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TEN OF PENTACLES

OLD MONEY, LASTING SUCCESS, FAMILY

KEYWORDS

Financial Success/Stability/Strength, Success Breeding Success, Permanence, High Ambition/Achiever, Thriving, Flourishing, Status, Reputation, Long-Term, Results of Hard Work, Promotion, Strong Investments, Solid Foundations, Security, Protection, Financial Rewards, Materialistic, Wealth, Affluence,Riches, Permanent Wealth, Luxury, Comfort, Old Money, Property, Land, Home, Homestead, Family Matters, Family Home, Family Money, Family Tree, Continuity, Genes, Ancestry, Descendents, Heritage, Passing On/Handing Down, Inheritances, Legacies, Wills, Deeds, Trust Funds, Posterity, Provisions, Pensions, Family, Traditions/Customs, Family Values, Family/Duties/Obligations/Responsibilities, Family Support, Family Riches/Privileges, Domestic Harmony, , Family Honour/Loyalty, Family Duty/Expectations, Family Business, Family Gatherings/Events/Celebrations, Establishments, Institutions, Corporations,Businesses, Empires, Contracts, Tried and Tested, Old Values, Old School, Old Ways, Old-Age, Elders, Generations, Coming of Age, Conventional, Conservative, Old-Fashioned, Marrying into Money, Marriage, Settling Down, Starting a Family, Combining Career and Parenting

CARD IMAGERY DESCRIPTION

As we finally arrive at the end of this particular cycle for The Pentacles in Card Ten, endings are the very last thing these people are thinking about. They may have made it to Card Ten, but their journey is not over by a long shot. On the Contrary, this Card is strongly linked to Continuity and not endings or final Outcomes. The Pentacles have done way too much on their journey for it to suddenly come to a stop anywhere. The Pentacles from the very beginning, had long-term plans and goals which they were determined to achieve, but these plans and goals were never intended to be the climax of their lives or the final realisation of their dreams. Rather each long-term plan or goal was viewed only as a small part of a much larger and grander Major Plan. As each long-term plan or goal was reached they merely acted as spring boards to the next one.

Every stage was meticulously and methodically planned out, with patience, understanding and belief. Very rarely did they take risks or try out new or novel ways of reaching their goals. They preferred to operate by the traditional way, looking to those who had already achieved success through tried and tested methods for inspiration and know how.

The Pentacles and their ambition was born out of the cradle, and looking back, they really had a head start on all the other Suits who lacked their practicality, common sense and old head on young shoulders attitude. Their determination and belief in hard work being rewarded with success, very probably came prior to the cradle and was inherited through their family genes. Here we come to one of the key messages of this Card in that the continuity the Pentacles desire, goes way beyond the personal. They have not gone to all this trouble and made so many sacrifices in their life to have to say goodbye to all they have achieved at their grave. Their desire is to pass on, or hand down, that which they received in their genes, inherited or worked hard for, to the next generation so that they may continue the work of their ancestors and family tradition.

The Pentacles will not pass on, or hand down, all that is theirs and hard-earned to just anyone, for there is too much risk associated with such a gamble. A lifetime’s work could be rapidly undone, if control and rights over it fell into the wrong hands. Therefore The Pentacles will seek continuity of their existence and lifetime work through those of their own kind, people who have grown up to understand and respect the same high standards, principles and responsibility of such an honor bestowed on them. What better place to find like-minded, well-trained and properly prepared people than in your own family? Your own flesh and blood, the family you have helped create, reared, fed, clothed and loved. The family who worked alongside you and gave their unquestioning support and understanding. The offspring you invested in through good education and a stable, secure home life and environment. The strong values and work ethic you instilled in them since they were babies. The respect for money, and having to work for everything they wanted, instead of being spoiled and indulged. Yes, the family were part of the long-term plan for The Pentacles and not just the individual.

Any decent family want the same. They want to be able to provide a strong, stable and secure environment for their family to grow up in. We want to be proud of our children and them of us. We want to ensure financial security for them and never have to see them go without. We want to provide a roof over their heads and ensure they will be properly looked after, and taken care of, should anything happen to us. And then when we are no more, we want to make sure our family are left anything that was ours, so that they may benefit and remember us. We want our family line to continue, and in turn, our offspring to hand down, or pass on to theirs, in the same manner we have done for them. And so traditions, customs and even names continue to thrive, and family history is made. So too and very importantly so, does property, land and business.

*******

Much time has passed since we visited The Pentacles in Card Nine, when we watched the elegant and refined woman of wealth stroll in her lush garden. They had reached a time in their lives when they could enjoy the rich rewards of all their hard work. It is true, they were no longer young but they were very comfortable and wanted for nothing. They had a beautiful house, stunning garden and were in a position to afford anything they wanted. They no longer had to work so hard and were enjoying their well-earned rest, secure in the knowledge that they had provided well for their future and the future of their family. They had everything in place and a strong family around them.

As we enter the scene in The Ten of Pentacles we are struck first and foremost by the sight of Ten Pentacles dominating the front of the imagery. The Pentacles seem to be everywhere and we must look behind them to see the personalities and scene behind. The Pentacle is a symbol of protection and with so many floating around in this Card, we can be certain the people and buildings behind them are well protected and secure. In Tarot, Pentacles represent The Earth Element and govern the material world and physical body. Therefore, these Ten Pentacles suggest strong financial protection and security. These Pentacles have been built up over time, right from the beginning in The Ace, and by the looks of it they are here to stay. In the Ten we are looking at substantial financial success, ongoing financial security and especially old money.

Let us now look behind these Pentacles and see who they are protecting and who is responsible for their presence. As we all know, Pentacles(money) do not grow on trees and any Pentacle Plants portrayed in Tarot are purely for symbolic purposes. Therefore these Ten Pentacles have been earned or inherited by someone.

Immediately behind the Pentacles and sitting on the left is an elderly man with well-groomed grey hair and a long beard. He sits on a comfortable but lavish seat decorated in vines and healthy bunches of grapes. The grapes symbolise, wealth, abundance and riches. The Man’s cloak is also elaborately decorated and embroidered. It looks to be quite expensive and made of high quality material. He must have some money to be able to afford such attire, but he looks comfortable in it and also quite at home sitting on his chair. This display of wealth and luxury is nothing new to him, and he does not feel apologetic for wearing it in front of so many of us who could only dream of affording similar. He has nothing to be apologetic about, because he worked hard all his life so that he could afford such luxuries. Nothing was ever given to him for free and so he is quite relaxed in enjoying what he rightfully earned. He likes others to acknowledge this too and respect him accordingly.

As we look closer at the elderly man, we suddenly realise who he is. Why it is The Pentacle’s Man from The Eight of Pentacles, the Master, Expert, Highly Qualified Professional. We first saw him in the Two of Pentacles not long after he had started out in The Ace. He had already doubled the Pentacle he had been given as he headed out on his journey, and was also working doubly hard to get his long-term plan and goal underway. He was living on a tightrope, juggling his finances and personal time so that he could get his foot on the first step of his career ladder. It was tough and he had to make many sacrifices, but he knew he could do it. He was very young then, full of energy and high ambition. He dreamed of the day when he would be mature and in full possession of his abilities and potential. It would take time, much time, but he was patient and prepared to give his all to make a success of his life.

We were delighted when he began his studies and apprenticeship in the Three of Pentacles. This was were he really laid down solid foundations for his future. In our story he had chosen Stone Masonry for his apprenticeship but it could have been any other trade or skill. Anyone could see by the way he applied himself to his studies and work that he had the makings of becoming a Master and Successful. This young Pentacles Man, learned his trade first hand working on the intricate stonework of the spiritual building. These places of worship were made out of solid stone, top quality materials, and built to last. He knew that for every foundation he lay in this holy building, he was also laying the foundations for his own life and success. It was an honour to work on such a magnificent construction that would still be standing long after he had departed this earth. Imagine that, hundreds and hundreds of years later, people would still be entering the building, touching the walls and admiring his craftsmanship. Like the building, The Pentacles Man intended the same for himself. He was here to stay and his success would live on long after he had gone. He was not going to be a one hit wonder or a flash in the pan success. He wanted more than that and he knew he would have to work hard to achieve it.

And so he worked hard and saved hard, and we saw how frugal he became in The Four of Pentacles when every cent was held onto and nothing wasted. It was quite a bleak time for him really and he had much to learn about money and possessions, for he had become, like many who are ambitious, quite obsessional and even a little ruthless. There was little fun or relaxation in him as he drove himself and those around him to the limit of their abilities. It was all about work and money, saving here and saving there, sharing nothing, not even his time.

Alas, his lesson about money and possessions, when it came, hit hard and fast. He lost everything in The Five of Pentacles and found himself cast out on the street like so many others, with no money, no food, and no roof over his head. For a time he was lost. His stubborn pride prevented him from seeking help or support, for he was used to being financially independent and self-sufficient. He came close to breaking at one stage but his natural Pentacle’s survival instinct kicked in and he fought back. Swallowing his pride, he sought assistance and took all the help he was given. He became employed once more in The Six of Pentacles and even though it was not what he had been used to, he was a hard worker and slowly but surely made his way up through the ranks again, and began his quest for success in earnest once More.

He worked hard all the way through The Seven of Pentacles only taking a break to check that he was still on track and heading in the right direction. He knew he was making progress for his success was beginning to manifest all around him. His hard work was beginning to pay off and he was nearly there.

No longer, the young boy of the Ace or Two, he had matured spectacularly into the highly skilled Master and Expert of The Eight of Pentacles. He had grown up and come of age, so too had his abilities which could be seen in the high standard and quality of his work. He had several qualification under his belt by the Eight and was highly committed and dedicated to his craft and choice of life. The money was rolling in and he was at last seeing the rewards for his years of relentless dedication and determination. He was also getting public recognition and was very highly thought of and respected in the community, and by his peers. He had an impeccable reputation and his work was much sought after.

Not only was he committed to his work, he was also a committed and loyal family man who cared deeply about his partner and children. He wanted to provide a stable and secure home for all of them. He had been drawn to his partner because she reminded him or himself. She was bright, ambitious and down to earth. Practical and thorough, she was a great business woman too. She followed her own career but helped him with his too whenever she was needed. They understood each other and accepted that on many occasions, work would have to come first and pleasure second. Their children grew up with this understanding too and were proud of their working parents even if they were not always available. The Pentacle parents taught them the value of money and to respect the effort that is required to make it. Their parents may not always have been around when they were growing up but they lacked for nothing and knew they were loved and cherished. They went to the best schools and were taught to be ambitious from an early age, to plan for their future, and then save for it. As parents they had both started with very little but had made a success of their lives. Their children had the advantage of a good start in life but even though they had been born into success, their parents were not foolish enough to let them think that it was their god-given right or that things came easy. They would be expected to prove themselves, their worth and follow in the family tradition of being hard, honest and dedicated workers.

We had missed him in The Nine of Pentacles, when we spent time with his lovely partner or spouse. He was away doing what he loved and she was suitably occupied doing what pleased her too. They may not have had the pleasure of each other’s company in The Nine of Pentacles but they were solid and strong enough in themselves to be able to enjoy their own solitude without being lonely. These were not people who would slip into retirement or old age too easily. While they very much enjoyed their new-found free time and rich comforts, they would never completely stop working. They would continue to have some input or active interest in the business world. For the Pentacles Man and Woman or Couple it was always going to be very hard to let go altogether, for although it had been a lifetime of work and effort, they had thoroughly enjoyed it. Most of the time it didn’t even seem like work to them.

However, time does move on and we all must acknowledge that we are not as young as we once were or that it would be foolhardy to attempt to keep up the same pace and level of activity of our younger years. In the Ten of Pentacles, the Pentacle’s Man has eventually had to come to terms with this aspect of his life. He has done his bit and it is now time to hand it on, or down to, other’s so that they can do theirs. He can relax and enjoy his golden years, content in the knowledge that he will be leaving a wonderful legacy for his family and those who follow. His shoes will certainly be hard to fill but he has planned well for this stage of his life and has left nothing to chance.

As he sits in the Ten of Pentacles, he gives his attention to his beloved dogs and constant companions. He grew up with animals and always had a deep love and respect for them. He admired their loyalty and complete devotion and in return he loved them dearly and looked after them well. The dogs look adoringly at the old while he gently strokes their head and talks to them. He made sure to instill a love of the animal kingdom in his children and is happy that they too are continuing this tradition. They always had dogs and he couldn’t imagine a loving home without pets.

The Pentacle’s Man sighs with deep content as he takes in his surroundings and those he holds close to his heart. He sits at the entrance to his kingdom, his family estate, and takes ownership of it by placing his family crests on the strong stone walls. Let no one be mistaken in who owns this domain, this establishment, this property, business or land for this is his. It belongs to him and his kin-folk. He has built it brick by brick, and much of it with his own bare hands. This his work without a doubt and what a success it has all been. He looks in through the archway at the man and woman with fondness and pride. These may be his son and daughter, his son or daughter with their partner or they may even be his grandchildren all grown up and now adults too. The woman has a child with her who teasingly pulls the dog’s tail in an attempt to get his attention. The child is yet another symbol of the family and new generations of that family.

It is interesting to note that both the child and elderly man appear to find company with, and attention from the family pets, while the adult couple can only spare the time to talk to each other in passing rather than stopping for a proper talk. This can symbolically suggest numerous scenarios but we must remember the way the Pentacles People operate. Ambitious and industrious, they rarely have time for idle gossip or frivolous behaviour. The couple and child can symbolically represent the hardworking parents who pass each other going in and out the door to work, dropping kids off and picking them up from childminders and creches, combining parenting with their relationship and demanding careers. It is all go, non-stop, and both children and partner must understand and accept that they may not get undivided attention every time they look for it as everyone is busy and have things to do. Daddy must work and so must Mammy if they all want to live in a big house and go to the best schools.

The Old Pentacle’s Man looking on at this is very aware of the sacrifices he made with his own family when it came to building his empire. He understands that a fine balance has to be achieved and maintained in order to minimise the damage to all involved. Personal sacrifices are one thing, but when others can be potentially affected by his decisions, he always aimed to make wise ones and ensure all were properly catered for. Looking around him he feels reassured that his lifetime’s work has not been in vain. He has properly provided for and cared for his family, and will leave them secure in the knowledge that they will be well looked after when he is gone. He casts his mind back to where he came from and what he had starting off, and compares it to what he is leaving behind. He finds a changed world, the world he strived for and successfully achieved. He takes in the solidity of the surrounding strong walls and buildings and feels the stability of the earth beneath his feet. His lifelong investment in property and land has rewarded him well. Putting his money into bricks and mortar was always part of the long-term plan and has provided evidence of his lasting wealth.

As he dwells on his kingdom he feels the twinges of arthritic pain and becomes aware of his own mortality. He looks to the man and woman with their child, the people who will inherit all that he has worked for. He feels confident that they will be able to carry on successfully with out him when his time comes, for he has trained them well. Whereas once he cared for and provided for all of them, they must now take their turn and look after him. Regardless of how old or frail he gets, they must keep him at the heart of the family for that is what strong loving families do for each other. His partner or spouse may be inside the house or off visiting one of her children, but she also may have passed away. It is only right and fitting for his family to protect him until his time comes. In The Upright Ten of Pentacles, the family look happy to do this and the elderly man looks comfortable and well nurtured, even if he is left on his own at times.

Whereas the couple worry about the welfare of the elderly Pentacle’s Man, he still worries about their welfare. He is all too aware that they have never been exposed to hard times or the kind of want that he experienced in the past. To the left of the elderly Pentacle’s Man is the black and white checkered entrance to a distant memory of the trauma in his life. The faded grey outline of The Tower reminds him of the catastrophic effect it had on his life in The Five of Pentacles. Up until the Five, he had thought to be in control and in a safe, secure position. Just like the black and white checkered frame, he went from riches to rags, from white to black, from one extreme to the other, in one foul swoop. Whatever foundations he had built up to the Five, turned out not to be strong enough to resist the force of The Tower, and it all came toppling down around his feet. He was left staggering in the wake of the crash but luckily for him he managed to keep upright and not collapse like so many others did. The power of The Tower still haunts the back of this mind and he can only trust that the foundations he has built on since will be able to withstand its force should it ever strike again. However, he cannot cover every eventuality and must have faith in those who follow to protect these foundations. They will have a duty as custodians of the family empire and line to strengthen and reinforce the foundations and to ensure that any new additions or constructions are based on the tried and tested standards of the past. Not only must his empire maintain strong foundations but so too must the family stay strong and united.

In The Ten of Pentacles we may be looking at several generations with these four people alone, ancestors and descendents, and suggests family lines and continuity. All these people feel the blood of their family course through their veins and their heart beats to the same drum beat of their parents and their parents before them. As each generation is born, they inherit family traits, personalities, talents and abilities in their genes. They also inherit, family morals, ethic, traditions and beliefs. On the material plane they will inherit any Family Land, Property, Business and of course Money and Assets. With everything inherited comes responsibility. They may also inherit negative aspects such as predispositions to health problems so they must be prepared to take the good with the bad.

And so the line continues safe and intact, and certain expectations for each succeeding generation are passed on by their predecessors. Children are born to each generation and in many cases are expected to follow in the footsteps of their parents. Therefore, farmers may expect their children to follow suit, doctors might expect their sons and daughter to enter the medical profession too and musicians may presume their offspring will be just like them. Certain families build up huge reputations around their family traditions, skills and professions and sometimes we only have to hear a person’s surname to know who they are and what they do. These archetypal families are usually very close-knit and all are happy and proud to be a part of their history and continuity of it. They are deeply involved in the family and all that it expects of them. Loyal and committed they are part of a tight team and all work towards a common goal to ensure continued success. These families provide security and stability for the individual members along with a strong sense of who they are and where they have come from. They support each other not out of obligation or duty, but because of love and unity.

The Ten of Pentacles symbolises the strong and solid family unit as above and problems only occur when certain family members choose not to follow or break with tradition. Even in this scenario there should not be any real problems if the family are open-minded enough, encourage free thinking and believe that everyone should follow their own path. However, as many of us are aware, families can be both a blessing and a curse. Family traditions may be forced with members feeling under obligation or duty-bound to comply. Terrible pressure can be put on the individuals to toe the line or risk excommunication or disinheritance. Parents can be demanding of their adult children and use emotional or material blackmail to control and keep order. Looking after an elderly parent is not welcomed and neglect may occur or there may be hidden agendas involved usually surrounding inheritance issues. These families are built on oppression and tension with family events loaded with stress and dread. There will be a strong Patriarchal or Matriarchal Figure who hold the reins tight, and can be stubborn and unyielding when challenged or exposed to change. They can oppose the choice of their offspring’s partners, career wishes or place of residence if they do not match their own expectations and standards. This can cause difficulties and arguments which can result in the withdrawal of affection, communication and privileges. The results of such situations are often reflected in the wills of parents when there is a huge discrepancy in the distribution of monies and assets among family members.

Family honour, pride and toeing the line are all suggested by this Ten. When you are born into wealth, certain things are expected of you. Where you will go to school, what sports you should take up, who you should be friendly with, who you should date and what direction your career should take? Money does not always bring freedom especially when you have not personally earned it yourself. Duty to your family and an unspoken expectancy of obedience can be part of the price one may have to pay when you come from a privileged background and stand to inherit. Introducing outsiders to the inner sanctum of that family may not always work out favourably and they can often be made to feel very unwelcome.

The Ten of Pentacles is a card of traditions, conventions, solid foundations and long-term establishments. There is safety suggested and the sense of a tried and tested solidity and old values. The elderly Pentacles Man has been methodical and thorough. He has stuck to what he knows works. However, sometimes change is good or refreshing or even just trying out a new approach. The energy The Ten of Pentacles brings is not generally in favour of such an attitude or risky behaviour. However, the young couple may have plans for the future that differ from what The Elderly Man has envisioned. They may feel that the time has come to make some changes or try out new methods with the aim of moving forward and making progress. It will be hard to convince the Pentacle’s Man at his stage just as it is hard to teach an old dog new tricks. They may have to wait until they inherit before they can introduce any changes new approaches.

The Ten of Pentacles very nicely shows off the energy of The Wheel of Fortune and The Sun Card. Circumstances are very favourable and everything is going well as The Wheel of Fortune puts The Pentacles in a very advantageous position indeed. The Pentacles have experienced the Reversed Aspect of The Wheel in Card Five when they were down on their luck. Thankfully they have learned their lesson and have made provisions that will tide them over such times in the future. They understand that even though it may be sunny now, there will always be rainy days ahead to be endured and survived. They have a contingency plan in place now and should be able to weather any storm that comes their way. The Sun Card with the little child on the horse suggests birth, new generations and good times to be enjoyed by all.

Well done to The Pentacles. Mission Successfully Completed.

MEANING

The Ten of Pentacles appearing in your Reading augurs favourably for financial, business and family matters. Here we are looking at success, prosperity and abundance on many levels. This Card suggests you have done or will do very well for yourself, not by chance, but by working very hard to achieve it. Wealth and strong financial security are indicated, and more than likely here to stay, as you have well prepared for this time and have done the essential groundwork. You may have had a long-term vision or goal that is now being realised or has come into manifestation. Careful planning, a methodical approach and the application of tried and tested methods have kept you on the straight and narrow. You may have taken your inspiration from those who have gone before or by researching that which had the most potential for long-term success.

It has been a long road to your success and many sacrifices have been made along the way but you are now in a position to finally enjoy the rich rewards it brings. The Ten of Pentacles suggests comfort and luxury which you have rightly earned. You are now in a position to or buy the house of your dreams, the car you always desired, the clothes that become you and the holidays of a lifetime. Your affluent position also brings you status and recognition as others see you as extremely successful and of great importance. Your name or family is probably well-known and respected in the community and in business circles.

Old money is strongly suggested by The Ten of Pentacles so there may be issues surrounding family inheritances. This Card can represent a wealthy family. Success generates success as accumulated wealth, titles, properties, business and assets are passed on to the next generation with a view to building an even bigger empire. Wills, legacies, inheritances and deeds are all represented here. You may stand to inherit a considerable amount of money or property, and this will more than likely be family related. You may be in line to inherit the family home, family business, family property or land. This Card can suggest that you will be well looked after and properly provided for.

The Ten of Pentacles suggests a tight and close family unit. This family look after and support each other. A strong bond, a united front and communal vision ensure all within the family work towards a common goal. All share in the hard work, duties and responsibilities. All are richly rewarded and benefit from the privileges and perks of being part of the family. Together they are a force to behold, and through combined effort, can realise any dream or bring about mass manifestation.

Wealth comes on many levels so this Card may simply refer to the riches that money cannot buy but are as equally important. Being part of a strong and united family, where you are loved and cherished, is something that money cannot buy. Here we see the Family who view each member as equally important, but hold an additional respect and reverence for the elder members. Elderly parents and grandparents are lovingly cared for and held in high regard. There is an understanding within the family, that they have the older members to thank for the people they are today, and the comfortable standard of living they enjoy. The Ten of Pentacles suggests a family built on strong foundations, foundations that were laid down from day one and have been carefully maintained and strengthened over a long period of time. This family love to be together and will be very much involved in each other’s lives. Traditional family events and gatherings are of great importance and fondly looked forward to.

Strong family values come to the forefront and the group scene in The Ten of Pentacles remind you that any actions you take, or any decisions you make will affect everyone involved. That is why it is crucial to consult with, and include everyone’s view and opinions, before making a move. Family loyalty may be an issue if you decide to do your own thing or head off in your own direction. You may be given the cold shoulder if you act alone.

The Ten of Pentacles can suggest you are caring for an elderly parent or relative. In the Upright Ten, this is not seen as a burden or obligation. Neither do you feel duty-bound to begrudgingly take them in. On the contrary, you find their presence a comfort and are only too delighted to repay them for all the care that was shown to you. This is a happy situation and the elderly parent or relative is content to let you go about your business and not interfere. If you have children, there will be the opportunity to build a strong rapport, respect and understanding which will bridge the generation gap. Your children will learn much from the traditions, stories and values of their elders.

However, if you have been too busy, like many Pentacle People, to visit elderly parents or relatives, The Ten of Pentacles can highlight the need to make the time, as you may be left with regrets and unable to turn the clock back. It is also important for your children to understand where and who they came from, for it will only be as adults, will they realise how much they have missed out on. It will then be too late and may ultimately affect their relationship with you as you age. It is essential to instill in your children from a young age, that elderly people have just as much a place in society as they do, and that they wouldn’t be here at all if it was not for them.

The Ten of Pentacles can also suggest the loneliness experienced as we age. You may no longer be able to participate in family activities or work the way you wish. You may feel slightly outside of things, but do not want to burden anyone with your worries as they are all so busy, with many things to do and places to go. You may get great comfort and companionship from a pet who is happy to sit with you all day and listen to your woes. In the Upright Ten, this scenario is only mild and simply part of the process of getting old. However, it can act as a reminder to ask after the welfare of an elder parent or relative, or spend time having a proper talk with them. Just because you are caring and providing for them well, does not mean to say they are carefree and have no worries. Elderly people will typically keep problems to themselves as they can be proud and struggling to hold onto their independence. It may be up to you to draw them out.

With regards to Elderly parents or relatives, The Ten of Pentacles can suggest that they may be the ones to help you in your situation or with your issues. They may be able to offer some advice or practical help, so don’t rule them out on the basis of being too old or too set in their ways to understand, for they may surprise you. If your parents are no longer living then perhaps ask of yourself what they would have done or advised if they were here today. Looking to the past and traditional ways of dealing with things may offer the solution to your problems.

Sorting out your affairs and giving thought to making wills or leaving proper provisions for your family can be suggested by The Ten of Pentacles. You may be setting up trust funds for your children or grandchildren, sorting out insurance and title deeds, or organising the transfer of ownership of business to the next generation. The continued well-being and welfare of your family after your death is extremely important to you, but you also want to ensure that all you have worked hard for, and established over the years, is properly managed and controlled in your absence. This Card also highlights the importance of making adequate provisions for your own old age such as investing wisely in solid, trustworthy pensions and tried and tested establishments.

The Ten of Pentacles is a Card for following family traditions and customs. There may be internal and external understandings and expectations which you have been born into for good or bad. This may involve following in the footsteps of those before you such as career, business or profession. You may be expected to fill your parents shoes when they are gone and continue their work. In the Upright, this is something that comes naturally to you and a role you are only too happy to fill. Family Honour is also at stake in this Card and if you happen to be born into a wealthy or well-known family there may be pressure on you to toe the line and not draw any negative attention to yourself. You may be expected to move only in certain circles, date only eligible partners or follow careers only fitting to your family status. Your family reputation may be a joy or a burden to maintain. There may be a strong and powerful patriarchal or matriarchal figure who holds tight control of your life choices. We see such scenarios especially in royal families where the members must constantly remember who they are and what they can and cannot do. Privileges, wealth and fame rarely bring freedom, so The Ten of Pentacles can highlight this issue. However, in the Upright, again it is not extreme.

The Ten of Pentacles can also simply suggest that you are attending or organising a family event or gathering, where all generations will come together to celebrate. Look for the Four of Wands and Three/Six/Ten of Cups which would support this interpretation. You may also be taking the time to trace your family tree. If so, you may discover someone of great importance and wealth in your ancestry which will quite surprise you.

The Ten of Pentacles appearing in your Reading when you are speculating on taking a massive gamble acts as a warning. It suggests that now is not the time for taking such risks and asks you to stick with the more traditional and conventional methods, even if they involve taking the long road and extra effort on your part. Don’t be in such a hurry to move too quickly. Take your time and build slowly. The idea is to seek permanence now, something long-lasting instead of instant gratification. If you are confused or uncertain, ask your family for advice.

This Card deals with all aspects of home, property, family, ancestry and posterity. The Family Home is strongly represented and suggests there may be issues surrounding it. You may be purchasing a house, building a house, inheriting a house or renovating an old house. You may be investing significantly in home improvements, extensions and decorating. Similar to the traditional ‘Barn Raising’, family, friends and neighbours may be helping you with the project and workload. This Card can suggest that you may be purchasing something large other than a house, such as a car or business. It confirms that the money is there for your purchase and that it will be a sound, wise and long-term investment. The Pentacles always believe in putting their money into bricks and mortar as they like to see something tangible for all their hard work. If you are house hunting at present and enquiring about a specific house you have seen, The Ten of Pentacles being drawn is a very good indication that it has the potential to be a long-term family home. This Card signals sound financial investment with guaranteed returns.

If you are involved in a legal case the appearance of The Ten of Pentacles can be a positive sign of the courts ruling in your favour or a possible large payout to your benefit.

When it comes to Relationships, The Ten of Pentacles can suggest you are looking to settle down or take steps to make your relationship more permanent. You may be planning on moving in together or looking to buy a house. The Ten of Pentacles can suggest marriage, so look for supporting cards in the Reading to confirm this. A traditional and conventional relationship is represented by this Card. If you are thinking about starting a family, then The Ten of Pentacles appearance is a very good omen, as it suggests your relationship is strong enough and both of you are fully committed to being parents. As a couple, you will be able to provide a stable and secure environment for your children. It also suggests that you will have more than enough money to cover all the costs that child rearing incurs.

The relationship suggested by this Card is one of financial comfort ahead of everything else. This couple will have the best that money can buy. Ambitious and career oriented, both probably work while children are happily cared for by nannies, or sent to crèches. Their status along with their affluent standard of living will put them in favour of boarding or private fee paying schools for their children. As a couple you may have high expectations for your children and have been steering them in the desired direction from infancy. This couple will talk business and shop over a dinner of good food and wine. Unlike the Cups, Pentacles will put less importance on the romantic side of their relationship but make no mistake here, for this is a couple who enjoy a strong passion for each other and a healthy sex life. Life and work can leave them precious little free time but they make the most of each other’s company whenever they get the chance.

The Relationship represented by The Ten of Pentacles Upright is rock steady and secure. Built to last, strong foundations have been laid down from the very beginning and constantly maintained, just like every other aspect of their life. If this is your prospective partner you are asking about, then they are in it for the long haul and will be someone you can trust and rely on. Conventional and conservative, family is very important to them, and this Card turning up in a Relationship Reading is a positive indication of a stable background and disciplined upbringing with traditional family values. The partner suggested by this Ten will be reliable, responsible and turn up when they say they will. Loyal down to their toes, you won’t have to worry about them straying or going on mad benders or drinking binges as they will probably be more sensible than you. A healthy down-to-earth relationship is indicated. The couple in this relationship know what they want and will work as a solid team towards achieving it.

The Ten of Pentacles can also indicate that you are marrying into money. Your partner may come from a wealthy family or indeed have their own. They probably stand to inherit substantially from older members of the family. In the Upright your inclusion and welcome into the family is generally accepted but you may go through a period of time when you are kept at arm’s length and viewed with suspicion. The family may be guarded with you, and might come across as cold or rude at times until they get to know you. However, you will have to prove to them that you are not just a fortune hunter and out for their money, especially if you do not come from a similar background. They will be very protective of each other in this regard. If you are marrying into a wealthy family then you may be asked to sign a pre-nuptial contract.

Career related, if this Card is representing a new job or career, then it suggests the long-term benefits from working there will be immense. This company is not going to disappear overnight and is financially sound and stable. Your career could really grow working there and you would be rewarded for your loyalty and work ethos. This company has the money to pay large salaries and bonuses. However, if you like working in an environment that is changing rapidly or have plans to introduce radical change or update technology then you might run into a brick wall when seeking the go ahead from owners or management. As well paid and prestigious the position on offer, you must remember that this establishment will be run in the ‘old school’, traditional tried and tested manner. They may not be readily open to change, and might stubbornly resist it, even if it is in their own best interests. The Ten of Pentacles can also stand for promotion, so if you have been working hard, others have noticed and you are likely to be rewarded.

The Ten of Pentacles suggests that you have high ambitions and want to go all the way to the top. You have a major plan in place with very defined goals and time frames for achieving them. You may only be on the first step of the ladder or possibly further up but you have what it takes to last the course and be super successful, but it will not happen overnight. Remember, hard work, focus, determination and ultimate patience will get you there. Learn from any mistakes you make along the way and when you hit hard times (as you will), do not lose your focus or faith. Dust yourself down and get back on track. No matter how much you think you have planned for, it will never be plain sailing, so be prepared.

When it comes to Business this card represents established businesses, corporations, institutions or family business. It is a very welcome Card in Business Readings as it suggests success, and success building upon further success. You may be working in a family business or taking over a family business. The Ten of Pentacles speaks for itself in Business or Career Readings as it is the ultimate success Card for ambitious, hard-working and driven people. It confirms that your business is rock solid, but then you knew that too, for it is you who has made it what it is. You may have started on a very small-scale but it has steadily grown over the years and is probably a household name now. Staff are industrious, highly skilled and professional, for you understand that it pays to hire the best. In return, your staff are loyal and supportive and all work like a family team for mutual benefit. Many of your staff may in fact be family members who have grown up learning the ins and outs of it from day one. You may be thinking about taking a back seat in your business or handing the reins over to the next generation. Your business is in safe hands.

If you are thinking about buying a business or buying into one, then it promises to be a sound investment when this Card appears Upright. This business is financially stable and will be around for some time to come, so you stand to make a good return as profits soar.

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coveyfin · 5 months

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Navigating Financial Waters The Role of Loan Servicer Professionals in Texas

In the dynamic landscape of finance, individuals and businesses often turn to loans to fuel their ambitions, whether it be purchasing a home, starting a business, or investing in education. Behind the scenes, ensuring the smooth functioning of these financial transactions are loan servicer professionals. In the Lone Star State of Texas, these professionals play a crucial role in managing loans, providing support to borrowers, and safeguarding the interests of lenders.

The Role of Loan Servicer Professionals:

Loan servicer professionals act as intermediaries between borrowers and lenders, facilitating a range of tasks essential for the proper functioning of loans. They are responsible for processing payments, managing escrow accounts, and maintaining accurate records of loan balances and transactions. In Texas, where the real estate market is robust and diverse, loan servicers are particularly vital in overseeing the repayment of mortgages, ensuring that both homeowners and lenders are on solid financial ground.

Texas-Specific Considerations:

Texas, known for its vast geographical expanse and economic diversity, presents unique challenges and opportunities for loan servicers. The state's housing market, with its fluctuating demands and regional variations, requires loan servicer professionals to stay abreast of local trends and regulations. Additionally, Texas has specific legal provisions, such as the homestead exemption, which impact the foreclosure process and necessitate a nuanced understanding by loan servicers.

Customer Interaction and Support:

Loan servicers in Texas serve as the primary point of contact for borrowers, addressing inquiries, concerns, and providing assistance throughout the loan lifecycle. Effective communication is paramount, and professionals in this field must possess strong interpersonal skills to navigate the often complex and sensitive nature of financial discussions. Whether guiding borrowers through the intricacies of loan modifications or helping them understand their repayment options, loan servicers play a pivotal role in fostering positive borrower-lender relationships.

Compliance and Regulatory Adherence:

The financial landscape is subject to a myriad of regulations, and loan servicer professionals in Texas must navigate the complex web of state and federal laws governing the industry. Staying compliant with regulations such as the Real Estate Settlement Procedures Act (RESPA) and the Truth in Lending Act (TILA) is essential. In Texas, where the regulatory environment may have nuances, loan servicers need to be well-versed in the intricacies of both state and federal legislation to ensure ethical and legal practices.

Technology Integration and Innovation:

Advancements in technology have transformed the financial industry, and loan servicer professionals in Texas are no exception to this trend. The integration of cutting-edge software and digital platforms has streamlined processes, enhanced efficiency, and improved customer experience. Loan servicers leverage technology to automate routine tasks, mitigate risks, and provide borrowers with convenient online tools for managing their accounts.

In the ever-evolving financial landscape of Texas, loan servicer professionals play a crucial role in ensuring the smooth flow of funds between borrowers and lenders. With their expertise in navigating complex regulations, fostering positive customer relationships, and embracing technological advancements, these professionals contribute significantly to the stability and growth of the state's economy. As Texas continues to be a hub of economic activity and innovation, the role of loan servicer professionals remains integral in supporting individuals and businesses on their financial journeys.

For more info:-

Mortgage loan servicing experts in Florida

Specialized loan servicing reviews from Texas customers

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sitegeek-blog · 2 years

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Remembering The Internet icon GeoCities

A web hosting service started in 1994 by David Bohnett and John Rezner, and it was the third most visited website on the world wide web. Earlier named Beverly Hills Internet (BHI), a small Web hosting and development company in Southern California, later renamed GeoCities. It allowed registered users called ‘Homesteaders’ to create and publish home pages and e-mail addresses, chat, bulletin boards, and community elements with neighborhoods they wanted to belong to with 2 M.B. of space provided. The neighborhood was part of the member’s Web address along with a sequentially assigned “street address” number to make the URL unique (for example, “www.geocities.com/RodeoDrive/number”).

According to their content, the users select cities or regions to list hyperlinks to their web pages like computer-related were placed in ‘SiliconValley, and entertainment placed with ‘Hollywood.’ GeoCities included GeoCities Marketplace, a commercial website, which sold GeoCities-branded merchandise.

The users need to provide personally-identifying and demographic information when they register for the website. In the privacy statement on its New Member Application Form, the website promises not to give anyone personally-identifying information without the user’s permission. The visitors can browse user-created websites by their theme or interest. They enjoyed the user-created websites and built a profound community.

In 1999, FTC received a complaint against GeoCities that it violated provisions of (the Federal Trade Commission Act, precisely 15 USC & 45. The act states, “Unfair methods of competition in or affecting commerce, and unfair or deceptive acts or practices in or affecting commerce, are hereby declared unlawful.” The agency found GeoCities engaged in deceptive acts and practices in contravention of their stated privacy act. The website sold personal information to third parties who used the information for purposes other than those for which members gave permission. The website illegally permitted third-party advertisers to promote products targeted to GeoCities’ 1.8 million users by using personally identifiable information obtained in the registration process. Subsequently, a consent order was entered into, which prohibits GeoCities from misrepresenting the purpose for which it collects uses personal identifying information from consumers.

On January 28, 1999. Yahoo Inc. acquired the GeoCities hosting service for $3.57 billion in stock and abandoned this practice to favor Yahoo member names in the URLs.

In July 1999, Yahoo! switched from the neighborhood and street addresses Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for homesteaders to “vanity” URLs through members’ registration names Yahoo! (“www.geocities.com/membername”). This service was offered previously only as a premium.

Later in October 2009, the United States GeoCities services came to an end. Yahoo terminated the most user-written website with at least 38 million pages – The vintage personal web hosting site got farewell on October 26, 2009. Yahoo asked and encouraged users to download content to computers if they want to rebuild them on another site, as they won’t be archiving user pages. Yahoo urged users to try the company’s pay Web-hosting service. The company introduced a for-fee premium hosting service at GeoCities. It reduced the accessibility of free and low-price hosting accounts by limiting their data transfer rate for Web page visitors.

By 2008, the domain geocities.com attracted at least 177 million visitors annually and had 18.9 million unique visitors from the U.S. during March 2006. Later in March 2008, it decreased to 15.1 million unique U.S visitors and in March 2009 had 11.5 million unique visitors.

GeoCities Joined a long list of other services, including Yahoo! 360, My Web, Yahoo! Briefcase Farechase, LAUNCHcast, My Web, Audio Search, Pets, Photos, Live, Kickstart, etc. Web messenger and teachers prioritize their products and services to deliver the best products to consumers. The visitors looking for GeoCities won’t find flashing banner ads, questionable color schemes, guest books, streaming HTML marquee tags, and omnipresent “Under Construction” signs. The site touched the hearts of millions of users that “RIP GeoCities” was a trending topic on Twitter. The website where millions first tried their hands at coding and designing before Yahoo scrubbed it.

#ananova #geocities #hosting services #hosting provider

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freehawaii · 3 years

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THE US OWES HAWAIIANS MILLIONS OF DOLLARS WORTH OF LAND - THE US CONGRESS MADE SURE THE DEBT WASNʻT PAID

By Rob Perez, Honolulu Star-Advertiser/ProPublica ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. In the 1990s, Hawaii’s two elder statesmen — U.S. Sens. Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka — were at the forefront of efforts to ensure that the U.S. compensated Native Hawaiians for ancestral lands taken from them over the years. “Dan Inouye believed that a promise made should be a promise kept,” Akaka, a Native Hawaiian, said in 2012 upon the death of his longtime Senate colleague. But an investigation by the Honolulu Star-Advertiser and ProPublica has found that those same senators voted several times each to support must-pass legislation that included provisions undermining efforts to repay millions of dollars in land debt to Hawaiians. At least six other current and former members of Hawaii’s congressional delegation have supported such legislation one or more times. Between them, Hawaii’s members of Congress voted for at least six laws authorizing the federal government to sell dozens of excess properties to private parties rather than offering them to a Hawaiian trust established to repatriate the land. In one must-pass military spending bill spanning more than 500 pages, lawmakers slipped in a single sentence that helped a handful of nonprofits to acquire the land. In another, they added language that effectively put the need for military housing ahead of the need for housing Hawaiians. The circumvention of the landmark 1995 Hawaiian Home Lands Recovery Act, which has not been previously reported, sent the excess lands to a variety of buyers instead: the Catholic Church; the nonprofit operator of a private school; a developer that intends to sell a site to another company with plans to construct hundreds of private-sector homes there. The transactions mostly involved lands on Oahu, the state’s most populous island, and were executed during a period in which the Department of Hawaiian Home Lands, which manages the trust, faced a severe shortage of developable residential land there. About 11,000 Hawaiians are now seeking residential homesteads on Oahu, nearly double what the figure was when the recovery act passed. As the Star-Advertiser and ProPublica reported in December, the trust has only enough land to accommodate less than a third of those homestead-seekers in single-family homes, although it is moving to develop more multi-family housing. Many waitlisters are homeless, and thousands have died without getting a homestead lease. Even as the federal government was selling excess properties to private buyers, it offered only two parcels to the trust over the past decade, according to the news organizations’ investigation. And one was for a remote mountainside location that DHHL rejected because it determined that the property — a former solar observatory — wasn’t suitable for residential use or to lease for other purposes. The findings confirmed the suspicions of Mike Kahikina, who said he had a hunch something was amiss during the eight years he served on the Hawaiian Homes Commission, which decides policy for DHHL. Kahikina joined the commission in 2011, 16 years after the recovery act was signed. Along with eight other commissioners, his job was to help the department get beneficiaries onto residential, ranching and farming homesteads in a timely way — a task DHHL has struggled with historically. By the time he left in 2019, the federal government’s debt was the same size as when he joined. Kahikina said he periodically raised questions with DHHL about the land debt, but they were never satisfactorily answered. The news organizations shared their findings with Kahikina — an Air Force veteran, former state legislator, ordained minister and outreach worker for troubled youth — as he sat outside the West Oahu homestead residence that has been in his family for three generations. With his long salt-and-pepper hair tied back in a bun, Kahikina, who now heads the Association of Hawaiians for Homestead Lands, a statewide nonprofit organization of waitlisters, was stunned as he learned details of the private deals. “You connected the dots for me,” he said, repeating himself to emphasize the point. “It’s like we’re an invisible people.” The investigation relied on federal, state and county records and revealed nearly 40 deals over the past decade involving about 520 acres, all authorized by special language inserted into at least six bills passed by Congress. Beyond the Catholic Church, the developer and the private school operator, the special legislation also allowed land deals with a veterans association, individual homebuyers, another nonprofit private school operator and several religious organizations. Had it not been for that legislation, advocates say the recovery act could have allowed some of these same entities to access the land while benefiting DHHL at the same time. That’s because under the recovery act, DHHL is permitted to sell certain properties for fair market value and use the proceeds for homestead development. The Navy, which had owned the majority of lands involved in the private deals, defended its actions. The special legislation expressed the intent of Congress at the time, and if a new law conflicted with a prior one, the new one applied, according to a spokesperson. “Navy followed the law,” she wrote. The General Services Administration, which plays a key role in federal land disposal, would not address criticisms about bypassing the recovery act. But in response to a letter from one of Hawaii’s two current U.S. senators, a GSA official acknowledged that congressional actions — a reference to the special legislation — allowed some agencies to bypass the recovery act. William J. Aila Jr., who now heads DHHL and the Hawaiian Homes Commission, said the congressionally approved workarounds deprived the trust of promising development opportunities. “It’s a conscious effort to go around the spirit of the recovery act,” Aila said in an interview. “Somebody had to consciously propose legislation.” Aila also said that some of the Oahu parcels that were sold would have been especially appealing to the commission because they were relatively flat and already had roads and utility connections. The high costs of installing such systems have contributed to DHHL’s slow pace in developing homesteads in recent years. “It wasn’t the department that was deprived,” Aila said. “It was the beneficiaries and the people on the waitlist.” Inouye and Akaka were widely known as strong advocates for Native Hawaiians and were credited with helping secure passage of major legislation benefiting Hawaii’s indigenous people, including the recovery act and bills related to health care and education. But extensive reporting on the special legislation did not turn up evidence that Inouye, Akaka or other legislators publicly addressed the potential impact on the debt. For their part, Hawaii’s current U.S. senators vowed to stop the practice of workarounds — even though both voted years earlier for legislation allowing it. They said they hadn’t realized at the time that the trust effectively would be left out the loop. Beneficiaries also said they didn’t know Congress was shortchanging the trust all these years. Many greeted the news with shock. “My heart’s broken,” said Ian Lee Loy, who lives on a Big Island homestead and served on the commission from 2011 to 2013. “The promises to Native Hawaiians continue to go unfilled while the political machine keeps churning and deals are made.” More Land Still Owed The circumvention of the recovery act is only the latest chapter in the struggle by Native Hawaiians to reclaim their lands. The U.S. debt to Hawaiians began accruing in the 1890s, after the U.S.-supported overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. In 1898, when the U.S. annexed the island chain, it took possession of 1.8 million uncompensated acres of former kingdom land. In 1921, as a form of reparation, Congress adopted the Hawaiian Homes Commission Act, creating a trust of 203,000 acres from among those taken. In promoting the act, Prince Jonah Kūhiō Kalaniana‘ole, considered the father of the program, referred to the destitute conditions that many families lived in, particularly those in urban tenements. “That is why the race is fast dying out,” he said in advocating for the bill. “These conditions stare the Hawaiian people in the face.” The new law authorized the government to issue 99-year land leases to people who are at least 50% Hawaiian for $1 annually. In the decades that followed, the state and federal governments took control of thousands of those acres for public purposes — roads, airports, schools, military uses — again paying little or no compensation. The recovery act was specifically meant to compensate for over 1,400 acres the U.S. was using without authorization. Under the act, the trust must be notified whenever most federal land in Hawaii is designated “excess,” or unneeded, by a federal agency. That designation triggers a screening process in which other federal agencies are given an opportunity to claim the land. It also triggers a requirement that the Department of Defense or GSA notify the chair of the Hawaiian Homes Commission of a potential acquisition candidate. If no other federal agency claims the land, the trust has the option to acquire the parcel. If that option is exercised, the land value is deducted from the outstanding debt. The new law kicked off rounds of negotiations about how to settle that debt. Because not all acres are created equal, the two sides focused on land values and eventually signed a landmark agreement to settle all claims: The federal government would transfer to the trust nine properties totaling 960 acres, roughly comparable in value to the 1,400 acres in question. The land was almost all on Oahu and described in news coverage as prime land. At a 1998 signing ceremony at the Hawaii governor’s residence, the Royal Hawaiian Band entertained a crowd of VIP guests. The newly inked settlement was hailed as a turning point for the trust. But things haven’t turned out that way. The trust has not received about 70 acres, including 47 that were removed from the settlement. Two other parcels have yet to be transferred because of a variety of environmental or other complications. DHHL staff last year told the commission that the land debt was worth between $24 million and nearly $34 million in 1998 values, which is how the department tracks the debt. That equates to roughly $39 million to $55 million in today’s dollars. What’s more, some trust beneficiaries — those who are at least half Hawaiian — believe the homesteading program is due more compensation because of the relatively poor quality of the nearly 900 acres it has received thus far. None of that land has been used for residential homesteads, according to DHHL, mostly due to the location or condition of the property or the prohibitive cost of installing infrastructure. The land is largely being used for industrial purposes. The federal government did offer, last year, an 80-acre site in Ewa Beach, a former tsunami warning center surrounded by residential neighborhoods and a golf course, along the West Oahu coastline. Hundreds of homes could be developed there, and DHHL said it accepts the offer. If, as expected, the acquisition goes through, the federal government still would owe DHHL more than $11 million worth of land in today’s dollars. When the Department of the Interior, which oversees the trust for the federal government but doesn’t decide which lands are offered to DHHL, was asked why a balance still remained after 25 years, a spokesman in a December statement gave three reasons. The first was that few excess lands have become available since 2000. The second was that the trust declined several offerings because of contamination or other concerns. And the third? The impact of the congressional workarounds. Making the Workarounds Explicit Inouye, a decorated Army veteran who lost his right arm during World War II and went on to become a political legend in Hawaii, was a key figure in winning passage of the recovery act. But the new reporting shows that he also played a critical role in the creation of the workarounds. One key example came in the 2000s, when nonprofit organizations near Pearl Harbor unsuccessfully tried to purchase the lands they had long been leasing from the Navy. They turned to Inouye for help. By the late 2000s, Inouye was one of the most powerful members of Congress, eventually becoming chair of the influential Appropriations Committee and the Senate’s president pro tempore, third in line for succession to the U.S. presidency. The nonprofits had built churches, schools and other facilities on the land, and they told his staff they wanted to remain. In interviews, the nonprofits said that after they contacted his office, Inouye in 2009 got language added to the annual military spending bill that enabled the organizations to purchase their leased lands from the Navy for fair market value. Two years later, Inouye added language — a single sentence — to a 566-page spending bill, adding a “clarification of land conveyance” to the 2009 law, specifically exempting those land sales from the recovery act, according to his former chief of staff, Jennifer Sabas. Sabas said in an email that her memory of how the exemption provision came together was fuzzy, but she recalled several lessees had contacted the senator’s office seeking assistance in acquiring the land. Because they had invested so much in those locations over the decades, “he wanted to provide them the opportunity to stay,” Sabas wrote. At the time, Sabas added, Inouye believed other nearby Navy parcels would become available and DHHL could pursue those if interested. But no such offers were made to the trust, according to GSA and Navy records. The Navy told the Star-Advertiser and ProPublica that all the lands covered by that special legislation were acquired by the nonprofits. Through the 2009 and 2011 legislation, six churches, a veterans group and a private school operator purchased more than 20 acres from the Navy between 2013 and 2019, generating roughly $9 million for the federal government, according to public records. That money did not go to the trust. Several of the nonprofits said they were unaware that the land sales had been exempted from the recovery act until they were contacted recently by the Star-Advertiser and ProPublica. Bishop Robert Fitzpatrick of the Episcopal Diocese of Hawaii, which acquired its nearly 3-acre site in 2016 thanks to the special legislation, said that had the diocese known that the trust and its beneficiaries were left out of the process, the church would have reconsidered the purchase. He noted that the church was founded in Hawaii in the 1860s with the aid of the monarchy. “Respecting Hawaiian sovereignty is a core value for us,” he said. Hawaii’s former U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie, who voted for the 2009 bill authorizing the land sales, didn’t recall the trust issue being raised at all. “It certainly never occurred to me,” said Abercrombie, who vacated his congressional seat in 2010 to begin a four-year term as governor. “I thought we were doing a good deed.” In addition to the Inouye efforts, one other bill explicitly included a recovery-act exemption. The military spending measure in 2013 authorized the sale of an 11-acre parcel at Navy Hale Keiki School to its nonprofit operator. The exemption language — inserted into the 494-page National Defense Authorization Act — was a copy of what Inouye had put in the 2011 bill, allowing the Navy to convey title to the land before it is “made available for transfer pursuant to the Hawaiian Home Lands Recovery Act.” Robin Danner, chair of the Sovereign Council of Hawaiian Homestead Associations, the largest statewide organization representing those eligible for the homesteading program, blamed Hawaii’s congressional delegation and DHHL for the lost opportunities. She pointed out that DHHL basically has two main federal laws to monitor and said its failure to flag the circumventions was glaring. “This would not have happened if DHHL had been doing its job,” she said. Kahikina, the former commissioner, agreed, saying no one from the agency was aggressively monitoring the situation, enabling the private deals to continue under the radar. Aila, however, pushed back on this point. He said DHHL doesn’t have the staff to monitor all federal legislation, but that it periodically asked GSA about the availability of property. He also pointed out that the recovery act requires the federal government to notify the trust as excess lands become available. A More Indirect Route In addition to the two explicit exemptions, several other pieces of special legislation did not mention the recovery act but had the same end result: The federal government transferred excess lands without offering them to the trust. Many of those acres were in Kalaeloa, part of the region where DHHL has been concentrating development on Oahu in recent years. Close to a dozen other parcels on Maui and the Big Island were in residential neighborhoods. Critics pointed out that the residential quality of the land represented lost opportunities for the trust’s future housing plans. Two of the laws benefitted Hunt Cos., a Texas-based developer that has done Hawaii projects for more than a quarter of a century. Legislation that Congress passed in 1999 and 2006 authorized the Navy to sell or lease land on Oahu to pay for redevelopment of Ford Island, a historic Navy base in Pearl Harbor. Hunt issued a brief statement acknowledging the acquisition of Navy properties but declined to respond to criticisms over the deals. Alan Murakami, who recently retired as an attorney for the Native Hawaiian Legal Corp., a nonprofit advocacy group, drew on history to criticize the property deals. Given that the Navy never properly owned the Kalaeloa lands, it “had no moral right to treat [them] as a piggy bank,” he said. Abercrombie, who as a Hawaii congressman and member of the House Armed Services Committee was a key advocate for the 1999 Ford Island legislation, also questioned the Navy’s actions, saying the law was designed to keep all the land in use for military housing. Once the property was placed for sale without maintaining that use, it should have been offered to the trust, Abercrombie added. “It’s crystal clear the Navy had that obligation,” he said. Asked to respond to the criticisms, the Navy spokesperson said the Ford Island law “speaks for itself.” Quoting from the statute, she noted that it was enacted “for the purpose of developing or facilitating the development of Ford Island.” “A Slap in the Face” Just as the workaround deals were picking up momentum, Bode Kalua, 28, a landscaper who is at least half Hawaiian, applied through DHHL for a residential homestead on Oahu. He wanted a place to call home for the family he planned to eventually start. In 2012, DHHL added him to the waitlist, more than 10,000 spaces from the top. Since then, he’s moved up roughly 700 spots, a pace that will keep him waiting for years. Kalua, now the father of three young kids with a fourth on the way, said the circumventions prolonged the waits for applicants ahead of him. He is renting a home on Oahu’s windward side but, like many other lower-income applicants on the waitlist, he and his family have spent time homeless. And the private deals were made during a period in which DHHL’s residential awards fell to record lows, hitting single digits in recent years, as the Star-Advertiser and ProPublica reported last year. “It’s even worse than just a broken promise,” Kalua said of the workarounds. “It’s like a slap in the face.” Sharon Pua Freitas, 55, who applied for an Oahu residential homestead a year after Kalua, shares his disdain. “It bothers me to my core because that was the land that the United States of America illegally took to begin with,” said Freitas, who is more than 9,000 slots deep on the waitlist and has yet to receive a homestead offer. “Now it’s still in somebody else’s hands.” Senators Vow Change Both of Hawaii’s current U.S. senators have voted for legislation to circumvent the recovery act, but they now say they will take steps to ensure the trust isn’t bypassed going forward. “I won’t defend the circumvention of the recovery act,” Sen. Brian Schatz, chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, which deals with Native Hawaiian issues, said in an early March interview. “It’s something that I was just made aware of, and I don’t think it should happen going forward.” Schatz voted for the 2013 military spending bill that included one of the two explicit recovery act exemptions and allows a sale to the operator of Hale Keiki school near Pearl Harbor. “I will scour every must-pass bill for anything like this to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” he said. Sen. Mazie Hirono, who voted for the 2011 legislation with the exemption sentence, said she too was unaware of the implications of the measures for DHHL. “It’s clear there’s a gap here that shouldn’t have existed,” she said in an interview. Prompted by the news organizations’ inquiry, she recently wrote to the heads of the DOD and GSA, the federal agencies required to notify the trust of excess lands, expressing alarm that the state agency wasn’t being properly notified. A senior Pentagon official wrote back to Hirono, saying his office would review the military’s processes for disposing of property in Hawaii “to ensure each is fully consistent” with the recovery act and the 1998 settlement agreement. He also named a liaison within the department to deal directly with DHHL. GSA, which did not comment about the news organizations’ findings, told Hirono that the agency would work with the trust to resolve outstanding recovery-act claims — an apparent continuation of the status quo. “As noted in your letter, GSA is aware of specific congressional actions that have also allowed some landholding agencies to bypass the HHLRA to achieve other goals,” Gianelle Rivera, an associate administrator, wrote in her April 19 letter to the senator. Beneficiaries, lawmakers and others say the best way to prevent the circumvention problem is twofold: Don’t pass legislation allowing that to happen and make sure the federal government notifies DHHL when any excess lands become available.

#free hawaii #hawaiian kingdom #stolen lands #us occupation

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rjzimmerman · 3 years

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Excerpt from this Op-Ed from the New York Times:

African-American labor built much of this country’s agriculture, a prime source of the nation’s early wealth. In the years since the end of slavery, Black Americans have been largely left out of federal land giveaways, loans and farm improvement programs. They have been driven off their farms through a combination of terror and mistreatment by the federal government, resulting in debt, foreclosures and impoverishment.

So a program that would pay off United States Department of Agriculture-guaranteed and direct farm loans and associated tax liabilities of Black, Indigenous, Hispanic and other farmers of color would not only be surprising, it would be historic. And yet it looks as though that may happen: Such a measure is included in the pandemic relief package wending its way through Congress.

In the last 100 years, the number of Black-run farms has plummeted by a calamitous 96 percent, from close to a million (one in seven) of all American farms to around 35,000 (or about one in 50). The beneficiaries of that Black land loss? White farmers. By 1999, 98 percent of all agricultural land was owned by white people.

After the election, Senator Cory Booker of New Jersey introduced the wide-ranging Justice for Black Farmers Act. The bill, which was reintroduced in February, would have paid off the U.S.D.A. debt of some Black farmers, and extends to Black farmers more of the benefits of the Homestead and Land-Grant College Acts of 1862. Those acts distributed land and funded public colleges focusing on agriculture, but by default they were programs for whites only, who were understood to be the “farmers” of the time.

On Jan. 27, the U.S.D.A. announced an immediate moratorium on debt collection and foreclosure for the more than 12,000 farmers who are behind in payments to two programs administered by the U.S.D.A.’s Farm Service Agency — roughly one-fourth of whom are Black or, to use the federally recognized phrase, otherwise “socially disadvantaged.”

Soon thereafter, Senator Raphael Warnock, Democrat of Georgia, introduced (with Mr. Booker, Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico, and Debbie Stabenow of Michigan) the Emergency Relief for Farmers of Color Act, which would provide direct relief payments to help socially disadvantaged farmers pay off loan debts. With the active support of the U.S.D.A., Mr. Warnock’s bill, and some provisions of Mr. Booker’s, were then incorporated into the Covid relief bill.

That bill thus now includes $4 billion for direct relief payments that will help farmers of color recover from the pandemic and pay off their U.S.D.A. farm loan debts and related taxes, along with $1 billion to be used in part for addressing the longstanding inequality in access to U.S.D.A. programs.

#Black farmers #farming #agriculture #COVID-19 Economic Relief Bill

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beginagainhq · 4 years

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Mutants rose up against the systems that had been discriminating against them for centuries, with leader Erik Lehnsherr demanding a safe space for mutants to exist without human interference, and reparations for his people’s suffering. With the United Nations building infiltrated and a prominent member assassinated, as well as Avengers Tower being taken and used as a mutant stronghold, the government was under pressure to provide a peace agreement that would satisfy both sides.

An answer came from an unexpected source. Dr. Elizabeth ‘Betty’ Ross, former professor of biochemistry and cellular biology at Culver University turned strong political advocate for enhanced individuals be it through birth or circumstance, presented in front of the Panel headed by her father, Colonel Thaddeus Ross. Her vision for the future came in two distinct parts: first, a provision of land for mutantkind as was requested and secondly, a more thorough ratification of the Sokovia Accords and Accountability Process created in development with several focus groups and aligned with heroes on the front line themselves.

As always with plot drops, there will be a period of two weeks to read through information and ask questions before the events are canon. See more information below!

GENOSHA

The Panel collaborated with Erik Lehnsherr, Jean Grey-Summers and Julio Richter, among other mutants, to use their powers and raise an ‘island’ in New York Bay. This island is exclusive to mutants and metahumans, specifically metas who were born with their abilities, or whose powers originate from their genetics. Those who developed powers as a result of experiments, etc. can be considered on an individual basis and will be provided with a Genoshan visa/citizenship.

Genosha will operate as its own devolved government, with power separate from the United States. It will function under a council headed by Erik Lehnsherr. Further details about the ministers of this council can be found on our Genosha FAQ page.

Genosha, similar to states such as Wakanda, Atlantis and Themyscira, will provide its citizens with diplomatic immunity. This means their transgressions would not be investigated by the Accords and Accountability Panel, but rather by an in-state justice system founded and run by fellow Genoshans.

Construction on Genosha will begin immediately and will be entirely governed by mutantkind, allowing all mutants and metas to establish homesteads and businesses as they wish, using their abilities freely to assist if applicable.

ACCORDS RATIFICATION

The Accords were ratified once more and now have several amendments added. Now, instead of individuals being registered for enhanced activity, teams take responsibility as private agencies. The leaders of these groups are responsible for representing their people’s interests towards the Panel, which will now be governed by elected leadership. Betsy Ross will lead in the interim until polls can be held. The Panel will supervise the movement of certain groups, allowing coordination of fighting forces, but do not have authority to dictate where they go, what battles they fight, etc.

For the most part, the Panel will act as a supervisory organisation, something similar in function to a police Ombudsman. If there is an incident such as Ultron, for example, or what occurred in Lagos prior to the ‘Superhero Civil War,’ the Panel will have to intervene to independently investigate complaints. This ensures accountability without intensive oversight and one organisation controlling all power.

Teams can be defined as either superhero groups such as the Justice League or Avengers, or alternatively schools, universities, institutions such as Xavier’s, community groups, etc. Any group of people that gathers with special abilities count under this ratification. If someone wishes to remain independent and not join a group, they can still register as an individual, allowing them to use their abilities but have the protection of the Panel should anything go awry.

The Panel will also provide special training programmes, both independently and through their various superhero group affiliates, allowing younger heroes to be mentored or explore their abilities through a safe and supportive medium.

As part of the peace process, the Sentinel programme will be scrapped and the technology used will be demilitarised. Instead, the track and trace technology will be provided to the leaders of Genosha, who can then use it to track mutants and metahumans and offer citizenship, expanding their numbers.

As stated above, certain groups such as those from Wakanda, Themyscira, Genosha, Atlantis etc. will be provided with diplomatic immunity. This does not mean they will not receive consequences for their actions or investigation -- merely that the investigation would happen under their own governing bodies, and they will be judged by their peers instead of the Panel.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR THE RP?

In short, the Panel will no longer be directly involved in dictating where heroes go and fight. They will be in a supervisory role, intervening when there is an incident, misuse of power, significant injury, etc. They will be led by an elected group of individuals, and all investigations will be open, transparent, and findings made readily available to the public.

Characters will no longer be registered or unregistered. Characters will instead be able to use their abilities independently, if they choose to do so (technically ‘registered,’ but the Panel is merely a protective force if something goes wrong), or work as part of a team. Any who do not register with the Panel independently or as part of a team will be treated as a vigilante, and pursued by local law enforcement as has been the case in the past. The Panel can preserve confidentiality when it comes to identities, etc, allowing people to remain masked if they wish.

Sentinels are ceased, bounties are dropped, and certain crimes committed during the time of the previous Accords (arrests for enhanced behaviour while unregistered, for example) will be expunged from records. This means the following pages are no longer in use: bounties and registration.

The following pages have been updated: plot summary, Accords FAQ and masterlist (registered/unregistered has changed to team affiliated/independent/vigilante). Our app has also updated to reflect these changes!

The following pages have been added: Genosha FAQ and teams.

We will be putting a link to the template in the OOC blog and Discord for people to send in regarding their characters’ places on teams, whether they’re independent or a vigilante. This is all you’ll need to do to update your character information regarding this plot drop!

POTENTIAL PLOTS

The Panel has been entirely restructured, meaning they need more heroes and civilians alike to assist. Your character could petition to be on the new council, could be a part of the focus groups, or start up their own training / mental support programme for young people with abilities.

The shift in dynamics between enhanced and non-enhanced individuals will affect everyone in the RP, including civilian, metahuman, mutant and enhanced. Maybe your character finally gets to use their powers in public for the first time without fearing the same level of discrimination -- maybe they face more backlash from people who aren’t too thrilled about the decisions made by their government during the peace process.

In fact, many anti-mutant and anti-enhanced groups will spring up throughout the city in the wake of the ratified Accords, or gain traction if they existed before. Perhaps your character helps fight these off, maybe they get taken or injured, maybe they join these groups to sow chaos or as an undercover agent.

Genosha is a new world, and everyone can have a hand in helping to build it. Perhaps your character has always dreamed about having their own home or business -- now they can! We may develop a locations page specific to Genosha within the next few weeks, so if you want to participate, please feel free to message the main or any of the admins and we can talk this out and add you in, opening up potential connections and arcs for your character!

#beginagainplotdrop

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

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Last summer, after the killing of George Floyd ignited protests around the country, Brown got more calls from reporters than she’d received in her entire career. By the time President Biden promised, on his first day in office, to identify and dismantle systemic racism perpetuated by all federal departments, staffers on Capitol Hill were already consulting Brown about the Internal Revenue Service’s impact on racial disparities. “Suddenly people wanted to talk about race and tax,” she says.

With The Whiteness of Wealth, Brown has turned a notoriously boring topic into a surprisingly accessible and lively 288-page book, relying on examples from real families, including her own, to guide readers through the intricacies of a tax code provisioned for just about every milestone in a person’s life—education, marriage, homeownership, childbearing, death and inheritance. Generations of lawmakers have optimized the system for White people, she argues, with the result that in the U.S.’s supposedly progressive and race-neutral tax code, Black people end up paying more than White people with the same incomes.

The challenge for Brown’s research has been all the greater because the IRS doesn’t take race into account when it analyzes its giant trove of tax data. So she had to laboriously stitch together information from dozens of other sources to prove her book’s thesis. The best evidence that the system is unfair to Black people is the sheer size and persistence of the racial wealth gap. The median White family has a net worth eight times the typical Black family’s wealth. According to Federal Reserve figures, that’s the same size gap as in 1983, despite higher incomes, educational gains, and extraordinary progress by individual Black people, including to the highest office in the land.

The book also serves as something of a primer on how wealth works in America, showing how the rich pass assets to their children and why those starting from the bottom face such a difficult climb. Brown devotes her final chapter to advice for Black readers trying to navigate a system that disadvantages them at every turn. “Black Americans need to be defensive players,” she writes, “choosing strategies in their educations, careers, and family lives that compensate for oppressive practices and policies.” She also pushes for major tax changes to erase biases toward Whites and to assist all people, especially Black ones, who are trying to build wealth. Never again should politicians discuss tax reform without considering race, she says. “I literally want to change how America talks about tax policy.”

One afternoon in the early ’90s, Brown pulled out an essay she’d been looking forward to reading by her friend and mentor Jerome Culp, the first professor of color to receive tenure at Duke University’s law school. She’d been feeling isolated at her first academic job, with White colleagues who she says seemed clueless about race, at best. And here was Culp arguing that race should no longer be overlooked in important areas of the law. “There may be an income tax problem that would benefit from being viewed in a Black perspective,” he wrote by way of example, “but until you look, how will anyone know?” Brown called Culp and promised to try.

It took several years for her to publish her first research on the question, focusing on the taxation of married couples. Black Americans are more likely to be single, and if they’re married, it’s more likely both spouses will be working. These considerations wouldn’t have mattered when the income tax made its debut in 1913, because all earners were treated the same regardless of marital status. But in 1930 a rich White shipbuilder named Henry Seaborn persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to lower his tax bill by imputing half his income to his wife. Congress eventually went along, and ever since, couples with only one high earner have paid less. Brown realized this policy had meant higher tax bills for her parents: The tax code essentially treats a plumber and a nurse who are paying for child care and commuting expenses with after-tax dollars the same or worse than it does a banker earning their combined salaries whose spouse stays home with the kids.

In the next 20 years, Brown went on to systematically catalog other ways in which, when Black families like her own tried to hoist themselves up the economic scale, the U.S. tax system pulled them down. Her colleagues, who were overwhelmingly White, expressed skepticism, however. “Dorothy, everybody knows your work is irrelevant, because Black people are poor and don’t pay taxes,” she says one professor told her, rudely laying bare an assumption she’s confronted countless times. (Four-fifths of Black households don’t fall below the poverty line.)

Brown’s father, James, with her nephew Jamaal in the early ’80s.

Brown’s early published work “caused her lots of professional grief,” recalls her friend Mechele Dickerson, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “People thought you were just trying to be controversial—that you’re just making stuff up.” Those on the left asked if this was about class, not race. Conservatives posed a different question: Wouldn’t these disparities disappear if Black taxpayers just acted more like White ones?

Brown’s answer to both is that your class may change but your race can’t, no matter how differently you behave. “Blacks graduate from college with more debt, do not get jobs as easily as Whites, are not paid the same wages as their equally qualified White peers, are steered toward lower paying jobs, and have an unemployment rate twice that of Whites—yet are more likely to provide financial support for extended family,” she writes in her forthcoming book.

These present-day disparities are piled on top of a shameful history of Black Americans being purposely excluded from landmark federal legislation and programs. “For Whites, there were government interventions that created a middle class,” says New School economics professor Darrick Hamilton, an adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign who considers Brown a mentor. He points to the Homestead Act in the 19th century and much of the New Deal and the GI Bill in the 20th. “When Blacks were able to amass pockets of wealth, it’s been vulnerable to confiscation, theft, and terror,” he adds, citing the devastation wrought in Black neighborhoods by predatory subprime lenders as an example.

Brown argues that “tax policy adds insult to injury” by magnifying the financial toll of Blackness. The tax treatment of housing is a textbook case. Interest paid on mortgages is deductible, but there’s no comparable perk for renters, who are disproportionately Black. Also, White homeowners tend to pocket gains upon resale, which are largely tax-free. In contrast, Black homeowners are very likely to lose money on their investment, because homes don’t usually appreciate much in diverse neighborhoods that are shunned by White buyers. And losses aren’t tax-deductible.

Or consider tax incentives the federal government offers on 401(k)s and other types of retirement savings plans, which add up to more than a quarter trillion dollars per year, according to the Tax Policy Center. Only about half of U.S. workers have a retirement account, and they’re disproportionately White. Meanwhile, Black people are far more likely to have jobs that fail to provide 401(k)s and other corporate benefits, such as health care and flexible spending accounts, that are heavily subsidized by the tax code.

These discrepancies are nothing new—Brown’s father, locked out of the plumbing union for the first 20 years of his career, was employed by a small private company that offered no retirement or health-care plan. Now, though, the gap between different classes of workers might be widening, with the rise of the gig economy and corporations outsourcing more work to contractors. Brown is wary of the trend, seeing it as a “new form of occupational segregation” that’s ensnaring a disproportionate number of Black workers.

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merthewarrior · 4 years

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I know I'm preaching to the choir. But so be it.

In the convergence of politics, public health, and racial inequality that we currently find ourselves in, I’d like to draw attention to a fascinating bit of history that very directly relates to where we are today.

The Homestead Act (1862) provided any white US citizen with 160 acres of free land under the only provision that you “improve it” with a dwelling and some crops or livestock or whatever.

This was one of the singular most profound acts of socialism that gave white Americans a foundation upon which to build their lives and prosperity, and, dare I say it, the “American Dream”.

Yes, socialism! That word that is supposed to make you squirm whilst you also are struggling to pay bills and retain health insurance during a pandemic under this golden umbrella of capitalism. Statistically speaking, if the word “socialism” does indeed make you squirm, you are most likely white and say things like “all lives matter”. Ironically, you are precisely the demographic that has a place in this society BECAUSE OF THIS SOCIALIST LEGISLATION. Black Americans, meanwhile, were SPECIFICALLY excluded from the Homestead Act.

So regardless of your present financial situation, your parents and/or grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents, had equity to benefit from and pass along that black citizens did not. One of many, many reasons why Black Lives Matter, well, matters.

Here’s another funny bit of irony: to qualify for the Homestead Act, you also had to have “never borne arms against the US government”. Kinda awkward for the NRA folks who claim to need their weapons specifically to bear arms against the US government. Guess that apple did fall a little further from the ancestral tree than you probably think.

Trump campaigns have distributed a plethora of ads suggesting that a Biden presidency would send is into *gasp* a Socialist nightmare! When the reality is:

1) The Capitalist system of the US is held up on multiple Socialist legislation, including the stability provided by the Homestead Act.

2) This legislation was also often racist, and thus every economic component henceforth carries and perpetuates that inequality.

3) If you’re opposed to the idea of full-fledged Socialism, then you should be in favor of REFORMING our Capitalist system to make it BETTER for its citizens. ALL citizens, of every race. Or at least not crumbling because unlike the rest of the developed world, it cannot withstand a pandemic without allowing hundreds of thousands of its citizens to die.

4) If you think that people of color and immigrants are keeping you from getting a bigger slice of the American Pie, you need to examine what entities are getting the vast majority of today's cut of socialist legislation in the form of hardship bailouts. Spoiler: its corporations, and the very people in the financial pyramid that have convinced you that you can be like them someday, while simultaneously ensuring you never will, and that you vote against socialism that actually benefits YOU.

5) Maxwell didn’t kill herself. (Now I'm just working ahead in the curriculum).

#homestead act #vote biden #black lives matter

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rauthschild · 4 years

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WARNING TO BLACK MEDIA, CIVIL RIGHTS ORGANIZATIONS AND THE MASSES

What if I offered to sell you the Empire State Building?

What kinds of questions would roll through your mind?

You'd probably be stunned and think: wow, this lady owns the Empire State Building? Then you might stop and think --- is she talking about "the" Empire State Building in New York? Or some other "Empire State Building"?

And then, depending on whether or not you were interested in such an acquisition, you might ask other questions and want to see proof of ownership, condition of the building, tax status, and all the rest of the issues that go into buying such a thing.

The Big Point is, that when someone sells us something, we want to make sure that they own it and have an actual, factual interest in it. We want to nail down exactly what that interest is and what we are talking about.

What if, instead, I offered you office space in the Empire State Building? Now, we are talking about a lease instead of a sale. Different questions arise. Now, we are quibbling over how many square feet, access, utilities, insurance, and all those sorts of things.

The Big Point is, that when we lease something we have different concerns. Please note that because it is a far lesser offer overall, our attention shifts from the Big Picture of who does the building belong to, to the details of the offer.

For some reason our logic circuits work perfectly fine when we are dealing with an individual, but slap a different name on the Seller or purported Landlord ---- a name like: the State of Nevada, or the Federal Land Office or the Federal Taxing Authority---- and all such good sense flies out the window.

We just assume that we are dealing with "the" government and that the government is legitimate and acting within the Public Law and for the Public Interest.

None of those assumptions are valid.

The actual government is just now lifting its hand and waking up and doing its job. During the last 150 years, this country has been run by a progressively corrupt series of foreign commercial corporations in the business of providing "governmental services".

They've come in here and sold everyone a Bill of Goods "in the name of" the actual government, and as a result, everything is messed up.

Can a Third Party acting in my name actually sell you my land? Without my knowledge and consent? Obviously not.

Can they legitimately act as my Proprietor/Custodian and lease my land to you? That depends on whether or not they have a contract to do so.

Over the last few days numerous people have been sending me maps showing "Federal Land Ownership" all over this country, and especially in the western United States.

People are assuming that this means that the Federal Government owns all that land as the actual landlord, but instead, the Federal corporations, including their State of State corporate franchises, are acting as custodians of land that belongs to the actual USNA and the original People.

The Territorial United States Government has a contract to do this, under the provisions of The Northwest Ordinance, so long as the area in question is still a "Territory or Possession". And that is, in fact, the situation in much of the western United States.

Those millions of acres of "Federal Land" in Nevada and Utah and Arizona and Colorado and other places throughout the western United States don't actually belong to the Federal Subcontractors, but they are still operating as custodians under the Northwest Ordinance because the actual State has not taken possession.

The actual State isn't "organized" and "peopled" --- at least according to those who are profiting themselves at USNA expense. So, the Federal Subcontractors conveniently retain control of land that should by all rights be directly managed by the People of these States acting under their own initiative.

The same Federal Subcontractors routinely hand out homestead land, mining contracts, grazing rights, water rights, and organize "soil districts" and "zoning districts" and districts on top of districts to milk and bilk profit out of resources that aren't theirs, by "regulating" those State resources and providing services that the People of each State should be overseeing and providing for themselves. This is part of the reason that it is so necessary for the People of the USNA to wake up and get organized by declaring their correct political status and conducting their own business affairs.

Gangs of corporations led by persons like Harry Reid have been pillaging the resources of these western States for years and using every excuse in the book for continuing the "Federal" proprietorship, aka, "ownership".

Look up the legal definition of "ownership".

In California, only 1-3% of the land is in private hands, and actual private land ownership is virtually unknown because aside from a few actual State-issued mining claims and oddball treaty enclaves, land "sales" and homestead claims are administered by a federal franchise "State of State" that doesn't actually have the authority to dispose of USNA land on any permanent basis.

Land sales under such a system are actually just "future lease purchase agreements" ---- illusory sales contracts that may or may not take place in the future when the actual People of the USNA wake up, get their State Assembly properly organized, and start taking care of their own business.

This is happening now all over the country, but especially in the western States, such action by local people is urgently necessary. Why? Because the Federal Subcontractors which are all operated as private, for-profit commercial corporations are purposefully going bankrupt --- and when the "US Trustees" come in to administer the bankruptcy of the "proprietors" it appears that nobody is left in charge of these lands and resources.

Where are the actual owners?

Where, indeed.

We are right here, half asleep.

Until we wake up and stand up, together, as the People of each USNA Nation-State, it LOOKS like the land of this country is abandoned. It LOOKS like it’s all up for grabs and available to be sold or re-sold by the US [Bankruptcy] Trustees to satisfy the creditors of these foreign "federal" corporations.

It LOOKS this way because millions of Black, Brown, Coppertone USNA Nationals and Citizens have been misidentified as "US Citizens" and as "citizens of the United States" when in fact, they neither. It LOOKS this way because millions of USNA Nationals and Citizens have been kept ignorant of the actual situation and therefore fail to take action in their own best interest and the best interests of their de jure country.

And this is why, among other reasons, that you need to go and reclaim your identity as USNA Nationals and start operating your State Assembly.

On that note, if New and Old Black Media, Churches, Fraternities and Sororities, Civil Rights Organizations and Black Hollywood continue to ignore, and or, aid and abet, in the fraud, theft, deception, we hope you live to tell about it cause God is coming for you.

Sincerely,

The United States of North America – The Republic of North America

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ocean-in-my-rebel-soul · 5 years

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Mutual Pining [4/?]

March’s monthly story, as voted on in my Patreon poll. Posted late due to health complications last month.

Check out my Patreon and consider joining my private Discord server to hang out!

Title: Mutual Pining Relationships: Templar!Carver Hawke/Merrill Rating: E for eventual smut (will be marked) Summary: A week of shore-leave turned into an impromptu camping trip with Merrill, and Carver made the mistake of not checking when Isabela and his sibling helped pack the bags. It had all the essentials, Bela swore, except for one thing:

It only had one tent.

Notes: set somewhere in Act 2, and Carver’s been a Templar now a year and a half or so. Turns out, it might did end up longer than seven parts, these two keep surprising me.

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4]

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“—and this is halla beard, but you might know it as goat’s beard,” Merrill chirped from her seat on the tree branch. Carver watched while she gathered up the stringy stuff. “It’s good for blood clotting and fevers and other things.”

“Is it good for keeping elves from falling out of trees?” he muttered, eyeing her critically.

She turned, a confused frown on her face, and wobbled, almost pitching herself off the branch entirely. Carver tensed and readied to catch her but she found her balance almost as quickly as she had lost it.

“What was that, Little Hawke?” she asked breathlessly.

Carver shook his head. “Nothing, Merr.”

“Oh, look, the spruce tips are ready, too! Here, catch these.” She dropped her current haul and stretched to pluck at the bright green branch tips around her. “These are good for food, you know,” she said absentedly, concentrating as she climbed up the tree in search for the best of the bundled needle-like leaves. “Makes an excellent tea, or added to salads. We sometimes pickle them in vinegar with honey and water. Delicious!”

He caught the tips as she tossed them down. “Wouldn’t it be better to collect more from each tree? Less climbing around and stuff.”

She shook her head and dropped down from the branches. “You don’t want to over-harvest,” she said. “We all have to live on what the forest gives us. Taking too much from one tree or bush could hurt it.”

He hummed noncommittally. Much different than farming; he remembered working for their neighboring homestead after his own household chores and the way the old widow would yell, reminding him and Eli to harvest and weed until the bare earth showed its scars. Ah, Ferelden.

Carver rolled his shoulders as Merrill peeked into the basket, rearranging her planty treasures. Satisfied, she retrieved their lunch from her travel bag, neatly slicing into the hard chunks of sausage and cheese before sharing.

“I can’t wait to get to the grove,” she said around a mouthful of sausage. “Varric says he got the original map from one of the Sabrae hunters a while back. I want to see what’s there!”

“You’ve never been to the place?” Carver couldn’t help the nervous falling of his stomach. She’d used string to find her way around Kirkwall for years, after all, and that was in a pretty straightforwardly-built city. There were only so many ways to get lost among all those stairs. A forest was a much easier place to get turned around and lost for days.

“It’s just the woods, Little Hawke. I know how to find my wa— Oh, listen, do you hear that? Sounds like a thrush!”

He shook his head as she rose to her feet and crept toward the birdsong, lunch forgotten. Ah, Merrill, he thought, smiling. Never change.

Carver watched her. She smiled, and laughed, and was animated in ways he rarely saw in Kirkwall. Rarely saw period, now, but especially in Kirkwall. She always seemed to breathe easier on the road in his memories.

“It looks like it’s going to rain tonight,” Merrill called over her shoulder. She pointed up through the tree canopy. “See those clouds coming in? They remind me of pregnant halla, all fat and heavy.”

He squinted up at the sky and the dark cloud layer rolling in before stowing her baskets. “We should get going, then. You said we’re only a couple hours away, right? Hopefully we’ll get there before the worst of it hits.”

Merrill bounded over to him, a handful of pale blue blossoms in hand. She slipped them into the top basket and Carver helped her shrug back into her pack, shuffling it against her back. “What are those good for?” he asked, picking up his own bag.

“Oh! Um.” She met his eyes, her own wide in surprise, and looked away, a blush stealing over her face. “They, um. They’re my favorite shade of blue.” Merrill took a deep breath and walked further into the forest. “It reminds me of you,” she said in a rush, not looking back.

He stood there, dumbly, hands still working on the clasps of his coat. “It what?”

—

They weren’t a mere two hours away from their destination, as luck (and a likely/definitely skewed map) would have it. The sky dumped buckets down on their heads well into the evening and soaked them to the bone, even despite the thick canopy overhead.

They came into a small clearing--no more wide than Carver’s bedroom at the estate, really, but big enough for maybe their tents and a fire, if they were careful. He scrubbed his hands down his face. “This better be it,” he grumbled.

They ducked into the less-drenched shelter of a tree before Merrill carefully retrieved her map, reading by the light of a ball of magelight hovering at her shoulder. “Looks like it! We should set up camp, I don’t know that we’ll get anything useful done tonight. Maybe the rain will stop soon.”

Carver peered up at the sky with a scowl and threw down his pack. ”I’ll set up the tents, you check for a source of fresh water. We can use the camp pot for rainwater, if it comes down to it, I guess.” Merrill created another ball of magelight and then scarpered off, shedding her pack far more gracefully than he did on her way.

“And don’t fall or slip or anything!” he called after her as she disappeared into the night, only to see a blithe hand-wave in response. “Right, tents. Get a move on, Carver.” He quickly untied the oilcloth coverings of their packs to retrieve the folded canvas tents—

And paused, brow furrowed.

No. No, no, no.

Carver pawed through his pack. It was big, and heavy, and that weight had been reassuring up until a minute ago. He set aside a neatly-corralled expanse of canvas, wrapped alongside the ropes and short sticks that would help make up most of the frame. A bundle of cloth laid beneath it, and when he messily unwrapped it he found Bela’s hip flask, a parcel of cookies, other sundry provisions, and a note.

“Dear Carver, get bent. Enjoy the tent! Heh, that rhymed, who’d’ve thought? Anyway. Love, Eli,” it said in blocky handwriting.

The ink dragged across the page and a new script, light and practiced, sprawled over the page.

“Ignore Eli, get Merrill bent, and maybe you’ll both feel better. Have fun! And don’t do anything I wouldn’t! Rum, Bela. (Rum’s better than love, don’t you think? More fun, anyway.)”

Carver crumpled the note--and its unsurprisingly juvenile sketch--in his fist and stared at the half-strewn traveling bags with growing horror-tinged embarrassment. He should have known better to assume any sort of goodness from those two, they were worse than magpies when they put their devious minds to something.

“I found the stream, just like the map said! We’ll be set!”

He gurgled something in response, fist pressed to his mouth for a moment. “Good, fine, good,” he called back. “Everything’s good. Yep. Good, good, good.” Carver mentally prepared a to-do list for the minute he got back to Kirkwall, with one highlighted, bullet-pointed item:

Absolutely murdering his sibling.

“Little Hawke?”

He would deny until his dying day acknowledgement of the squeak that burst from him at her silent arrival. “Everything’s good!” he said in a rush. “Good, good, good.”

Merrill tilted her head and looked at him, nonplussed. “Of course it is. Here, I’ll help!”

Together they set up their shelter, with the only hangup being finding fallen branches long enough to use as tent poles. Carver finished up tying the last of the knots to secure the canvas as she stowed their supplies.

“I don’t think Eli packed us the right tent,” Merrill said from within. She poked head out through the door flaps. “It’s a bit small. We’ll have to snuggle.”

What.

“Come on,” she said, when he hesitated too long. “It’s cold and wet out there, and soon to be warm and a bit drier in here. I can set a rune under us and keep the tent warm through the night, don’t worry! You won’t freeze, I promise!”

Her earnestness brought him back to the present. Carver shook his water-drenched bangs from his eyes. “Sure, sure. Wait, you can do that?”

Merrill laughed. “Of course! Why do you think Bela always wanted to share with me when we would be on the road together? I know how to do a lot of things,” she said, and her smile was a bit too sharp for her words, but he didn’t have the time to puzzle it out. Merrill pulled him inside, muddy boots and all, and tied the flaps closed against the rain. Her light hovered at the peak of the tent and bathed her in soft, silvery-blue hues.

“Watch,” she said, before crouching down and pulling back the ground cover. Merrill sketched some design into the loamy earth, something he couldn’t quite follow, and slapped her hands against it with a delighted smile. Soon enough steam rose from the ground, drifting lazily through the air as the tent began to warm.

“....huh,” was all he could say. That would have made years of adventuring with their band of misfits easier. “I figured Bela liked to share with you for, uh, other reasons,” he muttered thoughtlessly, shaking his head, and he clapped his hand to his mouth when he heard the words out loud.

Merrill laughed, bright and bubbly, though, so he didn’t make her mad. “Oh, she did,” she agreed sagely, “but I think it was mostly because we both hate being cold. Much easier to sleep when you’re warm, right? I always thought so, at least!”

….Right. Thinking about anything but that. Nope, very studiously ignoring… that.

“And the tent isn’t going to catch fire or anything in the middle of the night?” he asked instead, bringing the conversation back to something safe. Like a tent fire. Like a tent fire inadvertently caused by his mage companion, who so graciously cast some sort of spell to keep them warm, for his comfort.

Great going, Carver. Way to stick your foot waaaay in there.

“Nope,” she replied, thankfully oblivious to his inner monologue and unintended insult. Merrill patted the groundsheet back into place and layered their bedding together into a thick pallet. “Won’t get hot enough to do that. It really just takes the edge off; it’s not like making a fire, more like… oh, like warming the blankets before you crawl into bed. The rune heats the earth below us to help insulate against the cold, which heats the tent a little, and our bedrolls will help trap that warmth to us. Most of the work will still be body heat, though.”

“Smart.” Carver turned away and began to peel off his layers. He was halfway through unbuttoning his vest when he caught her watching, unabashed. Carver blushed. “Do you mind?” he huffed.

“Hm? Oh!” She shook her head and turned her attention elsewhere. “Sorry. Modesty. What a strange idea!”

“Is it… not a thing with the Dalish?” he asked over his shoulder, hands stilled on his buttons.

“Not really.” He could hear her shuffling, then the sound of wet leathers. Carver trained his eyes, both physical and mental, to the canvas wall ahead of him. “Everyone has a body. They’re made for all sorts of things; work, play, pleasure—” Merrill’s voice stumbled for a second before righting itself again “--all very natural things. Nothing I, or anyone else, hasn’t seen before, so why spend the energy being shy and secret about it?”

“...huh,” he said, the word strangled in his throat. “Right. Well. Okay. I’m going to… get ready for bed now. So don’t look.”

She sighed behind him, and he could swear he heard a soft “you silly thing” in her gentle lilt but a quick peek over his shoulder showed her turned toward her own wall, busy with her bedtime preparations. Carver quickly traded his soaked clothing for a light tunic and a suspiciously soft pair of pants--Bela’s influence, no doubt.

Merrill’s penchant for fondling soft, touchable fabrics was well known, and Bela had been trying to “help” Carver “woo” Merrill for ages.

He added “murder the pirate” to his to-do list.

“Oooh, soft,” Merrill cooed quietly, as if on cue. Carver swallowed down a sudden rush of nerves and turned to find her, fully dressed, even, clad in a light shift. Her fingers crushed the fabric and she looked like the happiest damn person he’d ever seen in that moment. “Feel this,” she insisted, and closed the distance between them to thrust the material into his hands. “Isn’t it so pretty?”

He tentatively rubbed at the fabric and found that, yes, it was delightfully soft, something like a mix of silk and the lightest cotton he had ever felt. He also found that its hemline crept up her thighs when she wound his fingers into the cloth. Carver dropped his hands as if scalded.

“It’s really nice.” Like you, he almost said, and it was like another voice was in his mouth, trying to come out. It suits you. Now please take it off.

Fucking Maker, the earth could swallow him whole anytime now.

She smiled, and for a horrified moment he worried he had spoken it all out loud. “It's new! It's a gift,” she said, “from—”

“--From Bela,” he supplied with a groan, to which she nodded. Of course it was. Of course! “I’m going to die,” Carver muttered under his breath when she stepped away.

“What was that?”

“I said I’m going to bed, goodnight.” Carver all but dove into the combined bedroll. He rolled to his side and situated himself to give as wide a berth as possible for her. They’d shared a tent before but never like this.

Don’t make it fucking weird, he told himself.

Despite his good efforts, the bed was still somehow small enough that she plastered herself along his back after extinguishing her light. “We’ll have to snuggle,” Merrill reminded him, words muffled against his shoulder. “Body heat.”

“Right.” His heart pounded like a war drum in his chest. “Should I roll over?”

“If you want.”

“Okay…” They shuffled until he was on his back and Merrill curled up into his side like she belonged there.

Blood mage, blood mage, his heartbeat reminded him. The warning had been loud in his mind before but now it was new once more, a vision of Knight-Commander Stannard’s rage-mottled face blistering into his mind’s eye.

“Remember to uphold the duties and values of the Order, even on your days off,” Rutherford’s phantom voice urged him.

Carver Hawke, who had shielded mages from Templars all his life, wrapped his arm around Merrill’s thin shoulders with a mental fuck you to the Gallows and let the sound of her pleased sigh send him to sleep.

====

[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4]

#Carver Hawke #Merrill #Carvill #DA2 #Dragon Age 2 #fic: mutual pining #eventual s/mut #soulrebel writes #soulrebel writes: patreon #reblogs and likes are appreciated and welcome!#thank you!#this chapter ended up being longer than the last two combined #whoops #but I couldn't find a natural place to break it up!#whoops pt 2

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stained-glassguide-blog · 4 years

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rainythefox · 5 years

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Oh, Brother (RDR2 Fanfic CH.4)

Synopsis: 1885, Illinois. A young Dutch, Hosea, and Arthur wander into a country town following a lead to swindle a wealthy homestead and break their control over the town. But while scoping it out, Arthur encounters a young John Marston, setting fate in motion that will eventually become a rocky, yet loyal brotherhood. A short multi-chapter story revolving around how Dutch, Hosea, and Arthur met John. (Rated T for violence and swearing) (Mostly Adventure/Friendship/Humor)

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Chapter 4

"Arthur."

Arthur stirred, the voice soft and distant. He turned over, yawning and pulling his blanket closer to his face.

"Arthur!"

He groaned. "What…"

A kick smacked his leg, and he awoke instantly. He sat up with a grunt, rubbing his face. "Sonova bitch, Hosea. What?!"

"The boy? Have you seen him?"

"Not since last night," Arthur mumbled, crawling out of his tent with a loud yawn. "He-" Arthur bit his tongue, suddenly red-faced and not daring to openly admit John crawled into his tent last night. The ribbing he would receive would be torturous. "He was asleep on his pallet, but that's the last I saw him. Why, what's goin' on?"

He saw Bessie and Susan looking around camp, their hushed voices exchanging as their eyes bounced around spot to spot.

Arthur pulled on his boots and looked around. He noticed the camp's provisions compartment was open and food and cans laid about. He put two and two together and glared at Hosea.

"That little gremlin stole from us and ran?!"

"Well…we don't know, but it's sure as hell lookin' like it," Hosea answered. He had a hand on his hip, his fingers tapping restlessly as he thought. "Dutch ain't missing anything personal, and neither are the women. I didn't find anything of mine misplaced. How about you?"

Arthur stooped back down into his tent, digging around. "Shit! Yeah, my gun 'n my knife're gone!"

He stood up straight, cursing under his breath. "After what I did for that little shit. I'm gon' skin his hide now!"

"You'll do no such thing."

Dutch's tone was final as he came around, dark eyes scanning over the camp. Arthur felt himself bow up in response, but Hosea gripped his shoulder.

"That damn kid took my hat, and now my gun 'n knife. He took food. He took advantage of us after I saved his ass! I shoulda let him drown!"

"You don't mean that," Hosea said.

"Damn straight I do."

Dutch jabbed a finger into his chest. "I raised you better than that, son. He's just a boy. You were in his shoes at one time, now would you goddamn think about that?"

Arthur released a tight breath, deflating. "Fine…I take it back. But I'm gonna beat some sense into him for sure."

"You're taking it too personal, Arthur."

"Well, 'course I am, Dutch. He took my stuff after I saved him from drownin'."

"Exactly."

Arthur gave Dutch a look, and then side-glanced Hosea, confused. "What the hell does that even mean?"

Hosea gave a wry smile, patting Arthur on the arm. "Think what Dutch is trying to say, Arthur, is that John took your stuff because he likes you. You saved his life, he…he admires you. The boy asked a bunch of questions about you last night when you were off doin' chores."

"Ya'll make no sense. That's a stupid reason to take my stuff."

"Oh really?" Dutch rounded, folding his arms. "Hosea…what happened to your favorite satchel you had for ten years?"

"Arthur took it."

"Hey!"

"Well? Am I lying?"

"No…"

"Dutch, I recall you had a gun holster you were quite fond of."

"Oh, shut up, that's completely different. I knew you fellas for a while before I took 'em and you knew 'bout it! Besides, he took my hat before all that!"

"Okay, fine. Then care to explain why he was huddled up to you in your tent last night? It was quite adorable."

Arthur went white as a ghost, stuttering as Dutch smirked his way. "T-That t-that's nothin' to do with it! The little monster was just cold!"

Hosea elbowed Dutch with a wink. "Are you sure? You two looked like precious brothers sleeping."

"You g-got it all wrong! I-I shoved him back outside!"

"Sure you did, Arthur," Hosea said.

Arthur very much wanted to slam his head into a tree right now.

Dutch sighed. "Well, ain't much we can do about it. Lost cause for now."

"Whaddya mean? I'll mount up and go find the little heathen right now."

Dutch pinched his nose. "We have a job to do, Arthur. We can't risk blowing our cover searching all over town for a boy. We get this score done with the Warrens and then we'll look."

"Little shit will be long gone by then."

"No, he won't," Hosea chimed. "He'll stick around. He has nowhere else to go at the moment."

"I'll send Miss Grimshaw and Mrs. Matthews into town to search and ask around for a limited time, but that's all I can allow."

"Fine. I just want my stuff back."

"Are you not even a little bit curious on why he took your stuff and left?"

"Not in the slightest."

"Aw, my dear boy. Are you gonna sulk all day? Do you need a hug?"

"You're a real piece of work, Dutch."

Dutch whistled at the women, beckoning them before looking back at Arthur. "I need you focused today, Arthur. We'll deal with this after. Do as Hosea says, alright?"

"Sure, Dutch."

Dutch left to go speak with Susan and Bessie. Hosea nodded towards a nearby table with a small smile.

"C'mon, son. We have a lot of planning to do. We want this to go right tonight, so we'll need to plan out every detail."

"Are you sure it's there?"

"Yes, I was at their house all day. It's there, Arthur."

Arthur scratched his head. "Why me? You got slicker hands, Hosea."

"Dutch and I will be their center of attention. You can do it, Arthur. You've done it lots of times."

"Yeah, but not with so many people 'round."

Hosea shook his head. "Nah, just the family. The ranch hands and guards won't be in the house."

"And this key? It unlocks the cellar door behind the barn?" Dutch inquired, stroking his mustache.

"Correct. That is where they keep their money as well as those documents we need to expose them."

"I don't know. I mean, how long do we gotta play pretend at dinner before he shows us around the place?" Arthur asked.

"Trust me, won't take long. He has a prized thoroughbred stallion he'll want to show off to Dutch. He showed it to me not long after arriving at their home still spinning the bullshit story we are now acting out."

"So, we nab him there and hold him hostage? Get into the cellar, take the money and documents and then get the hell out of there?" Dutch asked.

Hosea nodded, a pleased smile gracing his lips. "Yep. Easy peasy."

"The last time you said easy peasy, I nearly got killed in a goddamn dress, Hosea."

His father-figure stifled a grin, shrugging. "Well, if we ain't gettin' shot at in women's garments are we really living?" A wheezy laugh escaped his lips.

Hosea and Dutch snorted chuckles like naughty children and Dutch smacked Hosea on the arm playfully.

Arthur rolled his eyes. "Oh, dear God."

The heavy thumping of hooves hit their ears, and a horse burst from the hidden path in the woods out into the camp. The three men were alerted and rose quickly to their feet. Susan pulled on the reins, containing the panting horse. Miss Grimshaw's hair was a mess, her eyes large and round, sweat trickling down her forehead.

"Dutch! Hosea! Them bastards got the boy! And Bessie, I couldn't stop her! I had to come get help!"

"What? Who?" Dutch demanded, his face quickly souring.

"The Warrens! They caught the boy robbin' the gun store. They're talkin' 'bout hangin' him! Bessie went after 'em to try and stop 'em! We have to hurry!"

"Goddammit!" Hosea cursed.

"Get your guns and mount up," Dutch ordered.

Hosea and Dutch went to their tents. Arthur hurried over to the wagon that contained their stored weapons. He tossed Susan a repeater as she briskly walked over and she caught it gracefully. When she came closer, he tried handing her a revolver, but she pushed it away. Instead, she reached into the compartment and pulled out a shotgun, cocking it with a scowl. Arthur got himself a repeater and a revolver and loaded them and his bandolier.

When he and Miss Grimshaw went for their horses, Dutch and Hosea were already mounting up. Dutch kicked his horse into a gallop, and they rode out. Arthur didn't realize his heart was racing until he spurred his horse to come up alongside Dutch and Hosea.

What was that boy thinking? Why did he try and rob the gunsmith? Arthur thought back. John seemed really curious on why Dutch wanted those guns.

Dumb kid! Arthur thought.

"I've told her! I've told her a thousand times!" Hosea yelled, voice shaky. It was strange to see his mentor unnerved. "I told Bessie her good heart was gonna get her killed one of these days!"

"Easy, brother," Dutch said, tone a mix of icy and calm that Arthur couldn't quite grasp. "She'll be fine. And we'll handle the Warrens. But now they got another thing comin'."

Arthur felt uneasy, glancing at Susan. Nothing good ever came out of Dutch's wrath and Hosea's fear. They were an ungodly mix of madness and trouble. If Hosea couldn't appease Dutch then they would surely be walking into an all-out gunfight.

Arthur pulled his horse around closer to Dutch. "Dutch, we should think this over."

"Oh, I am thinking. Lots of things."

"But-"

Dutch spurred his horse faster. Hosea and Susan directed their horses after him. Arthur cursed under his breath and caught up, nerves burning under his skin.

"If something happens to Bessie…I-"

"Nothin's gonna happen to her, Hosea. We'll handle this. They will be fine," Susan assured. "I just…I don't understand why John would rob the gunsmith."

Arthur looked at Dutch, took in the black fedora atop his dark curls, his tense shoulders and hardened glare. "Think he overheard that Dutch wanted 'em. Not sure what he was tryin' to prove though."

"Doesn't matter why," Dutch said, side-glancing them. "What matters is that these bastards are about to hang a goddamn boy and we need to stop it."

Despite his anger, Dutch had a valid point. Arthur may have had mixed feelings about John, but there was nothing good or justified over hanging a little boy.

Only the rumbling of their horses' hooves as they galloped for Hickory sounded over the rush of blood in their ears. Arthur's stomach churned, his nerves alit with fire now that anger fueled him.

They took the turn down to the Warren homestead, following a wide dirt road paralleled by a wood fence on each side. The old, two-story ranch house loomed at the end of the path, encircled by tall, shady oaks and firs.

They cut off the path towards the large, rustic barn where a small crowd was gathered near the entrance. Voices boomed across the cattle filled pastures surrounding the homestead. Some ranch hands ushered family members away with pale and worried faces.

They halted their horses and got off. Dutch and Hosea went right to each other's sides, drawing their guns and walking for the opened doors. Arthur and Miss Grimshaw got their weapons ready and followed right behind them.

Arthur's blood boiled at the sight he saw. John was up on a makeshift stand, a noose lynched around his neck and his arms bound behind his back. He looked absolutely terrified, fresh tears on his dirty face, a cut on his chin that bled. He was wearing Arthur's hat…

Despite the hat being way too big for his head and dark, greasy hair, he had it pressed down with the brim up so he could see.

The Warren family and most of their guards stood around John. Some had guns in their hands, looking out to the horrified faces of several ranch hands. Arthur saw Bessie to the right of the stand, being held by two guards, teary eyes on John with bruising welts across her jaw and cheek, her lip busted open.

"You people are animals! Let him go!" she yelled.

"Animals?!" Randy Warren scoffed. "The only animal I see is this little street rat who had the audacity to steal from us! It's my God-given right to hang thieves of my property! I'll make him an example for those who wish to rob us in the future! I don't take kindly to folks stealing what I worked hard for!"

Boom!

The gunshot startled the crowd, the deafening blare cutting the air and silencing everyone. Smoke curled out of the barrel of Dutch's revolver as he pointed it towards the sky. The ranch hands silently stepped away, scared and confused. Arthur gripped his repeater, standing firm on Dutch's left side.

"What the hell is this?" Mr. Warren asked, glaring through his spectacles. His sons, Lester and Troy, stood on each side of him, also holding guns. Mr. Warren recognized them, but it soon turned into a sneer. "Ah, our fake friends. You really had me going for a while, gentlemen. But then I heard from one of my ranch hands that a few hucksters strolled into town looking for their friend, Mr. Galligan. 'Ol Jimmy was a good friend, a good source of information. Then he suddenly winds up dead after his "friends" show up into town and I knew something was amiss. But there's no denying the description of his friend and would-be killer. Your distinguishing features give you away, Mr. Van der Linde."

"What can I say, friend?" Dutch said, dark eyes on Mr. Warren as though he was prey. "I was cursed with these good looks."

Arthur knew…his father-figure had it out for Mr. Warren now.

"You're outnumbered here. I'm not sure what you want with the boy, but he's got other appointments, meeting his maker for one. Turn tail and leave, and I'll let you live."

"Dutch," Hosea whispered. It was nearly a plea.

"Oh sir, we do not run. You let my friend's wife go, and you hand me the boy, and we will let you live. Do that, and I won't make an example out of you with that noose instead."

Mr. Warren laughed. Arthur grimaced. Yep. There went that deal. Although, Arthur suspected that Dutch wasn't upset over it in the very least.

Hosea stepped forward, eyes earnest. "Do it, Mr. Warren. My friend, he-he…He isn't nearly as forgiving as I am. Let them go. You will never see us again."

"I don't make deals with lowlife ruffians."

"Arthur!" Dutch commanded.

Arthur raised his revolver, aiming for the men who held Bessie first. He flicked his hand over the hammer each trigger pull, pow, pow, and the men dropped. Dutch, Hosea, and Susan opened fire on the guards, running to the barn doors and taking cover, trapping the men inside.

The ranch hands scattered in the gunfight. Arthur felt a bullet blast through the old wood and graze his arm. He hissed.

Bessie grabbed a gun and ducked inside a stall within the barn, still trapped. Hosea covered Dutch as they aimed inside the building to take out the guards.

"Goddammit, the boy!" Dutch hollered.

Arthur looked, saw John hanging in the air, the makeshift stand no longer underneath him. His little legs kicked and he swayed, face turning blue. The hat had fallen off his head to the hay-covered ground.

"I'm goin' in!" Arthur yelled.

He dashed inside, the blaring gunfire ringing his ears. He shot Mr. Warren's younger son in the chest as he tried to intercept him. Arthur grabbed John's legs, pushing his tall shoulders under John's feet to relieve him from the noose. The boy's choking sobs stopped.

Arthur couldn't reach the noose to loosen it while holding John, and the boy couldn't grab it from his bound hands. A bullet whizzed between Arthur's legs, and another guard was shot down.

"Dutch! Hosea! Someone! Shoot the goddamn rope!" Arthur yelled.

Another gunshot, Arthur felt the rope go slack, and John dropped. He caught the boy, but they both crashed to the ground. Arthur was swift in his maneuvers to get him and the boy behind some cover. He pulled the bindings off John's hands and pulled the rope from his neck.

"Keep yer head down, kid!" Arthur ordered, pushing John's head down when he peeked out to see the gunfight.

"We're gonna die!" John cried.

"No, we ain't! Just do as I say!"

Arthur rose up, aiming at two more guards as they fired their repeaters towards the entrance of the barn. Two rapid trigger pulls and they were down. As Arthur was about to tell John to move, he was tackled to the ground.

The older son, Troy, was suddenly on top of him, fingers clenched around Arthur's throat. They rolled around in the muck and hay, punching, kicking, grunting. Troy grabbed a rusty sickle on the ground within their scuffle, and Arthur felt the blade slice across his collarbone. Arthur yelped, grabbing Troy's arm before he could slash it across his throat.

The gunfire kept raging around them, chunks of wood chipping and splintering from each blast. Arthur groaned, struggling to keep the sickle at bay.

"Duuuuutch, Hos…ea! A little…help here!"

Dutch attempted to get inside, but Hosea grabbed him and pulled him back just as a shotgun blast blew a hole in the door where he had been seconds before.

"Fuck! Arthur, hang on!" Dutch yelled.

Arthur heard some kind of angry cry and there were suddenly pitchfork barbs through Troy's chest, spurting blood out onto Arthur. Troy's agonized scream filled the barn as he dropped the tool to get up. Arthur took his chance and grabbed the rusty sickle, stabbing the long blade into the man's chest and ending him.

The barn went quiet. No more gunfire. No more yelling.

Arthur rolled the body off of him and got up. He saw John there, panting, shaking, a pitchfork in his hand as he stared with bulging eyes at the body.

"I-I…I-"

"Dammit, boy, I told ya to keep yer head down!"

John dropped the pitchfork like it was scorching hot, the color draining from his face. Arthur sighed, lungs full of gun smoke and dust. He reached over and pulled the boy into a one-armed hug.

"It's alright, kid. You done good."

"Arthur!"

He snapped his head over at the call. He saw Dutch coming in. Hosea and Bessie embraced near the entrance. Arthur didn't have a chance to say anything before Dutch grabbed him and looked him over, catching Arthur off guard.

"Jesus, son, I thought you were a goner."

Arthur scratched the back of his head as Dutch patted his shoulder affectionately. "Not this time."

"How's the boy?"

"He's fine." Arthur ran his hand across his nose, sniffling from the dust. "Helped me out a bit there, didn't ya?"

John wasn't there. Arthur's heart leapt to his throat, but then he spotted the boy in the center of the barn, where he almost hanged. He and Dutch walked over to him. John dusted something off. He turned around, slowly, shyly offering Arthur's hat.

"Here's your hat."

Arthur grinned, reaching out to take it when a crash sounded. Several farm tools fell over, making a mess. A trembling body crawled out of hiding, whimpering and sweaty. It was Mr. Warren.

An evil smirk rose on Dutch's face. "S'cuse me, gentlemen."

He ruffled John's hair as he passed by. Arthur took his hat and put it on, watching as Dutch walked over to the crying man with clenched fists.

"Dutch, no," Hosea called.

The words made Dutch falter, and he slowed. The man looked up, saw Dutch and screamed. He got up, escaping through the door to the back section of the barn. And like watching a deer flee, Dutch moved as a wolf in pursuit.

"No, leave me alone!" Mr. Warren yelled.

Arthur, Hosea, Bessie, Susan, and John followed after them. Mr. Warren cornered himself between a stable that held a beautiful, black thoroughbred and Dutch. The horse was going crazy, spooked by all the gunfire. Its stressful neighs filled the barn as it pawed at the ground, ears pinned and the whites of its eyes showing.

"I-I'll make you a d-deal! Anything, make me an offer! You want m-money? I got it!"

Dutch chuckled. "My friend, the time for deals has passed. You had your chance."

"N-No, wait!"

Dutch gut punched the man. They watched as Dutch gave him a few hard blows. John walked forward, bunching a fist and pulling his sleeve up. Arthur grabbed him by the ear and tugged him back.

"Ow, hey!"

"What do ya think you're doin'?"

"I'm helpin' him! That feller's a piece of a shit!"

"Better let Dutch handle it this time. Don't worry. He'll make 'em sorry."

Soon after, Dutch was dragging the screaming man, beaten to a pulp, across the ground by his feet as he weakly tried to grab for safety. John spat on him as he went by.

"You are the crookest crook around here, Mr. Warren! Burnin' down Andell, oppressing these fine people of Hickory to gain power! Hangin' a little boy! Beating a woman trying to save that boy! You revolt me!" Dutch yelled, hauling him to the center of the barn where John almost hanged earlier.

He dropped Mr. Warren's legs. He returned the makeshift stand and got more rope hanging on the wall. Whenever Mr. Warren tried to get up, Arthur or Miss Grimshaw kicked him back down. Dutch tied a noose on the rope and tested its hold before getting off the platform.

"I'll tell ya what, Mr. Warren. I'll make a deal for you. I won't turn in your dirty secrets. Maybe your family can recover from this. But you won't be around to see it."

He grabbed Mr. Warren. Miss Grimshaw, Arthur, and Dutch pulled him up onto the stand. The man cried and begged as Dutch tightened the noose around his neck.

"Your horse back there?" Dutch said, staring right at him. "It's ours. The money in your cellar. It's ours too."

"You can have it all, just don't hang me!" Mr. Warren begged. "I-I'm sorry, okay?" He gaped at John. "Little boy! I'm sorry!"

Dutch pinched the man's cheek. "He ain't interested in your apologies, old man! Now, to fulfill that promise I made to you earlier. I am a man of my word!"

Dutch hopped off the stand. They looked up at the bawling patriarch.

Susan curled her lip at him. "It's not nice being on that end of the rope, is it?"

Dutch kicked the stand out from under the man. He fell down, the rope catching, but it didn't break his neck. Like he was going to subject John to, he would dangle and die of asphyxiation.

They watched Mr. Warren kick and choke slowly. Arthur lit a cigarette, glancing over at Hosea. He was rigid, his eyes stern on their dying enemy. He held Bessie against him, her face more swollen than before.

"You alright, Bessie?"

She nodded, assuring him with a gentle smile. "I'll be fine, Arthur. Thank you."

"What 'bout you, Hosea?"

Hosea shrugged. "Can't say that I feel sorry for the fella anymore. It's just, well…Dutch can get a little carried away sometimes."

Arthur puffed on his cigarette, a wry smile forming. "Well one thing's for damn sure. Dutch always knows how to make an example outta someone."

Once Mr. Warren shuddered his last breath, Dutch turned around with a satisfied look on his face. "Time to break into that cellar."

"Bessie and I will get the horse," Susan said.

Dutch, Arthur, Hosea, and John left the barn. The Warren homestead was deathly silent, as though it had been cursed in the aftermath of the gunfight and the hanging of its lord.

"We should get what we can and get out of here, keep moving for a few days," Hosea suggested. "This…This turned into a bloody mess. We gotta lay low for a while, cover our trail."

"Don't worry, Hosea," Dutch said. "We're heading west as soon as we get the money."

"Uh…Mr. Dutch?" John mumbled.

"Yes, son? Are you alright? In all this madness, I've been unable to check on you. Are you hurt? Do you need anything?"

"N-No. I'm alright…thanks to Arthur."

Arthur felt his cheeks burn and he turned away.

"I got somethin' for you."

"For…me?" Dutch looked puzzled, kneeling down in front of the skinny boy.

John nodded his head, smiling. He pulled a key out of his pocket, presenting it to their leader. "It's the key to the gun safe. In the gunsmith. There's lots of guns in there…money too."

Dutch slowly took the key, looking it over, surprised. "You got this all on your own?"

"That's why you ran off? Why they caught you stealing?" Hosea questioned, disbelief lacing his tone as well. "Just for that?"

John suddenly looked self-conscious, dark eyes shifting between them as he played with his fingers. "Yeah…I mean, I overheard Mr. Dutch wanting them. And I wanted to do something to repay you fellas for feedin' and shelterin' me…repay Arthur for savin' me from drownin'. So, I took Arthur's weapons to break in there and get it."

Arthur wasn't sure what he was feeling. He was angry, frustrated, sure, but his heart clenched when he realized exactly why John ran off with his weapons. "Ya dumb fool! Almost got yourself killed anyway! Why would you do that?! What if we hadn't come in time?!"

Hosea hit him hard. Arthur gnashed his teeth but didn't speak another word. John lowered his eyes, shoulders slumping. It was a complete turnaround from his usual rowdy and stubborn nature. And Arthur forgot for a moment that John's tough exterior was just a front to protect himself and to hide his inner grief and fears, much like Arthur had done at his age. And maybe still some to this day.

He sighed, ashamed.

Dutch glared at Arthur only briefly before putting his hands on each of John's shoulders, looking at him closely. "My boy…sometimes we lash out in anger when we care the most."

John slowly nodded, glancing up at Arthur.

"What you did was very brave, but your life ain't worth what's in there," Hosea said.

"I just…wanted to repay you. After causin' you trouble and-and-"

"You don't owe us nothin', boy," Arthur said. "We just did the right thing. We're bad people a lot of the time. We rob, we con, hell like today we kill a lot of folks sometimes, but we ain't never gonna let a kid go hungry or be drowned."

"It was nice…havin' someone care. I forgot what that felt like."

Dutch rose to his full height, his features softer than Arthur had seen in a while as he studied John. "Hosea…we're keeping him."

Hosea rolled his eyes. "No surprise there. It's Arthur all over again."

"Hey!"

John gaped, a surprised, unsure smile pulling on his lips. "R-Really? You'll let me stay?"

"Of course, son. We'll teach you the tricks of our trade. Me, Hosea, and Arthur."

"I ain't no nanny, Dutch," Arthur said.

Hosea smacked Arthur's arm. "Nope, you're a brother now. Get used to it."

"Goddammit."

He sounded frustrated on the outside, but inside Arthur felt relieved the little shit was going to be safe.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/16932513/chapters/40676861

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13143281/4/Oh-Brother

#red dead redemption 2 #red dead redemption 2 fanfiction #red dead redemption 2 fanfic #rdr2 #rdr2 fanfiction #rdr2 fanfic #arthur morgan #dutch van der linde #hosea matthews #john marston #fanfiction #fanfic

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