#i vote to evict chuck

[a9saga]

never shoulda smoked that shit now im in the celebrity big brother diary room

[waywardandwestward]

My 'Big Brother’ brain is seeping into my ‘Supernatural’ brain.

So much so, that my first thought when Cas was telling Jack that he was loved by him, and Sam, and Dean, I was like, “Wow, Castiel has a terrible read on the house. Cas thinks Jack is in Dean’s alliance with him and Sam, but Dean would cut Jack so fast. There’s no way Cas is getting that 500k.”

And then when he got eaten by the empty, all I could hear was Julie Chen saying, “By a vote of 4 to 2, Castiel, you have been evicted from the Big Brother House.”

I suspect Jack will be evicted next.

[cherryliqueurkinks]

˗ˏˋ betty smut ideas: canon-inspired edition ˎˊ˗

please note: there are many DUBCON/NONCON elements in the list below! proceed with caution if you are sensitive to those kinks or similarly hard kinks.

A little while ago, I did a Betty-centric exchange with @kagszzy and @riverdaledreaming where we took a canon subplot or scene and put a smutty spin on it! I shared a list of ideas with them that I’ve been adding to throughout the seasons and I realized I should’ve shared this with everyone else a long time ago, because it’s not as if I could possible get to everything on here! So if you’re a Betty-lover like us and need some kinky ideas to play with, I hope these inspire some new smut! 

season one

the game of spin-the-bottle at Cheryl’s party is a kinky one and the bottle lands on Betty instead of Veronica

Betty and Cheryl hang out in Betty’s room and Betty asks Cheryl to teach her how to be good with guys

Betty actually wants to be a bad girl when she approaches Chuck and they fuck (or, alternatively, he knows Betty is trying to play him and drugs her instead)

Betty gets carried away in her “Dark Betty” persona with Chuck and they end up fucking in the hot tub

Betty fucks one of the workers or guards at The Sisters of Quiet Mercy to let her see Polly without alerting Alice as instructed (maybe as a one-time deal or as a regular thing for Betty to continue to see Polly)

Betty asks FP to use his Serpent connections to find a safe place for Polly to stay escaping from The Sisters of Quiet Mercy, and her fucks Betty as form of “payment” for his help

Betty goes to the trailer alone to ask FP about Jason’s death and FP fucks her in exchange for answer (or alternatively, as “punishment” for being nosy or as a way to distract her from continuing to interrogate him)

Betty convinces FP to help her with Jughead’s birthday party

FP “comforts” Betty after her fight with Jughead at his birthday party

Betty goes to the trailer after Jughead ran off from homecoming to talk to him but finds FP there instead (maybe he takes advantage of her being distraught about Jughead, or alternatively, of her being angry that Jughead ran off)

season two

Betty agrees to be in someone’s service in exchange for their help in saving Pop’s from closing after Fred’s shooting (maybe an original character, or she meets Hiram Lodge before she knows he’s Veronica’s father)

Betty bribes the Greendale police to learn details on Ms. Grundy’s death to see if her shooter could also be Fred’s shooter

Betty catches one of the drug deals discreetly being run by the Serpents during Retro Night at Pop’s and confronts them

The Black Hood visits Betty in person rather than calls her and says that he’ll stop killing as long as she keeps fucking him (maybe he also makes her wear sex toys to control her during the day)

The Black Hood kidnaps Betty when he lures her to the isolated house near Fox Forest to put on his mask

Archie and Jughead aren’t in the Ghoulies den when Veronica and Betty sneak in and the Ghoulies have their fun with them

Betty joins Veronica when she sleeps over at Kevin’s house and is the one caught snooping by Sheriff Keller

Sheriff Keller catches Betty sneaking into his home and searching his office and decides to punish her himself rather than calling her parents

Sheriff Keller catches Betty and Veronica following him to the Shady Palm Motel and they learn that his secret is far more perverse than simply having an affair

Betty visits FP at the trailer after his release from prison to check on him and it leads to him fucking her for hours to release his sexual frustration

Betty convinces Toni to let her practice her Serpent Dance before FP’s party and some Serpents are at the bar to watch (maybe even also FP)

Betty stays at FP’s party after Jughead breaks up with her and the Serpents decide to “cheer her up” now that she’s officially one of them

Betty goes to Pickens Park alone instead of with Archie and The Black Hood fucks her (or alternatively, he makes Archie watch as punishment to “cleanse him of his sins” instead of being killed)

One of the clients at Chic’s hostel mistakes her as another “fantasy fulfiller” and drags her into one of the rooms to have his way with her

Betty becomes a camgirl

Hiram fucks Betty in revenge for letting Jughead publish an article shaming him in The Blue and Gold (or as a “warning” for her not to let it happen again)

Tall Boy kidnaps Betty and videos him fucking her as blackmail to drive Jughead and FP out of the Serpents so he could be in charge

Betty fucks Hiram in exchange for him buying the trailer park to prevent the Southside from getting evicted

FP secretly fucks Betty when she’s living at the trailer to avoid Chic (maybe he offers it as “distraction” from her troubles at home, or maybe she wants to “thank” him for letting her stay there)

Betty tries to convince Sweet Pea and Fangs to trust her so Jughead gets the Serpent vote for student body president

season three

Fred wants to give Betty an extra special thank you for giving up her summer to help Mary prepare for Archie’s trial (or alternatively, as a thank you for her fulfilling her promise to Archie to keep Fred company after Archie goes to juvie)

Dr. Glass decides to try some radical methods on Betty during their therapy sessions to get her to open up (or Dr. Glass can be substituted by Fred or FP being asked by Alice to help Betty deal with her trauma)

Jughead asks Sweet Pea (or Fangs, or both of them) to “distract” Betty from their mission to rescue Hot Dog from the Ghoulies

Tom Keller figures out that Betty is investigating Gryphons & Gargoyles and takes matters into his own to convince Betty to stop

Betty is tasked with distracting the guards when the gang breaks Archie out of juvie

Sheriff Minetta takes drastic measures during his interrogation with Betty to get her to admit that she helped break Archie out of juvie

Hiram agrees to help Betty escape The Sisters of Quiet Mercy in exchange for being in his care instead

Hiram takes advantage of Betty while she’s high off of fizzle rocks at The Sisters of Quiet Mercy

Fangs (maybe with Sweet Pea and other Serpents) take their anger over Jughead’s “no crime” ruling out on Betty (or alternatively, they corner Betty without Jughead knowing and force her to convince him to change his mind)

Hiram takes advantage of Betty feeling angry and helpless after Alice “donates” all of Betty’s money to The Farm and he offers to provide for her in exchange for her service

Betty tries to see Hal in prison so he can prove that Alice forged his signature but the only way she can see him is through a conjugal visit

Betty takes the Jones’s offer for Betty to still live with them after they buy the house from Alice and FP takes advantage of the new arrangement

or alternatively, Hiram takes advantage of the fact that Betty is staying with them after Alice sells the house

Betty gives FP an extra special present for his 50th birthday party after everyone else has left

Edgar takes drastic measures to convince Betty to join The Farm

Betty asks Hiram to honor Hal’s request to be transferred to his prison and Hiram agrees to do it in exchange for “a favor”

season four

Betty and Charles are a lot closer than they let Jughead believe considering how much time they spend alone in the FBI office together

Betty helps out at the car wash to fundraise the gym renovations and one of the customers gets handsy with her while everyone else is on a break

FP and Betty find themselves alone together in their house more often than not and they take advantage of it (maybe Charles is also involved because Betty is trying to make a connection with her half-brother)

Charles wants to comfort Betty after being terrorized with prank phone calls by Polly on Halloween and they get carried away

Charles takes advantage of Betty’s vulnerability over having the serial killer gene and offers to help her control her darkness

Jughead is distracted with writing for a few hours during Betty’s visit to Stonewall and Bret takes advantage of it (maybe with Donna)

Betty tries to seduce and drug Bret like she did Chuck to get Bret to admit to Stonewall jumping Munroe

Betty is kidnapped by the Quill and Skull as part of an initiation or hazing ritual for Jughead as a new member

Mr. Honey is skeptical about Betty wanting to participate in the quiz show so Betty goes to extreme lengths to get his approval (or alternatively, Mr. Honey punishes Betty for cheating on the quiz show)

FP questions Betty alone about having Jughead’s phone after he’s gone missing and decides to try another means to get the truth out of her

Sweet Pea is the one hooking up with Betty in the bunker when Donna follows Betty into the forest and she stays to get proof that they’re only faking (or alternatively, it’s Reggie)

[arcticdementor]

Stefanie Gray explains why, as a teenager, she was so anxious to leave her home state of Florida to go to college.

“I went to garbage schools and I’m from a garbage low-income suburb where everyone sucks Oxycontin all day,” she says. “I needed to get out.”

She got into Hunter College in New York, but both her parents had died and she had nowhere near enough to pay tuition, so she borrowed. “I just had nothing and was poor as hell, so I took out loans,” she says.

This being 2006, just a year after the infamous Bankruptcy Bill of 2005 was passed, she believed news stories about student loans being non-dischargeable in bankruptcy. She believed they would be with her for life, or until they were paid off.

“My understanding was, it’s better to purchase 55 big-screen TVs on a credit card, and discharge that in a court of law, then be a student who’s getting an education,” she says.

Still, she asked for financial aid: “I was like, ‘My parents are dead, I'm a literal fucking orphan, I have no siblings. I'm just taking out this money to put my ass through school.”

Instead of a denial, she got plenty of credit, including a slice of what were called “direct-to-consumer” loans, that came with a whopping 14% interest rate. One of her loans also came from a company called MyRichUncle that, before going bankrupt in 2009, would briefly become famous for running an ad disclosing a kickback system that existed between student lenders and college financial aid offices.

Gray was not the cliché undergrad, majoring in intersectional basket-weaving with no plan to repay her loans. She took geographical mapping, with the specific aim of getting a paying job quickly. But she graduated in the middle of the post-2008 crash, when “53% of people 18 to 29 were unemployed or underemployed.”

“I couldn't even get a job scrubbing toilets at a local motel,” she recalls. “They told me straight up that I was over-educated. I was like, “Literally, I'll do your housekeeping. I don't give a shit, just let me make money and not get evicted and end up homeless.”

The lender Sallie Mae at the time had an amusingly loathsome policy of charging a repeating $150 fee every three months just for the privilege of applying for forbearance. Gray was so pissed about having to pay $50 a month just to say she was broke that she started a change.org petition that ended up gathering 170,000 signatures.

She personally delivered those to the Washington offices of Sallie Mae and ended up extracting a compromise out of the firm: they’d still charge the fee, but she could at least apply it to her balance, as opposed to just sticking it in the company’s pocket as an extra. This meager “partial” victory over a student lender was so rare, the New York Times wrote about it.

“I definitely poked the bear,” she says.

Gray still owed a ton of student debt — it had ballooned from $36,000 to $77,000, in fact — and collectors were calling her nonstop, perhaps with a little edge thanks to who she was. “They were telling me I should hit up people I know for money, which was one thing,” she recalls. “But when they started talking about giving blood, or selling plasma… I don’t know.”

Sallie Mae ultimately sued Gray four times. In doing so, they made a strange error. It might have slipped by, but for luck. “By the grace of God,” Gray said, she met a man in the lobby of a courthouse, a future state Senator named Kevin Thomas, who took a look at her case. “Huh, I’ve got some ideas,” he said, eventually pointing to a problem right at the top of her lawsuit.

Sallie Mae did not represent itself in court as Sallie Mae. The listed plaintiff was “SLM Private Credit Student Loan Trust VL Funding LLC.” As was increasingly the case with mortgages and other forms of debt, student loans by then were typically gathered, pooled, and chopped into slices called tranches, to be marketed to investors. Gray, essentially, was being sued by a tranche of student loan debt, a little like being sued by the coach section of an airline flight.

When Thomas advised her to look up the plaintiff’s name, she discovered it wasn’t registered to do business in the State of New York, which prompted the judge to rule that the entity lacked standing to sue. He fined Sallie Mae $10,000 for “nonsense” and gave Gray another rare victory over a student lender, which she ended up writing about herself this time, in The Guardian.

Corporate creditors often play probabilities and mass-sue even if they don’t always have great cases, knowing a huge percentage of borrowers either won’t show up in court (as with credit card holders) or will agree to anything to avoid judgments, the usual scenario with student borrowers.

“What usually happens in pretty much 99% of these cases is you beg and plead and say, ‘Please don't put a judgment against me, I'll do anything… because a judgment against you means you're not going to be able to buy a home, you’re not going to be able to do basically anything involving credit for the next 20 years.”

…

The passage of the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 was a classic demonstration of how America works, or doesn’t, depending on your point of view. While we focus on differences between Republicans and Democrats, it’s their uncanny habit of having just a sliver of enough agreement to pass crucial industry-friendly bills that really defines the parties.

Whether it’s NAFTA, the Iraq War authorization, or the Obama stimulus, there are always just enough aisle-crossers to get the job done, and the tally usually tracks with industry money with humorous accuracy. In this law signed by George Bush, sponsored by Republican Chuck Grassley, and greased by millions in donations from entities like Sallie Mae, the crucial votes were cast by a handful of aisle-crossing Democrats, including especially the Delawareans Joe Biden and Tom Carper. Hillary Clinton, who took $140,000 from bank interests in her Senate run, had voted for an earlier version.

Party intrigue is only part of the magic of American politics. Public relations matter, too, and the Bankruptcy Bill turned out to be the poster child for another cherished national phenomenon: the double-lie.

…

Years later, pundits still debate whether there really ever was an epidemic of debt-fleeing deadbeats, or whether legislators in 2005 who just a few years later gave “fresh starts” to bankrupt Wall Street banks ever cared about “moral hazard,” or if it’s fair to cut off a single Mom in a trailer when Donald Trump got to brag about “brilliantly” filing four commercial bankruptcies, and so on.

In other words, we argue the why of the bill, but not the what. What did that law say, exactly? For years, it was believed that it absolutely closed the door on bankruptcy for whole classes of borrowers, and one in particular: students. Nearly fifteen years after the bill’s passage, journalists were still using language like, “The bill made it completely impossible to discharge student loan debt.”

…

The phrase “Just asking questions” today often carries a negative connotation. It’s the language of the conspiracy theorist, we’re told. But sometimes in America we’re just not told the whole story, and when the press can’t or won’t do it, it’s left to individual people to fill in the blanks. In a few rare cases, they find out something they weren’t supposed to, and in rarer cases still, they learn enough to beat the system. This is one of those stories.

…

Smith’s explanation of the history of the student loan exemption and where it all went wrong is biting and psychologically astute. In his telling, the courts’ historically sneering attitude toward student borrowers has its roots in an ages-old generational debate.

“This started out as an an argument between the Greatest Generation and Baby Boomers,” Smith notes. “A lot of the law was created by people railing against draft-dodging deadbeat hippies.”

He points to a 1980 ruling by a judge named Richard Merrick, who in denying relief to a former student, wrote the following:

The arrogance of former students who had received so much from society, frequently including draft deferment, and who had given back so little in return, accompanied by their vehemence in asserting their constitutional and statutory rights, frequently were not well received by legislators and jurists, senior to them, who had lived through the Depression, had worked their ways through college and graduate school, had served in World War II, and had been paying the taxes which made possible the student loans.

Smith laughs about this I didn’t climb the hills at Normandy with a knife in my teeth just to eat the debt on your useless-ass liberal arts degree perspective, noting that “when those guys who did all that complaining went to school, only rich prep school kids went to college, and by the way, tuition was like ten bucks.” Still, he wasn’t completely unsympathetic to the conservative position.

…

This concern about “deadbeats” gaming the system — kids taking out fat loans to go to school and bailing on them before the end of the graduation party — led that 1985 court to take a hardcore position against students who made “virtually no attempt to repay.” They established a three-pronged standard that came to be known as the “Brunner test” for determining if a student faced enough “undue hardship” to be granted relief from student debt.

Among other things, the court ruled that a newly graduated student had to do more than demonstrate a temporary inability to handle bills. Instead, a “total incapacity now and in the future to pay” had to be present for a court to grant relief. Over the course of the next decades, it became axiomatic that basically no sentient being could pass the Brunner test.

…

In 2015, he was practicing law at the Texas litigation firm Bickel and Brewer when he came across a case involving a former Pace University student named Lesley Campbell, who was seeking to discharge a $15,000 loan she took out while studying for a bar exam. Smith believed a loan given out to a woman who’d already completed her studies, and who used the money to pay for rent and groceries, was not covering an “educational benefit” as required by law. A judge named Carla Craig agreed and canceled Campbell’s loan, and Campbell v. Citibank became one of the earlier dents in the public perception that there were no exceptions to the prohibition on discharging student debts.

“I thought, ‘Wait, what? This might be important,’” says Smith.

By law, Smith believed, lenders needed to be wary of three major exceptions to the non-dischargeability rule:

— If a loan was not made to a student attending a Title IV accredited school, he thought it was probably not a “qualified educational loan.”

— If the student was not a full-time student — in practice, this meant taking less than six credits — the loan was probably dischargeable.

— And if the loan was made in an amount over and above the actual cost of attending an accredited school, the excess might not be “eligible” money, and potentially dischargeable.

Practically speaking, this means if you got a loan for an unaccredited school, were not a full-time student, or borrowed for something other than school expenses, you might be eligible for relief in court.

Smith found companies had been working around these restrictions in the blunt predatory spirit of a giant-sized Columbia Record Club. Companies lent hundreds of thousands to teenagers over and above the cost of tuition, or to people who’d already graduated, or to attendees of dubious unaccredited institutions, or to a dozen other inappropriate destinations. Then they called these glorified credit card balances non-dischargeable educational debts — Gray got one of these “direct-to-consumer” specials — and either sold them into the financial system as investments, borrowed against them as positive assets, or both.

…

Smith thought these practices were nuts, and tried to convince his bosses to start suing financial companies.

“They were like, ‘You do know what we do around here, right?’ We defend banks,” he recalls, laughing. “I said, ‘Not these particular banks.’ They said it didn’t matter, it was a question of optics, and besides, who was going to pay off in the end? A bunch of penniless students?”

Furious, Smith stormed off, deciding to hang his own shingle and fight the system on his own. “My sister kept saying to me, ‘You have to stop trying to live in a John Grisham novel,’” he recalls, laughing. “There were parts of it where I was probably super melodramatic, saying things like, ‘I'm going to go find justice.’”

Slowly however, Smith did find clients, and began filing and winning cases. With each suit, he learned more and more about student lenders. In one critical moment, he discovered that the same companies who were representing in court that their loans were absolutely non-dischargeable were telling investors something entirely different. In one prospectus for a trust packed full of loans managed by Sallie Mae, investors were told that the process for creating the aforementioned “direct-to-consumer” loans:

Does not involve school certification as an additional control and, therefore, may be subject to some additional risk that the loans are not used for qualified education expenses… You will bear any risk of loss resulting from the discharge.

Sallie Mae was warning investors that the loans might be discharged in bankruptcy. Why the honesty? Because the parties who’d be packaging and selling these student loan-backed instruments included Credit Suisse, JP Morgan Chase, and Deutsche Bank.

“It’s one thing to lie to a bunch of broke students. They don’t matter,” Smith says. “It’s another to lie to JP Morgan Chase and Deutsche Bank. You screw those people, they’ll fight back.”

…

In June of 2018, a case involving a Navy veteran named Kevin Rosenberg went through the courts. Rosenberg owed hundreds of thousands of dollars and tried to keep current on his loans, but after his hiking and camping store folded in 2017, he found himself busted and unable to pay. His case was essentially the opposite of Brunner: he clearly hadn’t tried to game the system, he made a good faith effort to pay, and he demonstrated a long-term inability to make good. All of this was taken into consideration by a judge named Cecilia Morris, who ruled that Rosenberg qualified for “undue hardship.”

“Most people… believe it impossible to discharge student loans,” Morris wrote. “This Court will not participate in perpetuating these myths.” The ruling essentially blew up the legend of the unbeatable Brunner standard.

Given a fresh start, Rosenberg moved to Norway to become an Arctic tour guide. “I want people to know that this is a viable option,” he said at the time. The ruling attracted a small flurry of news attention, including a feature in the Wall Street Journal, as the case sent a tremor through the student lending world. More and more people were now testing their luck in bankruptcy, suing their lenders, and asking more and more uncomfortable questions about the nature of the education business.

In the summer of 2012, a former bond trader named Michael Grabis sat in the waiting room of a Manhattan financial company, biding time before a job interview. In the eighties, Grabis’s father was a successful bond trader who worked in a swank office atop the World Trade Center, but after the 1987 crash, the family fell out of the smart set overnight. His father lost his job and spiraled, his mother had to look for a job, and “we just became working class people.”

Michael tried to rewrite the family story, going to school and going into the bond business himself, first with the Bank of New York, and eventually for Schwab. But he, too, lost his job in a crash, in 2008, and now was trying to break the pattern of bubble economy misery. However, he’d exited Pennsylvania’s Lafayette College in the nineties carrying tens of thousands in student loans. That number had since been compounded by fees and penalties, and the usual letters, notices, and phone calls from debt collectors came nonstop.

Now, awaiting a job interview, his phone rang again. It was a collection call for Sallie Mae, and it wasn’t just one voice on the line.

“They had two women call at once,” Grabis recalls. “They told me I’d made bad life choices, that I lived in too expensive a city, that I had to move to a cheaper place, so I could afford to pay them,” Grabis explains. “I tried to tell them I was literally at that moment trying to get a job to help pay my bills, but these people are trained to just hound you without listening. I was shaking when I got off the phone, and ended up having a bad interview.”

Two years later, more out of desperation and anger than any real expectation of relief, Grabis went to federal court in the Southern District of New York and filed for bankruptcy. At the time, he, too, believed student loans could not be eliminated. But the more he read about the way student loans were constructed and sold — he’d had experience in doing shovel-work constructing mortgage-backed securities, so he understood the Student Loan Asset-Backed Securities (SLABS) market — he started to develop a theory. Everyone dealing with the finances of higher education in America knew the system was rotten, he thought. But what if someone could prove it?

The 2005 Bankruptcy Act says former students can’t discharge loans for “qualified educational expenses,” i.e. loans given to students so that they might attend tax-exempt non-profit educational institutions. Historically, that exemption covered almost all higher education loans.

What if America’s universities no longer deserve their non-profit status? What if they’re no longer schools, and are instead first and foremost crude profit-making ventures, leveraging federal bankruptcy law and the I.R.S. code into a single, ongoing predatory lending scheme?

This is essentially what Grabis argued, in a motion filed last January. He named Navient, Lafayette College, the U.S. Department of Education, Joe Biden, his own exasperated judge, and a host of other “unknown co-perpetrators” as part of a scheme against him, claiming the entirety of America’s higher education business had become an illegal moneymaking scam.

“They created a fraud,” he says flatly.

…

Grabis doesn’t have a lawyer, his case has been going on for the better part of six years, and at first blush, his argument sounds like a Hail Mary from a desperate debtor. The only catch is, he might be right.

By any metric, something unnatural is going on in the education business. While other industries in America suffered declines thanks to financial crises, increased exposure to foreign competition, and other factors, higher education has grown suspiciously fat in the last half-century. Tuition costs are up 100% at universities over and above inflation since 2000, despite the 2008 crash, with some schools jacking up prices at three, four times the rate of inflation dating back to the seventies.

Bloat at the administrative level makes the average university look like a parody of an NFL team, where every brain-dead cousin to the owner gets on the payroll. According to Education Week, “fundraisers, financial aid advisers, global recruitment staff, and many others grew by 60 percent between 1993 and 2009,” which is ten times the rate of growth for tenured faculty positions.

…

Hovering over all this is a fact not generally known to the public: many American universities, even ones claiming to be broke, are sitting atop mountains of reserve cash. In 2013, after the University of Wisconsin blamed post-crash troubles for raising tuition 5.5%, UW system president Kevin Reilly in 2013 admitted that the school actually held $638 million in reserve, separate and distinct from the school endowment. Moreover, Reilly said, other big schools were doing the same thing. UW’s reserve was 25% of its operating budget, for instance, but the University of Minnesota’s was 29%, while Illinois maintained a whopping 34% buffer.

When Alan Collinge of Student Loan Justice looked into it, he found many other schools were sitting atop mass reserves even as they pleaded poverty to raise tuition rates. “They’re all doing it,” he said.

In the mortgage bubble that led to the 2008 crash, financiers siphoned fortunes off home loans that were unlikely to be repaid. Student loans are the same game, but worse. All the key players get richer as that $1.7 trillion pile of debt expands, and the fact that everyone knows huge percentages of student borrowers will never pay is immaterial. More campus palaces get built, more administrators get added to payrolls, and perhaps most importantly, the list of assets grows for financial companies, whether or not the loans perform.

…

“As long as it’s collateralized at Navient, they can borrow against that,” Smith says. “They say, ‘Look, we've got $3 billion in assets, which are just consumer loans in negative amortization that are not being repaid, but are being artificially kept out of default so Navient can borrow against that from other banks.

“When I realized that, I was like, ‘Oh, my god. They’re happy that the loans are growing instead of being repaid, because it gives them more collateral to borrow against.’” Smith’s comments echo complaints made by virtually every student borrower in trouble I’ve ever interviewed: lenders are not motivated to reduce the size of balances by actually getting paid. Instead, the game is about keeping loans alive and endlessly growing the balance, through new fees, penalties, etc.

There are two ways of approaching reform of the system. One is the Bernie Sanders route, which would involve debt forgiveness and free higher education. A market-based approach meanwhile dreams of reintroducing discipline into student lending; if students could default, schools couldn’t endlessly raise costs on the back of unlimited government-backed credit.

Which idea is more correct can be debated, but the one thing we know for sure is that the current system is the worst of both worlds, enriching all the most undeserving actors, and hitting that increasingly prevalent policy sweet spot of privatized profit and socialized risk. Whether it gets blown up in bankruptcy courts or simply collapses eventually under its own financial weight — there’s an argument that the market will be massively disrupted if and when the administration ends the Covid-19 deferment of student loan payments — the lie can’t go on much longer.

“It’s just obvious that this has become a printing money operation,” says Grabis. “The colleges charge whatever they want, then they go to the government and continuously increase the size of the loans.” If you’re on the inside, that’s a beautiful thing. What about for everyone else?

[theradioghost]

could you elaborate on the long term plot of greater boston? i don't mind spoilers! i tried it but couldn't get past the first episode :( but i trust your taste and i've liked every other show you've rec'd so i wanna keep listening

EDIT: okay for some reason the formatting of this post is EXTREMELY befuckened and I can’t get it to behave, so it’s possible that this isn’t going to display with a spoiler cut and if so I am VERY sorry. the “keep reading” break is in the ask instead of the body of the post I have no idea what’s happening right now but if you don’t want spoilers please be aware this post spoils like everything about the show

Sure thing! I will .... do my best, but because of the nature of GB’s plot it’s a bit difficult to describe it without ending up either way too detailed or way too vague. But I will absolutely do my best because if there is any show out there that deserves it, this is that show. Cut for Obvious Spoiler Reasons!

So, there’s a LOT of plot that goes on, but what a plot summary could never convey is that the real heart and soul of this show is the characters. There are a metric fuckton of them, and every one of them is multidimensional and dynamic and wonderful, even if it’s not always obvious at first.

Leon Stamatis of course starts the show by abruptly dying of Existential Crisis/Panic Attack on a roller coaster, which sets everything else in motion. Of that big ensemble cast, at first the most important players are

Nica, Leon’s little sister who wants to be famous but doesn’t really have any concrete plans as to how

Dimitri, Leon’s little brother who is currently traveling in a submarine attempting to find Atlantis and keeps sending Leon letters, unaware that he’s dead

Louisa, Leon’s recent ex, a wedding photographer who later quits and becomes a crime scene photographer slash detective

Leon’s best friend/roommate Michael, who is unemployed and has just had a relapse after being sober for 12 years because he has no idea what to do without Leon

Gemma, a lesbian who absolutely hates her job as an editor at Third Sight, a company which publishes magazines relating to astrology/psychic stuff/divination/etc

Charlotte, Gemma’s pregnant wife, who has recently lost her job as an animation background artist and is feeling directionless

Professor Paul Montgomery Chelmsworth, aka the Mayor of the Red Line, a slightly eccentric college professor and casual friend of Leon’s who is inspired by his death to call for a referendum declaring that the Red Line of the Boston subway system will become an independent city.

It’s that last one that is the real ~main plot~ of the show: at first, more and more of the characters getting caught up in the campaign to create the city of Red Line, and then the chaos that results when they succeed and actually have to run it. But you also have characters like Louisa and Nica and Michael, dealing with a whole rainbow of grief and distress as they cope with Leon’s death. His eccentric personality is the other driving force of the show’s events -- Leon was caring and compassionate, but also obsessed with timetables, organization, and scheduling every action in his life down to the minute.

The other major force in the show is Third Sight, a magazine publisher with a focus on fortunetelling and the like; Michael ends up working there, along with Gemma and several other major characters. Third Sight also has an enigmatic boss no one has ever seen, who turns out to be a manipulative little bastard named Oliver West.

While Red Line successfully becomes a city, “Mayor” Chelmsworth turns out to have some major commitment issues and vanishes as soon as the vote passes, leaving Charlotte and Gemma to clean up the mess. Charlotte ends up interim mayor, but also begins to campaign for the upcoming mayoral election, in which she has two opponents: Isabelle Powell, a Black realtor and an incredible character whom I absolutely cannot do justice here, and Emily Bespin, Literally The Worst Person Who Has Ever Existed, Holy Fuck I Hate Her So Much.

The election is being manipulated behind the scenes by Oliver West, who also takes advantage of Nica’s isolation and a near mental breakdown to convince her to help him by orchestrating several escalating ~pranks~ in Red Line. Honestly he’s manipulating literally everyone, and also heavily backing Emily Bespin, in an attempt to profit off of influence in the new city. Eventually this ends up with Michael kidnapped and imprisoned, several other characters attacked and one badly hurt during a wedding in Red Line, and Isabelle Powell’s nephew framed for the attack. That results in Powell’s supporters beginning a set of protests which throw Red Line into even further chaos, even as Charlotte and Nica begin to have some real moral epiphanies about how they’ve been acting.

As events continue to escalate and the election draws closer and closer, the now-assembled cast have to figure out just who exactly is manipulating events and how -- not to mention how to prove Powell’s nephew’s innocence, what the hell has happened to Michael, and what the hell they’re going to do if Bespin wins the election and makes good on her promise to evict everyone involved in the protests.

Meanwhile, Dimitri is traumatized by finding a mass grave at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean, gets rescued and then imprisoned in Alaska by infamous vanished plane hijacker DB Cooper, finally makes it home to Boston disillusioned and lonely only to inevitably find out his brother has been dead for two years, and then gets totally rejected by his sister, because he basically can’t catch a break.

Also meanwhile, the same conflicts playing out in Red Line play out on a more metaphysical level, in the structure of the show itself. While the first season only hints at the possibility that Leon might not be quite as gone as everyone thinks, as the show progresses Leon’s ghost makes his presence known by starting to argue with the omniscient narration. Increasingly taking over the show’s narration until a brilliant scene where said narrator quits and audibly gets up from the microphone and leaves, Leon, the man who spent his whole life trying to impose order on the chaos of the universe around him, finds himself battling the very structure of the story they’re in, in an attempt to help his friends as both he and they are caught up in the chaos of Red Line and Oliver West’s plans. Unfortunately, the structure of the story has other ideas, and plans of its own.

None of this, of course, even begins to touch on the cheese robots; or Michael’s ongoing struggle with self-actualization and alcoholism; or Mallory the foulmouthed teenager who somehow manages to first witness and then be involved in nearly every major plot event of the show; or the in-depth examination of structural racism as it relates to things like housing and city planning and Boston’s history and well-intentioned white liberals and the imprisonment of Black youth; or Star Trek obsessed chaotic neutral gay reporter Chuck Octagon and that one time he flirted with his own mirror universe self; or the complex but beautiful process of Charlotte and Gemma working on their relationship in the midst of all this chaos because while they have troubles throughout they truly love one another and are trying to be better people; or the fact that one of the other major characters is an insufferable Loud Vegan member of a polyamorous commune who -- on the advice of his ~spirit advisor~ the ghost of 19th century feminist writer Mary Wollstonecraft keeps changing his name throughout the show to things including Earthman, Panda Bear, Extinction Event, and Dipshit; or the unfortunately real Olive Garden food truck; or the laughter and the tears and the flamethrowers and the fact that one of the show’s most important and heartbreaking conversations takes place on an amusement park log flume ride audibly filled with liquid nacho cheese.

It’s a good show, is what I’m saying, basically.

[madamspeaker]

Remarkably, this previously untagged post went for 63 notes before the inevitable reply like below happened.

Let's take it apart, bit by bit.

But don’t conflate anger and dissatisfaction at one’s job as misogyny. Pelosi’s detractors don’t get angry at her because she is a woman. Well the Democrats and Liberals don’t. I will not speak for republicans.

This argument would hold up a hell of a lot more if far-left pundits and candidates spent even a fraction of the time they spend screaming about Nancy Pelosi to instead blame Mitch McConnell or indeed Chuck Schumer. As it goes, Chuck always gets a pass, and Mitch might occasionally warrant a sassy hashtag, but check the Twitter account of anyone with a rose next to their name, and without fail their target is always Pelosi.

You seem intelligent enough to understand the difference between what Democrats do and what Yoho and Williams did.

I would suggest you expand your energies to something more productive than long winded paragraphs of death on women who are called out for hypocrisy and underperforming her job as if calling them out itself is misogyny. It isn’t.

I have issues with Pelosi. She is inconsistent in standing up to republicans. She’ll stand behind 45 and RIP up a speech in performance, but repeatedly backs down when substantive action is required.

I would say thank you on that first part but I am also intelligent enough to spot condescension a mile away. I would also add that I am intelligent enough to understand how government works in the US, and the fact that given that one party can control the House and another the Senate (not forgetting the White House), that the nature of governance requires that those parties actually need to work together to ensure the country functions when neither party controls all (see the history of federal shut downs for when that all goes awry). I appreciate that this probably flies in the face of your apparent notion that the Speaker of the House has carte blanche to do whatever she pleases, but the reality is that nothing can be done unless a bill can pass both chambers and then get a presidential signature (unless the majorities are large enough to be veto proof). Pelosi picks her battles wisely. In two years she has sent over 400 bills over to the Senate. Underperforming is Mitch McConnell doing nothing with those bills, despite having a majority in the Senate, which one would think would ensure they fail on a vote (one has to wonder then why Mitch doesn't put them to a vote - perhaps he's fearful his own members might back a few of them), or Mitch buggering off for yet another long weekend just as the federal moratorium on evictions expires. He's had two months to come up with a response to the Heroes Act, and as of Thursday he couldn't give Pelosi anything on paper, so instead he's effed off for the weekend. I don't see many on the far-left screaming at him though.

When Obamacare was passed, republicans tried again and again to repeal it. Under 45, they’ve been successful. But when it was obvious it wasn’t, they didn’t stop. Democrats in office could learn from that. But Pelosi doesn’t like that sort of thing, even though it let’s regular Democrats know their representatives are fighting for them.

This is just a ridiculous statement all round, and reveals no understanding of Pelosi or Democratic politics. You are talking about someone who has absolutely no reservation about telling her members to bash her if that's what it takes back home. For two months she has been on television nearly every day pushing the Heroes Act (she's actually be on television nearly every day since this crisis started), and her caucus doing the same in their districts. I very much doubt anyone from the GOP is presently going home and gleefully telling their electorate how Trump is pursuing a repeal of ACA in the Supreme Court in the middle of a pandemic.

Clinton and Harris are problematic for their abuses of black people, specifically black men. Again, calling these facts out isn’t misogynistic.

A statement tossed out minus any details. How convenient. You know who else is problematic, Bernie and his surrogates, who seemed quite happy to dismiss the entire black electorate of South Carolina during this primary cycle, as well as boo John Lewis when he spoke at the DNC in 2016. Didn't see much calling out on that. But yeah, Clinton and Harris are problematic for something, something black men.

And I don’t know where you’ve been, or who you’ve talked to, but over here in the Blue camp we are constantly blaming the orange sigma and the turtle for their bullshit.Perhaps you should consider relocation, but anyone that is calling Pelosi or AOC a bitch isn’t looking at any women in power favorably at all.

And back to condescension again. I will say that your last line might be the only valid thing you've said. Yes, anyone calling Pelosi or AOC a bitch does have a problem with women, but when AOC is lauded as some feminist superstar having passed zero bills and campaigned against one of the first Native American women to be in congress (as well as saying Hillary Clinton blaming misogyny for 2016 was "stupid"), and Nancy Pelosi is blamed for every goddamn thing Trump and Barr have ever done, then the fact remains that the far-left remains incapable of looking at and treating all women equally.

[valsebasshop]

Coronavirus stimulus bill fails to move forward..

https://amzn.to/3eCoQ4Ghttps://amzn.to/2XGCwpeCoronavirus stimulus bill fails to move forward; McConnell cites ‘obstruction’A vote to advance the massive coronavirus stimulus bill failed on Sunday night in the Senate as negotiations had yet to produce a deal on the more than $1 trillion aid package. A second vote has now been scheduled for Monday shortly after 12:00 p.m. ET.

It's very important to use this..

Republicans, who needed 60 votes to move forward on the bill, weren’t able to win over any Democrats to proceed, meaning no aid will flow to the economy — including checks to individuals, help for small businesses and bailouts for big corporations — until an agreement is reached.

Democrats said that they were dissatisfied with worker protections in the bill, which was written by Republicans, and that the rules on corporate bailouts are too lax.

“We’ll see what happens. I think we’ll get there,” President Donald Trump said at the White House moments after the measure failed to advance. “We have to help the worker. We have to save the companies.”

“All of a sudden, the Democratic leader [Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y.] and the speaker of the House [Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.] shows up and we’re back to square one,” McConnell said, blaming Democrats for “obstruction.”

“So we’re fiddling here, fiddling with the emotions of the American people, fiddling with the markets, fiddling with our health care. The American people expect us to act tomorrow,” McConnell said. “And I want everybody to fully understand if we aren’t able to act [Monday], it’ll be because of our colleagues on the other side continuing to dicker when the country expects us to come together and address this problem.”

McConnell said the second vote, set for Monday, would show whether there’s been any “change of heart” among the Democrats and he noted it would take after the markets open, which could increase pressure on Democrats not to oppose the measure and frighten investors.

Schumer is scheduled to meet with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin at 9 a.m. ET on Monday to continue talks.

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Full coverage of the coronavirus outbreak

Schumer said: “Early this morning (Sunday), Leader McConnell presented to us a highly partisan bill written exclusively by Republicans, and he said he would call a vote to proceed to it today. So who is being partisan? He knows darn well for this bill to pass it needs both Democratic and Republican support.

“Given more time, I believe we could reach a point where the legislation is close enough to what the nation needs for all senators, all senators to want to move forward,” Schumer added. “We are not yet at that point.”

Download the NBC News app for full coverage and alerts about the coronavirus outbreak

The stalemate unfolded after top Democrats said Sunday that they’re not yet ready to sign off on the major coronavirus stimulus package — and will be preparing their own legislation — as Congress tries to ready the bill for passage as soon as Monday.

Just before an 11 a.m. meeting of the top Republican and Democratic congressional leaders, as well as Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Pelosi told reporters that “from my standpoint, we are apart.”

Schumer told reporters ahead of the meeting that “we need a bill that puts workers first, not corporations,” and declined to say whether he supports the current bill.

Leaving Sunday’s meeting, Pelosi said that she will introduce her own legislative package but that “we are still talking” with Republican leaders. She said that at this point, however, there is no bipartisan deal.

The meeting came hours before the critical procedural vote on the Phase III bill, the text of which hasn’t yet been released. McConnell had delayed the vote from 3 p.m. to 6 p.m. ET to give congressional leaders more time to hammer out the details.

Just before Sunday morning’s meeting, Democrats revealed what they are still opposed to in the stimulus package. According to a person familiar with the negotiations, Democrats say the language would allow for corporations to keep bailout money while still firing workers, that the bailout money would have virtually no restraints and that there are very weak stock buyback restrictions.

A senior Democratic aide told NBC News that Democrats are concerned that the bill lacks specific provisions to protect people from evictions, foreclosure or forbearance and that it would allow for only three months of unemployment insurance.

McConnell told reporters after the meeting that the Senate plans to move forward with its bill and is “hopeful and optimistic” that it will have bipartisan support.

“But make no mistake about it, we’ll be voting tomorrow. I mean, the wheel has to stop at some point,” McConnell said. “And I don’t want any of you to buy the notion that this isn’t a thoroughly bipartisan proposal already. There’s still some elbowing and maneuvering for room, as you can imagine, but this is a pretty solid-like bipartisan proposal agreed to by a lot of rank-and-file Democrats who were involved in drafting it.”

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said that he thought the meeting “was very productive” and that both sides are “very close” to a deal. He added that he doesn’t think Pelosi’s introducing her own legislation would be “productive.”

“I don’t know that we’d have the time for that,” he said, adding he believes it “would do the country a lot of damage.”

Mnuchin told reporters he’s still optimistic about a deal, saying, “We still think we have an overall understanding, and we’re going to try to get this on paper.”

One potential complication was the news Sunday that Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., has tested positive for the coronavirus. Paul in recent days had contact with many other senators, and his announcement triggered a discussion about whether senators should immediately return home or self-quarantine. Sens. Mike Lee and Mitt Romney, both Utah Republicans, said later Sunday that they would be self-quarantining for two weeks and would have to miss floor votes after having had “extended” interactions with Paul.

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Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said he is concerned that other senators could be infected.

“I am concerned about every American. This thing is incredibly infectious, so I am concerned about every American,” he said. “Now senators, as a rule, tend to be a little bit older, so senators are at an increased risk for complications. But, by the way, not as high risk as a nursing home. And so we just need to be concerned about everybody right now.”

Democratic senators learned of Paul’s coronavirus test while they were in their Democratic caucus meeting Sunday, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the meeting. About half the senators were in the room, with the rest calling in by conference call. Once the Paul news came out, the senators on the phone urged those in the room to leave immediately and to stop congregating in the room.

But other senators pointed out that there’s no provision for the Senate to vote unless senators are physically present and that they can’t just all go home.

According to details of the bill released Thursday, Senate Republicans propose to give a $1,200 check to every American adult with an income under $75,000, decreasing gradually after that and zeroing out at $99,000 income. Checks would fall to $600 for those with little or no income tax liability, and $500 would be added in per child. The eligibility would be based on 2018 tax filings.

Meanwhile, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has proposed universal $2,000 checks per month “for the duration of the crisis.” Other Senate Democrats have suggested quarterly checks that begin at $2,000 per person, decreasing over time based on economic triggers.

The total coronavirus package McConnell released would cost about $1 trillion. Already, Congress has approved — and Trump has signed — coronavirus aid legislation that provides free coronavirus testing and ensures paid emergency leave, among other measures.

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Originally published at https://www.nbcnews.com on March 23, 2020

[power-of-vetos]

remember when metta world peace voted to evict chuck when he actually wanted him to stay hahdjdj i will never forget

[davonne-rogers]

Dina saying “I vict to evote Tom” this season and Metta accidentally voting to evict Chuck last season is why Celebrity Big Brother should be a mainstay.

[orbemnews]

Democrats Look to Smooth the Way for Biden’s Infrastructure Plan WASHINGTON — Senior Democrats on Monday proposed a tax increase that could partly finance President Biden’s plans to pour trillions of dollars into infrastructure and other new government programs, as party leaders weighed an aggressive strategy to force his spending proposals through Congress over unified Republican opposition. The moves were the start of a complex effort by Mr. Biden’s allies on Capitol Hill to pave the way for another huge tranche of federal spending after the $1.9 trillion stimulus package that was enacted this month. The president is set to announce this week the details of his budget, including his much-anticipated infrastructure plan. He is scheduled to travel to Pittsburgh on Wednesday to describe the first half of a “Build Back Better” proposal that aides say will include a total of $3 trillion in new spending and up to an additional $1 trillion in tax credits and other incentives. Yet with Republicans showing early opposition to such a large plan and some Democrats resistant to key details, the proposals will be more difficult to enact than the pandemic aid package, which Democrats muscled through the House and Senate on party-line votes. In the House, where Mr. Biden can currently afford to lose only eight votes, a Democratic congressman from New York warned that he would not support the president’s plan unless it eliminated a rule that prevents taxpayers from deducting more than $10,000 in local and state taxes from their federal income taxes. He is one of a handful of House Democrats who are calling on the president to repeal the provision. And in the Senate, where most major legislation requires 60 votes to advance, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, was exploring an unusual maneuver that could allow Democrats to once again use reconciliation — the same fast-track budget process they used for the stimulus plan — to steer his spending plans through Congress in the next few months even if Republicans were unanimously opposed. While an aide to Mr. Schumer said a final decision had not been made to pursue such a strategy, the prospect, discussed on the condition of anonymity, underscored the lengths to which Democrats were willing to go to push through Mr. Biden’s agenda. The president’s initiatives will feature money for traditional infrastructure projects like rebuilding roads, bridges and water systems; spending to advance a transition to a lower-carbon energy system, like electric vehicle charging stations and the construction of energy-efficient buildings; investments in emerging industries like advanced batteries; education efforts like free community college and universal prekindergarten; and measures to help women work and earn more, like increased support for child care. The proposals are expected to be partly offset by a wide range of tax increases on corporations and high earners. In Pittsburgh, Mr. Biden will lay out “the first of two equally critical packages to rebuild our economy and create better-paying jobs for American workers,” Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, told reporters on Monday. “He’ll talk this week about investments we need to make in domestic manufacturing, R & D, the caregiving economy and infrastructure,” she added. “In the coming weeks, the president will lay out his vision for a second package that focuses squarely on creating economic security for the middle class through investments in child care, health care, education and other areas.” Mr. Biden’s budget office is also expected this week to release his spending request for the next fiscal year, which is separate from the infrastructure plan. White House officials said it would lay out funding levels agency by agency, so that congressional committees could begin to write appropriations bills for next year. For the first time in a decade, they will not be limited by spending caps imposed by Congress. (Lawmakers have agreed to break those caps in recent years.) That request will not include Mr. Biden’s tax plans, the officials said. The administration’s full budget will be presented to Congress this spring. For now, some Democrats are already jockeying to make sure that their proposals are part of the plan. Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, and a group of liberal Democrats on Monday proposed scaling back a provision in the tax code that allows wealthy heirs to reduce what they pay on assets they inherit, known as stepped-up basis. The proposal reflects one of Mr. Biden’s campaign promises, and officials have suggested that it could be used to fund his infrastructure plans. Current law reduces the taxes that heirs owe on assets that appreciate over time. Say a person buys $1 million worth of stock, and the value of that stock rises to $10 million before the person dies. If the person sold the stock before death, she would owe taxes on a $9 million gain. But if she died first, and her heirs immediately sold the stocks she gave them, they would not owe any capital gains taxes. Under the new proposal, which exempts $1 million in gains, the heirs would owe taxes on the remaining $8 million gain. The full exemption reduces federal tax revenues by more than $40 billion a year. It was unclear on Monday how much the Democratic plan would raise in revenues to help Mr. Biden’s spending efforts. Other Democrats pushed the president to include further tax cuts in his plan. Representative Tom Suozzi of New York said in an interview on Monday that he would not support changes to the tax code without a full repeal of the so-called SALT cap, which limits the amount of local and state taxes that can be deducted from federal income taxes. That change largely hurt higher-income households in high-tax states like California, Maryland and New York. House Democrats passed legislation in 2019 that would have temporarily removed the cap, but it stalled in the Senate and attempts to include it in pandemic relief legislation were unsuccessful. “It has to be elevated as part of the conversation,” Mr. Suozzi said. “There’s a lot of different talk about going big and going bold and making significant changes to the tax code. I want to make SALT part of the conversation.” Frequently Asked Questions About the New Stimulus Package How big are the stimulus payments in the bill, and who is eligible? The stimulus payments would be $1,400 for most recipients. Those who are eligible would also receive an identical payment for each of their children. To qualify for the full $1,400, a single person would need an adjusted gross income of $75,000 or below. For heads of household, adjusted gross income would need to be $112,500 or below, and for married couples filing jointly that number would need to be $150,000 or below. To be eligible for a payment, a person must have a Social Security number. Read more. What would the relief bill do about health insurance? Buying insurance through the government program known as COBRA would temporarily become a lot cheaper. COBRA, for the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, generally lets someone who loses a job buy coverage via the former employer. But it’s expensive: Under normal circumstances, a person may have to pay at least 102 percent of the cost of the premium. Under the relief bill, the government would pay the entire COBRA premium from April 1 through Sept. 30. A person who qualified for new, employer-based health insurance someplace else before Sept. 30 would lose eligibility for the no-cost coverage. And someone who left a job voluntarily would not be eligible, either. Read more What would the bill change about the child and dependent care tax credit? This credit, which helps working families offset the cost of care for children under 13 and other dependents, would be significantly expanded for a single year. More people would be eligible, and many recipients would get a bigger break. The bill would also make the credit fully refundable, which means you could collect the money as a refund even if your tax bill was zero. “That will be helpful to people at the lower end” of the income scale, said Mark Luscombe, principal federal tax analyst at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting. Read more. What student loan changes are included in the bill? There would be a big one for people who already have debt. You wouldn’t have to pay income taxes on forgiven debt if you qualify for loan forgiveness or cancellation — for example, if you’ve been in an income-driven repayment plan for the requisite number of years, if your school defrauded you or if Congress or the president wipes away $10,000 of debt for large numbers of people. This would be the case for debt forgiven between Jan. 1, 2021, and the end of 2025. Read more. What would the bill do to help people with housing? The bill would provide billions of dollars in rental and utility assistance to people who are struggling and in danger of being evicted from their homes. About $27 billion would go toward emergency rental assistance. The vast majority of it would replenish the so-called Coronavirus Relief Fund, created by the CARES Act and distributed through state, local and tribal governments, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. That’s on top of the $25 billion in assistance provided by the relief package passed in December. To receive financial assistance — which could be used for rent, utilities and other housing expenses — households would have to meet several conditions. Household income could not exceed 80 percent of the area median income, at least one household member must be at risk of homelessness or housing instability, and individuals would have to qualify for unemployment benefits or have experienced financial hardship (directly or indirectly) because of the pandemic. Assistance could be provided for up to 18 months, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition. Lower-income families that have been unemployed for three months or more would be given priority for assistance. Read more. Mr. Suozzi is among the Democrats who have requested a meeting with Mr. Biden to discuss repealing the cap, according to a letter obtained by The New York Times. “No SALT, no dice,” declared another Democrat, Representative Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey. “There’s plenty of ways, in my opinion, to raise revenue and reinstate SALT,” he said in an interview, adding that he wanted to see the full details of the proposal. Ms. Psaki said on Monday that administration officials “look forward to working with a broad coalition of members of Congress to gather their input and ideas, and determine the path forward, create good jobs and make America more competitive.” While members of both parties have said they support a major infrastructure initiative, Republicans have balked at the details of Mr. Biden’s opening bid, which includes not only sweeping investments in traditional public works but also more ambitious proposals to tackle climate change and education, and tax increases to help offset the considerable costs. “Unfortunately, it looks like this is not going to head in the direction I had hoped,” Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, said at an event in his state. “My advice to the administration is: If you want to do an infrastructure bill, let’s do an infrastructure bill. Let’s don’t turn it into a massive effort to raise taxes on businesses and individuals.” “I’d love to do an infrastructure bill,” he added. “I’m not interested in raising taxes across the board on America. I think it will send our economy in the wrong direction.” Should Democratic lawmakers try to move Mr. Biden’s plan through the regular legislative process and overcome the 60-vote filibuster threshold, at least 10 Republicans would need to join them. But the reconciliation process allows a fiscal package included in the budget resolution to be shielded from a filibuster. Mr. Schumer has asked the Senate’s top rule-enforcer whether Democrats can revisit the budget blueprint that was approved last month to include the infrastructure plan, which would enable them to undertake a second reconciliation process before the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30 and pass it with a simple majority. Because there is no precedent for passing two reconciliation packages in the same budget year with the same blueprint, Elizabeth MacDonough, the parliamentarian, will have to issue guidance on whether doing so is permissible under Senate rules. If Democrats succeed, they could potentially use the reconciliation maneuver at least two more times this calendar year to push through more of Mr. Biden’s agenda. Source link Orbem News #Bidens #Democrats #infrastructure #Plan #smooth

[dipulb3]

Analysis: Impeachment complicates Biden's efforts to unify

New Post has been published on https://appradab.com/analysis-impeachment-complicates-bidens-efforts-to-unify/

Analysis: Impeachment complicates Biden's efforts to unify

After four exhausting years of Trump that left this country deeply divided and democracy hanging by a thread, the nation breathed easier when Trump decamped Wednesday to Mar-a-Lago, his slashing vitriol silenced by a permanent suspension on Twitter. Next month’s trial will bring the outcast former President back to center stage, giving him yet another chance to claim that he is a victim in a never-ending partisan witch hunt and handing him a platform to rally his supporters at a time when he might have otherwise had none.

Biden is caught in an almost impossible vise as the nation reengages in the most polarizing kind of proceeding that exists in Washington. He has insisted that Trump must be held accountable for the attempted insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, but he has been notably cool to the prospect of impeachment as he tries to unravel Trump’s legacy with more than two dozen executive orders in his first three days in office, while simultaneously working the phones to build broader legislative consensus.

The looming trial — which has the potential to inflame partisan divisions just as quickly as Biden was trying to squelch them — offers no visible upside to a President who was elected on his promise to bring the warring parties of Washington together and forge compromise in a Capitol that has been defined by strife.

The hopes that Biden could bring a different tone to Washington — which were so bright on Inauguration Day — were complicated by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s announcement that the House would deliver the impeachment article charging Trump with “incitement of insurrection” to the Senate on Monday evening. Senators will be sworn in for the trial the next day, according to the calendar outlined by Schumer, with trial arguments slated to start on February 9.

The delay in the trial’s start will be helpful to Biden because only two of his Cabinet nominees have been approved by the Senate so far — a much slower pace than his predecessors. Biden underscored that point Friday when asked whether he favored Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell’s timeline for a mid-February impeachment trial. “The more time we have to get up and running and meet these crises, the better,” Biden replied at the end of a White House event about executive actions on the economy.

Senate unlikely to convict

Biden has been circumspect on whether he believes there is any point to holding a Senate impeachment trial for a President who has already left office, answering virtually every question by stating that he will leave the timing and mechanics of a trial up to Senate leaders.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki crisply shut down questions about Biden’s more substantive views on impeachment — and whether Trump should be barred from holding federal office in the future — by pointing out that the President ousted Trump from the White House through the electoral process.

“He ran against him because he thought he was unfit to serve, and he’s no longer here because President Biden beat him,” Psaki said during the White House news briefing Friday. “We’ll leave the steps — the accountability steps — to Congress to determine.”

The question of the futility of an impeachment trial at this point is even more salient now given that the Senate looks increasingly unlikely to convict Trump, according to reporting by Appradab’s Manu Raju, Ted Barrett and Jeremy Herb. Convicting Trump would require 17 Republican senators to vote with the 50 Democrats in the Senate, a tall order on any legislative matter, let alone one as fraught as this one.

Though there is disagreement among rank-and-file Republicans about how Trump should be punished for his role in the riot — with conviction dangling the possibility that Trump could be barred from holding federal office in the future — many Republicans are now also questioning whether it is constitutional to try a president who has already left office.

The argument about constitutionality is serving as a useful dodge for GOP senators who are wary of Trump’s punishing instincts — allowing them to avoid alienating his base voters, while potentially getting them off the hook with more moderate constituents who were angered by Trump’s role in the Capitol riot, seeded by the blizzard of lies he told about the November election results.

“I don’t know what the vote will be, but I think the chance of two-thirds is nil,” Sen. John Cornyn, a Texas Republican, told Appradab.

‘Americans are going hungry’

Through almost all of his other actions this week, Biden signaled that he was trying to move Americans beyond the Trump era, not just in policy but also in tone. Swearing in his new employees, Biden told them that if he heard them disrespecting or talking down to another colleague, he would fire them on the spot — underscoring that he believes everyone deserves to be treated with the dignity and decency that has been “missing in a big way the past four years.” Aside from that comment, when given the chance to take a shot at Trump, he has generally avoided it — describing the letter the former President left him, for example, as “generous.”

Biden alienated some Republicans this week by seeking to undo some of Trump’s most controversial policies through executive actions — halting construction of the wall at the US-Mexico border, canceling the Keystone XL pipeline, rejoining the Paris climate accord and rescinding Trump’s ban on travel from predominantly Muslim countries.

But the new President also placed great emphasis on actions he was taking that could garner support from both parties: measures to speed up vaccine distribution like invoking the Defense Production Act to produce more supplies like needles or specialized syringes that could extract more vaccine from each vial; plans to accelerate the reopening of schools; an extension of moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures; and policies aimed at curbing food insecurity in the midst of the pandemic, which has been a concern for both Democrats and Republicans.

Pointing to the road ahead as he outlined some of the economy-focused executive actions that he was taking on Friday, Biden underscored that there were constraints on what he could do alone with the stroke of his pen — and made another urgent plea to members of Congress to come to the negotiating table on his $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package.

With the US Senate divided 50-50, Schumer and McConnell are still wrangling over a power-sharing agreement in the Senate that will determine the number of seats each party controls the chamber’s committees. Talks have stalled over McConnell’s demand that Schumer preserve the filibuster.

While Biden is already facing significant resistance among Republicans about the cost of the package, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese warned that Americans may tumble into an even deeper medical crisis and “economic hole” without it.

Biden noted that another 900,000 Americans have joined the ranks of the unemployed, according to economic data this week, while many families are still being forced to drive up to food banks just to feed their children. In an argument for his legislative package attuned to Republican concerns, he said there is a “growing economic consensus that we must act decisively and boldly to grow the economy,” and that it is “a smart fiscal investment” that will help America retain its competitive edge around the world. (He noted at one point that Trump’s former economic adviser, Kevin Hassett, has spoken in favor of the proposal that he has outlined).

“This almost doesn’t have a partisan piece to it,” Biden said plaintively.

“I don’t believe the people of this country just want to stand by and watch their friends and their neighbors, coworkers, fellow Americans go hungry, lose their homes, or lose their sense of dignity and hope and respect,” he said Friday. “I don’t believe Democrats or Republicans are going hungry and losing jobs; I believe Americans are going hungry and losing their jobs.”

“We have the tools to fix it.”

But Biden still has a great deal of persuading to do as he tries to drum up the political will for another bipartisan piece of legislation using those tools. As he reaches out, there are signs that the two camps are retreating back to their familiar corners — with impeachment standing as the biggest obstacle in the new President’s way.

[the-demure-abstract]

Democrats will try to approve $2,000 direct checks, putting Republicans on the spot

(put your money where your mouth is🤪 Repugnuts)

House Democrats will bring forward a bill to provide direct checks of $2,000 to individuals on Thursday, after President Trump called on Congress to amend a newly passed coronavirus relief bill to increase direct payments to $2,000, with $4,000 for a couple. Speaker Nancy Pelosi said the House will try to pass the bill by unanimous consent — meaning that only one Republican member opposing the proposal needs to be present in order to block the bill.

Mr. Trump indicated in a video posted to Twitter on Tuesday that he would not sign the $900 billion relief package passed by both houses of Congress on Monday. The package provides $600 in direct payments for adults making up to $75,000 per year and children, with $2,400 for a family of four.

The president's demand comes after weeks of negotiations, with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin playing an active part in determining the final numbers before the relief bill and an omnibus spending package passed with overwhelming majorities. By holding a voice vote on Thursday, Democrats will attempt to call Mr. Trump's bluff and force Republicans to go on the record for their opposition to increasing direct payments from $600 to $2,000.

But Mr. Trump's potential refusal to sign the current bill could have dire consequences, particularly if Congress is not able to convene to override a possible veto until after Christmas. The bill renewed relief provisions set to expire at the end of the month, such as critical emergency unemployment programs and an eviction moratorium. If these programs are allowed to expire, roughly 12 million Americans are set to lose unemployment benefits the day after Christmas. The bill also included an additional $300 per week in unemployment insurance and aid for small businesses.

In a tweet later on Tuesday, Pelosi noted that House Democrats had been calling for a larger relief package for months.

"Republicans repeatedly refused to say what amount the President wanted for direct checks. At last, the President has agreed to $2,000 — Democrats are ready to bring this to the Floor this week by unanimous consent. Let's do it!" Pelosi said. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also called on Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to bring a bill increasing the direct payments to the Senate floor, saying in a tweet that "the American people deserve it."

Pelosi said in a letter to colleagues on Wednesday that Republicans had told her and Schumer that they would be unwilling to accept direct payments above $600.

"In the bipartisan negotiations, Leader Schumer and I repeatedly asked Republicans what would be the highest number the President would accept for direct payments, and they responded with Sphinx-like silence. In the negotiations, they would never go above $600 and in some cases, proposed $500," Pelosi said.

Even if the House is able to pass the bill by unanimous consent in the House, with no Republicans offering opposition, it is unlikely that it will pass in the Senate. GOP Senator Ron Johnson twice last week blocked proposals by Independent Senator Bernie Sanders and Republican Senator Josh Hawley to provide $1,200 direct checks. Johnson argued that spending money on direct checks would increase the deficit, and amount to "mortgaging our kids' future."

Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, a staunch ally of the president, said in a tweet Wednesday that he supports Mr. Trump's "demand to increase direct payments for long-suffering Americans to $2,000 per person." But it is still unclear whether McConnell would even bring such a bill to the floor.

The previous bipartisan relief bill passed by Congress in March, the CARES Act, provided direct checks of $1,200 for adults and $500 for children. The House passed a massive $3 trillion relief package in May, the HEROES Act, which would have provided direct payments of $1,200 to adults and children, with up to $6,000 per household.

However, McConnell refused to bring the HEROES Act to the Senate floor, arguing that it was too large and contained too many provisions unrelated to the coronavirus. Mr. Trump also slammed the bill, saying that the inclusion of direct funding for state and local governments amounted to a bailout for blue states.

The House then passed a revised, $2 trillion version of the HEROES Act in October, which still included the direct payments. However, McConnell still refused to bring the legislation to the Senate floor, and instead tried to pass a targeted $500 billion bill that did not include direct payments.

(let's see Republicans spin this 🤨)

[markvillacampa]

Week 39, 2020

NVIDIA to Acquire Arm for $40 Billion, Creating World’s Premier Computing Company for the Age of AI

NVIDIA - September 13, 2020 - 6 min

This purchase will deeply influence the future of computing. We probably won’t see the effects for 5-10 years.

Nvidia’s Integration Dreams

Stratechery by Ben Thompson - September 15, 2020 - 19 min

Great overview of the NVidia-ARM acquisition with historic and industry context.

SiFive hires Qualcomm exec as CEO for RISC-V alternatives to Nvidia-Arm

VentureBeat - September 17, 2020 - 5 min

RISC-V is an instruction set architecture, just like ARM, that companies can use to build chips. The biggest difference is price: while manufacturers need to pay royalties to ARM for using it’s architecture, RISC-V is completely free.

An update for our TikTok family

TikTok - September 20, 2020 - 3 min

The USA-TikTok saga is closer to an end:

“Both Oracle and Walmart will take part in a TikTok Global pre-IPO financing round in which they can take up to a 20% cumulative stake in the company. We will also maintain and expand the US as TikTok Global’s headquarters while bringing 25,000 jobs across the country.”

How a marked-up term sheet and messy rollout threw TikTok deal into disarray

Reuters - September 23, 2020 - 5 min

Some of the terms of the deal are not 100% clear yet:

“ByteDance said it would hold an 80% stake in TikTok Global itself, until it launches an initial public offering in the next twelve months, and that it would then gradually reduce its stake.”

“Oracle said on Monday that ByteDance would not have a stake in TikTok Global, and that it would be ByteDance’s investors who would be awarded the remaining 80% stake.”

Building YouTube Shorts, a new way to watch & create on YouTube

Youtube - 3 min

YouTube is launching their TikTok competitor, called Shorts.

Airtable raises $185M and launches new low-code and automation features

TechCrunch - September 14, 2020 - 5 min

“The spreadsheet-centric database and no-code platform Airtable today announced that it has raised a $185 million Series D funding round, putting the company at a $2.585 billion post-money valuation.”

The Billionaire Who Wanted To Die Broke… Is Now Officially Broke

Forbes - September 15, 2020 - 7 min

“It took decades, but Chuck Feeney, the former billionaire cofounder of retail giant Duty Free Shoppers has finally given all his money away to charity. He has nothing left now—and he couldn’t be happier.”

Delivery Hero strengthens its global footprint and acquires Glovo’s operations in Latin America

Delivery Hero - September 16, 2020 - 5 min

The deal is valued at €230M.

Will Smith and Airbnb team up so fans can now stay at the ‘Fresh Prince’ mansion

The Loop - September 14, 2020 - 4 min

Stripe Workers Who Relocate Get $20,000 Bonus and a Pay Cut

Bloomberg - September 15, 2020 - 3 min

A classic carrot and stick strategy. Relevant comic strip.

Opendoor, a Leading Digital Platform for Residential Real Estate, Announces Plans to Become Publicly-traded via Merger with Social Capital Hedosophia

Businesswire - September 15, 2020 - 11 min

“The transaction values Opendoor at an enterprise value of $4.8 billion, and is expected to provide up to $1.0 billion in cash proceeds”

Chamath launches SPAC, SPAC and SPAC as he SPACs the world with SPACs

TechCrunch - September 19, 2020 - 2 min

Chamath Palihapitiya is behind last year’s Virgin Galactic and now Opendoor’s SPACs. And he’s planning more.

Buffett-backed Snowflake’s value doubles in stock market’s largest software debut

Reuters - September 17, 2020 - 3 min

“Snowflake shares started trading at $245 apiece on Wednesday, more than double its $120 IPO price, and closed up 111% at $253.93 to value it at over $70 billion.”

Amp It Up!

Linkedin - May 13, 2018 - 17 min

This 2018 essay from the CEO of Snowflake’s reads like an alpha business bro parroting the same old startup advice down to Steve Jobs quotes. You will probably not learn anything new, but it serves as a good primer into the mind behind the biggest software IPO pop ever.

Uber backup driver charged in fatal 2018 self-driving car crash

The Verge - September 16, 2020 - 2 min

Uber is throwing under the bus the backup driver that was overseeing the self-driving car when it hit a cyclist.

The TinySeed Investment Thesis — TinySeed: The Startup Accelerator for Bootstrappers

TinySeed - 15 min

“We believe investing broadly into the earliest stages of the Independent SaaS market — specifically, the set of B2B SaaS companies who are not necessarily reliant on traditional venture capital — can provide venture returns with less than venture risk.”

Zwift, maker of a popular indoor training app, just landed a whopping $450 million in funding led by KKR

TechCrunch - September 16, 2020 - 3 min

The exercise-at-home market is booming, and this Peloton competitor is cashing in.

Affirm Raises $500M Series G Round

Affirm - September 17, 2020 - 2 min

The company, founded by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin, offers a point-of-sale (POS), buy now, pay later (BNPL) service.

Klarna raises $650 million at a $10.6 billion valuation

TechCrunch - September 15, 2020 - 3 min

“Klarna’s main product is an alternative payment method on e-commerce platforms. It lets you buy now and pay later over three or four installments with 0% interest.”

Evernote’s CEO on the company’s long, tricky journey to fix itself

Protocol - September 16, 2020 - 10 min

Evernote’s CEO on how they had to undergo a 18-month deep code rewrite that was the root of many of the product’s longstanding issues. Technical debt is real and it can undermine your company. Now, they’ll try to take on note-taking newcomers like Roam and Notion.

Chime is now worth $14.5 billion, surging past Robinhood as the most valuable U.S. consumer fintech

CNBC - September 18, 2020 - 4 min

“In this latest round, a Series F that raised $485 million, Chime more than doubled its valuation from December and is worth almost 900% more than just 18 months ago, when it hit a $1.5 billion valuation.”

How does the laser technology in EUV lithography work?

Laser Focus World - August 29, 2019 - 12 min

There’s a new laser technology for semiconductor manufacturing that’s been in the making for quite a while but could signify a big leap in the industry.

The Era of Visual Studio Code

Roben Kleene - September 21, 2020 - 18 min

Great overview of the history of text editors and why Visual Studio might stay at the top for a while.

Nikola shows the tech hype cycle can’t stop worshipping founders

The Verge - September 25, 2020 - 7 min

The founder and CEO of electric truck company Nikola resigned after a report last week suggested the company has overstated the technological capabilities.

The company’s shares fell 33 percent in two weeks.

My semiconductor conspiracy theories

‌Aishwarya Nagarajan - September 20, 2020 - 8 min

The case for how a semiconductor fabrication company in Taiwan could spark the next world war.

How we used data to design modern record certification plaques

Sony Music Data and Insights - September 21, 2020 - 5 min

“Record labels regularly present their artists with recording certification plaques to celebrate milestones in the journey of a song or an album.”

Sony redesigns the record certification plaques for 2020 using data science.

Microsoft Pledges to Get Gaming Service on iPhones

Bloomberg - September 21, 2020 - 1 min

Following Apple’s AppStore rules, Microsoft said they’s bringing xCloud to iOS. We’ll see what the implementation finally looks like, as the rules estate each game needs to be submitted separately as an independent app.

Microsoft is acquiring Bethesda Softworks parent company ZeniMax

The Verge - September 21, 2020 - 2 min

“Microsoft has agreed to acquire ZeniMax Media, the parent company of Doom and Fallout studio Bethesda Softworks, for $7.5 billion in cash”

Zynga co-founder’s Playco is already a mobile gaming unicorn

TechCrunch - September 21, 2020 - 3 min

I’m always wary of startups with huge valuations pre-launch. Specially if it’s in the gaming industry where it’s virtually impossible to predict what users will like next.

QR codes bring helpful context to the Apple Store experience

9to5Mac - September 21, 2020 - 3 min

There’s a bigger pandemic trend of using QR codes to create contactless experiences. They mainly substitute shared pieces of printed text (e.g. restaurant menus) and, in this case, shared objects.

Gig Economy Company Launches Uber, But for Evicting People

Vice - September 21, 2020 - 6 min

“The website also featured a quote, attributed to The New York Times […] A search reveals this phrase hasn’t appeared in the Times. The company did not respond to requests for comment or a source for this quote, but the mention of the Times has since disappeared from its website.”

“At the time of writing, Civvl and OnQall did not return requests for comment, but did appear to block the author’s IP address from visiting OnQall.com. ”

This is what I call culture-market fit.

Creating Your Own Widgets: A New Category of Apps Emerges

Macstories - September 21, 2020 - 16 min

Since iOS 14 was launched, there’s been an outpouring of apps to customize your home screen, and videos to tech you how to. Turns out people like to customize the devices they use for most of the day.

On Widget Shaming – 512 Pixels

512 Pixels - September 23, 2020 - 2 min

On the other side, people are critiquing many peoples home screens as lacking “taste”. But taste is subjective.

Following TechCrunch reporting, Palantir rapidly removes language allowing founders to “unilaterally adjust their total voting power”

TechCrunch - September 21, 2020 - 2 min

“Palantir has now filed a sixth amendment with the SEC just a few hours after it filed its previous amendment, and the company has removed all references to this special mechanism from its SEC filing.”

Aston Martin reveals first racing simulator: The AMR-C01

Aston Martin - September 14, 2020 - 4 min

If you’ve always wanted to feel like James Bond while driving an Aston Martin from the comfort of your home, this is your opportunity. The experience can be yours for a mere $75k. But be quick, units are limited to 150.

Microsoft says it detected active attacks leveraging Zerologon vulnerability

ZDNet - September 24, 2020 - 2 min

The Zerologon vulnerability is one of the worst in recent times. Update your Windows machines.

Daniel Ek will invest over $1 billion in European moonshots

Protocol - September 24, 2020 - 1 min

More European startups success stories will hopefully help fuel 🤑 the European tech ecosystem.

Anduril among companies tapped to build the Air Force’s ‘internet of things’ for war

TechCrunch - September 24, 2020 - 3 min

The Ex-Oculus founder military drone company is among the ones chosen by the Air Force as supplier.

Also, “Internet of things for war” is dystopian AF.

How Twitter Survived Its Biggest Hack—and Plans to Stop the Next One

WIRED - September 24, 2020 - 14 min

The most surprising takeaway is many Twitter employees were not using physical 2-Factor authentication (using a physical USB key instead of a SMS or TOTP code).

Spotify, Epic, Tile, Match, and more are rallying developers against Apple’s App Store policies

The Verge - September 24, 2020 - 3 min

They’re calling themselves the Coalition for App Fairness, and their aim is to “create a level playing field for app businesses and give people freedom of choice on their devices.”

Ring’s newest security camera is a $249 autonomous indoor drone shipping in 2021

TechCrunch - September 24, 2020 - 4 min

Amazon announces new cloud gaming service called Luna

The Verge - September 24, 2020 - 3 min

Amazon is joining Google Stadia and Microsoft’s xCloud in the cloud gaming space.

Expanding to the US

Index Ventures

Index Ventures, one of the biggest VCs in Europe, is launching a guide for European startups to expand to the USA, based on experiences from some of the biggest success stories like Spotify.

Amazon disavows $500 “Prime Bike,” says it has no formal connection to the product

The Verge - September 23, 2020 - 2 min

Not even Amazon can police Amazon for Amazon counterfeit products.

Firefox usage is down 85% despite Mozilla’s top exec pay going up 400%

calpaterson.com - September 22, 2020 - 11 min

Journalists Are Leaving the Noisy Internet for Your Email Inbox

The New York Times - September 23, 2020 - 6 min

I wonder if Substack is simply subsidizing a few tens of creators to build momentum and absorb the long tail of writers that will not make a fulltime income in the platform but will increase their bottom line.

Twitter to start testing voice DMs

The Verge - September 23, 2020 - 1 min

▶ ◉──────── 02:37

Microsoft’s Edge browser is arriving on Linux in beta next month

The Verge - September 22, 2020 - 1 min

This is the first time a Microsoft browser will be officially supported in Linux.

Old television kept wiping out village’s broadband for 18 months

CNN - September 22, 2020 - 2 min

“For 18 months, residents of a village in Wales have been mystified as to why their broadband internet crashed every morning.”

“Now engineers have finally identified the reason: A second-hand television that emitted a signal that interfered with the connection.”

Russia wants to ban the use of secure protocols such as TLS 1.3, DoH, DoT, ESNI

ZDNet - September 22, 2020 - 3 min

Following in China’s steps. This is proof the latest security protocols work well to prevent espionage.

Recurring Revenue: The Rise of an Asset Class

Medium - September 21, 2020 - 15 min

Apple CEO Impressed by Remote Work, Sees Permanent Changes

Bloomberg - September 22, 2020 - 2 min

“Cook said he doesn’t believe Apple will “return to the way we were because we’ve found that there are some things that actually work really well virtually.””

Apple is unique among big tech companies in their adamant reject of remote work. But it looks like hell just froze over.

[go-redgirl]

Exclusive — President Donald Trump: ‘Obstructionist’ Nancy Pelosi ’Wasn’t Interested’ in Helping People in Need

President Donald Trump told Breitbart News in an exclusive interview on Monday afternoon in the Oval Office that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer are “obstructionists” who were not “interested” in helping people in need.

Asked to open the nearly 30-minute interview why he needed to continue coronavirus economic recovery aid via executive order instead of through legislation passed by Congress, Trump told Breitbart News that it is because “we have obstructionists on the other side.”

“Because Nancy Pelosi and Cryin’ Chuck are absolutely obstructionists,” Trump said. “All they wanted to do was to get money to bail out Democratic cities and states that have been run poorly. They want bailout money. The bailout money is about a trillion dollars and it’s unacceptable. That’s about 90 percent of what they wanted.”

In addition to the bailout money for failed blue states and Democrat-run cities, Trump said that Pelosi and Schumer were adamant about appropriating money toward the creation of a mail-in-voting system that he said would result in a “rigged election.”

“In addition, they wanted money so that the election would end up being rigged. It would be a rigged election,” Trump said. “This would be a rigged election. This is going to be one of the great messes of all time if they’re allowed to do it, if the courts don’t stop it. So we’ll see what happens.”

Asked if Pelosi should call Democrats back to Washington—she let them all go home on recess—to continue negotiations, he said he does not believe she or the Democrats were interested in helping people in need.

“She wasn’t interested in the people,” Trump said. “She wasn’t interested in anything other than getting bailout money for her friends who are doing a bad job running the cities and states. Every one of those—practically every one of them is in trouble.”

Asked if he meant by that that he believes Democrats are willing to hurt people to achieve their political agenda, he said he does.

“Yeah, I guess—it depends on your definition of hurt,” Trump said. “But certainly they’re doing things that are inappropriate. It’s pretty terrible.”

Trump said that despite Pelosi and Schumer refusing to agree with congressional Republicans and his administration—lead negotiators for the administration included Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows—his goal was to get cash directly into the hands of Americans who need it.

“We want to get money to the people,” Trump said.

On Saturday, while in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump signed a series of four executive orders. One sets up a system with the states that redirects emergency funds to be used to continue an additional $400 per week in unemployment payments to those who need it on top of whatever they’re getting from state unemployment programs. That is less than the $600 per week that the CARES Act passed in March, created in the early days of the pandemic, for those who lost jobs. 

A second includes a payroll tax cut, and a third defers student loan payments further, while the fourth order delays evictions for those still struggling in the pandemic.

Asked about the orders and what they do, Trump explained that the payroll tax cut and the additional $400 per week in unemployment payments are both big steps in the right direction but that he would have wanted to do more than the $400 per week if not for Pelosi and Schumer obstructing that.

“Number one, the payroll tax cut is great. It’s a double—it’s employer and employee,” Trump said. “We already got one covered and now the other one is covered. So the payroll tax cut is a very big thing. Getting the money to the people is a very big thing, so we’re at 400 and the reason you can’t go higher than that is because they’ll need more money. We have a certain amount of money. So we’re giving as much as possible. But the reason we can’t go higher is because we would need additional funds. You understand?”

Trump also hyped efforts his administration is engaged in to cut prescription drug prices.

“You know something else we’re doing is prescription drug prices,” Trump said. “That’s separate but not really separate. We need a favored nations clause so whatever the country that’s paying the lowest price in the world, the United States has to match. Meaning they have to match as a price for the United States. 

That could bring down drug prices by 70 percent—seven oh. You ever hear that one before? Plus we do the rebates, plus we do the buy from other countries, like Canada buys for much less than the U.S. So Florida would be able to go out and buy their prescription drugs from Canada at 50 percent lower than they pay to a drug company for the exact same prescription. By the way, do you have any idea how big that is? Nobody has any idea.”

This is the first of several forthcoming pieces on Trump’s latest exclusive interview with Breitbart News in the Oval Office. Shortly after this interview, Trump gave a news conference in the White House briefing room that was interrupted as U.S. Secret Service officials ushered him from the room after agents shot an armed person outside the White House grounds at the corner of Pennsylvania and 17th Avenue. 

The president rejoined the briefing moments later to inform the press what had happened.

[sinrau]

BEDMINSTER, N.J. (AP) — Bypassing Congress, President Donald Trump on Saturday signed executive orders deferring payroll taxes for some Americans and extending unemployment benefits after negotiations on a new coronavirus rescue package collapsed.

Trump accused Democrats of loading up their rescue bill with priorities unrelated to the coronavirus. “We’ve had it,” he said at a news conference at his country club in Bedminister, New Jersey.

Trump said the payroll tax cut would apply to those earning less than $100,000 a year. He said that if he is reelected in November, he would look at the possibility of making the payroll tax permanent.

Extra aid for the unemployed will total $400 a week, a cut from the $600 that just expired.

Trump also signed executive orders holding off student loan payments and extending the freeze on evictions.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

BEDMINSTER, N.J. (AP) — Ready and willing to bypass elected lawmakers, President Donald Trump seemed set to claim the power to defer payroll taxes and extend expired unemployment benefits after negotiations with Congress on a new coronavirus rescue package collapsed.

The White House signaled Saturday that the president was soon expected to sign four executive orders, contending Washington’s gridlock had compelled him to act as the pandemic undermined the country’s economy and the November election nears. Trump scheduled an afternoon news conference at his country club in Bedminster, New Jersey.

Perhaps most crucially, he intended to extend the unemployment benefits that have run out, but it was not clear whether the assistance would remain at $600 a week or where the money would come from. He also planned to defer the payroll tax until the end of the year, hold off student loan payments and enforce a freeze on evictions.

Trump has largely stayed on the sidelines during the administration’s negotiations with congressional leaders. The talks, which broke down in recent days, were led on his side by chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin.

The president said at his club on Friday night that “if Democrats continue to hold this critical relief hostage I will act under my authority as president to get Americans the relief they need.”

Democrats had said they would lower their spending demands from $3.4 trillion to $2 trillion but said the White House needed to increase their offer. Republicans have proposed a $1 trillion plan.

White House aides have watched the talks break down with apprehension, fearful that failure to close a deal could further damage an economic recovery already showing signs of slowing down. Friday’s jobs report, though it beat expectations, was smaller than the past two months, in part because a resurgence of the virus has led to states rolling back their reopenings.

The president’s team believes the economy needs to stabilize and show signs of growth for him to have any chance at winning reelection. Aides were hoping to frame the expected executive orders signings as a sign that Trump was taking action in a time of crisis. But it also would reinforce the view that the president, who took office declaring he was a dealmaker, was unable to steer the process to an agreement.

Also, the anticipated orders would be smaller in scope than congressional legislation.

“This is not a perfect answer — we’ll be the first ones to say that,” Meadows said Friday as talks broke down. “But it is all that we can do and all the president can do within the confines of his executive power, and we’re going to encourage him to do it.”

Trump has not specified how the payroll tax deferral would work, and it was unclear whether he had the authority to take such an action without approval from Congress.

The move would not aid unemployed workers, who do not pay the tax when they are jobless, and would face bipartisan opposition in Congress. The cut, long a Trump wish, would affect payroll taxes that are intended to cover Medicare and Social Security benefits and take 7 percent of an employee’s income. Employers also pay 7.65% of their payrolls into the funds.

Both the House and Senate have left Washington, with members sent home on instructions to be ready to return for a vote on an agreement. With no deal in sight, their absence raised the possibility of a prolonged stalemate that stretches well into August and even September.

Often an impasse in Washington is of little consequence for the public — but not so this time. It would mean more hardship for millions of people who are losing enhanced jobless benefits and further damage for an economy pummeled by the still-raging coronavirus.

Friday’s negotiations at the Capitol added up to only “a disappointing meeting,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York. He said the White House had rejected an offer by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., to curb Democratic demands by about $1 trillion. Schumer urged the White House to “negotiate with Democrats and meet us in the middle. Don’t say it’s your way or no way.”

That Capitol Hill session followed a combative meeting Thursday evening that for the first time cast real doubt on the ability of the Trump administration and Democrats to come together on a fifth COVID-19 response bill.

Pelosi declared the talks all but dead until Meadows and Mnuchin give ground.

The breakdown in the negotiations is particularly distressing for schools, which have been counting on billions of dollars from Washington to help with the costs of reopening. But other priorities are also languishing, including a fresh round of $1,200 direct payments to most people, a cash infusion for the struggling Postal Service and money to help states hold elections in November.

Mnuchin said renewal of a $600 per-week pandemic jobless boost and huge demands by Democrats for aid to state and local governments are the key areas where they are stuck.

Democrats have offered to reduce her almost $1 trillion demand for state and local governments considerably, but some of Pelosi’s proposed cost savings would accrue chiefly because she would shorten the timeframe for benefits like food stamps.

Pelosi and Schumer continue to insist on a huge aid package to address a surge in cases and deaths, double-digit joblessness and the threat of poverty for millions of the newly unemployed.

Senate Republicans have been split, with roughly half of Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s rank and file opposed to another rescue bill at all. Four prior coronavirus response bills totaling almost $3 trillion have won approval on bipartisan votes despite intense wrangling, but conservatives have recoiled at the prospect of another Pelosi-brokered agreement with a whopping deficit-financed cost.

McConnell has kept his distance from the negotiations while coordinating with Mnuchin and Meadows.

Associated Press writer Andrew Taylor in Washington contributed to this report.

Trump extends unemployment benefits, defers payroll tax #web #website #copied #toread #highlight #link #news #read #blog #wordpresspost #posts #breaking news# #Sinrau #Nothiah #Sinrau29 #read #wordpress