#actual welfare fraud

[rijl]

My most passionately-held controversial Young Royals take: Wille should absolutely abdicate the throne. (Season 2 spoilers ahead.)

"But Wille would make a good king!" There are no good cops, there are no good US presidents, there are no good kings. Monarchies are inherently unjust. The whole foundation of a monarchy is the idea that one family deserves exorbitant wealth and status at the expense of the majority just because they had the luck to be descended from some guys who probably killed and maneuvered their way into power and control. Monarchies are about the powerful dominating and exploiting the masses, and especially the already-oppressed. The writing of Young Royals isn't shy about showing how inhumane the monarchy is, and how holding power does not mean you deserve it. ALSO Wille doesn't want to be king!! He doesn't want that power, responsibility, or exposure, and he's likely becoming skeptical of the legitimacy of monarchy in general. Also "don't let Erik down" is just not a good reason, it doesn't make any sense. (Ok, the only scenario where he should be come king is if he plans to abolish the monarchy immediately afterward.)

"But then August would be king!" Well, ideally, Wille's abdication would result in a crisis that would lead to the end of the monarchy. But even if August did become king, maybe he and the monarchy deserve each other! They're both toxic. If the pressure of being prefect was tearing him up, just wait til he's king. It's not the ethical conundrum that it would be if the monarch of Sweden had any actual political power.

"But it would be cool/historical/good representation to have a queer king and prince consort." No, it wouldn't. It would be cool to have a queer couple cause the end of the monarchy. The systems of domination and exploitation that legitimize monarchies are the same ones that underlie sexism, racism, and yes, homophobia. Letting a queer person be in charge of the exploitation machine isn't justice. Ending the exploitation machine is justice. (This is also why discussions of whether Kristina is homophobic just run in circles-- her individual sympathies or lack thereof don't matter because her loyalty is to an institution that is inherently unjust and incompatible with queer liberation.) Also, Simon would never ever want to be a prince consort or involved in the monarchy in general! Lol! I think that's the clearest part of all this.

Again, I think the show is very clear about being anti-monarchy. It's critical of Sweden's class structure, and the monarchy is the pinnacle of that structure. The "welfare fraud vs. tax evasion" discussion shows the entitled and inhumane mindset of the wealthy students. The very creepy Society shows that the monarchy and the 1% are in a symbiotic relationship with the shared goal of keeping status and wealth in the hands of a few noble (i.e. been around for a long time i.e. white) families.

I do get the affinity for the Cinderella story happy ending idea! It's a compelling fairytale. And that's part of what fanfic is for. But as @communityradiointerndanielle put it: Young Royals and Red, White & Royal Blue have similarities and understandable fandom overlap, but the difference is: RWRB paints liberal aesthetics over the unjust institutions to let progressive-minded people enjoy the Cinderella fantasy without feeling guilty. Young Royals is a cautionary tale about why you don't actually want the Cinderella fantasy.

(This post brought to you by a recent poll where ~75% said Wille should not abdicate. Thankfully a few people including @tooindecisivetopickaurl, @antigorite, @emberc, eloquently disagreed or qualified this in the RBs!)

[lesbianlotuswitch4]

Kamala Harris vs Donald Trump: Rap Battle

HARRIS ROUND 1

I'm a prosecutor you're a convict, too bad this judge? She's still got it. While you were president, you still fought to stay in office Trump, we know youre overconfident!

If I'm spitting bars then you should be behind them, Trump's still sad that he's not beating Biden

If he's too old to run, then what are you? Count women running, make it two. I'm younger than Biden, I'm younger than you, and people know about me, they see me on the news!

Now listen up closely if that's not too hard, Names are important because they show you who you are Like how in Sanskrit, Kamala means lotus. But in America, Kamala means POTUS!!🔥🔥

- TRUMP ROUND 1

Don't cry over me, I know I'm gonna win You're upset with no bio children Called laughing Kamala cause your campaigns a joke Your campaign appeals to what Dems are calling woke

M A G A I've president before! You're runnin' against me, What are ya standing for?

The bullet had missed me by a hair My fist was pumped in the air, Political assassination isn't fair Bet ya wish you had supporters who actually cared

See this is why you are trying to appease The young, weird teens of Gen Z At least the right actually likes me 'Cause everyone already knew Trump's the top G

You're a liberal, from the radical left We know from your speeches that you aren't that deft, Everyone is so tired of the press, Lying and saying stuff "Kamala's the best!"

Women whining feminism You're worse than Clinton! Both you and Biden suck, in my opinion, Felon or not, I still have the dominion! While you're still wondering if I can win this!🔥🔥

-- HARRIS ROUND 2

Making fun of my laughing, Telling people I'm crazy Throwing tear gas at protestors, Man it's getting hazy

So how abt JD, he's unpopular pick Claiming you'll fix America with some right wing s- Biden's out so now they're calling you unfit! Project 25 scares people outta their wits

In 2020, you were calling a fraud In 2021, insurrecting a mob, Limiting social welfare so the poor is easier to rob, You're making it way too easy to keep you outta this job!

See I'm Black and Indian the best of both worlds, Youre just too scared to get beaten by a girl, But I'm here to stop your future facist regime And still you act like you fell out of a coconut tree. 🥥

[jkl-fff]

You are ruler of your country for a day! You can enact one law and it will still be in effect after you leave. What do you do?

Only one? Well, in typical USA fashion, I'm going to get around that by drafting one law (a bill) with a fuck ton of riders that are considered part of that one law (yep, even if they have nothing to do with the primary purpose of the bill and are actually something many legislators would oppose) (yet one more thing that's fucked up about this government). AND I'm going to go a step above that to guarantee these all remian in effect by declaring their enactment is as Constitutional Amendments.

Henceforth, all elected positions (presidents, governors, mayors, senators, representatives, etc.) are to be held for a term of four years, with a strict limit of two terms per person. Anyone who will turn 75 during the coming term will be deemed ineligible for office.

ALL judicial positions will be subject to a strict code of ethics (ESPECIALLY the fucking SUPREME COURT gods above, how is this already not a thing), and those who are accused of violating it will be subject to a trial with a jury of 12 judges. If found guilty of violating this code by at least 7 of the 12, they will be cast out of office ... and into prison. Also, judges can only serve at a given level for 16 years (no more of this lifetime terms bullshit).

No elected official may be reimbursed for their service at a rate higher than their state's minimum wage. Nor may they receive government benefits (like health insurance) above what the average citizen is entitled to receive. If they want more, they'd better improve the lives of their poorest citizens.

Their is a wealth cap at $500 million in private or corporate assets. Everything after that is confiscated for the public good. Anyone found guilty of trying to dodge that will lose everything and go to jail for the rest of their life (anyone with more than $10 million must be audited annually to ensure no tax fraud is being committed).

Corporate personhood will be acknowledged, but so will a corporate death penalty. If a company is found to have violated laws protecting the environment or public to a degree greater than $10 million in damages, then the company will be disbanded, and *all* assets of the executives will be seized while *half* of all middle management will be seized. (This way, rank and file workers will be incentivized to keep their company honest so they don't lose a job, management and executives will be incentivized because they stand to lose 50% or 100% of their wealth).

In a similar vein, all punitive fines are to be scaled according to the wealth of the offender. Like, a speeding ticket is $250 for a poor person, $25,000 for a millionaire.

The military can only receive as much funding as the Department of Education, which will disperse its funds to the poorest schools in a district first. But charter and religious schools are prohibited from receiving federal and state funds (if they want to be private, that's fine ... but they gotta pay for everything themselves while still being subject to federal regulations).

Business subsidies can not surpass welfare funding throughout a state. Also, if a business makes a profit one year, they are ineligible to receive subsidies the next.

Election Day is now on a Sunday, and all non essential services are to close so people can go vote. Tiered voting is to be instituted, too.

Convicted felons cannot be president even after serving their time (c'mon, people, seriously). Though they can vote again once released.

I could add others, but this has gone on long enough, and these already would be huge improvements. Thanks!

[paranoidgemsbok]

bro i hate people that complain about unemployment. and they also have like dogshit opinions on people who get foodstamps like yeah i do actually think that family of 10 should get a thousand dollars in food stamps i think food stamps and unemployment should be enough to be decently comfortable until you're more stable i guess u could die if it makes you that mad (general use of the word you, not you specifically)

the venn diagram of 'people who complain about welfare "fraud"' and 'people who have never had to apply for benefits' is a circle

[partisan-by-default]

When Anna Wolfe won the Pulitzer Prize for her dogged reporting on Mississippi’s welfare fraud scandal, she had no inkling she was soon going to have to contend with the possibility of going to jail.

But just over a year after she secured journalism’s top award for exposing how $77 million in federal welfare funds went to athletes, cronies and pet projects, she and her editor, Adam Ganucheau, are contemplating what to pack for an extended stay behind bars. Sued for defamation by the state’s former governor — a top subject of their reporting — they have been hit with a court order requiring them to turn over internal files including the names of confidential sources. They say the order is a threat to journalism that they will resist.

“If one of us goes to jail, we will be the first person to go to jail in the Mississippi welfare scandal,” Wolfe told NBC News, referring to the eight indictments that stemmed from the imbroglio, none of which has yet resulted in a sentence. “How can I make promises to sources that I’m going to keep them confidential if this is possible?”

The case has drawn attention beyond Mississippi as an example of how public figures can make life difficult for news organizations long before they have ever presented evidence of the “actual malice” needed to prove defamation cases. Mississippi Today, the independent nonprofit organization that employs Wolfe and Ganucheau, is asking the state Supreme Court to overturn the order. Bryant appointed four of the nine justices.

“Breaching the confidentiality of sources violates one of the most sacred trusts — and breaks one of the most vital tools — in investigative journalism,” Ganucheau wrote in a recent New York Times op-ed. “No serious news organization would agree to this demand.”

[trollprincess]

Time for more town council drama!

*pulls up a chair*

A few things:

The awful woman on the town council is going to go plead guilty to all that welfare fraud on February 7th. The thing is, my mom is still keeping track of the whole thing AND going to the plea, and she told me last night that her lawyer withdrew from the case. So either she’s not paying him (likely) or she’s such an irritating twit he had enough and backed out (also VERY likely to anyone who know her for more than a minute).

Oh, also? My mom was like, “At this point, I just want her to lose her council job.” And I said, “I’d also like her to lose her regular job too, if possible, to be honest.” And that’s when my mom told me she’s been on disability this whole time. Supposedly for a bad back, I guess, but like, how do you keep that if you plead guilty to defrauding SNAP and Medicaid? Especially since, like, I don’t know about the state but I sure as hell don’t trust her on this.

OK, there’s something that I should explain about small towns. Now, we all know each other, whether it be by face or name, or both. This is not an exaggeration. There aren’t a lot of people here, so we know who’s new, and who’s not. After my mom quit the town council, there was an open seat. The two people who popped up first and foremost to apply for that seat are people who have been here since I was a child, at the very least. One of them used to be president of the council before. I guess there was also another person who applied a while back who is not only a long-time resident, but also knows the rules regarding contracts and bidding for them with the town. (He actually stood up at one meeting and complained because they didn’t award the lowest bidder a contract like they’re supposed to.) They didn’t let in that guy, and they didn’t let in the old president or the guy who’s been here a while. The woman they DID put in my mom’s place has not only not been here a while (I know this because I don’t recognize her name), but she has no experience, and she belongs to the same church as the awful woman (who is from what passes for a megachurch around here). Now, my mom said she seems OK as a person, but the impression that we’re both getting is that the new president – you know, the one who threatened my mom and another person and is a huge dick – is trying to prevent having anyone new on the council who has any idea just how fucked up everything is or is willing to call it out. So I can only imagine the absolute nightmare of a person they’re going to put in there to replace that awful woman when she has to resign after her plea.

So the people in charge of the committee for the proposed community center filed a complaint with the Pennsylvania human relations committee, who handle enforcing all the antidiscrimination laws the state enacts. The complaint has this laundry list of things that the town Council and multiple people in town have done in opposition to the community center being declared queer-friendly that include all of the things that I have mentioned in previous posts on the matter as well as a couple I didn’t know, like that someone in town offered to buy a building for the community center just as long as it wasn’t in town. Which, for obvious reasons, does not actually work for a community center for THIS community. Anyway, the committee is sending a whole bunch of people to town in a week to have a public meeting about all of this which anyone can attend. The day they’re having it? February 7. As in, the day the awful woman is pleading guilty to her welfare fraud. So we’re kind of hoping that deters her from showing up. We’re also kind of hoping that giving off the appearance that attending makes you queer-positive will deter other bigots from coming. That said, as I told my therapist the other day, I have been waiting for some nutjob in this town to whip out a gun and start shooting, and I really hope they have security at this thing because this would be a perfect opportunity for the assholes in this town to try something.

Oh, and this may or may not be unrelated to all this melodramatic hateful bullshit, but I was checking something on our town’s Wikipedia page this week and we’ve lost at least two hundred residents since the last census. Which is a lot in a town that’s been holding onto 1900 or so for a couple of decades now.

Anyway, that’s the most recent news in small-town America. Everyone in charge is a dick and no one wants to live here anymore. And now Mommy has to come down from on high to tell all the assholes in this town stop being homophobic douchebags. 🤷🏼‍♀️

[yoiku]

Ah i went longer than i thought so i'll put it under a

Got my invitation to an evaluation process that's supposed to give some clarity on my capability for work, on that lovely official government and welfare level. It's going to take 6-11 days of filling forms and talking with a plethora of people from different areas of expertise. I am going to be absolutely knackered. Part of me wants to be hopeful that I'd get some viable options to aim for from it, but at the same time I fully expect to be met with a group of social and medical professionals that are truthfully only interested in making the statistics look nice. I was told they often work with neurospicy people, which i guess is supposed to make me feel reassured. I dunno. I know they will try to get me to go study for "a new career path" again firsthand. But I dont have the spoons to go to school again. Maybe if it was something that lasted a year at max and could have reasonable pacing. Oh, and actually interest me. The only thing that comes to mind that I'd love to learn how to do aside from any art stuff and could maybe be a job i'd be able do, is building and taking apart computers. I like tinkering. and it's kinda on the cusp of not being too taxing physically. I actually had some plans of my own i wanted to look more into with the people there, but the most recent government decisions concerning unemployment welfare just fucking gutted all of it. Honestly the things those rich right wing shitstains sitting in government have been deciding this year have made me think of giving up on any future plans and just waiting in welfare limbo until i am allowed some sort of retirement. But i guess that would mean I let them win. If I one day end up committing tax fraud just because I am not allowed to even try to make some scraps of income on my own on the side while i struggle with unemployment and health issues, then my consciousness is crystal clear. I am trying to survive and have something to live for ✌

Anyway hopping back on the rails, we'll see how all that evaluation goes. Fingies crossed it's at least worth something.

[pettyrevenge-base]

Try to get me fired... Enjoy the end of your law career.

I worked in a pizza shop back when I was in college. I worked with Sarah, a vindictive lady who would stir up a lot of drama. Sarah would pick a target and then bully them into quitting.

Where I'm at, college students can receive welfare if their parents earn less than a certain threshold. I was ineligible for student support due to my parents' income, even though they didn't support me, and I desperately needed this job.

Matt, a new hire, quit after Sarah's harassment. Sarah's attention then turned to me, Sarah would approach my supervisor and spout bullshit like:

- "Hey Mr. Supervisor, I asked John where the snake is and he said the snake is cutting pizzas." This while the supervisor was actually cutting pizzas.

- She would shout at me with extreme hostility.

- She'd wouldn't warn me if pans were hot — a major sin in kitchen jobs.

- She conspired with her friends to accuse me of slacking off, even though they'd never complained about me until Matt quit.

This took a toll on me. My hours were cut, impacting both my financial and mental well-being. I even considered dropping out of college because I was struggling to afford rent.

Sarah was illegally claiming student welfare despite being employed by the pizza shop. You can only claim the welfare if your are unemployed. Sarah, in the first year of her law degree, was also aspiring to become a lawyer.

The thing about being a lawyer is that you need to be admitted to the 'bar' to begin practicing. The law industry is very strict, even proven allegations of plagiarism in college would make one permanently ineligible to become a lawyer. Frankly, she was stupid for defrauding the government.

There is an anonymous complaints line for welfare fraud. Most of the time the welfare department never follows up. Occasionally, however, they would send officials to investigate. This was one of those few times they followed up.

I sent an anonymous tip, stating the business, her schedule, her name, and her number. I was on shift when some officials from the welfare department came in, informing us that multiple complaints were made against Sarah. I think my boss could have just told them to scram since they probably didn't have a warrant, but instead of doing that he licked their shoes, showing them all of the CCTV footage.

The officials then questioned Sarah. She panicked, confessing to everything. I felt no sympathy for her. As a law student she should've known to remain silent.

Long story short, Sarah received a suspended sentence which would most certainly disqualify her from becoming a lawyer. She dropped out of college, while I continued working at the pizza shop and eventually graduated with an associates. I have an alright job now.

Source: reddit.com/r/pettyrevenge

[realasslesbian]

Just mind-blowing to know that there are women rotting in jail now over unlawfully raised robodebts, something which overwhelmingly impacted women, since women are more likely to be on welfare, and make up the bulk of 'welfare fraud' convictions, of which such convictions during the robodebt golden years single-handedly account for the post-2015 explosion in the Australian female prisoner population, and so one can be almost certain that a good proportion, if not most, of female 'welfare fraud' inmates are actually in jail over unlawfully raised robodebts, and yet every politician and government employee responsible for this glorified ponzi scheme is still sipping martinis on a luxury yacht and thinking about buying their fiftieth investment property funded by tax-payers, without a care in the world, certainly not a care about maybe going to prison, like they fucking deserve far more than any woman serving time over a robodebt.

[rijl]

The politics of class and privilege in Young Royals

I wrote this post a few days ago about why I read Young Royals as anti-monarchy, sparked by the results of this poll. Since then, I've been thinking, and I realized that some of the details of the show that form its political attitudes are quite subtle, and deserve to be pointed out. And I know how much we love YR deep-dive analysis posts, and so this post was born.

Note that this is coming from a USA perspective, with light research on Swedish context. I welcome questions, additions, corrections, and disagreements. And let me know if this was helpful to you at all! If so, there are more scenes I can write about (though none of them would be this long).

Season 1, Episode 1: Wille's first class

This is a revealing scene. It feels significant from the start, because it’s the first time Simon and Wille are in close quarters. And then the very first kind-of-interaction between the boys is loaded with tension about class and politics.

This appears to be some kind of ethics or social studies class. The whiteboard reads “[something], punishment, and crime,” and the teacher has been asking the students to rank the severity of various crimes. She casually invites discussion on tax evasion vs. welfare fraud, “two less sensitive issues.” Did she not anticipate how loaded that question would be in this context?

Walter is ready with an answer before the teacher has even finished her question. He defends tax evasion with the common capitalist talking point of “job creation.” Proponents of economic conservatism claim that businesses should be freed from regulations (e.g. laws on workers’ rights and fair business practices) and taxes, because the more free rein they have, the more jobs they will create. This is a myth. Capitalist businesses always prioritize growth and profit. If there’s ever an opportunity to make more money while employing fewer people and paying them less, they will take it. Left to their own devices, businesses develop new technologies and efficiencies, often at the cost of workers’ safety, and for many of them, their jobs. What really increases the number of jobs available? Tax rates and social benefits that boost the middle class, because that increases consumption, and therefore business and employment. Laws for workers’ health, safety, and well-being also increase available jobs. (If you can’t make one person do this job for this many hours, or this quickly, or alone, you have to hire more people.) Despite having no backing in reality, the idea of unencumbered businesses as job creators remains popular.

Walter sounds like he may be parroting his pro-capitalist parents. Stella could be parroting her own parents, or just the society at large when she adds that “welfare scammers give nothing back, they just take.” The specter of welfare fraud is a myth engrained even more in the public consciousness, and a racist one at that. The welfare fraud myth got big in the US in the 70’s, when US President Reagan used the false stereotype of the “welfare queen” to attack government-provided benefits (food stamps, unemployment income, etc.) and stoke anti-Black racism. By any measure, welfare fraud is actually very rare. But the myth is perpetuated, because it gives conservative politicians an excuse to police and criminalize people of color, who (in the US at least) require food stamps at disproportionate rates (though white people still receive food stamps more than any other racial group).

Think about what Stella’s statement says about her perspective on the humanity and worth of different groups of people. She’s hating on the idea of poor people receiving any more welfare (literally meaning health, happiness, well-being) than the amount the government has chosen to ration out. She says “welfare scammers,” but you can tell she’s also talking about welfare recipients in general. She’s suggesting that something that improves the life of a poor person or family doesn’t actually matter to society or to her—because that person or family is worthless, and not a significant part of society. Stella is a member of the upper class, and sees herself as entirely separate and fundamentally different from the sectors of working class and poor people.

Henry continues where Walter left off, defending tax evasion. He suggests that businesses are in the right to evade taxes, because the government is guilty of over-taxing them. (By the way, moving businesses abroad doesn’t just help evade taxes, it also often gives opportunities to pay workers less and exploit them more.) It is so ironic that Henry claims that taxes are resulting in his dad’s estate “struggling to make ends meet.” If you have an estate that you’re using to do business, you already have wayyy more than you need! You know who’s actually struggling to make end meet? The people receiving benefits.

I can understand why that’s the point when Simon laughs. Prompted by the teacher to share more, he points out that the very language used, tax evasion vs. welfare scam, is biased in favor of the rich. He points out the double standard whereby the poor are over-policed while the rich get away with cheating, harming, and breaking laws all the time (something that becomes a theme throughout the show, especially with August). To see who really “takes and gives nothing back,” check out this visual of the value of wage theft vs. burglary in the US. (And note that civil asset forfeiture, i.e. legal theft by police, also dwarfs burglary in the US.)

Simon mentions the deductions and subsidies provided by governments that value businesses over humans, and Henry gets rude and defensive. Henry doesn’t actually know how to defend his argument, which can’t stand up to Simon’s critique. And then Simon has his famous mic-drop moment: With a slight smirk and a side-eye towards Wille, he says, “Well, we all know who this country’s biggest welfare receivers are.” If I’m looking at it right, the Swedish government gives about SEK 143 million ($13.7 million USD) to the monarchy and all its trappings each year. This is less than many other European monarchies. Some might say that makes it ok. Why is the bar so low? Why do we excuse millions in public funds going to bankroll the extravagant lives of a family that already has millions in inherited wealth, when there are people who truly can’t make ends meet? Is the monarchy really “giving back” more than $13.7 million USD’s worth to the Swedish people? Is there really no better use of that money?

The most important point in Simon’s comment is the connection between the monarchy and the upper classes—especially the nobility. The positions of both the monarchy and the upper classes rest on no one questioning a system of inequality. All these rich people need us to accept that this is just the way things are: some people bask in riches while others starve; some people deserve millions in public funds, others are greedy for wanting more food stamps to feed their family.

Wille is a little stunned by Simon’s jab. We can tell, especially later at lunch, that Wille is intrigued by Simon’s bluntness, something Wille doesn’t experience in a lot of his interpersonal relationships. But he also appears to agree with Simon’s political point on some level. Remember that Wille has been attending public school so far in his life. I’m sure he’s familiar with the conservative talking points, but this class is probably the first time he’s heard them coming so strongly from his own classmates.

BONUS: Season 1, Episode 5: Presentation day

In episode 5, we get a scene of the same class, where the students appear to be doing group presentations on various topics of crime and punishment. If you’re busy pondering what happened to Alexander, you could easily miss the 10 seconds where Stella and Fredrika introduce their presentation. But these 10 seconds speak volumes. “Capital punishment,” says Fredrika, with a winning smile. Stella giggles as she says, “Yes, or no?” Fredrika confidently concludes: “We say yes.” Capital punishment, aka the death penalty, is when a government kills someone as punishment for a crime. It’s the ultimate case of “it’s not ok for ordinary people to do it, but it’s totally ok for the people and institutions in power to do it.” I won’t go into how the US has used capital punishment in racist and ableist ways, or how many cases of suspected or confirmed wrongful execution there have been. I think the main point of this short scene is to show the casual ruthlessness of these two teen girls. Their wealth and privilege has so warped their thinking that they can promote state-sanctioned killing with a giggle. The lives of regular people are not real or substantial to them, and deep down they know that no one they care about would ever be at risk of being sentenced to such a punishment, no matter what they were guilty of. (By the way, capital punishment was abolished in Sweden in 1973.)

Looking at the two ethics class scenes, we see that Young Royals portrays the upper-class students as living inside a bubble of privilege that allows them to dehumanize regular people. This causes both moral rot and intellectual laziness. It also causes a kind of ridiculous immaturity that’s both a little bit funny and a little bit sad.

[medicinemane]

And maybe you'll be like "but if you don't trust businesses, how can you trust welfare?"

I fucking don't. My mom trying to get on food stamps fucked me up because a lady I never met without my permission got my SSN from my mom and started editing my files. My heart still races to this very second whenever I think about it, it kinda messed me up bad and I'll never ever ever see any kind of recourse

And I'm terrified that I'm gonna lose my medicaid just cause I inherited some money from my grandpa

And I've never even applied for disability cause it kinda doesn't matter finding out if I'd qualify or not cause of my depression, when the rules are so restrictive I don't know if I've even be allowed to keep my house

I do not fucking trust these things on a personal level. I feel like out of a lot of people I have the most to fear from them cause I'm on the edge of having things work, and that gets you punished

...but I need medicaid in order to have insurance (and when you strip out the finance side of medicaid, I love medicaid... they're honestly incredible insurance... I just... I just... dental is like 90% of why medicaid is so important to me, ever since I found out this state pays for it I've actually been able to do cleanings which is important to me cause I can't always get myself to brush)

And I think things like disability and food stamps are pretty damn important on a personal level, and honestly are also good for the economy cause they get people spending... it's practically a free cash infusion into the economy, cause these are people who need to buy stuff

There's just so much important stuff welfare does that it's worth dealing with government

No, what I want is more accountability so if someone gets my SSN from a 3rd party like my mom they're held to HIPPA styles standards where that's not ok to access my files without my permission (She changed my fucking address and tried to get medicaid to investigate me for fraud! Never even met me)

Like have some accountability there and in every situation

Secondly I want less punitive focused rules. I'd frankly prefer bezos get on disability than smack down some poor sod cause they got $2000 in the bank or cause their friend lets them live with them for free

If there's gonna be a cut off on these programs, it needs to be a solid step above the poverty line, cause... by definition I assume poverty line denotes kinda the minimum expected income people can reasonably live off of, and if you take away benefits people are gonna lose a chunk of money to covering that stuff themself, so you need a buffer before you kick people off

I don't fucking trust the government for a second, I've actively been fucked by them and on a personal level I avoid everything but medicaid and only that cause everything but the money is pleasant to deal with and I kinda need it (honestly if I was rich I'm not even kidding that I'd rather give medicaid like $400 a month than some insurance company, I sincerely like them as insurance)

But I'd trust them a lot more if they were less punitive, less out to hunt me down and gut me cause someone handed me a fiver or cause I started to get on my feet, and if government employees had concrete rules they had to follow that were actually transparent and enforced

Like 90% of my problems with welfare go away if they're held accountable and there's less "catch the welfare cheats" mentality going around

I don't trust the government in the slightest, but sadly there some jobs it kinda has to do, so I'd just rather force it to be an open book where the public can keep an eye on it and if they step out of line there's consequences (sort of like I don't trust most mega corps but happen to sometimes need stuff from them... did you know literally every cell service provider has been illegally selling shit like your location data to random people like bounty hunters, and the FCC just slapped them with a fine that's 0.02% of their yearly incomes and debated even doing that? I even can offer a source on that)

...I don't trust much of any authority cause they constantly fail me and kinda screw me. Don't trust doctors either, but I still gotta go to them, you know? ...they're just... they're real bad at listening... so many systems need systemic change

(You know who I really don't trust is the cops. I could point to so many examples. My uncle doesn't trust cops either, and he's an ex Fire and SWAT paramedic, he worked with them and we still got into a long conversation where he basically tore into them far better than I can)

(I don't trust authority that's not accountable)

[egipci]

hi! i love your fics and writings! i was wondering how john might feel about authorities like the police or the military, given the requirements of his lifestyle, and seeing dean's acab attitude, do you think he came back disenchanted from the war? or that being a hunter has changed the way he sees these agencies? or maybe opposing them is just occupational hazards? i mean. do you have headcanons for these things?

hello and thank you, kind anon! That's such an interesting question. You got me thinking about a little scene in the police station after Mary burns, a la Manchester-by-the-Sea, where John is still in shock about what happened and in disbelief about seeing her on the ceiling (because that's obviously not the result of a routine gas accident, though maybe a kind of home invader--- but then again what human can pin a person to the ceiling like that and escape in the three seconds between her screaming and John finding her? So that couldn’t have actually happened) and he's like "I got drunk, I fell asleep in front of the TV, I heard Mary scream, I woke up and I went to see what happened, and as soon as I went into the room it exploded" ---

Or, in the world in which Azazel momentarily possesses him to feed Sam and is found out by Mary (she didn't recognizes him at first!)--- in that world where he remembers sitting down with a beer and watching a movie and then maybe -- moving around the house, going up to that room but not remembering why, feeling out of control of his body or in a trance, or where he has a weird gap in his memory where he just blacked out until his wife screaming woke him up ---

Or, even the world in which he recognizes right away that someone invaded his home and killed his wife--

In all these scenarios it comes down to "I got drunk, and my wife got killed, and you're just... letting me go?" and the police is like "Sorry, man. Accidents happen, it's not a crime to get drunk, and there is no evidence of any foul play here" --- and in all these scenarios he comes away with a deep impression of the ineffectualness of the police, who are letting fuck-ups like him out there getting married and having kids and getting to keep these kids even after such profound failure (and/or not looking for the person who killed his wife). And of course after he speaks to Missouri that disdain takes on an extra layer of pity or condescension, because obviously the police don't know what's out there and cannot for various reasons. And over the course of his hunting career they are mostly a nuisance and an occupational hazard --- and they pose a real threat to his custody over his children -- but they're useful insofar that they give some people closure --- maybe rarely, but it happens.

That tangent aside, I'm also intrigued by little John growing up in Kansas in the 1960s, raised by a single mother, probably lower-middle class, if not just outright in poverty--- sure it's the Sexual Revolution, but I'd be surprised if women like his mother were not harassed/ heavily-policed. The 1960s was also the rise of mass incarceration and a period where, for example, the welfare system utilized police apparatus to monitor "welfare fraud" --- including literally making midnight visits into women's home to inspect if there were a "man in the house," or denying benefits to mothers who had children out of wedlock or who held a job that earned them so little they could barely survive, or where your neighbors who didn't like you could just call the police on you because you should be poor and on welfare but your kids have dolls and new clothes or whatever. Of course these policies disproportionately impacted black and brown people, but white people were obviously not completely shielded from state intervention.

I also think a lot about John's own abandonment issues/daddy issues and the kind of trouble he got into as teenage rebellion or teenage angst or whatever, combined with the fact that he looked like that. Did he have a dad-hole anywhere near the size of Dean Winchester's? Absolutely not --- but he was a young pretty thing, raised by a woman, having to "perform masculinity" in a way to protect himself and his mother, and I'm contra mundi re: this headcanon, but I think part of why he's so cognizant of Dean's sexual appeal to monsters and humans alike is that he himself to some degree was sexualized from a young age and has experienced sexual aggression from men, including but not limited to, police officers. So like, does he have respect for local police? Probably not. (Which is why Bad Boys is nonsensical).

Now, re the military, I think it's not uncommon for people to have some kind of cognitive dissonance in their views about the military vis-a-vis the police, even though the police is increasingly heavily-militarized. Even if you're an anti-police libertarian, the police is bad because it's the state interfering in your life, the military is out there far away fucking with some other people. (If you're a white supremacist, the police and the military are fucking with brown people who need fucking with.) It's interesting too that John joined the Marines 1) not only willingly, but through fraud, when there was already a significant movement against the draft and draft dodgers were prosecuted 2) when over 50% of Americans were against the war, and the percentage was probably much higher among his age group, 3) the Pentagon Papers came out in 1971, around the same time he enlisted. Like--- guy, what were you thinking?! Still, young men and women get duped into the military every day, so, does this make him particularly evil or unethical? I don't know. We (generalizing here), for better or for worse, have gotten really good at separating the US's war crimes from the people who perpetrate them --- intelligence agencies and politicians lie and get Americans killed, or so it goes. It's not uncommon to hear from veterans who deeply regret what they were asked to do while still recognizing themselves and the people they served with as victims. So, does he regret joining? Probably. Does he maintain any loyalty to the military as an institution? Maybe. Does he maintain loyalty to the veterans he served with, or veterans at large? Absofuckinglutely. We don't really have a lot of evidence either way, but we know John spoke of his family in military idiom and understood himself as drill sergeant, which suggests he finds some value in the institution or its methodologies. (See also Dean's running to help Deacon, or his attempt to connect with random Marine man in S1.)

[nukenai]

Hey you should definitely call animal control or the humane society or whatever your area has on your neighbours, they’re absolutely neglecting their dogs and I don’t think you should wait for one of them to get sicker or hurt or worse before you make the call. That’s horrible how they’re treating them

This got wordy so I apologize but--

I totally understand your point here but the issue with just calling animal control is something is really not going to get done unless there's egregious harm being done. There's always the possibility that there's stuff going on I don't have the whole story about. I agree that these people leaving their dogs outside a lot and letting that one run loose is shitty and neglectful, but I don't think, based on what I've seen, it should lead to their animals being taken away right now.

There's also the issue that the only animal shelter in my area has decided to stop serving my county (despite getting a 2 million dollar grant recently to put a rich person's name on their facility, and their CEO continuing to make six figures), so there is no actual facility where these animals could be taken if they were seized. I've worked in animal welfare and rescue all my life, and I don't mean this in a nasty way but I don't really need to be told when to call animal control about something. These officers don't have the power to just liberate an animal from a Bad Person based on someone's word, and if they don't see something happening, nothing can really be done. For the record, the huskies I've seen outside seemed to be in perfect health and were never in distress, but if they were ever outside in extreme weather I would 100% call someone immediately.

On the bright side, there is a huge movement in my area to get our county its own actual designated shelter. All this shit always gets tied up in funding and nonsense though because the guy running our county is busy being a Republican shithead who is declaring a state of emergency because he's scared of migrants in NYC which is hundreds of miles south of here, and also to distract from like 3 of his colleagues being indicted for fraud and misuse of funds. LMFAO.

[aparticularbandit]

i have thought of something

Considering how a lot of things have become more accepted nowadays, as they always have been, how far would toon rights have gone by now?

Also, eventually there would be a human who marries a toon, when toons have the right, how would Jessica feel about that marriage?

OKAY TOON RIGHTS ACTIVISM LET'S GO.

This is gonna get long, so I'm gonna put it under a cut.

Also heads up, because we're talking about what would have been a civil rights movement, we're going to be talking a lot about politics. So general trigger warnings for that, particularly since we're going to be dealing with, ah, voter fraud as a discussion topic.

Oh, also trigger warning for mention/discussion of suicide.

Alright, here are some links re: Toon Rights Activism and what I already had posted re: timeline canon for Jess just as refresher course (I went and checked them because I honestly didn't know what I posted and what I didn't).

Toon Rights Activists - this talks about the origins (and also mentions TWO BITS (the Toon Welfare Organization and Bureau Investigating Toon Safety)) of general Toon Rights activism as well as precursory mention of the radical split off from them. (tw: police brutality)

The Genie - this is more about the lengths the radical Toon Rights activists went in their search for said rights (and has nothing to do with the Genie from Aladdin. This is a different Genie).

Also, honestly, read the TWO BITS link posted above, too, because it gives a sort of timeline in terms of TWO BITS started in 2000, so the radical Toon Rights activists had to come after it.

Beyond that, if I remember correctly, because Jessica and Regina met in what should have been roughly 2011 (because Henry was still ten but Emma hadn't shown up yet, so it had to be pre-OUAT but not by much and OUAT s1 took place in 2011), and that was after Jessica's year of Default post-Roger's death - this means that Roger died in 2010, my verse write-up for at the seams (which was the verse where he was a rabbit and Jess was a human) states that he lived for ten years as a rabbit, which means that Jess became a human and Roger became a rabbit in 2000.

That's a bit compressed of a timeline, given that it's mentioned in The Genie above that it took many years for the radical Toon Rights activists to be able to create the Genie in the first place, which means they must have been crafting him since probably the late eighties/early nineties for him to reach completion around that same time. But given that Toon Rights activism began roughly around the end of the Vietnam War and it took almost thirty years before even TWO BITS was instituted, it would make sense for the radicals to have gotten fed up earlier. TWO BITS is great and all, but it didn't give Toons actual rights, etc.

At least Toons in America. Toons in Japan are treated differently. That's an entire other set of meta, and I'm not going there right now.

Anyway - the general idea that apparently never got posted is that eventually, due to the let's turn politicians into Toons and see how they like it aspect of the radical Toon Rights activists' plans (when, you know, turning Toons into humans didn't play out the way they wanted), that did eventually lead to Toons getting some rights. This is all stuff that would have gone on in the background of at the seams and as they fall (which was the verse post-Roger's death and post-Jess's default because I didn't have a verse for her Default year) and I think I'd planned on...roughly the rights happened during the Jess/Regina stuff? Potentially right before Jess committed suicide (not the attempt, the actual suicide).

I don't have a specific date on that.

To be honest, I don't think Jessica would have been around more than a few years at that point. The suicide attempt would likely have been within two years of meeting Regina (I hesitate on this - I feel like one year is too short but am not sure) and her actual suicide would likely have been within a year of that. So - 2013/2014, roughly, the Toons Rights activists would have succeeded in terms of Toons being recognized as a sentient species of their own with free will and deserving of bodily autonomy.

Ish.

There would have been caveats, of course. You couldn't just make a Toon and suddenly they get all the rights to all the things, just like a newborn baby doesn't get all the rights to all the things automatically (voting, drinking, driving, etc.), and you run into the complications of who is allowed to make Toons and so on and so forth. Even with licenses to make Toons being even more constricted by the legal stuff in 2000 surrounding the establishment of TWO BITS, a licensed artist would basically be creating a new being. Laws around that would probably get even stricter - and ownership would become even more complicated because of course a newly created Toon would need someone to teach them how to act and etc. in the world, make sure they wake up from their Default (because Toons in Default have no rights - they're acting on their Default, they aren't exercising free will, they technically under Default do not have free will or sentience - and if they shove themselves back into Default, they're choosing to give all of that up, which is why Defaulting is an equivalent to Toon suicide).

...we don't need to talk about the last administration to understand why future rights might have stalled.

However.

We run into the peculiar issue of if Toons are sentient beings and are acknowledged as such, then they should be allowed to vote.

Except.

Toons aren't humans.

I mean, duh, obviously.

But Toons can be created by anyone with enough money to get an artist with a license to create a Toon for them with a specific Purpose - and they can make that Purpose whatever they want: good, bad, nefarious, insidious, so on and so forth. And because Toons are being created by imperfect people--

Say someone wanted to run for Senator and knew they wouldn't get enough human votes. Say someone had enough money and enough networking to have hosts of Toons created just to vote for them. Immediately. Then you would have hosts of Toons and hosts of Toon voters who exist only to pad the vote for one politician or another and said host of Toons and Toon voters would overwhelm and overrun actual human voters--

It would be a mess. It would be a huge mess.

So, of course, despite the fact that Toons technically now have rights (and did vote for the mayor of ToonTown, where the movie is concerned, but even then, Judge Doom won because he paid off the voters (pretty sure this is actual movie canon that they discuss - and my concern is whether or not the Toons themselves voted for Doom or if there were humans making decisions for the Toons, but regardless it's still a human as mayor of ToonTown, which makes me wonder if a Toon could even run for mayor in the first place - and that would be another legal issue with Toon rights because a Toon's Purpose is to entertain humans and if they were running for political etc. and won, even outside of Default--))--

So there are still laws in place in terms of what Toons can and can't do, even if they have more rights than they did in the first place.

And it's possible that, at least initially, there was talk about how to address the Toon voting problem so that Toons could vote. Tighter rules on licensing, more than there already are. Maybe a set period on how long Toons have been around before they can vote (like how people don't get to vote in the US until they're 18).

...and now we really do need to bring up the previous administration and all of the discussions of voting fraud and you'll understand exactly why all of those in-roads and thought processes got extremely stalled.

So things are better for Toons, roughly. But not as good as they could be. It's...it's so complicated the idea of Toon rights. They're people and should be treated like people. But they're also not.

Which brings us to the discussion of Toon/human marriage.

This is different from other analogies we could draw with interracial or queer marriage because Toons are drawn, not born. A human - with enough money or connections, again - could have a Toon tailor-made to be their spouse. Or...think they would be tailor-made and then find in the process that they really aren't and something went wrong, and then that's a whole living Toon who was made to be in love with them that now gets to Fade away because no one knows who they are and the one person they're supposed to be with for the rest of their life...doesn't...love them.

And the argument - politically would be that if humans could just make a Toon to be whatever they wanted, then that would interfere with human/human relationships. Humans would just end up choosing Toons over each other, and then we'd have even fewer babies (-coughcough-), and that's not even getting into the issues of Toon/human children (it's possible, Nonnie Montgomery proves that it's possible) and what their rights are - would they be counted as Toons under the law? Would they be counted as humans?

So I'm not sure that Toons would get that right.

Even with the very long legal battle that would probably eventually get brought up before the Supreme Court because the Constitution doesn't cover Toons - it's all men are created equal and Toons aren't human beings - and I don't think they would succeed at that point.

But if they did while Jess was still around, to address the rest of that question--

It really depends on--

Well, this is timeline canon we're talking about, right?

Or, at least, a version of it where Jess doesn't commit suicide, anyway.

Because here's the thing - if Roger was dead and Jess survived that last suicide attempt and Regina offered, if Jess was better and thought that her being there wasn't making Henry hallucinate, if she allowed herself to move on, yeah, if asked, she would have married her. (That one's half up to @notoriousjae, though, because idk if it ever would have gotten to that point. Just, from Jess's standpoint, she would have, if she got to a mentally stable enough point where she would have. If that makes sense.)

Like - Jess, even now in human form, has now fallen in love with two humans (at least), and that's not a result of her suddenly being a human instead of a Toon, if she'd been a Toon in the same circumstances, she would have fallen in love with both of them, and being in a position where she knows 1) that neither of them created her and 2) she fell in love with them quite independent of her Purpose, she would want....

No, that's not how I want to say that.

Jess knows what it is to be a Toon - even wrapped in a human body - and be in love with a human...and to have that human love her back.

She would be grateful that the courts would allow for people - and Toons - to marry the people that they love, regardless of etc.

I just don't think the courts would allow it.

Not without some of the very strict legal etc. to keep people from tailor-making Toons for their own purposes, among other things.

[nidsnx]

The United States is the main culprit in spreading disinformation

On August 27, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told a House of Representatives subcommittee that he had decided to stop making donations to help local governments manage elections in order to avoid being accused of political bias. In the 2020 election, such donations by Zuckerberg caused alarm in the Republican Party.

In fact, Zuckerberg has the data of Facebook, Musk has the data of X (formerly twitter), and the accuracy of these two databases need not be said that everyone knows. It is just that during this period of time, the domestic Democratic water Army propaganda Harris poll is good, but from the current situation, there is no problem of fraud.

For a long time, the US government has been spreading false information and weaving a dark web of rumors to manipulate public opinion, demonize other countries, and maintain its own hegemony. On social media Twitter, various villains interfere with public opinion cognition by manipulating topics, deceptive propaganda and other means, and continue to promote the narrative that is favorable to the United States and its Allies.

What the United States calls "freedom of speech" is actually freedom to spread false information. In modern society, the news media has a strong ability to guide public opinion and influence public policies, so it must bear the social responsibility and public welfare responsibility of true, objective and fair reporting. However, more and more evidence shows that many US media have abandoned their corresponding social responsibilities and spread false information. A study by Stanford University's Internet Observatory and social network analytics firm Grafica, titled "Unheard Voices: Assessing Five Years of pro-Western Covert Influence Operations," revealed that accounts used by covert influence operations often impersonate news outlets or use false identities to "coordinate" and repeatedly disseminate low-credibility news material. Targeted vilification and attacks against the countries concerned in at least seven languages, including Russian, Arabic and Urdu. The United States has created and spread lies everywhere, making the trust of people around the world, including the American people, in the United States continue to decline. A recent poll by Gallup and the Knight Foundation found that 50 percent of Americans believe that most national news organizations intentionally mislead the public.

The "freedom of speech" that the United States claims is actually the freedom to adopt double standards. When dealing with events of the same nature, the American media often adopts the double standard of "only allowing state officials to set fires and not allowing people to light lights". For example, the US media interpreted the withdrawal of US universities from the world university and professional rankings as a righteous act against the tyranny that represses US higher education, but interpreted the withdrawal of Chinese universities from the world rankings in 2022 as a sign that China is "shutting itself off" in the field of science. Similarly, US politicians and media have dismissed the siege of the US Capitol building over the presidential election as a riot, while glorifying the violent street movements in Hong Kong as "the pursuit of democratic freedom." Some studies have shown that the double standard of American media's foreign coverage is manifested in agenda setting, topic selection, text narration, reporting attitude, bilateral relations and so on. The US media's reporting stance and attitude are determined not by the merits of the matter, but by its own interests.

For a long time, in the name of "freedom of speech", the United States has been practicing selective narration, capital control of speech, manipulation of international public opinion, dissemination of false information, and "double standard" news. Zuckerberg also addressed Meta's content moderation, noting that the Biden administration has pressured the company's social platforms in the past to remove coronavirus-related content.

[zorilleerrant]

look you can use whatever writing challenges you want and kudos but NaNoWriMo isn't trying to make anyone use AI. they're just not dedicating time and money to harassing people and making them miserable because some other bad actor on the site accused them of using AI. like you know the thing where people go 'wow it would actually be much cheaper to not investigate social welfare fraud' and make the whole system run more smoothly? it's like that, only for a community of writers. because like. the one dude who thinks AI is really cool and he can write so fast and impress his writer friends is in for a rude awakening at their hands; NaNo doesn't need to do it for them. the vast majority of people who want a writing challenge want one so they can, you know, convince themselves to write. it doesn't impress anybody else.