#the industry is tiny and funded almost entirely by government grants

[ratherembarrassing]

Not even for the eye candy and beautiful city? 😁

not even for that. australian television — especially fiction, especially especially drama — is BAD. we all saw sbb? that was not an aberration in quality, narratively it was at best 1 standard deviation below average, but aesthetically that show was practically prestige television. we are bad at making tv!

#there are reasons for this #the industry is tiny and funded almost entirely by government grants #but mostly it’s because all the talent goes to the US and the UK for better work #maybe post covid things will change given how many things have been filmed here in the last year #i know some things have been hiring local talent #but that’s been physical production - family friends have got sets and costume work #so we might get better looking badly written crap

[pokemaniac1]

To Grant a Wish - Part 1

Written for @tilltheendwilliwrite​‘s 7.7k Celebration (Covid Sucks) Challenge. This got waaaay away from me and ended up being almost three times longer than I thought it was going to be. It was originally going to be a oneshot but i’m going to have to post the second half in a few days due to the flu. :( 

Check it out on Ao3 Here

My prompt was this image:

Summary: After trying and failing to set an appointment to meet with Iron Man, Make-A-Wish Foundation worker, Eliza Elliot, has no idea how she's going to help her kids fulfil their wish to 'Meet a real life superhero'.  

However, thanks to an online video, some determination, and a pair of chaotic interns, Eliza manages to pull it off.

Warnings: Childhood illnesses, references to terminal illnesses, hospitals, possible inaccuracies in the job description tbh, cat calling, getting cornered by drunk guys, threatened assault, car crash, (almost)getting run over by a car,

------

Saturday evening had Eliza rubbing her eyes tiredly and glaring at the phone in her hand. The number to the Stark Industries' head office flashed briefly on her phone’s screen before going black.

She had been trying to get in touch with the events' coordinator of the company, or someone who could help her, for the past 3 months, but she'd been shunted off from one person to the next with seemingly no end in sight.

She noted the time, seeing 8:26pm, and sighed. Closing her notepad, she was about to place it back in her bag and head off for the night when her phone buzzed on the counter. She looked at the number and, seeing one of the numbers she had spent over an hour on hold with today, she scrambled to pick it up. She almost lost her mug - empty but for a few left over coffee grinds laying at the bottom - off the side of her desk in her haste but managed to catch it just as she pressed the 'Accept Call' button. She placed it back on the teetering pile of papers that sat on the edge of her desk, its weight balancing out the whole pile and preventing an avalanche that was one day inevitable.

"Hello! This is Eliza Elliot." She said to the phone, her best Customer Service Voice(TM) in place. She hoped briefly that she didn't sound too frantic.

"Ah, Miss Elliott. This is Michael Walters, I'm the deputy events manager at Stark Industries." Came the clipped voice from the other end. "I'm calling to follow up with you regarding your calls over the last few months." "It's great to hear from you Mr. Walters." Again, Eliza did her best to sound calm, hope rising in her chest. Three months and finally a response. "I was told you were one of the best people to speak to in regards to setting up an appointment with Iron Man." Him and like 20 others. "That's correct, I'm one of those in charge of approving Mr. Stark's events." he said, sounding like he had his nose pointed to the ceiling.

The haughtiness in his tone was hard to miss and Eliza felt her own nose wrinkle in distaste. Just get through this conversation Eliza. You've waited 3 months for this opportunity. She took a deep breath and jumped right into it.

"Great! As you're most likely aware from my previous calls, I'm calling on behalf of the Make-A-Wish foundation. I'm looking to set up a meet and greet with Mr. Stark and some of the children who would love to meet their hero." Her rehearsed line came out in a single breath and quickly enough it almost sounded like a single word. Thankfully, it was understandable, but it was a close thing. Pinching herself slightly, she forced herself to take a deep breath. Here next words came out a tad more controlled. "What would be involved....."

"Miss Elliott." Came the abrupt reply, cutting off her off. "I'm calling to inform you that, unfortunately, we can't approve of an event held at your location." Eliza's breath caught in her throat.

"Oh, well thank you for getting back to me and letting me know. Is it because of security for Mr. Stark?" She asked once she could breathe again, figuring that that would be a valid concern considering everything that the Avengers deal with on an almost weekly basis. It's not like a small (government funded) hospital in the middle of New Jersey would have the kind of security needed to prevent those risks. "We're happy to book an approved venue if that's what it takes."

"Ah wonderful, we can put you on the waiting list then." Walters said. The snobbish tone was still present and it rubbed Eliza up the wrong way. Do it for the kids, Eliza. Jeremy and Zeki have been waiting for this. She heard papers shuffle in the background. "It appears our next available booking is in 18 months at the..."

Her heart plummeted, a heavy rock forming in the pit of her stomach not even hearing where the venue was. She found her voice after a moment and was quite proud of the fact that there was no waver to it.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Walker. I know this may be a lot to ask, but is there any chance we can get an earlier time slot?" She asked. A pause on the other end had her palms sweating. She rushed to fill the silence. "It's just that, we have a couple of kids who have been waiting a really long time already and we're working on fast-tracking a few select wishes due to the nature of their illnesses." Fuck. Did I just violate HIPAA by saying that? Shit fuck. Too late now. "They're really looking forward to seeing their heroes."

"Miss Elliott," He started, a harsh edge to his voice. "I certainly cannot rush you up the queue. If we let anyone just push ahead, especially those looking for handouts, then we wouldn't be the industry leaders we are. Your organisation will wait your turn regardless of whatever sob story you have lined up."

Eliza was stunned silent momentarily, not quite sure how to respond.

She wasn't the best with social cues, but she was pretty sure that the man's response was entirely uncalled for. Even if she was trying to get a foot in the door to meeting her superhero for personal reasons, surely they had enough resources to do a background check on everyone who was trying to get a meeting? Wouldn't that be enough to see that she was who she said she was?

He clearly knew she was with the Make-A-Wish Foundation though. He mentioned looking for handouts, was this because they were a charity? Why would they have a problem with that though? Tony Stark and Stark Industries was famous for having one of the most influential charities in the country in the Maria Stark Foundation. Surely they'd be understanding in helping another charity? This sort of thing is what they did, right?

Mr. Walker had continued talking throughout her minor existential crisis.

"It's also come to my attention that you have made over a dozen calls to our office just in the past month." He said in his imperious tone.

She didn't need to look at her notes to know that, yes, she had indeed called them over a dozen times this month. Twenty-six times to be exact. Though, to be fair, most of those were to the Maria Stark Foundation rather than Stark Industries itself and all of those were because they couldn't seem to decide who was in charge of organising a meeting with Iron Man.

"I have booked you in for the next available appointment in 18 months. Our event team will be in touch with the details in the next 48 hours. From now on, please refrain from excessive phone calls, otherwise we will be forced to pursue legal action on the grounds of harrassment. I hope you have a lovely evening Miss Elliott."

At the sudden beep signalling the end of the call, Eliza could only stare at the phone, the number again flashing on the screen before going dark. After what felt like an eternity, she placed the phone down on the counter and collapsed her head onto her arms.

What the fuck was that?

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

Two days later on Monday morning, Eliza walked into the children's wing of the hospital, the laughs and chatter that greeted upon her entry making her smile. Despite everything that they were going through, the kids always managed to have smiles on their faces.

Her job as a Wish Granter with the Make-a-Wish Foundation had her scheduled to come in to socialise with her assigned children at least three days a week. She adored seeing her honorary children whenever she was scheduled; it was a  part of her job description that was a bonus she was very happy to take advantage of.

They were so often such a joy to speak with as the distinctive resilience of children was plain as day in almost all of the kids in the hospital. Whether they're hospitalised because of cancer, a birth defect, or even a degenerative disease, the vast majority of the time they're playing and laughing as much as they were able just like any regular kids.

Her job could be really difficult though. Sometimes, it was heart wrenching to look at all the tiny faces in the children's wing of the hospital and know that for some of them, their stay in the hospital would be ongoing for the remainder of their lives.

There were also days where certain children had a particularly painful day. It could be a flair up, a seizure, or a day after a surgery. The days that she had to watch the almost lifeless forms of usually energetic children weighed heavily on her heart.

Thankfully, that day seemed to be one of the good days.

When we she walked through the door to the ward one of her children were assigned to, she was almost bowled over by a bright blur at waist height. She only just managed to stay standing by reaching out and snagging the doorframe with one of her hands, steadying both herself and the little barnacle that was now attached to her legs.

She looked down and her face brightened in happiness at seeing the excited face of one of the kids looking up at her. Her concerns of the previous night's talk were put on pause and sent to the back of her mind as she went to chat the tiny ray of sunshine.

"Carly!" She exclaimed, taking in the little 6 year old dressed in her favourite summer dress, even though it could be considered sweater temperature in the air conditioned room. "It's good to see you, sweetie! I see you're up and moving about like a little tornado."

That got a giggle from the little girl and another squeeze before she let go and stepped back from Eliza.

"I'm super fast today!" Carly giggled. "I totally surprised you just then, didn't I?"

"You sure did." Eliza laughed, taking a step back into the room and making space in the doorway for a mum coming in. "What have you been up to today with all this energy?" The question seemed to remind the girl of something and she quickly grabbed hold of Eliza's hand again, tugging her towards a bed at the back of the ward and chattering so fast Eliza couldn't keep up with what she was saying.

As she was dragged walking past, several parents who were sitting beside beds – some carefully trying to avoid any wires or IV cords their young children had - looked up and smiled in greeting at her. They were doing remarkably well at managing the kids considering most of them seemed to have caught whatever spurt of energy Carly was displaying. She'd be worried if it weren't such a refreshing sight to see.

The children in this ward ranged in ages from five to ten years old and while most of those in the children's wing stayed maybe a couple of nights at a time, this ward and the ones either side of it were where those with some of the more serious conditions were staying. These were the kids who tended to come in more frequently for operations or observations and for longer periods.

For example, Carly, who wasn't one of the children whose Wish she was organising but was hard to ignore even on one of her bad days, was there that day on observation after a scare that her leukemia was returning. She'd recently had her third chemotherapy treatment so she was still in the early stages of treatment. Despite this, she rarely stayed still for very long, and was on her feet as often as she was physically able to be, much to her parents' distress.  

It hurt sometimes to know that such young children were going through such terrible experiences, but they always maintained such positive outlooks on their lives, it was difficult to remain too upset around them.

Eliza noted, with no small amount of amusement, that the bed she was being led to was almost completely covered with pillows. It was an impressive stack to say the least. It had been covered from the very top to the very end in pillows of varying sizes and was roughly five layers high all the way across, even six layers in some places. If Eliza had to guess, she'd say there was easily fifty pillows just on that one bed alone. Beside her, Carly was chatting away happily, informing Eliza that they had plans for today and that they needed her help with a very important task.

"Mummy said we weren't allowed to start until you got here, so now that you're here you, me and Zeki can play princes and princesses! Buuut...." the drawn out word was punctuated with another fierce little tug to her arm. "we need a castle!"

Eliza huffed out a laugh and traded an amused glance with Carly's mother who was watching everything from a chair by the window.

Zeki, a young boy with polymicrogyria and a smile with an intensity set to outshine his hardships, was standing beside a tower to the pillow gods, practically vibrating with excitement. He was one of the two children whose wish Eliza was organising and he happened to be one of Carly's best friends in the ward. The two of them were practically inseparable when they were staying in the hospital at the same time.

Due to his condition, his brain hadn't developed correctly in the womb and led to Zeki being born deaf, having a lot of trouble with coordination, and often experiencing seizures. It was a severe condition that was progressively getting worse. This condition, paired with an underdeveloped heart, had led to far too many close calls for comfort and a great deal of uncertainty of his survival with each seizure (hence Eliza's urgency to get in touch with Iron Man).

Kids being kids though, that didn't stop either of them from playing their hardest. With an excited wave at Eliza when he saw her, he pointed at the pillows and started signing even more wildly. She didn't know much sign language but it looked like a pillow fort construction was in the near future. She was proven correct a moment later.

"He says we're going to be building a Pillow Castle Fort, 'liza!" Carly almost shouted her Big Reveal as they came up to him. "Ooohh! That sounds fun!" Eliza said with enthusiasm. "That's a lot of pillows you have there. Where did you get them all?" "His mummy brought most of them and my mummy brought some of the others! We needed at least a hundred pillows for the castle!" She said with a serious nod to her head. "Let's go!"

"I'd love to help, Carly. But, aren't you supposed to be resting today?" Eliza asked, pausing by the bed and giving the girl what she hoped was a disapproving face. She apparently needed to work on her disapproving looks because Carly just grinned, ignored her, and started helping Zeki move the pillows from the bed to the floor. Eliza sighed. "Fine, but once we finish, you're going to bed, little miss."

And with that, the three of them got to work. With a chuckle and an amused glance at the two troublemakers Eliza focused on following the appointed princess' directions.

She wasn't surprised when, after only a minute and in a moment of frustration and mischief, as they were taking the main pile off the bed, Carly decided that the easiest way to bring them down was via the avalanche method; i.e. Grab a couple from the bottom of the pile and rip them out to bring the rest of the pillows down on top of them. Zeki let out a squeal of surprise and then a loud giggle as the pillows tumbled down around them.

Once that excitement was over, the castle was started by using the bed as a foundation with the pillows propped up against the legs and built around it. Carly obviously had a vision as to how her castle needed to be designed because she took over directions almost immediately and was very fastidious about the placement of each pillow.

She wasn't sure exactly what she was signing to Zeki, but her playful comments to Eliza along the lines of "'Liza, make sure that pillow is exactly this far away from the one next to it! No, no, no! This far!", or the very serious "No, 'Liza. We can't just make it two floors high! It has to be three floors! The princess and the prince are going to have the best room we can make." while Zeki giggled and wiggled at their side made her think they were talking smack about her in their secret language. The cheeky little things.

It was an hour later and the pillow castle was well on its way to completion when Eliza's other charge came to greet her.

Jeremy was a little boy for his 10 years of age and he came almost crashing into the ward through the door and bounding, not quickly but still energetically, over to her when he saw her. He had a massive smile on his face as his momentum, and lack of coordination, brought him crashing into her where she was crouching on the floor. Luckily for the castle, they fell to the side and away from the pillows, however, it wasn't so lucky for Eliza's elbow, which caught the tiled floor as she turned to catch the small bundle of energy flying into her. She chuckled as she sat up, ignoring the slight flare of a soon-to-be bruise, and picked up the squirming child from her lap.

"Hi Jeremy. How are you going today, kiddo?" She asked with a grin.

The garbled noises she got in return, paired with an excited wave of an Iron Man toy she had just noticed in his hand made her smile widen further, though a ball of sadness curled low in her belly.

Jeremy had an enzyme deficiency (the name of which was more a rearrangement of the alphabet to Eliza than an actual word) which caused a variety of issues for him. Besides being unable to communicate verbally, he also had various bone malformations, and had to have enzyme replacements each week. These appointments meant he was hooked up to a bunch of machinery for 8 hours every Monday, and while not a cure for his condition, did a lot to slow down its progression.

Having just arrived for his appointment, he was in high spirits and was excited to see all of his friends again. It was also apparent, he was keen to show off his new toy.

"Oh wow! That's an awesome Iron Man toy!" She told him excitedly. "Is he new?"

He nodded frantically in return and pulled out his mobile phone. He pulled up his communication app and started typing.

She waited patiently for him as she fixed the base of the castle fort and once he was done she read what he showed her. Carly and Zeki were excitedly starting to crawl through the castle and test its integrity so Eliza knew she had a moment to chat with her second charge. Carly was gingerly pulling herself up to the bed level while Zeki was exploring the base level, the one securely on the ground and the one with the most 'rooms' able to be huddled together.

'We were buying a present for my friend's birthday and mum got it for me!' He'd typed.

"Ooh! That's awesome!" She exclaimed. Grinning, she looked down at his shirt with a big screen print of the Ironman armour on it and his light up Ironman glow shoes. "Iron Man's your favourite superhero too isn't he?" She knew the answer but he always got excited when he spoke about Ironman.

As she expected, he started writing frantically on his app, telling her all about the trip to the store and the fact that he got to play in the park after it, and even meeting one of his school friends there!

'It even comes with 2 extra armour sets!' He went on to type. 'When I get home, I'm going to be putting on one of them! It's like a puzzle!'

She grinned. "Woah Iron Man puzzles!?" She started nodding her head thoughtfully while smiling. "They are the best kind of puzzles."

As Jeremy started typing on his phone once again, and Carly and Zeki started playing princes and princesses among the pillows, her thoughts drifted to the disastrous conversation with Mr. Walters on the phone the day prior. She hadn't yet received the confirmation email he said she'd receive but she still had roughly a day or so before she had to follow up.

Iron Man was Eliza's first choice of hero to contact for Jeremy and Zeki's shared wish of 'meeting a superhero' because of Jeremy's absolute adoration for the hero as well as the hero's very public identity. Zeki hadn't really shown a preference for any hero in particular as he reacted with the same vigorous energy to all the heroes when she'd asked and when they came on tv. So as long as they were in their suits, he'd be happy.

Getting in touch with the heroes was the biggest hurdle that Eliza had to face, made only slightly easier by the fact that Stark Industries had made a public method of setting up fundraising or social events. She'd seen pictures of Mr. Stark in his Iron Man suit taking publicity shots with people, both adults and kids, at other hospitals around the country, sometimes even the world, and she figured it would have been easy to get through to the self proclaimed Philanthropist. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Steve Rogers, Captain America, was also contactable through Stark Industries according to their website, but she didn't hold out much hope for reaching him if she couldn't get past the first stage of reaching Iron Man.

How was she even supposed to get in touch with another hero? It's not like all the heroes essentially had a hotline to contact them for meet and greets.

A tug on her shirt pulled her out of her thoughts and she looked down again at Jeremy, only to have his phone jammed in her face in his excitement.

'Spiderman was with Iron Man Yesterday in New York! There were super cool pictures and videos on Youtube of them fighting the big robot! Iron Man got really close and Spider Man even ran right past! They're so cool!'

Eliza raised her eyebrows in surprise, "When did this happen? I didn't hear about any fights that the Avengers were called to over the weekend." Though, I was working for half of it trying to get in touch with said hero and then staring despondently at Netflix for the rest of it when I couldn't.

After a few moments of typing, he replied. 'Saturday!! I can show you the video'

At Eliza's nod, he started searching YouTube for it. She took a moment to glance again at Zeki and Carly who were still playing Princes and Princesses. They'd moved from playing hide-and-seek through the castle to a royal tea party in the main room on the 'second floor' (i.e. on the bed rather than the floor).  

It didn't take long before Jeremy had found his video and her attention was brought back to him.

It was a very shaky shot at first, all blurred and out of focus. It was equally likely that the cameraman was either in a rush to get away from the danger, or in a hurry to catch some of the action (self preservation more often than not came after taking the chance to catch the action for the chance of a viral video of the heroes). After a few seconds of the of the blurred sidewalk, the camera's view shifted to a smoky version of the New York skyline, with Stark Tower reaching towards the sky and the Empire State Building in the distance. Rubble from nearby buildings littered the roads and people took shelter in various shops, nooks, and crannies around the street for what seemed to be an almost monthly occurrence at this point.

For a moment, the only sounds that could be made out were voices calling out to take cover or directions for the closest shelter, but then a low whine could be heard getting louder. The camera turned towards the sound and a dark spot in the sky could be seen getting larger, presumably as whatever it was got closer and closer coming from the direction of Stark Tower.

Suddenly, a loud crack and groan drew the cameraman's attention to the right, causing the camera to jostle and then move in that direction. The crack had been from the impact of a large body being thrown into a mess of steel frames outlining a construction site, which, by itself, was disturbing enough despite it having reptilian features and being almost twice the size of a human. Anything described as reptilian while being the size that it was had no business being in this century, let alone taking down construction sites.

As soon as the figure was there, it was gone. A brief shout from the cameraman and a pan to the left showed it had been yanked away and stuck to a wall across the street by what appeared to be a spider's web. A blue and red clad figure swung through the air in the direction of the disturbing lizard-man.

The camera was able to get a surprisingly good view of the swinging form as it passed. For the briefest of moments, it captured the black webbed pattern through the red and blue, and even managed to pick up a few fuzzy tears in the fabric wear blood seeped through. Again, almost as soon as the figure was there, it was gone, swinging up to meet the bad guy of the day head on.

Right behind him, a reddish-gold blur followed, streaking through the air and leaving a trail of smoke behind it. It went by too fast to get a good look at it, but as it got closer to Spider Man and the lizard-man on the side of the structure, it slowed down enough to make out the shape of a very humanoid robot.

The video ended on a frame of Spider Man swinging through the air just as the lizard-man broke free and launched himself up and into the air, Iron Man close behind the newer hero and ready to lend a hand.

It was still quite grainy but a really picturesque screenshot nonetheless and Eliza figured it would be used as a lock screen by many of the superheroes' fans around the world.

Ironman’s assistance brought up a question that she had actually been meaning to find out.

"Does this mean that Spider Man's an Avenger?" She asked the little fan.

After some frantic typing, Jeremy answered, 'No, he just stays in New York. Iron Man offered but he said no :('. At this, Eliza just hummed.

Then, an idea.

New York was Spider Man's base of operations? Perfect.

She'd just found her next contact.

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

Her Friday morning found her on a bus to New York City.

The trip to New York was a long and tedious one.

The bus routes from New Jersey to Manhattan were all painfully convoluted and each had their fair share of congestion issues so the total trip took 3 bus changes and roughly five and a half hours.

She'd planned on arriving at the city midmorning so that she'd have a greater chance to walk around and spot the vigilante throughout the day, but she ended up arriving after lunch thanks to a particularly nasty pile up on the freeway just outside the city.

Tumbling out of the bus, she thanked whatever god was around that day that the ride was finished.

She had just spent four and a half hours, shoved right next to a guy who looked like he had spent a night out on the town and smelt of piss, vomit and other bodily fluid she really didn't want to think about. To make it worse, the woman in front of her turned out to be a very loud Karen who had decided that this was to be the bus trip where it would be most beneficial to inform everyone in her general vicinity of the conspiracy theories she had heard of recently. God forbid anyone try to correct her though. Oh no, that would send her on a rant lasting another one of the four hours they were all stuck together and Eliza prayed fervently that no one made that mistake again.

Then, she started to declare that she was being discriminated against because the elderly woman in one of the front rows didn't give Karen the seat and the lady 'had a walker with her so surely she could sit on that!'.

Frick that lady.

Anyway, thankfully that ride from hell was over.

Standing in the middle of the bustling New York sidewalk, however, she realised that she forgot to think of a very important detail.

She had no idea how exactly she was going to go about contacting Spiderman.

Theoretically, she knew that he stayed around the queens area, but that only narrowed it down to about a hundred square miles of the city.

Thankfully her last bus had taken her right into the centre of Queens so she decided to wander around for a bit at least. She hadn't been to New York city before so she figured she'd do a bit of sight seeing and hope to see Spidey at some stage.

This method proved to be enjoyable for a time, and she had great fun taking pictures of 'Queens: Home of the Amazing Spiderman'. However, after three hours of seeing the sights but not seeing any signs of Spider Man, she was starting to get a bit antsy.

She had realised before she'd even set out that she most likely wouldn't see him on the first day, after all it was barely four o'clock in the afternoon and she was pretty certain he had a day job that took up his daylight hours. She'd hyped herself up for the encounter for most of the day though, and it was still a bit of a disappointment regardless of the logic.

Six hours of wandering later she admitted defeat. Friday was a bust, but she had high hopes for the weekend.

Sadly, Saturday turned out similarly to the previous day; some lovely sightseeing and tourist opportunities she hadn't had time for the previous day and no Spidey sighting. She had tried asking people around the area if they knew how or where she could find Spiderman but they'd mostly given her a brief, very judgy, once-over and a very generalised 'He sticks to Queens mostly.', or 'he's usually out around this time.', or the most useful one of all; 'if you need him, he'll find you.'

She couldn't say she blamed them for being hesitant to explain. She was a somewhat short, gangly, woman, who looked more like a teenager with her scruffy backpack and wide rimmed glasses than her actual 22 years, and very obviously not from New York. Hell, the locals probably got fangirls that looked similar to her looking for Spiderman on a weekly basis.

Honestly, she admired their loyalty to their local vigilante, it just made it a bit more difficult to do what she came there for. She hadn't lasted 3 months, over 20 phone calls, an eternity on the bus ride from hell, and two days of wandering around, just to be stumped by some city searching though, so she marched on.

It was late Sunday afternoon and many glances down suspicious alleyways later that Eliza had a breakthrough in her search for the local vigilante. It came in the form of a group of drunk guys and an ignored catcall (which the aforementioned drunk guys apparently took as a challenge).

She hadn't thought much of just ignoring the tottering group as she'd passed them, it was after all an unfortunately common experience and not the first time that day, let alone weekend. What wasn't a common experience, however, was the sound of uneven foot steps and increasingly boisterous attempts at getting her attention as she moved down the street.

It wasn't quite dark yet but it didn't take away from the rising sense of panic that sped up both her heartrate and her steps. Interestingly enough, her increased speed didn't deter the group, if anything it seemed to encourage them. She cursed her lack of knowledge of the area, avoiding looking at Google maps in order to keep her eyes on her environment.

After a few blocks of power walking, an ill-timed red light and road work stopped her in her tracks and allowed the group to catch up with her.

"Heey girl!" One drawled.  "Come on, we just wanna say hi."

His friend stumbled along beside him slurring "Yeah, why ya gotta be so ru-ude? Juss' tryna give a compl'm-nt!" He hiccoughed and slumped just a bit more on another in the group.

She kept her eyes trained forward, directed to the traffic light but just out of focus enough to observe the drunken antics on her peripheral. She knew New York city was famous for its creeps but this was getting out of hand. Just the situation she was hoping to avoid; Alone at night with a group of men following her.

Sure, Spider Man patrolled this area, but she'd seen neither hide nor hair – nor web – of the guy in the days she'd been here and she wasn't too thrilled about putting her safety on the line to just have a slim chance of seeing him.

Her silence seemed to just egg the guys on, encouraging them to get closer and more obnoxious. What had previously been at a distance was now up close and within reach. Her hands tightened on her bag straps and her breath stuttered as she noticed their movements tilting towards her, stopping just short of actually touching.

Everything was just slightly out of focus as the sun was almost completely gone by now, leaving only the glow of the street lights and the pin-pricked lights of the passing cars to provide an eerie illumination of her entourage. It put her on edge more than it would have in the daylight, even if there were just as many people lining the street. No one had come to her aid, and most likely wouldn't have in the daylight either, so she resigned herself to tensely waiting for the change of traffic signal. The feeling of hyperawareness was a feeling that would linger and probably leave her too agitated to sleep that night.

"C'mon girl!" A third guy crooned patronisingly, propping his drooping friend up from a stumble. "Just give us a smile!"

Just to spite him, she scowled.

"Awww! Look! She can hear us!" Another hollered. "Smile! C'mon, smile! You'd look soooo much prettier! At leeast say hellloooo!"

The beeping of the crosswalk signal was her saviour in that moment and as soon as she heard it, she was off, practically jogging across the road. Unfortunately, that just happened to be the moment that someone decided that they were above the road rules for driving and that they needed to run a red light. Directly towards the crosswalk she was running across.

She was two steps off the sidewalk and mid-step when she heard a scream behind her and caught a brief glimpse of headlights to her left before she realised her mistake. Years of listening to her mother drill into her to look both directions before crossing the road flashed in her mind.

Everything seemed to fall into slow motion as she turned her head towards the light, the dark shadow behind the lights loomed closer and closer. She felt her eyes widen and her foot move through the air as if through molasses for split second and she had only a moment before a thought flashed through her mind.

Well...damn.  

A sudden weight crashing into her diaphragm punched the air from her lungs and caused her head to snap forward and her legs to trail in her wake as she flew through the air. She instinctively shut her eyes and tensed at the impact, the pain from the car taking a moment to register to her shocked mind, though the wind at her back as she flew through the air was mildly soothing. She was pretty sure that when she crashed into the ground, the pain would come through and be even worse.

A few seconds passed and, when she didn't feel the jagged impact on the ground and the wind continued to whistle past her ears and whip up her hair into what was going to be a definite birds nest, she realised  that the impact she had felt wasn't the front bumper of a car but instead an arm. It was an arm that had apparently swung out of nowhere and was still wrapped securely around her torso as it, or rather they, swung through the air and away from the middle of the street she was nearly flattened in.

She looked down at the arm and saw a sliver of red and blue...just before her eyes noted the fact that they were approximately four to five storeys above the ground and going faster than the cars below them. She would have screamed but her breath caught in her throat as they started dropping and getting closer and closer to the pavement below so she contented herself with clutching at the only lifeline she had. She briefly hoped that she hadn't left finger shaped bruises on her saviour's arm in her panic (as she was sure that would be poor rescue etiquette) but she realised later that, considering he dealt with troublemakers such as the Rhino and Electro, bruises would most likely be fine, if not non-existent.  

As they swung, she could faintly hear a consistent stream of chatter coming from behind her. The voice sounded young, excited and carefree.

"It's ok ma'am, I got you. Just hold on and we'll be on the ground before you know it." He whooped when they crested another swing - contrasting her own urge to either puke or scream - and continued the stream of babble as the wind rushed past her ears. She thought she heard a few questions, but she didn't answer on account of the mild terror thrumming through her veins.

They touched down in front of a well lit strip mall surprisingly lightly considering they were going over 30 miles an hour less than a minute beforehand. Eliza was glad for the iron grip maintaining its hold on her after their landing as she knew she would be a shaky puddle on the floor had she been placed down and let go of immediately. She locked her knees to prevent them from crumpling and took a moment to breathe and mentally kiss the ground beneath her.

The arm around her slowly pulled away when she stayed standing so she slowly turned around to make eye contact with her rescuer. Well... Eye-to-mask eye contact. Her heart practically beat out of her chest from nerves and whether it was because of the drunk guys, the near death experience, or from simply meeting one of the famous heroes, she wasn't sure. Truth be told, the combination of all three would probably give her a heart attack if she took the time to think about it.

She had barely turned around before she was being spoken to by the figure in the famous red and blue costume, his hands coming up to steady her as she stumbled back slightly from being closer then she'd thought.

"Oh my gosh! That was a close one! That car came out of nowhere, are you ok?" She nodded, tongue still stuck on the roof of her mouth, not that it seemed to matter to the superhero. He seemed pretty content to talk a million miles an hour even without her input. "You look alright. I mean, the swinging can be a bit terrifying the first time you do it, but better that than being hit by the car." The eyes on his mask narrowed a bit and he tilted his head slightly to the side. "Actually, you look a bit pale and Karen says yo-I mean, I think you might be going into shock. Here sit down for a bit."

She was gently nudged to a set of stairs and she sat down gratefully.

"Thanks Spider Man." She sighed and relaxed as much as she could onto the cold concrete.

"No problem!" He replied. She couldn't really tell because of his mask, but it sounded like he was grinning.

"Bloody hell." Eliza sighed again, dropping her head into her hands and resting her elbows on her knees. "That's the last time I cross the road without looking, even if I do need to get away from creeps."

"Yeah, checking the road is always a good idea." Spider Man agreed. "As for the creeps, you could try carrying around some pepper spray?" She snorted.

"Yeah, like looking down and rummaging through my bag is a good idea when surrounded. Aren't you supposed to suggest I keep my eyes and ears alert, avoid badly lit locations, and always walk with a friend?"

Now it was his turn to splutter. "W-well yeah... I guess that would kinda defeat the purpose of keeping your eyes on your surroundings." He scratched his head almost sheepishly before continuing, his tone turning fervent. "It is useful if you happen to be able to get it though! I once saw this lady spray this guy in the face and he was still rolling on the ground after I came back to check on him after I walked the lady home! I didn't realise how useful the pepper sprays were until that day!"  

Eliza could only grin at his earnestness. She could already feel the erratic beat of her heart calm into a more sedate pace and her breathing even out as they spoke. It was great to see someone trying their best to help and give advice on staying safe, all hints of superiority absent in his tone.

"If you're feeling better, would you like me to walk you home?" He asked suddenly. The offer made Eliza release some extra tension she didn't realised she still had.

She nodded. "That would be great actually. I'm staying in a hotel somewhere around here."

"Cool, I can definitely take you back!" He was already standing and excitedly bouncing. Geez, he had a lot of energy. "What hotel are you staying in?" When she told him, he nodded again. "Ok, that's not far from here. Do you feel alright enough to start walking?"

"Sure. I could do with a really hot bath right about now." Eliza said, taking Spider Man's hand he offered as she spoke. She idly ran her hand through her tangled hair. "And a brush by the feels of it."

Spider Man laughed and they started walking down the street.

"So where are you from?" He asked.  

"I'm visiting from New Jersey." She paused, realising suddenly that this is her chance. She took a deep breath. "I, uh, actually came to New York to find out if you could help me with something." Spider Man turned to her and with his face covered she couldn’t tell if he wanted her to continue or not. So she too another breath and continued anyway. "You see, I've been trying to get in touch with a superhero, any superhero, for a few months now and I haven't had any luck. I've met you though today so... yay!" Jazz hands added for good measure. "I could have done without the almost-getting-run-over part, but hey, if it means I get to finally ask you about seeing the kids then I'll take it I suppose."

She really could have done without the 'almost getting assaulted and then flattened' part of the evening but considering he hadn't outright declined immediately, she was counting it as a win.

He continued to stare at her, making Eliza desperate for a verbal response as she could not read his reactions with his bloody mask on. "Well, it'll depend what it is. If you want my help to take over the world, I'm sorry, but you'll have to find someone else." He said playfully. Eliza laughed, almost in relief.

"No nothing like that." She said waving her hand. "Just want some help making a couple of kids' remaining years enjoyable."  At this, Spider Man seemed to take more of a keen interest so she elaborated. "I work with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and I have a couple of kids who would love to meet a superhero." Her tone had turned soft as it usually did when she was talking about the kids.

He seemed to perk up even more, if that was even possible. "Oh really? That's so cool! I mean, it's really cool that you thought of me! I'd love to meet the kids! I'd have to run it by Mr. Sta- I mean, Tony, but it should be fine!" He was almost shaking now and she could practically see the excitement rolling off him in waves. When his words registered though, she couldn't help but sag a little in relief.

"Awesome. It's been a long few days." she said with a chuckle, rubbing her temples while trying to keep her eyes on him just in case he disappeared. "You're really hard to find."

Spiderman tilted his head to the side as they walked, "Really? I thought there was, like, an Instagram or Facebook page following me?" He said, making it sound more like a question than a statement. Eliza stared at him for a moment and he rubbed his head. "I can't remember if there's a twitter page, but I know for certain that there's an Instagram page that likes to keep up with me and they do a surprisingly good job of it too." Eliza mentally facepalmed. Of course social media would have the answers. Spidey fans have some of the best content and the most up-to-date info on their hero (second only to Tony Stark and that's only because Mr. Stark's been around longer and is a literal billionaire) since the Friendly Neighbourhood Spiderman is so directly active in his community.

"Oh. Right. I completely forgot about that." Came her tired sigh. "Geez, I feel like such a failure of a millenial. I mean, what kind of millennial forgets about bloody Twitter and Instagram?"  

Spider Man laughed quietly, "It's fine. I know a few people at sc-work... who aren't on social media. Not many, but a few." After a moment, he asked, "So what are the kids like? Is Spider Man their favourite Superhero? I know I'm only kind of an Avenger, so it's cool they want to meet me!"

She snorted, "Are you kidding? Only 'kind of an Avenger'? Your battle last week with the lizard guy was on Youtube and you were working so well with Iron Man! One of the kids was practically vibrating out of his seat in excitement when he was showing me."

"Oh, you mean the one with both Mr. Stark and me going past? Yeah, that was a pretty good shot of us, we looked so cool at the end, it even stopped on a cool pose!"

As he continued enthusiastically, Eliza giggled. He almost reminded her of some of the kids. Energetic, easy to entertain and constantly bouncing between topics. Idly, she wondered how old Spider Man was. He didn't sound much older than her, and his energy....

"You know, Mr. Stark might be interested in meeting them too. I know he goes to a lot of charity functions." Eliza thought she heard him mumble, "He sure complains about them often enough." But she wasn't sure.

The comment made her crash back into the present. She felt her shoulders slump.

"Yeah. I tried getting in touch with him through the Maria Stark Foundation, but it didn't work out."

Spider Man seemed to frown at her tone, made obvious only by the slight narrowing of his eye lens things. "Really? How come?"

Sighing, she recounted her long and overly complicated phone journey through the bureaucratic chain of the Maria Stark Foundation and Stark Industries, followed by her brief but greatly disappointing interaction with Mr. Michael Walters. She was pretty positive this was going well and she could see her hotel across the street now so she let herself relax a bit. Suddenly feeling drained and really tired, she had to stop herself from stumbling the last of the distance to the building.

"I mean, it's understandable I suppose, the security that is. I get that Mr. Stark has a lot of enemies and I want what's best for the kids, so the safer the better." As she finished, she realised she probably sounded a bit whiny to one of the superheros that the safety protocols directly affected. At this point of the night however, she didn't have it in her to care all that much, not to mention, Spider Man was nodding encouragingly beside her. "At the same time though, I'm on a...bit of a time limit, you could say."

"What do you mean?"

"It's just, one of the kids I'm organising the meeting for has a progressive illness and, to be honest..." She paused, sadness filling her as she fiddled with the frayed end of her jacket's sleeve.

They'd come up to the main entrance to her hotel by now and she momentarily contemplated if it was really a good idea to bring it up, but she was fast running out of fucks to give and desperately wanted something good to come out of this hell-trip, "it's just...not very likely he'd make it the 18 months Mr. Walters said we had to wait. If anything, we're not sure if he'll make it to the end of this month."

Silence.

She looked at him and she saw him staring at her, lenses wide and standing eerily still beside her, his head cocked to the side.

After a moment, all he said was, "You know what? I'll talk to Mr. Stark. I'll see what we can do." And he swung away. Staring at the empty space beside her, it took a second for her to realise she was suddenly alone again. She hadn't even given him her number.

Still in shock and with fatigue starting to sit heavily on her bones, she shook herself and made her way toward the door, numbly figuring she was going to have to think of a different way to meet another superhero.

Eliza only had to wait two days before her life-risking journey paid off.

#tpromptsachallenge #my writing #To Grant a Wish #part 1

[thetldrplace]

Academic Capture

This is a somewhat modified transcript of a conversation between Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein on Academic Capture- meaning corrupting influences on science in the modern university.  

The highlights are:

Science in Academia has been captured by the economic incentives at play.

Scientists and their research are responsible large grants which are lucrative to the university. This creates pressure to do only the kind of research that gets large grants, and creates pressures to come up with the conclusions that would keep the money flowing.

The work of the actual research is done by PhD students, who are granted degrees by participating in small areas of each study.

This keeps PhD students from seeing a bigger picture, and incentivizes them to produce what is wanted by the research.

The stature of research scientists in academia, as the 'bread winners' is such that they are often not required to teach or engage in governance, which has had a twofold downstream effect: insulating themselves from students who might ask questions that call out the larger scope, and removes them from governance, with the effect that more non-scientists are calling the political shots of the university.  

So here are the comments. As I mentioned, this isn't a pure transcript, I've cleaned it up in a few places to help readability.

Heather Heying Lots of people are noting that Higher Education isn't what it used to be and is helping to make fragile so many of the people who go through it. In fact, years ago, when the grievance studies papers [1] were being published, we noted that we see the bastardization of post modernism, and those people from the 90's coming around to be faculty and indoctrinating, rather than educating, students, being a big part of what went wrong at Evergreen [2].  Almost all of the big, ridiculous kerfuffles on campuses seem to be about that. But what we said then, and what was harder to convince people of who weren't in the sciences was, there was a different problem within the sciences, and it's about the economic model of how scientists are funded, and institutions are funded by those scientists, therefore providing perverse incentives for those scientists to do big, expensive science. It has rendered scientists... not just people with PhDs in fields that probably shouldn't exist, but many scientists, incapable of doing solid, careful evolutionary thought. Credentialism, people thinking 'that person has a PhD in the science, so they must know what they're talking about', is rising. But too many people, credentialed with these degrees, were never expected to do a complete piece of research from beginning to end: to make an observation, to pose the alternative hypotheses, to figure out how you might address those hypotheses with predictions that are downstream, what the experimental design might be, or to go out and collect the data and analyze it and figure out what it means and reveal it and communicate it in speech and in writing. Many don't experience that to get their PhDs. They walk into someone else's lab, with someone else's funding and someone else's questions already on the table and they do a little tiny piece of the puzzle. Why do we expect people like that to be able to think broadly about the entire scientific process and to walk in and say 'that doesn't make sense'?

Bret Weinstein

When the grievance studies work emerged, we told them 'the problem is you didn't do this with the sciences also. As such, you can't see there is a parallel kind of corruption within the sciences.' The grievance studies stuff is particularly egregious, obvious, and transparently wrong. The problem is that the scientific stuff is cryptically broken. It's not only that people have been awarded degrees for work that doesn't actually make them experts in the way science is done because they've done too small a piece. That's a common problem. But there is also an issue. The same reason people end up doing a small piece of work in order to get their degree is that there is an incredible pressure that has to do with the way the University is paying for its work by effectively by giving people degrees in lieu of money. That's how it makes itself profitable. This creates an incredible pressure to do work that pleases those in position of authority in order to have any hope of getting a job. This creates positive feedbacks where some bit of conventional thought that owns your field is in a position to make sure that only work that emerges is what matches that school of thought and doesn't challenge it. This is anti-scientific. Unless you've seen the effects of that corruption, it's impossible to imagine.  

HH

That truth about how science is funded preceded the rise of the grievance studies and the capture by them of many university administrations. Scientists are the money makers of universities- universities get a substantial overhead percentage of any grants that get brought in, and because of that, academic scientists are given the gift of not having to do some of the work they would have to do. Broadly, there are three things academics are expected to do: research, teaching, and governance; governance meaning everything from sitting on the committee that decides who is going to do the catering for your campus, to admissions, to hiring, to decisions about restructuring departments. IF the research scientists are bringing in the money, administration will minimize what they have to do in the other two camps. Fewer teaching responsibilities means less and less interaction with students, who are actually incredibly useful in terms of giving pushback. Much of student pushback may be naïve, but students can also give more sophisticated pushback because they don't know what questions they aren't supposed to ask.

But also.... by allowing the sciences to excuse themselves from governance, governance skews towards non-scientists and people in fields that aren't making any sense at all. This means the grievance studies nonsense is downstream from scientists being captured by these economic forces.  

BW

We can see the effect of capture within the academy, but it looks very different from places where lobbyists are persuading legislators to do things. Something observable in developing nations is that everyone is so pressed for resources that they are cheap to corrupt. A forester in Madagascar who makes 10k per year is supposed to prevent a corporation from logging tens of millions of dollars from his forest. It's easy to persuade him to forgo the public interest if he can provide a better life for his family. He's susceptible because of his low salary.  

In academia, there is an incredible insecurity because there aren't near enough jobs, so it causes people to be easily corrupted even if they don't understand what they're doing. There's no bribe on the table, but there are other mechanisms.

The corruption of science is partly so destructive because it's so subtle. It's hard to even diagnose. Certain fields will be less susceptible. Astronomy perhaps has a more mundane corruption, whereas things get really bad as you get closer to medicine. The overarching impact of this corruption is to render the science feeble.   When talking about foreign policy, anyone can recognize there is such a thing as war profiteers: people that profit from, and work to push us into, wars because they personally would profit in such a scenario. Everybody knows that even if lives are at stake in wars, there are people whose perverse incentives might cause them to mislead us. Why can't we accept that the same thing is at least plausible with respect to a pandemic? Could there be such a thing as a pandemic profiteer and if so, what are some things that they might have us do, that we shouldn't do?  

We've seen profiteering by the pharmaceutical industry in the past. We have seen advice make its way into the academic literature, and only later reveal that it was harming people. That profiteering could be happening isn't shocking, the question is- how much of an effect IS it having on the public health advice? The public health advice is not making sense in some instances. Why are we vaccinating people that have already had covid?  There isn't a good answer to this and even the CDC's answer doesn’t make sense. Is that ineptitude or corruption? Until we have an answer, the question of 'how bad the rot is' will persist. Whatever forces have us giving a vaccine we don't know enough about to people who it will not benefit, is suspect. Why would we do that?

Notes

[1] The grievance studies papers were a series of papers by Helen Pluckrose, Peter Boghossian, and James Lindsay submitted to academic journals specializing in cultural, queer, fat, race, gender and other study fields focused on grievances against society. They submitted a series of papers meant to highlight that only certain conclusions were allowed. So they wrote papers containing ridiculous or morally questionable means, but arriving at the 'correct' answers. Several were published in the relevant journals.  

They became known as Sokol Squared, after Alan Sokol, who had written a hoax paper in 1996 to the academic journal Social Text, only to reveal later it was nonsense. He did it to expose that densely written, opaque nonsense could pass for academic insight in the post-modernist field as long as it contained the requisite buzzwords.  

[2] Evergreen College in Olympia Washington is where both worked as professors until 2017. Evergreen had for some years held a 'day of absence', where students and staff of color would absent themselves to highlight their contributions to the school. But in 2017, the university changed and told white students to stay off campus. Weinstein refused this and challenged it, and this sparked protests by a subset of the students first demanding his firing, but proceeded to them hunting Weinstein on campus while the school's administrator called campus police to stand down and not interfere with the students.

#Academic Capture #Bret Weinstein #Heather Heying #Science and Academia

[orbemnews]

Were the Airline Bailouts Really Needed? A year ago this week, Doug Parker, the chief executive of American Airlines, flew to Washington to begin what became a yearlong lobbying campaign for a series of taxpayer-funded bailouts during the pandemic. He wasn’t alone. The campaign also included leaders from Alaska Airlines, Allegiant Air, Delta Air Lines, Frontier Airlines, Hawaiian Airlines, JetBlue Airways, United Airlines, SkyWest Airlines and Southwest Airlines — all with their hands extended. The flight attendant and pilot unions were also part of the lobbying. A year later, as the stock market cruises to new heights, questions should be asked about the $50 billion in grants that were used to prop up the airline industry. Was it worth it? And was it necessary? The good news is that the rescue money likely saved as many as 75,000 jobs, most remaining at full pay. And that money also kept the airlines from filing for bankruptcy, and in a position to ferry passengers all over the country to jump start economic growth as the health crisis subsides. The bad news is that it is also likely that taxpayers massively overpaid: The original grant of $25 billion in April meant that each of the 75,000 jobs saved cost the equivalent of more than $300,000. And with each additional round of bailout money, that price has grown. The truth is that shareholders of the airlines have been the biggest beneficiaries. That includes airline executives, many of whom have been paid in stock for years and stood to lose millions of dollars if their holdings were wiped out. Airline chiefs collected tens of millions per year in compensation before the pandemic, in part by boosting their companies’ share prices by regularly buying back tens of billions in shares. That meant setting aside less money for a rainy day — or, in this case, a pandemic. But here we are: Shares of United traded below $20 in May; today they are above $60. The patterns are similar for the other major carriers. Airline stocks — lifted by taxpayers — are up nearly 200 percent from their pandemic trough and have almost recovered their losses. It is fair to say that we socialized the airline industry’s losses and largely privatized the gains. No other industry affected by the pandemic received more from the government. There was no special program for hotels or restaurants or travel agencies. Companies in those industries had to line up for the small business-focused Paycheck Protection Program and pray. The largest loan the program could make was $10 million. The question isn’t whether airline employees should have been helped, it’s whether airline shareholders should have been. The airline bailouts weren’t simply a job-protection program, as advertised. In case you’re not convinced, there’s this: United invested $20 million into an electric helicopter company last month that went public through a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. Does that sound like a company that is in such dire straits that it requires a taxpayer-funded bailout? It received a third rescue payment after it made the investment. With the stock market now soaring, it is worth considering whether the airlines needed taxpayer money at all. Private investors seem to be willing to throw money at everything these days, from celebrity-backed blank-check companies with no profits to troubled video game retailers, Bitcoin and digital art. Why not airlines? Even during the depths of the pandemic, in April last year, Carnival Cruise Line managed to raise $4 billion in debt from private investors, just as the airlines were still negotiating their first rescue deal with the government. That said, Carnival had to pay dearly for the money, with an interest rate of around 12 percent. Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus Package How big are the stimulus payments in the bill, and who is eligible? The stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more. What would the relief bill do about health insurance? Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become a lot cheaper. COBRA, for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, generally lets someone who loses a job buy coverage via the former employer. But it’s expensive: Under normal circumstances, a person may have to pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the relief bill, the government would pay the entire COBRA premium from April 1 through Sept. 30. A person who qualified for new, employer-based health insurance someplace else before Sept. 30 would lose eligibility for the no-cost coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would not be eligible, either. Read more What would the bill change about the child and dependent care tax credit? This credit, which helps working families offset the cost of care for children under 13 and other dependents, would be significantly expanded for a single year. More people would be eligible, and many recipients would get a bigger break. The bill would also make the credit fully refundable, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill was zero. “That will be helpful to people at the lower end” of the income scale, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Read more. What student loan changes are included in the bill? There would be a big one for people who already have debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on forgiven debt if you qualify for loan forgiveness or cancellation — for example, if you’ve been in an income-driven repayment plan for the requisite number of years, if your school defrauded you or if Congress or the president wipes away $10,000 of debt for large numbers of people. This would be the case for debt forgiven between Jan. 1, 2021, and the end of 2025. Read more. What would the bill do to help people with housing? The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes. About $27 billion would go toward emergency rental assistance. The vast majority of it would replenish the so-called Coronavirus Relief Fund, created by the CARES Act and distributed through state, local and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That’s on top of the $25 billion in assistance provided by the relief package passed in December. To receive financial assistance — which could be used for rent, utilities and other housing expenses — households would have to meet several conditions. Household income could not exceed 80 percent of the area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability, and individuals would have to qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship (directly or indirectly) because of the pandemic. Assistance could be provided for up to 18 months, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Lower-income families that have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for assistance. Read more. Airline chiefs and labor union bosses convinced Congress that the industry was different — and more indispensable. They made the case that if airlines were to fall into bankruptcy, there would be no planes ready to help revive the economy when the time came. They argued that pilots couldn’t be laid off and quickly rehired, since they need to be in flight regularly or training on simulators to be certified to fly. Would airlines have stopped flying in bankruptcy? Nope. In previous airline bankruptcies — and there have been dozens — the companies kept operating. The government could have provided financing under that scenario, similar to the way it did when it rescued General Motors in 2009, taking a major equity stake in the company so that taxpayers could share in the upside when it recovered. The airlines, in exchange for the taxpayer money, agreed to some conditions, including halting stock buybacks, reducing executive pay and agreeing to issue stock warrants to the government. But the warrants are tiny. In the case of American Airlines, the company will issue warrants that are worth about $230 million today — a small fraction of the $4 billion that the taxpayers bequeathed the carrier’s shareholders in the first round of bailouts. Of course, we’ll never know what would have happened to the industry had it been forced to raise money on its own. “Congress has saved thousands of airline jobs, preserved the livelihoods of our hard-working team members and helped position the industry to play a central role in the nation’s recovery from Covid-19,” Mr. Parker and a top lieutenant at American Airlines said in a statement after the latest round of bailouts last week. “Lawmakers from both parties have backed legislation that recognizes the dedication of airline professionals and the importance of the essential work they do.” After the banking crisis of 2008 led to bailouts, the recriminations began when firms like Goldman Sachs had a banner year in the aftermath — and paid bankers record bonuses. Will the same thing happen to the airlines? Under the terms of their bailouts, the chief executives’ compensation this year and last was capped at about half what they received before the pandemic. Delta has already begun to issue special payments to some other managers. It says this is to compensate them in part for extra hours worked during the pandemic. “The payment of special bonuses to management while the airline is still burning cash is premature and inappropriate,” said Chris Riggins, a spokesman for the Air Line Pilots Association, in a statement this month. The worst for the airline industry may be over, but the debate about the appropriateness of the pandemic bailouts is just getting started. Source link Orbem News #airline #Bailouts #needed

[econobitch]

UNIVERSITIES AS BUSINESSES. For most of the post-World War II period, it was well understood that universities, whether public or private, operated under a model distinct from business. That began to shift in the 1980s and 1990s as American culture became fixated on the virtues of private enterprise, says Christopher Newfield, a literature professor at UC Santa Barbara and a leading critic of the corporatization of academia. “Until then, the private sector wasn’t the model for the public sector,” Newfield told me. “But the prestige of the private sector now requires imitation by the public sector. It’s almost as if we’re intimidated.” Adding to the pressure is a “massive defunding of public higher education” by state governments, says Hank Reichman, an emeritus professor of history at Cal State East Bay who writes frequently for the blog of the American Association of University Professors. In California, per student spending from the state’s general fund has fallen since 1980 by 43% at the California State University system and 54.7% at UC. Administrators scurrying to replace these lost resources have turned to what appear to be promising sources — scientific research grants and patent royalties. But the idea that these programs are the key to sustainable budgets is mythical. At some institutions, patent income looks like a big number, but it’s seldom more than a tiny fraction of total needs. UC patent royalty and fee income averaged about $104.5 million annually from fiscal 2011 through 2014; it soared to $177.2 million in fiscal 2015 thanks largely to the licensing of a single prostate cancer drug, Xtandi, developed at UCLA. But $43.4 million of that sum was distributed to the inventors; the net income flowing to UC amounted to a paltry one-half of 1% of the system’s total operating budget of $27 billion. Science and engineering programs are heavily funded by outside grants, but the traditional patrons –  government and industry – have been stepping away from the plate. A 2014 survey by the Council on Governmental Relations, an association of research universities, found that federal spending on university R&D had fallen to 59.5% of the total in 2012, the lowest share since 1956, before the Soviet Union’s Sputnik launch spurred a massive increase in U.S. scientific research. Contributions from state and local governments and industry had fallen by roughly two-thirds. The burden of costs in higher education has been shifting to students: At UC, tuition and fees now cover 46.3% of the budget, according to the California Budget Project, up from 18.9% in 1998. These trends have pushed universities into questionable deals with donors. Last year, UC Irvine accepted the first installment of a $6-million gift from the Dharma Civilization Foundation for four endowed chairs in Hindu studies, before faculty members raised an alarm about the political agenda of the foundation. UCI ultimately rejected the entire donation. Arizona State in 2014 specified that applicants for a post at its new Center for Political Thought and Leadership display a focus on "the relations between free-market institutions and political liberty in modern history," which came suspiciously close to the mindset of the Koch family, which had contributed $1.3 million in seed money for the center.   What’s really at stake in the corporatization of academia is the traditional role the university as a repository of culture and training ground for open inquiry. “The obvious risk,” says Michael Meranze, a professor of history at UCLA who shares a blog on academic issues with Newfield, “is that academic research gets done to advance the interests of outside corporations, rather than guided by the logic of the university’s mission.”

http://www.latimes.com/business/hiltzik/la-fi-hiltzik-university-business-20160602-snap-story.html

[mikemortgage]

Peter Foster: Trudeau’s pipeline plan confronts the Liberal ‘Deep State’ his father created

The Trudeau Liberals, like the old comic-strip character, Pogo, are discovering that when it comes to pipeline policy, the real enemy is themselves. Their acquisition of the Trans Mountain pipeline is yet another example of their progressive pretension colliding with economic reality. The contradictions of their climate and energy policies have put them in a mighty pickle, after they effectively killed all other domestic alternatives to bring oil to tidewater.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s bland declaration in 2015 that “The Great Bear Rainforest is no place for a pipeline” has returned to haunt him in the form of a much more valid criticism: that a pipeline is no place for a government. But that is almost a peripheral issue. At some stage — assuming TransMountain survives endless court challenges and the diehard opposition of the B.C. government — push will come to shove. In the case of protestors hurling their bodies in the pipeline’s path, quite literally.

Ironically, one of the main nodes that might be helping to provide that physical opposition to construction is funded by a government entity that was set up when Justin’s dad was prime minister in 1977. Justin Skywalker is about to discover the figure inside that Darth Vader suit, the one helping the empire of eco-extremism now fighting his pipeline, is… his father.

A sizeable portion of opposition to Trans Mountain is being funded by a grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) an entity set up as part of what might be called the “Deep Liberal State” — that is, government-funded institutions created to make sure that the progressive agenda continues, whatever that agenda happens to be at the time, and whichever government happens to be in power.

The SSHRC doles out hundreds of millions of dollars in academic research grants. You might recall the unwelcome attention it received last year when it turned down a research grant to celebrity anti-progressive Jordan Peterson (who had received considerable previous funding) suspiciously soon after he had refused to be forced to use gender-neutral pronouns. How dare ze.

Three years ago (significantly when Stephen Harper was prime minister), the SSHRC gave a hefty $2.5-million grant for a six-year study to expose the supposedly insidious political power of the fossil-fuel industry. Other entities such as union giant Unifor kicked in an additional $2 million.

The title of the project was “Mapping the Power of the Carbon-Extractive Corporate Resource Sector.” It was to be hosted by the University of Victoria, the Parkland Institute at the University of Alberta (the place where they think David Suzuki is honourable), and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives (CCPA). The academic leader of the study is sociologist William Carroll, an old UVic Marxist.

Visit the power-mapping project’s website today and you will find a picture of Trudeau alongside the words: “Power and influence in the fossil fuel industry today place sharp limits on our democracy.” The juxtaposition might suggest that the words are a quote from the PM. They are not. Still, one must admit that the observation is insightful — except the power really undermining democracy is coming from radical environmentalists entirely unconcerned that a majority of both Canadians and British Columbians support building Trans Mountain. The radicals’ idea of “democracy” is, more accurately, minority rule by social-mediated mobs in endless town hall meetings.

But the left is nevertheless obsessed with corporate power for one very practical reason: the more power that corporations are accused of having, the more coercive “countervailing” power is justified in opposing them. This power takes the form of “market campaigns” of consumer disinformation and client intimidation, for instance, high-pressure demands on customers to boycott oilsands or forestry companies, or sometimes-violent protests at development sites. That brings us to the power-mapping project’s activist bit: Its plan for the “Development of an open source, publicly accessible corporate database and training program for citizens and civil society groups, many of whom will contribute and update data.”

Although they are still working on the database, it’s starting to become clear just what sort of training they’re offering citizens and civil society groups. Earlier this year, the project co-sponsored a presentation in Vancouver by U.S. activist Winona LaDuke. Since twice running on the Green Party’s vice-presidential ticket alongside Ralph Nader, LaDuke has featured prominently in protests against Enbridge’s Line 3 replacement in Minnesota and the illegal week-long sit-in against the Dakota Access line, in which Enbridge also has a significant stake.

LaDuke declared in her Vancouver speech that Canada was a “petrostate,” and that she “understood” that climate change would cost 20 per cent of global GDP “in a few years.” That’s a pretty serious misunderstanding. After running through the stock litany against GMO foods and fracking, she proposed a locavore society where everybody would live on solar power and grow their own crops. “You don’t need a lawn. Grow food,” she lectured. “Be smart,” she said, “like Denmark and Germany” (whose off-carbon transition policies are comprehensive disasters, as anyone who’s paid attention well knows).

LaDuke also declared her determination to continue fighting Enbridge in the U.S., and ridiculed the company’s efforts at appeasement. And she urged on Canadian activists in their the fight against Trans Mountain. LaDuke concluded by demanding the audience not relinquish power to “the one per cent.”

In reality, it is LaDuke and her ilk who represent the grossly disproportionate power of the tiny one per cent or less of radical activists. They are funded not only by the American 0.0001 per cent, made up of billionaires and their foundations who think Canada should be one big national park, but, thanks to Pierre Trudeau’s SSHRC, Canadian taxpayers, too. And those government-funded radicals are about to bite Trudeau fils in the butt.

from Financial Post https://ift.tt/2JB4gRw via IFTTT Blogger Mortgage Tumblr Mortgage Evernote Mortgage Wordpress Mortgage href="https://www.diigo.com/user/gelsi11">Diigo Mortgage

#IFTTT #Financial Post

[viralhottopics]

A huge sigh of relief on health care

(CNN)As House Speaker Paul Ryan pulled the Republican health care bill from voting, I could almost hear the giant sigh of relief from Atlanta and across the nation’s health care establishment.

Hidden in the nooks and crannies of the American Health Care Act (AHCA) was a provision to eliminate $1 billion in disease prevention funds from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Those cheers I imagine I hear right now in Atlanta are huzzahs from the CDC headquarters.

According to the GOP plan, “Our Step-by-Step Approach,” the first of three steps towards reshaping the American health care market was thwarted on Friday when the White House, recognizing that splits within the Republican Party could not be resolved to allow passage of the AHCA, instructed Ryan to pull the bill. Step two, led by Secretary Tom Price and his team at the Department of Health and Human Services, may still proceed: “going through every page of regulations and guidance related to the Affordable Care Act to determine whether or not they work for patients,” with an eye to eliminating the rules laid out by the Obama administration.

And under step three, Congress would have passed a series of laws aimed at lowering malpractice liability, enhancing cross-state-line insurance marketing and eliminating all forms of family planning provisions covered with federal funds. Republicans now know that all three steps will be tough, if not impossible, for them to accomplish.

After seven years of bashing Obamacare and 60 prior votes to repeal the ACA, Congress discovered over the last five weeks that:

Americans didn’t want the ACA repealed until Congress created a replacement for Obamacare.

Replacing the ACA is much harder than repealing it. As President Trump put it on February 27, “Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated. I have to tell you, it’s an unbelievably complex subject.”

As debate unfolded over ACA replacement millions of Americans learned, apparently for the first time, that “Obamacare” and the “Affordable Care Act” are the same thing. In early February, a survey found that 35% of Americans were unaware that the federal health insurance system that many of them were relying upon was “Obamacare,” and as realization sank in, opposition to changing or repealing the ACA swelled. By mid-March nearly 60% of Americans opposed changing or repealing the ACA, and members of Congress were hearing complaints from constituents all over the country about AHCA provisions that would decrease or eliminate many types of coverage, and increase costs to most individuals.

The AHCA’s reliance on individual tax credits to offset elimination of direct subsidies for health care never won favor with most voters, as only the wealthiest Americans would garner sufficient tax deductions to cover their health costs.

The GOP leadership touted the AHCA as “health freedom,” liberating average Americans from the chains of federal mandates and control. But they would accomplish the liberation by passing funds to the states in the form of Medicaid block grants, which each state would use as it deemed fit. Republican governors howled in protest, realizing this “freedom” simply shifted the burden of health regulation and most costs from Washington to the cash-strapped states.

It is impossible to separate the “healthy” from the “sickly” and affordably place them in different insurance pools. Obamacare could only satisfy the insurance industry’s financing needs if it mandated pooled enrollment of both healthy young adults, people suffering from chronic diseases, and the sicker older adults.

How the GOP angered constituencies

Trump and Ryan pull GOP health bill

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As the debate unfolded, advocates for the GOP plan made statements, or offered amendments, that angered a succession of constituencies and health organizations. A call to insert provisions allowing employers to conduct genetic tests on job applicants, eliminating all funding for Planned Parenthood, questioning the wisdom of “forcing” men to pay for insurance coverage of maternity care, childbirth and newborn services, undermining access to treatment for opioid addiction, telling poor Americans that they need to choose between buying the latest iPhone and purchasing insurance — these and countless more tone-deaf statements and initiatives from Republican politicians had the nation crying foul.

Perhaps the coup de grace came with Vice President Mike Pence’s tweet of a White House meeting with members of Congress, discussing cuts in women’s health and maternity coverage to reduce the overall cost of the AHCA. Twitter exploded with protest over the optics of a room full of white men — and not a single woman to be seen — deciding the fate of the nation’s female population.

On social media many compared the all-male discussion of women’s health coverage in the White House to Saudi Arabia’s creation of a Girl’s Council composed of men.

Widespread opposition from the experts

Nearly every major medical and public health professionals’ organization in the nation opposed the GOP plan, even before the Congressional Budget Office released its nonpartisan assessment of the bill’s likely impact. Opposition grew when the CBO concluded that by the end of 2018 the AHCA would bump 14 million Americans out of insurance coverage — a sorry lot that would swell to 21 million by 2020 and 24 million by 2026. Though President Trump had vowed to provide “insurance for everybody,” the AHCA would roll the total number of uninsured Americans back to pre-2009 levels.

Deconstructing the GOP healthcare bill failure

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So under the ACA the $1 billion Prevention and Public Health Fund was created, in the CDC. The CDC used those funds to support everything from diabetes diagnosis and care programs to elimination of lead poisoning. A third of the funds ($324 million) were for vaccines and child immunization programs. Another $12 million targeted adolescent suicide efforts and $160 million subsidized epidemic surveillance and the safety of drinking water and food from bacterial contamination. All of these programs would have disappeared — 12% of the CDC’s total budget — with repeal of the ACA.

Health trends in America, particularly when compared to those in other developed nations like Germany and Japan, are terrible. Eliminating the CDC’s vaccination budget would effectively propel an already dangerous anti-immunization movement that finds parents across the country refusing to vaccinate their children.

The CDC program that would have been eliminated covers eighty 80% of the nation’s efforts to control heart disease and strokes — the No. 1 cause of death in the US Stockpiles of drugs and medical equipment that are rapidly deployed in catastrophes, outbreaks and natural disasters would have disappeared.

Americans are dying younger — especially white, middle-aged men. One reason: fentanyl, heroin and other opioids. In 1999 drug overdoses claimed the lives of 6.1 of every 100,000 Americans, and that soared to 16.3 per 100,000 in 2015. Most of the overdoses in 2015 were white Americans aged 45-54 years. Whether from drugs, accidents or any other cause, premature death rates are worst in rural America, where health care is least accessible.

Life expectancy in America took a backwards turn in 2015 for the first time since the mid-1990s peak of the AIDS epidemic, falling to 78.8 years on average, combined for men and women. Cancer death rates fell, but more Americans in 2015 died from unintentional injuries, suicides, respiratory diseases and Alzheimer’s. The CDC concluded, “In 2015, a total of 2,712,630 resident deaths were registered in the United States 86,212 more deaths than in 2014. From 2014 to 2015, the age-adjusted death rate for the total population increased 1.2%, and life expectancy at birth decreased 0.1 year.”

More Americans are dying from drug-resistant infections — the garden variety staph and strep bugs that used to be swiftly cured with a course of routine antibiotics. But last year Congress only approved $14 million for CDC research to identify ways to preserve the utility of antibiotics. Given the scale of the crisis, it was a pittance. The arrival, to US hospitals, of forms of bacteria can be so extremely resistant to treatment that, in the case of a Nevada woman last year, 26 different antibacterial drugs failed to save her life.

Startling decline in Americans’ life expectancy

Comparing American survival to that of other nations can be startling. The United States ranks 37th in the World Health Organization’s annual health systems assessment, behind not only the longest-lived societies like Japan, and the entire continent of Europe, but also below tiny Costa Rica. With a GDP per capita, in 2015, of only $9,200, Costa Ricans live an average one year longer than their far wealthier US counterparts. US male mortality is 18% higher than in Costa Rica; American female mortality is 10% higher than Costa Ricans for women under 65 years of age. The biggest differences between Costa Ricans and Americans are for deaths due to lung cancer, influenza and heart disease.

Why do people in the tiny Central American nation live longer, for less money, than their United States counterparts? It’s simple: the Costa Rican government ensures that every single citizen has equal access to basic care and prevention services, while the United States fails to do so, and Costa Rica’s health system provides better care based on individual wealth or quality of private insurance.

Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute wrote a startling essay entitled “Our Miserable 21st Century,” in which he linked the rise of nationalism and victory of Donald Trump to the nation’s declining life expectancy, soaring opioid crisis and falling social mobility. In conservative Eberstadt’s view the very conditions that led campaign crowds in 2016 to scream for the death of Obamacare are what the Affordable Care Act is meant to address.

According to a 2009 Harvard study a whopping 62% of family and personal bankruptcies filed in the United States before Obamacare were caused by financially overwhelming medical expenses. That translates to a little more than 640,000 people, and makes health care the primary cause of pre-ACA American financial catastrophe.

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The Commonwealth Fund Biennial Health Insurance Survey found that after four years of Obamacare the number of Americans claiming bankruptcy or financial difficulty due to medical bills fell from 75 million in 2012 to 64 million two years later, “And for the first time [since 2001], there was a decline in the number of people who had problems paying their medical bills or who are paying off medical debt over time.” Moreover, the survey found, “The coverage gains are allowing working-age adults to get the health care they need while reducing their level of financial burden because of medical bills and debt.”

And so I breathe a sigh of relief as the GOP’s American Health Care Act goes to its grave. As long as the maligned Obamacare and its Prevention and Public Health Fund remain funded and functioning there is reason to hope that America can once again see improvements in its population’s life expectancy, women can safely give birth to healthy babies, and families can afford to confront tragic catastrophes like paralyzing injuries or cancer without fear of bankruptcy and medically-induced poverty.

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[literateape]

Killing the NEA isn't the Same Thing as Killing Support for the Arts

NOTE: This was written in 2011. Since then, the NEA has changed some of their financial terminology but the facts on the ground are that the various grants given specifically by the NEA (as opposed to the NEH and other federal granters) cover arts policy and education organizations, associations and administration, fundraising and management wth artist services on the bottom of the pile.  Nearly all NEA grants are earmarked as “General Operational Budget” which pretty much covers anything the receiving organization wants to spend it on.  Just to clarify.   All of a sudden, it's relevant again. Ah, the pendulum, she swings...

Well, well.

The GOP wants to kill off the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) entirely.

The knee-jerk reaction that artists automatically leap to is NO!! Don't defund the arts!! The arts won't survive without the NEA grant money! Holy shit. See how the sky is wobbling back and forth in preparation to fall?

Uh. No. I don't see that.

I see that the bulk of NEA funding goes to pay for administrative salaries. It sure as shit isn't going to pay actors or playwrights or directors. Maybe some scenic designers and light and sound techies are getting their pockets lined with that dough but I doubt too much of it.

So, assuming my reasoning is sound and that most (and by most I mean almost all of it) of NEA grant money goes to the cost of maintaining institutions rather than funding artists, I say let them kill it. Certainly, the symbolism of such a move is significant. The on paper announcement that the Federal Government no longer supports the arts with our tax dollars doesn't look so good but what would the end result actually be?

1)  Bloated, giant artistic institutions would have to scale back on the money spent on staff and buildings. I'm sure this is a sucky thing for all the folks who work for houses at the Goodman and Roundabout and other over-extended institutions for shit wages but can say they work "in the arts" but, if you're only gonna make $7.50 an hour answering the phones or restocking programs or stuffing envelopes, the difference between working for Steppenwolf or The Men's Warehouse is negligible. And no one with a brain who does that sort of administrative work for Old Navy touts themselves as "working in the fashion industry."

2)  Bloated, giant artistic institutions would have to face the same music as all those smaller artistic organizations who don't receive any money from the government. I look forward to the Guthrie Theater version of the WNEP Bowling Fundraiser. Seriously, I do.  And I'd love to see a Goodman production with a set and sound design with a $5,000 budget.  Can Bob Falls do a quality production with a storefront budget? Now that's a creative exercise, baby!

3)  The arts community would all of a sudden no longer have to be afraid of the rabid slobber-monkeys in the GOP Artistic Censorship Brigade. After all, if the government isn't funding your work, who gives a shit that a Religiously Oppressive Lobbying Group doesn't like your portrayal of Black Transgender Women Who Dress Like Jesus?

For decades, these Factually Challenged Morons have been beating up on government funding of the arts and treating artists as if they were simply needy children sucking the lifeblood out of society with their crazy, godless plays and paintings, poetry and erotic fiction. Lose the NEA and they can't bitch any more about it, can they?

No minions to mow down with their hateful, stupid censorship guns when the minions are off the payroll, huh?

4) Without all that salary-money for things like Marketing Directors and Audience Development Directors and UnderSecretary of the Ushers and the like, the money spent by these institutions would be spent on the art. OK. That's probably nonsense. We all know that when cash gets tight, it's the art that feels the squeeze the most. Not paying actors or playwrights is so common in theatre's history that it's a cliche we can't seem to escape. It would, however, genuinely expose those not-for-profit companies that are actually FOR PROFIT COMMERCIAL INSTITUTIONS for what they are.

The plain and simple is this: The NEA doesn't fund enough of the arts to kill it off by being axed by the GOP. The NEA is merely a symbol of faux support for commercially sound organizations who spend lots of money to cater to the upperclass white people in major cities. Maybe by letting the GOP gut the NEA and kill it outright, we might make an attempt to create something that funds the art in the country that could use a few bucks:

– the rural community-based groups that aren't blessed with an already arts-literate audience

– the tiny dance companies, theater companies, poetry foundations and storytelling start-ups that could actually make the most effective use of the least amount of money because that's what we know how to do.

– the itinerant artists with no affiliation with any major institutions of any kind.

– venues created to house the art of these little upstarts and miscreants.

In fact,

Bill Eddins says it much better than I can:

"So enough already. Kill it. Stop blaming the NEA for all the problems in this country. Save your .046% of the budget. So what if we become the artistic laughing stock of the 1st world? We’re already the laughing stock in so many ways. So what if huge orchestras lose a $400K grant? The NEA has been too gun shy to fund anything remotely interesting for almost three decades now, and funding another Mostly Mozart Festival at some orchestra isn’t going to make any difference. Maybe those humongous institutions will make a little room at the trough for the artists who don’t have that high paying union contract job.

And once the NEA is gone then those rabid politicians and their slavering wannabe supporters will be faced with the real questions: do we as a people deserve affordable healthcare, and if so how are we going to pay for it?  Do we as a people deserve to retire like our parents did, or will we have to work until we go to our grave just to make ends meet? Do we as a people deserve to pass on a living viable planet to our children, or will we remain mired in a fossil fuel economy and planet warming denial? And, Mr. and Mrs. Deficit Hawk—how are you going to balance your budget?"

SOURCE

So, I say to those in the Grand Old Party who are itching to axe the NEA, go for it. It can only make things better.

#NEA #GOP #ART #$$$