#long term reform

[blackpilljesus]

I saw this from the female separatism subreddit & the responses are some of the biggest reasons for separatism et al (or extinction if I'm being candid here). Moids cant be reformed they are fully aware of the hell they force women to live in. MaIe achievement & happiness is rooted in female exploitation & life. Their glory days are based on our horrific days. No amount of love, kindness or facts will change maIes and we cannot happily or even neutrally coexist with them.

Main points across answers:

Many want to experiment but not permanently be women

They dont want to be in constant danger or lose their autonomy at the hands of maIes for merely existing

They dont want to deal with childbirth (& periods)

They dont want to have to share spaces with species much stronger than them with ulterior motives

It makes me go crazy seeing people give moids benefit of doubt for their evil like "maIes just dont understand", "we need to teach maIes", or claiming that maIe violence is a result of maIes struggling with (expressing) their feelings. I get that women love maIes and it can be hard to imagine that people can intentionally be so evil but it is what it is. MaIes have no problems expressing themselves, abusing women is what maIes choose to do because they enjoy & benefit from it - that is their expression.

MaIes see the same news of women being abused, raped, and killed like we do except rather than be disheartened or alarmed they're either apathetic or satisfied. It isn't aliens that's committing GBV it's maIes & maIes have no problem reminding women of this when women anger them (such as rape threats & threatening women they'll end up on the news/true crime). The victim blaming, denial, and derailment of misogyny is part of the game to keep the system alive, they know the events occured & are a systemic occurence they just dont care. Hell not only do they not care, they rejoice in it or get off on it.

MaIes set up environments that work in their favour which simultaneously ensures that women will lose. They know women are set up to live in damn near impossible conditions for us. It's normalised for women to defenselessly share personal & private spaces with beings much more stronger than them with ulterior motives for us, it's trap. It's interesting how these moids aren't saying that they'll just cover up and *poof* harrassment gone, or they'll just pick a nice guy & they'll be okay. MaIes know the net negative they are towards women.

MaIes know that childbirth is a painful process & what do they do? Demand it happens and make it even MORE painful for women. MaIes that impregnate women do not love or care for them. Pregnancy itself is dangerous & sometimes lethal, often comes with a range of health issues, to cause someone to be in that condition especially in a environment where abortions are illegal is reckless & unloving. Now imagine how sinister & full of hatred one has to be to impregnate someone and abuse them on top of that. Many women risk their health & lives to reproduce with a Y and they get abused by said Y instead of being taken care of. Deranged.

Realising that maIes are aware of the evil they inflict is one of the things that radicalised me. It isn't a miscommunication or ignorance issue, their violence is intended. They want control. The cruelty is the point. Instead of wasting time & energy trying to change maIes or hope that they "understand" one day, focus on yourself & other women (who prioritise women). Moids aren't oblivious to female pain they enjoy it. A lot of women treat maIe evil like it's a mistake on maIes part but it's calculated terrorism. I know that this will go over many womens heads as they refuse to hold strong negative sentiments about moids as a collective so if you're not a woman like that, take this post as a sanity check. You aren't crazy, it isn't all in your head.

[astralleywright]

i say a lot that ppl in cr fandom don't believe a better world is possible but they do, actually, they just think its a matter of individual choice. it's honestly far more idealistic and unrealistic than the idea of systematic change, which everyone who advocates for knows will be an incredibly messy and risky process, because it demands a continuous pattern of people being on their best behavior, often specifically in the face of the manipulation and abuse of the system.

Vespin shouldn't have tried to become a god, Zerxus shouldn't have trusted Asmodeus, Cognozuna shouldn't have teleported away, Opal shouldn't have put on the crown, Cassida shouldn't have helped build a god killing weapon. Ludinus should have gone to therapy. Ashton and Imogen and Dorian should have prayed more correctly. hell, even the Archeart should have just tried harder to convince their siblings not to start another apocalypse on Exandria. none of these bad things would happen if someone had simply been better than the Gods are ever expected to be.*

now, that isn't even true, but even if it was that's not how people work. and it would be one thing if these were all sourceless accidents, man vs. nature, but they are very much not! there's a specific, sentient power failing all of these people and causing massive collateral damage! and yet people don't talk about all the suffering that could be avoided if the Gods were better, smarter, more patient and kind or less violent and proud.* if they got over their trauma. if they didn't make imperfect choices under duress. it's textbook victim blaming logic, to obfuscate the cruelty of the powerful and attack the victimized, because to do otherwise is to reveal that the system itself is broken in a way that demands more than just individual change.

*the Gods, at least, that are advocating for the status quo in Exandria. and also the Gods that want to kill all mortals. we can't expect them to do better.

[arolesbianism]

Y'know the fun thing abt how I've set up the society that the main stalien cast comes from is that even the most broad general trends across stalien societies tend to not apply to them. So everytime I yap about how most herds form and the general trends in their societies I just get to remember mid yapping that basically none of this will ever be evident or even come up in the main story. Damn isolated motherfuckers

[wahbegan]

This is real, btw. The version of Project 2025 i'm looking at rn, it's on a different page, but it's in Chapter 4: Department of Defense, Section DOD Personnel, Subsection Needed Reforms: Recruitment and Retention, Item 3.

And this is just one of the horrifying things these dudes are proposing, the list goes on and on and on and on and on.

Now, this is run by The Heritage Foundation, which is a Conservative think-tank, not Trump himself. The Project has actually been publicly disavowed by Trump, and they can't officially back him, but many theorize he's publicly distancing himself from it because of one of its authors openly espousing a "second American Revolution" and that his remarks ring false when some politicians who are known close allies of Trump were involved in authoring it.

Regardless of whether or not the grifter is involved, though, this is the face of the Conservative Party. They are becoming more and more openly fascist by the day. This is beyond just Trump now, he was just some fucking guy who wanted power and attention, but his influence has been to embolden the Far Right to attempt to seize control and remake America into a militaristic, theocratic, white dictatorship where dissent is not tolerated. I'm not scaremongering, the pdf is available, they couch it in very formal language, but that is their end goal.

So yeah, if it stops the country i live in from going the way of all those poor countries the CIA fucked into a fascist coma during the Cold War, i'm voting for Joe Biden, i don't give a shit if the man is a corpse on a golden throne, i don't give a shit if he is personally signing off on the assassination of Palestinian civilians, i'm still voting for him, because he is still the one that is not going to ruin my fucking life and the lives of everyone i know. I know that's cold and brutal, but so is reality. One term, and the man's Supreme court appointments already overturned Roe v. Wade and his supporters stormed the Capitol. Nobody thinks it's going to happen to you until it does. America is not immune to totalitarianism, and i am not about to let some holier-than-thou internet activists and zoomers who can't be arsed to vote let this country turn into Nazi Germany 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Jesus Christ please vote idc if Biden is in hospice care we cannot let Trump become president again

[quantomeno]

I'm actually rather excited for the upcoming election because of the speculation going around that we might end up with a minority government.

People will make a big fuss of minority governments being chaotic or at the whims of the crossbench, but the Gillard government (our last hung parliament) was actually incredibly productive when judged by the amount of legislation it passed, having the highest of any government in our history (obviously one can question the quality of the legislation, but it at least puts paid to the idea minority governments never get anything done).

A Labor-led minority government might actually make some progress in this country, but even a Liberal-Led one might not be as terrible as the stagnant Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison years. It depends on the numbers (if they're only 1 seat short, its impact will be notable smaller), but having to deal with the crossbench (which is currently made up of a lot of environmentally-conscious MPs) should at least make things a little more interesting, regardless of who's in power.

There are a few main reasons why a minority government is expected:

Previous election results:

The previous election had the lowest percentage of first preference votes going to Labor and the Coalition. Labor is in government after only winning ~33% of the national 1st preference vote, and the Coalition ~32%. That is, about 1/3 Australians voted 1 for someone who wasn't Labor or Coalition. This suggests there's a sense of disenchantment with the major parties and people are willing to vote in minor parties or independents. The 2022 election resulted in the largest crossbench in recent history.

2. Low support for Albanese/Labor:

It's been reported that Albos' preferred PM ratings are slipping, making it increasingly likely he'll lose seats and he is already on a wafer-thin majority of only two seats. There's been a large turn against incumbent parties in elections world-wide, which has largely been attributed to high inflation and high interest rates etc, among other things. Labor is in an awkward position: voters will blame them for the cost of living crisis and they will need to convince them that more of the same will fix things. There's also Albanese's perceived lack of action and many progressive voters are rather unimpressed with his middle-of-the-road-don't-rock-the-boat way of running things.

3. The high bar for the Liberals:

While things look bad for the government, it's not all sunshine for Peter Dutton. The Coalition suffered historic losses in some of its prized electorates to the Teal independents and Dutton is not the sort of leader that could ever really win them back. Electoral boundaries have changed, however, for a lot of seats since 2022 and this muddles things a bit, partly due to those low major party preferences I mentioned earlier. For example, Kylea Tink, a 'Teal' (her colour is really pink to rhyme with her name, but she's often grouped with the Teals) has had her electorate divided amongst three others. There are a lot of seats that could change hands and it is quite possible the Coalition will take some seats off Labor, but while Labor only needs to lose two seats to lose majority, the Coalition needs to gain 18 (we lose a seat in parliament due to redistributions, but the minimum majority would still be 76/150). While those aforementioned polls are showing increases in Dutton's favourability, it is still not particularly high (39%, compared to 34% for Albo in one recent poll for preferred PM).

But yeah, a Labor-led minority government would likely be a lot more ambitious in its reform goals and I am quietly optimistic about that being the results of this election. So if there was ever a time to not put a major party first, it's now.

[enchantedephiphany]

I invented fake news 10 years before it was a concept

[projectchampionz]

ANALYZING THE FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY AND REIMBURSEMENT CHALLENGES FACING NURSING HOMES

ANALYZING THE FINANCIAL SUSTAINABILITY AND REIMBURSEMENT CHALLENGES FACING NURSING HOMES 1.1 Introduction Nursing homes provide essential long-term care for elderly individuals and those with chronic illnesses, disabilities, or other health challenges. However, the financial sustainability of these facilities is increasingly under pressure due to rising operational costs, fluctuating…

[redbean-nom]

idea: on the other side of things, satine and jango also time traveled! they're both subtly trying to destroy death watch (satine is unraveling maul's end of The Sith Plot, and jango is dealing with dooku's part) without realizing the other is a time traveler. they have very different ideas of how to go about doing so.

at some point before they have the Time Traveler Discussion, mace and obi wan go on the mission protecting satine from death watch. jango shows up hunting death watch. cue all four of them attempting to hide the fact that they're all time traveling.

many years later, obi wan has the idea to go check on kamino/deal with dooku. upon arrival, he and the rest of the time jedi discover jango ran away with a bunch of his favorite alphas (because hey, free army!) and started another war. they go searching for jango around mandalore and instead find that the kryze sisters are temporarily allied for maul-killing purposes. jango (with boba in tow) keeps getting in everyone's way while attempting to rescue arla from the nite owls. bo katan keeps trying to kill him.

for extra fun, maul is also time traveling. he, too, knows most of The Sith Plan, and is also attempting revenge against palpatine & grievous, this time with an alive talzin, savage, and feral.

mace has a massive shatterpoint migraine. palpatine has a Bad Feeling About This.

📓 👀

(for the daydream plot ask meme) TIMETRAVEL, BUT MAKE IT COMPLICATED. Ok, so. Several council members are yeeted back in time at the moment of their deaths, mentally — ie. die, and then wake up back in the past, not body doubles or anything. Mace, Plo Shaak and Kit, all of whom wake up in the halls of healing and proceed to Freak Out very quietly, because, like, what the fuck but also oh my god the sith. They work out that the others are also time travelers, and then proceed to conspiracy theory very quietly attempt to fix, y'know, the whole sith plot attempting to genocide them out of existence.

Mace survived longest — I refuse to believe he died when he got shoved out the window, he was kicking about in the rebellion era for a little while with a cybernetic hand and is very thankful and a little weirded out to have both hands back now — so he's kind of their point man, when it comes to 'oh we need to fix that too, turns out it was part of The Sith Plot.'

This is complicated, somewhat, by the fact that Mace just took Obi-wan on as a padawan. He didn't mean to! he fucked up!! he's not sure what they did but Qui-gon — instead of taking obi-wan as his padawan, as they're all pretty sure happened in the original timeline — was wildly cruel to initiate kenobi, basically accused him of being half a second from a fall, and then made him cry. Which: yikes what the fuck how did they screw up the timeline that bad.

None of them really knew obi-wan until he was, y'know, Adult; prior to that he was qui-gon's padawan, and also, it was like fourty fucking years ago for them. They collectively remember…uh, obi-wan had some fucked missions as a padawan? maybe he went to agricorps on a mission? no one is quite sure, because, like, it was a weird thing that mostly resolved itself, whatever the fuck it was. He grows up to be Obi-wan Kenobi, though, so it's not like they could let him go to the fucking agricorps. Best case, general kenobi doesn't exist and the war goes badly — if they can't prevent the war —, worst case, general kenobi does exist, but like. evil.

Unbeknownst to them, obi-wan was also shot back in time at the moment of his death. And then, because that boy has never met a problem he didn't attempt to solve all on his own, decided he was just going to fake his death and go into the galaxy to, y'know, deal with the sith plot all on his own. He's been alone for twenty fucking years after the genocide of his people. He can handle being alone but knowing they're alive.

He's not about to raise suspicions, though, so he accepts when mace offers to be his master instead of what happened the first time around, with bandomeer and the suicide offer etc — he feels a little bad, because he's 100% going to fake his death at the first opportunity, bc, y'know, sith plot to end, but mace is a busy man who's on the fucking council, probably he's not even going to mind too much, really. Qui-gon certainly wouldn't have.

Thus ensues two sets of time travelers being like who the fuck is doing that as team council and obi-wan make changes to the sith plot. Mace would be tearing his hair out if he had hair; not only is the butterfly effect apparently way more complicated than logically makes sense — they fucked up the death stick trade on ryloth, and now somehow three outer rim planets are in revolt???? (it was obi-wan) — but also his new padawan keeps nearly getting killed.

Obi-wan, on the other hand, is losing his damn mind. On the one hand, goddamn, mace is the absolute bastion of kindness and steadfastness and everything he always was! he didn't know that mace and shaak and plo and kit were friends, but it's so nice to see them, and he missed them, and for all his appointment to the council was kind of tainted by the war it was a community of friends who he missed dearly.

On the other hand, please, he is trying to fake his death. Please be less attentive. Please stop rescuing him from seemingly deadly situations. He's fine he just needs to be a little fake dead, and also stop the sith, and also not let anyone realise that he is a sixty year old in a thirteen year old's body.

[howdoesone]

How does one assess the impact of transitional justice mechanisms in post-genocide societies?

Transitional justice mechanisms play a crucial role in post-genocide societies by addressing past atrocities, promoting accountability, and fostering reconciliation. Assessing the impact of these mechanisms is essential to understand their effectiveness in healing divided communities and preventing future conflicts. This article explores how one can assess the impact of transitional justice…

[theonewhoscreamsfuck]

Hey, gotta get the creative juices flowing, so feel free to send me an ask with a plot for a short vore story (doesn't even have to be vore) and if I like it then I’ll write something for you

(and if you wanna be moots than just ask!)

[demonic0angel]

Assistant Jazz AU (click for clarity)

Part 2

Where Jazz makes a deal with Jason in order to further both of their goals. They both work together, but since Jazz’s goal is more long-term, she decides to stick around Jason bc she’s bored.

Thus, she becomes Wolf, assistant and secretary to the Red Hood. She mainly works as an extra bodyguard and assistant to him, including going with him to events as a plus one. Eventually, he confesses to her and they date, but until then, all of the Red Hood’s goons just stare at their boss with thinly veiled disbelief and bafflement as he flounders after Jazz as she completely reforms his gang with ruthless efficiency and an iron fist.

(In reality, I just wanted to draw Jazz’s “hero” costume, Jason’s costume with the muzzle, and her on Jason’s lap. It’s Kinktober let me live orz

There will definitely be more of this AU)

[coraniaid]

If the reboot goes ahead, and SMG plays an older, wiser Buffy who shows up a few times to give advice and encouragement to the new Buffy (named after her, of course), I hope they keep her romantic life as vague as possible. The original Buffy didn't want to know too much (if anything) about Giles' dating history, or her own mother's, and why should the new one?

I hope the most we get about the last twenty years of our Buffy's life are some scattered hints that she's in a long-term relationship with somebody who used to be a vampire -- "a vampire with a soul?" the show's new Buffy can scoff -- but who became human again "decades ago" after fulfilling the terms of an ancient prophecy. I hope they have the original Buffy let slip that she met her partner when she was a high school student, but it took her a while to realize that they were the one. That they used to be evil but have since reformed and help her fight against evil and save the world. That they're the most important person in her life after her sister and her nieces. I hope the Bangel and Spuffy fans spend hours refighting old wars about which character Buffy is "meant to be with", both convinced that the show is building up a cameo by their preferred (now older and in-universe human) leading man.

I hope that, in the last episode of the first season of the new show, our Buffy's phone rings during a key bit of exposition -- in the library, ideally, because it won't be Buffy without one of those -- and she apologizes, saying that she has to take it because "that's my wife". I hope as she walks out of shot, phone in hand, we see her smile and we hear her say "hey, Harmony". And I hope the show never, ever expands on any of that again.

[eelhound]

"The idea of reforming Omelas is a pleasant idea, to be sure, but it is one that Le Guin herself specifically tells us is not an option. No reform of Omelas is possible — at least, not without destroying Omelas itself:

If the child were brought up into the sunlight out of that vile place, if it were cleaned and fed and comforted, that would be a good thing, indeed; but if it were done, in that day and hour all the prosperity and beauty and delight of Omelas would wither and be destroyed. Those are the terms.

'Those are the terms', indeed. Le Guin’s original story is careful to cast the underlying evil of Omelas as un-addressable — not, as some have suggested, to 'cheat' or create a false dilemma, but as an intentionally insurmountable challenge to the reader. The premise of Omelas feels unfair because it is meant to be unfair. Instead of racing to find a clever solution ('Free the child! Replace it with a robot! Have everyone suffer a little bit instead of one person all at once!'), the reader is forced to consider how they might cope with moral injustice that is so foundational to their very way of life that it cannot be undone. Confronted with the choice to give up your entire way of life or allow someone else to suffer, what do you do? Do you stay and enjoy the fruits of their pain? Or do you reject this devil’s compromise at your own expense, even knowing that it may not even help? And through implication, we are then forced to consider whether we are — at this very moment! — already in exactly this situation. At what cost does our happiness come? And, even more significantly, at whose expense? And what, in fact, can be done? Can anything?

This is the essential and agonizing question that Le Guin poses, and we avoid it at our peril. It’s easy, but thoroughly besides the point, to say — as the narrator of 'The Ones Who Don’t Walk Away' does — that you would simply keep the nice things about Omelas, and work to address the bad. You might as well say that you would solve the trolley problem by putting rockets on the trolley and having it jump over the people tied to the tracks. Le Guin’s challenge is one that can only be resolved by introspection, because the challenge is one levied against the discomforting awareness of our own complicity; to 'reject the premise' is to reject this (all too real) discomfort in favor of empty wish fulfillment. A happy fairytale about the nobility of our imagined efforts against a hypothetical evil profits no one but ourselves (and I would argue that in the long run it robs us as well).

But in addition to being morally evasive, treating Omelas as a puzzle to be solved (or as a piece of straightforward didactic moralism) also flattens the depth of the original story. We are not really meant to understand Le Guin’s 'walking away' as a literal abandonment of a problem, nor as a self-satisfied 'Sounds bad, but I’m outta here', the way Vivier’s response piece or others of its ilk do; rather, it is framed as a rejection of complacency. This is why those who leave are shown not as triumphant heroes, but as harried and desperate fools; hopeless, troubled souls setting forth on a journey that may well be doomed from the start — because isn’t that the fate of most people who set out to fight the injustices they see, and that they cannot help but see once they have been made aware of it? The story is a metaphor, not a math problem, and 'walking away' might just as easily encompass any form of sincere and fully committed struggle against injustice: a lonely, often thankless journey, yet one which is no less essential for its difficulty."

- Kurt Schiller, from "Omelas, Je T'aime." Blood Knife, 8 July 2022.

[lilacstro]

🌸Uranus through the houses: what generational curse you are here to break

hey y'all, back with another post. I hope you are doing well :) been very very long since I made a post haha. This post may be rather short? Idk how long it'd be tbh, let's get into it now!

Paid readings open

Support me on ko-fi

🌸Uranus in 1st: to break the stigma around being yourself, your "real" self, doing you, what you really want and going against the wind because that is your purpose and calling. Finding yourself, and not hiding it away. Doing everything you desire to, not confronting to societal or traditional norms, being the one of heart

🌸Uranus in 2nd: Speaking up, showing what respect is supposed to mean for one self, initiating the concept of self respect and personal boundaries, re-inventing the relationship with money, material things and desires.

🌸Uranus in 3rd: Big thoughts, innovative thinking. Thinking in a broad manner, against the current circumstances or conditioning. Big dreamers for a reason. Usually either extremely strong or extremely weak relationship with siblings for whatever the reason. New, big ideologies. Breaking the generational thinking patterns.

🌸Uranus in 4th: Someone who would follow their heart. Choosing their chosen family, prioritizing the family they created. Following the spirit of their soul and mind. Bringing reforms in the whole family, changing the family dynamics from their generation and lineage, reforming traditional dogmas and orthodoxes running in the family through generations.

🌸Uranus in 5th: Taking pleasures of life seriously. Being more attuned to your inner voice if it signals you to follow your dreams, hobbies and passions. Leaving this "work until you die" kind of mentality and actually indulging in things you like, following your heart, the rhythm of your soul. Full of creative energy.

🌸Uranus in 6th: Breaking monotony in life, breaking this idea and pattern of stability, security, and predictability in life. Leaving behind the idea of, "tunnel vision", basically. May despise following routines, structures, traditions in life. Usually have spontaneous bursts of energy instead of being consistent per se, usually the "turbulent" types.

🌸Uranus in 7th: for this placement, I feel their spouse or partner would heal patterns more than them. I mean both of you together would change things together, but they would more likely lead or initiate this revolution. Your family may have hard time settling with them, but eventually all would be good.

🌸Uranus in 8th: The way the shadow side of life is treated or talked about. Maybe you grew up in a family where darker things like, death, or other taboo topics were not discussed. This is true for a majority of people who do not have this placement as well, but you would be the one who may introduce them to such ideas and may be in charge of making them comfortable embracing their own shadows, and so you may often experience projection from your family often, because you're triggering their shadows.

🌸Uranus in 9th: Someone who would not accept things taught to them for no reason, without explanation. Other placement that speaks in terms of genetic unwinding. You would change the way upcoming generation thinks. You may question religion, traditions, beliefs a lot, not to ridicule them, but to find their relevance in the current world. Expanding the tunnel vision, the view of the world. You may adapt a different culture or a philosophy than the one you're born with and challenge the idea of unknown and foreign in your family.

🌸Uranus in 10th: This stigma attached to people and society and the world. "what would they say" "what would they think" and you may most probably set out to do things no one in your lineage could think of doing, especially in terms of jobs and career, creating something new altogether. You may be seen as eccentric by others for that, but more you grow in this energy, more you would heal this idea of following the crowd for people who are lost themselves.

🌸Uranus in 11th: This again for people who have the wildest dreams and do not care about being a part of the social community or to conform to it in any way. You are very very likely to have high spirits, and follow your higher purpose, your dreams. More of a rebel kind of placement, you do not care if your dreams or ambitions are different than the one imposed or planned for you. You would break this programming of needing to be a certain way, a certain success recipe, a certain dream, in your lineage.

🌸Uranus in 12th: More of a visionary kind of placement. Someone who does not conform to immediate ideas and tunnel visions. Someone who's thoughts and ideas would not make sense currently but would be the future. You are here to heal subconscious programming, limiting beliefs, thoughts, and opinions of your lineage. The deepest of all the above placement and very transformative. You yourself may have experienced unexpected changes and events in life, that shake you right from the bottom until a steady foundation is built, and you are meant to transmute this same lessons and light to your lineage.

until the next time

ps: i love you

xoxo

[pebblegalaxy]

Angus Maddison and His Contributions to Economic History: Measuring and Comparing Economic Growth Across Countries and Regions Over Time

Angus Maddison (1926-2010) was a prominent British economist and economic historian who made significant contributions to the field of international economic history. His work focused on measuring and comparing economic growth across countries and regions over long periods of time, using data from his comprehensive Maddison Project Database. Education and Career Maddison received his…

[the-cimmerians]

Today, ProPublica reports on yet another big change that stands to solve a decades-long problem we first learned about back in 2016, closing a huge loophole that allowed states to divert federal antipoverty funds to governors’ pet projects, like promoting abstinence, holding “heathy marriage” classes that did nothing to prevent out-of-wedlock births, funding anti-abortion “clinics” to lie about abortion “risks,” sending middle-class kids to private colleges, and other schemes only tangentially related to helping poor kids. It’s the same loophole that Mississippi officials tried to drive a truck through to divert welfare funds to former sportsball man Brett Favre’s alma mater, for a volleyball palace. [ ]

The agency has proposed new rules — open for public comment until December 1 — aimed at nudging states to actually use TANF funds to give cash to needy parents, not fill budget holes or punish poor people.

One change will put an end to the scheme Utah used to substitute LDS church funds for welfare, by prohibiting states

from counting charitable giving by private organizations, such as churches and food banks, as “state” spending on welfare, a practice that has allowed legislatures to budget less for programs for low-income families while still claiming to meet federal minimums.

Another new rule will put the kibosh on using TANF to fund child protective services or foster care programs, which are not what TANF is supposed to be for, damn it.

And then there’s the simple matter of making sure that funds for needy families go to needy families, not to pet projects that have little to do with poverty:

The reforms would also redefine the term “needy” to refer only to families with incomes at or below 200% of the federal poverty line. Currently, some states spend TANF money on programs like college scholarships — or volleyball stadiums — that benefit more affluent people.