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robertreich · 5 years

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The 12 Biggest Myths about Raising Taxes on the Rich

Some politicians are calling for higher taxes on the rich. Naturally, these proposals have unleashed a torrent of opposition – mostly from…the rich. Here are the 12 biggest myths they’re propounding:

Myth 1: A top marginal tax rate applies to all of a rich person’s total income or wealth.

Wrong. It would only apply to dollars in excess of a certain level. The 70 percent income tax rate proposed by Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would apply only to dollars in excess of 10 million dollars a year. The 2 percent wealth tax proposed by Elizabeth Warren would apply only to wealth in excess of 50 million dollars.

Myth 2 : Raising taxes on the rich is a far-left idea.

Baloney. 70 percent of Americans -- including 54 percent of Republicans -- support raising taxes on families making more than 10 million dollars a year. And expecting the rich to pay their fair share is a traditional American idea. From 1930 to 1980, the average top marginal income tax rate was 78 percent. From 1951 to 1963 it exceeded 90 percent -- again, only on dollars in excess of a very high threshold. Even considering all deductions and tax credits, the very rich paid over half of their top incomes in taxes.

Myth 3: A wealth tax is unconstitutional.

Rubbish. Most locales already impose an annual wealth tax on the value of peoples’ homes -- the main source of household wealth for most people. It’s called the property tax. The rich hold most of their wealth in stocks and bonds, so why should these forms of wealth escape taxation? Article I Section 8 of the Constitution gives “Congress [the] power to lay and collect taxes.”

Myth 4: When taxes on the rich are cut, they invest more and everyone benefits, when taxes on the rich are increased, economic growth slows.

Utter baloney. Trickle-down economics is a cruel joke. Donald Trump, George W. Bush, and Ronald Reagan all cut taxes on the rich, and nothing trickled down. There’s no evidence that higher taxes on the rich slows economic growth. To the contrary, when the top marginal tax rate has been high -- between 71 to 92 percent -- growth has averaged 4 percent a year. But when top rate has been low -- between 28 and 39 percent -- growth has averaged only 2.1 percent.

Myth 5: When you cut taxes on corporations, they invest more, and create more jobs.

Wrong again. After Trump and the Republicans lowered the corporate tax rate in 2018, America’s largest corporations cut more jobs than they created. They used their tax savings largely to increase their stock prices by buying back their own shares of stock -- enriching executives and wealthy investors but providing no real benefit to the economy.

Myth 6: The rich already pay more than their fair share in taxes.

This is misleading, because it focuses only on income taxes -- leaving out the large and growing tax burden on lower-income Americans; payroll taxes, state and local sales taxes, and property taxes take bigger bites out of the pay of lower-income families than higher-income.

Myth 7: The rich shouldn’t be taxed more because they already pay capital gains taxes.

Misleading. Rich families avoid paying capital gains taxes by passing their wealth on to their heirs. In fact, the largest share of big estates transferred from generation to generation are unrealized capital gains that have never been taxed.

Myth 8: The estate tax is a death tax that hits millions of Americans.

Baloney. The current estate tax, which only applies to assets in excess of 11 million dollars, or 22 million dollars for couples, affects fewer than 2,000 families.

Myth 9: If taxes are raised on the wealthy, they’ll find ways to evade them. So very little money is going to be raised.

More rubbish. For example, a 2 percent wealth tax, as proposed by Senator Elizabeth Warren, would raise around 2.75 trillion dollars over the next decade with very little tax evasion, according to research. A 70 percent tax on incomes over 10 million would raise close to 720 billion dollars over 10 years.

Myth 10: The only reason to raise taxes on the wealthy is to collect revenue.

No. Although these proposals would generate lots of revenue – and help us reduce the national debt while investing in schools, roads, and all the things we need – another major purpose is to reduce inequality, and thereby safeguard democracy against oligarchy.

Myth 11: It’s unfair to raise taxes on the wealthy.

Actually, it’s unfair not to raise taxes on the rich. For the last 40 years, most Americans have seen no growth in their incomes at all, while the incomes of a minority at the top have skyrocketed. We’re rapidly heading toward a society dominated by a handful of super-rich, many of whom have never worked a day in their lives. More than 60 percent of wealth in America is now inherited.

Myth 12: They earned it. It’s their money.

Hogwash. It’s their country, too. They couldn't maintain their fortunes without what America provides – national defense, police, laws, courts, political stability, and the Constitution. They couldn’t have got where they are without other things America provides -- education, infrastructure, and a nation that respects private property. And to argue it’s “their money” also ignores a lot of other ways America has bestowed advantages on the rich – everything from bailing out Wall Street bankers when they get into trouble, to subsidizing the research of Big Pharma.

So the next time you hear one of these myths, know the truth.

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mycryptosuite · 3 years

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hermancharley · 3 years

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researchkenneth · 3 years

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Global Portable Blenders Market Size study, by Material (Plastic, Glass and steel), by Distribution Channel (Offline and Online) and Regional Forecasts 2021-2027

Global Portable Blenders Market is valued approximately USD 128.56 billion in 2020 and is anticipated to grow with a healthy growth rate of more than 7.85% over the forecast period 2021-2027.

A Portable Blender is generally used to make shakes, juices or smoothies. It consists of a container with a rotating metal blade at the bottom, driven by an electric motor that is in the base. It is easy to use in comparison to traditional blenders as it provides one-touch blending and can be taken along while travelling. Along with all of this, it is easily chargeable and is fully functional with high power batteries. The changing and fast paced lifestyles of customers in urban areas are compelling them to adopt to easy-to-use hand-held devices for making healthy drinks. The rapid urbanization too, especially in developing countries, is increasing the demand of kitchen appliances as well. All these factors are driving the sales of Portable Blenders Market. According to United Nations, currently 55% of the world’s population lives in urban areas, which is expected to increase to 68% by 2050. The steady shift in residence of the human population from rural to urban areas, combined with the growth of the world’s population would add 2.5 billion people to urban areas by 2050. 90% of this increase will take place in developing countries of Asia and Africa like China, India and Nigeria. The world is expected to have 43 megacities with more than 10 million population each, most of them in developing regions by 2030. This rapid urbanization will also bring lifestyle and consumer behavior changes, beneficial for Portable Blenders Market.

Download Sample of This Strategic Report:- https://www.kennethresearch.com/sample-request-10347663

However, Portable Blenders are rarely suitable for heavy usage for large quantities of food, which may act as a restraint for its growth. However, increasing penchant for healthy drinks and shakes in urban cities, especially after the pandemic, acts as an opportunity Portable blender in next decade.

Key geographical regions such as Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, Latin America and Rest of the World are analysed to provide a holistic picture of Electronic Weighing Machines market. Due to faster technological adoption of compact devices, propensity for healthy living as well as higher per capita income, North America is the significant region across the world in terms of market share. Whereas, Asia-Pacific is anticipated to exhibit highest growth rate for the forecast period 2021-2027 owing to the growing urban population and healthy lifestyle habits of people in developing countries of the region. Rising disposable income and increase in sales of kitchen appliances are other factors which will boost growth for the market.

Major market player included in this report are: Conair Cuisinart Pop Babies TOPQSC Oster BILACA Hamilton Beach Keyton Blufied NutriBullet BELLA

Request For Full Report:- https://www.kennethresearch.com/sample-request-10347663

The objective of the study is to define market sizes of different segments & countries in recent years and to forecast the values to the coming eight years. The report is designed to incorporate both qualitative and quantitative aspects of the industry within each of the regions and countries involved in the study. Furthermore, the report also caters the detailed information about the crucial aspects such as driving factors & challenges which will define the future growth of the market. Additionally, the report shall also incorporate available opportunities in micro markets for stakeholders to invest along with the detailed analysis of competitive landscape and product offerings of key players. The detailed segments and sub-segment of the market are explained below: By Material: Plastic Glass Steel By Distribution Channel: Offline Online By Region: North America U.S. Canada

Europe UK Germany France Spain Italy ROE Asia Pacific China India Japan Australia South Korea RoAPAC Latin America Brazil Mexico Rest of the World

Furthermore, years considered for the study are as follows:

Historical year – 2018, 2019 Base year – 2020 Forecast period – 2021 to 2027

Target Audience of the Global Portable Blenders Market in Market Study:

Key Consulting Companies & Advisors Large, medium-sized, and small enterprises Venture capitalists Value-Added Resellers (VARs) Third-party knowledge providers Investment bankers Investors

The report further discusses the market opportunity, compound annual growth rate (CAGR) growth rate, competition, new technology innovations, market players analysis, government guidelines, export and import (EXIM) analysis, historical revenues, future forecasts etc. in the following regions and/or countries:

North America (U.S. & Canada) Market size, Y-O-Y growth, Market Players Analysis & Opportunity Outlook

Latin America (Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Rest of Latin America) Market size, Y-O-Y growth & Market Players Analysis & Opportunity Outlook

Europe (U.K., Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Hungary, Belgium, Netherlands & Luxembourg, NORDIC, Poland, Turkey, Russia, Rest of Europe) Market size, Y-O-Y growth Market Players Analys & Opportunity Outlook

Asia-Pacific (China, India, Japan, South Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Rest of Asia-Pacific) Market size, Y-O-Y growth & Market Players Analysis & Opportunity Outlook

Middle East and Africa (Israel, GCC (Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Oman), North Africa, South Africa, Rest of Middle East and Africa) Market size, Y-O-Y growth Market Players Analysis & Opportunity Outlook

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webionaire · 3 years

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Reagan Era

Three news items within two weeks clarify what our long-range problems and potentials are. First, California's Commission on Industrial Innovation made 50 recommendations based, in part, on a report from the Stanford Research Institute. Said the report: "At no time in history has there been a broader range of new inventions and technologies poised for commercial development and diffusion. . . . The range of emerging or fastgrowing technologies is broad, diverse, and advancing with increasing rapidity. Similarly, the range of applications of these technologies is continuously expanding. There is as much invention in the applications area as there are in the technologies themselves."

Second, 15 business and community leaders from 14 states -- individuals who obviously agree with the Stanford forecast -- formed the Small Business High Technology Institute a week after the California report was released. "We have founded this institute," said its chairman, Roger Hill, of Racine, Wis., "as a direct response to the expressed desire of the President and the Congress that this program be carried on by a vigorous partnership of government and small business. In signing [the Small Business Innovation Development Act] five weeks ago, the President said that 'small business is a tonic for what ails this country. By passing and signing this Act we are showing our resolve to unleash this most innovative sector. The Act recognizes that we in government work in partnership with small business.' " He hopes to draw into the institute's program people from all over the country, including people who have founded and built growth businesses, such professionals as engineers, bankers, accountants, and lawyers; and venture capitalists who work most closely with technology entrepreneurs

No one doubts that we have a long, hard road to recovery still ahead. Peter Passell, writing that same week in The New York Times, said it well:

These are not times that breed optimists. After a decade of economic stagnation, the American standard of living has slipped to 11th in the world, well below those of northern Europe. Autos and steel, the industries on which the postwar expansion was based, are in steep decline. Our road, bridge, mass-transit, and water systems are literally collapsing. Our banks are loaded with the debts of overdeveloped companies and underdeveloped countries. Our energy supplies are vulnerable to the whims of desert nomads. Our farmers rely on our enemies to buy their surplus. Millions can't find jobs; millions who have them don't bother paying taxes on their earnings.

It is easy to find hard statistics to back Passell's assertions. And there is more he doesn't say. At this writing, for example, we are losing about 600 business enterprises a week through bankruptcies. And I estimate that 6 to 10 times that number of companies are simply paying their bills and shutting their doors.

The nation's task is not limited to putting 10 million Americans back to work. We have to start the economy growing again, we need to add perhaps 15 million more jobs in the next 10 years. Without a noninflationary, full-employment economy, there can be no balanced federal budget. Without a massive national retraining effort there will be no revolution in skills to equip our management and labor forces to compete in tomorrow's fast-track, high-tech economy.

But formation of the Small Business High-Technology Institute underscores that passage of the Small Business Innovation Act this past summer may have good ripple effects beyond its direct intent. The program set in motion by the act directs nine federal agencies that spend more than $100 million annually on research and development to launch small business programs, beginning on October 1, 1982. In its first year, each agency must set aside not less than 0.2% of its extramural R&D budget for small business R&D. (The one exception is the Department of Defense, which must set aside 0.1%.) Over the next five years, the set-aside requirement for all of these agencies will rise to 1.25%.

The institute's two main tasks will be to mobilize the private sector to use the new law and to stimulate the federal government to work with private enterprise in order to maximize the prospects that the new program will succeed. These can help to ensure that the new technologies cited by the Stanford Research Institute report find their way as quickly as possible to the marketplace. Specifically, the institute has mapped out five goals:

1. To persuade the best of the small, high-tech companies to participate in the new federal SBIR program. In the past, top-notch small companies have avoided doing business with the government -- and with good reason. They found that agencies often tailored specifications to big-company products. Applying for a government contract was enormously time-consuming and expensive. The innovation program specifies that application procedures must be simple and not costly. It is the job of institute members to convince small businesses that governmental scales have now tipped, at least partially, in their favor.

2. To cooperate with about 28 federal agencies. Some will run SBIR programs; others will be expanding small business R&D contracts, a few have supervisory roles. The institute will establish a network to monitor agency effectiveness. It will publish an annual evaluation, beginning late in 1983.

3. To conduct an ongoing cost-benefit study to see whether the program represents a good investment for the taxpayers. The study, to be designed by a team of economists, will draw on a computerized database to be established by Price Waterhouse & Co. It will keep track of costs, jobs created, and new technologies developed by small companies.

4. To establish model "Joint Small Business-University Technology Councils" in at least 10 cities to experiment with cooperative research programs linking academics in the basic sciences and small technology entrepreneurs.

5. To encourage and help all 50 state governments and some local ones to develop their own means of helping as many qualified companies as possible to make use of this program.

Perhaps the best omen for the success of the new institute is a handsome starter grant given it by the J. Howard Pew Freedom Trust of Philadelphia. This action in itself is trail-blazing. The grant is, as far as I know, the first financial support yet given to an organized small business effort by a major foundation, with the exception of some welcome minority-related programs. The Pew family trustees have shown that they have a laudable awareness that the big companies of tomorrow will include some that are small today -- as small as the onetime family business that grew into the Pews' Sun Oil Co.

It is hoped that the institute will help spark an upturn at the local level. Certainly the people involved know how that happens. For example, Roger Hill and his wife, Emily, run the Gettys Motion Control Division of Gould Inc. They started Gettys Manufacturing Co. as a small family business in Racine, Wis., and made it a leader in the development of advanced numeric controls for machining, before selling it to Gould.

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janetomassian · 3 years

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5 Reasons to Sell Your House This Spring

When selling a house, most homeowners hope for a quick and profitable transaction that puts them in a position to make a great move. If you’re waiting for the best time to win as a seller, the market is calling your name this spring. Here are five reasons why this is the perfect time to sell your house if you’re ready.

1. There’s high demand from homebuyers. Buyer demand is strong right now, and buyers are active in the market. ShowingTime, which tracks the average number of buyer showings on residential properties, recently announced that buyer showings are up 51.5% (up 90% in CA) compared to this time last year. Daniil Cherkasskiy, Chief Analytics Officer at ShowingTime, notes:

“As anticipated, demand for real estate remains elevated and continues to be affected by low levels of inventory…On average, each home is getting 50 percent or more requests this year compared to January of last year (90% or more for CA). As we head into the busy season, it’s likely we’ll push into even more extreme territory until the supply starts catching up with demand.”

When your house is positioned to get a ton of attention from competitive buyers, you’re in the best spot possible as the seller.

2. There aren’t enough houses for sale. Purchaser demand is so high, the market is running out of available houses for sale. Recently, realtor.com reported:

“Nationally, the inventory of homes for sale in February decreased by 48.6% over the past year, a higher rate of decline compared to the 42.6% drop in January. This amounted to 496,000 fewer homes for sale compared to February of last year.”

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) also reveals that, while home sales are skyrocketing, the inventory of existing homes for sale is continuing to drop dramatically. Houses are essentially selling as fast as they’re hitting the market – in fact, NAR reports that the average house is on the market for only 21 days (less for the Bay Area).

It’s this imbalance between high buyer demand and a low supply of houses for sale that gives sellers such an advantage. A seller will always negotiate the best deal when demand is high and supply is low. That’s exactly what’s happening in the real estate market today.

3. You have a lot of leverage in today’s market. Clearly, many more people are interested in buying than selling this spring, creating the ultimate sellers’ market. When this happens, homeowners in a position to sell have the upper hand in negotiations.

According to NAR, agents are reporting an average of 3.7 offers per house and an increase in bidding wars. This is especially true for remodeled homes in good neighborhoods in the Bay Area, where multiple offers have been the norm recently. As a seller, this means the ball is in your court – so much so that you can use your leverage to negotiate the best possible contract. Demand is there, and now is the perfect time to sell for the most favorable terms.

4. It’s a great way to use your home equity. According to the latest data from CoreLogic, as of the third quarter of 2020, the average homeowner has seen their equity increase by 10.8%, year over year, and this amount of equity continues to grow as home values appreciate. Equity is a type of forced savings that grows during your time as a homeowner and can be put toward bigger goals like buying your next dream home.

Mark Fleming, Chief Economist at First American, notes:

“As homeowners gain equity in their homes, they are more likely to consider using that equity to purchase a larger or more attractive home – the wealth effect of rising equity. In today’s housing market, fast rising demand against the limited supply of homes for sale has resulted in continued house price appreciation.”

5. It’s a chance to find a home that meets your needs. So much has changed over the past year, including what many of us need in a home. Spending extra time where we currently live is enabling many of us to re-evaluate homeownership and what we find most important in a home.

Whether it’s a house that has the features suited to working remotely, space for virtual or hybrid schooling, a home gym or theater, or something else, selling this spring gives you a chance to make a move and find the home of your dreams.

Bottom Line Today’s housing market belongs to the Sellers. If you’ve considered making a move but have been waiting for the right market conditions, your wait may be over. Contact me so we can get you positioned to win when you sell your house this spring. I look forward to assisting you! JANE TOMASSIAN Realtor Coldwell Banker "Experience, Exceptional Service, Proven Results.... Referrals Appreciated." 650.504.7074 [email protected] www.janetomassian.com BRE# 01412671

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readingsrantsrambles · 3 years

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When Pittsburghers banked at the Post Office

By Christopher W. Shaw

Published by the Pittsburg Post Gazette - May 12, 2020

https://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/Op-Ed/2020/05/12/Christopher-W-Shaw-When-Pittsburghers-banked-at-the-post-office/stories/202005120014

Restoring banking at post offices would affirm a national commitment to basic economic fairness

As millions of Americans shelter at home to reduce the spread of coronavirus, and the economy enters a sharp recession, postal workers have continued to make their daily rounds delivering our mail. But while the U.S. Postal Service survived the Civil War, two world wars and the Great Depression, the economic fallout of COVID-19 threatens its continued existence.

Yet even though the Postal Service requires emergency federal financial relief now due to declining mail volume, this crisis also presents an opportune moment to secure critical future revenues. It is time to restore the sorely needed banking services that post offices offered for much of the 20th century.

From 1911 to 1966, millions of Americans deposited billions of dollars in the Postal Savings System. Because banks focused on businesses and affluent customers, working people often lacked bank accounts. This widespread financial exclusion led these ordinary citizens to turn to Uncle Sam and demand savings accounts at the federal government’s extensive network of post offices. Once this service was established, any American could walk into a post office and open a savings account.

The forgotten history of the government’s savings bank is one that native Pittsburgher Richard Brean remembers well. Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s, he worked in the Hill District at his father’s drugstore, Jay Drug, at the corner of Centre Avenue and Roberts Street. Many customers saved their money at nearby post offices. “At that time,” Mr. Brean recalls, “the relationship between Pittsburgh’s banks and the Hill was one of malign neglect.” Banks had “redlined” the predominately African American Hill District, refusing to make loans on properties in the Third and Fifth Wards no matter how creditworthy an applicant was.

“My father, who was white, was welcome to do Jay Drug’s banking at Potter Bank (a predecessor to today’s PNC),” Mr. Brean states, “but Potter, despite my father’s excellent credit record, refused to grant him a loan to construct a new storefront.” If his father had been black, he would have found it difficult to obtain any banking services. “All but a very few Pittsburgh banks shunned black customers,” Mr. Brean explains, “and even a passbook savings account would have been out of reach for most black Pittsburghers.”

Through the Postal Service, however, the federal government combatted this entrenched discrimination. Mr. Brean emphasizes that “black residents of the Hill had a nondiscriminatory alternative to the banks: the United States Postal Savings System.” Black and white, rich and poor, the Postal Service provided all Americans with inclusionary access to savings accounts and low-cost money orders.

“Postal money orders surged through the economy of the Hill,” Mr. Brean remembers, “and at Jay Drug they were a common means by which our customers paid for prescriptions.” There was a deeper meaning underlying these simple transactions. “Using postal savings and postal money orders was a symbol of black financial independence,” Mr. Brean observes, “rooted in the long and proud relationship between the African American community and the United States Post Office which, in an America where most employers’ doors were firmly shut to even the most qualified black applicants, was regarded by blacks as offering a meaningful chance for employment and at least some opportunity for advancement.”

Throughout its existence, bankers claimed postal savings was unnecessary, until they finally lobbied the service out of existence. Yet today, 9 million households of all racial backgrounds are handicapped by their inability to maintain a bank account. Around 12 million consumers spend hundreds — and even thousands — of dollars annually on small, short-term loans from the $90 billion payday loan industry. With dwindling numbers of bank branches, it’s becoming increasingly difficult just to find a conveniently located bank, especially in poor urban and rural areas.

In addition, banks simply do not offer accounts that are designed for low-income Americans. A sizable minimum deposit is required to maintain an account, and banks impose any number of high and unpredictable fees. These barriers have driven the “unbanked” to check-cashing outlets, where they spend on average almost $200 a year just to obtain their money. Still, these businesses are easier to access than banks and offer more transparent fees.

The Postal Service could benefit working people nationwide by again offering bank accounts at thousands of local post offices that are close at hand whether one lives in a big city or a remote hamlet. A postal bank that prioritized access and affordability would open up new opportunities for those who currently don’t use banks to establish low-balance checking and savings accounts. Small-dollar loans with generous grace periods would be another valuable financial resource to low-income Americans. By assessing reasonable fees for such services, postal banking would be tailored to meet the needs of the unbanked while still providing additional revenues to help the Postal Service maintain universal delivery on an equal basis to all Americans.

Historians and economists have called the mid-20th century the golden age of capitalism. It was a period when progressive taxation, dynamic government programs and strong unions helped create a thriving middle class. When the Postal Service promoted access to a savings account, it nurtured both economic mobility and security. With more than 1 in 8 Americans living in poverty, there’s little hope of promoting economic equality as long as millions of working people struggle to obtain the necessary tools to manage their money. Restoring banking at post offices would affirm a national commitment to basic economic fairness.

Christopher W. Shaw is the author of Money, Power, and the People: The American Struggle to Make Banking Democratic, and Preserving the People’s Post Office.

First Published May 12, 2020, 4:45am

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mycryptosuite · 3 years

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confrontingbabble-on · 7 years

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The International Bulletin of Missionary Research reported that Christian religious leaders will commit an estimated $34 billion in financial fraud...

Researchers from the Center for the Study of Global Christianity estimate that Christian religious leaders will commit $90 million in financial crimes daily and the fraud is growing at a rate of 5.97% each year. If the researchers are correct, religious financial fraud among Christians will almost double...to $60 billion annually by 2025. 1

Dr. David Barrett, the first editor of the World Christian Encyclopedia and a researcher for the Center, has been studying religious financial fraud for more than 20 years.

Barrett and Johnson in the reference book “World Christian Trends” reported, “Probably 80% of all cases are kept private or swept under the carpet, but each year a rash of megathefts (over $1 million each) is uncovered and publicized in the secular media.” 3

Here is a small sample of religious financial scandals from around the world:

Brazil: Bishop Edir Macedo, head of the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, and 9 of his associates have been charged with embezzling more than $2 billion. 4

Canada: Televangelists Ron and Reynold Mainse allegedly recruited investors in a Ponzi scheme. 5

China: A whistleblower goes to jail for speaking out after donations for earthquake victims were stolen. 6

Italy: Police confiscated 23 million euros in a Vatican bank account as part of an investigation into money laundering. 7

Ukraine: Pastor Sunday Adelaja charged with fraud in promoting a business venture to his congregation that lost $100 million. 8

United Kingdom: Church treasurer Derek Klein embezzled funds to pay for a stamp collection. 9

United States: Trent Huddleston, former senior accountant at Oral Roberts University, alleges that more than $1 billion was money laundered annually by members of the Oral Roberts University board. 10

Common Funding Sources of Religious Thieves

The Offering Plate — In 2002 NBC Dateline aired an exposé on Benny Hinn. Mike Estrella, a former Benny Hinn Ministries employee responsible for counting the money given at Hinn’s crusades, said that he observed Gene Polino, Hinn’s CEO, embezzle thousands of dollars from the crusade collection buckets.11 Wikipedia describes this practice as “skimming” which “refers to taking cash ‘off the top’ of the daily receipts of a business …” 12This form of fraud is hard to detect but occassionally the skimmers are caught. A member of St. Ita Catholic Church’s finance committee marked a $100 bill before placing it in the offering plate. The bill disappeared before the church could deposit it in the bank. A priest later acknowledged taking the money. 13

The Ministry Checking Account and Credit Card — Jason Reynolds, the finance director of National City Christian Church, used the church credit card to acquire a Lexus SUV and Land Rover. He also embezzled over $200,000 by writing himself checks. 14

Investments — In 1999 the Baptist Foundation of Arizona filed for bankruptcy after accumulating $530 million in liabilities. Dishonest administrators engaged in a cover-up to hide bad investments. William Crotts and his associates set up more than 90 dummy corporations to hide financial losses and used a ponzi scheme to cover old investments. 15 New Church Ventures was the largest dummy corporation formed by the BFA and held $173 million in debts. New Church Ventures had zero employees and provided no funds for building new churches even though that was its stated objective. 16The Phoenix New Times investigated Jalma Hunsinger, the president of New Church Ventures, and reported on strange insider deals and flipped property fraud. The owner of the Simms Tower offered this $1.9 million building to the BFA for $1 as a tax write-off because the building was contaminated by asbestos. When the Foundation turned down the offer, Hunsinger acquired the building and used it as collateral for a BFA $6.8 million loan. 17

In 1987 filmmaker Harry Guetzlaff‘s production company was failing. Out of desperation he pledged money to televangelist Robert Tilton in hopes for a financial blessing. When Guetzlaff lost his home and approached Tilton’s organization for help, he was denied any assistence. Guetzlaff went to the Trinity Foundation and told his story to Ole Anthony, director of the Foundation. Anthony launched an investigation into Tilton’s direct mail operation and assisted the ABC News program PrimeTime Live on a TV exposé.18

The Trinity Foundation has investigated religious financial fraud for 23 years. Trinity investigators have gone through the trash of televangelists to obtain evidence, worked undercover inside ministry offices, assisted TV news programs and newspapers in developing investigative reports, and operated a phone line for victims of fraud (1-800-229-VICTIM).

The 2004 Internal Revenue Manual of the IRS noted that some churches are being used fraudulently to avoid taxes:

“While desiring to protect churches from undue interference by the IRS, Congress, in enacting IRC § 7611, recognized that an increasing number of taxpayers had used the church form primarily as a tax-avoidance device.” 22

Realtor and banker George Michael of Lake Bluff, Illinois, claimed that he converted his 15,000 square foot lakefront mansion worth $3 million into a church so that his disabled wife would have a place to worship. Michael’s neighbors and local government officials claim the home was not a church and that Michael was attempting to avoid paying more than $70,000 in property taxes. After the Illinois Department of Revenue granted a religious tax exemption, local officials went to court to have the tax exemption removed and won in court on July 6, 2009. 23

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reports, “IRS rules do not bar transactions between a nonprofit group and a business that is owned or controlled by the same person, a practice known as self-dealing.” 24 Self dealing is one of the key methods that fraudulent nonprofit executives use to enrich themselves. Here’s an example of how it works:

A televangelist owns a for-profit company that publishes all of his books and DVDs. Then he sells the books and DVDs at full retail price to his nonprofit rather than at a discount or wholesale price. A televangelist can use this technique to excessively profit from his nonprofit organization.

Pastors Mike and Elaine Millé of White Dove Fellowship in Harvey, Louisiana, purchased property costing $850,000 in August 2007 and sold the property to their church about 90 days later for $1,229,112 for a profit of $379,112. This transaction is not just an example of self dealing, it is also flipped property fraud. After learning of the transaction, the Trinity asked the IRS to investigate the Millés and White Dove Fellowship. 25

Excessive Compensation

Nonprofit organizations in the United States can lose their tax-exempt status and be required to pay excise taxes if employees receive excessive compensation. Yet this rarely happens. When the Charlotte Observer investigated compensation for charity executives, it reported, “Most years, fewer than 10 of the nearly two million U.S. nonprofit leaders are penalized for receiving excessive compensation.” The newspaper also noted that there is “roughly one enforcement agent for every 4,000 tax-exempt groups nationally” so very few nonprofit organizations get audited. 26

The Charlotte Observer reported that televangelist David Cerullo of The Inspiration network “was paid nearly 1.7 million” in 2008. However, the newspaper left out that Cerullo received $331,881 in nontaxable benefits that year. 27

Cerullo has the highest compensation of any religious broadcaster in the United States that files 990 forms with the IRS. Churches are exempt from filing so some megachurch pastors and televangelists are refusing to make their compensation public. Kenneth Copeland doesn’t disclose his income but has bragged that he is a billionaire. 28

In 1921 the United States federal government established a tax exemption for ministerial housing expenses to help poor congregations provide housing to clergy. 29

This exemption is now being abused to provide religious leaders with large tax-exempt housing benefits. When Crystal Cathedral filed for bankruptcy, its financial records revealed “$832,490 in tax-exempt housing allowances given to eight people …” 30

WFAA reported that Ed Young of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, Texas, “was paid $240,000 a year as a parsonage allowance; that’s in addition what sources say is a $1 million yearly pastor’s salary. 31

A lawsuit filed by the Freedom From Religion Foundation could result in this housing allowance being ruled unconstitutional in 2011. 32

Insurance Fraud

The Coalition Against Insurance Fraud produces a Hall of Shame list each year to bring attention to insurance fraud. Pastor Gerald Rayborn was featured on the 2004 list for burning down his church for $800,000. 33

Dennis Jay, the Coalition’s director, reported in Claims Journal that “Rev. Roland Gray helped stage nearly 200 car crashes plus phony slip-and-fall injuries in restaurants and hotels. He recruited parishioners and even his brother, who also was a minister.” 34

After obtaining seven life insurance policies for a blind man, pastor Kevin Pushia hired a hitman for $50,000. Pushia plead guilty. 35

Fraud Among Nonchristian Religious Groups

Rabbi Saul Kassin, head of America’s largest Sephardic synagogue, was arrested in 2009 with four other rabbis for money laundering almost $3 million. 36

Salman Ibrahim established credibility among Chicago Muslims through his involvement in the Shariah Board of America. Ibrahim formed Sunrise Equities Inc., as an Islamic investment company, and paid dividends rather than interest which is prohibit by the Koran. Investors lost $30 million when Ibrahim disappeared from the United States. 37

Religious con artists have been effective at targeting Mormons, costing their victims $1.4 billion. 38

Read in full...https://signposts02.wordpress.com/2013/01/21/an-overview-of-religious-financial-fraud/

#atheist #agnostic #secular humanist #skeptic #Religion #Christianity #religious insanity

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technoqueers · 4 years

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html test 3

2019-11-27

Happy Holigays from TQ! For the first time since sending out the guide v.1, we're going into hibernation for a bit and taking a break! Feel free to email us if you’d like ideas for where to go out, or just check RA! If you'd like to peruse past editions of the guide, they're posted on our Facebook and Twitter pages. Stay in touch, stay warm, and hope to see y’all on the dancefloor in the new year! 💗

How Charlene Incarnate Inherited the Legacy of NYC’s Drag Scene // “That’s what gay people are good at,” she acknowledges, “being audience members and contributing energy.” “We saw the shuttering of every space [queer folks threw] parties in, every space that wasn’t a typical gay dive bar. They’re all gone now.” The artist grieves both her home [Casa Diva] and the community it provided, and the fact that spaces like hers are “even rarer or nonexistent in the neighborhoods that [queer folks are] still occupying.”

“Taking drag out of nightlife is like taking it out of queerness,” Charlene says, adding that drag “happens in the spaces that were left to us.” How Papi Juice Became the Most Important Party in New York City // In 2013, Oscar Nuñez and fellow DJ Adam Rhodes were tired of going to parties catering to white, cisgender gay men — and were thus inspired to create a party that centered queer and transgender people of color. “We are part of a legacy of people who have been doing similar work for years,” Rhodes explains. “Seeing colleagues emerge and get bigger has been amazing. I love that there are more parties that are specifically serving our people. They’re creating spaces where we can be celebrated in all of our beauty and diversity.” Rare photos of New York’s iconic club kids // We were able to set an example for the everyday kid who was coming from the outer boroughs, and maybe it would give them permission to be a little more liberated within their own lives and within their own context. This was very valuable. The real tragedy when they closed all of the mega clubs in New York was that a number of creative people lost job opportunities. That’s why New York really suffered culturally when the nightclub industry was targeted and wiped out because all of a sudden people couldn’t pay their rent or sustain their art practices. That was a really sad moment for New York culturally. Masked balls and gay uprisings: Queer Maps is a guide to 150 years of LGBTQ history // The tool launches at a time of growing concern about the disappearance of queer bars in cities across the country – LA’s last remaining lesbian bar closed in 2017. It honors world-famous institutions alongside little-known haunts that quietly thrived during eras when being gay was criminalized and dangerous. Saatchi exhibits and BBC Four docs: why is 2019 so nostalgic for 80s rave? // These events were communal and often lawless. They were not happening with anyone’s permission but instead were reactions to the prevailing currents of their time. Deller’s film analyses rave’s role in the traumatised aftermath of the miners’ strike. Rave, he proposed, was “a death ritual marking the transition of Britain from an industrial to a service economy”. Techno Titan Carl Craig Commissioned for Sound Project at Dia:Beacon, Five Years in the Making // Craig—part of a fabled lineage for a legacy of techno music that was born and bred in Detroit—said he drew connections between his hometown and Dia:Beacon’s setting in a former factory that had been abandoned for years before it was transformed in an art-world destination. More to the floor: the decade the dancefloor was decolonised // Perhaps partly helped by the global panopticon of the internet, DJs and producers combine everything from the weighty syncopations of footwork to the sparse, percussive rolls of gqom and euphoria of hard trance, until the key compounds are almost unrecognisable – and then add their own distinctive local flavour. The result is a simultaneously global and local sound, and cross-continental collaborations are making it even more cosmopolitan. First Floor #13 – Where Have All the Anthems Gone? // More and more, what matters is contextualizing an artist within a larger socioeconomic and sociopolitical backdrop. Writers and editors obviously still consider the music, but they’re now also thinking about stuff like identity, representation, privilege and structural discrimination, and while that rubs some people the wrong way—particularly the “it should just be about the music” crowd—I don’t see it as a problem. Leave Your Body at the Door: How ketamine became the drug of choice for our dissociated moment. // In the 1980s and ’90s, the growth of rave culture brought it onto New York dance floors and it became a staple of the club kid scene, prompting the first wave of ketamine trend pieces. “Whether it’s a gay all-nighter, or at a hard techno rave patronized by young, white out-of-towners, the picture is invariably the same. Come 3 a.m., the dance floor is littered with those wasted on ketamine,” Muzik Magazine wrote in that same 1998 article. But in 2019, once-fringe elements of rave culture have bled into the mainstream. EDM is elevator music, banker bros and leather-daddies share bumps at Bushwick warehouse events, Silicon Valley has invaded Burning Man, and the wellness world has turned the drugs of the ’60s counterculture into productivity boosters for start-ups. As rave culture has rebranded, ketamine has pivoted with it. Today’s K users are bringing the drug beyond the dance floor: to chilled-out bar nights and tech-world salons, New-Age wellness retreats and quiet nights at home. NYC Votes To Ban Flavored Vaping Products // New York became the first major city in the country to ban all flavored vaping products on Tuesday. The ban is expected to take effect in July. The crackdown also comes amid an outbreak of vape-related lung disease that's killed dozens of people nationwide, including at least two New York City residents. Researchers with the Center for Disease Control have linked the sickness to vitamin E acetate, which is commonly used in black market THC vaping products.

Wednesday

11-6 // parka presents Trust Exercise: Courage @ Market Hotel // The theme of the night is Courage as a reminder of the courage it takes to trust and be vulnerable. We forget that not everyone celebrates the holidays the same way and many have had to sacrifice a lot to move away from home.

10-3 // Thanksgiving eve with justin strauss and juan maclean @ Black Flamingo 10-4 // Marcellus Pittman All Night @ Nowadays // The Detroit don is back to bless us with another marathon set. 10-4 // pure immanence XL @ Bossa // 10-11: Pure Immanence, 11-12:20: Night Doll, 12:20-1: perrX (live), 1-3: quest?onmarc, 3-4: Pure Immanence 10-4 // OD: Yurk \ Skyshaker \ WILHELMINA \ Christy @ 444 Club

Thursday

10-4 // ADAM X & MÆDON @ Bossa 10-4 // Bermuda /\ Thanksgiving night @ Venus in Furs

Friday

10 // ELSEWORLD: Juan Atkins, Noncompliant, Lauren Flax & More @ Elsewhere // 🌎🛸 HALL 🛸🌎 Juan Atkins, Noncompliant, Relaxer (live), Lauren Flax 🌎🛸 THE LOFT 🛸🌎 Cultivated Sound and Friends: Maŕa & Chamberlain Zhang, 夜露四苦4649 [ Haruka Salt & Yuri Mizokami], LOKA $5 off presales

10-4 // Room To Live presents sold and DJ Wawa @ Newtown Radio // sold (Chicago, smartbar, Groove Cafe), DJ Wawa, Room To Live residents 10-4 // Soul 2 Seoul Do Black Friday @ Mood Ring // Tag Team, Back Again, Back by unpopular demand, The original Blasian Super Duo. Chung & Turtle All Night 10-4 // Technofeminism @ Bossa // BORED LORD (LA), AKUA 10-4 // Blazej Malinowski [Live] + Mary Yuzovskaya @ Public Records // Polish-born DJ Blazej Malinowski brings his knack for deep + atmospheric techno to the Sound Room for a live performance. Having released records on Semantica, TGP, SIlent Season + many more, expect a tripped out, mesmerizing set with Monday Off founder, Unter regular, and vinyl-only DJ Mary Yuzovskaya kicking things off and closing the room. 10-4 // Working Women and Martyn @ Nowadays // Nowadays resident DJs Nina, Nicely and Voices, aka Working Women, are teaming up with 3024 boss (and Ostgut Ton, Brainfeeder, Ninja Tune, Hyperdub, Warp and Aus Music alum) Martyn. 10-5 // Stenny, rrao, Only Child, Significant Other Plus Lagasta, Jacques Renault, Boys' Shorts @ Good Room // Stenny is an essential producer in driving forward the sound of Ilian Tape. A versatile, adventurous and tough approach allow for constant forward momentum and a truly unrelenting energy on the dancefloor.

Saturday

10-5 // NEW YORK TRAX x VOITAX @ BASEMENT // In partnership with the forward-thinking, Berlin-based, record label Voitax, New York Trax brings 4 massive live acts for its Basement debut. Makaton LIVE, Swarm Intelligence LIVE, Brenecki LIVE, Deflector LIVE, Cressida, Paàl

10-4 // XXxBORED LORD x NYCxXx @ Mood Ring // ୧༼ಠ益ಠ༽୨ bored lord, pauli cakes, phoneg1rl, nk badtz maru ୧༼ಠ益ಠ༽୨ 10-4 // FIT Siegel / DJ Fire / DJ Healthy @ Bossa 10-4 // Soul Summit Music All Night Long @ Black Flamingo 10-5 // Perel, L&L&L + Lost Soul Enterprises with L. Sangre, R Gamble @ Good Room // Perel will be joined by L&L&L Record Club. Lost Soul Enterprises takes over the Bad Room with party residents L.Sangre and R Gamble. LSE is a party and label focused on mutant sounds past and present: wave, electro, body music, and all things in between. 10-5 // Shelter 002: Timmy Regisford, Francis Harris + Special Guests @ Public Records // Crossing generations of fans in New York, Timmy Regisford joins Public Records music director and partner Francis Harris for a monthly affair in the Sound Room with one question in mind: How deep is your love for House? 11 // Occupy the Disco @ Elsewhere (Zone One) 10-7 // Dee Diggs, Posi-Track and DJ Bone @ Nowadays // For this soiree, HalfMoonBK's Dee Diggs is teaming up with Fermented Frequency's Posi-Track and the inimitable DJ Bone. Good luck leaving before daybreak.

Sunday

3-9 // The Carry Nation All Day @ Nowadays // Nita Aviance and Will Automagic have been working together as the Carry Nation for the better part of a decade. During that time, they've lit up clubs, lofts and warehouses the world over and released music on Nervous, Classic Music Company and W&O Street Tracks.

Techno Queers NY

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Brooklyn, NY 11221

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rolcomictranscriptions · 7 years

Text

Body Work 1 Pages 6 to 10

Page 6

First Panel:

The panel returns to the BMW being removed from the river. The panel focuses on Sahra, Miriam and Peter with the crane and uniformed officer in the background.

Narrator: But I find when talking to senior officers it pays to be circumspect.

Miriam: How exactly did you hear about this?

Peter: Information received, Ma’am.

Second Panel:

The focus pulls in to Miriam and Sahra. Sahra is looking at Miriam out the corner of her eye and Miriam is making a dubious expression at her.

Third Panel:

The is panel focuses on Peter smiling amiably.

Fourth Panel:

The panel focuses on Miriam and Sahra. They both look dubious.

Miriam: You’re not fooling anyone... ...but help yourself.

Fifth Panel:

The panel has a white background and shows three images of Peter. In the first he is stepping in to a white suit. In the second he is stretching fully in the suit with white booties and blue gloves on. The third shows him rearranging his gloves.

Narrator: I’m all for an uncontaminated locus... but do they really have to be such a bugger to get on over your shoes?

Page 7

First Panel:

Three faces in white hoods with white masks on stand in front of a silver car roof with the crane behind them.

Second Panel:

The panel focuses on Peter and the body of the driver. It is the same white man shown on the first page. Peter is lent in close to him.

Peter: Hmmm.

Third Panel:

The panel show the white man’s feet in black brogue shoes. Peter is reaching out to touch one of his socks,

Fourth Panel:

The panel shows Peter opening the boot of the car.

Fifth Panel:

The panel focuses on Miriam and Guleed from behind with Peter in the background still looking in the boot.

Miriam: Do you know what he’s looking for?

Sixth Panel:

The panel focuses on Peter leaning in to the boot of the car.

Narrator: Vestigia. It’s the trace left behind by magic.

Seventh Panel:

The panel shows a person in white suit, presumably Peter, in front of the car bonnet.

Person 1, presumably Peter,: Alright for me to open this?

Person 2: Go ahead!

Eighth Panel:

Panel shows the same person, presumably Peter, looking down into the open car boot.

Narrator: You feel it all the time, only you think it’s your imagination, or a memory, or a stray thought or, if you’re really lucky, the early symptoms of schizophrenia.

Ninth Panel:

The panel shows Peter looking down on the engine.

Narrator: If you want to be a practitioner...

Page 8

The page background is the car engine.

First panel

A hand in blue glove touches the engine block.

Narrator: ..You have to learn the difference.

Second to Fourth Panels

The panels show a swan flying off water.

Fifth Panel.

A old book with a celtic cross on the cover

Narrator: The smell of old leather.

Sixth Panel:

The eyes of a man with a eye patch looking angry.

Narrator: The sound of an angry crowd murmuring

Seventh Panel:

The panel focuses on Miriam’s face.

Miriam: Well?

Page 9

First Panel:

Miriam and Sahra’s head and shoulders are shown.

Miriam: Is is Falcon?

Narrator: Like I said Falcon - Weird Bollocks - Magic.

Second Panel:

Peter’s head and shoulders are shown. He is taking his hood down and has taken off his mask.

Peter: Falcon... ish. Do we know who owned the car.

Third Panel:

A birds eye view of Peter, Miriam, and Sahra standing on the river bank. The is a stream of water running down between Peter and Miriam and Sahra.

Sahra: Euan Ferguson his wallet was in his jacket, so it looks like he’s the victim. He was an Irish national. He also worked as a banker.

Miriam: Well, that will narrow down the suspect pool... ...to most of the citizens of Western Europe.

Fourth Panel:

Peter is taking off the white suit against at white background.

Narrator: This car was recently involved in a criminal damage case.

Fifth Panel:

A birds eye view as in the third panel but now Peter has stepped over the stream and is holding his white suit in his arms.

Sahra: His ex-girlfriend allegedly poured water into his petrol tank.

Peter: Nasty! That won’t have improve his fuel injection.

Sahra: Only he didn’t press charges.

Sixth Panel:

Focuses tightly on Peter, Miriam and Sahra, from behind Peter and Sahra looking at Miriam.

Miriam: Why don’t you go and have a chat with the ex? And take Peter, since he’s here he might as well work for a living.

Page 10

First Panel:

Peter and Sahra are sitting at a table in a coffee shop. in the background a blonde barista is serving a white man coffee and white couple are drinking coffe at another table. Peter is drinking from his mug while Sahra types on a laptop and talks on a mobile.

Narrator: You don’t just rush over to a potential suspects house and take potluck. First you call in for an IIP (Integrated Intelligence Platform) check which looks at everything...

Second Panel:

On a black background the following are shown in the order listed. A UK drivers license for Julie Ann Goring born 11-09-90 in London. Julie’s passport refining her birthplace to Croydon. An Incident report with a photo of Julie next to it. The results of searching for Julie on a normal search engine. Julie is a slim white woman with blonde hair. In her social media photo she is picture with two other slim white women of similar age.

Narrator: ...From the DVLA... ...The UK Border Agency... ...The Police National Computer... ...And of course you look them up in the same place everybody else looks things up.

#Rivers of London #Body Work #Body Work 1 #Peter Grant #Miriam stephanopoulos #sahra guleed #Transcription

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nebris · 7 years

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Unlearning the myth of American innocence

When she was 30, Suzy Hansen left the US for Istanbul – and began to realise that Americans will never understand their own country until they see it as the rest of the world does

My mother recently found piles of my notebooks from when I was a small child that were filled with plans for my future. I was very ambitious. I wrote out what I would do at every age: when I would get married and when I would have kids and when I would open a dance studio.

When I left my small hometown for college, this sort of planning stopped. The experience of going to a radically new place, as college was to me, upended my sense of the world and its possibilities. The same thing happened when I moved to New York after college, and a few years later when I moved to Istanbul. All change is dramatic for provincial people. But the last move was the hardest. In Turkey, the upheaval was far more unsettling: after a while, I began to feel that the entire foundation of my consciousness was a lie.

For all their patriotism, Americans rarely think about how their national identities relate to their personal ones. This indifference is particular to the psychology of white Americans and has a history unique to the US. In recent years, however, this national identity has become more difficult to ignore. Americans can no longer travel in foreign countries without noticing the strange weight we carry with us. In these years after the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the many wars that followed, it has become more difficult to gallivant across the world absorbing its wisdom and resources for one’s own personal use. Americans abroad now do not have the same swagger, the easy, enormous smiles. You no longer want to speak so loud. There is always the vague risk of breaking something.

Some years after I moved to Istanbul, I bought a notebook, and unlike that confident child, I wrote down not plans but a question: who do we become if we don’t become Americans? If we discover that our identity as we understood it had been a myth? I asked it because my years as an American abroad in the 21st century were not a joyous romp of self-discovery and romance. Mine were more of a shattering and a shame, and even now, I still don’t know myself.

I grew up in Wall, a town located by the Jersey Shore, two hours’ drive from New York. Much of it was a landscape of concrete and parking lots, plastic signs and Dunkin’ Donuts. There was no centre, no Main Street, as there was in most of the pleasant beach towns nearby, no tiny old movie theatre or architecture suggesting some sort of history or memory.

Most of my friends’ parents were teachers, nurses, cops or electricians, except for the rare father who worked in “the City”, and a handful of Italian families who did less legal things. My parents were descendants of working-class Danish, Italian and Irish immigrants who had little memory of their European origins, and my extended family ran an inexpensive public golf course, where I worked as a hot-dog girl in the summers. The politics I heard about as a kid had to do with taxes and immigrants, and not much else. Bill Clinton was not popular in my house. (In 2016, most of Wall voted Trump.)

We were all patriotic, but I can’t even conceive of what else we could have been, because our entire experience was domestic, interior, American. We went to church on Sundays, until church time was usurped by soccer games. I don’t remember a strong sense of civic engagement. Instead I had the feeling that people could take things from you if you didn’t stay vigilant. Our goals remained local: homecoming queen, state champs, a scholarship to Trenton State, barbecues in the backyard. The lone Asian kid in our class studied hard and went to Berkeley; the Indian went to Yale. Black people never came to Wall. The world was white, Christian; the world was us.

We did not study world maps, because international geography, as a subject, had been phased out of many state curriculums long before. There was no sense of the US being one country on a planet of many countries. Even the Soviet Union seemed something more like the Death Star – flying overhead, ready to laser us to smithereens – than a country with people in it.

I have TV memories of world events. Even in my mind, they appear on a screen: Oliver North testifying in the Iran-Contra hearings; the scarred, evil-seeming face of Panama’s dictator Manuel Noriega; the movie-like footage, all flashes of light, of the bombing of Baghdad during the first Gulf war. Mostly what I remember of that war in Iraq was singing God Bless the USA on the school bus – I was 13 – wearing little yellow ribbons and becoming teary-eyed as I remembered the video of the song I had seen on MTV.

And I’m proud to be an American Where at least I know I’m free

That “at least” is funny. We were free – at the very least we were that. Everyone else was a chump, because they didn’t even have that obvious thing. Whatever it meant, it was the thing that we had, and no one else did. It was our God-given gift, our superpower.

By the time I got to high school, I knew that communism had gone away, but never learned what communism had actually been (“bad” was enough). Religion, politics, race – they washed over me like troubled things that obviously meant something to someone somewhere, but that had no relationship to me, to Wall, to America. I certainly had no idea that most people in the world felt those connections deeply. History – America’s history, the world’s history – would slip in and out of my consciousness with no resonance whatsoever.

Racism, antisemitism and prejudice, however – those things, on some unconscious level, I must have known. They were expressed in the fear of Asbury Park, which was black; in the resentment of the towns of Marlboro and Deal, which were known as Jewish; in the way Hispanics seemed exotic. Much of the Jersey Shore was segregated as if it were still the 1950s, and so prejudice was expressed through fear of anything outside Wall, anything outside the tiny white world in which we lived. If there was something that saved us from being outwardly racist, it was that in small towns such as Wall, especially for girls, it was important to be nice, or good – this pressure tempered tendencies toward overt cruelty when we were young.

I was lucky that I had a mother who nourished my early-onset book addiction, an older brother with mysteriously acquired progressive politics, and a father who spent his evenings studying obscure golf antiques, lost in the pleasures of the past. In these days of the 1%, I am nostalgic for Wall’s middle-class modesty and its sea-salt Jersey Shore air. But as a teenager, I knew that the only thing that could rescue me from the Wall of fear was a good college.

I ended up at the University of Pennsylvania. The lack of interest in the wider world that I had known in Wall found another expression there, although at Penn the children were wealthy, highly educated and apolitical. During orientation, the business school students were told that they were “the smartest people in the country”, or so I had heard. (Donald Trump Jr was there then, too.) In the late 1990s, everyone at Penn wanted to be an investment banker, and many would go on to help bring down the world economy a decade later. But they were more educated than I was; in American literature class, they had even heard of William Faulkner.

When my best friend from Wall revealed one night that she hadn’t heard of John McEnroe or Jerry Garcia, some boys on the dormitory hall called us ignorant, and white trash, and chastised us for not reading magazines. We were hurt, and surprised; white trash was something we said about other people at the Jersey Shore. My boyfriend from Wall accused me of going to Penn solely to find a boyfriend who drove a Ferrari, and the boys at Penn made fun of the Camaros we drove in high school. Class in America was not something we understood in any structural or intellectual way; class was a constellation of a million little materialistic cultural signifiers, and the insult, loss or acquisition of any of them could transform one’s future entirely.

In the end, I chose to pursue the new life Penn offered me. The kids I met had parents who were doctors or academics; many of them had already even been to Europe! Penn, for all its superficiality, felt one step closer to a larger world.

Still, I cannot remember any of us being conscious of foreign events during my four years of college. There were wars in Eritrea, Nepal, Afghanistan, Kosovo, East Timor, Kashmir. US embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam were bombed. Panama, Nicaragua (I couldn’t keep Latin American countries straight), Osama bin Laden, Clinton bombing Iraq – nope.

I knew “Saddam Hussein”, which had the same evil resonance as “communism”. I remember the movie Wag the Dog, a satire in which American politicians start a fake war with foreign “terrorists” to distract the electorate during a domestic scandal – which at the time was what many accused Clinton of doing when he ordered a missile strike on Afghanistan during the Monica Lewinsky affair. I never thought about Afghanistan. What country was in Wag the Dog? Albania. There was a typical American callousness in our reaction to the country they chose for the movie, an indifference that said, Some bumblefuck country, it doesn’t matter which one they choose.

I was a child of the 90s, the decade when, according to America’s foremost intellectuals, “history” had ended, the US was triumphant, the cold war won by a landslide. The historian David Schmitz has written that, by that time, the idea that America won because of “its values and steadfast adherence to the promotion of liberalism and democracy” was dominating “op-ed pages, popular magazines and the bestseller lists”. These ideas were the ambient noise, the elevator music of my most formative years.

But for me there was also an intervention – a chance experience in the basement of Penn’s library. I came across a line in a book in which a historian argued that, long ago, during the slavery era, black people and white people had defined their identities in opposition to each other. The revelation to me was not that black people had conceived of their identities in response to ours, but that our white identities had been composed in conscious objection to theirs. I’d had no idea that we had ever had to define our identities at all, because to me, white Americans were born fully formed, completely detached from any sort of complicated past. Even now, I can remember that shiver of recognition that only comes when you learn something that expands, just a tiny bit, your sense of reality. What made me angry was that this revelation was something about who I was. How much more did I not know about myself?

It was because of this text that I picked up the books of James Baldwin, who gave me the sense of meeting someone who knew me better, and with a far more sophisticated critical arsenal than I had myself. There was this line:

But I have always been struck, in America, by an emotional poverty so bottomless, and a terror of human life, of human touch, so deep, that virtually no American appears able to achieve any viable, organic connection between his public stance and his private life.

And this one:

All of the western nations have been caught in a lie, the lie of their pretended humanism; this means that their history has no moral justification, and that the west has no moral authority.

And this one:

White Americans are probably the sickest and certainly the most dangerous people, of any colour, to be found in the world today.

I know why this came as a shock to me then, at the age of 22, and it wasn’t necessarily because he said I was sick, though that was part of it. It was because he kept calling me that thing: “white American”. In my reaction I justified his accusation. I knew I was white, and I knew I was American, but it was not what I understood to be my identity. For me, self-definition was about gender, personality, religion, education, dreams. I only thought about finding myself, becoming myself, discovering myself – and this, I hadn’t known, was the most white American thing of all.

I still did not think about my place in the larger world, or that perhaps an entire history – the history of white Americans – had something to do with who I was. My lack of consciousness allowed me to believe I was innocent, or that white American was not an identity like Muslim or Turk.

Of this indifference, Baldwin wrote: “White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded.”

Young white Americans of course go through pain, insecurity and heartache. But it is very, very rare that young white Americans come across someone who tells them in harsh, unforgiving terms that they might be merely the easy winners of an ugly game, and indeed that because of their ignorance and misused power, they might be the losers within a greater moral universe.

In 2007, after I had worked for six years as a journalist in New York, I won a writing fellowship that would send me to Turkey for two years. I had applied for it on a whim. No part of me expected to win the thing. Even as my friends wished me congratulations, I detected a look of concern on their faces, as if I was crazy to leave all this, as if 29 was a little too late to be finding myself. I had never even been to Turkey before.

In the weeks before my departure, I spent hours explaining Turkey’s international relevance to my bored loved ones, no doubt deploying the cliche that Istanbul was the bridge between east and west. I told everyone that I chose Turkey because I wanted to learn about the Islamic world. The secret reason I wanted to go was that Baldwin had lived in Istanbul in the 1960s, on and off, for almost a decade. I had seen a documentary about Baldwin that said he felt more comfortable as a black, gay man in Istanbul than in Paris or New York.

When I heard that, it made so little sense to me, sitting in my Brooklyn apartment, that a space opened in the universe. I couldn’t believe that New York could be more illiberal than a place such as Turkey, because I couldn’t conceive of how prejudiced New York and Paris had been in that era; and because I thought that as you went east, life degraded into the past, the opposite of progress. The idea of Baldwin in Turkey somehow placed America’s race problem, and America itself, in a mysterious and tantalising international context. I took a chance that Istanbul might be the place where the secret workings of history would be revealed.

In Turkey and elsewhere, in fact, I would feel an almost physical sensation of intellectual and emotional discomfort, while trying to grasp a reality of which I had no historical or cultural understanding. I would go, as a journalist, to write a story about Turkey or Greece or Egypt or Afghanistan, and inevitably someone would tell me some part of our shared history – theirs with America – of which I knew nothing. If I didn’t know this history, then what kind of story did I plan to tell?

My learning process abroad was threefold: I was learning about foreign countries; I was learning about America’s role in the world; and I was also slowly understanding my own psychology, temperament and prejudices. No matter how well I knew the predatory aspects of capitalism, I still perceived Turkey’s and Greece’s economic advances as progress, a kind of maturation. No matter how deeply I understood the US’s manipulation of Egypt for its own foreign-policy aims, I had never considered – and could not grasp – how American policies really affected the lives of individual Egyptians, beyond engendering resentment and anti-Americanism. No matter how much I believed that no American was well-equipped for nation-building, I thought I could see good intentions on the part of the Americans in Afghanistan. I would never have admitted it, or thought to say it, but looking back, I know that deep in my consciousness I thought that America was at the end of some evolutionary spectrum of civilisation, and everyone else was trying to catch up.

American exceptionalism did not only define the US as a special nation among lesser nations; it also demanded that all Americans believe they, too, were somehow superior to others. How could I, as an American, understand a foreign people, when unconsciously I did not extend the most basic faith to other people that I extended to myself? This was a limitation that was beyond racism, beyond prejudice and beyond ignorance. This was a kind of nationalism so insidious that I had not known to call it nationalism; this was a self-delusion so complete that I could not see where it began and ended, could not root it out, could not destroy it.

In my first few months in Istanbul, I lived a formless kind of existence, days dissolving into the nights. I had no office to go to, no job to keep, and I was 30 years old, an age at which people either choose to grow up or remain stuck in the exploratory, idle phase of late-late youth. Starting all over again in a foreign country – making friends, learning a new language, trying to find your way through a city – meant almost certainly choosing the latter. I spent many nights out until the wee hours – such as the evening I drank beer with a young Turkish man named Emre, who had attended college with a friend of mine from the US.

A friend had told me that Emre was one of the most brilliant people he had ever met. As the evening passed, I was gaining a lot from his analysis of Turkish politics, especially when I asked him whether he voted for Erdoğan’s Justice and Development party (AKP), and he spat back, outraged, “Did you vote for George W Bush?” Until that point I had not realised the two might be equivalent.

Then, three beers in, Emre mentioned that the US had planned the September 11 attacks. I had heard this before. Conspiracy theories were common in Turkey; for example, when the military claimed that the PKK, the Kurdish militant group, had attacked a police station, some Turks believed the military itself had done it; they believed it even in cases where Turkish civilians had died. In other words, the idea was that rightwing forces, such as the military, bombed neutral targets, or even rightwing targets, so they could then blame it on the leftwing groups, such as the PKK. To Turks, bombing one’s own country seemed like a real possibility.

“Come on, you don’t believe that,” I said.

“Why not?” he snapped. “I do.”

“But it’s a conspiracy theory.”

He laughed. “Americans always dismiss these things as conspiracy theories. It’s the rest of the world who have had to deal with your conspiracies.”

I ignored him. “I guess I have faith in American journalism,” I said. “Someone else would have figured this out if it were true.”

He smiled. “I’m sorry, there’s no way they didn’t have something to do with it. And now this war?” he said, referring to the war in Iraq. “It’s impossible that the United States couldn’t stop such a thing, and impossible that the Muslims could pull it off.”

Some weeks later, a bomb went off in the Istanbul neighborhood of Güngören. A second bomb exploded out of a garbage bin nearby after 10pm, killing 17 people and injuring 150. No one knew who did it. All that week, Turks debated: was it al-Qaida? The PKK? The DHKP/C, a radical leftist group? Or maybe: the deep state?

The deep state – a system of mafia-like paramilitary organisations operating outside of the law, sometimes at the behest of the official military – was a whole other story. Turks explained that the deep state had been formed during the cold war as a way of countering communism, and then mutated into a force for destroying all threats to the Turkish state. The power that some Turks attributed to this entity sometimes strained credulity. But the point was that Turks had been living for years with the idea that some secret force controlled the fate of their nation.

In fact, elements of the deep state were rumoured to have had ties to the CIA during the cold war, and though that too smacked of a conspiracy theory, this was the reality that Turkish people lived in. The sheer number of international interventions the US launched in those decades is astonishing, especially those during years when American power was considered comparatively innocent. There were the successful assassinations: Patrice Lumumba, prime minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, in 1961; General Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, also in 1961; Ngo Dinh Diem, president of South Vietnam, in 1963. There were the unsuccessful assassinations: Castro, Castro, and Castro. There were the much hoped-for assassinations: Nasser, Nasser, Nasser. And, of course, US-sponsored, -supported or -staged regime changes: Iran, Guatemala, Iraq, Congo, Syria, Dominican Republic, South Vietnam, Indonesia, Brazil, Chile, Bolivia, Uruguay and Argentina. The Americans trained or supported secret police forces everywhere from Cambodia to Colombia, the Philippines to Peru, Iran to Vietnam. Many Turks believed that the US at least encouraged the 1971 and 1980 military coups in Turkey, though I could find little about these events in any conventional histories anywhere.

But what I could see was that the effects of such meddling were comparable to those of September 11 – just as huge, life-changing and disruptive to the country and to people’s lives. Perhaps Emre did not believe that September 11 was a straightforward affair of evidence and proof because his experience – his reality – taught him that very rarely were any of these surreally monumental events easily explainable. I did not think Emre’s theory about the attacks was plausible. But I began to wonder whether there was much difference between a foreigner’s paranoia that the Americans planned September 11 and the Americans’ paranoia that the whole world should pay for September 11 with an endless global war on terror.

The next time a Turk told me she believed the US had bombed itself on September 11 (I heard this with some regularity; this time it was from a young student at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University), I repeated my claim about believing in the integrity of American journalism. She replied, a bit sheepishly, “Well, right, we can’t trust our journalism. We can’t take that for granted.”

The words “take that for granted” gave me pause. Having lived in Turkey for more than a year, witnessing how nationalistic propaganda had inspired people’s views of the world and of themselves, I wondered from where the belief in our objectivity and rigour in journalism came. Why would Americans be objective and everyone else subjective?

I thought that because Turkey had poorly functioning institutions – they didn’t have a reliable justice system, as compared to an American system I believed to be functional – it often felt as if there was no truth. Turks were always sceptical of official histories, and blithely dismissive of the government’s line. But was it rather that the Turks, with their beautiful scepticism, were actually just less nationalistic than me?

American exceptionalism had declared my country unique in the world, the one truly free and modern country, and instead of ever considering that that exceptionalism was no different from any other country’s nationalistic propaganda, I had internalised this belief. Wasn’t that indeed what successful propaganda was supposed to do? I had not questioned the institution of American journalism outside of the standards it set for itself – which, after all, was the only way I would discern its flaws and prejudices; instead, I accepted those standards as the best standards any country could possibly have.

By the end of my first year abroad, I read US newspapers differently. I could see how alienating they were to foreigners, the way articles spoke always from a position of American power, treating foreign countries as if they were America’s misbehaving children. I listened to my compatriots with critical ears: the way our discussion of foreign policy had become infused since September 11 with these officious, official words, bureaucratic corporate military language: collateral damage, imminent threat, freedom, freedom, freedom.

Even so, I was conscious that if I had long ago succumbed to the pathology of American nationalism, I wouldn’t know it – even if I understood the history of injustice in America, even if I was furious about the invasion of Iraq. I was a white American. I still had this fundamental faith in my country in a way that suddenly, in comparison to the Turks, made me feel immature and naive.

I came to notice that a community of activists and intellectuals in Turkey – the liberal ones – were indeed questioning what “Turkishness” meant in new ways. Many of them had been brainwashed in their schools about their own history; about Atatürk, Turkey’s first president; about the supposed evil of the Armenians and the Kurds and the Arabs; about the fragility of their borders and the rapaciousness of all outsiders; and about the historic and eternal goodness of the Turkish republic.

“It is different in the United States,” I once said, not entirely realising what I was saying until the words came out. I had never been called upon to explain this. “We are told it is the greatest country on earth. The thing is, we will never reconsider that narrative the way you are doing just now, because to us, that isn’t propaganda, that is truth. And to us, that isn’t nationalism, it’s patriotism. And the thing is, we will never question any of it because at the same time, all we are being told is how free-thinking we are, that we are free. So we don’t know there is anything wrong in believing our country is the greatest on earth. The whole thing sort of convinces you that a collective consciousness in the world came to that very conclusion.”

“Wow,” a friend once replied. “How strange. That is a very quiet kind of fascism, isn’t it?

It was a quiet kind of fascism that would mean I would always see Turkey as beneath the country I came from, and also that would mean I believed my uniquely benevolent country to have uniquely benevolent intentions towards the peoples of the world.

During that night of conspiracy theories, Emre had alleged, as foreigners often did, that I was a spy. The information that I was collecting as a journalist, Emre said, was really being used for something else. As an American emissary in the wider world, writing about foreigners, governments, economies partaking in some larger system and scheme of things, I was an agent somehow. Emre lived in the American world as a foreigner, as someone less powerful, as someone for whom one newspaper article could mean war, or one misplaced opinion could mean an intervention by the International Monetary Fund. My attitude, my prejudice, my lack of generosity could be entirely false, inaccurate or damaging, but would be taken for truth by the newspapers and magazines I wrote for, thus shaping perceptions of Turkey for ever.

Years later, an American journalist told me he loved working for a major newspaper because the White House read it, because he could “influence policy”. Emre had told me how likely it was I would screw this up. He was saying to me: first, spy, do no harm.

Adapted from Notes on a Foreign Country: An American Abroad in a Post-American World by Suzy Hansen, which will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on 15 August

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/aug/08/unlearning-the-myth-of-american-innocence?CMP=share_btn_fb

@catcomaprada @evaannapaula @sissyhiyah

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itunesbooks · 5 years

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The Vatican Exposed - Paul L. Williams

The Vatican Exposed Money, Murder, and the Mafia Paul L. Williams Genre: Christianity Price: $11.99 Publish Date: May 1, 2003 Publisher: Prometheus Books Seller: Penguin Random House LLC Over 50 billion dollars in securities. Gold reserves that exceed those of industrialized nations. Real estate holdings that equal the total area of many countries. Opulent palaces containing the world's greatest art treasures. These are some of the riches of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet in 1929 the Vatican was destitute. Pope Pius XI, living in a damaged, leaky, pigeon-infested Lateran Palace, could hear rats scurrying through the walls, and he worried about how he would pay for even basic repairs to unclog the overburdened sewer lines and update the antiquated heating system. How did the Church manage in less than seventy-five years such an incredible reversal of fortune? The story here told by Church historian Paul L. Williams is intriguing, shocking, and outrageous. The turnaround began on February 11, 1929, with the signing of the Lateran Treaty between the Vatican and fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Through this deal Mussolini gained the support of the staunchly Catholic Italian populace, who at the time followed the lead of the Church. In return, the Church received, among other benefits, a payment of $90 million, sovereign status for the Vatican, tax-free property rights, and guaranteed salaries for all priests throughout the country from the Italian government. With the stroke of a pen the pope had solved the Vatican's budgetary woes practically overnight, yet he also put a great religious institution in league with some of the darkest forces of the 20th century. Based on his years of experience as a consultant for the FBI, Williams produces explosive and never-before published evidence of the Church's morally questionable financial dealings with sinister organizations over seven decades through today. He examines the means by which the Vatican accrued enormous wealth during the Great Depression by investing in Mussolini's government, the connection between Nazi gold and the Vatican Bank, the vast range of Church holdings in the postwar boom period, Paul VI's appointment of Mafia chieftain Michele Sindona as the Vatican banker, a billion-dollar counterfeit stock fraud uncovered by Interpol and the FBI, the "Ambrosiano Affair" called "the greatest financial scandal of the 20th Century" by the New York Times, the mysterious death of John Paul I, profits from an international drug ring operating out of Gdansk, Poland, and revelations about current dealings. For both Catholics and non-Catholics this troubling expose of corruption in one of the most revered religious institutions in the world will serve as an urgent call for reform. http://dlvr.it/R5x97S

#Christianity

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traceyropper-blog · 5 years

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America's Safest Affordable Cities … That Won't Put You to Sleep

mihailomilovanovic/iStock

Buying a home these days is a high-stakes, need-to-have/nice-to-have equation. You need a home within an hour's drive of work; it would be nice to have one that's in walkable distance. You need a full-size kitchen with room for your five-person brood; it would be nice to have a chef's kitchen with La Cornue Grand Palais range, Meneghini Arredamenti fridge, and, heck, a Mugnaini wood-fired pizza oven. You need at least 2.5 bathrooms; it would be nice to have a master en suite spa with a touchscreen-controlled smart bidet. Dream the dream, my friends!

So what's the neediest of all need-to-haves? You need to find a safe place to live where you can still afford a great home. And wouldn't it be nice if there were even fun stuff to do after work and on weekends? Yes, indeed.

Realtor.com set out to find these seductive strongholds where you can have it all. And we're not talking about the boonies: We zeroed in on metropolitan areas, which include cities and the surrounding suburbs. (Note: Cities often have higher crime rates than their less-populated surroundings.)

Research-and common sense-indicates that when crime goes up, property values go down. Meanwhile, home buyers will pay more to live in locations with lower rates of violent crime, according to a 2015 Auburn University study. It doesn't hurt that these areas typically also have top public schools.

“When homeowners think about the biggest investment of their life, top of mind is how safe an area would be to live in and raise a family,” says Rick Palacios Jr., director of research at John Burns Real Estate Consulting.

They also want to make sure that their investment appreciates over time, which it typically won't do as much in areas with growing crime. “High crime rates unnerve potential home buyers,” he says. Um, yeah.

The good news: Crime has declined sharply since the early '90s. Violent offenses, which include homicide, assault, and robbery, plummeted 49% from 1993 to 2017, according to FBI data. This explains why some of our safest places were once known for riots and rampant car thefts before they rebounded. (The downside: Gentrification is leading to some longtime residents being priced out.)

The places that made our affordable safe harbor ranking are a mix of smaller metros that never really struggled with high crime, and cities once riddled with problems that have successfully pulled off a turnaround. Our list is concentrated on resurgent Midwest, Southern, and Rust Belt cities. No Western metros were included because home prices are simply too high.

We analyzed crime data provided by NeighborhoodScout, a website that tracks community data, focusing on America's 150 largest metros. We eliminated those with high rates of violent or property crime, and with home prices above the (roughly) $300,000 national median. Next, we zeroed in on cities with great extracurriculars-running the gamut from nightlife, to kayaking, to great indie bookstores-as tracked on Yelp.com.**

Safety, affordability, and fun! Yep, they can coexist. Let's take a tour.

Safest affordable metros

Tony Frenzel

1. Grand Rapids, MI

Median home list rice: $280,000 Total crime rate: 18.38%

Luxury condo building in Grand Rapids, MI

realtor.com

As some Michigan cities, including Flint and Detroit, continue to face hard times, Grand Rapids is booming. The very low 2.5% metro unemployment rate is reason No. 1 for the upswing.

“The economy is strong here, with lots of jobs at different levels,” says Trisha Cornelius, a local real estate agent with Keller Williams. “The neighborhoods are affordable and clean. There isn't much in the way of urban blight.”

Indeed, only 2.2% of homes here are vacant, compared with 9.6% in Flint and 6.5% in Detroit, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Meanwhile, the metro has been attracting younger residents lured by those plentiful gigs, the affordable housing, and the influx of craft breweries in the area.

“A 25-year-old can actually afford to buy a home here,” Cornelius says. They're snagging luxury, one-bedroom condos priced at around $200,000 like this converted, historic school building spanning two city blocks.

But bargain prices won't last forever. While the national housing market is starting to slow, realtor.com projects Grand Rapids will be the second-hottest market in 2019, with a 8.2% projected sales price growth.

Local R&R: Buckle your blades on for ice-skating in Rosa Parks Circle.

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2. Pittsburgh, PA

Median home list price: $173,000 Total crime rate: 18.44%

Home in Brighton Heights neighborhood of Pittsburgh, PA

realtor.com

As Pittsburgh's steel mills shuttered and residents pulled up stakes, many neighborhoods fell into a crime-ridden, downward spiral. But that feels like ancient history these days, as the city continues to reinvent itself as a thriving corporate center for startups and tech biggies like Uber and Google alike. Now those once-hurting neighborhoods, like Brighton Heights, are seeing their fortunes rise and rise, with an influx of new workers moving in.

Brighton Heights “is a neighborhood in transition. … When I was growing up in the '90s, it was certainly not a place for a first-time home buyer; but that's changed,” says local restate agent Bobby West of Coldwell Banker.

Young professionals and home flippers are buying up many of the community's Craftsman-style homes built in the early 1900s for under $150,000.

The number of violent crimes plummeted 24.8% from 2000 to 2014, according to the most recent FBI data. While crime is low in the metro, there are still some problem areas within the city limits. And residents are still hurting from last October's tragic shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue, a hate crime that left 11 dead.

Local R&R: Fixate on flora fantasies at the Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens.

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3. Port St. Lucie, FL

Median home list price: $285,100 Total crime rate: 19.16%

Four-bedroom home in Port St. Lucie, FL

realtor.com

About two hours north of Miami, Port St. Lucie is a quiet Atlantic beach town, long a magnet for retirees.

“Here, it's just a really calm mix of people, mostly families and retirees,” says Richard L. McKinney, a real estate agent at Atlantic Shores Realty Expertise. “People are just coming here to live and commute to work, so we don't get all that ruckus that comes with tourism” in other Florida ocean areas.

This beach town is made up of lots of new single-home and condo communities. And prices are still reasonable, leading realtor.com to name Port St. Lucie one of the most affordable beach towns in June. Buyers can find condos just minutes from the beach for $150,000, says McKinney.

Local R&R: Gaze or gape at gators at the Savannas Preserve State Park.

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4. El Paso, TX

Median home list price: $175,800 Total crime rate: 20.48%

El Paso, TX, ranch house

realtor.com

A combination of tougher police action and changing demographics has led to substantial decline in violent crime in this once-dicey metro on the U.S.-Mexico border. In the early '90s, El Paso often had more than 50 homicides a year. But from 2012 to 2016, the city averaged fewer than 18 homicides, according to the city's police department. That's good news for locals, and for long-term property values.

Finding a single-story, brick ranch under $200,000 in El Paso is a breeze. In fact, last year realtor.com named El Paso one of the best markets for middle-class home buyers. Developer-friendly zoning laws and low land costs make building homes here cheaper than in other parts of the country.

Local R&R: Manage your mountain mania! Start climbing at Franklin Mountains State Park.

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5. Syracuse, NY

Median home list price: $160,000 Total crime rate: 21.4%

Condos in Syracuse, NY

realtor.com

In the early 2000s, former industrial center Syracuse began pumping millions into renovating crime-ridden communities near downtown to entice college students to live there after graduation, instead of scramming as soon as possible. Crime dropped so much that everyone from young professionals to empty nesters bought up remodeled condos there.

“Over a decade, downtown Syracuse went from being unsafe to the hottest spot to live” in the area, says Amber Spain-Mosher, a real estate agent at Re/Max in Syracuse. “The residential growth downtown is unlike anything we've seen before. And it shows no sign of slowing down.”

Homes in nearby urban neighborhoods have also received a boost. As the city became safer, more people swooped in and bought up fixer-uppers just above the $100,000 price range. That's played a role in home prices rising 9.6% over the past year.

Local R&R: The 13-day Great New York State Fair attracts nearly a million visitors annually.

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6. Hartford, CT

Median home list price: $260,000 Total crime rate: 21.97%

Three-bedroom home in Parkville in Hartford, CT

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Hartford is a charming town with stately, older homes and rich history dating to Colonial America. And it's packed with affluent and highly educated homeowners who live in the burbs.

But that's not the only reason crime is low here. Several neighborhoods in the city proper, which has a higher crime rate than the metro, have seen an increase in development. Investors are setting their sights on areas such as Parkville, a once-dicey neighborhood that now has a burgeoning startup and art scene. They're flipping 100-year-old multifamily homes, then selling or renting them out to Connecticut College grads.

“All the work to make downtown safer is paying dividends: Standard old office buildings are being converted into nice apartments,” says David Griggs, president and CEO of the MetroHartford Alliance, Hartford's economic development arm

Local R&R: Huckleberry hysteria! Go nuts visiting the Mark Twain House, where the American Master lived from 1874 to 1891.

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7. Fayetteville, AR

Median home list price: $272,600 Total crime rate: 23.21%

Two-bedroom home in Fayetteville, AR

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Retail giant Walmart has its headquarters in Bentonville, in the Fayetteville metro, and that's long ensured high property values and low crime. And as the company continues to expand, so does the real estate market here.

“We don't have the wrong side of the tracks here,” says Jill Bell, a local real estate agent at Crye-Leike. “[Even neighborhoods like] far south Fayetteville that had a bad reputation in the past has been revitalized.”

Local R&R: Get your theater on! See nationally acclaimed productions in an intimate setting at TheatreSquared.

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8. Springfield, MA

Median home list price: $244,950 Total crime rate: 26.14%

This four-bedroom Cape Cod in Springfield, MA, is listed for $249,900.

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Massachusetts has the top public schools in the nation, according to U.S. News & World Report. It's no wonder buying a home in the state isn't cheap-the median list price is $450,000. That's where the Springfield metro sets itself apart: Folks can score reasonably priced homes, enroll their children in high-performing schools, and live in a low-crime area.

Communities such as East Longmeadow, home to East Longmeadow High School, which boasts a 98% graduation rate, are highly sought-after. And buyers can find many four-bedroom, Cape Cod–style homes priced around $250,000.

But crime within the Springfield city limits is higher, with neighborhoods such as McKnight and Forest Park all having some issues. In Forest Park, the vehicle theft rate is three times higher than the statewide rate-so be cautious.

Local R&R: Ramp up your roller-coaster love with a trip to Six Flags New England.

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9. Cincinnati, OH

Median home list price: $233,600 Total crime rate: 26.26%

Renovated condos in Over-the-Rhine in Cincinnati, OH

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Cincinnati doesn't exactly spring to mind when most folks think about low crime. In 2001, the city burst onto the national consciousness when riots broke out after the police shooting of an unarmed 19-year-old black man. In the years that followed, many avoided the city.

But in recent years, things have improved. The Over-the-Rhine neighborhood, where much of the rioting took place, might be the city's biggest success story. Many of the three-story brick buildings, built 150 years ago by German immigrants, have been remodeled and turned into condos that sometimes sell for over $500,000. And OTR, as it's known by the locals, is among the region's top spots to be on a Saturday night with bars and nightclubs.

The Cincinnati metro is packed with booming, low-crime suburbs with good schools and new, sprawling subdivisions, including some just across the Ohio River and in Warren County, one of the state's fastest-growing counties.

Local R&R: Chow down on Cincinnati-style chili-with spaghetti and copious amounts of cheese, natch.

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10. Fort Wayne, IN

Median home list price: $180,000 Total crime rate: 26.62%

Buyers can snag four-bedroom homes in Fort Wayne, IN, for $150,000.

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These days, the streets of downtown Fort Wayne are lined with new businesses, restaurants, and moving trucks. But this Midwestern destination for young professionals wasn't always like this.

“A decade ago, Fort Wayne's downtown wasn't the best place after dark,” says Ryan Dollens, a real estate agent and appraiser with Keller Williams Realty in Fort Wayne. “There was nothing going on-it was eerie.”

Things started to change in 2010, when the city spent $30 million on Parkview Field, now home to Fort Wayne's popular minor-league team, the TinCaps. Then the city started to renovate Harrison Square in downtown, which included building new apartment complexes, a hotel, and a park with amphitheater. The efforts paid off.

“By adding all these businesses, restaurants, and apartments, they've really been able to clean up the streets,” Dollens says.

Buyers have responded, with prices soaring 11.1% over the past 12 months. Last July, it was ranked second on realtor.com's hottest markets list. But despite the hype, buyers can still snag three- to four-bedroom, two-story homes just outside downtown for under $200,000.

Local R&R: Soar with the butterflies and other wildlife at the Eagle Marsh Nature Preserve.

* A metropolitan statistical area is a designation that includes the urban core of a city and the surrounding smaller towns and cities. We limited our rankings to just one metro per state to ensure some geographic diversity.

** We used Yelp.com for the number of per capita nightlife venues, highly rated restaurants, kayaking/rafting/scuba diving opportunities, gyms, libraries, bookstores, and campgrounds.

Allison Underhill contributed to this report.

The post America's Safest Affordable Cities … That Won't Put You to Sleep appeared first on Real Estate News & Insights | realtor.com®.

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