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antoine-roquentin · 3 years

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“The federal budget assumes the government will recover 96 cents of every dollar borrowers default on,” Mitchell wrote. This banker, Jeff Courtney, put that figure closer to just 51 to 63 cents.

Now, for a private lender, like a bank, this projected shortfall would indeed be a ticking time bomb. The bank might be in danger of insolvency (unless, of course, it was rescued by a federal government that could give the bank an emergency cash infusion and take those bad loans off its hands). But there’s no real danger of a federal Cabinet-level department becoming insolvent. The Treasury Department is already in the habit of making up the Education Department’s budgetary shortfalls.

So what is the problem again? Typically for a news outlet like the Journal, the story describes this potential shortfall as what “taxpayers” would be “on the hook for,” but obviously, we all know that that is not how federal budgeting works. Taxes could rise for certain people for certain reasons, but no one will receive an itemized bill for this uncollected debt. And as for that large, catastrophic number ($500 billion!) that might never be paid back, it amounts to less than one year of a national defense budget that “taxpayers” are similarly “on the hook for.” (The Journal’s editorial board recently complained that the Biden administration’s proposed 2022 $715 billion Pentagon budget, while an increase in real terms, nonetheless represents an unconscionable decline in the defense budget as share of gross domestic product. “Taxpayers” are not mentioned in the editorial.)

Democrats helped sacrifice a generation of students to the deficit god, in exchange for meaningless numbers in a report.

The story, then, is that the government might not collect some debt, even if it currently pretends, for budgetary reasons, that it definitely will, and, as a result, the deficit may rise to levels higher than the current estimates predict. For a committed conservative, such as DeVos, that situation is inherently scandalous. For everyone else, that could only ever become a problem in the future, and only if that future deficit has some negative effect on the overall economy, which is not very likely considering the entire recent history of federal deficits and economic growth.

That state of affairs may explain why articles like the one in the Journal so often invoke “taxpayers,” as if everyone would have to write personal checks to cover the Department of Education’s shortfall: because without imagining taxpayers as victims of government deficits, it’s hard to point to anyone actually harmed by a government department giving unrealistic estimates of future revenues.

Except in this story, there are actual victims: the people who hold debt that the government doesn’t realistically expect to collect in full but who are bled for payment regardless. As Courtney’s report found, because of the importance of these loans to the department’s balance sheet, the government keeps borrowers on the hook for the loans even if they will never be able to repay all of the money they owe, often by placing borrowers on a repayment plan tied to their income. (As the economist Marshall Steinbaum has explained, the “income driven repayment,” or IDR, program is framed as a means of helping borrowers, but in reality, it “exerts a significant drag on their financial health, to no apparent purpose” by forcing them to “make less-than-adequate payments for many years before their debt is finally cancelled.”) The victim of such a scheme isn’t taxpayers, it’s debtors.

There’s one particular portion of The Wall Street Journal’s story that the public should treat as a moral and political scandal (the emphasis here is mine):

One instance of how accounting drove policy came in 2005 with Grad Plus, a program that removed limits on how much graduate students could borrow. It was included in a sweeping law designed to reduce the federal budget deficit, which had become a concern in both parties as the nation spent on wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and as baby-boomer retirement was set to raise Social Security and healthcare outlays.

A key motive for letting graduate students borrow unlimited amounts was to use the projected profits from such lending to reduce federal deficits, said two congressional aides who helped draft the legislation.

Each change was publicly justified as a way to help families pay for college or to save the taxpayer money, said Robert Shireman, who helped draft some of the laws in the 1990s as an aide to Sen. Paul Simon (D., Ill.) and later was deputy under secretary of education in the Obama administration.

But how agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office “score” such changes—determine their deficit impact—“is a key factor in deciding whether a policy is adopted or not,” Mr. Shireman said. “The fact that it saved money helps enact it.”

To explain this more plainly, Democrats helped sacrifice a generation of students to the deficit god, in exchange for meaningless numbers in a report, because CBO scores are more real to senators than flesh-and-blood people.

This is the sort of depravity that deficit obsessions produce. The Iraq War needed to be “paid for” with the future earnings of students who, lawmakers imagined, would eventually be rich, even as many of the same lawmakers voted to cut taxes on already-rich people. Now the debt of the still-not-rich students can’t be forgiven because of its importance to the federal government’s predicted future earnings. And politicians and commentators in thrall to deficit politics still paint the situation as a morality tale, in which the borrowers are irresponsible for having the debt and the government would be irresponsible to forgive it. After all, think of the poor taxpayers.

The early days of the Biden administration led some to believe we were finally free of this incoherent political mode, where dubious predictions in CBO reports dictate the limits of the politically possible and determine who will be arbitrarily punished for the sake of limiting the size of a program in a speculative 10-year budget projection. The proof that Democrats had learned their lesson was one major piece of legislation, the American Rescue Plan, designed to respond to a unique emergency.

More recently, the administration, and some of its allies in Congress, have signaled strongly that they’re returning to the old ways. The American Prospect’s David Dayen has reported that the White House is determined to “pay for” its infrastructure plans, and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is apparently leading the charge to ensure the infrastructure spending is “offset.” This will have the likely effect of limiting the scope of the plan, once again sacrificing material benefits for the sake of estimates and predictions from the CBO.

The Biden administration seems to be determined to go about this without violating its pledge not to raise taxes on any American making less than $400,000 (a threshold meant to define the upper limit of “middle class” despite being comically higher than the Obama administration’s similar $250,000 limit for tax hikes). It has floated increasing IRS enforcement and raising the capital gains tax for the wealthiest Americans. Both are fine ideas. But the best thing about taxing the rich is not that you can use their money for infrastructure, it’s that doing so reduces their political and economic power. That’s also the reason why it’s so difficult for Washington to do it.

The complete incoherence of the current Democratic position on spending and deficits is summed up well in another Wall Street Journal story, where Montana Senator Jon Tester was quoted saying, “I don’t want to raise any taxes, but I don’t want to put stuff on the debt, either.… If we’re going to build infrastructure, we have to pay for it somehow. I’m open to all ideas.”

“Open” to “all ideas” but unwilling to tax the rich, and unwilling to allow a CBO report to show a larger deficit as a result of needed spending: This is more or less precisely the dynamic that led student loan debt to explode in the United States, and it’s the zombie worldview that threatens any chance of this government averting a multitude of political, economic, and ecological disasters.

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zoequeenz · 4 years

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Plain Sight (Part 3)

A/N: okay okay biggest sorry ever for not posting last month. Started a new position at my job and then had to deal with some miscommunication that made me believe I was gonna lose that position. Thought I had COVID twice (no matter how safe you are you are always in danger) and that threw me through a loop. Then I started college and that was a whole crazy thing, so my August was anxiety filled and very demanding. So sorry, so I will be posting twice this month to finish this part.

MASTERLIST

PREVIOUS CHAPTER

We had Detective Martin round up all the other officers to listen to our profile. They all sat, ready with their pens and paper as Gideon began to talk.

“The Unsub brought his weapons with him. Tape, glue, wire. He did not leave them at the scene. He took them when he left. He has a kind of killing kit that he carries.” Gideon informs.

“Organized killers usually have a skilled job, likely technology related, which may involve the use of the hands. The crime scenes are far enough apart that he needs a vehicle. This will be well kept, obsessively clean, as will be his home. He’s diurnal, the attacks occurred during the day, so the vehicle may be related to his work, possibly a company car or truck.” Hotch continues.

“We believe he watches the victims for a time, learns the rhythm of the home, knows his time frame.” Derek adds on.

“You’re not gonna catch him accidentally.” Hotch says.

“He destroys symbols of wealth in the victims’ homes. He harbors envy of and hatred toward people of a higher social class.” Gideon says, walking towards the murder board.

“He feels invisible around them.”

“Class is the theme of the poem which he left at the various crime scenes. At one point in the poem, the woman attempts to bribe death, but he doesn’t accept it. He says this is the one moment when riches mean nothing. When death comes, the poor and the rich are exactly alike.” Spencer explains.

“So he’s poor.” A Detective asks.

“Probably middle class.” I answer.

“A decidedly lower class person would stick out in a highly patrolled neighborhood. This guy appears to belong there. He blends in.” Hotch elaborates.

“Why does he glue the eyes open?” Detective Martin asks.

“The Unsub is an exploitative rapist. Most rape victims close their eyes during the attack, turn their heads. For some rapists, this ruins the fantasy. For this type of rapist, the goal is more related to the victim watching him than the act itself.” Elle explains.

“He wants them to see him, he is often overlooked. The open eyes give him that satisfaction.” I add.

“The verses the staging, the aggressive language, “I am Death,” this is a guy who, while being in control at the crime scene, almost certainly feels inadequate in the rest of his life.” Hotch explains.

“That’s why he couldn’t wait for you to figure out what he’d done, why he needed to make sure all of his crimes were counted. His victims, they represent whatever it is that’s controlling him, and he wants that control back. He is under the thumb of a powerful woman who frightens him. And a final point. He is white.” Gideon clarifies.

“We have witnesses that identify him as a black male.” The same Detective argues.

“The attacker was black. He is not the Tommy Killer.” Gideon tells him.

“Mrs.Gordon’s husband came home at the same time that he always does. The Tommy Killer would’ve known that.” Hotch adds.

“And Mrs.Gordon’s attacker wore a ski mask. The Unsub knows when he walks into a house, he’s going to kill the woman who lives there. If you’re not leaving any witnesses, why wear a ski mask?” Elle asks rhetorically.

“And he wants the victim to see him anyway.” Derek adds.

“The attempted rapist is a garden variety disorganized young man.” Hotch explains.

“As the victim’s age goes up, generally, the attacker’s age goes down. Mrs.Gordon is about 60, which puts her rapist at about 20.” Elle informs.

“And it takes years to develop the level of calm and sophistication that Tommy displays at a crime scene, and the rapist is far too young for that.” Gideon says.

“Mrs.Gordon told me that there’s a young man who delivers groceries to their home. He fits a lot of what we’re describing here.” Elle adds.

“Great. So we’re back to zero on Tommy.” The Detective sighs.

“Not at all.” Hotch objects.

“May I see you in your office for a moment?”

They walk off.

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We had located Marcia’s rapist. Elle, Derek, and I were sent to go arrest him. He was walking back to get something from one of the trucks when Elle and I turned the corner.

“FBI. You’re under arrest.” Elle states, he then tries to run for it but Derek already knew he was gonna run and cut him off.

“You’re under arrest for the attempted rape of Marcia Gordon.” Derek tells him.

“What?!” He questions.

Though this was our rapist, he wasn’t out Tommy but this was the only way we were gonna get Tommy to contact us. We pull up as JJ is giving a press conference, just as planned. Morgan pulls him out while Elle and I follow through the crowd of reporters to get into the police station. Hotch meets us as we walk in and Elle tells him that he had already confessed. Our plan was moving accordingly. One bad guy off the street and so close to the other. We just had to wait. We were just waiting at this point. I was sitting across from Spencer and next to Derek, who had just angryily slammed his phone down.

“Chill, Derek. He will call.” I say calmly.

“I know Little One.” He sighs leaning back.

I knew better than to talk to him, and chose to listen to Elle and Spencer.

“God, I hate waiting like this.” She said.

“Do you think it’s weird that I knew that ballad?” He asks playing with a Rubix Cube.

“I don’t know how it is that you know half the things you know, but I’m glad you do.” She answers.

“Do you think it’s why I can’t get a date?” He asks again and my heart pangs. If only he knew how many women would kill to be with him.

“You ever ask anyone out?” She asks back.

“No.” He replies.

“That’s why you can’t get a date.” She says simply.

“I’m sure there is someone waiting for you to ask them anyway…”she winks.

What does she mean by that. Her? Does Elle like Spencer. No no no, Percy. She does not. Maybe she means JJ. God it is definitely JJ. I mean, they were totally flirting and he was checking her out at his birthday thing and ugh-

The phone rings.

“Detective Martin. Hey,hey” he says grabbing our attention.

“Line 6, Penelope. Line 6.” JJ says.

“You stupid incompetent sons of bitches! I don’t make mistakes! I am Death! You hear me?! I AM DEATH! You’ll see now. Tomorrow. Mark my words, you will see. And while I am taking her, I’m gonna be thinking of you.” Tommy shouts.

JJ asks Penny if she got anything, but sadly she got nothing. Confusion was all around. How could we miss him. We all sigh in defeat. My nerves begin to rise. He was so aggressive and his threat was so terrifying. I couldn’t breathe, luckily Spencer was there. I couldn’t really register it but I knew his hand was in mine. I breathe in and out for a bit, look at Spencer and I am okay.

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It was a very restless night for everyone. Elle and I could barely sleep so we occupied ourselves by watching whatever shitty movie was on the TV. I eventually got an hour or two of shut eye but it was all I really needed.

“We have an undercover car for each of your teams, and the entire damn department out there, too.” The Chief said.

“Remember a truck. Maybe a work truck, in excellent condition.” Gideon says.

“Everyone knows.” The Chief says.

“All right, he might make a mistake today. He’s angry, and he probably hasn’t done the kind of surveillance he’d like.” Hotch informs us. We all nod.

“Yeah, well, neither have we.” Derek adds coming up next to Spencer and I.

“Let’s go Reid, Chase.” We follow him out.

Derek drives us to our lookout spot. It was mostly quiet and I was two seconds away from sleep. I thought those couple hours were enough but the warm air and the birds singing was lulling me to sleep. At least until Derek sighs.

“It’s 10:30 already.” He says.

“All he said was tomorrow. He didn’t specify morning.” Spencer says.

“For all we know, he could strike later in the day.” I add.

“This guy’s gotta spend a lot of time in that house. A lot. He needs it to be morning.” Derek says. Spencer looks around.

“Are we sure this is a good spot?” He asks.

“Three of the victims lived within a block of this street. It’s the main artery through the neighborhood.” Derek answers.

“True, but three victims in the same block could mean he’s done with the area.” Spencer suggests.

“Or that he’s just really familiar with it.” Derek charges back.

“And comfortable in it.” Spencer adds.

“But then, on the other hand, the other victims lived more than a mile in either direction.” Derek continues.

“Right.” Spencer says.

“God,” Derek says, hitting the wheel.

“I hate not having a plan. We’re looking for a needle in a haystack here.”

“Spencer would argue a needle in a pile of needles.” I say, Spencer looks back and smiles at me. I know him so well.

“What?” Derek asks.

“A needle would stand out in a haystack.” Spencer explains making Derek laugh.

“And we’re not looking for someone who stands out?” Derek starts.

“No. We’re looking for a particular needle in a pile of needles.” Spencer further explains grabbing his binoculars.

Derek looks back at me smirking. I roll my eyes and feel my face heat up. I punch him in the arm, lightly of course, as a way to tell him to shut it. He just laughs. I rest my head on Spencer’s seat causing him to look back and smile at me. I couldn’t take my eyes off his face. He did his little smile and went back to looking out. It may very well be a long day but I was with my favorite boys so it didn’t matter.

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TAGLIST

@thesailbells

#criminal minds #criminal minds series rewrite #spencer reid #spencer reid imagine #spencer reid x oc #criminal minds imagine #spencer reid series

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

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As someone who has researched school segregation and interviewed hundreds of white parents, I know that one of the biggest barriers to achieving meaningful integration in public education is how the most politically powerful parents in any school system — usually many of the white parents — come to understand what the “good” schools are and what is “best” for their children.

As a former public school parent and a white woman with a white son who performs well on the metrics that get students into the most selective public schools, I know the peer pressure that white parents feel to get their children into these high-status schools. I remember another white parent, when she learned that my son was not going to the most selective, predominantly white middle school in our district, looking at me in disbelief and saying, “I thought he had high tests scores?”

Yes, he did have high test scores and, yes, he most likely would have been accepted to the selective middle school, which many of his friends’ parents were determined to get their children into. But he did not want to go to that school.

He thought the students there looked bored when he toured it. I did not want him to go there either, because he was a sensitive kid who needed a school with a strong sense of community and care, which that school lacked. We were both upset by the almost completely white student body in this selective school located in the center of a racially and ethnically diverse community school district.

Really, the only reason to send him there would have been because it would give him — and, by default, his parents — a sense of status and prestige. This school had the highest test scores in the district, my son noted, because it only accepted the students with the highest test scores. In his middle school mind, being selective in and of itself did not make a school “good.” He had higher standards for a school than that. Too bad more white parents do not see it that way.

New York City has become the poster child of intense racial segregation, but the issues here are not unique to the Big Apple, nor is the challenge of implementing solutions. The New York City Mayor’s School Diversity Advisory Group has released its preliminary report outlining next steps for the city’s Department of Education to lessen chronic racial and social-class segregation in the public schools. This Advisory Group, of which I am a member, laid out reachable goals to address equal access and resources, school accountability for diversity, and new teaching strategies to ensure that all students feel valued and affirmed.

One of the most pivotal factors in how far these recommendations can go in New York and elsewhere is the amount of support that such plans receive from public school parents. In particular, white parents too often say they want integration while simultaneously opting out of diverse schools in favor of those that are more selective, of higher status among their peers, and predominantly white and/or Asian.

Thus, as white parents navigate the shifting terrain of school choice and enrollment, they need to understand that having one’s child at the top of a rigid and segregated hierarchy of schools is not always the best parenting decision, on several levels. Taking a deep breath and paying less attention to what other white parents say and more attention to your children and their teachers will enable you to make choices that can not only better fit their learning styles, but also do more to make our public school system more integrated and better.

Cutting-edge research in brain science and education tells us that students learn better and deeper when their ways of knowing a topic are challenged by those who have different life experiences and worldviews. A recent report on learning by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine demonstrates that the culture of our families and communities plays a major role in how we learn.

This means that in many instances there is not a single right or wrong way of understanding a concept or interpreting a work of literature. We understand things in slightly different ways because of our histories and backgrounds. Having your children exposed to these different ways of knowing prepares them for a world of cultural complexity and constant uncertainty.

Indeed, for the first 175 years of public education in the United States, the “right” answers to most questions have been normed around white and mostly northern European culture. In the last 30 years, we have codified these culturally specific ways of knowing in high-stakes standardized tests that Asian students also tend to perform well on, particularly in math.

Taking a deep breath and paying less attention to what other white parents say and more attention to your child and their teachers will enable you to make choices that can not only better fit their learning style, but also do more to make our public school system more integrated and better.

The result is that we consistently sort and select students based on their cultural histories, ways of knowing and prior opportunities to learn. This racial hierarchy becomes so ingrained that even when schools enrolling mostly black and Latino students have high test scores, we still see them as “bad” schools.

In fact, in a study we conducted on Long Island, we found that the race of the students in the school system affected property values of otherwise identical houses in districts with the same test score data by as much as $50,000. In other words, the perception of “good” schools is too often about the perception of race, even when black and Latino students perform well on tests normed toward white students.

And still, despite this evidence and the call for more integration, many white parents continue to derive status and honor from one another when their children are selected into predominantly white or Asian schools regardless of the climate or characteristics of these schools. As the viral video of a parent meeting on the Upper West Side of Manhattan last year demonstrated, white parents can become very angry when the admissions policies to these schools change.

Too often the parents live vicariously through their children, and thus feel “gifted” or elite themselves when their children are admitted to selective schools. But the fact is that children usually want to be in schools where they feel emotionally safe and cared for by the adults and other children at the same time that they are engaged and challenged to think more deeply about complex issues than the possible answers on a multiple-choice test. As the rich evidence in the National Academies Report demonstrates, students learn best in these settings, even if they’re not the schools with the highest test scores or the most white and affluent students. In fact, it’s the latter schools that often have high rates of anxiety, cheating, drug and alcohol abuse and bullying.

It can be difficult for some parents to choose a more nurturing school for their child if it does not confer status and approval from their family, friends and acquaintances. But until more white parents make those choices, the hierarchy and the racial segregation will remain. While the NYC Mayor’s Advisory Group’s sage advice to rate schools based on diversity as well as test scores is a solid first step to address these race-based perceptions of “good” schools, white parents must also listen to their children and their hearts before saying they support integration while choosing segregation.

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dreamingsushi · 5 years

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Before we get married - Episode 1

Before I start my recap of this episode, let me mention that it is not the first time I watch it! I first had a look at it a few weeks ago with a friend and I must say it was quite a weird experience. Anyways. Whan I saw the previews of the drama, I was quite intrigued by it because the theme and the plot seemed a little bit different from what we are used to and I thought it would be interesting to watch. We’ll see from now on.

The first episode starts slowly by outlining for us the characters. On one side, we have Chu Kehuan, apparently a very successful business man, while on the other side we have Zhou Weiwei, your average white collar it seems. Both main characters have their first encounter in and out of a cab. Zhou Weiwei is hurrying out of the car while Chu Kehuan is trying to get in. On her way to meet some director, Zhou Weiwei bumps into a kid on a skateboard and spills the whole content of her purse including the taxi bill. Since she needs to keep it to get reimbursed by her company, she runs after it. That little piece of paper does have a will of its own as it flies from left to right back and forth. Naturally, it’s Chu Kehuan that picks it up for her and as a quite arrogant little rich guy, he makes fun of her.

There, I’m already a little bit disappointed : the male lead is a rich little jerk and the female lead is scrapping every penny to live. I wish we wouldn’t have the rich-poor pattern, even though I don’t think Zhou Weiwei is poor, from her apartment and job I guess she would be from the middle class.

Destiny could have stopped her magic right there, but after they part and Chu Kehuan get in the cab, he finds Zhou Weiwei’s red planner. Instead of asking the driver to wait and to get off the car a few seconds to hand it back, he keeps it. That scene is really weird. It’s like “Oh! A planner! Nice, I’m going to keep it!” Maybe Chu Kehuan is just a really indifferent person?

Well not when it comes to his work and his opponent. Apparently Chu Kehuan is the run for a CEO position against Shu Mingge, another investment expert I believe. To build up the tension, we have then getting set up in their office, as if going on the finals on a box-ring. I think the whole preparation could have been edited out, it’s a waste of time.

We switch right away, before knowing who is going today’s big bet, to another office filled with overexcited workers trying to buy some camera that’s at a really good price. Nice product placement there! This scene is to introduce another character though and probably the most boring character ever : doesn’t own a credit card, believes cellphone is enough to take pictures, paper money is better than virtual money. I think we have here a guy very much in love with money.

Better news! That office is also Zhou Weiwei’s office and boring guy... Well it’s obviously her boyfriend. While on the bus, previously which I didn’t mention, she texted him, saying she wanted to meet with him after work. He answered : “Even though today is a week day that we are not appointed to meet, I also want to see you.” I can’t stand the guy already. He is a bore.

Up till now, it seems I really hate that show... Well it only has been 12 minutes, maybe it’s going to get better!

Another little scene of the competition between Chu Kehuan and Shu Mingge. Chu Kehuan is obviously losing with the value of the stocks he invested in going down, but he looks quite confidente still. Pass.

Good. Zhou Weiwei finally realizes that she lost her planner. She goes to her roommate asking about it. Han Kefei really is portrayed as a sex-addict. Earlier in the morning, she’s showering with a guy that slept over, now she’s in a conference room trying to seduce (it looks a lot more like she’s forcing him to be there though) an employee. Shouldn’t a manager like that be fired? Why is she doing this in the conference room? Why is she so violent about it? I mean, what is happening there... Abusive boss in every way and Zhou Weiwei just tells her “you even eat what’s raw.” I know they are roommate, but shouldn’t she report her to high ups? I really don’t understand a thing about this. Why is everybody so abnormal?

Again to the competition, Shu Ming gets cocky and naturally, that is when his stocks start dropping as Chu Kehuan’s are climbing higher. No big surprise. Lots of shocked faces, lots of slow motions to show the face expressions. And finally, Chu Kehuan looks human and he waves his fist for victory. So unlike him, but thanks for the effort for not being too sure of yourself.

And what better to celebrate this big win than playing tennis with a friend! I must agree with you, being a CEO is the best. Money making wise. Workload wise, I can’t say. And is anywhere better than the locker room to look through Zhou Weiwei’s planner? He says he’s looking so he can find her, but by the way he’s flipping through, he’s going way too much in detail. Her name and phone number are probably on the first page... Ah, no, her business card is a the bottom of the planner. Good job. I must remark here that it looks like a bullet journal and I really love that because I love bullet journaling myself. Bonus point for the bujo.

Well it seems Zhou Weiwei has a really bad memory and that’s why the planner is so important to her. During her meeting, she can’t open the ppt for her project because she doesn’t remember the password for it. The meeting is about to be cancelled when she is called by... no one else but Chu Kehuan! So nice of him to bring the planner to her at her office building. Not nice of him to try to hit on her. Is it true that in western country, inviting somebody for coffee means you want to hook up? To me it has always been a way to thank somebody for something they did for me. I don’t know, maybe I should change my thanking methods... Well, let me tell you that we are going for another love-hate relationship. No clichés. But at least, the meeting is saved.

So on her date with her boyfriend, she is clearly embarrassed by how cheap he is. Then a collegue pass by the street and the try to hide : turns out it’s forbidden to date somebody from the company. What a crappy rule : where do you expect your workers to find their partner if not at work? Anyways. It’s their three year anniversary, they are happy and the best way to celebrate is... by scanning old receipts to see if they can win some money. Haha, Weiwei’s face is so funny, how romantic. She definitely hates that her boyfriend is so cheap. I can’t believe she still puts up with him. Well at least it’s to buy a house together, I guess he is serious about her at some point.

Oh... I totally forgot. The guy started dating her because on their first date, she paid her part of the meal they had together. Darling, dump him. This is so cringy, it’s not romantic.

Her three year anniversary gift? A cup he bought with points he saved... CHEAP. CHEAP. CHEAP. And when she wants to stay the night, he says no because it’s not Saturday and they agreed they would spend the night together only on Saturday. DUMP HIM. I know she most likely will somewhere in the future, but it’s already taking too much time...

At least she is unhappy with it so after she leaves she goes to a solo KTV. I so want to try these, it’s like my dream. Naturally, outside the cabin, BAM! Chu Kehuan is there. Fate is really strong between those two already, they bump into each other pretty much everywhere. Kehuan obviously also thinks so. Three meetings in one day, that’s an amazing fate. But he needs to ruin it by reciting by heart everything he saw about Weiwei’s finance. He is so annoying. Weiwei’s reaction in that particular moment the most realistic part of the whole episode so far. I have to congratulate Puff Guo for her acting, I enjoyed it very much. Well actually, even though Weiwei’s reactions are most of the time weird, I have to say the acting is on point. At that point, I think the script is just strange.

Anyways, she gets mad and when she tries to go, she rips her shirt open. I watch the scene a few times, I don’t get how it happened, she didn’t touch anything. Maybe it was too tight on her, I don’t know. Anyways, her underwear is showing, she’s shook. For the first, Kehuan acts like a gentleman and cover her breast with his jacket. If they were a couple, it would be such a sweet moment. Please redo it 15 episodes later. Thank you goodbye.

So she goes back home, tells the story to her sex addict roommate, gives herself a pep talk in front of the mirror : girl, it’s about time you realize you’re not happy. Kehuan is annoying, the character is so unrealistic to me up till now, but at least, he knows how to turn somebody’s mind upside down.

The next, dear Kehuan keeps on calling Weiwei on the phone. It’s really childish honestly. Doesn’t he have anything more important to do? Like, maybe... I don’t know... working? Well at least we know he has a party that night and he makes his subordinate make sure that Weiwei attends. Naturally, because it’s fate, the guy knows Weiwei’s roommate, seems like they had a thing sometime. Well anyways, he convinces her to make Weiwei attend the party so they can find her a boyfriend. This is so twisted.

So they go to the party, Weiwei tries to leave when she sees Kehuan, her friend threatens her to end their friendship if she leaves, twisted, twisted, twisted. Lots of wine drinking. Somebody teach them how to drink wine. Please. I don’t even drink wine and it bothers me. And then they... THIS IS TWISTED OKAY? WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS DRAMA?? They bring a crane game. It Kehuan grabs a teddy bear successfully, he gets to sleep with any girl he wants at the party. IT’S DISGUSTING! I JUST CAN’T. NOPE. THIS IS WRONG!!

As expected, he grabs one. I don’t need to see the reste of the episode to know who he will ask out. Yuck. Dude, your morals are wrong. Yup. Of course, she doesn’t want to. So instead he gives her three chances to grad a teddy bear to refuse him? Okay. NO. And the crowd is cheering so she wouldn’t catch it? What is this? This is so inappropriate. I don’t think something like that should be allowed in a drama. And it wouldn’t be a drama if she didn’t loose. They end up in a BDSM room and I am just thinking... what the hell am I watching... At least, he just handcuffs her to the bed. AS IF THIS WAS NOT BAD ENOUGH ALREADY... He leaves the key hanging too far away for her to reach it. In the process, we learn that he has a girlfriend. Poor girl, I wouldn’t want to date somebody like that. Dirtbag.

After he leaves her like that, he sees on his phone thousands of phone call, from whom I assume is his girlfriend. I feel another twisted relationship coming. Maybe it makes him regret or whatever, but he goes back to free Weiwei.

She runs to her boyfriend, but she can’t bring herself to tell him what happened even though she insists on staying over even though it’s not a Saturday night.

Kehuan gets home to his girlfriend, locked outside because she forgot the door’s key. I can already tell the relationship is so unhealthy. She basically worships Kehuan and if she could, she would be his slave. That’s really not a good start. I can already see he’s bored with her. Two unhappy couples.

The episode ends on Weiwei deleting Kehuan’s invitation on a social media to be friends or to follow her, I couldn’t recognize the app.

Overall... This is twisted. I will try the next episode, the preview are still intriguing me, but so far I am not enjoying it so much. I hope it gets better soon. If ever you decide on watching, just be prepared : this drama is kinda more adult like. It is definitely not for a younger public.

Thanks for reading, see you on another episode!

#我们不能是朋友 #before we get married #drama #drama recap #drama review

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nalufever · 5 years

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On Camera, Ch.1

Fandom: The Flash

Pairing: Snowells ~ Caitlin Snow x Harry Wells

Rating: M++ (lemon)

Movie AU: Harry Wells and Caitlin Snow are actors on the set of a movie starring Iris West, Julian Albert, Barry Allen and more! One late night together between Harry and Caitlin means the world to them and their lives will never be the same.

I must give credit where credit is due, my mood board was created by @lovemarvelandtheflash ~ Thank you so much! And the whole Movie AU idea was born from another story where, And I quote: She knew he would be dressed all in black, looking like he'd just walked off the set of some incredibly high-end porn movie made for people who found brilliant scientists highly arousing. From ‘Beautiful Wreck’ by the talented @earthsickwithoutyou

On Camera, chapter 1: Alternate Third Revision READ on FF.net or A03

"I'm sure the script read-through will go amazingly." The clipped English accent coming from the woman dressed in a sensible suit made the words sound somehow posher - more interesting and worthy of attention, even though as seasoned actors, the people slouching around the table had been through initial script readings ad nauseum. Tina McGee shuffled her stack of papers and gave the room a beaming smile. "You've all been chosen after extreme vetting, so show us we've made the correct choices."

Cisco Ramon, the assistant director, gave Tina a thumbs-up and cleared his throat. "You heard our director, let's start the reading with your best efforts!"

Julian Albert puffed out his chest and began, "Dammit! You've got the wrong Tom!"

"The thing is, we're both right." Caitlin Snow let her voice show rich amusement as she kept reading from her script. "You're the target, but I wouldn't have you even if you were offered on a silver platter."

Harry Wells, quick on his mark delivered his line sounding clinical and dispassionate. "As another man of science Mr. Felton, you must understand genetics don't lie. You're the Tom the world needs right now."

Iris West did her best to keep her tapping foot under the table quiet - but she was beyond thrilled to land this part - cast as a reporter in a multi-million dollar film, so she may have delivered her first line with a bit extra oomph. "Tom! What do you have to say to the millions of viewers on this historic occasion?"

Julian threw his copy of the script on the table and scowled. "Must you be so loud? I know you haven't been in any noteworthy films, unlike myself and the chain of Rowling movies. But surely your handler must have told you to keep your over-enthusiasm for the camera?"

Barry Allen shoved himself away from the table. "Is this a good time to take a break? I need to call my dog-sitter and see if I'm a father!"

Tina peered at Barry in disbelief. "You mean to say you've fathered a child on your dog-sitter?"

Carlos chuckled, saying to Tina, "Haha, no, his dog is pregnant and due any minute. He's just anxious to know how many puppies Tasha has delivered."

"Yeah, so do we take a break or what?" Barry pulled out his phone and started tapping away, ignoring everybody else in the room.

"All right, ten minutes and right back at the action!" said Tina, rising from her chair. She ordered Cisco, "Fetch me a double-double or I'll replace you with my cousin."

"Yes'm. That's ever so much funnier every time I hear that threat." Cisco jumped out of his chair and bolted to the door ahead of his director, knowing Tina wasn't joking.

"Keep in mind I'm a munificent director when things go my way and the very devil if I'm crossed." Tina waved cheerily and slipped out the door.

"Huh." Caitlin shrugged, raising her eyebrows, giving Harry a dialed-down smile. "Interesting."

”In more ways than one, that's for sure." Harry slouched in his chair and started to whistle aimlessly.

"Must you?" Julian turned up his nose and simultaneously looked down his nose at Harry. "Whistling is for common folk."

"Guess I'm common." Harry pushed his glasses higher with his middle finger. "Too common for you, dude."

"You're Harry Wells. I honestly thought from your, shall we say, long career, you'd be more sophisticated." Julian gave Harry a false smile, as smarmy as only the man cast as Draco Malfoy could manage. "I've enough charm and class to share." He had the audacity to wink at Caitlin - who maintained a blank expression.

"I'm of the opinion that it's quality rather than quantity." Caitlin leaned back in her chair to avoid Julian's heavy aura of cologne. "We all bring something unique to the movie-making party, don't we?"

Iris, much more relaxed without the famous director in the room, slapped her hand on the table. "I agree." She flinched as every head swivelled to look at her, taking a steadying breath. "It's not the time spent, it's the effort put into it, right?"

"Well put!" Harry smiled cheerfully at Iris. "I remember you from 'Heaven's Gate,' don't I? You made Phyllis the standout character." He nodded and slouched in his chair, crossing his long legs. "A fantastic cast and fantastic performances from everyone involved."

"You saw that?" Iris forgot her star-fright, her feet now planted firmly on the ground - her stress evaporating, bonding with her new crew. "Sylvia Rogers was amazing. The whole cast would sign up in a heartbeat to work with her again."

Barry stumbled back inside and dropped into his chair, proudly announcing, "Seven puppies!"

"How wonderful!" Caitlin patted Barry on the shoulder and the rest of the actors voiced their congratulations - except Julian who mumbled something unintelligible. Eager to play peace-maker, Caitlin peppered Barry with questions. She asked what kind of dog Tasha was and the breed of the father, slumping in relief as everyone kept the conversation related to the miracle of birth.

Caitlin shivered a bit as Harry laid his warm hand on her forearm. She turned and offered him a shy smile. Leaning towards him she spoke softly, "Are you a dog person too?"

Deviltry alive in his electric blue eyes, he whispered, "Yes, and it looks like I'm not a Julian Albert kind of person."

Cisco entered the room and placed a large cup of coffee at the director's spot. He heaved a sigh of relief, sat and started to look at the cast as a whole entity, gauging personalities and potential conflicts.

Tina showed up a scant minute later, clapping her hands sharply after making herself comfortable in her chair. "All right! Take it from the top and wow me!"

The interlude had served to bring ease to all the cast, and the read-through went much smoother the second time around. Two hours into the exercise, Tina called for a break and the cast dispersed under admonitions to return after lunch.

><><><><

Much to Caitlin's surprise, Harry escorted her all the way to the craft services table, making small talk as they filled their plates and sat off by themselves from the rest of the cast. Caitlin plopped down her plate and asked, "So, how's your first day on set going?"

Harry chuckled, spearing a cherry tomato from his salad. He lifted it high and waved it to and fro. "Magnificently." He used it to point at Julian and let his lips twist in derision. "Getting better by the second, the further I get from that person."

"It's strange, isn't it?" Caitlin pushed her food around and then met Harry's gaze with a frank expression. "Why are some people so rude?" She bit her lip, thinking about how to clarify herself. "I mean, just because Julian's been in a huge movie series he acts like he's better than others."

"He's a good actor, but I honestly didn't like how he schmoozed you. You're a competent actress. It rubs me the wrong way when I see guys try to treat women like they're available just because they're female."

"I take it you're nothing like that," smiling, Caitlin took a big bite of her food.

"What I'm like, other than fun to work with, doesn't matter." Harry tugged on his ear. "Treating my peers with respect is my default." He dropped his voice and added, "Might take a while for Julian to become my peer though." Caitlin laughed as Harry intended. They spent the rest of lunch conversing over past movie projects - a few more of the other actors joining their table.

><><><><

Caitlin shivered after being doused for the third time as they shot the pouring rain scene. Julian kept blowing his lines and the uncharitable part of Caitlin figured it was because of her thin white blouse. She cursed silently and gratefully accepted the towel from the wardrobe assistant as she followed them to the trailer to freshen up yet again.

Tina McGee flipped through her notes and suddenly clapped her hands. "Let's try this from the other angle, shall we?"

Carlos furrowed his brows and frantically read his own notes about the scenes they were currently shooting. "There isn't another angle."

"Pish-posh." Tina dismissed Carlos airily. "Julian can go sit this out. Bring Harry here - and we'll use the alternate dialogue, from the third revision as I recall."

"Yes." Carlos nodded slowly. "The third revision, not the second or fourth." His wide smile was patently false. "Let me go check on something, real quick."

Tina watched her assistant trot off and then pulled out a pen and did some quick alterations on the script. Caitlin returned with a dry shirt just as Harry, trailed by Carlos showed. "You two, let's try this scene without Julian."

Caitlin looked at Harry and Harry looked at Caitlin.

"I've marked all the changes here and here," said Tina as she jabbed with her pen onto the script. "The motivation is primarily the same. But now it'll be Harry's character - Tom C. giving encouragement to Caitlin's character - Danielle P." Her friendly tone dropped. "Are we clear?"

The two actors nodded.

"Excellent, this spot still ends in a hug - so you can have five minutes to read to each other and then we'll do a take."

><><><><

The fake rain started and then the scene board clapped and Caitlin moved out from under the shelter of the store-front. "Are you going to tell me this is pointless too?"

Harry darted closer and held the umbrella over Caitlin. "And why would I do that?"

"Maybe because nobody else believes in my theory." She sighed and then gave a half-hearted push against Harry's chest. "You've got to have better things to do than cheer me up."

"So what if I do have better things to do?"

"Excuse me?" Caitlin gave her lines a careful blend of shock and dismay.

Harry laughed, the lines around his eyes crinkling. "Done feeling sorry for yourself?"

Caitlin punched Harry's shoulder. "You're lucky you're a valued co-worker!"

"Tell me something I don't already know!"

"Oh my God - that's it! The variable input has to be derived from assured facts - the things we already know!"

Harry tossed the umbrella aside and took Caitlin into his arms, swinging her around as he crushed her in a warm hug.

"Cut!" Tina scrawled a note onto her script and smiled. "Excellent work you two."

Caitlin looked into Harry's blue eyes then gazed heavenward as the faux rain stopped. "I'm so damn glad not to have to get wet again." Suddenly realizing her words could be taken poorly, she flushed and bit her lip before saying, "Ugh - you know what I mean."

"Pretty sure you're only talking about getting misted by fake rain." Harry gave one of the towels offered to him to Caitlin. "Dry off and I'll see you on our next shared scene, okay?"

"Yes." Caitlin nodded and began to rub her hair. "I'm glad this scene is in the can."

"Me too."

#snowells #on camera #chapter 1 #nalufever #aka danceswithseatbelts #alternate third revision #fluff #eventual smut #oh yes the smut #very important #Caitlin snow #Harry wells #snow x wells #movie AU #multichaptered fic #the flash #thanks for the inspiration earthsickwithoutyou ^^#thanks for the pic lovemarvelandtheflash

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thevividgreenmoss · 6 years

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But here’s the depressing truth: this exposé will only make things worse. Any attempt to shed light on the absurdity and excess of the admissions scramble only breeds more scramble, as one admissions consultant, an advisor to clients including middle-eastern royalty and scions of name-brand multinational conglomerates, said. “Articles like this are part of the white noise vortex,” she told me at the outset of our interview. “They are consumed by these communities focused on this.”

In elite admissions, sunshine is more of a fertilizer than a disinfectant. In the early 2000s, then-Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Golden broke a string of stories chronicling corruption in admissions, from politicians pulling strings to billionaires like Charles Kushner bribing their kids through the storied gates of the Ivy League. Then he started getting calls. “Some of the Journal’s wealthier subscribers regarded my series not as investigative journalism but as a how-to guide,” Golden wrote in his 2006 book The Price of Admission (a point he returned to on Tuesday for ProPublica). One “high-tech tycoon” asked Golden for help getting his academically undistinguished daughter into an Ivy. Others offered him large sums to serve as an advisor.

If elite education is mostly about status consciousness, galling tales of profligacy in college admissions will have the unintended effect of producing more of the same. Imagine the plight of a multimillionaire parent looking to land their kid in a top college. Whatever the motivation might be—class preservation, earnest belief in the power of education, shallow hunger for prestige—they know there’s a thousand other parents just like them angling for some kind of advantage that goes beyond the obvious educational expenditures, the tutors and prep schools and mission trips to Guatemala.

The first option is to hire someone to help their kid stand out among the rest. Thankfully, a burgeoning cottage industry of admissions consultants stands ready to shepherd well-heeled Ivy aspirants through the application gauntlet. At the baseline, their job is to aid in college selection, ease anxiety, strategize around course selection, and help revise essays. At the higher end of the market, there are consultants charging over $1,000 an hour to help kids set up resume-enhancing charity projects; others blatantly offer to punch up essays and leave no trace in the process. In any other context, we would call it PR.

But this is all just a way of getting in the front gates. Another suite of strategies exists to help usher privileged teens in through the back door of elite educational institutions. The most obvious is legacy preference, which colleges defend on the logic that it helps bring in donations. It also doesn’t hurt to play some country club sport like tennis or water polo (see, for instance, the well-meaning charities that teach low-income, inner-city kids squash to help their future educational prospects). Legal bribery in the form of donations provides a last-ditch option for the obscenely rich, though I was told that an opening bid of $10 million is required to even be taken seriously among the Ivies.

But at this point the front gates are already crowded with perfectly credentialed, consultant-polished applicants, while the back door is straining under the pressure of legacy cases and trustees’ nephews and plutocratic donors. What other option is there? Enter the side door. Here is William Singer, the mastermind behind the Edge College & Career Network, aka the Key, who was charged Tuesday for racketeering, money laundering, conspiracy to defraud the United States, and obstruction of justice:

If I can make the comparison, there is a front door of getting in where a student just does it on their own, and then there’s a back door where people go to institutional advancement and make large donations, but they’re not guaranteed in . . . And then I created a side door that guaranteed families to get in. So that was what made it very attractive to so many families, is I created a guarantee.

It would be nice to believe that the recent bust would close forever the side door that Singer pried open for the criminal conspirators he called clients. But more realistically, status-conscious one-percenters reading the recent coverage aren’t going to be struck with a sudden bout of conscience. Instead, they’ll be googling “side door ivy league consultant” and looking for someone they can pay who isn’t staring at ten to twenty in federal prison.

This isn’t to say brazen schemes like Singer’s are all that common (though really, who knows). What matters more is the fine-tuned system of perfectly legal advantage-gaming that surrounds higher-end admissions. The latter will exist as long as the economic and social rewards to Ivy degrees tower so vertiginously above those of less elite competitors. All that is needed for the system of legal bribery to persist are three interrelated factors: social and financial networks that help usher alumni into the one percent; the dependence of elite colleges on private donations and alumni support; and admissions offices that are not perfectly insulated from the prerogatives of development offices and trustees, among other interested parties. So long as these realities remain, the rich will continue to exploit the elite education system by whatever (totally legal) means are available. Only the truly gauche will sink so low as bribe an SAT proctor.

For all the bile and spleen surrounding the admissions scandal, it’s hard to imagine any systematic overhaul coming anytime soon. Some of the embarrassed universities might tighten up their admissions practices, particularly the easily exploited athletic preference angle. But none of them are going to, say, ditch legacy admissions or lock trustees out of the decision process. And among ultra-wealthy parents, the current news cycle will only intensify the admissions anxiety (read: class anxiety). As the aforementioned high-end admissions consultant told me, “You and your gory stories keep me employed, but frankly I would rather have people be less stressed.”

#*#essays

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abbottmiti · 2 years

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Is the American dream really dead?

the United States has a long-held reputation for exceptional tolerance of income inequality, explained by its high levels of social mobility. This combination underpins the American dream – initially conceived of by Thomas Jefferson as each citizen’s right to the pursuit of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

This dream is not about guaranteed outcomes, of course, but the pursuit of opportunities. The dream found a persona in the fictional characters of the 19th-century writer Horatio Alger Jr – in which young working-class protagonists go from from rags to riches (or at least become middle class) in part due to entrepreneurial spirit and hard work.

Yet the opportunity to live the American dream is much less widely shared today than it was several decades ago. While 90% of the children born in 1940 ended up in higher ranks of the income distribution than their parents, only 40% of those born in 1980 have done so.

Attitudes about inequality have also changed. In 2001, a study found the only Americans who reported lower levels of happiness amid greater inequality were left-leaning rich people – with the poor seeing inequality as a sign of future opportunity. Such optimism has since been substantially tempered: in 2016, only 38% of Americans thought their children would be better off than they are.

In the meantime, the public discussion about inequality has completely by-passed a critical element of the American dream: luck.

Just as in many of Alger’s stories the main character benefits from the assistance of a generous philanthropist, there are countless real examples of success in the US where different forms of luck have played a major role. And yet, social support for the unlucky – in particular, the poor who cannot stay in full-time employment – has been falling substantially in recent years, and is facing even more threats today.

In short, from new research based on some novel metrics of wellbeing, I find strong evidence that the American dream is in tatters, at least.

White despair, minority hope

My research began by comparing mobility attitudes in the US with those in Latin America, a region long known for high levels of poverty and inequality (although with progress in the past decades). I explored a question in the Gallup world poll, which asks respondents a classic American dream question: “Can an individual who works hard in this country get ahead?”

I found very large gaps between the responses of ‘the rich’ and ‘the poor’ in the US (represented by the top and bottom 20% income distributions of the Gallup respondents). This was in stark contrast to Latin America, where there was no significant difference in attitudes across income groups. Poor people in the US were 20 times less likely to believe hard work would get them ahead than were the poor in Latin America, even though the latter are significantly worse off in material terms.

A man waits at dawn, after sleeping in his car, to see a free ‘mobile doctor’ in Olean, New York.

A man waits at dawn, after sleeping in his car, to see a free ‘mobile doctor’ in Olean, New York. Photograph: Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Another question in the poll explores whether or not respondents experience stress on a daily basis. Stress is a marker of poor health, and the kind of stress typically experienced by the poor – usually due to negative shocks that are beyond their control (“bad stress”) – is significantly worse for wellbeing than “good stress”: that which is associated with goal achievement, for those who feel able to focus on their future.

In general, Latin Americans experience significantly less stress – and also smile more – on a daily basis than Americans. The gaps between the poor and rich in the US were significantly wider (by 1.5 times on a 0–1 score) than those in Latin America, with the poor in the US experiencing more stress than either the rich or poor in Latin America.

The gaps between the expectations and sentiments of rich and poor in the US are also greater than in many other countries in east Asia and Europe (the other regions studied). It seems that being poor in a very wealthy and unequal country – which prides itself on being a meritocracy, and eschews social support for those who fall behind – results in especially high levels of stress and desperation.

But my research also yielded some surprises. With the low levels of belief in the value of hard work and high levels of stress among poor respondents in the US as a starting point, I compared optimism about the future across poor respondents of different races. This was based on a question in the US Gallup daily poll that asks respondents where they think they will be five years from now on a 0-10 step life satisfaction ladder.

I found that poor minorities – and particularly black people – were much more optimistic about the future than poor white people. Indeed, poor black respondents were three times as likely to be a point higher up on the optimism ladder than were poor whites, while poor Hispanic people were one and a half times more optimistic than whites. Poor black people were also half as likely as poor whites to experience stress the previous day, while poor Hispanics were only two-thirds as likely as poor whites.

What explains the higher levels of optimism among minorities, who have traditionally faced discrimination and associated challenges? There is no simple answer.

One factor is that poor minorities have stronger informal safety nets and social support, such as families and churches, than do their white counterparts. Psychologists also find that minorities are more resilient and much less likely to report depression or commit suicide than are whites in the face of negative shocks, perhaps due to a longer trajectory of dealing with negative shocks and challenges.

Another critical issue is the threat and reality of downward mobility for blue-collar whites, particularly in the heartland of the country where manufacturing, mining, and other jobs have hollowed out. Andrew Cherlin of Johns Hopkins University finds that poor black and Hispanic people are much more likely than poor white people to report that they live better than their parents did. Poor whites are more likely to say they live worse than their parents did; they, in particular, seem to be living the erosion of the American dream.

The American problem

Why does this matter? My research from a decade ago – since confirmed by other studies – found that individuals who were optimistic about their futures tended to have better health and employment outcomes. Those who believe in their futures tend to invest in those futures, while those who are consumed with stress, daily struggles and a lack of hope, not only have less means to make such investments, but also have much less confidence that they will pay off.

Desperate people are more likely to die prematurely, but living with a lot of premature death can also erode hope

The starkest marker of lack of hope in the US is a significant increase in premature mortality in the past decade – driven by an increase in suicides and drug and alcohol poisoning and a stalling of progress against heart disease and lung cancer – primarily but not only among middle-aged uneducated white people. Mortality rates for black and Hispanic people, while higher on average than those for whites, continued to fall during the same time period.

The reasons for this trend are multi-faceted. One is the coincidence of an all-too-readily-available supply of drugs such as opioids, heroin and fentanyl, with the shrinking of blue-collar jobs – and identities - primarily due to technological change. Fifteen per cent of prime age males are out of the labour force today; with that figure projected to increase to 25% by 2050. The identity of the blue-collar worker seems to be stronger for white people than for minorities, meanwhile. While there are now increased employment opportunities in services such as health, white males are far less likely to take them up than are their minority counterparts.

Lack of hope also contributes to rising mortality rates, as evidenced in my latest research with Sergio Pinto. On average, individuals with lower optimism for the future are more likely to live in metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) with higher mortality rates for 45- to 54-year-olds.

Desperate people are more likely to die prematurely, but living with a lot of premature death can also erode hope. Higher average levels of optimism in metropolitan areas are also associated with lower premature mortality rates. These same places tend to be more racially diverse, healthier (as gauged by fewer respondents who smoke and more who exercise), and more likely to be urban and economically vibrant.

Technology-driven growth is not unique to the US, and low-skilled workers face challenges in many OECD countries. Yet by contrast, away from the US, they have not had a similar increase in premature mortality. One reason may be stronger social welfare systems – and stronger norms of collective social responsibility for those who fall behind – in Europe.

Ironically, part of the problem may actually be the American dream. Blue-collar white people – whose parents lived the American dream and who expected their children to do so as well – are the ones who seem most devastated by its erosion and yet, on average, tend to vote against government programmes. In contrast, minorities, who have been struggling for years and have more experience multi-tasking on the employment front and relying on family and community support when needed – are more resilient and hopeful, precisely because they still see a chance for moving up the ladder.

There are high costs to being poor in America, where winners win big but losers fall hard. Indeed, the dream, with its focus on individual initiative in a meritocracy, has resulted in far less public support than there is in other countries for safety nets, vocational training, and community support for those with disadvantage or bad luck. Such strategies are woefully necessary now, particularly in the heartland where some of Alger’s characters might have come from, but their kind have long since run out of luck.

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brotoman-exe · 6 years

Text

Reconstructing Hazel

So while they tried in Volume 5 to give Hazel a sympathetic backstory and make Ozpin look shady again but fired off on all the wrong cylinders. So I’m going to take a stab at some ideas I think might work.

The following will be presented as the bullet points of a hypothetical Hazel side series that could be released before Volume 5. Maybe not a single short and more a mini-series like Recovery One from Red VS Blue

- We start decades ago. Hazel is a recently graduated huntsman now suddenly thrust into raising his little sister himself with only his team to help. Though eventually, they all grow distant, they all take higher paying and riskier jobs while Hazel simple works security inside city limits, leading to Hazel being truly alone.

- Cut to years later and his sister, a teen with dyed hair and half her wardrobe being 90% shirts of her favorite bands, bounces into the room talking excitedly about her acceptance into Beacon. There is a brief argument but she gets him to allow her to go with two points. Grimm don’t really actively attack the major cities anymore meaning most of what she’d fight during school are probably weak offshoots of major packs and when she graduates she promises to take a well paying safe job bodyguarding rich people or the like.

- What follows is a quick group of scenes showing things going well. His sister introduces some of her teammates, talks about how she likes coming home cause she isn’t being forced to wear a uniform despite being an adult, and even talking about how she is the top of her class with the headmaster himself taking notice.

- This all changes with the last scene of her coming to visit home. She’s acting off, doing things like wearing her school uniform outside of campus grounds. Her hair looks like she’s been forgetting to redo her dye, and she almost seems to have lost a bounce to her step. At first, Hazel tries to blow this off as she is simply becoming a proper adult but it begins to eat at him.

- So we get scenes of Hazel under constant gaslighting whenever he asks about it. Not just from his sister but from her team and everyone working at Beacon. As well the brief glimpses of her interacting with Headmaster Ozpin make their relationship come off as very questionable. Eventually, he decides to call one of his teammates who he hasn’t spoken to in years. They actually bring up how there was a girl in their class who seemed to get really close to Ozpin then changed personality. Though when Hazel asks for more info the teammate shuts up, acting like they had done something wrong by bringing that girl up.

- This leads up to Hazel confronting Ozpin directly. When Ozpin brushes him off and seems to almost be insulting him near the end Hazel attacks demanding the return of his sister. This attack is short lived as Hazel really hasn’t seen a true battle since his school days and is rusty at best. So Ozpin bests him and next we see is Hazel being thrown into a prison cell.

- Cut to years later again and Hazel, who looks more like his present self due to time and having not a lot to do besides work out in prison, is told he has a visitor. A beautiful woman with white hair, blue eyes like the sky during the first days of winter, and in a black dress who easily waves away the guards. Their conversation is brief. She talks about how difficult it was to find Hazel because despite assaulting one of the four Huntsmen Academy headmasters in the world there was no reporting on it. She says he is not the only victim of Ozpin and that they will talk more soon.

- Soon as in only a few days later when Hazel is released from prison because apparently some hot shot lawyer of his, a maned named Watts, had stormed in shouting about how Hazel’s arrest wasn’t even legal and is waiting outside with a car for him. Watts tells Hazel that it is time for him and ‘Salem’ to have a talk.

- Hazel is driven out to a cabin in the middle of the woods. Yet despite the remote location not a single sign of Grimm activity is in sight. Walking inside it looks like someone shoved one of the most expansive Atlas hotel rooms inside this cabin and the woman from before is waiting with some wine and a certainly more “complimentary” dress.

- From here Salem begins to spin a tale. The “true” story of the Wizard and the Four Maidens. How the Wizard was a madman taking four young girls and twisting them to be his toys. The Wizard who found a way to cheat times function of eventually erasing men like him from history. How through magic they’ve for centuries when nearing the end of their lives choose young people to be their new bodies. How his sister was just the latest in a long line of victims who had their soul destroyed by the invading Maiden. The Wizard, of course, being Ozpin who uses his identity of Headmaster more as a way to scope out young women he’d like to use as new vessels for the maidens. Whether because of age, injury or that he is simply bored with their current appearance.

- Of course, Salem is manipulating Hazel her self. Yet it should be presented as if there is a large grain of truth to this story. The exact amount being unknown but enough to make the audience truly question Ozpin. When her tale is over she gives Hazel an opportunity. To work with her in taking away the power base and defeating this seemingly immortal monster.

- The special ends with a scene mirroring the attack on Amber in Volume 3. Yet this time it is Hazel confronting the Maiden. He has come to kill her and finally put the body of his “long dead” sister to rest. He charges and the scene cuts to black ending the special.

So anyways that is my idea. I think it does a few things. Makes Hazel much more sympathetic, starts to give pay off to all the hints about Ozpin being shady, shows Salem as much more impressive manipulator than before, and makes the viewer anticipate what the confrontation between Hazel and Oscar is going to be like. Does Hazel see this as a mercy killing? Letting Oscar die before Ozpin destroys his soul to have full control. Or does Oscar still being allowed to control the body give our antagonist pause? Is the Mad Wizard Oz a better person than he was centuries ago and is trying not to just take over this body for himself?

Also, it leaves enough of a gap between the end of the special and things like Hazel learning Salem’s true nature to allow a revisit to these events.

Still, tell me how you think the character Hazel could have been handled and whether you think I’m going about it completely the wrong way.

#RWBY #RWDE #Long Post #Hazel #Salem

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moonfirebrides · 6 years

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‘In this country in 15 or 20 years’ time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man.” ― Enoch Powell, River’s of Blood’ Speech, Birmingham 1968

I don’t normally like explaining my art process, as it can differ according to my mood and the topic of my work. I prefer to leave it open to interpretation but I’ll attempt to just this once. I was asked by Nottingham based magazine Leftlion to create a front cover and middle page poster for their June 2018 Issue. For a while I was wondering what imagery should I create for this cover? I needed to embark on a journey in search of fresh inspiration.

Leftlion Editor, Bridie Squires, sent over a list of some of the featured articles, notably black British poetry legend and activist Benjamin Zephaniah, an article on Female Genital Mutilation featuring Valentine Nkoyo, a feature on artist Jasmin Issaka, Human Rights Lawyer Usha Sood, activist and Jamaican WW2 veteran Oswald George Powe and a play by a local Nottingham playwright Mufaro Makubika called ‘Shebeen‘ about the 1958 race-riots in Nottingham. All of which made for a very culturally important edition of Leftlion. Now, I see myself as being relatively deep, I knew that I wanted to say something colossal and powerful with my art… but what?

Then the news of the Windrush Scandal hit, basically the UK government have been steadily kicking out Caribbean’s who immigrated to the UK in 1948-1971 (of whom were deemed them British Citizens according to the Nationality act of 1948). For more info on the Windrush see link What is the Windrush scandal? How the Windrush generation got their name and why many fear deportation by Ann Stenhouse

My blood boiled after seeing Prime Minister Theresa May and Former MP Amber Rudd’s faces in Parliament drowning over facts, figures, tepid apologies, and pathetic last minute attempts to save political careers. David Lammy MP delivered a brilliantly emotive, soulful, parliament shaking speech and after hearing a tsunami of stories of deportation being reported in the national press and not only in black newspapers such as The Voice, Gleaner or as merely word of mouth amongst PoC communities. I decided that I was going to channel the nauseous concoction of pride and disgust I was feeling into creating a collection of pieces of illustration inspired by the Windrush Scandal.

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The Windrush Generation, Navigating Britain, How to Convey Them Visually

Excited fearfulness, queasy vulnerability, disappointedly chilly, a seasick loneliness, a war torn run down realisation, relieved to be safely on dry land, eyes searching for familiar faces. I have gathered info from the Windrush generation, those that I know personally and have researched in interviews. Above are a few of the emotions that would have been running through the youthful minds of people first stepping foot off the ship Empire Windrush in England, ‘fresh off the boat’.

I decided to base my illustration on a freeze frame taken from footage shot by the BBC of the literal moment that a young black Jamaican man had first laid eyes on England (see slideshow above). He’s a young dark skinned black man, smartly dressed in a trilby, pinstripe suit and bowtie. Though in slight wonderment you can see that he is hopeful.

My parents are a part of the Windrush generation, they came from middle class backgrounds in Jamaica, my dad arrived in 1958, as a detective in Jamaica he was only able to be a Traffic Warden and Bus Driver in the uk. Likewise my mother arrived in 1962 as a teacher and had to start off working in a factory, but why?

Which brings me to what has to be one of the single most cruel plot twists for Caribbean British citizen’s in post WW2 British legislation. My parents had always drilled into me that ‘Education is key’ and that I have to work at least twice as hard as my white counterparts. I later learned why they were so adamant. The British government ran Jamaica’s education system but even so; Britain disallowed by law all the qualifications of Caribbean British citizens (down to age 11). The effect was that it acted to ghettoize; you cannot have access to higher paid jobs, which would afford you better places to live. Even though on average middle-class and many working class Caribbean’s knew a lot more about stuff like… ‘the Queen, Buckingham palace, William the Conqueror, Shakespeare, Sheffield Steel, Clive of India, The Brontës, David Livingstone and how he ‘civilised the savage’ in Africa, industrial revolution’ etc more than your average white working class Brit. To convey this element in my art, I created conflict within each image in terms of their mood. The imagery I created is deliberately jam-packed with contradictory information that my parents and other Caribbean’s had to navigate and survive under.

“White privilege is an absence of the consequences of racism. An absence of structural discrimination, an absence of your race being viewed as a problem first and foremost.”  ― Reni Eddo-Lodge, Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race

Channelling The Caribbean Perception of Post War Working Class White Britain & My Feelings on The Windrush Scandal

‘We were taught that the streets were paved with gold and that most white people were rich ’. Caribbean’s were generally taught whitewashed version of history, religion and a blind allegiance to British nationalism. All of this was a effective tool to insure that many Caribbean’s would

well behaved

subscribe to conservatism, meritocracy, respectability politics

aspire to be like white people

Be non-critical thinking servants at Britain’s beck and call, that would be compelled to come running just like the ‘good old days of Empire and slavery’. Then could be disposed off as the Britain Government and white ruling class saw fit. Though many did not adhere to all of the above and fought against the indoctrination by re-educating, decolonising and rebelling in a myriad of ways. I conveyed the clashing views of the Black British Caribbean self under the narcissistic paternal rule of Britain by using dissonant imagery, such as religious iconography, 19th century etchings of the torture of slaves calling for abolition, photography of Caribbean’s toiling in plantations, Caribbean war veterans both men and women, BlackLivesMatter protests of Nottingham, Nottingham Riots of 1958, interracial couples, the permanent influence of Jamaican culture on popular British culture and the English language, Caribbean nurses, Brexit scaremongering and racist signs.

I incorporated the beauty of paradise, sunsets, palm trees, houses with red tin roofs into my art. I wanted it to represent rose tinted memories of belonging, innocence, the memory of being a part of an ethnic majority and the confidence in ones stride that brings. A saturated use of colour was used to convey paradise and to appear diametrically opposite to the overcast aesthetics of Britain. I tried to convey that Caribbean people comment that they were shocked to find that in reality they found Britain to be smoky grey, old, dirty, dank, shoddy, ignorant, unhygienic, depressing and hostile. Caribbean’s and notably Jamaicans were instantly deemed as troublemakers, criminal, smelly, ugly, noisy and inferior in every way. ‘No, Blacks’ was a regular sign that would be seen in most accommodation available for rent and in places of employment. Most white churches would ask Caribbean’s not to return in a most polite and very British fashion. Many Caribbean people would have to defend themselves from attackers, which helped fuel riots and protests for basic human rights in Britain. I chose to represent these elements by incorporating real newspaper headlines and riot photography slashed into the imagery.

Black British Caribbean women have arguably been the anchor of the Black British families and community, a much needed ‘big up’, acknowledgement and appreciation of the beauty and strength of those women. Hence my depiction of the black caribbean woman as queen, plus I wanted to convey the 2 figures as ‘the Adam & Eve’ of the biggest influx of Black people in Britain since its creation.

Scandal is the word for this malicious act of the British government effectively wanting to get rid of the Windrush Generation now they 50+ and their children and in some cases grandchildren, after all of our great sacrifice, great contributions to Britain I wanted this art to be a visual smack in the face, machete chops and cuss words in visual patois, a beautiful explosion of consciousness.

‘If you are the a big tree, we are the small axe, sharpened to cut you down, ready to cut you down’ – Bob Marley & The Wailers

As big black women of Jamaican descent taking up room in the uk in any sense can be treacherous, often greeted with backlash; be it via my art on the cover of a magazine, singing self penned songs, navigating unemployment, voicing my opinion or merely walking down the street. I have personally have never felt a part of Britain and the recent scandal comes as no surprise to me, is it any wonder why? Most black Caribbean’s seldom talk about the moment they encountered England for the first time. I hope my art can act as a mouthpiece for their feelings, mine and for those no longer with us

The beautiful struggle continues…

If you are interested in buying any of my work please click on this link https://www.etsy.com/uk/shop/THEHONEYEFFECT . Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think and thank you for reading my blog.

Middle page poster of the June 2018 Issue of Leftlion Magazine

Front cover of the June 2018 Issue of Leftlion Magazine

What To Do When ‘The Mother Country’ Wants To Send You Back On The Windrush: Navigating The Hostile Environment of Brexit Britain ‘In this country in 15 or 20 years' time the black man will have the whip hand over the white man." …

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antoine-roquentin · 7 years

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IT’S A FACT that African-Americans are disproportionately represented in America’s prisons. In state prisons, where the majority of prisoners are held, African-Americans are incarcerated at 5.1 times the rate of white Americans.

But what remains an open question is what explains this racial incarceration gap; what needs to change to eliminate that gap? Is it a racist economic system that produces a disproportionate population of impoverished African-Americans who then are ground up by a criminal justice system that targets the poor? Or is it better explained by racial bias in policing and sentencing?

A new report from the People’s Policy Project argues that while both exist, it’s economic oppression that matters most — or, at least, matters first.

Researcher Nathaniel Lewis sought to examine the role of both race and class in male incarceration as they impact four different outcomes:

Whether or not men aged 24-32 years have ever been to jail or prison

Whether or not men are jailed after being arrested

Whether or not men have spent more than a month in jail or prison

Whether or not men have spent more than a year in jail or prison

In order to do this, he utilized data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (known as Add Health), which followed a nationally representative sample of Americans who were in grades seven through 12 between the years 1994 and 1995. The fourth wave of this sample was collected in 2008, when these Americans were between the ages of 24 and 32.

The dataset collected information on respondents that includes race, whether they have been incarcerated, and for how long. To compose his class variable, he created a composite that includes educational attainment, homeownership status, household income, and other similar categories. He also ran results through seven different models with the variables slightly differently composed.

His research found that “while class has a large and statistically significant effect on the first three outcomes, race — once one controls for class — does not.” In the fourth category, whether a man has spent more than a year in jail or prison, he found that race does have a significant impact.

Even in the fourth category, Lewis found that “though for all but one of the seven models the effect of being in the middle rather than bottom class level was stronger than the effect of being white rather than black.” In other words, middle-class and rich people were equally as likely to have served more than a year in prison regardless of race, but a poor black person was more likely than a poor white person to do so.

Lewis illustrated this relationship in a series of charts. As you can see, class quintile and the probability of incarceration track very closely except for the probability of being jailed more than a year, where this is a clear divergence for the lowest class quintile:

The results cut against the conventional wisdom on much of the political left, which argues that America’s system of mass incarceration is primarily built on racial bias and discrimination. Michelle Alexander’s “The New Jim Crow,” when published in 2010, sat on the New York Times best-seller list for more than a year and was dubbed “the secular bible for a new social movement” by philosopher and activist Cornel West. Alexander’s thesis, in its popular, simplified form, is that the modern criminal justice system in America is analogous to a “racial caste system,” similar to the Jim Crow-era South and other historical systems of racialized oppression.

But central to Alexander’s argument is the history of that oppression, beginning with her exploration of an economic system that drove blacks into poverty, undergirded by a system of racism intended to split poor whites from poor blacks, to prevent the formation of a transracial populist party of the working class. Alexander highlights the destruction of the post-Reconstruction Populist Party, which was a serious attempt at a trans-racial coalition. Its upper-class opposition used explicitly racist tactics to divide the white and black poor, helping to set off the trend that carries through to today.

Some of the tactics of racist economic exploitation present in the 19th century — particularly trapping blacks in crushing debt — are around today, as are others, such as simply refusing to give work to African-Americans, though it is done more subtly in the 21st century. By “whitening” a resume, a black applicant is much more likely to get a call back for a job interview. White high school dropouts are just as likely to land a job than black college students.

Lewis’s conclusion is similar to that of scholar Cedric Johnson (who is cited as the competing view to Alexander in the report). Johnson, a professor of African-American studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, argues that “contemporary patterns of incarceration and police violence are classed in a manner that is not restricted to blacks and whose central dynamics cannot be explained through institutional racism.” Instead, Johnson sees the modern prison state in the United States as a means by which Americans who cannot find decent employment and living standards are discarded.

In an interview with The Intercept, Lewis attempted to explain why we may see a divergence over the fourth question.

“One aspect might be that this is where we would see the culmination of the race effect. That is, the study doesn’t find a ‘statistically significant’ racial effect for any of the other outcomes, but that doesn’t mean that there isn’t one there, just that it’s probably a lot smaller than most people think,” he said in an email. “If there is a small racial bias each step of the way (i.e. arrest rates, to initial incarceration rates, to sentencing terms), a study like this wouldn’t find it to be statistically significant at any given step, but when added together, as it is in the last question, we could see a significant effect, both in the technical sense and the common sense.”

That racial bias each step of the way expresses itself even in schools, where black students are four times more likely to be suspended, and on the sidewalks, where blacks are more likely to be stopped and searched. It all adds up.

The explanation around sentencing bias is particularly compelling in light of research released by the United States Sentencing Commission late last year. Its November 2017 report looked at federal sentencing data and concluded that “black male offenders received sentences on average 19.1 percent longer than similarly situated White male offenders” between fiscal years 2012 and 2016.

Ultimately, Lewis concluded that his data showed that the primary reason we see overrepresentation of African-Americans in the criminal justice system are factors related to poverty.

“I think that people are used to hearing the statistics about glaring racial disparities in the justice system, and police brutalization and the police murder of black individuals, plus the long history of stark racism in America, and they add this all up and, quite reasonably, the New Jim Crow framework of explaining mass incarceration as a racist system designed to oppress black people seems inarguably correct,” he told us. “But most of these studies and statistics don’t control for socioeconomic status, and the ones that do, I would say, do so inadequately. It could be that mass incarceration is primarily a system of managing poor people, rather than black people, and the racial disparities show up mostly because black people are disproportionately represented in the lower classes. This is what my study finds.”

Lewis concluded that his research suggests that one of the best ways to reduce the total prison population would be to embrace social democratic policy that would address poverty, the education gap, and other class divides.

“One implication, at least to me, is that policies aimed at alleviating class disparities may be the most effective way of helping black people, and all people, subject to being ground up by the criminal justice system,” he said.

the reason why it’s important to note that the prison population swelled with black people because black people were poor is because it helps to explain the origins of neoliberal policy. when america first tried to extricate itself from its commitment to keynesian policies in the late 60s and early 70s, it saw mass protest and strike action. workers were able to demand higher wages even as employment increased, which should have made workers too afraid of being fired to strike. in other words, stagflation. in response to this, nixon, ford, carter, and reagan ended their commitment to preserving labour peace and allowed private business to crush unions, deregulated industries and removed the cushions that prevented a race to the bottom in wages, moved the american dollar off the gold standard and made it the world’s reserve currency, which helped upper middle class americans afford consumer goods, loosened financial rules in order to allow complex derivatives to manage risk, militarized police and built up prisons, and initiated the drug war, in order to imprison the massive amount of workers at the bottom of the ladder who would be laid off. in turn, because black people are traditionally last hired and first fired, their numbers were the first to swell in prisons. the boon to prison corporations from prison labour was an ancillary effect, not the main motivation in and of itself.

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whereareroo · 3 years

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20 PARAGRAPHS

WF THOUGHTS (10/4/21).

Once again, our leaders in Washington have failed us.

One of their most important jobs is to keep us informed regarding proposed legislation. Once we're informed, it's our job to tell them if we support or oppose the proposal. That's how the system is supposed to work.

It's extremely unlikely that you've been adequately informed about the pending infrastructure proposals. I've not seen anything from Congress, or from the White House, that explains the proposals in understandable language. Similarly, because they have been either overly simplistic or overly complex, the media reports have not effectively educated the public. Due to the lack of digestible information, any opinion you have about the infrastructure proposals is probably not an educated opinion. You probably have no opinion because you've lacked the information to form an opinion.

I'm going to give you the essential information in 20 concise paragraphs. You're welcome! Here goes.

1. In the Senate, the everyday voting rules state that a proposal must receive 60 votes to pass. Right now, the Senate is populated by 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans. That complicates everything.

2. On August 10th, in a rare exhibition of bipartisanship, the Senate approved a $1 Trillion infrastructure bill. Let's call it the "small" infrastructure bill. The vote was 69 in favor and 30 opposed.

3. The small infrastructure bill funds projects that fit within the traditional definition of "infrastructure." It funds projects like roads, bridges, trains, water systems, the power grid, and internet hardware systems. Such projects are designed to facilitate commerce in America and to allow our economy to be more competitive on the world stage.

4. There is only one thing that you really need to know about the small infrastructure bill. Even though the effort was spearheaded by President Biden, a Democrat, the bill was supported by 19 Republicans in the Senate. Let me give you the math in a different format. The small infrastructure bill was supported by 100% of the Democrats in the Senate and 38% of the Republicans in the Senate. It's unlikely that you'd disagree with anything that gained such widespread, bipartisan, support in the Senate.

5. The small infrastructure bill will cost us $1 Trillion over the next 10 years. About 25% of that amount will be borrowed by the government selling bonds. About 25% will be paid from previously allocated Covid-19 assistance that hasn't been used. The remaining 50% will be funded from expected increases in tax revenue, increased tax enforcement, and the elimination of some tax loopholes.

6. President Biden's original infrastructure package was a bigger bundle of projects that would have cost $2.6 Trillion. He could only get Republican Senators to accept the basic projects that totalled $1 Trillion. He decided to take the $1 Trillion victory under the 60 vote rule and to pursue the other projects under an arcane Senate procedure called "Budget Reconciliation."

7. "Budget Reconciliation" is an exception to the Senate Rules that overrides the normal 60 vote rule and allows for a measure to pass the Senate with only 51 votes (or 50 votes plus the Vice President if the Senators themselves vote 50-50). I won't bore you with the procedural details, which only allow Budget Reconciliation occur a few times each year. In theory, because there are 50 Democrats in the Senate, an infrastructure proposal that is considered as a Budget Reconciliation measure should be able to pass without a single Republican vote. (Because there is no 60 vote rule in the House and the Democrats have a solid (although slim) majority, any infrastructure bill that is passed by the Senate will also be passed by the House.)

8. After the small infrastructure bill passed the Senate, work began on what I call the "big" infrastructure bill. Guided by President Biden, the Senate Democrats began to formulate a bill that includes projects that Republicans had excluded from the small infrastructure bill. This was no surprise to the Republicans. The Democrats had been transparent about their plan. The Democrats in the Senate planned to enact the big infrastructure bill via Budget Reconciliation (i.e. with the 50 Democratic votes plus the Vice President).

9. The big infrastructure bill is based upon a nontraditional theory. In the modern world, according to President Biden and almost all Congressional Democrats, it's not enough to only invest in projects that are built with concrete, and steel, and pipes, and wire. We need modernized physical structures to keep our economy competitive, but to get the economy to thrive over the long haul we need to invest in workers too. What good are the best physical structures and systems if we don't have the best workforce and systems that allow our workers to thrive?

10. The big infrastructure bill funds programs to improve the American workforce and to allow American workers to enjoy a higher standard of living. To increase the educational level and job skills of workers, the big infrastructure bill would fund: A. Two years of free community college education for everyone; B. Massive workforce training programs (particularly for construction, healthcare, and technical jobs); C. New programs to increase the number of school teachers and to properly train and compensate teachers; D. Specialized research, development, and training programs designed to encourage growth in the technology and environmental sectors--and to build a modern workforce for those sectors. To increase the standard of living of workers and to make working easier, the big infrastructure bill contains provisions that will reduce taxes for middle class families, substantially increase the inventory of affordable housing in America, lower healthcare costs, lower child care costs by providing universal preschool for three and four year olds, require 12 weeks of paid family and medical leave, and lower prescription drug prices. President Biden and the Democrats believe that these investments in the American worker are just as important as investing in bridges, roads, tunnels, and railways. What do you think?

11. According to recent polling, most Americans like the big infrastructure bill once they understand what it does. If the big bill is objectively explained to a group of randomly selected Americans at a focus group, 70% of them say that they approve. If Americans are polled without any explanation of the bill, 50% approve and 50% disapprove. Knowledge makes all the difference. Once it's understood, there's nothing for the average American to dislike about the big infrastructure bill.

12. The big infrastructure bill hasn't been finalized yet. The latest version would cost $3.5 Trillion over the next 10 years. The ultimate bill will have a lower price tag, but let's use the $3.5 Trillion figure for the sake of discussion. With little else to complain about, the most frequent criticism of the big bill is that the price tag is way too high. Unless you're given information to put the price tag in perspective, that may seem so. A small amount of indisputable information shows that the price tag is actually quite modest. The Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a nation is the monetary value of all goods and services produced in that nation during a specified period of time. Essentially, the GDP tells you the size of the economy. To understand the size of a specific element of the economy, economists compare that element to the total size of the economy. Let's do that with the big infrastructure bill. For the 2022-2031 time period, the 10 years covered by the big infrastructure bill, experts estimate that our cumulative GDP will be $288 Trillion. If it passes at $3.5 Trillion--which it won't--the big infrastructure bill is only 1.2% of the GDP. It's peanuts. It's a very small item. We should probably be embarrassed that were spending so little. The government is already projected to spend $64 Trillion over the next 10 years. An added $3.5 Trillion over those ten years would only increase annual spending by 0.5%. After years of not spending appropriately on human infrastructure, does that sound like too much to you? An economist discussing the misinformation over this issue noted: "It's all about giving the public the proper perspective. An expense of $1,000 is a real expense if you make $10,000 a year, but not if you make $1,000,000."

13. Let me give you another important datapoint. Under the present proposal, the $3.5 Trillion will come from small tax rate increases for big corporations and very wealthy Americans, and from ending tax loopholes that allow rich people and giant corporations to pay little or no income tax. It will not add to the national debt.

14. Why do the Republicans in Congress oppose the big infrastructure bill if it's full of good things, reasonably priced, funded by tax evaders, and popular with 70% of educated voters? It's all politics. They don't want to let Biden and the Democrats have a big win. To justify their position, the Republicans hide behind mistruths about the price tag and "big government" trampling on the common man. That's politics.

15. Where is the big infrastructure bill now? It hasn't even been written. The Senate Democrats are still negotiating amongst themselves in an effort to find a package that can secure 50 votes. They'll get there. My guess is that the final price tag will be around $2.25 Trillion. I think that's embarrassingly low, but that's probably the best that can be done in a Senate that includes at least two fiscally conservative Democratic members.

16. Much of the media attention has been focused on the political strategy that has been adopted by the Democratic leaders in the House. The Democrats in the House are 100% behind a big infrastructure bill. They could immediately pass the small infrastructure bill that the Senate passed during the summer, and await the big infrastructure bill, but they're fearful that the big infrastructure bill will never get finalized unless some pressure is put on the Senate. Thus, they're denying the Senate their "victory" on the small infrastructure bill until the big infrastructure bill is ready to be passed too. You might disagree with this tactic, but the Democrats in the House have a point. Nothing gets done in Washington unless pressure is applied. Pressure had to be applied to get Obamacare done in 2010. Pressure had to be applied to get the Trump tax cuts done in 2017. Both of those laws passed by very slim margins. We shouldn't be surprised that pressure has to be applied to pass the Biden infrastructure plan in 2021. Sadly, in 2021 our political party system is so dysfunctional that the Democrats are fighting amongst themselves. Nonetheless, I'm confident that Congress will ultimately pass the small infrastructure bill and the big infrastructure bill. The Democrats aren't stupid. They know they they might lose control of Congress in the 2022 elections, and that they only have limited opportunities to do big things when (at least when they use Budget Reconciliation) they control the White House, the Senate, and the House. I'll be shocked if they squander that opportunity.

17-20. I promised that I'd explain everything in 20 paragraphs. I know that you are dying for more, but I don't need paragraphs 17, 18,19 or 20. I'm done. You now know everything that you need to know in order to formulate an educated opinion about the infrastructure bills. If you don't trust me, or if you don't understand something, feel free to do your own research. Either way, you're free to formulate your own opinion. I've told my Congressional representatives that I want them to support both infrastructure bills. You should tell your representatives what you want them to do. We didn't send them to Washington to play political games. We sent them to represent us and America. After years of neglect, it's time for some significant spending on infrastructure.

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96thdayofrage · 3 years

Text

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Why Do Republicans Want Tax Cuts

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-tax-cuts/

Why Do Republicans Want Tax Cuts

Treasury Says State Tax Cuts Ok If Separated From Virus Aid

Americans Hate The Idea Of Corporate Tax Cuts So Why Do They Keep Voting Republican?

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. Responding to concerns from state officials, the U.S. Treasury Department said Wednesday that states can cut taxes without penalty under a new federal pandemic relief law so long as they use their own funds to offset those cuts.

Republican governors, lawmakers and attorneys general have expressed apprehension about a provision in the wide-ranging relief act signed by President Joe Biden that prohibits states from using $195 billion of federal aid to either directly or indirectly offset a reduction in net tax revenue. The restriction could apply through 2024.

A treasury spokesperson told The Associated Press that the provision isnt meant as a blanket prohibition on tax cuts. States can still offset tax reductions through other means.

We should not let federal restrictions weigh in on that direction were going as a state, Hutchinson said.

Why Do The Dc Republicans Have Any Credibility

President Biden has introduced his American Jobs Plan which will fund investments in our people and our infrastructure with higher taxes on corporations and individuals who make over $400,000.00 per year. S&P predicts that Bidens infrastructure plan will create 2.3 million jobs by 2024, inject $5.7 trillion into the economy which would be 10 times what was lost during the recession and raise per-capita income by $2,400, Axios reported.

This should come as no surprise to anybody but the sabotage minded D.C. Republicans have come out in opposition to Bidens plan. One of the key talking points from the right is that the proposed tax increases would be job killers. Senator Susan Collins alleged that the proposed 28% corporate tax rate would cause the loss of jobs. Not to be outdone in the pessimism sweepstakes, Senator Tim Scott in the GOP response to President Bidens address to members of Congress last week contended that the plan contains: The biggest job-killing tax hikes in a generation.

Now what I find interesting is that the GOP has been erroneously prognosticating that tax increases on the rich would hurt the economy since way back in 1993. Its like Collins and Scott simply cut and pasted GOP talking points from the Clinton and Obama years. Lets take a little trip down memory lane and see how previous D.C. Republican predictions of doom and gloom played out.

Gop Must Stop Believing In Magic

Im not making a plea for larger government just a plea for economic sanity.;If Congress in its all-seeing wisdom wants to spend $700 billion on the military, billions of dollars on farm subsidies;and so on,;it must either raise enough money in taxes to pay for the programs it authorizes or reduce the size of government.;

Instead, although Republicans controlled the White House, the Senate;and the House from 2017 to 2019, they;chose not to make any substantial cuts to government programs that would balance the revenue lost by their;series of massive unfunded tax cuts.

Unquestioning;and unsubstantiated;belief in the magical power of tax cuts isnt a viable economic policy. The;GOP is putting America on an unsustainable path that is disastrous both for;its;fiscal future and for the hopes of people trying to get ahead.;

Steven Strauss;is a lecturer and;visiting professor at;Princeton University’s;Woodrow Wilson School;of Public and International Affairs, an economic development specialist and a member of USA TODAYs Board of Contributors. Follow him Twitter:;

Also Check: Did Trump Say Republicans Are Stupid

Republicans View 2017 Tax Law The Way Democrats View Obamacare: As A Signature Achievement They Will Fight To Keep

Republicans have taken an aggressive approach to President Bidens plans to finance his roughly $6trillion agenda: Dont mess with their 2017 tax cuts.

Even before Biden formally unveiled his plans, Republicans sent a message that they consider the 2017 law that slashed personal and corporate tax rates as a sacrosanct measure that theyve no intention of gutting.

Sen. Roger Wicker explained this ethos in unusually blunt fashion when he returned to the Capitol on April12 after Biden met with a small bipartisan group of lawmakers involved in infrastructure issues, telling the group he was targeting the very taxes that Republicans slashed four years ago.

Clearly there are parts of his program that are non-starters for Republicans. The pay-for, I view the pay-for as a problem, Wicker told reporters in the Capitol after that meeting. I view the 2017 tax bill as one of my signature achievements in my entire career.

In many ways, Wicker signaled to Biden that Republicans view the 2017 law in the same manner that Democrats regard the 2010 passage of the Affordable Care Act: a signature achievement of domestic policy that they will defend in every way possible.

The two laws obviously had very different goals and very different results, one trying to provide health insurance for millions of uninsured Americans and the other reducing taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

Why Do Republicans Oppose Extending The Payroll Tax Cut

NYT reports that many Republicans are opposed to extending the payroll tax cut proposed by the Obama administration.

The payroll tax cut affects SS and Medicare contributions that employers deduct from their workers paychecks. It would mostly benefit low and middle-income Americans.

Many of the Republicans who oppose extending the tax cut have demanded an extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans. Why do you think Republicans support extending tax cuts for wealthy Americans while opposing the extension of tax cuts for low- and middle-income Americans?