “sickness care system,” which for me evokes concerns about chemtrails and chemikillz, and her opening statement evoked American Exceptionalism.

I’m so tired of Marianne Williamson.

13) Biden

Former Vice President, Former Senator Joe Biden was invited to comment on everything. As a result, I have over a page of notes just for him. The moderators’ bold strategy of checking in with Uncle Joe every time anyone said anything gave him opportunities to say a few things I agreed with, but ultimately was not enough to get him out of my lowest ranked category.

As he said in the last debate, Joe supports rejoining the Paris Climate Accord. This time, he said we need to “increase” the standard, apparently recognizing that solutions negotiated several years ago will not be sufficient now, and he wants to see an end to fossil fuel subsidies. These are good things I can agree with.

Joe is concerned by the treatment of immigrants seeking asylum, and the excessive wait times for their cases to be heard and the refugees either released or returned to their country of origin. His solution is to “flood the zone,” spend more resources to make decisions faster. This guarantees nothing except a reduction in detainees which, while generally positive, is less than half a solution.

The thing Joe said that I liked best was about the treatment of former-inmates after the completion of their prison sentences. Joe said that former-inmates should have access to public programs and benefits upon release. This would be a significant change from the current system, which continues to punish people long after their sentence is served. He also said that drug crimes should result in rehab, not prison.

Joe continued to use his association with Obama as a shield against criticism, which was worn thin before the first debate started. He evaded questions about Eric Garner, refused to answer questions about Obama-era deportations (with the added bonus of “what I said was said in confidence, you’d share it, but not me”), invoked American Exceptionalism in his opening statement, interrupted Cory Booker at one point, blamed all of our current political and social dysfunction on Trump, and thinks we should renegotiate the Trans Pacific Partnership.

The cherry on top of this shit sundae? He said the phrase “I have the only plan that (…)” I haven’t talked about this much, because it’s a little hard to express in text, but I have a very, very negative response to any claim to being the only person who can solve a problem. It’s bad when Trump does it, it’s bad when Biden does it, it’s an abuser’s tactic. “I’m the only one who loves you, I’m the only one who can help you, I’m the only one” is always a) a lie, and b) a red flag.

Granted, I was so far behind that some of Biden’s comments formed parallels I might not have seen when he initially said them, but some of the things he said about immigration were symptomatic of the same thought process that gave us that abominable rewrite of Emma Lazarus’s New Colossus. Biden, when trying to make a point about the strength of America being in our diversity, said that “we’ve been able to cherry pick from the best of every culture,” and followed it up with “anybody that crosses the stage with a PhD, you should get a green card for seven years. We should keep them here.” Not everyone who immigrates to the U.S. is going to have an advanced degree. Not everyone who immigrates to the U.S. is going to be “the best and brightest.” And that’s a good thing. There is a limit to the number of doctors and lawyers a society needs. Some immigrants are going to be nurse’s assistants and cab drivers, and we need them here, too.

Even with all of that, the worst of what Joe had to say was about healthcare. Joe thinks that limiting co-pays to $1000 per person is part of making healthcare accessible to everyone. He thinks your health insurance premium should be no more than 8.5% of your annual income. I did some math. For minimum wage, that’s almost $2500 for insurance, out of pocket, before anyone sees any benefit. After taxes, that leaves about $10k for a minimum wage worker to live on for a year. At $15/hour, $20k to live on. These are not reasonable numbers in most of the country.

#second democratic debate #politics #opinions and analysis

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anthonybialy · 2 years

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Politics Ticked

Trying to think of something other than politics is tricky when politics won't let you. The ceaseless interdictions into your life win arguments by force of law, which should tell you something about how well such ideas work without coercion. Being compelled to cooperate is precisely why government was limited from ordering your around on so many issues in the first place. But you can't appeal to the legal system when the judge is the one who mugged you.

It's unhealthy for anyone to think about what they must obey and how someone elected will fix their sorrows. This country's whole point features being left the hell alone, which is why liberals despise it so. I know rich white males came up with the system of being unbothered by a dumb and evil ruling club, so the notion must be as racist as it is sexist.

There's good news ahead if choice feels like torture, as you won't be allowed to engage in the alternative. We're told that Barack Obama's persistently flimsy health scheme fails only because it features too much choice. Government eliminating competition is telling in a way advocates don't grasp. Infringing on your existence at every instance features the precisely wrong kind of opportunities to seize.

A fear of attack makes going about everyday business stressful. Americans don't particularly care about Afghanistan except for that whole bit where the only industry permitted under the Taliban is terror planning. We really are lucky that the only memories left are short-term, as forgetting about precedent surely keeps us safe.

Money is worthless, but you can have all you'd like. It seems like inflation is the catch. Supply and demand applies to the quantity of bills, as well, but those dragging us into astounding debt so we can be affluent hope the sheer quantity of bills overwhelms the minuscule quantity of purchases that can be made with them.

Everything will be fine unless your physical self needs consumed energy. Modern people who found themselves reenacting bread lines thanks to the glory of inflation can't even eat for fun, much less to acquire calories. Food costs skyrocket for some mysterious reason that I'm sure has nothing to do with government trying to make everyone rich by printing currency.

An unnervingly high minimum wage costs you nothing as long as you buy same. Lectures about obesity from an entity of unimaginable corpulence that consumes income and savings in complete disregard to financial well-being adds whipped cream on a sundae nobody can afford. The entrée is out of reach, so forget about acquiring a treat.

Food costs skyrocketing may somehow lead to higher prices. A baseline that restaurant owners can't avoid is almost as ominous as artificially increasing compensation. It's awesome to get more money except for how you can't get any job. Rich dishwashers couldn't afford to eat at the places where they work even if they managed to get hired.

Negotiation between workers, employers, sellers, and buyers for how much products and labor are worth is as close to happy as anyone involved will get. As it stands, the compassionately rational liberal response to shuttering restaurants is that they should pay more. Why did greedy proprietors who squeak by trying to provide enjoyment during calorie consumption not think to overpay? The most painful cruelty is based in idiocy.

Getting healthier is a matter of obeying. Why won't your stupid physical self listen to restrictions? Being ordered to not get infected works as well as anything else government attempts. Breathing through cloth treated as a way to stop a pandemic is no different than expecting insurance to get cheaper by passing a law.

Please stop being selfish by caring for yourself. You could've made the decision to take precautions that seem reasonable based on individual risk factors just like getting insurance that covers what sounds sensible from any company that sells it. Instead, erstwhile free people don't have the option to decline. But I'm sure coverage will be awesome. Why else must you participate?

It's almost like politicians make it worse. Those who profess allegiance to science sure love ignoring experiment results. Purported fans of facts keep voting for the same pompous dolts who vow to solve the problem of making tuition more costly by getting government involved with even more government. Fill in the blanks to feature the awful political solution of your choice.

America needs a president who can be ignored. It's much easier to disregard one who leaves you alone. That happens about as often as a federal success. A wholly imaginary politician who doesn't seize a ridiculous portion of your income or potential would be asking for too much. Criminally inept federal agencies going extinct would mean less legal looting, and then we'd be cruelly taking multiple sources of their fun.

Get back here and bother us. It'd be an incalculable relief to loathe the evil president who isn't making life more expensive by handing out totally free checks. The best argument for making politics less central to life is everything political.

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debra2007-blog · 3 years

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The fatal flaw in the 9/11 cover-up!!

(Long but worth the read)

September 11, 2021

9/11 was one of the most pivotal events in world history. Its impact will be felt for years to come. You owe it to yourself to go beyond the sound bites and the simplified official story. This is an extremely complicated story with numerous players and motives.

Why can no one name the hijackers or prove they flew the planes?

Know how to tell the difference between the truth and lies of 9/11? If they're talking about hijackers having done the dastardly deed, you know they're part of the sinister cover up extravaganza, wittingly or not.

In order for the people of the world to be convinced that Islamic hijackers were responsible for terrible tragedy of 9/11, we need to see some evidence. Not hearsay, innuendo, aspersion or promises of evidence, but real evidence.

Otherwise, the whole subject is rightly regarded as a ruse, a setup to conceal the identities of the real culprits, the ones who sit smugly in front of the TV cameras and plot their cynical war on terror — otherwise known as the war on the peoples of the world.

As President Bush continues to insist that his word be accepted as truth on numerous questions, time after time his statements have been revealed as blatant falsehoods. Yet he continues to repeat them, and the whorish corporate media continues to accept them.

Why hasn't either the Bush administration or some element of law enforcement in the United States issued a single solid piece of evidence connecting the hijackers to the hijacked airplanes? Why don’t the alleged hijackers appear on the airport security videos? Why aren’t there credit card records of their ticket purchases?

Why did FBI director Robert Mueller say very publicly to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco that nothing on paper connected Arab terrorists to 9/11? I mean, 19 years have passed. And the feds produced 19 names within 72 hours of the disaster. Notice a mathematical inconsistency here? All that has happened since is mere vigilante hysteria, hypothetical scenarios trumpeted ad nauseum by America’s notoriously brainwashed Zionist press.

Seven or eight of the names on that original list have been found living comfortably in other countries. Why hasn’t the FBI made any attempt to correct the errors made on that original list?

And why, after much hullabaloo about Colin Powell using phony information in his remarks to the United Nations about the reasons for war, hasn’t the U.S. government produced a single conclusive piece of evidence to back up its claim that 9/11 was the work Osama bin Laden and other Islamic terrorists? Not a single piece!

If you disagree, tell me what it is!

There's a simple answer to this, you know. It's because there isn't any evidence. And why is that? Because those pseudo-Muslims revealed to be so publicly incompetent at piloting jerkwater training planes had absolutely zero chance of flying sophisticated jetliners into anything narrower than the Grand Canyon, never mind executing tricky maneuvers with extraordinarily complicated machinery.

The unknown men who played the roles of the so-called Arab terrorist hijackers were really recruited by either American and/or Israeli intelligence services in a scheme set up as a diversion to inflame dumb Westerners against the Islamic world. The purpose was to divert the world’s attention from the Israeli genocide and dispossession of the Palestinians by blaming the attacks on Muslims.

But that was only half the objective. The other half was to enable our despicable cabal of neocon gangbangers to fleece the American public with an endless array of no-bid contracts to enrich the conscienceless billionaires who are really driving the war machine.

You know how the Bushista American government uses anything for PR to supposedly authenticate its own evil agenda. If they had any concrete evidence against the hijackers — if they even possessed all their correct names — we would have heard about it by now. There would be an avalanche of TV shows about them, unlike that Jewish claptrap hate crime against Muslims that appeared on NBC one night.

After 20 years, with the whole world knowing that eight of the 19 names on the hijacker list are fraudulent, the FBI has made no attempt to substitute new names. And why is that? Because the identities of the hijackers were constructed with mostly stolen papers, for some of the patsies designed to take the heat. In any case, and whoever they were, there is no evidence they ever got on the planes.

But nothing. Instead we have one minor player convicted in Germany, then the conviction was overturned, partly because Americans refused to help with the prosecution.

We have the so-called 20th hijacker and assorted other preposterous character actors languishing in jails on trumped up charges. We have security camera film at the Pentagon, which surely reveal that no jetliner hit that building, locked away in Ashcroft's vault under the phony aegis of national security. We have all the rubble of the World Trade Center, which surely would have revealed the use of nuclear explosives creating shattered beams in odd places, instantly carted away with no forensic investigation. We have transcripts — but no recordings — of these phony cellphone calls, some from people who may not have even existed.

And we have the famous stand down, in which America's air defenses suddenly evaporated — the only time in our history this has happened.

We have Marvin Bush sitting suspiciously on the board of directors of the security company that had the contract for the Twin Towers.

We have Larry Silverstein, who conveniently leased and insured the towers shortly before the big hits, telling officials to "pull" a relatively intact tower, which then fell identically to the two structures that were struck by airplanes, creating the impression that that's the way all three came down.

We have billions of dollars of windfall profits made by savvy investors in the days before 9/11, and an FBI investigation that insists nothing was amiss with these spectacular deals. Of course, we don't get the details. Only "assurances" that the trades were not suspicious, despite patterns and results that were unprecedented in the entire history of financial trading.

We have reports from firemen of explosions at the base of the Twin Towers BEFORE they fell, and the seismographic evidence to back up these assertions.

We have leader after leader saying they didn't know such a thing could happen when the government had been studying the problem for ten years. It had held at least two major drills simulating such a possibility.

And we have a president sitting in a ghetto classroom in Florida, at possibly the most pivotal moment in American history, pretending to read a book that he was holding upside down.

Perhaps most tellingly of all, we have the tragic tale of John O’Neill, rabidly honest FBI investigator, prevented from following his leads about Osama bin Laden because of the danger he would have discovered the links from Afghanistan back to CIA headquarters. Just review the way he was prevented from conducting his probe of the Cole bombing, and prevented by digging into other leads by the same guys — namely insiders Louis Freeh and Thomas Picard — who prevented significant reports from other FBI agents from seeing the light of day.

So, how does all that make you regard the supposedly impartial government panel investigating these matters? When they talk about Presidential Daily Briefings months before the event, or chitchat with presidential flunkies who leak out these pseudo revelations about this and that tidbit of essentially trivial information. And especially when they talk about the dastardly hijackers (without being able to name them) as if there is no question of their guilt. Talk about your misleading urban legends! This one is the champ.

Well, no sense feeling surprise. We knew this commission was a set-up from the get-go. Recycled Watergate investigators, even. Part of the same bunch that has run the country and covered up everything for the past 30 years or more.

Surely you didn't expect a real investigation. Thomas Kean declared at the outset of his hearings that Osama bin Laden was guilty. End of discussion. As soon as he made that statement, there was no way the hearings could be legitimate.

Asserting that genuine Arab hijackers did not carry out the attacks of 9/11 requires analysis of two concomitant categories: the history of American (and Israeli) involvement (and subterfuge) with Arab terrorists, and methods of remote control of aircraft, or other means of piloting the aircraft.

The remote control aspect continues to be a bone of contention among legitimate pilots, with some asserting only real pilots could have made such extemporaneous maneuvers and others insisting only remote control could have accomplished such a feat. An interesting new perspective on this debate can be found here:

A third natural area of study in this regard would be the intimate histories of those whom officials claim to be the hijackers, including putting the microscope on their behavior in the days and weeks before the tragedy.

Many researchers claim the name al-Qaeda was made up in middle ‘90s by a variety of American functionaries (one of them being none other than Richard Clarke) as an all-purpose villain the U.S. could blame as a convenient reason for its military adventurism. And a group of Israeli provocateurs was recently discovered trying to create their own faux version of al-Qaeda.

How many more hints do you need? The absence of any relevant arrests or discovery of any clues to the hierarchy of this supposedly worldwide terror group should tell you a lot.

Al-Qaeda doesn’t exist except for when they want it to, to blame for any sort of strategic terror they have created themselves for some political reason, like influencing the elections in Spain. Hah, that one really backfired.

Why haven’t American intelligence operatives gone to these foreign countries to interview these named hijackers who turned out to be alive? Simple. Because they knew the list was fiction in the first place, and the Arab-types who have been named as terror gurus are mostly their own employees, or people who have been set up by them.

It is a celebrated fact that Mohammed Atta and some of his friends were seen in nightclubs in the hours before 9/11, certainly a fact that argues against them being able to carry out their supposed missions because they were motivated by Islamic religious zeal. So their appearance in strip clubs blows the whole story that they were devout Muslims giving their lives to Allah. Devout Muslims don't drink, never mind cavort with strippers.

If we knew who the hijackers were, we'd know their names, wouldn't we? Or is it now worth bombing other nations and murdering thousands of innocent people because we say we know who the hijackers were, even though we don't know their names? It is the great shame of the American people that they have approved of the murders of thousands of people because of that blatant lie.

Many of the men who were fingered as 9/11 hijackers received preferential treatment from American immigration officials when it came to entering and leaving the U.S. on numerous occasions. Many of these same names reportedly trained at various U.S. military installations.

What has resulted after 19 years of work by America’s crack intelligence agencies, besides the persecution of Muslims throughout the world?

Well, hundreds of innocent people have been unjustly imprisoned and tortured at Guantanamo. All of them innocent, hapless dupes rounded up in a Rumsfeld-ordered dragnet in Pakistan after U.S. planes had (inadvertently or otherwise) allowed the Taliban fighters to escape with the Pakistani army from Afghanistan.

Two pathetic flunkies have been arrested and held without due process. One of them, the notoriously pathetic shoe bomber who was obviously a deranged personality and not a member of any terror network, was ceremoniously sentenced to life in prison.

Other than that, no al-Qaeda kingpins have been even named, never mind apprehended. No clue about how the 9/11 attacks were engineered has ever emerged. This is simply not consistent with being able to name all 19 hijackers the day after the attacks. It is a case of pretending you have all of the information instantly, and then pretending you no information for the next two years. What a smell!

This means two things: that the list of 19 names was a total fabrication, and that the worldwide terror network called al-Qaeda is also a total fabrication, the wet dream brainchild of the CIA and the Mossad to be trotted out as an excuse for a whole string of terror attacks — Madrid, Bali, Riyadh, Istanbul, etc. — that were really carried out by the CIA and the Mossad themselves, cleverly involving designated patsies to give the operations a suitably foreign flavor.

Al-Qaeda does not exist except as a bogeyman invented by Western powers to justify their evil agenda. There were no hijackers flying those planes on 9/11. And honest FBI agents have been prevented from publicizing that fact.

If you disagree, prove it! The world knows you can’t, though the high-tech mass murder by the United States and Israel spreads around the world because of this falsified version of events.

History will show — and the public will soon realize — that those who are telling these lies not only allowed 9/11 to happen, but planned it for their own personal advantage.

The only question that remains is will the American public awaken to this murderous, treasonous scam before the perpetrators achieve their objective and bury the whole planet in the flames of their insane perfidy.

Just remember. If they’re talking about the hijackers, they’re part of the cover up, whether they know it or not.

Much more productive would be analyzing the tiny hole in the Pentagon, how the ejected material in the WTC photos prove there were unexplained explosions, or how those emotional cellphone calls could not possibly have been made as government flunkies have presented them.

But you won’t hear the official 9/11 commissioners talking about any of that, because they are definitely part of the cover up. You can obviously tell, because they keep talking about the hijackers.

Other than a general alert to citizens of the world about the basic lies that continue to underlie all political debate in the United States at this time, there is another, more pressing reason to discuss and contemplate all these matters at this time.

The Secret History of 9/11 - Full Documentary

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVh9WgGxuIY

The Truth Behind 9-11 Attack [Part 1 of 9]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Arub097L5Co

The Truth Behind 9-11 Attack [Part 2 of 9]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IK7qJTCvAHE

The Truth Behind 9-11 Attack [Part 9 of 9]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQ5AxjjDv-U

Mysterious Deaths of 9 11 Witnesses (MUST SEE) - THESE ARE NOT COINCIDENCES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suQitX2GmTU

This Computer Simulation Explains How the Twin Towers Fell

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzInIjD6nKw

This is the 9/11 Cover Up

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzkd0C2t2s8

9/11 Firefighter Blows WTC 7 Cover Up Wide Open

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQrmkOWhH48

Remembering 9/11 | National September 11 Memorial | United States

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTpYlm79Fis

9/11 Memorial Video (2020)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bgzm4klQXOw

Alan Jackson - Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning) (Official Audio)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zj6rMcVNQbw

Pray for the families that lost their love ones from such a senseless evil act of life. We must hold those that let this happen accountable and that includes our GOVERNMENT!!!

SEEK THE TRUTH. RESEARCH THE TRUTH. FOR YOU SHALL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE!!

May Yeshua the Messiah bless you,

Love, Debbie

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Why Did Republicans Vote Against Hr3

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-did-republicans-vote-against-hr3/

Why Did Republicans Vote Against Hr3

How Would Medicare Negotiate Drug Prices Under Hr 3

Why Do Most White People Vote Republican?

H.R. 3 amends the non-interference clause under current law by adding an exception that allows for the price negotiation process established by the legislation. The negotiation process applies to at least 25 and 50 single-source brand-name drugs lacking generic or biosimilar competitors, selected from among the 125 drugs with the highest net Medicare Part D spending and the 125 drugs with the highest net spending in the U.S., which could include physician-administered drugs covered under Medicare Part B, along with all insulin products. Drugs that are new to market could also be subject to negotiation if their list price is greater than median household income and their projected spending would place them among the list of drugs with the highest spending under Medicare or the U.S. overall.

In determining the maximum fair price, H.R. 3 requires the Secretary to consider research and development costs, market data, production and distribution costs, and existing therapeutic alternatives, including comparative effectiveness data. If a manufacturer offers a price that is no more than the target price, the proposal requires the Secretary to accept this as the maximum fair price for the drug. The agreed-upon negotiated price would be made available to private plan sponsors in Medicare Part D and commercial payers in group and individual markets, and to providers that administer physician-administered drugs.

Prescription Drug Costs Raise Profits For Big Pharma While Lowering Quality Of Life For Millions

Its already been a bad time for pharmaceutical companies. Many have received the brunt end of widespread public dissatisfaction after being criticized in the media and political realms.

Now that healthcare is carrying political narratives, out-of-pocket spending like the kind that would go down for Medicare parts B and D beneficiaries should HR 3 or a similar bill become law is more than just a pundit talking point.

Everyone in America knows someone who is taking an expensive medicine, Robinson said. And they vote, so this is obviously political.

Between patients out-of-pocket costs all the way up to what CMS covers, the United States spent more than $330 billion on prescription drugs in 2017.

That is an enormous draining of dollars from taxpayers out of Medicare and Medicaid, and out of the pockets of Americans who have to pay high premiums, deductibles, and copays, which are driven up significantly by the highest prescription drug costs in the world, Chris Orestis, president of LifeCare Xchange, told Healthline.

Orestis says freeing up even the smallest percentage of this money could raise the standard of living for many people, as well as having a stimulating impact on the economy.

It would also help people who react to the high costs of prescription drugs by rationing their care and dosages.

Republicans Hold Firm Against Socialism

Despite President Trumps frequent use of the bully pulpit to criticize the drug industry, the good news is that only two Republicans joined the Democrats in supporting passage of H.R. 3. House Democrats either did not read or were unmoved by multiple studies suggesting tremendous peril for small and emerging biotechs if the legislation becomes law and our investors run for the hills. More than 130 life sciences investors have publicly confirmed they would have no other choice.

Also Check: Which Republicans Might Vote For Impeachment

If Implemented The Bill Could Save Americans Billions

The Congressional Budget Office estimates that HR 3 would account for about $98 billion in savings over a 10-year period.

The price negotiation provisions would lower spending by about $456 billion, but covering dental, vision, and hearing under the Medicare program would raise spending by approximately $358 billion.

Dr. James C. Robinson, PhD, MPH, the Leonard D. Schaeffer professor of health economics and the director of the Berkeley Center for Health Technology, says HR 3 would help bring the costs of drugs in the United States closer to the International Reference Price, or what other wealthier countries pay.

For reference, the United States pays 60 percent more than Germany, another country with high healthcare costs.

The big issue is the part of HR 3 that allows CMS to negotiate drug prices under Medicare Part D, which Robinson says is predominantly run by private interests.

If youre pharma, this is bad, he told Healthline.

So What Exactly Would This Legislation Do

The centerpiece of the House Democrats’ bill would require the government to negotiate the cost of up to 250 brand-name drugs that don’t have competition and cost the U.S. health care system the most money. Insulin for diabetes would have to be included. The maximum price negotiated would be capped: It couldn’t be more than 120 percent of the average price charged in other industrialized countries that typically pay less than the United States. Drug companies would either play ball or face an excise tax starting at 65 percent and rising to 95 percent. Private insurance plans could also use the negotiated prices.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated this part of the bill would save $456 billion over a 10-year period. Its projected to cost drug companies at least $500 billion in revenue, which CBO predicts would cut research funding and result in about eight fewer new drugs coming to market in the first 10 years the law was in effect, and 30 fewer drugs in the following decade.

The legislation also tries to restrain companies abilities to launch new drugs at astronomical prices by allowing the government to negotiate the cost of any medicines that come to market at list prices higher than the U.S. median household income. The plan would also cap seniors’ annual out-of-pocket spending for outpatient prescription drugs at $2,000.

Recommended Reading: Are There Any Republicans Running Against Donald Trump

Govtrackus Is Taking A New Focus On Civic Education

Help us develop the tools to bring real-time legislative data into the classroom.

If youve visited a bill page on GovTrack.us recently, you may have noticed a new study guide tab located just below the bill title. This is part of a new project to develop better tools for bringing real-time legislative data into the classroom. We hope to enable educators to build lesson plans centered around any bill or vote in Congress, even those as recent as yesterday.

Were looking for feedback from educators about how GovTrack can be used and improved for your classroom. If you teach United States government and would like to speak with us about bringing legislative data into your classroom, please reach out!

House Republicans Vote Against Slashing Costs For Prescription Drugs

A bill to lower the cost of prescription drugs passed the House with mostly Democratic support.

The House of Representatives took the issue of high prescription drug costs head on Thursday, passing a bill that promises to lower the costs of medication associated with cancer, asthma, and many other conditions.

By a 230-192 vote, H.R.3, the Elijah E. Cummings Lower Drug Costs Now Act, passed on a largely party line vote. Every Democrat supported the legislation, joined by only 2 Republicans, with the lone House independent, Rep. Justin Amash of Michigan, voting no. The bill was named after the late Rep. Elijah Cummings , who passed away earlier this year.

According to NPR, the legislation would allow the federal government to negotiate the cost of prescription drugs for Medicare, limit out-of-pocket costs for Medicare participants, and prevent drug price hikes. The Trump administration vowed to veto the legislation if it ever comes to his desk.

“In my district alone, H.R. 3 could lower breast cancer medication by $45,100, and diabetics could save up to 94% on the cost of insulin,” Rep. Lucy McBath said in an email. “I have heard heartbreaking stories from people in my community who are forced to skip doses or ration their insulin,” she added, noting too many Americans “worry about paying for their lifesaving prescription drugs.”

Rep. Ami Bera , a doctor a member of the moderate New Democrat Coalition, joined McBath in supporting the legislation.

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Read Also: Why Are The Republicans So Evil

Democrats Pass Us Bill To Lower Drug Prices That Trump Threatens To Veto

By Lisa Lambert

3 Min Read

WASHINGTON – – The U.S. House of Representatives on Thursday approved legislation aimed at driving down the prices that seniors pay for prescription drugs, but the bills future is clouded by President Donald Trumps threat of a veto and lack of support in the Senate.

The Democrat-led chamber voted 230 to 192, largely along party lines, to approve the measure that would allow the Medicare insurance program for seniors to negotiate prices for dozens of prescription drugs, including insulin. The lower drug prices would also be available to private insurance companies.

Ive seen grown men cry on the campaign trail because they cannot meet the prescription drug cost, whether they have a spouse that is ill or a child with a pre-existing conditions, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi told reporters ahead of the vote. This will make all the difference in the world.

The bill would cap prices for the countrys most expensive drugs using an international index and impose hefty fines for manufacturers that do not negotiate.

The pricing system would save the government $456 billion over 10 years, according to estimates from the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, much of which would go toward extending Medicare coverage for vision, hearing and dental care.

The bill also would prevent price-gouging on new drugs for those with private health insurance.

Democrats And Hr 3 Taking A Harder Line Against Biomedical Innovation

Lifelong Republicans Explain Why They’re Voting Against Trump | NowThis

Shockingly, some Democrats went on the record saying a trade-off lower prices now for fewer cures in the future is acceptable. Rep. Darren Soto said, I frankly think its worth it. He should tell that to the people whose lives wont be saved by the medicines that wont be made.

House Democrats have unanimously moved to a hard-left position against the biotechnology industry, and we have some real work ahead of us to bring moderates back into the fold. In a single week, Pelosis party unanimously supported socialized price controls on drugs and persuaded the White House to strip important intellectual property protections for biologic medicines out of the U.S.-Canada-Mexico Trade Agreement.

Also Check: Why Did Democrats And Republicans Switch

Combining The Two Bills Sets Up A Political Minefield For Republicans Who Are Torn Between The Two Issues

The House is set to vote Thursday on legislation meant to lower prescription drug prices and strengthen the individual health insurance exchanges, setting up a political minefield for Republicans who are torn between the two issues.

Democratic leaders decision to combine legislation that would make it easier to bring generic drugs to market with bills that would bolster the 2010 health care law does;not damage the prospects of passage for the package of bills. But that does make it certain that most Republicans will vote against the bipartisan drug pricing legislation.

The decision to merge the bills, which Democrats say was made so that savings achieved through the drug pricing measures would pay for spending under the health insurance legislation, could open Republicans up to attacks that they voted against legislation to lower drug prices, an issue that polls show is of great concern to both Republicans and Democrats.

These are very separate issues, said Rep. Greg Walden, R-Ore., the ranking member on the Energy and Commerce Committee. How we deal with bad practices in getting drugs and samples and all that to consumer and competition in the market is different than paying for more navigators and wiping out state-regulated health insurance.

Theyre just waiting to cut the TV ads, he added.

Rep. , R-N.C., the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, said he wasnt concerned about the show vote, but said it was a missed unique opportunity.

House Is At Work While Senate Stalls

Most people Ive spoken with in Connecticut are astounded to learn that the House of Representatives has passed more than 400 bills over this past year.

Theyre equally struck by the fact that 275 of those bills were bipartisanly supported.

They were then deeply disappointed to learn that the Senate has not taken any of them up over the past year.

The media coverage, including social media, has been focused on impeachment, a divided Congress, and a divided nation. Is it any wonder then why people have little faith in government and are fed up with the process?

Yet, the truth is much has been done by one chamber, the House of Representatives, while the President and the Senate continue to falsely assert the only thing were working on is impeachment.

The summary below indicates what the House of Representatives has passed to help the American people.

Hailing from the state where the activism around the tragedy at Sandy Hook took place, Im proud that the House of Representatives took action and passed three gun violence prevention bills in 2019. Gun violence is an epidemic that is tearing our communities apart, and we need to make responsible changes now.

In addition to voting to lower prescription drugs, Democrats are also working to protect those with pre-existing conditions and strengthen affordable health care for Americans.

These are just a few of the 400-plus bills the House has passed that are awaiting consideration in the Senate.

You May Like: What Republicans Are Voting Against Trump

How Did Pelosi Keep Various Democratic Factions On Board

She carefully crafted legislation that could appeal to diverse wings of her caucus.

Moderate Democrats pushed for a bill that could become law and wasnt just a messaging document. Progressives argued that since no Pelosi bill would get the time of day from McConnell, the party should go bold.

The Pelosi bill attempts to appease both camps by focusing on government price negotiations for the highest-cost, highest-use drugs that enjoy patent-protected monopolies. Unlike previous Democratic attempts at drug price negotiations, it contains hefty sticks to guarantee the government gets prices down for those drugs. But it would allow the status quo to prevail for most medicines, letting the private market continue to dictate their prices.

Progressive Democrats appeared to have the upper hand over moderates as the bill went through its final iterations. By threatening to block the bill from getting a vote if Pelosi didn’t make last-minute changes, progressives won two big last-minute concessions, expanding the scope of the legislation.

Why Are There Pro

H.R. 3 has been protested almost since the day it was introduced. The No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, which does pretty much what it says on the tin imposes a series of draconian restrictions on abortion funding made waves at first because of its forcible rape clause, which aimed to restrict the definition of rape as it applied to rape and incest exemptions, and which garnered a significant amount of coverage and protest this February. Of course, even with that infamous clause removed, H.R. 3 aims to deprive people of Medicaid funding for abortions, meaning that it aims to deprive poor women of abortions, meaning that it targets specifically the most vulnerable people within the population. And good news for those of us in the middle: If you are lucky enough to have insurance, H.R. 3 will also prohibit your insurance company from covering your abortion. So, hurrah! All will be delightfully well-oppressed.

The most upsetting thing about H.R. 3, however, is the fact that it passed the House on May 4. And how it passed: On a 251-to-175 vote. Every single Republican present voted for it. And so did 16 Democrats.

Which is why those pro-life Democrats stick out. In a House that was already going to pass the measure, against a united and determined Republican anti-choice strategy, they added sixteen unnecessary voices of support. The question of why why such a thing as a pro-life Democrat even exists gets more terrifying the more closely you consider it.

Don’t Miss: Who Won The Midterm Elections Democrats Or Republicans

What Is Your Analysis Of This Vote

What trends do you see in this vote?

Members of Congress side together for many reasons beside being in the same political party, especially so for less prominent legislation or legislation specific to a certain region. What might have determined how the roll call came out in this case? Does it look like Members of Congress voted based on party, geography, or some other reason?

One tool that will be helpful in answering this question is the cartogram at the top of the page. A cartogram is a stylized map of the United States that shows each district as an identical hexagon. This view allows you to see the how the representatives from each district voted arranged by their geography and colored by their political party. What trends can you see in the cartogram for this vote?

How did your representative vote?

There is one vote here that should be more important to you than all the others. These are the votes cast by your representative, which is meant to represent you and your community. Do you agree with how your representative voted? Why do you think they voted the way they did?

If you dont already know who your Members of Congress are you can find them by entering your address here.

Each votes study guide is a little different we automatically choose which questions to include based on the information we have available about the vote.Study guides are a new feature to GovTrack. You can help us improve them by filling out this survey or by sending your feedback to .

Theres Two Approaches To Drug Pricing Reform And Both Are Stalled

The House bill H.R.3 has a few mechanisms for reducing prescription drug prices, but most notably, it would allow the US health department to directly negotiate the prices it will pay for up to 250 drugs every year. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated the bill would save Medicare up to $450 billion over 10 years because of those new negotiating powers. CBO has also projected about eight fewer drugs would come to the market in the next decade because of the decrease in revenues for drug makers.

Despite Trumps promises on the 2016 campaign trail that he would support proposals allowing Medicare drug negotiations, the White House threatened to veto the House plan. They called it a plan to institute government price controls, and said it would limit access to medicine, a favored talking point of the pharmaceutical lobby.

Even without this veto threat, H.R.3 is expected to be dead-on-arrival in the Senate. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has shown no interest in taking up the bill. It did, however, garner some small measure of bipartisan support although Trump has thrown the weight of the White House against the bill, it did receive two House Republican votes in December.

Instead, Trump has aligned himself more with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley, who has advanced a narrower set of reforms from his perch as the Senate Finance Committee chair.

Will you support Voxs explanatory journalism?

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douchebagbrainwaves · 3 years

Text

I'VE BEEN PONDERING STUDY

Because then you're asking government or almost-government employees to do the unpleasant jobs. We could not have grown so big so fast. Having a job is said to be even more onerous than schoolwork. At first the default reaction of the Slashdot trolls was translated into articulate terms: Who is this guy? But it's not enough just to raise up the poor. But if you order results by bid multiplied by transactions, far from selling out, you're getting a better one, and actually did. Meanwhile, sensing a vacuum in the metaphysical speculation department, the people who run them. I don't think many people like the slow pace of big companies, software has to go through one lame idea before realizing that a startup has 3 founders than 2, and better when the leader of the company is just a bunch of guesses, and guesses about stuff that's probably not your area of expertise. It would have been delighted at first to be bought for $2 million, but the deeper you go into the e-commerce business, we'd have found the idea terrifying. Economic statistics are misleading because they ignore the value of information, it will make the others much more interested. 01 continuations 0. You're committing to search for one of the characters on a TV show was starting a startup.

The place to look is where the spread of literacy and the arrival of block-structured languages, but by then it's too late. But patents may not provide much protection. A team that outplays its opponents but loses because of a bad decision by the referee could be called unlucky, but not about observing proprieties. And so to protect themselves people say I can't do it by accident. If you have to push down on the top as well as limiting your potential and protecting you from competitors, that geographic constraint also helps define your company.1 The structure of their business means a partner does at most 2 new investments a year, then on average you must be contributing at least x dollars a year worth of work per year for the company just to break even. For example, can this quality be taught? It always seemed to us the optimal way to do great things, you get better results if you use flexible media. 14758544 valuable 0.

You can't plan when you start a startup. There are other 19 year olds who are 12 inside. Most unpleasant jobs would either get automated or go undone if no one were willing to do them. I want to bias the probabilities slightly to avoid false positives.2 You have to add a few more checks on public companies. So if one group abandons this territory, there will always be both supply and demand. But they are not enough to make it prestigious. You'd think that a company about to buy you. The study of rhetoric, the art of arguing persuasively, was a third of the population have y percent of the wealth. Their inexperience caused them to make a living was by farming. The first was the rule of law. We could see the problem was one that needed to be solved though.

At YC one of our specialties at YC. In fact, we're so sure the founders are sufficiently different from other people that ideas few others can see seem obvious to you. At the very least, crank up the font size big enough to make all your decisions for you; anything that gets you tenure. For the next year or so, if anyone expressed the slightest curiosity about Viaweb we would try to sell them the company. Not merely in the obvious sense that if you eliminate economic inequality, you decrease the number of startups and think this can't continue. Apparently not. Then you have to invent a bubble to explain why Americans make some things well and others badly.3 I do the same. Which means, oddly enough, that patent application had continued in the pipeline for several years after, and finally issued in 2003, but no one told me. For example, I think we're better off attacking one step downstream, where wealth turns into power. There must be things you need. Realizing it does more than make you feel a little better about forgetting, though.

What they really dislike is the sort of people who aren't. If you're really at the leading edge of a field that's changing rapidly, your ideas about what you haven't figured out yet. When I first laid out these principles explicitly, I noticed something striking: this is practically a recipe for chaos, think about a soccer team. Almost every company needs some amount of funding to get started. But if you think it takes a lot of schleps, you'll still have plenty dealing with investors, hiring and investment decisions, and of course the judgements made in dating. 042199217 various 0. Big companies can develop technology that's simply too hard for competitors to duplicate, you don't even know? I'm telling you that the key is to have a cup of coffee, but told himself he ought to finish what he was working on first.

What we like is speed, and we're willing to go ahead and start startups right out of college, or even become a competitor. Dartmouth, the University of Vermont, Amherst, and University College, London taught English literature in the 1820s. But these numbers are not misleading, because that means your growth rate. Wealth is stuff we want: food, clothes, houses, cars, gadgets, travel to interesting places, and so on. Except in a few unusual cases. But it should help. In more recent times, Sarbanes-Oxley has practically destroyed the US IPO market. It's supposed to be a doctor may simply not realize how much room there is for a potential competitor to undercut them. They don't change the laws of wealth creation. One is that parents tend to be ones that work.4 When things go well you can take risks; when things are bad you want to do, you'll have to deal with uncertainty is to analyze it into components.

Notes

If you want to invest at any valuation the founders don't have enough equity left to motivate people by saying Real artists ship. Most smart high school football game that will pay for health insurance derives from the rule of thumb, the average car restoration you probably do make everyone else microscopically poorer, by encouraging them to act.

17. Aristotle the core: the energy they emit encourages other ambitious people together. It's unlikely that religion will be a problem this will give you 11% more income, they made much of the court. Or more precisely, while the more qualifiers there are those that will be regarded in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, Oxford University Press, 1981.

At the time 1992 the entire period since the mid twentieth century. I believe, is he going to distinguish between gravity and acceleration. If early abstract paintings seem more powerful than ever.

But it's hard to predict at the command of the markets they serve, because universities are where a great founder is in itself, and Smartleaf co-founder before making any predictions about the other team. One of the main effect of this model was that it offers a better influence on your way up into the heads of would-be-evil end. After a while ago, the LPs who invest in so many trade publications nominally have a group of Europeans who said the things I write.

#automatically generated text #Markov chains #Paul Graham #Python #Patrick Mooney #specialties #job #predictions #literacy #supply #Slashdot #rule #curiosity #probabilities #food #people #place #valuation #Centuries

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anonymous-hopeful · 6 years

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The Soul Society (Chapter Three: A Life So Bitter, A Death So Sweet)

First Chapter:https://anonymous-hopeful.tumblr.com/post/168367064353/the-soul-society-chapter-one-snow-melts-with

Second Chapter:https://anonymous-hopeful.tumblr.com/post/168874873773/the-soul-society-chapter-two-and-we-shall-ride

"Oh my...I remember that day well...though I had no idea that it landed you in the position that you're in now.", Hilda cried.

"I admit, it does make sense when you think about it. Once human, and now, practically monsters! No offense, boys.", Sally pointed out.

"None taken...I just wish that...I knew who...killed us...", the Blind Spectre sighed, directing his eye socket downward.

"Well, it's nice to know that I'm not the only undead one here.", the Baroness announced, placing both hands on her head and lifting it from her neck without fail, a collection of gasps filling the room.

"Baroness von Bon Bon! When was this?", Rumor exclaimed.

"A day after the Express crashed. Though...I remember it well...".

The Baroness held her head in her hands, stroking her hair slowly.

"If this didn't happen, I'd probably still have a free soul. The worst part was that it was for something that I did to try and help my kingdom, not hurt it. Though, I feel that she was looking forward to the moment when she could drop the axe on me...and Lord Layerbarré, the blabbermouth..oh, I'm rambling-".

"No, no, Baroness. This is why we meet.", Elder Kettle reassured her. "Now, go on.".

Most would assume that a kingdom of candy would be a literal heaven on Earth. Afterall, it was coated with sugar, chocolate, tainted with toffee and sour balls and gummy bears, entangled in mints and ice cream, and fizzy sodas and crunchy bars. Just saying the treats would give an eager little kid a sugar rush. This kingdom's name was Caine, commonly known as the Candy Kingdom of Caine to neighboring areas. When someone visited, they were insured a marvelous time from the moment they stepped into the sweet haven, and they most certainly did have the fun they were promised, and every time they left, be it their first trip or their five-hundredth, they always said the same thing.

"What a place, it's practically heaven!"

And the subjects would smile and nod all the same. After the visitors left, however, the kingdom would revert back to its true horror, for the royal monarchs were seething with evil and malice, more so the Queens. The reigning queen at the moment was Hershey Snickerdoodle, a lass from a long line of crazy cookie queens. Out of all the eras of Caine, the era of the Snickerdoodle was positively the worst. It was this era when the public execution law was put into place, and if the sovreign ruler had found you guilty of a law from the book of the High Cook Book of Order, be it by any technicality, then you would be executed in front of the entire kingdom based on your social standing. Peasants usually had it worst, with death by torture, while the socialites were given a quick death by beheading.

The Snickerdoodle era was also the one to host the most deaths of the royal peers, the barons and baronesses, the dukes and the duchesses. Nearly every one of them, those horrid Snickerdoodles killed off, as well as their families. There was Duke and Duchess Delicious, a merry couple executed for opposing the queen's vote for expansion of the kingdom, which required backbreaking work on the behalf of all subjects, then there was Duchess Gobstopper who was put to an end after trying to reorganize the royal army with deserving citizens. Not to mention Baron Stickyfingers, Baroness Lollipop, Duke Kitkat and his family, Baron Swirl and his children, Baroness Yohgurt, the list went on.

There was, however, a family of Barons and Baronesses that withstood the test of time, and that was the von Bon Bons. With every new Snickerdoodle, there wasn't one von Bon Bon put to the guillotine. Some said it was a blessing from the cookie royals before them. Others say that it would be a matter of time. When the Barons, Baronesses, Dukes, and Duchesses were lined up to be inducted into the Queen's realm, a young and new von Bon Bon, Taffipullé stood tall and proud. As Queen Hershey went down the line, she looked Taffipullé something fierce.

"Well, well, another von Bon Bon to be a part of a Snickerdoodles' rule. Tell me something, Taffipullé, are you mad, insane, or feeling lucky?".

"Nothing of the sort. As a member of the von Bon Bon family, it is my duty to serve. Not doing so would be a disgrace upon my family.", Taffipullé answered, calmly.

"Another thing would also be a disgrace upon those with your name.", Hershey snickered, pulling the Cook Book from her crown. "Unlike the Snickerdoodles before me, I will have a von Bon Bon beheaded, and it shall be a wonderous event that everyone in the kingdom will gather to watch as I myself weild not the blade of the guillotine, but a custom made ax with a blade ground so sharp that it could split a single hair. Yes, I shall have the honor of making you the first beheaded von Bon Bon, and from then your family will be mocking and scorning your name. Just you wait, Taffipullé.".

With a twisted laughter, she continued on down the row, leaving Taffipullé the slightest bit frightened. There was no doubt about it; Hershey Snickerdoodle was out to kill her, and possibly her entire family. That was, if she could find anything she was guilty of. Which she shouldn't. Rather, she would not, if her plan had went smoothly.

Once the ceremony was complete, now Baroness Taffipullé von Bon Bon had made her way to her castle home, named lovingly Whippet Creampup. Yes, her castle did indeed double as a pet, and a loving, protective pet all the same. Within the castle were older workers of the royalty, ones who had bonded with her family of von Bon Bons. Lord Gob Packer, who had served a queen before she did, had been friends with her father, Baron Candibär von Bon Bon, and had known Taffipullé since her childhood. Kernel von Pop, a bit older than Lord Gob Packer, had worked with her grandmother, Baroness Licorice von Bon Bon, and though cranky and crass, was still a rather sociable candy, albeit competitive. Muffsky Chernikov, an attack coordinator, had known her grandfather, Baron Charelston von Bon Bon like a brother, and was always available for help.

Then there was Sargent Gumbo Gumbull, Sir Waffington the Third, and Patsy Menthol, who had actually known Taffipullé since grade school. There was no better group of candies to be put together, which was why she had trusted them with the plan she had.

"Everyone, gather 'round. I know it seems like Hershey will be the toughest Snickerdoodle of them yet, but, I have a plan to soothe her. The issue it that if she finds out at all, well, I'll be executed. The first von Bon Bon to be. Is everyone ready to get the plans?", Taffipullé asked the subjects.

"Well of course! Anything to cool off that cookie! She'll be as mellow as an Oreo!", Gob Packer proclaimed.

"Good. Now then, there is a magical Isle just a bit from the docks, called Inkwell Isle. I've been in cahoots with a queen bee on the Isle, named Rumor Honeybottoms. She's been sweet enough to make a special honey that will change the queen's mentality, so long as she eats it on a regular. All we have to do is go to the Isle and gather the supply. We'd need a boat, as Whippet doesn't like the water.".

"That's no issue; I can get a boat straight away!", Gumbo stated with a grin.

"Good, good. Then, when we return, we'll need a way to ship in the honey without being noticed."

" I'm postitive I can put somethin' together, in fact, I'll contact the Candy Corn Company and see what they have.", Kernel von Pop assured.

"Very nice. Now what about actually sneaking it into the castle?", Taffipullé inquired.

"Maybe the Jelly Bullies? They know how to get around.", Patsy suggested.

"Well, yes, but with them you never know. Perhaps I should take a chance on them?", Taffipullé sighed.

"I'd do it. They haven't stirred up any trouble since the whole incident with the oil derrick.", Muffsky enlightened.

"That was indeed a good while ago...fine. I shall trust them,"the Baroness decided, "now hurry on and gather what we need for the trip. We'll need to scoot if we want to get the shipment in time.".

Now standing paitiently, waiting at the docks, Baroness von Bon Bon stared into the sky, watching as the sun set that taxing day. It seemed as if the entire kingdom was heading to rest, giving the Baroness and her cohorts the perfect opprotunity to leave. Finally, as the sun had disappeared from the sky, her subjects had came out, the Sargent on his promised boat, and the others carrying the Kernel's promised containers.

"Will this be enough, Baroness?", von Pop asked, ushering his company forward.

"It should be. Never have I carried so many containers! ", Muffsky complained.

"Oh, yes! Now hurry onto the boat. You never know who could be an insider.", Taffipullé warned, signalling the sargent to lower the ramp.

Quickly and silently, with the exception of some clanging containers, the Baroness and her familiars loadedonto the boat and set sail for the magical Isle. It seemed impossible, but after exactly one night's sleep, the boat had landed in the docks of the Isle.

"Should we all go?", Gob Packer asked in a whisper.

"No, too suspicious. I'll go, and you boys stay here and prepare the containers.", Taffipullé said, making her way off.

Once on dry land, the Baroness looked about. It seemed like they ended up in a forest, a lush and thriving forest, but a forest all the same. Huffing, Taffipullé made her way forward, attempting to navigate her way out. She'd never admit it herself, but she was never good with directions. Now, she was going in circles...at least, she was sure of it.

"Hey. You're new here, aren't you?".

Surprised, the Baroness looked around, trying to find the source of the squeaky, high-pitched voice.

"Down here, miss."

Looking downward, Taffipullé had finally identified the voice; a small blue ...goop?

"Well hello, small creature! Would you mind helping me out a bit?", Taffipullé asked politely.

"Well, I suppose I could spring that...that is, if you'll give me something in return.", the goop replied with a wink.

"That depends on what you want.", the Baroness returned, catching on to what he was hinting.

"I mean, I am a pretty handsome slime here, and you just happen to be the finest thing to come to this forest since that sassy flower over there, so- hey!".

"You disgusting little creep! Get back here so I may crush you like a bug!", Taffipullé cried out, stamping her heeled shoe repeatedly upon the ground.

"Try as you may, us slimes don't die, we only briefly decompose, then reappear perfectly fine!", the slime boasted, running in circles around the Baroness.

"Goopy! My goodness, you can't control yourself.", a large flower groaned in the background.

"Cagney, speak for yourself! If I best recall, your motto is 'Extreme Pollination, Total Domination', is it not?", Goopy retorted.

"That doesn't mean I want you of all things to pollinate me! Ugh, just imagine that abomination of a flower sprouting.", Cagney cringed.

"Wait, I never offered to do that! I didn't even know you could...flowers have those things?", Goopy inquired in slight amazement.

"Yes, flowers have both, and before you ask, I am not revealing how it works.", Cagney scowled.

"Ahem! Excuse me boys, but I would like directions to Rumor Honeybottom's hive without being harrassed by slimes and informed of flower vaginas!", Taffipullé yelled sternly.

"Cool it, hot stuff, you haven't even introduced yourself.", Goopy replied.

"I am Baroness von Bon Bon, I come from the Candy Kingdom of Caine, and I need directions to Rumor Honeybottoms!"

"Specifically Rumor? That's a new one.", Cagney said with a leaf on his chin.

"What do you mean? Isn't she a queen bee?", the Baroness questioned.

"Nope. Just a worker trying to get by. Whenever she has a moment, she flies by and vents about her oppressive queen. I wish she'd buzz by my place.", Goopy sighed.

"What! She lied about her queen status? Whatever, I still need to talk to her. Could any of you provide directions out of this forest at least?", Taffipullé asked, exasperated.

"Sure. Go left at the nearest oak, and continue straight from there.", Cagney informed.

"Thank you, Cagney...um...Calendula?"

"I'm a Carnation! Why must everyone think that I'm a-"

"My apologies, but I must take my leave!", the Baroness interrupted, making her way out of the forest.

Trying her best to disregard the encounter from earlier, the Baroness had, thankfully, exited the forest, and had now found herself in a rather easy to navigate carnival. Whilst walking through, someone had tapped her on the shoulder.

"Hey, what did the clown say to the newcomer?".

"I...don't know. I admit, I never heard that one before. What did the clown say to the newcomer?".

"He said 'Hi, how are ya? The name's Barry, but call me Beppi, because I'm a clown-in-the-works!'".

Taffipullé looked a bit lost, before realizimg that the punchline was an introduction.

"Oh, haha! Very clever, Beppi, sir! Most certainly more hospitable than the slime and the carnation on the other side.", Taffipullé replied.

"Don't mind Goopy Le Petité and Cagney Carnation. Ones a worm, while the other's worm food!", Beppi joked.

"Ahaha! Ah, where are my manners? I am Baroness von Bon Bon, and I am looking for a worker bee named Rumor Honeybottoms. You wouldn't happen to know where she is, would you?", Taffipullé inquired.

"Rumor Honeybottoms? Hmm...I've heard a buzz about that girl. Can't say I know her personally though. There is this guy though, huge bookworm, a genie-in-the-works by the name of Jimmy. I think the two have met.", Beppi informed.

"Would you take me to him?", the Baroness asked with a smile.

"Why take you to him when he's right there!", Beppi returned, pointing to the pyramid near the rides.

"Oh, that's convenient. Should I say you sent me?", the Baroness wondered.

"I think he'll know. See, he and I have a thing, ya know?", Beppi chuckled.

"Oh. Ah, I'll take note.", Taffipullé nodded, heading toward the pyramid.

When she opened the door, she had expected crazy magic shenanigans, and all the other things you'd associate with genies. Never would the Baroness expect papers and textbooks to be strewn about the genie's house.

"Aladdin, Shmeladdin. I swear, why does it always have to be an essay on Aladdin? Aren't there any more stories with genies in them?", the genie complained, afterward realizing that he had a guest.

"Hello, hello, welcome to Djimmi's pyramid! Pardon the mess, I have an exam for genie school, and it makes up fifty percent of my final grade...say, I don't remember having you on my magic lesson list.".

"I haven't been here before Jimmy-"

"Djimmi."

"Does it make a difference? We're pronouncing it the same, are we not?", Taffipullé questioned.

"It all depends, madame."

"Madam?"

"See? Just like that!", Djimmi chortled.

"Anyway, pronunciations aside, I was told by Beppi that you know Rumor Honeybottoms. Is this true?", the Baroness interrogated.

"Beppi? Ah, you know, he and I have a thing.", Djimmi smirked.

"Yes, I am well aware, now could you please answer my question?", the Baroness asked, quickly becoming frustrated.

"I know Rumor, yes. She lives and works in the hive complex in the city, which is on the right side of the carnival.", Djimmi answered.

"My thanks, Jimmi."

"No problem, Taffypull."

"It's Taffipullé...and how do you know my name?"

Djimmi shrugged, sporting the same smirk.

"I'm a genie, I know things.".

Making her way to the metropolitan area, Taffipullé immediately spotted a meloncholy worker bee floating sadly out of the hive complex near the front of the city.

"Rumor?"

Nearly jumping out of her wings, Rumor looked toward the Baroness.

"Taffipullé? I wasn't expecting you so soon! Um...I'm not a queen, by the way...", she admitted, sheepishly.

"Yes, I had learned that from some of the locals. I am a real Baroness, however, and you have my enchanted honey, or was that a lie, too?", Taffipullé confronted.

"I didn't lie about the honey, I will say that much. Hopefully, you have something to hold it all in.", Rumor replied.

"Oh yes. There's a hole boatload of containers on the ship I rode here.", Taffipullé informed.

"Well, that's going to do a lot of good here!", Rumor stated sarcastically.

"At least I didn't lie about being a queen!".

"So, what's in the honey?", Sargent Gumbo asked, looking at the glass jars on the boat.

"It's no ingredient; just a bit of magic is all.", Taffipullé claimed.

"Ooh, berries. I hope this seems unsuspicious when we get back. We've been gone for a whole day now!", Lord Gob Packer mused, worried.

"If it takes as long to get back as it did to get here, I think we'll be okay!", Patsy encouraged.

"Yeah, so long as Queen Snickerdoodle the whatever doesn't whip out that Cook Book.", von Pop grumbled.

Once again, a swift night's sleep, and they were back at Caine. Unfortunately, Queen Snickerdoodle was there at the docks waiting for them.

"Hmm, leaving for a whole day without authorization. Suspicious, is it not?", the cookie chuckled darkly.

"On the contrary," the Baroness began, "we were actually out to bring you a gift! Here, in these containers, is freshly made honey that we had so graciously gathered for Her Highness.".

"I'll be the judge of that!", the Queen huffed, marching onto the boat and flipping open the lids on the containers, to reveal the jars of honey. Still skeptical, the Queen unscrewed a jar and dipped her whole hand into the jar, scoopong out as much honey as she could in her hand before shoving it into her mouth. Surprised, her eyes flew open, and she began to greedily devour the contents of the jar.

"Mm! My goodness, what flavor! The taste, it dances on my tounge like sugarplums in my dreams!", the Queen exclaimed.

"Now, what was that about being suspicious?", Muffsky asked, raising his eyebrows.

"Suspicious? It's a gift, what's so suspicious about it? Now, get all of this honey into the castle at once!", Queen Hershey commanded, giggling.

"Yes, your majesty! Come on, boys, you heard the woman! Get the honey into the castle!", Taffipullé ordered, breathing a sigh of relief.

Now months after the honey was stocked in the castle, the subjects of Caine had very well noticed the change in the queen's demeanor. No one was put to execution, the main sign, and there was mirth and merriment even when no one had come to visit. The thing was, no one particularly cared to let her know that she was acting differently. If anything, it was a lovely change, one that was unanimously welcomed by subjects. Well, almost unanimously.

"I'm telling ya, there's something up with Queen Hershey Snickerdoodle VIII. Snickerdoodles have a violent streak, there's no reason for her to be any different.".

"Lord Layerbarré, you're being ridiculous. Not every cookie has to be like their mother or father before them.", Baroness von Bon Bon remarked.

"Seven Snickerdoodles, and this one just up and changes. There's some foul play here, Baroness von Bon Bon. I ought to figure it out. Imagine the praise I would get, for something like that!", Lord Layerbarré grinned.

"And put Caine back into who knows how many more years of suffering? Lord Layerbarré, I've never heard of such a greedy proposition!", Baroness von Bon Bon scolded.

"I guess you're right...but that won't stop me from looking. I'm serious, Baroness von Bon Bon, I'd be crazy enough to say that foreign magics are at work, and you know that the number one rule in Caine is-"

"No foreign magics are allowed to be at work in Caine, especially in royal affairs, unless given special permissions by His or Her Highness themselves.", Baroness von Bon Bon recited, annoyed.

"Precisely. Maybe it's in that honey that she loves so much. The supply you bring in, Baroness. Of course, you wouldn't pull a life ending stunt like that would you?"

"I-"

"Of course not! You're a von Bon Bon!", Lord Layerbarré laughed boisterously, before asking, "Where do you even get that honey from, anyway?".

"From a friend on an Isle that I'm telling you nothing about.", Baroness von Bon Bon snapped back.

"Oh really? Then how can we really trust that the honey is clean?", Lord Layerbarré interrogated, pointing a finger in Taffipullé's face.

"You're speaking blasphemy-"

"Oh, I am? I bet you haven't even done an inspection on the honey! In fact, you yourself may have ordered to have the honey enchanted!".

"Lord Layerbarré, I never!".

"Forget it, von Bon Bon! I shall expose your dastardly plans!", Lord Layerbarré cried out, dashing down the royal castle halls.

For a moment, Baroness von Bon Bon stood there dumbfounded. Would that lemon really disturb the peace of the kingdom just for his own gain?

Yes.

Absolutely.

No doubt about it.

Without fail, the Baroness had made her way out of the royal castle and headed to Whippet Creampup.

"Gob Packer, von Pop, Chernikov, Gumbull, Waffington, Menthol!! We may be knee deep in trouble. We must leave the kingdom at once!", she whisper cried.

"What?! After all this time, she finds out about the honey?", Sir Waffington gasped.

"No, but that motormouth, Lord Lemonseed Layerbarré, is on to me. He's blabbing to the Queen as we speak.", Baroness von Bon Bon groaned.

"Just what we needed. Is Whippet going to swim us away?", Lord Gob Packer asked, worried.

"It seems so.", Taffipullé sighed.

Shaking her head, she made her way to the top of Whippet. With a crack of her knuckles, she pulled his turrets until he had awoken with a whimper.

"Whippet, I know how much you hate getting wet and all, but, I need you to swim as far away as...actually...could you swim to Inkwell Isle?".

Giving a growl of confirmation, Whippet began dashing through the streets of the kingdom, until he, regrettibly, leapt into the water and began swimming away.

"Queen Snickerdoodle the Eighth! Queen Snickerdoodle the Eighth! I'm telling you now," Lord Layerbarré took a deep breath as he burst into the throne room, where the Queen and her guards were merrily eating cake, before screeching, "DON'T EAT THAT ...cake?".

"Huh? It's a very nice cake, yes... but wasting food is so unsanitary! It is a pretty cake, though. Should we eat it? Um...here, guards, fetch Lord Layerbarré a slice.", the Queen stuttered.

"Oh, thank you, your Highness, I- wait, that's not why I'm here! Queen Hershey, I request a jar of your fine honey.", Lord Layerbarré inquired.

"Very well then. Here, a jar. Whatever are you to do with it? ", the Queen asked, wide eyed.

"Behold, a vial of magic detecter! With this, I-"

"Wherever did you get that from? Have you been taking lessons?", the Queen asked, cheerily.

"Well, yes, but...oh nevermind, just look!".

Popping the lid off of the honey and the vial, Lord Layerbarré had mixed one with the other, causing the honey to change from it's rich yellow to a bright pink.

"WHAT?! I'VE BEEN POISONED?!", the Queen roared.

"Yes, and by the exact supply that Baroness von Bon Bon brings in! I believe this calls for the nesissary beheading punishment, don't you?", Lord Layerbarré boasted.

"NO DOUBT ABOUT IT!! GUARDS, MY AXE!!", the Queen shouted.

Immediately, the guards had dashed out and brought the Queen a shiny, sharp axe, decorated to perfection, with the sweetest candy cane handle.

"Ooh, nice choice.", Lord Layerbarré commented with a grin.

"Yes, isn't it? Oh, but I'm severely out of practice with an axe. Lord Layerbarré could you stand there a moment?", the Queen implored.

"Well, anything for her High-"

Unexpectedly, Lord Layerbarré's head was chopped off in one swoop of the axe. Hosting an evil grimace, Queen Snickerdoodle swung the axe a few more times, revilling in the chunks of flesh she chopped from the former lord's body, striking a final blow down the exact middle of his body.

"Haha! I've still got it in me! Screw this poison, I'm a dammed Snickerdoodle! Guards, I want you to search high and low for the von Bon Bons. I want you to capture them and bring them to the killing square, and I want you to execute them on the spot. Not Taffipullé, though. I shall have that privy to me.", the Queen commanded.

"Now go, or you'll be like Lord Loose Lips.".

Now, a decade later, the Baroness and her cohorts were living well on Inkwell Isle. They had made a home in the carnival, where the Baroness had befriended Beppi and Djimmi, and had practically became their sister. While there, she had met the Elder Kettle who lived in the forest across from the Narcissistic Goopy and the more or less genocidal Cagney. From then on, she had gone to see plays, and rode the Inkwell Express, and even become a carnival worker herself, giving sweets to the little children that were polite enough to ask for one. It was a nice life, indeed, and there was never a boring moment with all of the magics about, in the sea and sky. She had even had a 'thing' with Rumor, as Beppi and Djimmi put it. When the Express had crashed, however, things began to go downhill...no pun intended.

There was the whole Devil's casino to deal with, and now the death of close friends. There wasn't anything that could make matters worse. At least, not that she could think of. The day after the upsetting crash, there was a knock on Whippet's door.

"Yes? Who is there?", the Baroness asked, heading to check the door.

"Are you Baroness von Bon Bon?"

"Yes, this is she. If you don't mind, I am greiving at the moment so...oh my berries.".

"We are the Royal Guard of Caine. We've been looking for you for a long time, by orders of Queen Snickerdoodle the Eighth. You're coming with us.".

Forcefully, the guards had apprehended the Baroness, dragging her away from the castle. A confused Beppi had come out to ask,"Taffipullé? What's going on?".

The only thing the Baroness could say was, "I'm sorry for not telling you sooner!", before being gagged.

Speechless, Beppi began pulling at the guards trying to get them to let go.

"Hey, buddy, if you don't want to get beheaded, then I assume you let go!", a guard threatened.

"Beheaded?", Beppi inquired, before being knocked out by the same guard.

"Hurry it up boys. This place is itching with foreign magics.", the guard sneered.

Baroness Taffipullé von Bon Bon had came back to the kingdom of Caine in chains and shackles. The place had changed most definately in the ten years she was gone. The air was thick with smoke from fire, the aura was dark and heavy. There was a wall built around the kingdom, now cracked. All around , the remaining citizens were running from the patrolling guards, who were pulling arrows to fire into innocents. It was nothing like Inkwell. It was horrible, almost apocolyptic. Taffipullé couldn't even look at the subjects, she knew they were blaming all the pain and horror on her. Her head remained hung until she was forced into the killing square.

"Baroness Taffipullé von Bon Bon, at last. I admit, for a moment, I almost gave up searching for you. Almost. Look around. Your family is here to watch your death.", the Queen hissed.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, the Baroness looked up and around the square, feeling more pain as she saw the skeletons of her family scattered helplessly around.

"All of them are dead, from your great-grandmother, to your baby cousins. Thanks to you. Now, I shall execute you, by a simple beheading. Isn't it sad, how your death will be quick compared to the suffering your family has endured? ".

"Just do it already...", the Baroness whispered through tears.

"Oh, an eager beaver, hmm? Bring her to the middle.".

With a bit more force, the guards pushed her toward the middle of the square. Menacingly, the Queen held the axe in her hands, making her way forward to the Baroness. Giving her most horrible grin, the Queen prodded the Baroness with the end of the axe's handle.

"Any last words, Taffipullé?", she asked coldly.

"Yes. Burn in Hell.".

"In due time...".

As the Queen raised the axe, the Baroness closed her eyes tightly, fearing the worst. When the blade had hit, slicing through her neck, she thought she was dead. The only problem, was that she wasn't. A collection of gasps erupted around her, including one from the queen, who dropped her axe in surprise.

"She! Without her head! What kind of magics...you...it's as if you're a shell...soulless monster!".

Dizzy, the Baroness stood up, or rather, her body. Feeling a new sensation, the Baroness placed her head back upon her shoulders, then took hold of the axe.

"Once again, burn in Hell!", the Baroness hissed, slaying the Queen then and there.

"Hellbeast! Monster! Please, spare us!", the crowd cried.

"There is only one thing I want. Guards, take me back to Inkwell Isle at once.", Baroness von Bon Bon commanded.

"But-".

With a frightening yell, the Baroness swung the axe until the blade broke off, leaving the candy cane handle.

"I'll go back myself...", the Baroness seethed, a haunting yellow in her eyes.

The entire crowd watched as the Baroness headed back to the docks, simply taking off her head when she entered the water.

Worn with water, holding her head in one hand and the candy cane handle in another, the Baroness crawled onto Inkwell Isle, intent on heading back to Whippet to find out what exactly happened.

"I swear, we didn't mean you any harm! You see, we heard about your, eugh...beheading, and we didn't want you to die for something you did, with our abetting, a decade ago, so we looked high and low for someone, anyone, to help!", Sir Waffington explained, nudging Lord Gob Packer.

"Indubidubly, and we had found someone willing to help, on the third part of Isle, a dapper man in a purple suit. We told him of our plight, and he offered a solution!", Gob continued, before signalling Sargent Gumbull.

"Yep, he stated that if we signed your name on his contract in time, you'd be safe! And you are...somewhat.", Gumbull concluded.

"I lost my head, died for a second, then came back and went on a killing spree. They called me a Hellbeast and a Monster. What was that contract you signed?", the Baroness asked, staring her subjects down.

"Look, it's right here.", Gumbull said shakily, handing her the contract.

The Baroness read for a moment, before her eyes welled up.

"This is marked for my soul...to save me...you gave up...my soul...they were right...I am a Hellbeast...".

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