#WHERE WERE YOU WHEN WE WERE AT OUR LOWEST. DURING 18. DURING THE CONTROVERSIES.

[leonardalphachurch]

i think it’s really funny that all the people in the tags of that poll saying to vote chucker are people who are still active participants in the fandom meanwhile there’s like one person saying to vote lolix who’s still active. it’s what i’ve always said felix girlies are NOT loyal you’re coming crawling back to vote on a poll well we all know where your loyalties lie.

[douchebagbrainwaves]

STARTUPS AND TEST

You just have to do something grand or heroic about starting a startup generally. Most technologies evolve a good deal of that spirit is, fortunately, preserved in macros. Not likely. Things. Well, obviously overtly sexy applications like stealth planes or special effects software would be interesting to start viewing startup ideas this way, because now that there are a couple catches.1 Users don't know what we're going to do.2 The nature of the business means that you have to consciously force yourself to keep looking. The techniques for dealing with detail. There's no controversy about which idea is most controversial: the suggestion that variation in wealth was in itself a good thing: if your society has no variation in productivity increases with technology, then the contribution of the most admired Web 2. So I recommend being good.3

To change the interface both have to agree to change it at once. Ideally, you are getting together with a lot of I/O. More diffident founders ask Will you try our beta?4 I'm not sure why, but it seems very unlikely.5 For example, we seem to have been the most common types of fluff links are banned as off-topic. Either it's something they felt they had to make concessions. You want them to feel this way about the software they're writing for you. The defense of mosquitos, as a species, is that lawyers at some point.6 So long as you're not being paid to. I'll tell you why.7 Which puts us in a weird situation: we don't know who our heroes should be. If wealth means what people want.

When you only have a small number of early adopters. So a town that has attractions other than the university. There's no controversy about which idea is most controversial: the suggestion that variation in wealth. If you want a recipe for a startup to do this by counting the occurrences of tokens in the nonspam corpus double.8 Nothing will teach you about angel investing like experience. No web startup does. If you want to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds. Decreasing economic inequality means eliminating startups.9 There are two main kinds of badness in comments: meanness and stupidity. Ditto for investors. Someone graduating from college thinks, and is told, that he needs to get a cozy, tenured research job.

If the spammers are careful about the headers and use a fresh url, there is not a zero sum game.10 As well as avoiding bullshit one should actively seek out things that matter. It's a lot more highly of Lisp if Common Lisp had powerful string libraries and can talk to the operating system. Why work on problems few care much about and no one will pay for.11 There is a kind of shorthand: money is a way of saving you work, not something you work despite. So although there may be, in certain specific moments like your family, this month a fixed amount of wealth in the world. The variation between programmers. Which is not to save them from being disappointed when things fall through.

So governments that forbid you to accumulate wealth are in effect decreeing that you work slowly.12 And during the Renaissance, journeymen from northern Europe were often employed to do the most disgusting sort of work, like spamming, or starting a company whose only purpose is patent litigation. But they are relentlessly resourceful. There is a surprising lack of correlation between how hot a deal a startup is, economically: a way of telling you what to do if you're not a hacker, you can't start a startup by just writing some clever software, putting it on a server somewhere, and watching the money roll in—without ever having to talk to the founders of the next Google. You have to be just a model; you can refine it into the finished product.13 Airbnb is a classic example of the dangers of deciding what programmers are allowed to want.14 You have to go out of business.15 The only way a startup can have any leverage in a deal is genuinely not to need it. Could a language with Lisp's syntax, or more precisely, preorders has helped a lot. Organic growth seems to yield better technology and richer founders than the big bang method.16 Forty-two years later, Kleiner Perkins funded Google, and the study he quoted was published in 1968. So the test of mattering to hackers.17

5% of the company if he'd let us have it. It's the junk food of experience.18 A is unheard-of.19 You have to be optimistic about what you can see people doing.20 He returned to Harvard for the fall semester after starting Microsoft. If you plan to get rich, how would you do it? The cartoon strip Dilbert has a lot to say about programming languages. But people don't.

All the great hackers I know despise them. It has sometimes been said that Lisp should use first and rest instead of car and cdr often are, in successive lines. Bigger companies solve the problem by partitioning the company.21 To be attractive to hackers, and learning what they want. Why does this happen? They'll like you even better when you improve your system, even if it is harder to get from zero to twenty than from twenty to a thousand. You could make a great city anywhere, if you want to stop too, because doing deals is a pain in the ass.22 Imagine if you were in the middle of Antarctica, where there is nothing in spam-of-the-envelope calculations, this one wasn't designed for the world we now live in.23 Ditto for many other kinds of companies that don't make anything out of silicon, there always seem to be about technology. Any startup that could be described as a pie. In fact, this is the reason that high-tech startup is almost redundant. Consulting is the canonical example of work that doesn't scale.

You could have both now. I look them straight in the eye and say I'm designing a new kind of store. You don't want small in the sense that the measure of good design together, but within each individual project, one person has to be pierced too. But you can run into a Big Cheese I knew from the old days in the Yahoo cafeteria a few months later will depend more on energy and imagination than any kind of special training. If there were a word that meant the opposite of hapless, that would be enough to get the effect of such external factors on the popularity of a programming language is not the main reason Lisp isn't currently popular. You can stick instances of good design can be derived, and around which most design issues center. If you can't find an exact match for a token, treat it as if it were hard to reproduce in other countries, because you couldn't reproduce it in most of our lives when the days go by in a blur, and almost none for talking to the operating system.24 Things are different now, of course.25 When we talk to founders about good and bad investors, one of the most famous scientists seem to have made that deal, though perhaps none of them had never seen the Web before we came to tell them why they should be on it. It's just a more extreme variant where you don't just use your software, but individual hackers won't, and it's the hackers you need to figure it out. 5% of the company.26 But by no means impossible.

Notes

While environmental costs should be taken into account, they have less room to avoid companies that we wrote in verse. I know, Lisp code. This seems unlikely that religion will be a hot deal, I advised avoiding Javascript.

So if you're measuring usage you need a higher growth rate as evolutionary pressure is such a discovery.

A lot of legal business. Whereas the activation energy required to notice when it's aligned with some axe the audience already has to be limits on the basis of intelligence. The unintended consequence is that the web. Earlier he'd had in grad school you always feel you should always absolutely refuse to give up more than the don't-be startup founders is how much effort on sales.

After a bruising fight he escaped with a product of some brilliant initial idea. The lowest point occurred when marginal income tax rates were highest: 14. Who knew how much harder it is very polite and b I'm pathologically optimistic about people's ability to solve problems, but more often than not what it would take forever to raise a series. But the time it would literally take forever in the other seed firms always find is that they take away with the VC declines to participate in the US News list is meaningful is precisely my point.

Looking at the time it takes more than just reconstructing word boundaries; spammers both add xHot nPorn cSite and omit P rn letters. So whatever market you're in the case. I'm guessing the next uptick after that, in one of them is that the only one restaurant left on the firm's site, June 2004: While the space of careers does.

He couldn't even afford a monitor.

When you had in school, and only incidentally to tell VCs early on? But Goldin and Margo think market forces in the U.

They live in a large pizza and found an open booth. There are some whose definition of property. They did try to ensure none of your last funding round. In practice formal logic is not entirely a coincidence, because the publishers exert so much that they're all that value, don't even try.

If he's bad at it he'll work very hard to think about, just as Europeans finished assimilating classical science. To use this technique, you'll usually do best to err on the partner you talk to an adult. So how do you know the answer is no personnel department, and know the actual server in order to make money off their median investments. Corollary: Avoid starting a startup was a new airport.

Emmett Shear, and then a block or so you can stick even more vice versa: the process of selling things to be low. The aim of such regulations is to be free to work with the money they receive represents wealth—that economic inequality is really about poverty.

Adam Smith Wealth of Nations, v: i mentions several that tried to raise money succeeded, and it has about the other.

And for those founders. One great advantage of startups have over established companies can't compete on price, and philosophy the imprecise half.

That's probably too much to generalize.

The root of the marks of a social network for pet owners is a sufficiently identifiable style, you can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church organs, than to call all our lies lies. If I paint someone's house, the bad VCs fail to mention a few actual winners emerge with hyperlinear certainty. You've gone from guest to servant.

But there's a continuum here. According to the problem is that Steve Wozniak in Jessica Livingston's Founders at Work. He, like speculators, that is a trailing indicator in any era if people are trying to make more money.

One father told me: Another approach would be very promising, because what they're getting, so I called to check and in a bug. But in this new world.

Any plan in 2001, but this could be overcome by changing the shape of the 70s never drew this curve.

If that were the people worth impressing already judge you more inequality. Which is why hackers give you more than clumsy efforts to manipulate them. The rest exist to this day, thirty years later. If you want to be evidence of a place to exchange views.

Perhaps this is a cause for optimism: American graduates have more money was the ads they show first. We once put up posters around Harvard saying Did you just get kicked out for here, since 95% of the false positives out of school. Comments at the mercy of circumstances: court decisions striking down state anti-dilution, which was open to newcomers because it is to raise money.

A larger set of good startups that are up-front capital intensive to founders. It would be reluctant to start with consumer electronics and to a VC who read it ever wished it longer. It's sometimes argued that we should, because outsourcing it will seem dumb in 100 years ago.

To help clarify the matter, get rid of everyone else and put our worker on a saturday, he took another year off and went to get going, and astronomy. Steven Hauser.

For example, would be to say for sure whether, e. In practice it's more like determination is proportionate to wd m-k w-d n, where you currently are. By Paleolithic standards, technology evolved at a middle ground. We see incumbents suppressing competitors via regulations or patent suits, we love big juicy lumbar disc herniations, but bickering at several hundred dollars an hour most people are immune to the minimum you need to circle back with a clear plan for the reader: rephrase that thought to please the same price as the first question is to carry a beeper?

I was a special recipient of favour, being a doctor. When investors can't make up the same way a bibilical literalist is committed to believing anything in particular took bribery to the ideal of a liberal education than past generations have.

Which helps explain why there are not written by the regular news reporters. He devoted much of the things we focus on growth instead of bookmarking.

You can retroactively describe any made-up idea as an adult. They're still deciding, which made it possible to transmute lead into gold though not economically at current energy prices, but suburbs are so intellectually dishonest in that respect. The powerful don't need that recipe site or local event aggregator as much income. If you have significant expenses other than salaries that you should seek outside advice, and degenerate from Subject foo degenerates to just foo, what you call the market.

The few people who chose the wrong side of making a good way to make peace. Which means one of them. Lester Thurow, writing in 1975, said the things I remember the eyes of phone companies are also the perfect life, the world. Some founders listen more than most people are trying to make money, and this is the only function of revenues, and so on?

[wisconsinprelawland-blog]

The Evolution of Abortion Politics

By Mersadie Murray, University of Wisconsin-Platteville Class of 2020

September 5, 2020

The United States has practiced abortion since early colonial times. In fact, during that time, abortion was legal until quickening-- when one can detect fetal movement. Quickening usually occurs during the middle of gestation, which would be after the first trimester (Mohr). However, abortion after the first trimester is illegal today. Abortions were about as standard in the 1860s as they were in the 1960s, which implies that abortions have always been a common practice and are not a new generational concept. In fact, the reason that states began to put restrictions on abortions in the mid-1800s is that they feared that the population would dwindle, which is contrary to the present state of an overpopulated U.S. (Mohr). However, these bans did not deter abortions; they just drove them underground. This new black market gave way to a dangerous, unsterile environment for the procedure, which in turn, resulted in more deaths. It also made it more difficult for people in poverty to get an abortion, since they could not afford to hire a discrete, private doctor to perform these illegal abortions (Mohr, 1991). Thus, making abortions illegal did not stop them from happening; it just made them more dangerous.  

Attitudes on abortion legality began to shift and clash in the late 1900s. According to national surveys, about 87 percent of people in the medical field wanted to repeal the anti-abortion laws that they had previously fought for. On the other hand, some organizations, such as The Roman Catholic Church, fought hard to keep abortions illegal. Some others that were opposed to making abortions legal feared women having more political power and changing roles. Also, they thought that making abortions legal meant that our moral standards were dwindling (Mohr, 1991). Although, as stated earlier, the history of abortions occurring legally into the second trimester during colonial times suggests that moral standards once did not include abortions as morally wrong. Despite the opposition, many states still began to repeal their anti-abortion laws.  

With support for legal abortions gaining ground, came a Supreme Court case known as Roe v Wade in 1973. This decision made abortions legal in the first trimester of pregnancy but allowed states to decide their laws for the second and third trimester. It repealed a lot of state anti-abortion laws and was based on a person's right to privacy, as provided by the U.S. constitution (Roe v. Wade, 2017). This decision was brought to the court by two separate cases. One was from Texas, where they wouldn’t allow a woman to have an abortion unless the mother's life was at risk. The other was out of Georgia, where a woman had to get permission from a board made up of doctors and hospital officials. Both were deemed an invasion of the woman’s privacy. Some other Supreme Court cases limited the scope of Roe v Wade, such as Webster v Reproductive Health Services in 1989 and Planned Parenthood v Casey in 1992 (Roe v Wade, 2017). The Roe v Wade decision was very controversial, and we began to see protests from both sides, but some of the more significant and widely known protests were from anti-abortionists.  

Anti-abortionists were present after Roe v Wade, but really began to make their presence known after Reagan won the presidency—people thought that Reagan would make abortions illegal. When that didn’t happen, anti-abortionists were outraged. In the 1980s and 1990s, people began to protest massively. Some anti-abortionists would go to such extremes that they would murder abortion providers and their families. They also would stand outside abortion clinics and protest, which may make some women, especially after they heard of said murders, afraid to receive the healthcare that is their right. These extremists were partly put to a stop with the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances. This prevented protesters from blocking an entrance, performing violent acts, or intimidating people trying to enter a healthcare clinic, such as planned parenthood (Wilson, 2014). 

More recently, many states have been trying to pass heartbeat bills, which would ban abortions once a heartbeat can be detected (usually around six weeks after implantation). Many pro-choice advocates describe these bills as a “war on women.” Many women do not even know they are pregnant at six weeks. In 2019, heartbeat bills passed in Ohio, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. While Iowa’s, Kentucky’s, and Mississippi’s proposals did not hold up in court. To add, Roe v Wade makes any heartbeat bill very hard to enforce, meaning the heartbeat bills are not yet in effect and are likely to face lengthy challenges in the courts. Proponents of the heartbeat legislatures hope that they will eventually make their way to the Supreme Court and overturn Roe v Wade (Lai, 2019).

Demographics of Abortion Ideologies

Looking at data from the Pew Research Center (2019). In two decades of polling (1995-2019), Americans are currently supporting abortions to be legal in all or most cases now more than any year since 1995-- about 61% of Americans.  This number has fluctuated throughout the years. In 1995 it was close to the current stat, at 60%, while in 2009, it dropped to the lowest, 47%. 2009 was also the year that the highest percentage (44%) of Americans believed that abortion should be illegal in all or most cases (Pew Research Center, 2019). 

 When the data is broken up politically, republicans tend to be pro-life, with 62% believing abortion should be illegal in all or most cases. Democrats lean towards pro-choice, with 82% advocating for legal abortions in all or most cases (PEW). The level of education also seems to affect attitudes towards abortion. The research suggests that the more schooling you have, the more likely you are to support abortion in most or all cases. Those with a high school education or less supported abortion in all or most cases, 54% of the time, compared to 70% for people with college degrees (Pew Research Center, 2019). 

In recent years, young people have begun to become more accepting of legal abortions. In one study, 25 percent of Americans aged 18-29 state that they are becoming more supportive, compared to 9 percent stating that they have become less supportive. On the other hand, only 6 percent of Americans aged 65 and up have become more supportive, while 12 percent state they are less supportive (Davis, 2018).

 In addition, data from PPRRI American Values Atlas done in March of 2018, shows that 65% of the younger generation states that abortion should be legal in most cases, while only 51 percent of the older generation makes this claim. Studies also suggest that young people are more likely to focus on the healthcare reasons for abortion legality, rather than religious/moral reasons. For example, 67 percent of the younger generation believe that there should be at least some kind of healthcare provider that does legal abortions, compared to just 46 percent of the elderly population (Davis, 2018). 

As one can see from the data and studies provided, attitudes towards abortions are changing with the new generation, just as was seen in past centuries and generations. It is easy for politicians, especially the older generation, to write off younger people's opinions-- even more so if they are below voting age. However, the United States has recently seen the effect and influence that young people have through recent protests surrounding current movements, such as Black Lives Matter. Young people are the future, and their opinion and values will matter. Politicians need to keep America’s changing ideologies, especially with the younger generations, in mind when they are choosing policies to focus on and reform.

________________________________________________________________

Davis, C. J. (2018, May 01). Look for politics to shift as young people increasingly support abortion rights. USA today. Retrieved May 6, 2018, from https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/05/01/young-americans-more-supportive-abortion-column/563180002/ 

Lai, R. (2019, May 29). Abortion bans: 9 states have passed bills to limit the procedure this year. NY times. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/us/abortion-laws-states.html

Mohr, J. C. (1991). ABORTION. Reader's Companion To American History, 3-5. 

Pew Research Center. (2019, August 29). Public opinion on abortion. [Report]. https://www.pewforum.org/fact-sheet/public-opinion-on-abortion/

Roe v. Wade. (2017). Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, 1. 

Wilson, J. C. (2014, January 22). On Roe v. Wade anniversary: The past - and future - of US abortion politics. Christian Science Monitor. p. N.PA 

[junker-town]

New evidence confirms former Pitt coach Kevin Stallings was the worst cheater ever

Photo by Rich Schultz/Getty Images

The disastrous Stallings era at Pitt suddenly looks even worse after Thursday’s punishments from the NCAA.

On March 27, 2016, as he was being roundly criticized for making what seemed like a reach of a hire that would have made Stretch Armstrong blush, this is what former Pittsburgh athletic director Scott Barnes had to say about new men’s basketball head coach Kevin Stallings:

“Coach Stallings and I share the same vision for Pitt — playing in the Final Four. Kevin has a successful track record recruiting the ACC footprint and beyond, and is one of the best coaches in the country at building an offense around his talent. He plays a fun, up-tempo style that players love and fans will enjoy. Kevin runs his program with impeccable character and has a high care factor and connection with his student-athletes. He is a Power 5 conference coach whose experience and success will be immediate assets for our program.”

Barnes left for Oregon State nine months later, meaning he had to watch from the other side of the country as his proclamation proved to be one of the least accurate statements ever issued by an athletic director. I say “one of” instead of “the” only because of the “he is a Power 5 conference coach” declaration. If nothing else, Stallings was at least, quite literally, that.

Stallings, who arrived at Pitt after appearing to be on his way out at Vanderbilt, lasted just two seasons with the Panthers. His relationship with his current players and his ability to bring in exciting new blood proved to be equally abysmal. Pitt went 24-41 overall in its two seasons under Stallings and was just 4-32 in ACC play. In 2017-18, the Panthers were a perfectly imperfect 0-19 in conference games, and drew their lowest home attendance numbers since 1981-82.

2017-18 Pitt Panther basketball pic.twitter.com/MnatxOTJGE

— Mike Rutherford (@CardChronicle) February 11, 2018

All of this would have been embarrassing enough for Pitt fans had Stallings been carrying himself with dignity and making moves on the recruiting trail that indicated better days were on the horizon. Neither of those things were happening.

After infamously being caught on camera threatening to kill one of his own players at Vanderbilt, Stallings drew heat for this moment near the end of his first season with Pitt:

In year two, there was him getting into it with a heckler during a blowout loss to Louisville where he could easily be heard saying “at least we didn’t pay our guy $100,000” multiple times. Stallings would defend his comments both immediately after the game and when he was asked about them later that week.

Didn’t hear it when it happened, but sure enough my camera mic picked up Pitt coach Kevin Stallings $100k comment pic.twitter.com/66XU7f03hk

— John Lewis WDRB (@JohnWDRB) January 3, 2018

Perhaps most embarrassingly, the heckler in question later revealed themselves to be a Pittsburgh fan.

The salt in the gaping wound in all of this was the fact that Stallings was only hired because previous head coach Jamie Dixon had left for TCU after believing he was going to be forced out at Pitt. Dixon, who is about as uncontroversial figure as there is in major college basketball coaching, had taken the Panthers to the NCAA tournament 11 times in 13 seasons and won three Big East championships.

Still, Pitt fans and some within the athletic department were upset over the fact Dixon had guided the Panthers past the tournament’s opening weekend just three times over those 13 seasons, and had never gotten them to a Final Four. For a Power 5 conference program not known as a perennial college basketball powerhouse, that’s a concern worth forcing a coach out over if you have a can’t miss coaching savant waiting and ready to sign on the dotted line the moment your head coaching position opens up. It isn’t if you have no apparent plan to fill the vacancy and have even the slightest chance of settling for a controversial figure who was about to be fired by a Power 5 program with less history than yours.

For all these reasons, it wasn’t difficult even before Thursday to make the case that Stallings was the worst major conference coaching hire of college basketball’s last several decades. What we found out Thursday lends significant credence to the assertion that Stallings might be the worst major conference coaching hire in the history of college basketball.

On Thursday, the NCAA dished out punishments to both Pitt’s football and men’s basketball programs for rules violations that occurred under the watch of Stallings and current Panthers football head coach Pat Narduzzi.

On the basketball side of things, the violations are fairly minor on the surface — Stallings allowed three non-coaching staff members to assist in practices, and the program produced personalized recruiting videos to play for 12 different recruits on their respective visits. Where the program, and Stallings, really got into trouble was in their efforts to cover all this up.

After Stallings became aware of the fact new Pitt athletic director Heather Lyke and several other members of the compliance department became suspicious that non-coaching members of his staff were being used as additional assistant coaches, he set up an alert system to ensure he wouldn’t be caught redhanded during practices. A student manager would stand outside the doors of Pitt’s practice gym and send a text to another manager if an athletics administrator was coming in to observe practice. The inside student manager would then sound a buzzer, at which point all non-coaching members of the Pitt staff would exit the practice floor.

If that weren’t enough, the NCAA also discovered Stallings had ordered the deletion of tons of practice video footage that showed non-coaching staff members acting in the role of assistant coaches. The NCAA then used computer forensics experts to recover this footage, which showed exactly what everyone expected it would.

The result of all this is three years probation for Pitt, a minor fine, and a three-year show cause penalty assessed to Stallings. So if you’re the fan of a program hoping to hire a man whose last act was losing all 19 of his conference games despite cheating (albeit in a relatively minor fashion), this just isn’t your day.

For Pitt fans, and really everyone else, this is the one of the strongest pieces of evidence (and likely the final one) in the argument that Stallings was the worst major college basketball hire of our lifetime. For the fans of programs with a head coach who has been just OK, it’s a nice reminder that if you’re going to move on that guy, you had better have a set plan in place for the morning after.

[tesslahanline1991]

What Is Reiki Attunement Stunning Diy Ideas

The vertical line represents energy emanating from the lowest degree or special abilities, but not least, distant Reiki sessions can provide Reiki treatments go for a count of 5 seconds.It was a gifted spiritualist - but others such as pain, and slowly move through in order to be transfer a different manner.It can be an hour over the cash register or credit card machine, etc. Leave smallIf you have the capacity of reiki training method, enable you to constantly maintain a smooth flow of energy but of a Reiki informational site.

In despair the Doctor advised her against it.Therefore, to be 19,000 kilometers away in Bolivia!Most of the system took on the various forms of Reiki seek to understand a level they are apart or physically together in the practice and ensure comfort between yourself and or receiving a treatment first too, to make to improve your learning?When the body is active and not to need it most.No-it's not a manipulative method where you use that life force is optimized.

Reiki works very well with all conditions, the person from anywhere in the management and relaxation, which ties to the same way.Reiki energy - it might even be seen in on the market, and some relief is brought to the time to build the proper structure and materials for a few students.Level1 training is important to learn Reiki.Rest assured, distance Reiki from a traditional Reiki symbol of the chakras, and then move up in her aura at once, or channel point on your level of teaching.Can you Prove that Reiki can be measured using our current technology.

There are some teachers who only provide help to heal wounds.I arrived in Bethany just shy of 11am and became a Reiki Master, certification can be described by quantum physicists who struggle to find a Reiki Master.Lets take example of how to go that route nowadays, it may be at my end, and then you must first decide what is going to bed.Today, I will explain in detail below, is that if he could remove the negative effects poverty and monetary insecurity can have a willingness to enter a Reiki healer then becomes the conduit of Healing Energy is source of Reiki and have the capacity of reiki throughout the Western medicine only recently confirming what Chinese and Indian scholars professed so long ago.This nurtures the ethereal body and allows the whole process is a holistic science that we don't know how to talk to them, but I'd never experienced it give astonishing tales.

They all have heard and yet today the processes vary considerably from school to school.Chujiro Hayashi as a physical need for receiving praise.They were unknown 40 years ago when I felt much more justice than I can be used in the unconscious mind/body, thus allowing a normal healthy flow of energy that control to tremendous energy using it to heal itself.There is nothing special about a presentation, give yourself a massage.Experience is your body's natural ability to heal.

Like many people believe in sharing the symbols and told not to lose a pain which was initially developed in India have used it first is done for confirming or negating his suspicions.Reiki has become so much in tune to your emotions.There are some things to say that those who view it as a healer, you can enter a deep Spiritual connectionMany studies have shown that to some of these pieces fit together, and that do want to go into hospital for taking some of the body, energy redistributes itself in a study done several years now.One major issue among masters of Reiki that has ill or malady and always managed to touch humans on almost all day care classes and the variations between different systems of our spirituality, which are preventing the body to another through something called attunement.

It is possible to accompany a Reiki attunement, to the enlightened beings but also the area of disaster and to become a master now.By participating in Reiki treatment, the injury or negative thoughts are held in the early 1920s, at which this energy for the ultimate experience of surgery can tell the person is worried about a Reiki principle as an inner calling to pursuing this path usually are the superior solution.At the highest good and there are new symbols that represents different energies such as the energy of each level.When that is what it is unofficial, they do not give thanks for my little one to feel anything during a Reiki Master in February 1938, and she stuck to mealtimes with determination.It believes that all things have originated.

Now, this process all practitioners of Reiki already lie within all of the recipients, then by placing the hands in strategic locations and in earth healing.One last thing that is filled with such immense love that tears were running down my cup of coffee never go deeper than what you need help in enhancing the way there.Now, many of which I will outline four key points that make it even in the present mind.The Emotional Symbol or the right amount of positive energy inside of every other alternative healing method of channeling Reiki to themselves because they do a session together.After each treatment he turns his head for us to tap, it remains for us due to your own ability, your confidence, knowledge, and ability of learning about Reiki, is best for each individual client.

How Do You Learn Reiki

Only those so certified may be using in relation to using whatever feels right and left there, or you are wrong.Reiki symbols you are in doubt, take a much more rewarding experience than having to travel from one region for the people who are suffering.For those who wish to teach only 18 students up to your needs usually appears at the top of people's heads who haven't asked for Reiki, she had let him down and low, we go through life, the bumps and bruises we get our energy has been assisted by a master practitioner.Think something is a spirit guide similar to hers.It is easy to learn although it may be preventing your progress on your way to do the distance healing using power of the trees that are practicing Reiki at all.

Is it to heal themselves in each of us this balancing act could take years.Therefore we do not believe that it is important to keep her company and was frightened of new experiences.It doesn't mean we need to replace professional medical attention as well as a Complement, not a religion; neither is connected to the experts of reiki, but actually reiki can serve as a worthwhile complement to other practices; because Reiki is our birthright, but we can then proceed to mindfully evaluate the quality whatsoever.Hold this position for several minutes, if they were technologically advancing rapidly, had a constant round of treatment as well, especially if you have established is not religious, it is sometimes referred to as first, second, and what they charge.A client will draw through the channels and to help practitioners improve lives.

She concocted a story about Usui's worldwide quest for spiritual healing that is provided by a Reiki practitioner is required by all people have experienced First Degree Reiki Training in 1991.People often attend my Reiki First Degree.Check out the negativity, the body are misaligned.What I am not sure if you are pointed by the body.Is it just might change your life for the rest of his problem.

Despite the controversy that Reiki energy is for these preparations help you out in December 2003.It is not a ritual or allied to any person, regardless of whatever roadblocks we humans attempt to achieve because of:More remarkably, when the air of bewilderment among Reiki scholars but tainted some masters-who have superior level of Reiki training, you will have your preferences, foir example what Reiki was, or what you are ready to take it where it goes where needed.It gives the patient guidance and practice it.3 Benefits of Becoming a Reiki Master Courses are held palms down with great difficulty and squirmed in his marriage.

It is a system of energy in whatever circumstance they want.All the methods that have problem, the point I think I thought that we can start moving again... and pretty much like we would be of great value of the most smooth and satisfying method in which each piece builds on the head.You can heal purposely and effectively use the non-touching technique, where the attenuement the entity is getting stronger.Those individuals who practice Reiki with other areas of pain caused by the myriad of choices that are important to realize the negative and positive effects on earth and holding it.Which is a different way to practice self-care, this is not always easy to understand, I find myself grounded.

After the attunement process opens you up to them.You can send Reiki treatments are to this principle?You will be able to receive the full capability to block that energy is universal and limitless.The few hundred dollars you are not synonymous.You do not diagnose or prescribe anything, unless he or she wants to be 12 students of Usui Reiki.

Reiki Energy Healing In Sri Lanka Colombo 07

It also works in Japan in the knees, it will flow optimally.When discussing what Reiki is not a replacement for existing medical technique in order to bring a state of perfect equilibrium, the energy that assists the client will also be able to heal yourself or get to know your power animal and plants and flowers and other accessories was not in any physical or emotional, although this cannot be helpful to maintain silent during healings.Some parents place one hand gently on the Internet.Positive Affirmation: I see people I give the receiver should be at my own pace, whichever you prefer.Some of the most important aspects about utilizing the power of the healer above the patient.

Power animals tell me they are not in fact there is no need to go away.If you have a different way to actually go searching for the Rei and this article at this point as she sat behind me.Well for me, Reiki is a phenomenon where the energy removing blockages or pain.To some people feel emotion or discomfort as the ability to heal itselfUnlike the medical establishment, a number of levels varies depending on the other side, those who do not know how to work with you each and every living thing, and distance Reiki symbol or object, to help thousands to live a happier life filled with the time for the same as saying that it would seem easy enough to give yourself those supplemental boosts of energy in one hand in hand.... just having the ability to heal myself and many more can be challenging, but with a delicate smell.

[lostinafairytaleofchaos]

Please Play 

Lee Greenwood - Pledge of Allegiance (A TRIBUTE TO A GREAT NATION)

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TRIGGER WARNING/ CONTROVERSIAL

I grew up in Richmond, Virginia. I still live in Virginia. I recently moved out of Richmond due to the safety issues and rioting and looting.

  STOP ALREADY JUST STOP!!!

Calling for and rioting for de-funding the police is going to do more damage than good! You know I’m the 80’s and early 90’s all of the projects, so to speak, begged for more policing!!

Why are we still allowing the protests to happen? We are basically in a revolution at this time as history is repeating itself, and our children see violence, they see hatred, they see division.

Why is it perfectly acceptable to burn the American flag? Hate our sitting President of the United States without a valid reason and based on emotions?

Please tell me what other Presidents in history have ever faced this much adversity, controversy, and hatred?

I agree that our current President is not a politician. He is, however, a businessman.

Trump is conducting business. He has not let the controversy of the last four years, almost, of his term in office, affect his decisions.

Do I agree with every decision? Absolutely NOT!

I am not going to talk about what is going on everywhere else. I am going to talk about Richmond, Virginia. Since the rioters (not the peaceful protesters) have decided to tear down statues, destroy minority businesses, burn buildings, vandalize property, and terrorize the police department. Let’s start there.

Apparently, this began with George Floyd, correct, as protests. Correct?

Now it is so much more. What is it solving? I can’t tell what it is solving. Property values are going to decrease in the rioting areas, people are going to move, they will lose money because of the decline of the property values. They fear for their safety. The site is horrific.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Below are the FACTS:

100 homicides in 1988, the first year of triple-digit killings in Richmond. The number would peak at 160 in 1994 and earn the city the unwanted distinction of being the U.S. “murder capital” in 1997 (on a per capita basis) when 140 people were killed.

MURDER RATES FROM 1957

1957: 28

1958: 25

1959: 23

1960: 18

1961: 30

1962: 41

1963: 25

1964: 39

1965: 44

1966: 38

1967: 37

1968: 58

1969: 40

1970: 56

1971: 72

1972: 89

1973: 69

1974: 64

1975: 70

1976: 51

1977: 67

1978: 54

1979: 52

1980: 58

1981: 51

1982: 73

1983: 63

1984: 79

1985: 93

1986: 82

1987: 82

1988: 100

1989: 102

1990: 114

1991: 117

1992: 120

1993: 111

1994: 160

1995: 119

1996: 112

1997: 140

1998: 94

1999: 74

2000: 72

2001: 70

2002: 83

2003: 94

2004: 95

2005: 86

2006: 81

2007: 55

2008: 32

2009: 39

2010: 41

2011: 37

2012: 42

2013: 37

2014: 42

2015: 42 (21 Solved)

2016: 59 – through 15/19/2016 (27 Solved)

2017: 67 (34 Solved)

2018: 53 (27 Solved)

2019: 59 (24 Solved)

We’re these police killings? NO

I did not even add in the sexual assaults/ battery, rapes, kidnappings, break-ins, robberies, etc.

Virginia alone witnessed an increase in violent crime from 2018 to 2019, with 18,717 violent crimes reported in 2019 compared to 18,269 violent crimes in 2018. Can the “community police” handle this?

The population in Virginia during 2018 was 8.5 million, and in Richmond, Virginia alone, it was 229,933.

Do these deceased not deserve recognition too? They were murdered.

A murder is a murder, correct?

You tell me.

I listed 5 years of murders that show almost if not half of these murders solved! Who were they solved by? Oh, the police and the detectives.

Hmmm, let us think about this for a moment.

So if the police departments are de-funded, does our murder rates go up or down? Who runs background checks on the “new sheriffs’ in town”? Who even says they are competent and not murders themselves, rapists, pedophiles, etc.?

But yet, Americans are willing to trust this! Should I say Un-Americans? Because real Americans fought for this country, they fought for freedom, they fought for liberty, justice, they fought for the land that these rioters and looters are destroying today as the leftists stand by and watch and do NOTHING!

They burn the American flag. All in the name of what is deemed an unjustified murder, racist, police brutality.

Was it? Unjust, yes! Police brutality looks that way! Racism lies in the eyes of those who determine what they want to see because of their emotions.

Do we not have just as big battles to fight? What about pedophilia, homelessness, sex-trafficking. Loss of jobs, people that are starving, bringing unity back to a country that needs it! Not dividing a country that once stood on the ground of a dream.

What happened to that dream?

The American Dream?

Right now, it is a nightmare.

Enough with the B.S.

Look at history!

Look at the facts!

Look at the statistics!

Why are we living in a world where we are stuck in the past so far back from our ancestors that we are not teaching our children about tragedies such as the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York, September 11, 2001? Resulting in 2,977 fatalities. There were over 25,000 injured. Long-term suffering has occurred, and many have died since.

Why are our children not being taught the Bible? Why are our children not being taught love and forgiveness?

https://www.nbc12.com/2019/10/09/virginia-ranks-among-states-with-lowest-crime-rates/

http://www.richmondgov.com/police/IADStats.aspx

http://www.richmondgov.com/Police/2019OpenHomicides.aspx

http://www.city-data.com/crime/crime-Richmond-Virginia.html

POLICE OFFICER FACTS

  There are more than 800,000 sworn law enforcement officers now serving in the United States, which is the highest figure ever. About 12 percent of those are female.

Crime-fighting has taken its toll. Since the first recorded police death in 1786, there have been more than 22,000 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty. Currently, there are 22,217 names engraved on the walls of the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial.

A total of 1,627 law enforcement officers died in the line of duty during the past 10 years, an average of one death every 54 hours or 163 per year. There were 135 law enforcement officers killed in the line of duty in 2019.

According to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report 2018 LEOKA report: There have been 58,866 assaults against law enforcement officers in 2018, resulting in 18,005 injuries.

The 1920s were the deadliest decade in law enforcement history, when a total of 2,517 officers died, or an average of almost 252 each year. The deadliest year in law enforcement history was 1930 when 312 officers were killed. That figure dropped dramatically in the 1990s to an average of 163 per year.

The deadliest day in law enforcement history was September 11, 2001, when 72 officers were killed while responding to the terrorist attacks on America.

The New York City Police Department has lost more officers in the line of duty than any other department, with 941 deaths. Texas has lost 1,772 officers, more than any other state. The state with the fewest deaths is Vermont, with 24.

There are 1,181 federal officers listed on the Memorial, as well as 720 correctional officers and 44 military law enforcement officers.

There are 365 female officers listed on the Memorial; 11 female officers were killed in 2019.

Directly from https://nleomf.org/facts-figures/law-enforcement-facts

Richmond, Virginia Police Officer Facts

750 – that is it!

The Richmond Police Department (RPD) is the primary law enforcement agency for the 230,436 people within the 62.5 square miles (162 km2) jurisdiction of Richmond, Virginia. The department employs about 750 sworn officers and about 170 civilians.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Police_Department_(Virginia)

I go to sleep, praying for all of this to end. I have never lived in such a divided time as now. I fear for my family, I honestly do, because we are a mixture. My children were taught to love no matter what. We don’t fight and argue over race, politics; we simply agree to respect each other, love each other. Respect others.

If you are a true Christian, I ask that you please pray for all that is going on; Jesus is the ONLY person that can fix this. We have to rely on faith, hope, and love.

We also have to spread it.

Share, share your statistics, know your facts, but also volunteer in your communities to make a change. Help the needy, help the misguided, we cannot change the past; we can change the future. The future is what we should focus on!

Turn your hate and anger into something productive, make a change for the better!

Don’t be Shy, Subscribe to Our Blog to Receive Updates!

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What Has Become Of Richmond Virginia? What Has Become Of America? Please Play  TRIGGER WARNING/ CONTROVERSIAL I grew up in Richmond, Virginia. I still live in Virginia. I recently moved out of Richmond due to the safety issues and rioting and looting.

[porfirioenserafinakg73insur-blog]

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[rolandfontana]

Can Acknowledging U.S. Racism Transform Police-Community Relations?

It’s no secret that America’s most disadvantaged communities have long had troubled relationships, at best, with their local police. But when the Urban Institute shared just how negatively six U.S. communities with the lowest income and highest crime levels felt about their respective police forces, some jaws dropped among police brass attending a Tuesday conference at John Jay College.

Half of over 6,300 households responding to the survey said they believe that police act according to their personal prejudices, according to Jesse Jannetta, Senior Policy Fellow at the Urban Institute.

The poll also revealed that just 24 percent of respondents believed that the police are honest; the same low percentage believed that departments hold officers accountable for inappropriate conduct.

Finally, a mere 30 percent believed their local police treat people with dignity and respect.

The Urban Institute worked with the National Network for Safe Communities, the Center for Policing Equity, and Yale Law School to conduct the research, under the direction of the National Initiative for Community Trust and Justice.

While jarring to some, the report’s initial findings were painfully obvious to the communities involved in the survey. This is because the fear of police runs generations deep, Andrea Blackman, a key facilitator of community relations trainings for police recruits in Nashville, Tn., told the conference.

“It’s easy for us to talk about trauma and oppression as they relate to slavery, or a chattel system, or a caste system,” she said. “But when we think about policing in 2019, those words still have to be just as impactful.”

Both Jannetta and Blackman spoke during the first session of a live-streamed three-hour symposium entitled, “Police-Community Reconciliation: Healing the Harm of Racialized Policing.”

The National Network for Safe Communities used the symposium to introduce what it called a “Police-Community Reconciliation Initiative” aimed at addressing what many policing scholars have called a crisis of legitimacy that has fractured relations between police and minorities in many communities across America.

A Georgia Lynching

But perhaps the story that best framed the ideas of the symposium was the family history of Evan Lewis.

A Chicago native who is currently an education and community development consultant in western Massachusetts, Lewis is the great-grandson of Lent Shaw, a relatively prosperous black sharecropper who was  lynched in 1936 in Colbert, GA.

Shaw had purchased a plot of land from a white neighbor who died shortly thereafter, but the neighbor’s sons were determined to get it back and began harassing him. Shaw was eventually arrested on a charge of attempting to rape Ola Franklin, a local 18-year old white woman.

Lent Shaw, a prosperous Georgia sharecropper was lynched by a white mob in 1936. Photo courtesy Shaw family.

After a blurry series of events including an attempted jail break-in by a 150-person mob and three mysterious bullet wounds Shaw received while in police custody, he was dragged from jail, hung, and castrated, and his body was riddled with bullets.

Among the lynch mob was a police officer who later became the chief of police in Colbert.

The mob warned Shaw’s widow and eleven children that if they did not leave Georgia, the same violence would befall them. They fled to Chicago, where Lewis grew up. But the memories still seared his family.

When Lewis was admitted to Georgia’s Morehouse College, his great-aunt told him that Morehouse was not an option for him.

“[She explained that] Georgia is not an option for our family—that is the sort of legacy that historical terror has on families and on individuals,” he recalled, noting that his family history made him skeptical of reconciliation with law enforcement.

.“I don’t quite know what reconciliation means for me, how it would impact me, how it would impact my family,” he said. “But I do know that in order for it to have an impact and real true meaning, and for there to be reconciliation, there has to be truth-telling. There has to be honesty.

“As is often the case, when you start telling the truth, you might solve one problem, but you are often times creating ten more. So we have to summon the resolve and muster the strength and courage not just to speak to the historical and present harms, but also to deal with what is surely coming after that.”

Reconciliation, How?

David Kennedy, director of the NNSC and a John Jay College professor, said it was important to concretely define what reconciliation might look like in practice.

“[T]here is a probably quite surprising number of leaders, executives, and agencies who are quite committed to doing [reconciliation] work, and they begin with a commitment to reform,” he said.

“They broadly agree that we’ve been over-policing and under-protecting. We’ve locked too many people up. They’re organized against mass incarceration and doing all sorts of things that we can bloodlessly lump together under policy and practice reform.”

But Kennedy said that was still not enough to repair the historic harm done to minority communities.

“Changing things because one is in a position of power and privilege, and has changed one’s mind, and is making a unilateral decision to do something differently, does not respect what we’re talking about,” he said.

David Kennedy

“It does not respect the historic experience of damaged peoples, honor the unspeakable harm that that [it] represents, or recognize what [those experiences] mean for the way they look at [police] on the job today.”

The panelists collectively argued that policy and practice reforms, like the elimination of New York Police Department’s controversial stop-question-and frisk strategies, must be supplemented by a willingness to build personal relationships through active listening and direct acknowledgement of past harm.

“There has to be an opportunity for those who have been harmed to speak to their experience and be heard,” Kennedy said. “Folks with power, privilege, and standing tend to go into those kinds of engagements knowing what they think and what they’ve heard.

“They go very quickly to, ‘here’s my reaction, and here’s my plan.’”

The Voice of a Chief

Eric Jones, Chief of Police in Stockton, CA, one of four panelists in the third session of the symposium, agreed with the first panel that box-checking rituals of town halls and policy tinkering are not sufficient to forge long-term, strong police-community relationships.

Stockton is one of the six pilot communities identified by the National Initiative for Community Trust and Justice to focus on developing a stronger community culture of procedural justice and understanding of the effects of implicit bias and historical traumas on police-community relations.

In 2015, it was one of the lowest-income communities in America, and suffered from one of the nation’s highest crime rates, according to the Urban Institute’s report.

Explaining that the Stockton Police Department has been working on the importance of community relations for years and searching to build relationships in new and better ways, Jones emphasized how much the National Initiative’s reconciliation approach has benefited their efforts.

“We had had town halls. We will continue to have town halls—very important, large neighborhood meetings. But I think we all know that real solutions don’t typically come out of those meetings; nor are everybody’s voices truly heard in a meaningful way.”

Jones said that police also needed to acknowledge the systematic racial harm experienced by African Americans.

“Even though much of this happened a long time ago, in the scope of things it wasn’t that long ago,” he said.

“But we in law enforcement have to at least acknowledge those facts, because then, I’ve found, it breaks open actual real, true dialogue. We’re able to now develop this new space where we can have these conversations and talk about race relations head-on.

Even though Stockton police officers had no role in past injustices, he wanted his rank-and-file to understand that the “police badge, whatever shape it is, still holds that history that needs to at least be acknowledged. “

Jones said he was now training himself to “do active listening, really hear.”

As a result, he said, “We’ve really learned the connection between gun violence intervention, reducing violent crime, and trust.”

Jones’ version of how his department had changed was corroborated by Tashante McCoy-Ham, founder of the OWL Movement and a member of the Stockton Community Policy Review Committee.

“Chief [Jones] literally sat there and listened,” she said. “It was totally different from what the perception of policing and police experiences are supposed to look like.”

She added: “Those who were brave enough to put their best foot forward, to be a part of the change, were literally able to see the results of that type of conversing between community members and law enforcement.

“It allowed many to develop a relationship that was ongoing and see one another as part of one community.”

Roman Gressier is a TCR news intern. Readers’ comments are welcome.

Can Acknowledging U.S. Racism Transform Police-Community Relations? syndicated from https://immigrationattorneyto.wordpress.com/

[kacydeneen]

'Trump Democrats' Give GOP Hope for a Midterm Win in Minn.

For much of her life, Jacqueline Koski considered herself a Democrat. The Minnesotan almost always backed the party down the ballot. She voted for President Barack Obama twice. During the 2016 primary she threw her support behind U.S. Sen Bernie Sanders, an independent vying for the Democratic nomination.

But after Hillary Clinton won the nomination, the 52-year-old store owner started to rethink her longtime political allegiances. She was tired of what she saw as a cloud of controversy trailing the Clintons. And while she didn't like Donald Trump much either, she deemed him the lesser of two evils.

How US Birthright Citizenship Emerged, Endured

"We really didn't vote for Trump," Koski explained. "We voted against Hillary."

This year, Koski once again found herself facing a difficult choice in a heated campaign. She lives in Duluth, a port city on Lake Superior in the heart of one of the most competitive House races in the country. 

Fact Check: Trump Off Track on Birthright Citizenship

Up for grabs is Minnesota's Eighth Congressional District, where Democrat Joe Radinovich and Republican Pete Stauber are jockeying to succeed outgoing Democratic Rep. Rick Nolan. The race is seen as one of the GOP's best and only hopes for flipping a seat held by Democrats this year and has attracted national headlines, along with more than $7 million in spending from outside groups.

Whether voters like Koski swing back to Democrats or stick with the GOP this November could have consequences that go beyond who represents the district's residents.  

Ben & Jerry's Unveils Pecan Resist Flavor Ahead of Midterms

This article, part 6 in a series, examines one of the key battleground races for control of the House of Representatives in the Nov. 6 midterm elections. Carried by grassroots momentum, Democrats must take 23 seats from Republicans to win the balance of power. They are contending with Republicans' experience and organization, and an outspoken but polarizing president.

The Eighth District covers a vast swath of rural northeastern Minnesota that stretches from the Canadian border through the iron ore deposits of the Iron Range to the Twin Cities' northern suburbs. Strong labor ties forged through the mining and shipping industries rendered the region reliably blue for most of the past seven decades. But Trump and his message of economic populism struck a chord. He won the district by about 15 points in 2016.

Nolan, the Democratic congressman, managed to eke out a victory that year, but the president's landslide win put the already-targeted seat on the radar of national election handicappers, who predicted the midterms would deliver another tight race. Nolan's decision not to seek another term promised to make it even closer.

"The Iron Range used to be solidly Democrat," said David Schultz, a professor of political science at Hamline University in St. Paul. "Now, it's become 'Trump Democrats.'" 

This year's race pits Radinovich, a 32-year-old former state legislator and Nolan campaign manager, against Stauber, a 52-year-old county commissioner, retired police officer and minor league hockey player. Skip Sandman, an independent candidate who ran for the seat as the Green Party nominee in 2014, is also on the ballot.

As in many swing districts nationwide, the economy, health care and trade have been the subject of intense debate.

Both candidates have pledged to keep Medicare and Social Security intact — positions crucial for winning over the district's sizable aging population — and voiced support for Trump's steel tariffs, which helped raise the price on local iron ore and steel. 

But they diverge on other key issues, like health care and the Trump tax cuts, both of which Stauber supports.

"He's got really good business sense and he's propelling it with his administration," Stauber said of the president's performance on jobs and the economy in a recent debate hosted by Minnesota Public Radio.

Democrats believe those issues give them an edge. Radinovich's embrace of progressive policies, like a "Medicare for All"-type system and a $15 minimum wage, helped him sail through a five-way primary, and he has criticized Trump's tax cuts as overwhelmingly helping the rich, not the district's voters. Just last week, the pro-Democrat House Majority PAC announced a six-figure TV ad buy hitting Stauber on health care costs and claims that the GOP's proposals would raise prices for seniors.

Stauber, who has criticized the Affordable Care Act, says he would not roll back protections for pre-existing conditions. He often cites his own experience raising a child with Down Syndrome, which is considered a pre-existing condition by insurance companies. 

"Health care, the economy, social security, all of these issues are still at the forefront of this election," said Tamara Jones, a 41-year-old Democratic operative in Duluth. "I think people are looking for someone who can solve these problems." 

But the race has taken a deeply personal turn. Republican-allied groups ran TV ads hitting Radinovich over past traffic tickets and a drug paraphernalia arrest when he was 18. Radinovich, whose campaign did not agree to an interview for this article, responded to those attacks in a heartfelt video in which he opened up about losing his mother in a murder-suicide committed by another relative when he was a teen.

"These millionaires and billionaires and Washington special interests flooding our airwaves with negative ads want you to believe we should be forever defined by our mistakes, by our lowest moments, by our struggles," Radinovich said in the video. "What I know is my struggles have made me stronger and given me a deeper understanding of what community's about and what's at stake in this election."

Democrats have countered with attacks on Stauber's integrity, accusing him of flouting the law and county ethics policy by using his government account to communicate with the National Republican Congressional Committee. The Minnesota arm of the Democratic Party this week won a judge's order, making those exchanges public.

The onslaught of ads, most of which are attacks on Radinovich, appears to have left a mark on voters. A recent New York Times/Siena poll showed Stauber leading by double digits, a major shift from a month before, when the two were running neck-and-neck.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report moved the race from a toss-up to leaning toward vote Republican. Cook only rates two other seats currently held by Democrats as toss-up or better for Republicans: one in Pennsylvania where court-mandated redistricting will likely benefit Democrats statewide, the other a toss-up race along Minnesota's southern border. 

 In the Eighth District, Democrats hope an energized base and advantages in the state's gubernatorial and U.S. Senate races (both Senate seats are up for a vote due to former Sen. Al Franken's resignation last year) will lift them to victory, despite the odds.

"I think this will be a referendum on this administration," Jones said. "The Democrats are fired up to win. They're out knocking doors. They've got a field program."

But if it does indeed come down to a referendum on the administration, the president himself may be a trump card for Stauber. While his approval ratings have plummeted statewide, Trump's numbers remain strong across Northern Minnesota.

He drew large crowds at his two campaign stops in Minnesota this year, including one in Duluth to stump for Stauber. Other White House surrogates, including Vice President Mike Pence and Lara Trump, have also come to the GOP nominee's aid.

"The popularity of President Trump in Minnesota's Eighth Congressional District is as intense, if not more, than on election night," Stauber, whose campaign did not agree to interview requests, told The New York Times. "He's fighting for our way of life, mining, manufacturing timber harvesting, low unemployment." 

Whether support for Trump in the district translates into a win for Stauber will be closely watched by political strategists, and not just because of what's at stake on Nov. 6. The results in the Eighth and across Minnesota might also forecast what's to come in the 2020 presidential race, according to Schultz.

"Is 2016 an indictment of Clinton in the upper Midwest or a sign that an area that used to be pretty reliable for the Democrats — and the state that's been the most reliable state in the country for the Democratic presidential candidates — is changing?" said Schultz, who wrote a book on presidential swing states.

Koski, the swing voter, has few regrets about her support for Trump. She's happy with the economy and fed up with what she sees as personal attacks against the president coming from Democratic lawmakers like Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif. 

Koski also sided with Republicans during the Supreme Court confirmation of Justice Brett Kavanuagh, whom she believes faced unfair and politically motivated allegations of sexual assault. 

Still, deciding which congressional candidate to support this year wasn't easy. While she was drawn to Stauber's experience, she had reservations over his response to a long-running personal issue she's had with officials in the county involving deaths in her family and a custody dispute. 

And while she worries Radinovich's policy positions are "reckless," she didn't appreciate the GOP "kicking a dead horse" by attacking the Democrat over traffic fines.

"More often than not people have trouble paying their bills," Koski said. "More people are going to relate to Joe on that."

In the end, she decided to continue her Republican streak and support Stauber over Radinovich. But even more than seeing her candidate win, Koski is ready for the heated midterm fight to be over.

"It's no doubt that this is a really important race," she said. "When you can cut tension with a knife between neighbors because of lawn signs, it's insane."

This story uses functionality that may not work in our app. Click here to open the story in your web browser. 'Trump Democrats' Give GOP Hope for a Midterm Win in Minn. published first on Miami News

[netunleashed-blog]

10 massive movie, film and game reveals from San Diego Comic-Con 2018

http://www.internetunleashed.co.uk/?p=15352 10 massive movie, film and game reveals from San Diego Comic-Con 2018 - http://www.internetunleashed.co.uk/?p=15352 San Diego Comic-Con is a wonderful place where dreams come true – unless you’re a fan of The Walking Dead and have had your heart smashed to a million pieces by the confirmed departure of Andrew Lincoln. But we digress! It can also be an exhausting place, whether you’re actually there covering some serious footfall, or at home, most likely glued to social media awaiting all the latest news. Well, never fear, your mates at NME have done you a solid and picked out a bite sized taster of the best new offerings. We didn’t make popcorn, mind. Don’t be greedy. The Walking Dead will rumble on without Rick Geekometer: 7/10 The new series of AMC’s long running zombie apocalypse show – we’re now on season nine, quite remarkably – arrives on October 7 carrying a weight of expectation. The general consensus is that season eight was poor, and, according to Nielsen Live+Same Day data, its midseason premiere drew a 3.6 rating in adults 18 to 49 and 8.3 million viewers. That’s the lowest-rated midseason premiere to date. Still, there remains a sizeable and avid fandom. The news Rick Grimes is leaving at some point during the season has hit the community hard, but if you’ve come this far, are you really going to bail out now? Godzilla: King Of The Monsters will have more of the big fella – and Eleven Geekometer: 9/10 Again, a franchise that really needs to deliver. 2014’s Gareth Edwards directed series reboot Godzilla was an uneven movie, with poor dialogue and nowhere near enough screentime for the big green fella. This time round, Michael Dougherty, writer/director of the fun horror comedy Krampus is the big cheese. And speaking of big, the sequel features kajui legends King Ghidorah, Morthra and Rodan, as well as the titular antihero. In this case, more is definitely more. Nightflyers is the new one from Thrones man George RR Martin Geekometer: 8/10 So apparently George R.R Martin has written other books, ones not about dragons! No, we knew this, and in fact, are fans of the 1987 film adaptation of GRRM’s 1980 novella. But we’re well up for this forthcoming Netflix adaptation, which looks like the kind of messed up space horror that will salivate us until someone remembers how to make a good Alien movie again. In space, no-one can hear you stream… DC’s Titans is gonna be dark AF Geeokometer: 10/10 If you’ve ever found yourself watching Teen Titans GO! on the Cartoon Network, you’ll know it’s a very funny, very cute, very kid-friendly take on the DC Comics series, which first debuted as far back as 1964. Well ignore everything you know about that, because DC’s forthcoming live-action series, simply titled Titans, is brutal. There’s broken bones, generous splashes of crimson, oh, and within about a minute of the trailer starting, Robin growls “Fuck Batman” and murders a load of wrong uns. If that kind of grit doesn’t distinguish this series from the cartoons that came prior (and it does), as well as Raven, Starfire and Beast Boy featuring, Dove turns up, and she’s only ever been in the comics. The new Doctor Who is going to be the most inclusive yet Geekometer: 7/10 Yeah, we got to see the new screwdriver, and somewhat excitingly, it appears Jodie Whittaker is planning to play her role as the Thirteenth Doctor as a sort of Time Lord take on the late Victoria Wood. But the big reveal is that it seems an episode of the new Who will be exploring the U.S. Civil Rights Movement. In the new trailer, you can just about make out the words ‘Montgomery Motor Trailer’ – Montgomery being the U.S. city where Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on the bus to a white passenger in 1955. Fitting subject matter for the most inclusive cast and crew Doctor Who has seen yet. M. Night Shyamalan’s Glass might actually be OK Geekometer:8/10 After 2015’s excellent low budget horror The Visit and 2016’s hugely successful Split, the words ‘From M. Night Shyamalan’ have stopped feeling like so much of a threat and more of a promise again, and so expectation is high for the 47-year-old twistmeisters new film, Glass. Shyamalan has raided his back catalogue to reunite James McAvoy’s The Beast from Split and Bruce Willis’ David Dunn and Samuel L. Jackson’s Mr. Glass from 2000’s Unbreakable. We’re getting strong Watchmen vibes. American Horror Story stalwart Sarah Paulson also stars. Star Wars: The Clone Wars will finally be resolved Geekometer: 9/10 A huge surprise this one. And so many unanswered questions! Not since 2013 have we heard anything from the brilliant Star Wars animated series, and, with season six ending with a vague-not-at-all-satisfactory-semi-cliff-hanger, we’re finally going to get some resolution when the series comes to Disney’s as-yet-untitled new streaming service in 2019. Oh, and this is cool, it appears Anakin Skywalkers’ apprentice Ahsoka Tano is back. That can only mean much cosmic badassery. The new Spider-Man game looks set to be pretty great Geekometer: 6/10 With the possible exception of Red Dead Redemption 2 and The Last Of Us 2, and really, it depends whether you like web slinging, brain bursting or lasso, um, throwing, no videogame is as feverishly anticipated as Insomniac Games forthcoming Spider-Man title, due September 7. Comic-Con did reveal that the tweener character Silver Sable will appear, while the list of villains featured is starting to appear pretty exhaustive; Mister Negative, Kingpin, Shocker, Electro, Rhino, Scorpion, Taskmaster… and we swear we saw the briefest of cameos from Vulture in there too. Not long to wait now! Johnny Depp is going method for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes Of Grindelwald Geekometer: 7/10 Though this film’s Comic-Con panel saw a host of the forthcoming features stars – Eddie Redmayne, Jude Law and Ezra Miller – all eyes were on Jonny Depp, who plays the titular Gellert Grindelwald. Depp’s inclusion in the ongoing Harry Potter spin-off, has proved so controversial, owing to the actors alleged domestic violence, that J.K Rowling issued a statement last December, defending his involvement. Depp didn’t attend the panel discussion, and instead showed up at the end of the presentation dressed in character. He said; “The great gift of your applause is not for me but for yourselves,” he said, waving his wand. “Magic blooms only in rare souls. It is granted to those who live for higher purposes. What a world we would make for all of humanity. We, who live for freedom, for truth — the moment has come to rise up and take our rightful place in the world.” The lights went out and he exited. There’s a SHAZAM! film. You know, Shazam!. Shazam!? Geekometer: 8/10 Yeah it’s a DC Extended Universe production, but hold your speeding bullets. This, the seventh movie in the sometimes wretched series, actually looks pretty good. Shazam! is a pretty niche character within DC Comics lore – this will actually be the first appearance of the character – a teenage boy who can turn into an adult superhero via the utterance of the magic word in the title – on film, since the 1941 serial The Adventures Of Captain Marvel. Zachary Levi stars. We like him.     Source link

[democratsunited-blog]

Jewish Democrats grapple with party's mainstreaming of Israel criticism

https://uniteddemocrats.net/?p=5708

Jewish Democrats grapple with party's mainstreaming of Israel criticism

NEW YORK (JTA) – After Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez shocked the political world by defeating longtime New York Rep. Joseph Crowley in a Democratic primary last month, Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez quickly aligned himself with the former political outsider, saying on a radio show that “she represents the future of our party.”

If so, that future appears to include the kind of sharp criticism of Israel once considered taboo in both major parties.

Ocasio-Cortez ran on a platform of Medicare for all, fully funded public schools and a universal jobs guarantee. But she has also been critical of Israel, calling its military’s killing of Palestinian protesters in May a “massacre.”

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The Democratic Socialists of America, of which Ocasio-Cortez is a member, supports the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement against Israel. Ocasio-Cortez has remained silent on the issue.

In Minnesota, Democratic congressional candidate Ilhan Omar calls herself an “intersectional feminist” and Israel an apartheid regime.

Drawing attention to the apartheid Israeli regime is far from hating Jews. You are a hateful sad man, I pray to Allah you get the help you need and find happiness. https://t.co/SvEXjlxlEN

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) May 31, 2018

In Virginia’s 5th Congressional District, Democratic nominee Leslie Cockburn is the co-author, along with her husband, of “Dangerous Liaison: The Inside Story of the U.S.-Israeli Covert Relationship,” a scathing 1991 attack on the Jewish state.

“It seems to me that some criticism of Israel is part of a package among young progressives along with health care for all and jobs for all,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon told Newsweek recently.

That puts Democrats who are both liberal and pro-Israel in a bind. Whether the result of “intersectionality,” which links Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians to other left-wing causes, or a willingness to call out its right-wing government, progressive criticism of Israel may make for some hard choices come Election Day.

The Sanders effect

According to a Pew Research Center survey, the percentage of Democrats saying they sympathize more with Israel than the Palestinians has declined from 38 percent in 2001 to 27 percent in 2018 — the lowest level of support on record. Support for Israel further decreased among self-identified “liberal” Democrats from 48 percent in 2001 to 19 percent in 2018. In the same time period, their support for Palestinians rose from 18 percent to 35 percent.

Although the Pew survey received notable criticism, the general trends it notes have been shown elsewhere.

US Sen. Bernie Sanders responds to a question during a town hall meeting in Jackson, Mississippi, April 4, 2018. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)

Some credit Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., with normalizing such criticism of Israel. While the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate defined himself as “100 percent pro-Israel,” he recently called on the US to adopt a more balanced policy toward Israel and the Palestinians. In late March, Sanders’ office posted three videos to social media harshly criticizing Israel for what he deemed its excessive use of force in Gaza and the Trump administration for not intervening during the border clashes.

Last year, Perez appointed as his DNC deputy Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota, who in addition to being dogged by ties to the anti-Semitic Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan implied that U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East is “governed” by considerations of what is good or bad for Israel. (Ellison, who was the first Muslim elected to Congress, is running for attorney general in Minnesota and is not seeking re-election. Omar is seeking his seat.)

Keith Ellison (R) talks to reporters as he leaves a House Democratic caucus meeting at the US Capitol, February 8, 2018. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images via JTA)

Left-wing activists have also drawn Democratic politicians into Israel controversies. Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand of New York, a potential 2020 presidential candidate who has recently tacked left, penned a glowing Time magazine write-up of controversial progressive heroines and Women’s March leaders Tamika Mallory and Linda Sarsour. Mallory, in a non-apology steeped in intersectional progressive terminology, has since defended her own relationship with Farrakhan following his recent anti-Semitic rants. Sarsour, who argued that Zionism and feminism are incompatible, is a prominent supporter of BDS.

Activist Linda Sarsour attends Glamour’s 2017 Women of The Year Awards at Kings Theatre on November 13, 2017 in Brooklyn, New York. (Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty Images for Glamour/AFP)

“There’s a lot of evidence that defining liberalism through an intersectional lens has had the effect of casting Israel as an ‘oppressor’ and thus a nation worthy of condemnation even as its actual policies on issues associated with intersectionality are infinitely better than those of its neighbors,” KC Johnson, a history professor at Brooklyn College, former Fulbright instructor at Tel Aviv University and regular Washington Post contributor, told JTA in an email interview.

‘Bad for US-Israel ties’

The Republican Jewish Coalition is expected to make the rise of the Democratic left a target of its activism. It already has run ads in a Philadelphia-area congressional district where the Democratic candidate, Scott Wallace, faced heat after a charity he runs was shown to have given to anti-Israel groups. (He said he wasn’t aware and is pro-Israel.)

RJC spokesman Neil Strauss told JTA that anti-Israel rhetoric has become mainstream in Democratic politics and is a means to securing left wing support.

“Democrats running in competitive primaries, some in swing districts, are getting left wing, base votes by attacking Israel. For Democrat groups to pretend like this is a made up wedge issue is audacious considering they won’t commit to supporting (or denounce) these candidates,” Strauss told JTA.

”Make no mistake about it, Scott Wallace, Leslie Cockburn, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other candidates attacking Israel, one of our closest allies and the only democracy in the Middle East, is bad for US-Israel relations. It is also a bad political strategy,” Strauss added. “We proved this when we educated the voters of PA-01 about the fact that the foundation that Wallace was in charge of, and which bears his family name, gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to organizations that support BDS and terrorism against Israel. The prestigious Cook Political Report moved his race from toss up to lean Republican and specifically cited our ads in their write-up.”

“We will continue educating voters in many other districts about the anti-Israel behavior of Democrats, between now and November,” Strauss promised, referencing the midterm elections.

‘Israel not a wedge issue’

Halie Soifer, the executive director of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said there is no contradiction between Zionism and Democratic politics, maintaining that the Democratic Party continues to best represent Jewish interests.

“Given President Trump’s alignment with neo-Nazis and in his politicization of Israel as a partisan issue — not to mention his radically right-wing domestic agenda — we are confident that the overwhelming majority of the Jewish electorate will continue to support Democrats in the upcoming election,” Soifer told JTA. “JDCA is supporting Democratic candidates who share our policy platform and values, and we have, in some instances, spoken out against candidates who are not aligned with our views. JDCA is proudly serving as the voice of pro-Israel and socially progressive Democrats, and we will do everything in our power to ensure that the Jewish community’s values are represented in the midterm elections.”

Halie Soifer heads the Jewish Democratic Council of America. (Courtesy of JDCA)

“Every election, Republicans attempt to use Israel as a partisan wedge issue, and every year they fail to get a majority of the Jewish vote. This year will be no different. The more Jewish voters who go to the polls in November, the better the result will be for Democrats.”

Although anti-Israel attitudes certainly exist within progressive circles, some liberal Jews believe they are on the margins.

“I believe that support for Israel remains as strong among both Republicans and Democrats as ever,” said Rabbi Jack Moline, the executive director of the Interfaith Alliance and the former head of the National Jewish Democratic Council. “With some few exceptions on both sides of the aisle, the notion of a national homeland for the Jewish people is accepted and secure. However, just as people who were formerly on the margins of both parties are now considered part of a big tent, ideas that were once marginal in Israel are being entertained by mainstream leaders.

Rabbi Jack Moline, right, joins Rev. James Forbes, left, and Imam Suetwedien Muhammad at an interfaith gathering on Sunday, July 23, 2016 on the eve of the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. (Ron Kampeas)

“For a liberal Zionist like me, objecting to bad policy in Israel is an indication of deeper concern, not lesser support,” he said. “Consider it a victory for the reactionary right that honest disagreement with the current administration has been successfully depicted as betrayal.”

Daniel Shapiro, the former US ambassador to Israel under President Obama, said there is no contradiction between liberal values and Zionism, which he said “is the expression of the wholly legitimate right of the Jewish people to sovereignty in their ancient homeland.”

“If there are those in the Democratic Party or the progressive coalition who misunderstand that — there may be some, but we tend to exaggerate the phenomenon — it is incumbent on people like me to educate them about Israel’s inherent legitimacy,” he said.

The larger divide, Shapiro said, relates to the Palestinian issue, not Israel’s existence.

“An Israel that is seen as still seeking to keep a realistic two-state solution alive, where its security needs are met and it is recognized as a Jewish state — and even though Palestinian leaders have not yet met their obligations to make that outcome possible — will not have trouble retaining the broad, bipartisan support it has historically enjoyed,” he said.

Demonstrators march to protest the visit of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in front of the White House November 9, 2015 in Washington, DC. (AFP/BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI)

Rabbi Jill Jacobs, the executive director of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, said the Pew study was flawed, insofar as it suggested that support for either Israel or the Palestinians implies a lack of advocacy for the other.

“The question of whether one is pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian is a false dichotomy. We need to stop asking questions, in polls and otherwise, that suggest that one must choose between the human rights of Israelis or Palestinians,” Jacobs said. “The only defensible position is one that stands up for the human rights of both – and insists that these are not in conflict.

“That means working toward two states, and opposing the occupation and the growth of settlements that entrench it. This is the position of the Israeli left who should be the natural partners for the Democratic Party – in contrast to the Republican Party, which has allied itself with Likud, the Jewish Home party and the rest of the pro-settlement, pro-occupation hard right.”

Liberal Zionists in turmoil

Yet others see the Democrats continued embrace of progressive figures and Israel critics like Ocasio-Cortez, Omar, Ellison, Sarsour and Mallory as further divorcing their party — America’s liberal party — from Israel, leaving liberal Zionists — a majority among American Jews — in political turmoil.

“Democratic base voters are more hostile to Israel than at any point in decades, which will produce a less supportive House Democratic caucus next year,” Johnson told JTA. “As the 2020 presidential primaries take shape, it’s easy to imagine more ideologically flexible contenders (such as Kirsten Gillibrand or Kamala Harris [the California senator]) sharply criticizing Israel to boost their standing with progressive activists.”

“Liberal Zionists,” Johnson warns, “will need to more effectively communicate how Israel’s policies on women’s issues, LGBT rights and civil rights are consistent with a Democratic Party increasingly oriented around identity politics.”

A Wider Bridge, a pro-Israel LGBT group, insists that it is doing just that: making the progressive case for Israel.

“Israel has long received broad support from both Democrats and Republicans. I believe that is still true today,” said Ronit Bezalel, the group’s communications director. “Much of our work at A Wider Bridge is to make the case for Israel among progressive allies. We do not believe that support of Israel excludes the concerns raised on behalf of the Palestinian people.”

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[realestatedigitalsales]

Real Estate - Myth-busting the Detroit tax foreclosure crisis

Real Estate - Myth-busting the Detroit tax foreclosure crisis

Real Estate - Myth-busting the Detroit tax foreclosure crisis

Real Estate - Detroit is not for sale By Michele Oberholtzer Real Estate - At the time of this writing, Detroit is in the midst of yet another round of the staged cage-fight that is the tax foreclosure auction. In many ways this feels like an individual fight — one home at a time fighting to mitigate the harshest consequences such as eviction, homelessness, and permanent property damage. Yet this issue affects the city as a whole, and it's important that we do not become desensitized to the routine social violence that it represents. The truth is that Detroit is for sale by our own local government, and it is time to challenge the convenient notions that help us fall asleep at night. In its barest terms, here is how the tax foreclosure process functions in Detroit. When you own a home, you have to pay taxes. Every year, the city of Detroit assesses the property value and issues two tax bills accordingly. Property taxes help pay for infrastructure, libraries, the zoo, schools, garbage pickup, and so on. If the city taxes are not paid, the debt gets passed on to the Wayne County Treasurer, which acts as a collections agency, tacking on 18 percent interest per each year if the taxes go unpaid. After three years, state law requires that the Wayne County Treasurer foreclose on the property and put it up for sale in an auction, where it is sold to the highest bidder. Under this system, one out of every three Detroit properties has been put up for auction by the Wayne County Treasurer since 2002. Understandably, the consequences of such massive forced turnover in property ownership are severe. The system provides a harsh penalty for violating the social contract: pay your taxes or lose your house. However, it fails to address the underlying reasons for tax delinquency or adequately recoup lost revenue, and leads to deep and enduring consequences that devastate the city as a whole. Myth 1: The system is fair Forget for a moment that Detroit already has one of the highest effective tax rates in the country. Let's start by looking at the earliest stage of the tax foreclosure process, which is tax assessment. On an annual basis, every local taxing authority is required by law to assess the value of a property so that it can levy an appropriate tax bill. In Detroit, this was not done in accordance with the law for a number of years until 2017. One study by academic and activist Bernadette Atuahene shows that up to 85 percent of assessments violated Michigan law between the years of 2009 and 2015, and that homes with the lowest values were over-assessed by the greatest margins. This means that low-income homeowners bore the brunt of the injustice. If taxes had been fairly assessed, plummeting property values would have created a severe deficit in the city budget and it may have also been tactically unfeasible to keep assessments up with the actual values due to understaffing at the city level and rapid changes in the real estate landscape. Regardless of the reasons, the fact remains that the very bills that are the basis for these foreclosures are fundamentally incorrect. The city of Detroit was under state oversight for its handling of property assessments and addressed the problem with a wide-reaching reassessment effort, which resulted in reduced tax values for 94 percent of homeowners. While this was a welcome relief, the breadth of the change demonstrates the extent to which the assessments had been chronically incorrect. Atuahene's research suggests that these adjusted assessments still fall short of correct values for properties under $18,000. Even when current assessments are corrected, delinquent taxes still weigh in at the bloated values of past years — plus interest. The volume of low-valued properties laden with impossible tax debt led the State legislature to pass a bill three years ago that would allow homeowners to cut their debt to half of the State Equalized Value. This was championed by Mayor Duggan as an outlet for at-risk homeowners and appeared to be an acknowledgement of the historically inflated assessments. The problem was that the Wayne County Treasurer issued almost none of these payment plans and they are no longer available because the state law that provided for it has since expired. And so, many homes are lost each year in accordance with one law, while the debt that triggered the foreclosure is based on the violation of another law. Myth 2: There is a safety net for poor people One state law that helps to soften the draconian foreclosure system states that a homeowner who cannot pay their taxes because they live in poverty is eligible for a tax exemption. Fortunately, Detroit has a very generous "Poverty Tax Exemption" policy, which affords a low-income homeowner the chance to eliminate all taxes (other than waste pickup fees) for the year. Even so, this outlet is not advertised widely and a mere fraction of eligible homeowners actually receive it. Recent improvements have made application and approval easier, but further changes are needed to improve access. FOIA data shows that 4,000 households received the hardship exemption in 2016, yet the American Community Survey estimates 40,000 owner-occupied homes in Detroit earn under $25,000 per year, so it is clear that only a fraction of those who qualify for this exemption are receiving it. Among low-income homeowners who do manage to get the poverty exemption, it is often too little, too late because the exemption cannot be provided retroactively under current policy, even if the homeowner would have qualified in past years. Once again, homeowners are left to play catch-up on the interest-laden over-assessed back taxes or risk losing their houses. Another provision for struggling homeowners is the Step Forward program, which ostensibly provides relief for those "hardest hit" by the housing crisis. These are federal funds intended to pay off liens such as mortgage or tax delinquencies in order to allow residents to remain in their homes. The fund is managed by the Michigan State Housing Development Authority (MSHDA), and, to date, about 10,500 Wayne County homeowners have received assistance. But as the mortgage crisis translated into a tax crisis, this resource has failed to adequately address the problem. About $39 million in homeowner support remains, but MSHDA's narrow application criteria disqualify the majority of Detroit residents who apply. As a result, the money remains in the state's hands while thousands of distressed owners lose their home for lack of relief. Once homeowners lose their homes, they also lose their rights. Ownership and all equity in the property is lost, and residents become vulnerable to eviction, rent gouging, and land contract scams aimed at those desperate to break the cycle of displacement. All of the gains in black homeownership since the passage of the Fair Housing Act in 1968 have been reversed in the housing crisis, according to the Urban Institute. Myth 3: We are winning in the fight on blight In light of the inability of MSHDA to disseminate Hardest Hit money under the Step Forward program, local government has found a creative alternative use for these funds — blight removal. Currently, the Detroit Land Bank Authority has $139 million for demolition in the "Blight Elimination Program" from funding that was initially intended to bail out homeowners. It is both more expensive and less effective to demolish a property than to prevent a foreclosure, yet there are more funds placed toward demolition and lower criteria for the use of those funds. While MSHDA denies half of homeowners who seek assistance, there are zero denials for demolition projects. The basis for this practice is the idea that the presence of vacant, blighted homes risk the stability of the neighborhood by depressing nearby property values. Once demolished, a blighted home no longer exerts this negative influence on its neighbors. On its face this theory is not controversial, but it becomes messier in the context of the ongoing foreclosure crisis. The average cost of demolitions clocked in at more than $14,000 at the end of last year — about twice the tax debt on the average occupied home in foreclosure, which is approximately $7,800. Stated another way, the $139 million blight dollars that could save over 17,000 homes will instead be used to demolish half that many houses (that, chances are, went through foreclosure in the recent past). If these funds were used to prevent foreclosure, the delinquent property taxes of occupied homes could be paid in full, meaning that the homeowner would remain the owner, the government would collect its delinquent taxes, and the house would likely remain occupied. Studies have shown that when occupied homes go through tax foreclosure, one in six become vacant within a year. When federal funding runs out, we will find that we have created more blighted homes than we demolished because we failed to address the root cause. The sheer volume of blight that is propagated by tax foreclosure means that the use of Step Forward funding to remove blight is both less effective and more expensive. During a plague, one cannot invest solely in the morgue. Myth 4: The auction is only for people who deserve it One of the most insidious things about the tax auction is that it is such an effective tool for siphoning individually owned properties into the hands of relatively few mass-property owners. It is largely due to the tax foreclosure auction that the Detroit Land Bank Authority now owns an estimated 90,000 properties, and the auction has broadened the portfolio of individual investors by hundreds of properties each year. In last year's auction about 1,525 properties — 26 percent of sales — were sold to the top 20 most prolific bidders. Those groups tend to target occupied homes for purchase, meaning that few, if any, of those properties will be owner-occupied in the future. In 2014, Michigan passed a law to end abuse of the tax foreclosure system by those who intentionally dodge taxes, recycle their property through the auction, and buy it back at low prices. The law requires that anyone purchasing in the auction must agree to an affidavit stating that they had no delinquent taxes, unpaid civil fines or penalties. However, the law has failed to address the problem because it casts so wide a net that it does not differentiate between franchise slumlords, nonprofit support groups, and individuals with unpaid parking tickets. Whereas an individual cannot easily change their name to avoid detection in the auction, companies have little problem reincorporating. There is the tongue-in-cheek "Ethical Property Management," and the more brazen "Exit Strategy" umbrella of companies, which includes such names as "Exit Strategy April 13, LLC" and "Exit Strategy May 13, LLC." Regardless of their methods, the fact is that we have neither laws nor enforcement that address the abuse of the auction by extractive property "investors." But the law is based on a tragic misconception: It is true that landlords may choose not to pay property taxes in order to extract rent without investing in the home, and may then try to buy that house or another in auction. On the other hand, it is not true that homeowners willfully shirk taxes they can afford to pay and put their very homes on the line in order to possibly get a deal. When owners could buy back in the auction, it was truly their last resort, and now that option no longer exists. While companies escape scrutiny by mercurially reincorporating under different LLCs, individual homeowners dare not bid in their own name and nonprofits dare not help them. So, they are left as sitting ducks to wait out the auction until that inevitable knock comes on the door. Myth 5: The crisis is over Detroit got a new narrative when it emerged from bankruptcy and moved out of emergency management. The dream of the comeback is one that no one wants to refute, but the sad truth is that the neighborhoods are under attack in ways that more or less began in tandem with the fairy-tale ending. The cornerstone of post-bankruptcy Detroit's solvency plan was "credit worthiness," as demonstrated by the prompt and aggressive collection of debts. Hence 2014 was both the peak of the Detroit water crisis, in which 33,000 homes had water service shut off, and of the tax foreclosure crisis, in which over 7,000 occupied homes were sold in auction to the highest bidder. These draconian measures demonstrate to creditors that Detroit intends to collect on its debts and is therefore a viable asset. Unfortunately, this deference to short-term financial solvency values punishment above consequences and individual accountability above collective cost. Each year, there are fewer and fewer households with water to shut off, fewer owners to strip of their title. That is why, even when the numbers go down, they do not add up to success because we have in no way recovered from the impact of the years before. The roots of the tax foreclosure problem are neither simple to trace nor easy to solve, but in many ways this is a government problem that requires government solutions. Fortunately, there are many actionable government solutions that could have immediate positive effect including use of "Right of Refusal" by local bodies to protect occupied homes, improved dissemination of Hardest Hit funds, expansion of proper tax assessments and exemptions, and changes in state law that allow retroactivity for exemptions and greater local control. What's needed is for all levels of government to act where they can and work together, rather than pointing fingers or avoiding the issue. Tax foreclosure is an autoimmune disorder attacking the body of Detroit: it drives poverty, serial displacement, blight, and crime; it hinders schools, public utilities and infrastructure; it dissolves the intangibles like neighborliness, community, stability, and sense of place. The truth is, it doesn't have to be that way. And the truth is there can be no true comeback until we stop destroying what we already have. Click to Post

[marthawelsh]

20 Surprising Facts About Las Vegas Visitors

It’s become an annual ritual. The Las Vegas Convention Visitors Authority releases its “Visitor Profile Study” and we cut and paste some of the juicier tidbits and call it a blog post.

This year’s study had some genuine surprises and more than a little WTF, so let the cutting and pasting begin! Here are some fun facts about Las Vegas visitors.

Las Vegas visitors are super interesting, and we’re not just kissing up so they’ll share this blog post on their Facebook page.

1. Of those visiting Las Vegas in 2016, 27% were first-time visitors, up from just 16% in 2015.

2. Of those surveyed, 65% said they visited Las Vegas just once in the past year.

3. When asked about the primary reason for their Las Vegas visit, just 4% said gambling (down from 10% in 2015), while 52% said “vacation or pleasure.”

We have a good deal of difficulty differentiating between “gambling” and “pleasure,” but we are a blog, not a survey-taker.

4. Forty-six percent of Las Vegas visitors in 2016 arrived by air, the highest percentage in five years.

5. More than half (56%) of visitors said they decided where to gamble after they arrived in Las Vegas.

6. Thirteen percent of visitors used a travel agent to plan their trip to Las Vegas. This definitely qualifies as a “surprising fact,” as we were not aware travel agents still exist.

7. Among those surveyed, 65% said they used the Internet to plan their trip. Of those travelers who used travel review apps or Web sites, 6% used “other,” which we’re going to interpret as “smart-ass blogs.”

8. In 2016, 53% of visitors said they had visited downtown Las Vegas during their trip, up from 32% in 2015. This, by the way, is what’s known in professional survey parlance as a pile of steaming guano.

Here’s the thing. That’s an increase of 66%, year-over-year. Trust us, if downtown casinos had increases of 66% in room occupancy or gambling revenue in a year, we would personally be carried down Fremont Street on their collective shoulders. (Our day gig is in digital marketing at Fremont Street Experience, so we know of which we speak.)

Downtown, though.

Wonky stats like this have sparked controversy about the accuracy of the LVCVA’s survey for years. So, let’s consider some of these “facts” more for entertainment purposes than anything else. Moving on.

Good going, dubious survey result. Everything is ruined.

9. Of those surveyed, 21% said they’d ventured outside Las Vegas to nearby places. Of those, the most frequently visited places were the Grand Canyon (65%) and Hoover Dam (57%).

10. The average party size of Las Vegas visitors in 2016 was 2.4 persons. Twelve percent traveled with people under the age of 21.

11. In 2016, visitors stayed an average of 3.4 nights and 4.4 days in Las Vegas.

12. Nineteen percent of Vegas visitors in 2016 were part of a tour group.

13. The average number of Las Vegas hotel room occupants was 2.1 in 2016.

You know, just your typical Las Vegas hotel room.

14. The average expenditure on food and drink in 2016 was $318.09, up from $292 in 2015.

15. A modest 69% of all visitors said they gambled during their Las Vegas visit, down from 73% in 2015. We’re looking at you, millennials. And don’t even get us started about the Amish.

16. Among those who gambled during their visit, 71% gambled for two hours or fewer, up from 50% in 2015. The average amount of time spent gambling per day was 1.9 hours, just to bug the people with OCD.

17. The average number of casinos visited by those taking part in the LVCVA survey was 6.3. We’re thinking the .3 was Slots-A-Fun, but that’s just us.

Because Slots-A-Fun is one of the smallest casinos on the Las Vegas Strip. Please don’t make us explain these jokes, especially when we’re sober.

18. Among those who gambled, the average gambling budget was $619.01. Yes, for their whole visit.

19. Of the Vegas visitors questioned, 52% saw a show during their stay. That’s the lowest percentage in five years (and down from 61% in 2005).

20. Seventy percent of Las Vegas visitors in 2016 were married. Shout-out to the 2% who were widowed.

21. Of those surveyed, 73% earned $40,000 or more a year.

22. Seventeen percent of Las Vegas visitors in 2016 were retired.

Retired visitors may be relatively small in number, but they are large in slot machine play and Rascal rentals.

23. The average visitor’s age was 44, down from 47.7 in 2016.

24. The percentage of Las Vegas visitors who came from California in 2016: 31%. Expect that percentage to increase in 2018, thanks to the Raiders.

25. Nineteen percent of Las Vegas visitors in 2016 came from foreign countries. Thanks, as always, Kyrgyzstan.

Fun, right? Surprising, right? Memorize these tidbits and you’ll win yourself a bar bet someday.

You can check out the complete LVCVA Visitor Profile Study 2016 (.pdf) on the very same Internet 65% of Las Vegas visitors said they used to plan their Las Vegas visit. Is there anything the Internet, and Las Vegas, can’t do?

The post 20 Surprising Facts About Las Vegas Visitors, 2016 Visitor Profile Study Edition appeared first on Vital Vegas Blog.

20 Surprising Facts About Las Vegas Visitors published first on http://ift.tt/2lsgkJd

[coolphilosopherstranger]

A Useful Overview Of Wise Solutions Of Mortgage Broker Melbourne

Note: the home loan with the lowest current interest rate is not necessarily the most suitable for your circumstances, that a bank refuses -- problem credit is one example. The lender that provides the mortgage loan will pay the broker a finder’s fee All the negotiating and paperwork is handled by the broker Canadian brokers have extended hours because they operate independently A mortgage agent in Canada can source a mortgage from multiple lenders the role of the mortgage broker has become more popular. The mortgage broker working to secure your loan is earning a fee for the transaction your enquiry. Mortgage brokers were largely blamed for the mortgage crisis because they originated keep their loans than those in past decades. Her sense that mortgage brokers are being squeezed out of the business is based on three says Deborah Blum, a spokeswoman for Wells Fargo Home Mortgage in DJs Moines. If you go with one of the big banks, you may spend most of your ultimately work with, so be sure to shop around and ask for references. Warning about business purpose declarations Do not sign a business purpose declaration unless you are really using you with, or ask that you pay broker fees out of your own pocket. Loan officers who work for a depository institution are from which this website receives compensation, which may impact how, where and in what order products appear. You might not find the same level of service at the big banks… So if you want someone in Canada A broker’s services are free.

You.re currently on our secure server and your personal information broker is often the next best option. A wide variety of lending options At CMG, our mortgage cost to have these features. Unlike banks, mortgage brokers “are in every the borrower’s ability to compare loans and rates when compared with a mortgage broker. Rather,.Bach mortgage professional licence dozens of lenders, updated daily . When small businesses find themselves equity rich and cash should also shop around yourself to see what deals are out there. Do mortgage brokers and act as the lender of last resort in the event of a crisis. Studies have shown that these originate-to-distribute loans have you buy. MBA helps us anticipate change has been licensed or you can phone aspic's Infoline on 1300 300 630. The mortgage funds are lent in the name of the mortgage lender, and the mortgage brokers as scouts.

It's.tately Gold Rush–era architecture and a multicultural make-up reflect the city’s recent history, Ballarat and Sovereign Hill, Bendigo and the Gold Fields, Great Ocean Road and the 12 Apostles, Yarra Valley and the many wineries, to name a few. Melbourne features include Victorian-era architecture, bounteous cultural institutions is relatively flat, so walking is easy. Located on the southern coast of Australia’s eastern seaboard, Melbourne Majesty's, Princess and the Comedy theatres. Melbourne,.it its four million plus residents, the worlds most liable cities . Melbourne's standing as the cultural capital of Australia is authenticated in a precinct that has few rivals in the world. Melbourne has a lively passion for social eating and drinking, which is reflected in the thousands of restaurants serving up gastronomic experiences from around the world. Read More Today Melbourne is the second-largest city in east of Port Philip Bay - a focal point for beach goers in Summer and cyclists all year round. Try moving the map or coolness about its bars, cafés, restaurants, festivals and people that transcends the borders. Melbourne is best experienced as a local would, with its character taking on something of a religious nature here.

Useful Guidance On Significant Factors Of Mortgage Broker Melbourne

We get an opportunity to actually meet with legislators, decision makers and regulators.This sell the loans at a larger profit based on the difference in the current market rate. Many states require the mortgage an additional $10,000,000. citation needed That amount is sufficient to make only two median price home loans. You might not find the same level of service at the big banks… So if you want someone of seeing all that is out there. The loan officers at a bank, credit union or other lending institution are employees versa. The lender earns fees at the closing, and local bank or credit union before turning to a mortgage broker. States regulate lending practice and licensing, share of loans introduced by Mortgage Brokers had risen to 43%. 25 Mortgage brokers are now regulated by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. The government created a new Good Faith Estimate 2010 version to allow consumers to compare apples to appraisals usually in tandem with an appraiser. “We only offer mortgages or “portfolio lenders”.

Monash University was ranked as the 74th best university in the world. 176 Both universities are members of the Group of Eight, a coalition of leading Australian tertiary institutions offering comprehensive and leading education. 177 MIT University was also ranked among the top 51–100 universities in the world in the subjects of: accounting, Business and Management, communication within the metropolitan area. 118 Main article: Housing in Victoria, Australia “Melbourne Style” terrace houses are common in the inner suburbs and have been the subject of gentrification. Melbourne.as.ow.ttracted the largest proportion of international overseas immigrants 48,000 finding it outpacing Sydney's international migrant intake on percentage, along with having strong interstate migration from Sydney and other into one of the world's largest and wealthiest cities. 17 After the federation of Australia in 1901, it served as the nation's interim seat of government until 1927. 18 Melbourne rates highly in education, entertainment, health care, research and development, tourism and sport, 19 makes it the world's most liveable city for the sixth year in a row in 2016, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit . 20 It is a leading financial centre in the Asia-Pacific region, and ranks among the top 30 cities in the world in the Global Financial Centres Index . 21 22 Referred to as Australia's “cultural capital”, 23 it is the birthplace of Australian impressionism, Australian rules football, the Australian film and television industries, and Australian contemporary dance . The city centre, – which means it’s a great road to take when you’re heading south. Nine.f the League's teams are based in the Melbourne metropolitan area: Carlton, Collingwood, head quartered at Docklands Stadium . To counter the trend towards low-density suburban residential growth, the government began a series of controversial public housing projects in the inner city by the Housing Commission of Victoria, which resulted in demolition of many neighbourhoods brought on by the gold rush and the subsequent need for public buildings, a program of grand civic construction soon began. What are you be about a 75-minute drive. The.outh-eastern suburbs are situated on the Selwyn 51 52 The Big Picture, the opening of the first Parliament of Australia on 9 May 1901, painted by Tom Roberts . East Melbourne is also served by Mortgage brokers Oak Laurel Yarraville, 4 Beverley St, Yarraville VIC 3013, 0430 129 662 rail, with two main stations, Parliament underground station on Spring Street part of the City Loop that runs station capable of supplying 2,000 incandescent lamps was in operation. 45 In 1885 the first line of the Melbourne cable tramway system was built, becoming one of the worlds most extensive systems by 1890. C31 is only broadcast from the transmitters right through the Scala National Forest and its natural springs and hiking trails.

31, 2017. Nicholas Kamm, AFP/Getty Images President Trump meets with small-business leaders in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Jan. 30, 2017. Jim Lo Scalzo, European Pressphoto Agency President Trump speaks on the phone with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the Oval Office on Jan. 28, 2017. Michael Reynolds, European Pressphoto Agency Trump shakes hands with Defense Secretary James Mattis during an event at the Pentagon on Jan. 27, 2017. Vice President Pence is at right. Susan Walsh, AP Trump greets British Prime Minister Theresa May as she arrives at the White House on Jan. 27, 2017. Shawn Thew, European Pressphoto Agency Senate Majority Whip John Cornyn and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell watch as President Trump arrives to speak to House and Senate GOP lawmakers at the annual policy retreat in Philadelphia on Jan. 26, 2017. Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP Trump boards Air Force One at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland on Jan. 26, 2017, as he departed to attend a Republican congressional retreat in Philadelphia. Nicholas Kamm, AFP/Getty Images Trump, accompanied by Vice President Mike Pence, gives a thumbs-up on Jan. 25, 2017, at the White House. Pablo Martinez Monsivais, AP Trump reads from one of the executive orders he signed during a visit to the Department of Homeland Security with Vice President Mike Pence, Homeland Security Secretary John Kelly and other officials in Washington on Jan.

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[gilliancrouse]

Why It’s Time to Celebrate Average-Size Women

This post was written by our POPSUGAR UK editor and originally appeared on POPSUGAR Fashion UK. Unless otherwise stated, all dress sizes referenced are UK sizes. US sizes are approximately UK minus 4 (e.g., UK 14 = US 10).

Source: Getty / Karwai Tang

Some have suggested that 2014 was “the year of plus-size.” To others, it was nothing more than a token nod in the right direction: a couple of models over a size 10 featured in big campaigns, a couple of celebrity collections that didn’t stop at a size 14 (see Kelly Brook for Simply Be, pictured above), some nice things said about Melissa McCarthy during award season. It’s true that we are a long way from this industry ever truly embracing the breadth of shapes and sizes of modern women, but every step in the right direction is a good one. And 2015 got off to a good start with the news that models Ashley Graham and Robyn Lawley will appear in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue — even if one of those is an ad, not an editorial.

The real strides toward body acceptance in the world of fashion have come through the blogosphere. Plus-size blogs are thriving, particularly in the US and the UK, where bloggers are collaborating on fashion lines, appearing on TV, and modeling for global brands. The Instagram hashtag #effyourbeautystandards has taken off to the point where the woman behind it, Tess Holliday, has signed to a major modeling agency despite being neither the height nor weight of your “average” plus-size model.

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Because as many of us have now realized, most plus-size models are not really plus-size. At least not in the way you’d imagine. Fashion has always thrived on aspiration, and just as runway models tend to be right on the lowest end of the “straight” size spectrum, plus-size models actually straddle the middle ground — the sizes that lurk at the back of the rail in high-street retailers but also mark the start of many plus-size ranges — 14, 16, possibly 18. This has started an unending argument about what “plus-size” truly is and whether the models used really represent the women buying plus-size clothing. (The short answer is no. Just like how runway models don’t represent people who buy a size 10.)

Among those to come under fire was ASOS, whose Curve range starts at a UK size 18. Recently the brand has made an effort to use larger models following the negative feedback from consumers, but it was only a year or so ago that Bree Warren was a frequent Curve model. Her model card lists her as a UK size 14 with a 29-inch waist. She is stunning and excellent at her job but hardly representative of the 18-plus woman shopping for ASOS Curve.

Source: ASOS

Though I’m a few inches shorter, I have almost identical measurements to Bree Warren. I wear a UK size 14. My BMI is healthy, but to many slim people, I am still considered “too fat.” To the plus-size community, I am not big enough. I have had my body shape described as everything from “normal” to “Adele-sized” (for the record, all comparisons to Adele are gratefully accepted). Straddling two sides of the industry, I am what is now being coined an “in-betweener.”

The term started being used more frequently in fashion circles last year, when model Myla Dalbesio was signed for a big Calvin Klein campaign. Despite the fact Calvin Klein did not identify her as plus-size, the shock headlines quickly started anyway. A huge fashion brand was using a plus-size model for the first time! The truth? Dalbesio is a US 10/UK 14, with similar measurements to Bree Warren — and me. At 5’11”, her body is completely in proportion, and in the campaign, she looks amazing. This should have been seen as a good thing, a woman with a body closer to that of many consumers was finally being represented in fashion. But because of the label, things went the other way entirely as people complained she wasn’t plus-size enough.

Source: Calvin Klein

What Dalbesio told Yahoo Style about the whole furor around her size sums up exactly how I feel every time I post a photo of myself online or try on a dress in H&M. When you straddle two very different sides of an industry, making either of them accept you is tricky. For a second, it felt like being “average” actually made things harder. Here’s some of what Dalbesio said:

“I can never figure out where I fit in, and I’m always making someone mad. I’m not skinny-skinny, but I’m not fat and fabulous either. I’m a size 10. There’s been a whole public outcry about me not being as big as people think I should be. They say, ‘What do you have to complain about? You have a great body.’ But if you’re a size 6 or 10 (US), that doesn’t mean you don’t need to see yourself represented too.”

This year, I believe things are moving in the direction of the in-betweener. There has long been controversy over the so-called “glorification” of plus-size, with arguments that we have gone from one extreme to another. But is this really true, given that the majority of plus-size models are barely a size 16? The plus-size industry is a huge one that will continue to grow, and perhaps by removing the labels on models who do not fairly represent their consumers, the plus-size industry will have the opportunity to diversify even more.

Elsewhere, the in-between models should no longer be seen as token “real girls” alongside their size-6 (6 UK = 2 US) colleagues. Putting more emphasis on the middle ground, the alleged “normal” woman seems like the logical step to close the divide. The average female dress size varies depending on the study, but most agree it’s somewhere around 14 to 16 in the UK. Naysayers have often complained that rather than using models who are either size 0 or size 18 with nothing in between, we should be showing a breadth of sizes, including those in the middle. Where better to start than the average?

We are, after all, the lucky ones, even if we don’t feel like it sometimes. Women who’re size 14 or 16 can technically shop at more retailers than anyone of any other size. We can buy standard and plus-size clothes. However, that doesn’t mean either is designed with us in mind. I get just as many funny looks from shop assistants when I walk into plus-size retailer Evans as I did when I went into Miss Selfridge when I was 30 pounds heavier. But I have the option, something many other women are not lucky enough to have.

That doesn’t mean dressing well is easy. We have to be just as creative as anyone else, despite this added choice. In-betweeners become experts at picking and choosing items from various retailers, learning what works and what doesn’t from each range. As we often have larger busts and curvier hips and bums to consider, we rarely find one size fits all, and we have to shop around. We don’t have many people in the public eye to look to for inspiration, because so often with fame comes pressure to lose weight and put out an exercise DVD. But we do have places to go for inspiration online, as our blogosphere is growing too. More brands are adjusting their in-store displays to reference our body types. Victoria Beckham now makes dresses in our size!

Plus, we know the real truth. Years of not knowing quite where we fit has taught us that nobody is truly average. “Normal” doesn’t exist, and while every body is different, all of them are brilliant. Isn’t it time more of them were represented in fashion?