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posttexasstressdisorder · 1 month ago

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How Trump's billionaires are hijacking affordable housing

Thom Hartmann

October 24, 2024 8:52AM ET

Republican presidential nominee and former U.S. President Donald Trump attends the 79th annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner in New York City, U.S., October 17, 2024. REUTERS/Brendan McDermid

America’s morbidly rich billionaires are at it again, this time screwing the average family’s ability to have decent, affordable housing in their never-ending quest for more, more, more. Canada, New Zealand, Singapore, and Denmark have had enough and done something about it: we should, too.

There are a few things that are essential to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” that should never be purely left to the marketplace; these are the most important sectors where government intervention, regulation, and even subsidy are not just appropriate but essential. Housing is at the top of that list.

A few days ago I noted how, since the Reagan Revolution, the cost of housing has exploded in America, relative to working class income.

When my dad bought his home in the 1950s, for example, the median price of a single-family house was around 2.2 times the median American family income. Today the St. Louis Fed says the median house sells for $417,700 while the median American income is $40,480—a ratio of more than 10 to 1 between housing costs and annual income.

ALSO READ: He’s mentally ill:' NY laughs ahead of Trump's Madison Square Garden rally

In other words, housing is about five times more expensive (relative to income) than it was in the 1950s.

And now we’ve surged past a new tipping point, causing the homelessness that’s plagued America’s cities since George W. Bush’s deregulation-driven housing- and stock-market crash in 2008, exacerbated by Trump’s bungling America’s pandemic response.

And the principal cause of both that crash and today’s crisis of homelessness and housing affordability has one, single, primary cause: billionaires treating housing as an investment commodity.

A new report from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies reveals how billionaire investors have become a major driver of the nationwide housing crisis. They summarize in their own words:

— Billionaire-backed private equity firms worm their way into different segments of the housing market to extract ever-increasing rents and value from multi-family rental, single-family homes, and mobile home park communities. — Global billionaires purchase billions in U.S. real estate to diversify their asset holdings, driving the creation of luxury housing that functions as “safety deposit boxes in the sky.” Estimates of hidden wealth are as high as $36 trillion globally, with billions parked in U.S. land and housing markets. — Wealthy investors are acquiring property and holding units vacant, so that in many communities the number of vacant units greatly exceeds the number of unhoused people. Nationwide there are 16 million vacant homes: that is, 28 vacant homes for every unhoused person. — Billionaire investors are buying up a large segment of the short-term rental market, preventing local residents from living in these homes, in order to cash in on tourism. These are not small owners with one unit, but corporate owners with multiple properties. — Billionaire investors and corporate landlords are targeting communities of color and low-income residents, in particular, with rent increases, high rates of eviction, and unhealthy living conditions. What’s more, billionaire-owned private equity firms are investing in subsidized housing, enjoying tax breaks and public benefits, while raising rents and evicting low-income tenants from housing they are only required to keep affordable, temporarily. (Emphasis theirs.)

It seems that everywhere you look in America you see the tragedy of the homelessness these billionaires are causing. Rarely, though, do you hear about the role of Wall Street and its billionaires in causing it.

The math, however, is irrefutable.

Thirty-two percent is the magic threshold, according to research funded by the real estate listing company Zillow. When neighborhoods hit rent rates in excess of 32 percent of neighborhood income, homelessness explodes. And we’re seeing it play out right in front of us in cities across America because a handful of Wall Street billionaires are making a killing.

As the Zillow study notes:

“Across the country, the rent burden already exceeds the 32 percent [of median income] threshold in 100 of the 386 markets included in this analysis….”

And wherever housing prices become more than three times annual income, homelessness stalks like the grim reaper. That Zillow-funded study laid it out:

“This research demonstrates that the homeless population climbs faster when rent affordability — the share of income people spend on rent — crosses certain thresholds. In many areas beyond those thresholds, even modest rent increases can push thousands more Americans into homelessness.”

This trend is massive.

As noted in a Wall Street Journal article titled “Meet Your New Landlord: Wall Street,” in just one suburb (Spring Hill) of Nashville:

“In all of Spring Hill, four firms … own nearly 700 houses … [which] amounts to about 5% of all the houses in town.”

This is the tiniest tip of the iceberg.

“On the first Tuesday of each month,” notes the Journal article about a similar phenomenon in Atlanta, investors “toted duffels stuffed with millions of dollars in cashier’s checks made out in various denominations so they wouldn’t have to interrupt their buying spree with trips to the bank…”

The same thing is happening in cities and suburbs all across America; agents for the billionaire investor goliaths use fine-tuned computer algorithms to sniff out houses they can turn into rental properties, making over-market and unbeatable cash bids often within minutes of a house hitting the market.

After stripping neighborhoods of homes young families can afford to buy, billionaires then begin raising rents to extract as much cash as they can from local working class communities.

In the Nashville suburb of Spring Hill, the vice-mayor, Bruce Hull, told the Journal you used to be able to rent “a three bedroom, two bath house for $1,000 a month.” Today, the Journal notes:

“The average rent for 148 single-family homes in Spring Hill owned by the big four [Wall Street billionaire investor] landlords was about $1,773 a month…”

As the Bank of International Settlements summarized in a 2014 retrospective study of the years since the Reagan/Gingrich changes in banking and finance:

“We describe a Pareto frontier along which different levels of risk-taking map into different levels of welfare for the two parties, pitting Main Street against Wall Street. … We also show that financial innovation, asymmetric compensation schemes, concentration in the banking system, and bailout expectations enable or encourage greater risk-taking and allocate greater surplus to Wall Street at the expense of Main Street.”

It’s a fancy way of saying that billionaire-owned big banks and hedge funds have made trillions on housing while you and your community are becoming destitute.

Ryan Dezember, in his book Underwater: How Our American Dream of Homeownership Became a Nightmare, describes the story of a family trying to buy a home in Phoenix. Every time they entered a bid, they were outbid instantly, the price rising over and over, until finally the family’s father threw in the towel.

“Jacobs was bewildered,” writes Dezember. “Who was this aggressive bidder?”

Turns out it was Blackstone Group, now the world’s largest real estate investor run by a major Trump supporter. At the time they were buying $150 million worth of American houses every week, trying to spend over $10 billion. And that’s just a drop in the overall bucket.

As that new study from Popular Democracy and the Institute for Policy Studies found:

“[Billionaire Stephen Schwarzman’s] Blackstone is the largest corporate landlord in the world, with a vast and diversified real estate portfolio. It owns more than 300,000 residential units across the U.S., has $1 trillion in global assets, and nearly doubled its profits in 2021. “Blackstone owns 149,000 multi-family apartment units; 63,000 single-family homes; 70 mobile home parks with 13,000 lots through their subsidiary Treehouse Communities; and student housing, through American Campus Communities (144,300 beds in 205 properties as of 2022). Blackstone recently acquired 95,000 units of subsidized housing.”

In 2018, corporations and the billionaires that own or run them bought 1 out of every 10 homes sold in America, according to Dezember, noting that:

“Between 2006 and 2016, when the homeownership rate fell to its lowest level in fifty years, the number of renters grew by about a quarter.”

And it’s gotten worse every year since then.

This all really took off around a decade ago following the Bush Crash, when Morgan Stanley published a 2011 report titled “The Rentership Society,” arguing that snapping up houses and renting them back to people who otherwise would have wanted to buy them could be the newest and hottest investment opportunity for Wall Street’s billionaires and their funds.

Turns out, Morgan Stanley was right. Warren Buffett, KKR, and The Carlyle Group have all jumped into residential real estate, along with hundreds of smaller investment groups, and the National Home Rental Council has emerged as the industry’s premiere lobbying group, working to block rent control legislation and other efforts to control the industry.

As John Husing, the owner of Economics and Politics Inc., told The Tennessean newspaper:

“What you have are neighborhoods that are essentially unregulated apartment houses. It could be disastrous for the city.”

As Zillow found:

“The areas that are most vulnerable to rising rents, unaffordability, and poverty hold 15 percent of the U.S. population — and 47 percent of people experiencing homelessness.”

The loss of affordable homes also locks otherwise middle class families out of the traditional way wealth is accumulated — through home ownership: over 61% of all American middle-income family wealth is their home’s equity.

And as families are priced out of ownership and forced to rent, they become more vulnerable to homelessness.

Housing is one of the primary essentials of life. Nobody in America should be without it, and for society to work, housing costs must track incomes in a way that makes housing both available and affordable.

Singapore, Denmark, New Zealand, and parts of Canada have all put limits on billionaire, corporate, and foreign investment in housing, recognizing families’ residences as essential to life rather than purely a commodity. Multiple other countries are having that debate or moving to take similar actions as you read these words.

America should, too.

ALSO READ: Not even ‘Fox and Friends’ can hide Trump’s dementia

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misfitwashere · 1 year ago

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If You Don't Know Medicare Advantage Is a Scam, You're Not Paying Attention

We’re on the edge of the open enrollment period for Medicare, and the Advantage scammers will be carpet-bombing America with advertisements over the next few months. Don't be fooled about what it is—and who is profiting.

Thom Hartmann

Oct 07, 2023

Common Dreams

President George W. Bush and Republicans (and a handful of on-the-take Democrats) in Congress created the Medicare Advantage scam in 2003 as a way of routing hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into the pockets of for-profit insurance companies.

Those companies, and their executives, then recycle some of that profit back into politicians’ pockets via the Citizens United legalized bribery loophole created by five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court.

Just the overcharges happening right now in that scam are costing Americans over $140 billion a year: more than the entire budget for the Medicare Part B or Part D programs. These ripoffs — that our federal government seems to have no interest in stopping — are draining the Medicare trust fund while ensnaring gullible seniors in private insurance programs where they’re often denied life-saving care.

Real Medicare pays bills when they’re presented. Medicare Advantage insurance companies, on the other hand, get a fixed dollar amount every year for each of the people enrolled in their programs, regardless of how much they spent on each customer.

As a result, Medicare Advantage programs make the greatest profits for their CEOs and shareholders when they actively refuse to pay for care, something that happens frequently. It’s a safe bet that nearly 100 percent of the people who sign up for Advantage programs don’t know this and don’t have any idea how badly screwed they could be if they get seriously ill.

Not only that, when people do figure out they’ve been duped and try to get back on real Medicare, the same insurance companies often punish them by refusing to write Medigap plans (that fill in the 20% hole in real Medicare). They can’t do that when you first sign up when you turn 65, but if you “leave” real Medicare for privatized Medicare Advantage, it can be damn hard to get back on it.

The doctors’ group Physicians for a National Health Program (PNHP) just published a shocking report on the extent of the Medicare Advantage ripoffs — both to individual customers and to Medicare itself — that every American should know about.

The report, titled Our Payments, Their Profits, opens with this shocking exposé:

“By our estimate, and based on 2022 spending, Medicare Advantage overcharges taxpayers by a minimum of 22% or $88 billion per year, and potentially by up to 35% or $140 billion. By comparison, Part B premiums in 2022 totaled approximately $131 billion, and overall federal spending on Part D drug benefits cost approximately $126 billion. Either of these — or other crucial aspects of Medicare and Medicaid — could be funded entirely by eliminating overcharges in the Medicare Advantage program. “Medicare Advantage, also known as MA or Medicare Part C, is a privately administered insurance program that uses a capitated payment structure, as opposed to the fee-for-service (FFS) structure of Traditional Medicare or TM. Instead of paying directly for the health care of beneficiaries, the federal government gives a lump sum of money to a third party (generally a commercial insurer) to ‘manage’ patient care.”

With real Medicare and a Medigap plan, you talk with your physician or hospital and decide on your treatment, they bill Medicare, and you never see or hear about the bill. There is nobody between you and your physician or hospital and Medicare only goes after the payment they’ve made if they sniff out a fraud.

With Medicare Advantage, on the other hand, your insurance company gets a lump-sum payment from Medicare every year and keeps the difference between what they get and what they pay out. They then insert themselves between you and your doctor or hospital to avoid paying for whatever they can.

Whatever you decide on regarding treatment, many Advantage insurance company will regularly second-guess and do everything they can to intimidate you into paying yourself out-of-pocket. Often, they simply refuse payment and wait for you to file a complaint against them; for people seriously ill the cumbersome “appeals” process is often more than they can handle.

As a result, hospitals and doctor groups across the nation are beginning to refuse to take Medicare Advantage patients. California-based Scripps Health, for example, cares for around 30,000 people on Medicare Advantage and recently notified all of them that Scripps will no longer offer medical services to them unless they pay out-of-pocket or revert back to real Medicare.

They made this decision because over $75 million worth of services and procedures their physicians had recommended to their patients were turned down by Medicare Advantage insurance companies. In many cases, Scripps had already provided the care and is now stuck with the bills that the Advantage companies refuse to pay.

Scripps CEO Chris Van Gorder told MedPage Today:

“We are a patient care organization and not a patient denial organization and, in many ways, the model of managed care has always been about denying or delaying care – at least economically. That is why denials, [prior] authorizations and administrative processes have become a very big issue for physicians and hospitals...”

Similarly, the Mayo Clinic has warned its customers in Florida and Arizona that they won’t accept Medicare Advantage any more, either. Increasing numbers of physician groups and hospitals are simply over being ripped off by Advantage insurance companies.

Not only is the Medicare Advantage scam a screw job for healthcare providers and people who are on the programs and are unfortunate enough to get sick, it’s also preventing Americans from getting expanded benefits from real Medicare.

As the PNHP report notes, for real Medicare to provide comprehensive vision, dental, and hearing benefits to all Medicare recipients would cost the system around $84 billion a year, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Instead, though, the Medicare system is burdened with at least that amount of money in over-payments to Medicare Advantage providers — over-payments that have no health benefit whatsoever and merely inflate the companies’ profits.

A hundred billion dollars in excess profits can be put to a lot of uses, and the health insurance industry is quite good at it. The former CEO of UnitedHealth, “Dollar” Bill McGuire, for example, made off with over $1.5 billion dollars for his efforts.

And, because five corrupt Republicans on the Supreme Court legalized political bribery with their Citizens United decision, some of these companies allocate millions every year (a mere drop in the bucket) to pay off loyal members of Congress and to dangle high-paying future jobs to high-level employees of CMS who have the power to keep the gravy train going and thwart prosecutions.

As PNHP noted:

“Medicare Advantage is just another example of the endless greed of the insurance industry poisoning American health care, siphoning money from vulnerable patients while delaying and denying necessary and often life-saving treatment. While there is obvious reason to fix these issues in MA and to expand Traditional Medicare for the sake of all beneficiaries, the deep structural problems with our health care system will only be fixed when we achieve improved Medicare for All.”

We’re on the edge of the open enrollment period for Medicare, and the Advantage scammers will be carpet-bombing America with advertisements over the next few months. Representatives Pocan, Khanna, and Schakowsky have introduced the “Save Medicare Act” that would ban Advantage companies from using the word Medicare in their advertising.

They made a video about it that’s well worth sharing with friends and family:

youtube

As Schakowsky, Khanna, and Pocan note, “Only Medicare is Medicare.” Don’t be fooled by the Medicare Advantage scam.

And now that you know, pass it on and save somebody else’s health!

#Medicare #health insurance #Youtube

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compneuropapers · 9 months ago

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Interesting Papers for Week 8, 2024

Sensory prediction error drives subconscious motor learning outside of the laboratory. Albert, S. T., Blaum, E. C., & Blustein, D. H. (2023). Journal of Neurophysiology, 130(2), 427–435.

Working memory load impairs transfer learning in human adults. Balter, L. J. T., & Raymond, J. E. (2023). Psychological Research, 87(7), 2138–2145.

Objects sharpen visual scene representations: evidence from MEG decoding. Brandman, T., & Peelen, M. V. (2023). Cerebral Cortex, 33(16), 9524–9531.

Specific patterns of neural activity in the hippocampus after massed or distributed spatial training. Centofante, E., Fralleoni, L., Lupascu, C. A., Migliore, M., Rinaldi, A., & Mele, A. (2023). Scientific Reports, 13, 13357.

Hormonal coordination of motor output and internal prediction of sensory consequences in an electric fish. Fukutomi, M., & Carlson, B. A. (2023). Current Biology, 33(16), 3350-3359.e4.

Subcortico-amygdala pathway processes innate and learned threats. Khalil, V., Faress, I., Mermet-Joret, N., Kerwin, P., Yonehara, K., & Nabavi, S. (2023). eLife, 12, e85459.

Neural mechanisms underlying uninstructed orofacial movements during reward-based learning behaviors. Li, W.-R., Nakano, T., Mizutani, K., Matsubara, T., Kawatani, M., Mukai, Y., … Yamashita, T. (2023). Current Biology, 33(16), 3436-3451.e7.

Monkeys exhibit human-like gaze biases in economic decisions. Lupkin, S. M., & McGinty, V. B. (2023). eLife, 12, e78205.

Widespread coding of navigational variables in prefrontal cortex. Maisson, D. J.-N., Cervera, R. L., Voloh, B., Conover, I., Zambre, M., Zimmermann, J., & Hayden, B. Y. (2023). Current Biology, 33(16), 3478-3488.e3.

Synaptic variance and action potential firing of cerebellar output neurons during motor learning in larval zebrafish. Najac, M., McLean, D. L., & Raman, I. M. (2023). Current Biology, 33(16), 3299-3311.e3.

Novelty and uncertainty differentially drive exploration across development. Nussenbaum, K., Martin, R. E., Maulhardt, S., Yang, Y. (Jen), Bizzell-Hatcher, G., Bhatt, N. S., … Hartley, C. A. (2023). eLife, 12, e84260.

Ants combine object affordance with latent learning to make efficient foraging decisions. Poissonnier, L.-A., Hartmann, Y., & Czaczkes, T. J. (2023). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 120(35), e2302654120.

VIP interneurons in sensory cortex encode sensory and action signals but not direct reward signals. Ramamurthy, D. L., Chen, A., Zhou, J., Park, C., Huang, P. C., Bharghavan, P., … Feldman, D. E. (2023). Current Biology, 33(16), 3398-3408.e7.

A stochastic model of hippocampal synaptic plasticity with geometrical readout of enzyme dynamics. Rodrigues, Y. E., Tigaret, C. M., Marie, H., O’Donnell, C., & Veltz, R. (2023). eLife, 12, e80152.

Sequence anticipation and spike-timing-dependent plasticity emerge from a predictive learning rule. Saponati, M., & Vinck, M. (2023). Nature Communications, 14, 4985.

Statistical inference on representational geometries. Schütt, H. H., Kipnis, A. D., Diedrichsen, J., & Kriegeskorte, N. (2023). eLife, 12, e82566.

High-resolution volumetric imaging constrains compartmental models to explore synaptic integration and temporal processing by cochlear nucleus globular bushy cells. Spirou, G. A., Kersting, M., Carr, S., Razzaq, B., Yamamoto Alves Pinto, C., Dawson, M., … Manis, P. B. (2023). eLife, 12, e83393.

Using occipital ⍺-bursts to modulate behavior in real-time. Vigué-Guix, I., & Soto-Faraco, S. (2023). Cerebral Cortex, 33(16), 9465–9477.

Octave illusion: stimulation frequencies can modulate perception. Whittom, A., Couture, F., Chauvette, L., & Sharp, A. (2023). Psychological Research, 87(7), 2183–2191.

Completeness out of incompleteness: Inferences from regularities in imperfect information ensembles. Zhu, J., Xu, H., Shi, B., Lu, Y., Chen, H., Shen, M., & Zhou, J. (2023). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 49(9), 1203–1220.

#neuroscience #science #research #brain science #scientific publications #cognitive science #neurobiology #cognition #psychophysics #neurons #neural computation #neural networks #computational neuroscience

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poorrichardjr · 29 days ago

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kolajmag · 6 months ago

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THIS WEEK AT KOLAJ MAGAZINE

Cherished, Intertwined, Unmasked, Repurposed, & Whimsical

FROM THE PRINT ISSUE My House Too Reports on how Danielle Cole

FROM THE PRINT ISSUE Cherishing the Beauty of Ephemeral Objects Helen Hartmann profiles Dutch Artist Anna van der Putte

FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY Repurposed art is a passion Caroline della Porta | Picton, New Zealand

FROM THE ARTIST DIRECTORY Colorful and Whimsical Bonniediva Shorr | Gurnee, Illinois, USA

COLLAGE BOOKS Neurophototherapy: Playfully Unmasking with Photography and Collage

KOLAJ FEST NEW ORLEANS Wangechi Mutu: Intertwined at the New Orleans Museum of Art in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

COLLAGE ON VIEW Deconstructed Heroes at NOLA ‘Nacular Studio and Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA

Read the full update

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Kolaj Magazine, a full color, print magazine, exists to show how the world of collage is rich, layered, and thick with complexity. By remixing history and culture, collage artists forge new thinking. To understand collage is to reshape one's thinking of art history and redefine the canon of visual culture that informs the present.

SUBSCRIBE | CURRENT ISSUE | GET A COPY

#collage #collage art #collage artist #art #artist #art project #art history #art education #book art #contemporary art #art show #contemporary artist #artist books #artist portfolio

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noctiilio · 2 years ago

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Gensokyo 199x (09/2021)

Track 5: "Busy Line Shuffle"

Original: Zun - "Last Remote"/"Hartmann's Youkai Girl" Touhou 11: Subterranean Animism

Arranged by: Nocti (@noctiilio)

Genre: Boom Bap hip hop

"Reports from Gensokyo claim that their phone won't stop ringing. If, annoyed by the noise, you were to pick it up, a cheerful voice would pipe up, hi! hi!! hello!!! and immediately put you on hold forever. It seems to be an elaborate prank from a fun-loving youkai, but nothing more than simple good spirited mischief." Get the album >here< it's free! Also available on Youtube here!

#Koishi Komeiji #Touhou #Subterranean Animism #Last Remote #touhou project #my music #touhou music #touhou arrange #touhou remix #touhou ost #last remote #hartmann's youkai girl #Gensokyo 199x

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archivist-crow · 7 months ago

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Odds and Ends:

HORSING AROUND

In May 1906, miller J.C. Playfair of Lambhurst, England, went to his stable to check on his horses. All the horses were turned around in their stalls—all but one, which was missing. After checking all the places where a horse could be, Playfair began to look in unexpected places. Adjoining the stable was a tiny hay room; its doorway was barely large enough for a man to go through. Inside was the horse. A wall had to be knocked down to remove the animal.

Also from May, 1906, comes a report from Franz Hartmann, a noted German physician and theosophist of the time. Hartmann relays an incident that happened to his brother-in-law, a count and a captain in the Bavarian cavalry. One of the captain's horses became sickly, and the groom told him that each morning the horse was covered with sweat and its mane and tail were braided. The count decided to spend the night in the stall. At two in the morning, the animal began to tremble, and the astonished count saw its tail and mane become whipped into intricate plaits. The horse's panic left it coated in foam.

In 1918 the great magician Harry Houdini decided to make an elephant vanish. While Jennie the pachyderm was bowing to the audience, Houdini's assistants set up an eight-foot-square cabinet with solid sides and top, hinged doors at the back, and curtains at the front. The cabinet was set up two feet above the ground, precluding use of a trap door. At Houdini's cue, Jennie entered the cabinet, and the curtains were closed. Houdini then fired a pistol, the curtains opened, and the elephant was gone. How the ingenious escape was managed remains a matter of debate. When asked, the magician would respond, "Even the elephant doesn't know how it is done."

Text from: Almanac of the Infamous, the Incredible, and the Ignored by Juanita Rose Violins, published by Weiser Books, 2009

#odds and ends #horses #elephants #harry houdini #strange occurrences #may

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hpowellsmith · 2 years ago

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Hello! What do I need to do to make Hartmann more relaxed? there was a route where he let Max go and then he went to the salon with MC but I haven't been able to get it to happen again

Trivia time: I had a report where a kind player let me know that Hartmann apologised after not having done anything/the MC had told them it was fine, and they thought it was a bug. But it was just Hartmann overthinking, because they are an unrelaxed soul.

However: you can encourage them to be more rebellious using this post as reference.

#hartmann #choice of games #creme de la creme

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arlengrossman · 20 days ago

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How It Happened

https://hartmannreport.com/p/the-billionaires-won-the-50-year-841?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=302288&post_id=151253908&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=false&r=r3bio&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email The Hartmann Report The Billionaires Won: The 50-Year War on Democracy That Built Trump’s Oligarchy and Killed the American Dream Bought politicians, and a court on their…

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#Lewis Powell #The Hartmann Report #Thom Hartmann

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garudabluffs · 2 years ago

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youtube

"...a plug in for a documentary I watched last night -- it's called "Where to Invade Next", compiled by Michael Moore. He tours some European countries and one N. African one (Tunisia) to see if there's any good ideas/practices he can bring back to the U.S. While he doesn't go into religion, there's bits on education, justice (in terms of prisons and drugs), and labor practices. I was left with the impression that your country's woes are due to a philosophy of selfishness - as expressed by one Icelandic woman, "it's all about me, rather than we". If I wished to simplify the woes of the U.S., I'd boil it down to that also. There are some of your citizens who recognize the value in others, but for the large part I'd say that your Egos are way too big. This is why, as Moore discovers, the male bankers were all prosecuted -- yes, that's correct, bankers were prosecuted -- after the '08 collapse of the financial system -- and the women replaced them, because women place we over me. Anyways, some good lessons for America in this documentary." - 1 of 15 Comments

Is SCOTUS About to Put Religion Over Civil Society?

So here we are in 2023 and the real beliefs and plans of the Founding generation — slaveholders and abolitionists alike — have dissolved into a blur of BS, Qanon, and fundamentalist religion 02/01/2023

"The Court may force the state to prioritize religion above normal business and governmental concerns, in other words."

"[Or]the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, whose members, a Massachusetts court has ruled, are legally entitled to sport their unique headwear (a colander) in official government ID photos.

Or Rastafarians, who may argue that marijuana is their sacramental herb and they should be allowed to work under its influence.

After all, the IRS has acknowledged all of these groups as legitimate religions by granting them tax-exempt status. While that may deprive the government and some communities of income and property taxes, it generally doesn’t hurt anybody."

READ MORE https://hartmannreport.com/p/is-scotus-about-to-put-religion-over

#video Where To Invade Next Michael Moore Thom Hartmann report #Youtube

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 1 year ago

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[Daily Don]

* * * *

The Jacksonville, Florida murders of three Black customers in Dollar General Store.

On Saturday, a gunman attempted to enter Florida’s oldest historically Black university—Edward Waters University. When he was turned away from the EWU campus, he went to a Dollar General Store in Jacksonville, Florida, and killed three Black customers. He carefully choreographed the murders to ensure that we would know they were hate crimes directed against the Black population in Florida—a state that has been engaged in a culture war against its Black citizens at the urging of Ron DeSantis.

There is much to unpack in this latest hate crime in Florida. Juliette Kayyem provides the details and analysis in The Atlantic, The Jacksonville Killer Wanted Everyone to Know His Message of Hate. Her article is behind a paywall, but if you have access to The Atlantic, Kayyem’s article is a compelling and disturbing read. She writes, in part,

Much is already known about the gunman who killed three Black customers at a Dollar General shop in Jacksonville, Florida, yesterday. He was in possession of an AR-15-style weapon and a handgun; he left manifestos about his hatred toward African Americans; he was wearing a tactical-style uniform as if going to war. [The gunman’s] actions yesterday were not just a hate crime. They were a performance for all the world to see. This is the age of mass shooting as production. And we misunderstand what is happening if we see this as a play with only one act at a time. [The shooting] occurred on the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the civil-rights March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Whether the killer knew this doesn’t really matter. African Americans do.

It does not matter whether we can draw a straight line between the killings and DeSantis’s hostility toward Black Floridians, it is enough that he signed a bill allowing permitless carry of handguns and several bills prohibiting the teaching of Black history. DeSantis has created an atmosphere of fear and hate that inevitably encourages deranged people like the Jacksonville killer to act on their delusions. DeSantis’s animosity toward Black Americans is objectively immoral. But it is also singularly disqualifying in his bid for the presidency.

We must do something to stop the carnage and hate. There are many different approaches to stopping gun violence—and we must pursue them all. Thom Hartmann published an essay over the weekend that gave me hope that some solutions are not far from hand. See The Hartmann Report, Well-Regulated Smart Guns Are Here. As Hartmann explains, several technology solutions are fully operational and ready for deployment. Solutions include fingerprint technology to unlock guns and serial imprints on bullets inscribed by the firing pin upon discharge. None of these solutions would stop killers like the Jacksonville neo-Nazi, but they would undoubtedly stop other gun deaths. We must start somewhere.

[Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter]

#Daily Don #racism #white supremism #Robert B. Hubbell #Robert B. Hubbell Newsletter #hate crimes #incitement

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