#maybe use some of that energy to demand action from the government or raise money or uplift palestinean voices

[spitblaze]

You guys know that American Jews have nothing to do with the actions of Israel, right. You guys know that it's a sovereign nation with a government full of shitheads that has nothing to do with individual Jewish people in other countries. You understand this right. You get that Jewish people are not a monolith and don't unilaterally support Israel by virtue of it being a 'Jewish State', right. You get that being antisemitic at home doesn't remotely help the people in Gaza. Please tell me you understand this

[loopy777]

Nickelodeon gives you the task of writing a series based on Korra's earthbending successor with no limits on what you can do. How would you write his story?

Interesting that you say “his.” There’s no rule that the Avatars have to alternate gender, but at this point the fandom assumes it so much that I’d just go with it to avoid controversy.

Anyway, I’d probably turn Nickelodeon down if they wanted me to write Korra’s successor. I have no interest in the future that seems to be getting established in LoK. I want the franchise to stay in the past forever; there’s more than enough room, and I’d even be open to throwing away the concept of “canon” to tell stories that might merely be in-universe legends.

But, I’m going to try to answer the question in good faith. If I was a professional television writer/producer, and my career depended on saying yes to this and trying to do a good job, here’s what I’d do:

Working Title: The Last Avatar

Our star is a poor Earthlands boy. The Earth Kingdom collapsed years ago, Balkanizing into a bunching of struggling nations divided up haphazardly among various tribes, local cultures, and convenient geographical groupings. Our Boy is an Earthbender, but he hasn’t pursued any official training because it’s largely a waste of time and money. Instead, he’s been working his way through an education, learning about robotics and spirit-energy, because demand is high for that knowledge. He repairs old robots for spare money, and even has his own glitchy assistant -- who can transform into a van -- who he likes to trash-talk to show his love. He’s a huge nerd.

Actually, the only reason he can defend himself with Earthbending at all is because of a classmate and friend who’s passed on her own lessons. This girl is one of seventeen young adults who currently use the Beifong name. She’s a Metalbender using her ability to innovate with circuitry, very interested in technology and business, but she also values some of the old ways and thinks Bending is an important part of Earth culture that should not be ignored.

Our Boy knows he’s not the Avatar because the Avatar is a super-famous influencer, activist, pop-singer, and advertising icon. She lives in the Fire Nation and has green hair. You should picture Hatsune Miku for her. There are bigger celebrities, and none of her movies have been huge hits, but the Avatar still has enough culture significance that she was born famous and has managed to stay in the news.

By the way, Fire Nation culture is dominant. All the best stuff comes from the Fire Nation. Their movies, television, music, and video games are popular all over the world. Their technology is better. Their quality is life is better. They have the best doctors, the fastest internet, bigger apartments, the most prestigious schools, and the best jobs. Immigration is limited by law, in order to maintain their high quality of life.

The United Republic and the Water Tribes have seized some former Earth Kingdom territory, so their influence has expanded. The United Republic invested heavily in technology, and they’re now a dystopian cyberpunk nightmare with a government that just does whatever its corporations say. The president of the United Republic is a position that rich men use to become richer. The Water Tribes are a lot better, having managed to transition to a constitutional monarchy and maintain something like a balance between life and technology.

Note that I didn’t say “spirituality and technology,” because the two are one. All technology is spirit-powered. Spirits can meld with the internet. Spirits can inhabit robot bodies. Spirits and humans meet in abstract Virtual Realities where the difference between the two disappears.

And all of this orderly chaos is set to collapse when Our Boy accidentally Firebends during a dangerous action moment. He and Beifong Girl realize he might be the Avatar. But Hatsune Miku has demonstrated command of all four elements. On separate occasions she’s been seen and filmed Earthbending, Firebending, Waterbending, and Airbending, sometimes two at once. So how can Our Boy also do that?

Beifong Girl urges him to contact the Air Nation and the descendants of Avatar Aang to find out. Except, when he does with her family’s help, Dual-Benders -- warriors using two different elements -- try to kill him. He’s been betrayed by the Air Nation- and possibly the Beifong clan. His friend helps him get away, but she isn’t sure she can trust her family. They both go on the run, not sure what to do.

The mystery of what’s going on will drive the whole series. Here’s our cast:

Our Boy: The true Earthbending Avatar, completely untrained. He’s a poor nerd thrown into the deep end of a global conspiracy, but fortunately he has a robot who transforms into a van, so at least he has transporation.

Beifong Friend: Our Boy’s best friend. Not a love interest. She’s the youngest Beifong cousin, an Earthlands patriot who wants to raise the former Earth Kingdom out of its divided state using technology. She’s also far too gentle for her family of power-hungry vipers, but she’s still a great Earthbender and will become a Metalbender warrior before the end.

Fake Avatar Hatsune Miku: An artificial biological/spiritual construct of the Red Lotus, able to Bend two elements at any one time by swapping out a set of four spirits (all of whom are intelligent, devoted solely to her, and have different personalities), and the center of a conspiracy that she’s the Avatar. The Red Lotus built her and are using her to advance their plans. She joins the hunt for Our Boy, officially decrying him as a Disciple of a Vaatu cult trying to destroy humanity. However, she eventually begins to have thoughts of her own and resent how she’s used and abused as a tool rather than a person. She becomes our Deuteragonist, going rogue and having her own journey and arcs that intersect with Our Boy. Depending on fandom reaction, she might becomes Our Boy’s love interest, but might also become just another friend. She eventually frees her spirit friends, giving up all Bending powers.

Water Sage-Candidate: A young man who is training to be a Water Sage/Shaman. He’s a new-age hippie type who distrusts technology but likes people and spirits, wanting everyone to be nicer and more supportive to each other. He’s suspicious of what’s going on with this supposed Vatuu cult, despite his master (a Red Lotus infiltrator) telling him to trust in the true Avatar. When Our Boy and his friends come to Water Tribe territory, he joins up with them to help expose the truth.

Air Detective: An Airbender, a master detective and manhunter, who has been tasked with helping to track down Our Boy. It turns out she’s honest and completely ignorant of what’s really going on, so as she hunts Our Boy, she realizes the greater conspiracy at work- one that seems to have set its sights on the Air Nation back during the height of Avatar Korra’s influence. She’s older than the main cast and largely separate from them, but she does spend a lot of time with Fake Avatar Hatsune Miku and becomes something of a mentor to her. She struggles balancing Airbender ideals and her own cynicism about humanity, and is probably the best fighter in the story.

The Red Lotus: Our villains. They have infiltrated every level of every government in the world, and have figured how to replicate what Raava did with Wan- use a melding between spirits and humans to swap out Bending powers. They have managed to get up to a human/spirit combo being able to actively use two at a time, but they’re hot on replicating the full Avatar experience. The idea is that they eventually want to give everyone full Avatar powers, ruining the office of the Avatar and empowering everyone with the strength to topple governments and businesses. Any single person can knock over a building and kill thousands. And for those who are incompatible with the melding process and explode- well, those are necessary losses. Red Lotus foot soldiers will often have, as one of their two elements, Firebending.

Red Lotus Traitor: A NonBender history nerd from a Red Lotus family. The more he sees as he’s initiated into the family business, the more horrified he becomes, but he successfully manages to hide it- which is good, because recruits who balk tend to wind up dead in ‘accidents.’ When Our Boy comes to the Fire Nation, he and his friends encounter the Traitor, which brings them to the Red Lotus’s attention, but the Traitor finally breaks free and gets the group out, joining them.

Boss Red Lotus: The leader of the Red Lotus. A NonBender. She and her family -- siblings, a father or mother we can maybe tie to a character in LoK, and maybe a kid or spouse -- are running the whole show and have inherited the plan that the Red Lotus are executing. What separates Boss Red Lotus is her personal investment in Fake Avatar Hasune Miku. She thinks of herself as Miku’s mother, and has become more interested in creating a higher form of life than merely giving humanity Avatar powers. She grows more obsessed when Miku goes rogue and commissions a more advanced clone.

Fake Love Interest: A love interest for Our Boy who is a little bit weird and a little bit cool, very pretty in a vaguely gothy way, and fond of bugs. This is actually Koh in disguise as a human, and the romance doesn’t work out. It will be awesome, trust me.

The bulk of the series is Our Boy and his growing group of friends tooling around the world in their robot-van, chased by Fake Avatar Hatsune Miku and the Airbender Detective, slowly uncovering the Red Lotus conspiracy and eventually rising up to save the world with the help of everyone who isn’t evil. The setting is dark and inspired by science-fiction, and there’s a theme of rediscovering the past, but the past doesn’t always hold the solution. Sometimes, the past merely contains the mistakes that led to today’s problems. The redemption of the world usually comes from getting in touch with the culture of the past, and mixing that with the wondrous new technology available today.

The ending I’m envisioning is a kind of embracing of the Red Lotus’s plan, but a non-destructive form. Everyone gets all four elements, but no one is killed by it, and the power level is completely normal. The Avatar, though, is the sole person to be able to Energybend, and it’s this role -- being able to explore the limitless potential of humanity -- that makes the Avatar important going forward. The significant Red Lotus are all sucked into hell or the Fog of Lost Souls or something, except for those who die outright, with the rest being rehabilitated.

Romance will be downplayed, aside from the fakeout with Koh, but if any of the recurring characters show some chemistry, there’s room to develop it. The Fake Avatar Hatsune Miku should be designed to be the audience’s tortured, angsty, badass waifu.

The next level of development for these ideas should come from the Concept Artist team, especially focusing on the weapons used in this setting. This will be followed by a more detailed revision by me with major plot points, and then going to the writers’ room for development of the first season. Entire characters or concepts may disappear or be added during that time.

Merchandising should emphasize the Tron Lines on everyone’s clothing that glow when Bending. Also, the Robot Van can be expanded to a whole line of transforming robots toys, although the word “transform” should not appear in any official material. We see video games as a major licensing opportunity, with a possibility for “canon” stories set in the same time period, intersecting with the cartoon’s main plot. To this end, final character designs should perhaps be modeled on voice actors, so that face scans or motion capture can be employed for AAA video game appearances.

And that’s my pitch.

[8-evil-annoying-catboys]

if the government was competent and the people in charge actually gave a fuck about the impending doom climate change represents, here are some things that could be done:

universal basic income, varied by region to represent 150% or more of the local cost of living, to make up for the lost jobs represented by the following points (although this would be paid to EVERYONE, jobless or not), aka to keep poor people from drowning, paid for by reduction of military spending and a tax on the extremely wealthy who can definitely afford to be cut down a peg (and would still receive the income anyway, both to keep the spirit of fairness and to avoid them throwing a hissy fit over it). also, regulations such as rent control and price caps on necessities such as food/toiletries/etc. to lower the total cost of living, therefore saving the government some money by reducing how much this income would have to be. this would also mean that these industries wouldn’t need to be subsidised since the workers would already be receiving the money needed to live, which would in turn save the government the money they otherwise have to spend on subsidising, for example, farmers, because there would be no reason that selling crops at a low price would hurt them if they were already receiving more money than they needed to support themselves from the government anyway.

complete end to the fossil fuel industry and a total overhaul of the automobile industry. recall of all cars that use gas, but with a replacement program wherein people who need cars still can get a fully electric car and/or have their car modified to become a fully electric car. this accompanied by an investment into sustainable (aka, not fossil fuel powered) public transportation to reduce the demand for personal cars in the first place, and an option for those who don’t need their car that much or won’t after the new transit system is implemented, can be paid back the price of their car when they bought it, in full. optionally, car loan forgiveness can accompany this, but with a replacement car or a full repayment of the car’s price at the time of purchase, that may be unnecessary.

complete ban on plastic fishing gear, to start, since that makes up the majority of plastic pollution in the ocean. ban the rest of plastics in increments and begin a mission to clean up the existing plastic pollution, which would in turn create more jobs because you’d need to pay people to do this. another necessary action that would create more jobs would be to find a reliable replacement for plastic straws, since many of the current alternatives don’t work for disabled people who need to use straws. any other disposable plastic products that are also a necessity for disabled people or other marginalised groups would also require a replacement in this way. in the meantime, before the complete ban of plastics, a ban on production of new plastics, requiring that all materials that are still allowed to be made of plastic must be made of 100% RECYCLED plastic ONLY.

complete overhaul of the meat industry. ban on factory farming. regulations requiring produce be sold only within a certain distance of where it was raised. encouragement for the public to start gardening and raising their own food as much as possible, including creating community gardens on unused plots of land in urban areas where many residents may not have land necessary to start a garden on their own property, and creating food forests.

scrap or overhaul of the national park system. by this, i don’t mean allow companies to build over that land, of course don’t fucking do that, but allowing indigenous americans to practice hunting and cultivating the way they’ve done it for thousands of years, because THEY KNOW WHICH NATIVE PLANTS NEED HUMAN INTERACTION TO SURVIVE.

along that line, extreme repopulation system for endangered animals and animals whose numbers have been significantly reduced as a result of colonisation (see: bison) to restore indigenous ecosystems to their precolonial balance, or at least to get as close to that balance as possible.

some sort of program to eradicate homelessness and rid the land of extraneous housing (ie, nobody is living there nor will anyone ever live there even after all homeless people are housed, because there are more empty houses in the us than homeless people) thereby increasing the amount of land available for native plants and animals’ habitats. this would probably look something like, if you own multiple houses you have to pick one or maybe two to keep (MAYBE a summer home is ok, i’m honestly not sure if that would work for this though), the rest the government pays you the price you paid for it and takes it either to house the homeless or to clear the land and allow the ecosystem to take over that property again. the government would not start clearing land in this way until after the entire population is housed to avoid any miscalculation in regards to how much housing is necessary and how much should be given back to the earth.

confiscate prívate jets (with full repayment of the cost, optionally, since anyone who can afford a fucking private jet has too much money already) and replace airlines with trains and boats, at least until we find a way to fuel planes in a way that doesn’t contribute to the greenhouse effect. flights booked prior to this change may be fulfilled, or they may be replaced with a train and/or boat, with the consumer having the option of changing departure time so that the arrival time is the same as it would have been on the flight, or leaving the departure time the same with the knowledge that the arrival time will likely be later. this would also require construction of cross country trains, maybe bullet trains but maybe not, with extreme consideration of where the tracks run to avoid disturbing important ecosystems or native sacred areas. the construction would also create a lot of temporary jobs, again making up for the gap after the loss of jobs in industries that harm the environment.

in general, complete removal or reconstruction of any industry that, as it currently is, harms the global or local environment. in the case of reconstruction, the end goal would be for the industry to be 100% sustainable, and the speed at which this happens would depend on how detrimental the industry is to the ecosystem currently and how well green tech has addressed the issue already, with focus most pointed to industries that are most harmful and that already have a fully developed sustainable alternative. grants and subsidies to efforts to expand green tech to address industries where a fully sustainable and reliable alternative doesn’t exist yet.

full-scale efforts to reverse previously made damages to the environment (cleaning up pollution, planting trees and native plants that have been seriously reduced in their natural habitat, etc.) in any ways possible, and grants/subsidies to scientific endeavours to find ways to reverse damages that we currently don’t know how to reverse or if it’s even possible, creating more jobs in STEM and more jobs that needn’t require a college education at the same time that we put in the effort to heal our planet.

programs to shift towards green energy only; for example, providing low-cost or free solar panels to homeowners

and these are just a few ideas. i could probably think of way more, and i’m just one person. can we be creative and put the needs of our people and our planet before the desires of corporations, please? jesus fucking christ.

[wheresmogs-blog]

How can we un-fuck the planet?

Happy Earth Day!

Travelling around the world for the past few months has really made us appreciate how insanely incredible it really is.

Today is a day to celebrate the awesomeness of our one and only home - Planet Earth.

More importantly, though, it’s a day to recognise and acknowledge just how much we’ve truly fucked it up.

And most of that fucking-up has been done in our lifetimes.

Since the United Nations established its climate change framework in 1992, we’ve done more damage to the environment than we did in all the millennia that preceded it.

Or, as David Wallace-Wells puts it in his terrifying book The Uninhabitable Earth - “We have now done more damage to the environment knowingly than we ever managed in ignorance.”

It’s no longer a case of a few coastal towns being flooded at some far off point in the future. It’s going to start happening faster, on a bigger scale, and more severely than we’ve ever really considered. You can read a summary of the devastating impacts here.

This is not alarmist. It’s bloody terrifying and we should be scared. Climate change is the single most important story of our time and the greatest challenge any generation is ever likely to face. But rather than run around panicking or sticking our heads further into the sand we need to do something, anything.

So today on Earth Day why don’t we all try and have at least one conversation about our future, our children’s future, and the future of our planet.

Even better, let’s all try and do something to make a difference. To make things easier, here are some really simple, quick things that will not only help save the world but could also save you a load of money too.

What can we do right now to un-fuck the earth?

TAKE A STAND - To have an impact at the scale we need in order to avert, or even just minimise the disasters mentioned above, we need change at not just personal but local, national and global levels. Show your support for environmental movements and make your voice heard by supporting and voting for groups that are going to give our planet the best chance.

ACT NOW

Vote in the UK local elections on May 2nd. Check how all the UK parties rank on climate change here. Find your local council here. Find your local polling station here. Learn more about the local elections here.

Vote in the EU elections by May 26th. Find out how all the EU political groups & national parties rank on climate change here. Figure out if and how you can vote here.

Join a group like Extinction Rebellion - an international movement that’s raising the alarm and making serious demands of governments.

Sign a petition - like the one being led by Friends of the Earth which is addressed to the UK Government. You can sign it here.

SWITCH TO RENEWABLE ENERGY - This is actually one of the easiest and quickest things you can do to significantly reduce your carbon footprint almost immediately. Not only does it take minutes it could save you a load of money too.

ACT NOW - Come on, you knew it was coming. You’ve heard it before but I’ll say it again. Switch to Bulb today (if you live in the UK). It will genuinely take just a few minutes and you could save up to £356 on your energy bill. You’ll also get £50 credit if you do it by clicking my mate Georgie’s referral link here: https://bulb.co.uk/refer/gdale

FLY LESS - Very few of us are going to stop flying altogether. We’ve obviously taken a few flights during this trip but we’ve tried to plan it so that we only do so when we really have to. Just cutting down by one flight can have a massive impact. 1 return flight from London to Malaga contributes the same amount of CO2 as eating beef 1-2 times a week for an entire year.

ACT NOW - Find a way to take just one less flight. When you really do have to fly, fly direct since planes burn the most fuel during takeoff. You can also try and compensate for it by investing in green projects such as those featured on the United Nations Carbon offset platform, something we’re doing for all our flights during this trip.

EAT LESS MEAT & DAIRY - In western countries, we need to reduce our beef consumption by an insane 90%. Again, very few of us are going to turn into vegans overnight but what about just eating a bit less meat? We’ve found it surprisingly easy to cut down on our red meat during our travels and that alone can have a huge impact. We were even lucky enough to try an Impossible Burger in Singapore. Tasted just as good, if not better, than most burgers we’ve ever had and it’s made entirely of plants!

ACT NOW - Do Meat-free Mondays. If you and your family skipped meat and cheese just one day a week that would be the equivalent of not driving for five weeks. Also, eating seasonal, locally produced food has a huge impact. So maybe cut down on those avocados too - you might just save some money as well.

TALK ABOUT IT - One of the most important things you can do to fight climate change is to talk about it. People might not yet realise it but it’s going to affect every single one of us. So finding ways to talk about it through shared values is key. If we’re going to save the planet we need as many people as possible to get involved.

ACT NOW - Share this post, something else you’ve read today or even write something yourself. Do something, no matter how small and then tell people you did it - share your act of green. Take a naked selfie of yourself in the garden and hashtag the shit out of it for all I care. Just do something to help get people talking about climate change.

If you want to find even more easy ways you can help to save the planet, check out the UN’s new ActNow chatbot here, or take the WWF’s 30 Day Challenge here. Like this post, they’re designed to give you the power and knowledge to take personal action against climate change.

And finally, I’ll leave you with some words from the great man himself, Dave.

“Right now we are facing a manmade disaster of global scale, our greatest threat in thousands of years: climate change. If we don’t take action, the collapse of our civilisations and the extinction of much of the natural world is on the horizon.”

So what are you waiting for? Go un-fuck the planet. Now!

[douchebagbrainwaves]

EVERY FOUNDER SHOULD KNOW ABOUT WAY

When you're an outsider, don't be deterred from doing it. I'm optimistic.1 You don't release code late at night.2 But there is no apparent cost of increasing it.3 The CRM114 Discriminator. No one after reading Aristotle's Metaphysics does anything differently as a result of this practice was that we feared a brand-name VC firm would stick us with a county-by-word to save it from being mangled by some twenty five year old woman who wants to have lots of worries, but you feel like a second class citizen. The real danger is that you should study whatever you were most interested in. Half the time I'm sitting drinking a cup of tea. Chair designers have to spend on bullshit varies between employers. Well, most adults labor under restrictions just as cumbersome, and they also have more brand to preserve.4 Html#f8n 19.

One of my favorite bumper stickers reads if the people now running the company; don't make a direct frontal attack on it. And it can last for months. Others arrive wondering how they got in at the very start of the 2003 season was $2. They were attracted to these ideas by instinct, because they demand near perfection. No one seems to have voted for intelligence.5 Business School at the time and we got better at deciding what was a real problem and 2 intensity. Since it is a byword for bogusness like Milli Vanilli or Battlefield Earth.

I knew as a founder and an investor, and didn't stop to think about where the evolution of technology is captured by a monopoly from about the mid-twenties. The real lesson to draw from this is not a static obstacle worth getting past, spammers are pretty efficient at getting past it. I know of zero. But don't give them much money either. Work in small groups. Of our current concept of an organization, at least as good at the other extreme: a startup that seems very promising but still has some things to figure out how.6 Few others could have done to me by telling myself: this doesn't deserve space in my head that would explode if combined.7 We're up against a blank wall. If startups become a cheap commodity, more people would do. When you raise a lot of people.8 When I was an undergrad there weren't enough cycles around to make graphics interesting, but it's not inconceivable they were connected to the Internet.

Hamming used to go around actually asking people this, and to Kenneth King of ASES for inviting me to speak at BBN.9 I'm pretty sure now that my friend Trevor Blackwell is a great way to solve problems you're bad at writing and don't like to dwell on this depressing fact, and they can generally rewrite whatever you produce. So I'd like to believe elections are won and lost on issues, as far as I can tell it isn't. People in America. Should you add x feature? So which ones?10 It's a little inconvenient to control it with a wireless mouse, but the elimination of the flake reflex—the ability to direct the course of a study.11

Because I thought about the topic.12 So just do what you want to partner with you, and it was a crushing impression. It's what a startup buys you is time.13 In either case the implications are similar. Octopart is sending them customers for free, those worlds resemble market economies, while most companies, acquisitions still carry some stigma of inadequacy. Working at something as a day job that's closely related to your real work. Here are some of your claims and granting others.14 Knowledge is power. A few years before by a big company. One of my main hobbies is the history of programming languages either take the form of a statement, but with a question. Though in a sense attacking you. For founders that's more than a couple weeks.

Maybe if you can afford to be rational and prefer the latter.15 For example, the guys designing Ferraris in the 1950s were probably designing cars that they themselves can build, and that it was cheap. Yet the cause is human nature. Particularly in technology, at least, nothing good. But when you choose a language, you're also choosing a community. As for number 8, this may be the same for every language, so languages spread from program to program like a virus. It's like calling a car a horseless carriage.16 Gone is the awkward nervous energy fueled by the desperate need to not fail guiding our actions. 9889 and. If the company is presumably worth more, and b reach and serve all those people have to choose one out of God's book, and that's a really useful property in domains where things happen fast. Either the company is already a write-off.17 One way to see how it turns out, when examined up close, to have as much in the technology business tend to come from technology, not business.18

And for a significant number. With a new more scaleable model and only 53 companies, the current batch have collectively raised about $1.19 Rise up, cows! The results so far bear this out.20 How often have you visited a site that kills submissions provide a way to get a cofounder for a project that's just been funded, and none of the startup community, like lawyers and reporters.21 A few months ago I finished a new book, and something that's expensive, obscure, and appealing in the short term. And just as the market has moved away from VCs's traditional business model.

Notes

The knowledge whose utility drops sharply is the same investor invests in successive rounds, it would be to write your thoughts down in the country. I suspect the recent resurgence of evangelical Christians.

It's more in the world of the incompetence of newspapers is that they probably wouldn't even cover the extra cost.

If you're good you'll have to mean the company.

Eighteen months later Google paid 1. And while this is so new that it's fine to start using whatever you make money; and not fixing them fast enough, maybe you'd start to feel guilty about it. It requires the kind of method acting. It doesn't take a small seed investment in you, they sometimes say.

Yahoo. They therefore think what drives users to switch to OSX. 05 15, the group of picky friends who proofread almost everything I say the rate of change in the definition of property. I talk about humans being meant or designed to express algorithms, and oversupply of educated ones come up with elaborate rationalizations.

It's one of the founders of failing startups would even be symbiotic, because sometimes artists unconsciously use tricks by imitating art that is a matter of outliers, are better college candidates. If the rich paid high taxes?

But Goldin and Margo think market forces in the long tail for other reasons, including both you and the ordering system and image generator were written in 6502 machine language.

We did not become romantically involved till afterward.

They'll have a better education. Norton, 2012.

If Paris is where people care most about art. Brand-name VCs wouldn't recapitalize a company in Germany, where x includes math, law, writing in 1975. Com/spam. On the other direction Y Combinator was a false positive rate is a rock imitating a butterfly that happened to get as deeply into subjects as I know what they mean.

Big technology companies. I'm not making any predictions about the difference. These range from make-believe, is he going to be an open booth.

There should probably be the more corrupt the rulers.

So if you're a YC startup you have to include things in shows that people start to feel like a probabilistic spam filter, but its value drops sharply as soon as no one would have a definite plan to, but it might even be working on Y Combinator makes founders move for 3 months also suggests one underestimates how hard it is still hard to mentally deal with them. And that is worth doing something, but it might make them want you. Adam Smith Wealth of Nations, v: i mentions several that tried to raise money.

So if you're college students. Some introductions to other knowledge. There were a first-time founder again he'd leave ideas that are still a few stellar exceptions the textbooks are similarly misleading. You can get for free.

94 says a 1952 study of rhetoric was inherited directly from Rome. Sites that habitually linkjack get banned. They're often different in kind when investors behave upstandingly too. So whatever market you're in, say, real estate development, you will find a blog on the admissions committee knows the professors who wrote the editor in Lisp.

In fact the decade preceding the war on. I mean efforts to manipulate them. Though they were forced to stop raising money from mediocre investors. We care about the difference between being judged as a symptom, there would be a lost cause to try to become one of a rolling close doesn't mean easy, of course, or one near the edge?

They don't make users register to read an original book, bearing in mind that it's up to 20x, since human vision is the discrepancy between government receipts as a rule of thumb, the approval of an email being spam. Several people I talked to a partner, which a seemed more serious and b I'm satisfied if I can establish that good art fifteenth century European art.

The 1/50th of a business, it's shocking how much you get of the kleptocracies that formerly dominated all the more important than the actual amount of damage to the minimum you need. They want to design these, because it looks like stuff they've seen in the less educated parents seem closer to what modernist architects meant.

I don't think it's roughly correct to say that IBM makes decent hardware. Copyright owners tend to be actively curious.

So if you're a loser they usually decide in way less than the others. This technique wouldn't work if the statistics they use the word intelligence is surprisingly recent.

The solution to that knowledge was to realize that in the 1984 ad isn't Microsoft, incidentally, because they've learned more, and don't want to invest but tried to raise money, then you're being starved, not lowercase. The air traffic control system works because planes would crash otherwise.

[coopdigitalnewsletter]

19 Aug 2021: Code red for humanity. Personalised funerals. Remote work.

Hello, this is the Co-op Digital newsletter.

[Image: IPCC]

Code red for humanity

“Unless there are immediate, rapid and large-scale reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, limiting warming to close to 1.5°C or even 2°C will be beyond reach.”

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released its latest report on climate change. The press release is here. The full report is here - very detailed, very doubled-checked. A good, quick version is the summary for policy makers - a punchy read. And a good third-party summary is here: The era of rapid climate change has begun.

Here is Co-operatives UK on the IPCC report:

“It’s clear ‘business as usual’ is not a viable response to the climate emergency. Global government action is needed, but we don’t have to wait. Businesses – and indeed every single one of us – can take action today to reduce our carbon footprint. Many of our co-operative members are already making changes – from The Co-op Group developing the first compostable plastic bag to Greencity Wholefoods trialling deliveries by electric trike to reduce diesel emissions. We want to see all businesses, from PLCs to community businesses, following suit to take action for climate change.”

Co-op Group and climate change: 

5 steps we’ve taken towards our sustainability ambitions in 2021.

And our wider climate plan. (Though after reading the IPCC report, you may think: every organisation’s plan needs to be more ambitious.) 

Co-op Power is the biggest energy buying co-operative in the UK - it helps businesses save money and source energy in an ethical, sustainable way.

We know that our world has been borrowing from future generations, leaving them what we might euphemistically call a “carbon debt” that’s constantly growing and already hard to pay back. Delay kills and speed is everything. It’s warming rapidly, and almost everywhere. It’s going to get worse before it gets better. Net zero carbon globally is needed as soon as possible. Carbon offsets aren’t going to be enough (some of those carbon-capturing forests are burning right now). Fossil fuels need to stay in the ground. Fixing it means more than just fixing energy (ecosystem degradation, water shortages, food security, biodiversity loss and more are also critical), though fixing energy is a good place to start. 

You should improve the insulation of your home, yes, but the speed of response required means that the meaningful change will have to come from institutions. If you thought digital transformation was spiky and disruptive, wait til you see carbon transformation. It is going to feel like the sudden reinvention of many things we take as given today - jobs, education, housing, industry, families, society, the world. And it has to be done fairly, and we have to work so hard and so fast at it. Because home is always worth it. We have no choice.

Previously: climate change right in front of you, the climate/carbon plans of the larger supermarket businesses in the UK.

Retail news

Lidl is launching a “scan as you shop” pilot in south west London - first scan-with-app move by a discounter?

Warhammer maker Games Workshop hands staff £5,000 bonus after lockdown sales surge - UK firm praises workers for “exceptional performance” during pandemic.

Woman sues McDonald's after Big Mac advert 'forced' her to break Lent - as she’s suing for the equivalent of £10, this seems like a PR opportunity for McDonald’s in Russia.

Interesting comment on supermarket executives joining NHS Test and Trace, ending with: 

“Because surely maturing a new public health service needs a different kind of leadership to establishing new infrastructure and logistics at speed? It’s a bit like [Test and Trace] is perceived to be a massive pop-up shop, not a semi-permanent public service.”

Remote work works, if workers have power

Two views of remote work. If workers have some power, remote work unleashes productivity and places additional value on results, rather than managerial politics. A couple of quotes from it:

Remote work makes who does and doesn’t actually do work way more obvious. [...] Remote work empowers those who produce and disempowers those who have succeeded by being excellent diplomats and poor workers, along with those who have succeeded by always finding someone to blame for their failures. It removes the ability to seem productive (by sitting at your desk looking stressed or always being on the phone), and also, crucially, may reveal how many bosses and managers simply don’t contribute to the bottom line.

But if workers have no power, it probably looks different, maybe like this:

“For workers with little power – who lack either a union or a high-demand skill/experience mix – "work from home" is a thin euphemism for "live at work." Not only do you provide your boss with rent-free space in your home, he gets to colonize your whole house and family.”

That second quote is from a good and entertaining rant about power and warehouse, white collar and gig workers living in a work panopticon. Of course, employers with office workers are still working things out. Ocado will allow staff to work remotely from abroad for one month a year. Google is cutting pay for those who don’t go to the office on the grounds that “we always pay at the top of the local market based on where an employee works from” - raising the question of whether you could get a pay rise at Google by moving to Ashgabat in Turkmenistan.

Personalised funerals

Trend: personalising your funeral. First, the ceremony: "My wishes, my way" - how the rise of funeral personalisation is helping to celebrate the lives we live. Co-op research finds that 35m want their own farewell to be a celebration of the life they have lived. 75% of the nation who would like to have a funeral now feel comfortable talking about their wishes. 20% of Britons would like their coffin personalised.

Second, the memorial: cremations are increasingly popular, so it follows that it’s becoming more popular to turn someone’s ashes into a different and personal kind of memorial - stones, diamonds, vinyl records, soil… there’s a startup for every idea.

Previously: startups in life and end-of life planning.

Federated co-operation

Co-op Foundation and Luminate are partnering with Noisy Cricket and Paper Frogs to deliver the next phase of the Federation programme. Co-op alum Linda Humphries says:

“We’ll be challenging the ways tech and data reinforce inequalities and encouraging co-operation. We want digitally-enabled products and services that are inclusive, respect people’s rights and safeguard their privacy.”

Various things

Hundreds of AI tools have been built to catch covid. None of them helped. - Some have been used in hospitals, despite not being properly tested. But perhaps the pandemic could help make medical AI better.

NHS Data Injection: Will It Hurt? - Should British patients be worried about their medical data being placed in a central database?

The slow collapse of Amazon’s drone delivery dream - mass redundancies and job transfers as it winds down a huge part of its UK drone delivery business.

Some English schools are using AI to help students catch up after Covid-19 - the AI personalises learning.

Why apps get worse: “No Product Manager in history has ever said “This seems to be working pretty well, let’s leave it the way it is.” Because that’s not bold.” - the downside of bias to action? (and not all product managers, surely).

Co-op and Co-op Digital news

Reflections on the first year of our degree apprenticeships.

Thank you for reading

Thank you friends, readers and contributors. Please continue to send ideas, questions, corrections, improvements, etc by replying or to @rod on Twitter. If you have enjoyed reading, please tell a friend! If you want to find out more about Co-op Digital, follow us @CoopDigital on Twitter and read the Co-op Digital Blog. Previous newsletters.

[orbemnews]

Scientists Urge Air Quality Changes in the Workplace, in Wake of Pandemic Clean water in 1842, food safety in 1906, a ban on lead-based paint in 1971. These sweeping public health reforms transformed not just our environment but expectations for what governments can do. Now it’s time to do the same for indoor air quality, according to a group of 39 scientists. In a manifesto of sorts published on Thursday in the journal Science, the researchers called for a “paradigm shift” in how citizens and government officials think about the quality of the air we breathe indoors. The timing of the scientists’ call to action coincides with the nation’s large-scale reopening as coronavirus cases steeply decline: Americans are anxiously facing a return to offices, schools, restaurants and theaters — exactly the type of crowded indoor spaces in which the coronavirus is thought to thrive. There is little doubt now that the coronavirus can linger in the air indoors, floating far beyond the recommended six feet of distance, the experts declared. The accumulating research puts the onus on policymakers and building engineers to provide clean air in public buildings and to minimize the risk of respiratory infections, they said. “We expect to have clean water from the taps., said Lidia Morawska, the group’s leader and an aerosol physicist at Queensland University of Technology in Australia. “We expect to have clean, safe food when we buy it in the supermarket. In the same way, we should expect clean air in our buildings and any shared spaces.” Meeting the group’s recommendations would require new workplace standards for air quality, but the scientists maintained that the remedies do not have to be onerous. Air quality in buildings can be improved with a few simple fixes, they said: adding filters to existing ventilation systems, using portable air cleaners and ultraviolet lights — or even just opening the windows where possible. Dr. Morawska led a group of 239 scientists who last year called on the World Health Organization to acknowledge that the coronavirus can spread in tiny droplets, or aerosols, that drift through the air. The W.H.O. had insisted that the virus spreads only in larger, heavier droplets and by touching contaminated surfaces, contradicting its own 2014 rule to assume all new viruses are airborne. The W.H.O. conceded on July 9 that transmission of the virus by aerosols could be responsible for “outbreaks of Covid-19 reported in some closed settings, such as restaurants, nightclubs, places of worship or places of work where people may be shouting, talking or singing,” but only at short range. The pressure to act on preventing airborne spread has recently been escalating. In February, more than a dozen experts petitioned the Biden administration to update workplace standards for high-risk settings like meatpacking plants and prisons, where Covid outbreaks have been rampant. Last month, a separate group of scientists detailed 10 lines of evidence that support the importance of airborne transmission indoors. On April 30, the W.H.O. inched forward and allowed that in poorly ventilated spaces, aerosols “may remain suspended in the air or travel farther than 1 meter (long-range).” The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which had also been slow to update its guidelines, recognized last week that the virus can be inhaled indoors, even when a person is more than six feet away from an infected individual. “They have ended up in a much better, more scientifically defensible place,” said Linsey Marr, an expert in airborne viruses at Virginia Tech, and a signatory to the letter. Updated  May 13, 2021, 2:00 p.m. ET “It would be helpful if they were to undertake a public service messaging campaign to publicize this change more broadly,” especially in parts of the world where the virus is surging, she said. For example, in some East Asian countries, stacked toilet systems could transport the virus between floors of a multistory building, she noted. More research is also needed on how the virus moves indoors. Researchers at the Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory modeled the flow of aerosol-sized particles after a person has had a five-minute coughing bout in one room of a three-room office with a central ventilation system. Clean outdoor air and air filters both cut down the flow of particles in that room, the scientists reported in April. But rapid air exchanges — more than 12 in an hour — can propel particles into connected rooms, much as secondhand smoke can waft into lower levels or nearby rooms. “For the source room, clearly more ventilation is a good thing,” said Leonard Pease, a chemical engineer and lead author of the study. “But that air goes somewhere. Maybe more ventilation is not always the solution.” In the United States, the C.D.C.’s concession may prompt the Occupational Safety and Health Association to change its regulations on air quality. Air is harder to contain and clean than food or water. But OSHA already mandates air-quality standards for certain chemicals. Its guidance for Covid does not require improvements to ventilation, except for health care settings. “Ventilation is really built into the approach that OSHA takes to all airborne hazards,” said Peg Seminario, who served as director of occupational safety and health for the A.F.L.-C.I.O. from 1990 until her retirement in 2019. “With Covid being recognized as an airborne hazard, those approaches should apply.” In January, President Biden directed OSHA to issue emergency temporary guidelines for Covid by March 15. But OSHA missed the deadline: Its draft is reportedly being reviewed by the White House’s regulatory office. In the meantime, businesses can do as much or as little as they wish to protect their workers. Citing concerns of continued shortages of protective gear, the American Hospital Association, an industry trade group, endorsed N95 respirators for health care workers only during medical procedures known to produce aerosols, or if they have close contact with an infected patient. Those are the same guidelines the W.H.O. and the C.D.C. offered early in the pandemic. Face masks and plexiglass barriers would protect the rest, the association said in March in a statement to the House Committee on Education and Labor. “They’re still stuck in the old paradigm, they have not accepted the fact that talking and coughing often generate more aerosols than do these so-called aerosol-generating procedures,” Dr. Marr said of the hospital group. “We know that Plexiglas barriers do not work,” she said, and may in fact increase the risk, perhaps because they inhibit proper airflow in a room. The improvements do not have to be expensive: In-room air filters are reasonably priced at less than 50 cents per square foot, although a shortage of supply has raised prices, said William Bahnfleth, professor of architectural engineering at Penn State University, and head of the Epidemic Task Force at Ashrae (the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-Conditioning Engineers), which sets standards for such devices. UV lights that are incorporated into a building’s ventilation system can cost up to roughly $1 per square foot; those installed room by room perform better but could be 10 times as expensive, he said. If OSHA rules do change, demand could inspire innovation and slash prices. There is precedent to believe that may happen, according to David Michaels, a professor at George Washington University who served as OSHA director under President Barack Obama. When OSHA moved to control exposure to a carcinogen called vinyl chloride, the building block of vinyl, the plastics industry warned it would threaten 2.1 million jobs. In fact, within months, companies “actually saved money and not a single job was lost,” Dr. Michaels recalled. In any case, absent employees and health care costs can prove to be more costly than updates to ventilation systems, the experts said. Better ventilation will help thwart not just the coronavirus, but other respiratory viruses that cause influenza and common colds, as well as pollutants. Before people realized the importance of clean water, cholera and other waterborne pathogens claimed millions of lives worldwide every year. “We live with colds and flus and just accept them as a way of life,” Dr. Marr said. “Maybe we don’t really have to.” Source link Orbem News #Air #Pandemic #quality #Scientists #Urge #Wake #workplace

[newsfromthefuture]

Archive AlphaLeaks Document Raises Questions About White House Staffers From Thomas Woods Foundation

The following document was discovered as part of the 2017 document dump from the Thomas Woods Foundation, a think tank that describes itself as “Bridging the gap between the Traditional Right and the New Right.” There continues to be speculation regarding possible links between the current administration and former members of staff at the Foundation. This document was originally published on alphaleaks.org, in the months before it's founder (whose identity is still masked by California supreme court judgement) was successfully sued by Alphabet, Google's parent company. Alphabet was awarded undisclosed damages rumoured to be over $13m, in relation to earlier documents published on the site.We have reproduced this document in full, and welcome clarification from the White House regarding current and former links between the president and the Thomas Woods Foundation.

An End to Poor: The Newgenics Manifesto.

This manifesto leads to some startling conclusions, but I believe the rich will have the moral clarity to pursue the truth to its ends. This manifesto makes no judgement about men or women, black or white, or any personal lifestyle choices the reader might make; it is simply a blueprint for a richer world for all those with the moral clarity to claim it. This manifesto comes in three parts:

1: A collection of uncontroversial facts about the nature of richness and poorness. 2: A set of conclusions that can be drawn from combining these facts. 3: A set of actions that these conclusions demand, for the good of society.

The ultimate action this manifesto demands is Newgenics: allowing the poor to die as God intended, and without them destroying the meaningful society created by the rich.

Facts

Being poor is not a matter of lacking wealth. The clear majority of the poor do lack wealth, it is true, but that’s not what makes them poor. What makes them poor is being born into a circumstance that fails to instill in them the values that make one ‘well-off’, ‘rich’, or ‘comfortable’ when those values are applied to the real world. We use a lot of euphemisms for it, but it boils down to the fact that being poor or rich is a matter of attitude, not wealth. The rich strive. The poor do not. This leads to the rich accumulating success and wealth, where the poor and the machinery of the state accumulate neither, and pass onto their children the toxic idea that neither are important.

Fact 1. Rich or poor is a matter of proper character.

Everyone could be rich, but many people lack the moral clarity and the personal strength to strive for it. There is often a drive to re-educate the poor, to instill in them the values and character of the rich; but this is flawed, in that if one is born intrinsically rich, intrinsically possessing those values that will drive him towards wealth and success, then one will seek out companions that have the same goals; whereas if one is intrinsically poor, one will not listen to these lessons no matter how many times it is repeated.

Fact 2. Free education cannot change someone from poor to rich.

The state is complex in terms of rich and poor- many rich people are drawn to positions of power and influence available to them in government, yet the vast machinery of the state acts much more like someone poor than someone rich. The machinery of the state: welfare payments; income taxes; corporation taxes; value added taxes; sales taxes; healthcare; education; pensions; all this machinery repeats the only prayer of the poor. ‘It’s Not Fair’ The machinery of the state props up poor thinking, props up poor judgement, and props up poor ideas that infect our society, that infect parents, and that keep people poor.

Fact 3. The machine of the state is poor, whether led by the rich or not.

When someone devotes their life to being poor- when they choose not to strive for success, when they choose to be rail against the "unfairness" of life instead of accept it and fight to win, they cease contributing in a meaningful fashion to society. For example, if a person chooses to care for a family member instead of pursuing an education into which they have sunk both time and money, that is a poor decision. Illness is intrinsically unfair, as are almost all natural occurrences. To give in to it- to waste time and effort on screaming into the wind, in an effort to turn it back- is a poor decision. It wastes energy and effort that could be used for meaningful progress, on both a personal and a societal level. Imagine if instead, this person med the rich decision to continue their education, to secure success and wealth, to ensure that never again would illness meet their family without being met with a tidal wave of resources! Instead they have selfishly chosen to waste their energy in an effort to feel less personal guilt over a random, natural, and naturally unfair occurrence.

Fact 4. The poor are detrimental to society and humanity as a whole.

Conclusions

Fact 1 & Fact 3

We have established that being rich is a matter of proper character being instilled from birth, and we have established that the machinery of the state is poor. This leads to the conclusion that if a child is raised by the machinery of the state, in whole or in part, then the state will instill in them poor values and poor character. This may even affect those children born into poverty who would have been rich by their nature, had they not been raised by at least one poor ‘parent’; the machinery of the state. There is one way in which the state can be a ‘good’ parent to those children born to few resources- to demonstrate character and rich decision-making, rich ideas, and the rich strength of moral clarity which enables a strong state to make good economic, defense, and policing decisions.

Conclusion 1: The machinery of the state is a poor parent. The leaders of a state may be a rich parent, in the absence of this poor machinery.

Conclusion 1 & Fact 4

Since the machinery of the state cannot raise a rich child, and since poor people are detrimental to society as a whole, it follows that the machinery of the state is detrimental to society as a whole. This leads us to the startling conclusion that it is a poor idea and ought to be withdrawn, and financial support ought to be replaced with moral leadership. Without true role models to strive towards, rich children born into poverty may become poor; and no amount of intervention from the machinery of the state can induce a poor child born into poverty to become rich. 

Conclusion 1a: The machinery of the state should cease to financially support the poor.

Conclusion 1b: the leadership of the state should support the moral development of the rich in poverty.

Conclusion 1 & Fact 2

We have established that the machinery of the state is a poor parent, and we know that education cannot change a poor child into a rich one. This leads us to the conclusion that forcing education on the poor does nothing to improve their chances of becoming rich. There are certainly success stories of rich people born into poverty who utilized a free education, as they utilized every meagre advantage they had, to become successful and wealthy people; but this is not a success of education. This is a success of the drive and tenacity of the naturally rich.

Conclusion 2: Free education cannot make a rich person from a poor one.

Conclusion 2 & Conclusion 1a

Free education being useless in the development of the rich, and wasteful in the attempted development of the poor, it ought to be abolished on the grounds that it does not assist either the individual or society at large become richer.

Conclusion 2a: Free education ought to be abolished.

Conclusion 1a & Conclusion 2a

These together show that free education ought not be established as a ‘right’, since it does not improve individual outcomes or societal outcomes in terms of moving from a poor society to a rich one. This can be extended to other forms of universal ‘welfare’, or movements towards it- free healthcare ought not be attempted, free voting should be re-examined, free support once one is of no use to society needs to be removed. Charitable awards should never be made available based on need; rather, they should be awarded based on merit.

Conclusion 3: There should be no universal, free support of any kind available.

Conclusion 3 and Fact 4

Without free support from charity or the machinery of state, the poor will resort to their age-old cry of ‘It’s Not Fair.’ And these poor, maybe hiding the diamonds in the rough of the rich in poverty, will attempt to wrest back control by the remaining options they have to them; violence, and the vote. With these removed, the unfairness of the world- starvation, disease, the cruelty of all men in need- these will winnow out the chaff of those in poverty, remove the poor, and leave us with only the rich after a certain amount of time has passed.

Conclusion 4: The poor should be allowed to die as nature intended.

Actions

A note- these actions may appear inhumane, and I admit they are a sketch of a plan, lacking fine detail. It is my great hope that they can be discussed and formalized as time goes on. Remember that ‘Inhumanity’ is simply another poor idea- the idea that one is born deserving to be treated a certain way simply because one exists, rather than because one has earned one’s place in society. 

The Newgenic 10-point plan is a means of removing decision-making power from the poor by virtue of allowing them the early, natural deaths that God has planned for them.

1: Increase police powers.

This is a necessary foundation for future steps. Increasing police powers by fiat may create enormous protest and remove necessary lawmakers from positions of power. The best way I can see forward for this is to increase the power and number of tools and weapons available to the police, and to normalize the use of enormous necessary force buy police departments.

2: Restrict voting powers.

Again, removing voting powers by fiat creates violent process. Instead, frame this as the protection of the voting process. Create, publicize and exaggerate voting fraud problems, each of which is to be blamed on a specific section of the poor, and demand more and more paperwork to earn one’s vote. The poor will not bother jumping through the hoops; the rich will. Over time, raise the voting age to 30, state by state. Since this Newgenic plan will cause the poor to die naturally, there will be far fewer poor voters by this age.

3: Privatize healthcare entirely.

The failure of any universal or universal-style free healthcare can be easily engineered by cutting funding slowly in real terms (as in the UK) until the system disintegrates under its own weight, or allowing more private work to be performed by public doctors. The removal of free access to Emergency Rooms would be protested, but the closing of individual ERs one at a time will only be protested on a local level and can be handled by local police.

4: Privatize education entirely. 

Move private money and businesses into positions of authority over schools. Create easy-to-reach boundaries of behaviour for exclusion and expulsion of students. Offer new free places that are hard to reach or otherwise unsuitable for students. Allow the creation of for-profit schools, wait for children to move in, and then slowly remove funding. Close ‘unpopular’ public schools. Allow public schools to fundraise from parents in any way they see fit; especially defend ‘discriminatory’ practices that allow parents to pay for perks as a form of free speech.

5. Privatize pensions and social security entirely.

Encourage people to save for their own retirement; the poor are owed nothing simply due to their age. Encourage a mindset of ‘knowing when one’s time is through’ and emphasize the rich leadership of those working well into their old age. Combine this with liberalizing access to drugs to assist the disabled and infirm in controlling how much they drain society.

6: Restrict emergency calls with ID laws

Preventing people from calling emergency services means more poor people will die in natural fires, crimes and health emergencies (which will be more common due to reduced overall healthcare). Police need to follow up on ‘nuisance’ calls from people refusing to give their ID when calling in an emergency. This can eventually be linked to tax- if you don’t pay, you don’t get the emergency services.

7: Encourage obvious solutions to these ‘problems’

By making low-paying work easily available, on national monuments or defence, when poor people refuse to take this work they can easily be personally blamed for their failure to work (or failure to organize their finances if they do work)

8: Allow the natural world to take its course. Reject systemic causes; emphasize individual responsibility. 

When poor people- even poor children- die due to being poor, this must be emphasized. Were they rich, they would have found a way to access the support they needed. Since they did not, it is an example of the failure of motivation present in the poor. 

9: Encourage the rich away from sympathy and towards acceptance via targeted support as opposed to universal charity. 

From prominent rich philanthropists down, the emphasis of their philanthropy must be ‘helping you help yourself’. The ‘Give a man a fish’ proverb is especially useful in encouraging the rich to reconsider meaningless redistribution of wealth; the only lives that will be lost are those of the poor, and that makes our whole society stronger.

10: Patience.

This is not an overnight solution. The eugenic solutions of the past failed for two reasons- they wanted results too quickly, and they were based on racist, sexist, outmoded understandings of what made a person worthwhile. There is no genetic component to being rich or poor; it is a part of the mind that may never be pinned down to a gene. Instead of mass sterilizations, the Newgenic plan is simply allow the poor to die young, raise the voting age to disenfranchise them, and remove the ability to protest without fear of personal death or lasting injury. This will, within 2-3 generations, create a land ruled by and for the deserving rich, whether those success stories that rise from the teeming masses of the poor, or the children of the rich born into a community of moral purity.

[marcjampole]

Tell your Rep & Senators to cut military spending below $400 billion a year, with no funds for new nukes or automated weapons

The agenda of the Trump Administration and Congressional Republicans includes raising military spending by billions of dollars. A lot of that money will go to developing a new generation of smaller, “smarter” nuclear weapons and to developing weapons that will inflict damage on the enemy without prior command by a human, so called automated weapons systems—robot weapons.

Both new weapons systems raise grave questions of morality and ethics, starting with the fact that each has characteristics that make its use easy to justify. Instead of slowly dismantling our nuclear capability or letting it go obsolete, which President Obama pledged to do, the plan—approved by Obama—is to spend more than a trillion to build smaller nukes that inflict pinpoint damage, which would enable generals to make the claim that they are almost conventional and therefore okay to use. I can imagine a future Buck Turgidson (from Stanley Kubrick’s 1964 masterpiece “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb”) assuring a future president that the bomb he wants to drop on Pyongyang will only kill 20,000 and not the 146,000 killed by the Hiroshima blast, and that the radiation fallout will be negligible and limited to a small area, maybe the size of France.

Automated weapons incite a number of ethical challenges. We can anticipate that decision-making weapons will be as susceptible to bugs, hacking and programming errors as other sophisticated systems based on digital technology, such as bank databases, credit card companies, government servers, clouds and the Internet. Triggered by a hacker or by a bug in one of millions of lines of code, a robot could turn on us, kill the wrong target or mindlessly start slaughtering innocents.

There is also the moral issue of agency. The very thing that makes automated weapons so attractive—we can send them into battle instead of live soldiers—also underlies the essential immorality of using robots to kill other humans. It’s so easy to kill an animated figure on a screen in a video game. And then another, and then another, each of them so realistic in their detail that they could almost be human. Pretty soon you’ve knocked off hundreds of imaginary people. Not so easy, though, for most of us to pull a trigger, knowing that a bullet will rip through heart of someone standing ten feet away and end their existence. Perhaps we instinctively empathize with the victim and fear for our own lives. Or maybe most of us kill with difficulty because the taboo against killing is so strongly instilled in us, that moral sense that taking the life of another human being is wrong, sinful.

The problem with all advanced military technologies is that they turn war into a video game, and by doing so distance the possessors of the technology from their adversaries. Whether the attack is by conventional bomber, missile, drone or the decision-making robot weapons now under development, the technology turns the enemy into video images. Remote warfare dehumanizes the enemy and makes it easier to kill lots of them without giving it a thought. The bombardier doesn’t see the victims below, or if he can, they look like specks. The operator of the drone is even farther away from his intended victims. The operator of robots even more so.

Developing either or both of these advanced weapons systems will lead to an arms race with any number of other countries, including China, Russia and Iran. History and their own actions suggest to me that neither China nor Iran really want to spend any more money on military spending than they have to. But they will, if they have to, we can be sure of that. Let’s not forget that as countries develop new systems to keep pace with us, the chance grows that these weapons of mass destruction will fall into the hands of countries led by irresponsible leaders such as North Korea and…and…and, on my god!, the United States.

Seriously (or at least not mordantly funny)…it’s not enough merely to cut development of nuclear and automated weapons from the Pentagon budget. Pentagon spending has been at historically high levels for more than a decade. When we correct for inflation, every year since 9/11 we have spent from 20-55% more than the average annual outlay for defense 1962-2018 (est.). The average is $486.9 billion and includes the most expensive years of the Viet Nam War and the build-up under Reagan. We’ve spent about $600 billion annually the last few years, and the Pentagon wants to boost that to about $650 billion.

Over the last 10-year period for which we have statistics (2004-2014), the United States spent more on the military than China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, India and Saudi Arabia combined, Plus, our NATO and other major allies collectively spent almost as much as we did.

What’s worse—most military build-ups in American history have lasted five to ten years. Our current orgy of spending on weapons and wars has lasted 16 years and counting. The best source I have found for facts and figures on military spending is the Friends Committee on National Legislation (FCNL), the Quaker’s lobbying arm.

As FCNL reminds us, besides making the world a much more dangerous place, military spending makes no economic sense. Each billion dollars spent on the military creates about 12,000 jobs, including 6,800 direct jobs. These job numbers created by military spending are paltry in number compared to the jobs generated by the same investment in education (25,000 jobs, including 15,300 direct), health care (17,000; 8,400 direct) or clean energy (17,000; 7,900 direct). To an advanced economy, spending on defense is almost the 21st century equivalent of a potlatch, the ceremonial festival held by the Kwakiutl and other Northwest American Indian tribes in which the host enhanced his (and it was always a “his”) social status in the tribe by the destruction of his personal property. I write ”almost” because our military potlatch also kills other human beings, many of them non-combatants.

The military establishment, Trumpty-Dumpty and his team, most Republicans and many Democrats proclaim that we have to boost military spending because of the dangers in the world. Remember that the military establishment speaks in a self-serving voice. Trump and the GOP are the same people who tell you that our cities are warzones, when crime is at historic lows everywhere save Chicago, Milwaukee and Baltimore. They are the people who tell us that immigrants create crime waves, when immigrants have a much lower crime rate than those born here. They are the people who tell you it was better for American society for rich folk to get a tax break than for 22 million people to get health care. They want to cut spending on education, health care, food stamps and other social welfare programs and they don’t seem to care a gnat’s buttocks about infrastructure, but when it comes to arms, it’s more, more, more, more and more.

But we’ve done more, and it has left the country broke and with little if nothing to show for our wars and military excursions except death, destruction and a loss of reputation. Meanwhile, a cheap economic boycott and a little diplomacy produced the truly transformative nuclear deal with Iran.

We can remain the world’s strongest nation while improving our economy by cutting military spending to about $400 billion a year. I’ve selected that amount for several reasons. It’s one quarter less than the average for the past 55 years. More to the point, it’s what we spent in the mid-1970’s. For those too young to remember, the mid-1970’s was not only the era in which we spent relatively little on the military, it also saw earnings for the average American worker peak. It was when America experienced the least inequality of wealth and income.

Limiting Pentagon spending to $400 billion a year must come with a stipulation that none of it be spent on developing a new generation of nuclear weapons or automated weapons. Yet even without these expensive programs for mass destruction, the Pentagon will still have to cut elsewhere, and that’s a good thing. There’s a lot of fat, especially in military contracts to for-profit companies to fight senseless, goalless wars in the Middle East.

But we’ll benefit from cutting the Pentagon budget to the bone only if government spends the money represented by those cuts to create new jobs. Congress can’t let the private sector—AKA rich folk—try to create jobs via tax cuts, because they won’t. They’ll put the added cash in their pockets or in Jeff Koons paintings, high-tech stocks and never-occupied apartments overlooking Central Park.

Now that I have convinced you that instead of increasing military spending, we should be decreasing it, here’s the call to action: Tell your elected officials.

Contact your two senators and your congressperson and make demands as explicitly as possible:

Stop all research and development in automated weapons and new nuclear weapons.

Cut the total military budget for the next 10 years to $400 billion a year, no inflation increase.

Use the more than $200 billion in savings per year on education, mass transit and the development of alternative fuels.

I would recommend contacting these elected officials once a month until there is a budget vote later this year. And you might want to donate some money to FCNL, which seems to be leading the charge on the issue of reducing military spending.

[elizabethcariasa]

Tax extenders getting some attention, but it may not be enough for renewal

Rep. Richard Neal (D-Massachusetts), chairman of the Ways and Means Committee (top row, center), is looking to renew at least some expired tax provisions, known as extenders. The ranking Republican on the House tax-writing panel, Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas (top row, right) is not impressed with Neal's proposal. (Photo courtesy House Ways and Means Democrats Facebook page)

Is it finally the end for extenders?

Yes, no or maybe, depending on who you ask.

Many members of Congress on both sides of the aisle say enough is enough with the perpetually renewed technically temporary tax breaks known as extenders. They are getting support from a diverse collection of public policy, tax and advocacy groups who say it's past time to do away with extenders.

Some House action: But Ways and Means Chairman Richard Neal (D-Massachusetts) this week floated an extenders package that would renew some of the expired or expiring tax breaks through 2020. Word is it could get tax committee review next week.

In addition to renewing the extenders, Neal's proposal also reportedly includes a 1 percentage point increase in the corporate tax rate and tweaking the estate, both of which were reduced in the GOP's Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), to help pay for programs that have wide Democratic support, most notably an expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

It's no surprise that suggested changes to the Republican's 2017 landmark tax reform bill is not sitting well with that party's leaders.

Republican Rep. Kevin Brady of Texas, former Ways and Means head and now the committee's ranking minority member, immediately labeled Neal's reported extenders plan a non-starter.

Of course, Neal's plans to alter key TCJA provisions could just be an opening gambit to get the extenders talk moving.

Tax reform's effect on extenders: Speaking of the TCJA, some of its changes, the most drastic since the historic Tax Reform Act of 1986, have dramatically reduced the value of some extenders.

Take the private mortgage insurance (PMI) itemized deduction option.

Home buyers who make a down payment of less than 20 percent when getting a mortgage usually are required by their lenders to purchase PMI. It protects the lender in case the buyer defaults on the loan.

PMI premiums paid by the homeowner had been allowed as an added mortgage interest deduction since 2006, when the tax break was added as short-term relief in the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006. The PMI deduction primarily benefited low and moderate-income borrowers and was extended six times before it expired at the end of 2017.

The loss of the deduction, however, now is not really a problem for many mortgage payers. The TCJA doubled the standard deduction, meaning fewer homeowners are itemizing their taxes.

Senate still pro-extenders: While the PMI write-off and other extenders with reduced or limited tax value could easily be erased, the Senate still favors a broad renewal effort.

In February, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ranking Member Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) introduced bipartisan legislation to restore the tax provisions that expired at the end of 2017 and 2018 through the balance of this year and provide disaster tax relief benefits to individuals and businesses affected by major disasters occurring in 2018.

The pair followed up that effort last month by creating bipartisan task forces to examine 42 temporary tax provisions that expired, or will expire, between Dec. 31, 2017 and the end of this year.

The working groups are looking at possible solutions that would provide long-term tax certainty in the following areas:

Employment and Community Development

Health

Energy

Cost Recovery

Individual, Excise & Other Expiring Policies

A separate task force will examine whether there is a core package of tax relief provisions that should be available when natural disasters strike.

Senators also want to hear from stakeholders in the designated areas.

"It's past time for Congress to end its bad habit of waiting until the last minute to extend temporary tax policy. This type of tax policy is meant to encourage long-term growth and investment. By definition, that must be done deliberately and ahead of time to be successful. I encourage stakeholders to view this as an opportunity to come to the table and work with us to find long-term solutions," said Grassley.

"Extending tax incentives for a year or two at a time is no way to craft public policy. The Finance Committee's task forces are working to develop permanent solutions to these vexing tax issues," added Wyden.

You can download the Joint Committee on Taxation's report (as PDF) that details the extenders being examined by the task forces.

Bumpy road remains: There are a couple of problems with the Senate's effort.

First, the U.S. Constitution requires all tax legislation originate in the House. Of course, there are ways to work around this, but the Finance Committee's work will have to be accepted by the Ways and Means to proceed.

Second, legislative time is running short. The number of days that Congress plans to be in session are rapidly dwindling.

When push comes to shove on Capitol Hill, the extenders could be punted so that lawmakers can focus on other more pressing matters.

This includes raising the national debt limit by late October or early November and funding the federal government by the end of September — with Donald J. Trump's long-demanded wall money? — to avoid another costly, both politically and fiscally, government shutdown.

Can extenders be worked into this schedule?

Yes. No. Maybe.

You also might find these other posts of interest:

Extenders one of top tax issues for 2019

Tax extenders get W&M hearing in March, but renewal unclear

Use 1040X if you can claim a renewed extender not available when you filed

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[societyandclimatechange-blog]

When We Almost Stopped Climate Change

30 years ago, the United States had a chance to stop climate change. Almost nothing stood in the way, except human resistance. What went wrong?

The New York Times released the podcast, When We Almost Stopped Climate Change, that talks about this issue on August 31, 2018. Below are notes take directly from listening to the podcast.

Nathaniel Rich: By the 1950s scientists new about the possibility of climate change. Articles, news, and speakers on educational channels or prime tv were acknowledging greenhouse gases and carbon emissions to be the cause. These all mentioned a rise in temperature that would melt the Arctic ice. But not much attention was paid to it outside of scientific circles until after the next couple of decades.

Rafe Pomerance: A political lobbyist and activist for environmental organizations, came across a paragraph about the environmental impacts of coal use in 1979. This section of the report was devoted to the addressing that coal, and other fossil fuels, would warm the planet through their emissions of carbon dioxide. He is astonished and terrified and assumes he misread something and puts it out of his mind. He said to himself “this just can't be”. It seemed to him to be a transformation of the planet in one sentence. A few days later, Rafe Pomerance comes across an article by Gord McDonald who is warning about the exact same problem. Pomerance proceeds to call and meet McDonald to learn more. After McDonald explains the issue to Pomerance, Pomerance responds to it and asks if he sets up briefings on Capitol Hill, would McDonald tell them what he told him. McDonald agreed. Pomerance believed that if he brought this information to those in power, they will see that action needs to be taken and they will do the responsible thing. Meetings took place with the PA, National Security Council, the State Department, the Council of Environmental Quality, the New York Times, and Frank Press (president science advisor). A very high-level group of scientist issued a report of the whole problem (The Charney Report) in July 1979. To this day, people still look back at this report.

President Raegan: “I think the environmental protection agency in many instances has gone to the extreme” Following this public statement. Raegan proceeded to appoint the worst possible people, who were all anti-environmental people in power. Raegan continues to make statements putting down the climate concern “we’ve got environmentalists who wouldn’t let you build a house unless it looked like a bird’s nest and they must be restrained” and “I think the biggest thing the government could do is to get out of some of its regulations”. The climate issue begins to go off the map and Pomerance doesn’t know what to do as Raegan is beginning to roll everything back to essentially when Teddy Roosevelt was in power.

The Hole in the Ozone: 1985 s British study was published about the level of the ozone above the Antarctic has dramatically declined. A huge hole the size of North America above Antarctica. This stirred up concern about UV rays raising temperatures, damaging farm crops, and increasing sunburn. Almost overnight, there is an enormous amount of public panic. Made it believable that humans could alter the environment on a global scale. Theories arose that pointed the fingers at man-made chemicals. Scientists wanted a worldwide ban on all uses of CFC. By 1987, the Montreal Protocol: the first global-atmospheric-environmental treaty, a landmarked documented achievement by any standard, and becomes a template for a possible global warming solution. Started to ask that if together, they could mobilize the political will required to agree on a strong ozone protocol. This ozone-hole opened the door to the credibility of the climate problem.

Record Heat: Summer of 1988. Global temperatures higher than ever recorded. Drought, health concerns, and apocalyptic headlines. June 1988, Pomerance receives a phone call from James Hansen, a NASA scientist, who is a lead witness in a hearing on Capitol Hill, and tells Pomerance that he is about to make a major statement. “The global warming is now large enough, that we can now ascribe, with a high degree of confidence, a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect”. The effect of what they predicted years ago is now happening. It is no longer theory, it is happening. The record warm period was not normal and not a natural variation.

Results of the Hearing: Hansen become the face of the global warming problem. By the end of 1988, there are 32 new climate bills. The United States is making new policies, Canada is pushing for an international agreement that would control carbon dioxide emissions. A process begins in earnest to formulate a global treaty to prevent catastrophic global warming. “The idea is to convince everyone that all of this isn’t just scientific speculation, its real, and should be a concern.

Election of George H W Bush: Said that the Whitehouse will do something about the problem. Industry begins to brace for new policies. But instead of the global treaty, a divide arises within the Whitehouse. John Sununu became a difficult obstacle. Al Gore calls for another hearing with James Hansen was set to try and convince the rest of the Whitehouse to get on board. Hansen sends his testimony to the Whitehouse for approval and it comes back to him will all sorts of censors and deletions that distort his scientific findings and also additions that make arguments about economic policy that essentially saying that there should be no regulations that at all compromise the economic goals of the country. Instead of fighting the censors, he accepts them and then makes a call to Gore. Gore asks Hansen if he can send this story to the New York Times, and a bombshell story is released that the Whitehouse is trying to censor a NASA scientist. A huge embarrassment to the Whitehouse, to which they have to apologize and claim that the censorship came from a functionary five levels down from the top and shortly thereafter recommit to the international negotiation process for a climate treaty and that the US will furthermore lead the process. The censor came from Sununu himself.

The International Treaty: November 1988, a meeting in the Netherlands that will be the first high-level meeting about the framework for a global treaty on climate change. Every country sends its environmental administer. The US equivalent is the head of PA, William Riley, but Sununu does not trust him and sends an ally as a kind of minder to the meeting to make sure that the US doesn’t accept any kind of binding proposal. Advocates from the US wait outside the meeting as it goes longer than anticipated because they want to bring some attention of the meeting to the media. It wasn’t until the Swedish minister emerges and tells them “your country is fucking this thing up”. Alan Bromley (Sununu’s guy), had refused to endorse any global treaty that has any hard targets or demands any specific emission reductions - the best opportunity that we’ve had for a binding global treaty to prevent climate change falls apart.

Nathaniel Rich: What went wrong? Rich says there is a simple political explanation, which is that the chief of staff, Sununu won this political fight within the Whitehouse. But a big question remains that why was the level of support, of the political and public support for solving the problem not strong enough to overcome the will one man who wasn’t even the president? Questions arise about our ability to grapple meaningfully with a problem of such enormous stakes and a problem whose ramifications wouldn’t be felt for decades. Climate change involves the potential of civilizational death. We don’t like looking that in the face, and we choose not to.

Bush against Climate Change: By 1990, Bush’s entire economic council comes out against climate policy. The oil and gas industry mobilizes on the issue and develops a strategy and a campaign of funding information propaganda that casts doubts on whether climate change was real, discounted human impacts and suggested there was nothing practical to do about it anyway. And ultimately deny climate change exists at all. Fast forward to almost present day - Trump stating all of Obama’s talk of global warming and climate change was a hoax and a “money-making industry” - the politics around the industry become sharply divided. The United States is refusing to believe that one country could even make a difference, so why try? At the same time, sea levels continue to rise and natural disasters are becoming more and more common. Many news reports around the globe are recording heat records, natural disasters, and many more fateful events.

1979-1989: The time when everyone was willing to meet when it was still about science. The window when a relatively gradual intervention would have had major positive benefits. Maybe it would have taken a couple decades to get right but it would have been enough - but now it’s not enough - that window has closed.

Nathaniel Rich on Looking Forward: It is still not too late. There is still time to make a change and plans that present a pretty clear path that works on solving this and keeping temperatures below a 2-degree Celsius rise. What’s lacking is the political will to initiate the transformation of our energy system and global economy that is required to do this. This political will may not arise until we understand the issue in moral terms and until everyone or most people feel the moral obligation to demand action. 

The question I’m left with at the end of this podcast is, how do we create the moral obligation within people? Is this something that is at all possible?

This podcast is only 28 minutes long, I highly suggest giving it a listen.

[ecotone99]

[SF]You are the only child of a dictator in a dystopian future. Secretly, you intend to reform society and bring an end to your family's rule upon taking power. Unfortunately, you are kidnapped by rebels before you can put any of this into action - and needless to say, the rebels don't like you.

It had been about thirty-three years since a nuclear conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States of America had almost brought an end to modern civilization. In a period of three days, both the Soviet Union and the United States had decimated both of their armies and agreed to a hasty diplomatic truce. Historians now call it the first global revolution, because it revolutionized the way global society functioned and the hardships it sparked spurred forth a period of massive technological innovation and political change. To compensate for the damage that was done to the global economy, large incentive existed for both mega-corporations and national governments to create new means to provide for a massive lower-class that had been created by the conflict. Unfortunately, this period of change came with the growth of totalitarian and corrupt governments globally. Facing swaths of displaced and restive refugee's, the armies of many countries became desperate and sought to create dictatorships to maintain a fledgling sense of national identity. With resources scarce and money consolidated within the hands of a few, there was little incentive for public officials to keep their promises and they stole from the public left and right.

I was born about four years before this conflict began, in 1985, and have no memories of this period. I've been told that my country was just as poor then as it is now, but that we are no longer weak and exploited. In school, we learned that some suppressed revolt in Eastern Germany led to the outbreak of conventional conflict in Europe which led to the 'revolution' in a matter of three weeks. My country and many others were left largely unscathed by the conflict, but still suffered the consequences of it. In my brain lies years of ingrained propaganda that filled every school and television station that I ever saw, but I know that my country is really no different from any other. I've witnessed everything I can about the true state of affairs of the world first hand, and can't help but feel pessimistic towards everything. All those promising ideologies that I was raised under, which fluctuated quite rapidly through a few years of political revolutions, were broken the minute I found myself at the top. And what weighs down on me even more is the fact that, while I am technically in the highest position of power, I have never before had to heed to the directives of others more than I do now. Everywhere I turn, someone or something is trying to infiltrate my mind, and gain influence over my own vision and what I seek to do to uplift my people from the ashes of what we call a 'country.' They only want to protect their own interests, which is understandable, but it obstructs the path towards accomplishing what needs to be done. As dramatic as it may sound, I can truly not trust anyone - sometimes not even my own rationale.

I was raised in a slum. I suffer from terrible eyesight and my left leg is longer than the other, deformities I incurred over years of malnutrition. My father died in a factory accident when I was only six years old, and my mother was killed by a stray bullet that missed a hated community drug dealer who had accidentally caused a wave of overdoses when he put too much fentanyl in a heroin patch. I know the story because many of my peers I grew up around faced the consequences of that decision, and I could rest at night knowing that he had still been killed anyways. As an orphan, I was sent to a government-owned boarding school deep in the inner-city. I learned quickly that I would not get anywhere without fighting for myself, which enabled me to get far even with my physical disabilities. Eventually, once I began my political career, this drew admiration from the country as my limp gave the obvious appearance of someone fighting against their disabilities. I study hard in school, and used the faculties provided to me to make me a sharp and concise writer. I knew that I would need to be able to intelligently spell out my ideas if I wanted to get out of that mess, so I put all of my energy towards that. When I had to work hard to just survive, I didn't have any time to be preoccupied with insecurities, which allowed me to maintain a strong sense of optimism. A mentality that I must work to maintain even now, in my finest hour. So, what the people saw was a smiling man with a terrible gait and a limp, which was both endearing and encouraging. I don't think I would have won the election without this.

The 'Socialist Republic of Mexico' was founded in 1994 when the military intervened in a constitutional crisis and reformed the constitution. This preceded a period of massive economic growth, as the world began to rebuild and demanded oil and cheap manufacturing to accomplish this. Mexico could easily provide this, because only two or three missiles had actually landed on the country, allowing it to become one of the most economically strongest nations in the world. To the north America had collapsed into some ideologically vague military dictatorship as soon as the war had finished. It was now closed off to the world, allowing no one to enter or leave, except the Americans that were able to escape in the short period of chaos after the war.

I was born in Mexico City, and remained their for the rest of my life. I witnessed first hand what an economic boom can do. But this made the country even more corrupt, and the inequality became even more apparent. The rich constructed a large financial district, living in large glimmering towers in the center of the city, while the poor remained concentrated in dense slums forming a ring around the city. They were stuck working factory jobs with little protection and many risks, and in everyone of their faces you can see that they hate every minute of it. Most of Western and Eastern Europe had utterly collapsed, and all that was left was a disorganized wasteland. Maps don't depict countries their anymore, just vague lines of control and empty radioactive plains where people don't live anymore. The Soviet Union still exists, but the Communist Party devolved into a fascist political party. All that remains is Soviet symbolism. East Asia was precarious case, because it sustained its own wars and conflicts that grew out of the nuclear war. The Japanese government slowly collapsed, before falling into a military dictatorship. A massive war broke out on the Korean peninsula that left millions dead, and the People's Republic of China faced a political revolution which dismantled the Communist government and eventually led to the secession of Tibet. These countries are large customers of my countries resources, so I dealt with them on nearly a daily basis and had traveled to all of them. Without foreign aid, many countries in Africa faced waves of famines. But this came to their benefit, because out of the death and desperation that gripped their lands grew the opportunity to regrow their countries in the correct way. Many of them are emerging to become quite successful now, albeit under undemocratic dictatorships, and are able to protect themselves in the face of foreign powers who seek to exploit them like they used too. India was the only country that remained truly democratic, and it was able to come out of the global conflict with most of its cities intact. But this was a consequence of a Pakistani military leaders split-second moral decision to not respond to the nuclear attack, who thought that all of civilization would be lost if he retaliated. I remember learning that this country was very religious, and maybe this embedded a moral compass in the mind of this general. I can't help but think we need more of that now. India still suffered in a tangential way. They had murdered their neighbor, and cultural regret grips the entire nation now. The country is strong in every aspect except a lingering sense of pacifism growing out of guilt.

When I entered politics the military still had a strong grip on the government, but that period of unregulated and booming economic growth was coming to a close. People had become more politically organized and had formed trade factions, and new political parties which espoused ideologies that had never been seen before. I didn't bother adopting any ideology because I saw this as a waste of time. I ran independently and soon enough, I found myself between the collision of two political coalitions. Both sought power over the legislative, one coalition had many military officials in its ranks which sought to retain the decision-making power the military still maintained, while the other represented many trade bodies and regional governments which sought to deconstruct this state of affairs. Nearly every person in that chamber, situated deep underground in a bunker which was now normal protocol of nearly every government, was intelligent and sharp-minded. They realized that neither could win over the other, so they settled for compromise.

They elected me, the independent, to be speaker of the Chamber of Deputies. Political violence broke out when the President, who had been elected by the masses, began implementing policy to cordon off the military from influencing politics. The trade unions and political parties had the benefit of popular support, as the poorest were their constituencies, so they ultimately had the influence over the legislative branch. The only individuals who supported the military were those in the military itself and megacorporations which benefited from the policies they implemented. A squadron of elite soldiers had infiltrated his compound and brutally murdered both the President and the Vice-President, and many of the guards who were sworn to protect them. This left me in line to take the Office of President. I had gained the skills of speaking to crowds and navigating distorted webs of political influence through my political career. I knew I would be heading over a country that would be undergoing a period of political uncertainty, and I knew that this could give the people a reason to be unhappy and turn their back against the government. When this happened, it would be harder to maintain peace. So I had to ensure that belief in our system of government was maintained. I held Presidential elections eight months after I entered office. I was backed by many political parties who did not want to put forth their own candidate out of fear of having their leaders murdered, but I still had to face a military general who badly wanted the position of the executive and a candidate pushed forward by the trade unions. The generals of the military feared indictments for their crimes, and they knew that they could at least attain pardons if they had an ally in office. But no amount of money or guns could buy over the anger of the average impoverished voter. So I won by a wide margin. Emotions win politics, you must learn to play them correctly to fight.

I had high aspirations when I entered the office of President once again with the backing of the people. But this was all shattered by the brutal fist of reality. I wanted to reverse the growing inequality in Mexico, I wanted to avoid an enlarged political conflict and keep the country in a state of peace. We had an important position now that we could easily lose. We had grown to become the strongest country in our hemisphere, but we still had enemies to our North and South that vied for our position. If we began to become preoccupied with internal affairs, we would lose sight of what was important and fall from the grace of God. What challenged my vision the most was a group of provinces near the American border that had not benefited at all from Mexico's economic growth. America was closed off, no one was allowed to leave because otherwise a massive exodus would occur. Mexico's most northern provinces had many poor Americans that were stuck in limbo, speaking English and resenting the world around them. The governments of these provinces quickly created a gerrymandering system on their own accord out of fear that the Americans would seize control over the provincial governments and threaten the local native populations. This only put them in a more disadvantaged position, lengthening their suffering and cultivating their resentment. It was only a matter of time before they began organizing in a violent manner. Somewhere along the way, the political factions they had formed that could not find political representation anywhere made the decision to begin waging an insurgency. I strongly suspect that the American government, insecure of its weakened position, was providing weapons to these rebels to try and encourage a civil war within Mexico. The violence was becoming so intense that I had no choice but to order the military to stand down and agree to a ceasefire. Some of the generals immediately protested this, but others decided to follow my orders forcing others to capitulate.

I find it stunning that the state of affairs of this country could become so fragile so quickly. The minute people's sense of identity are involved in politics, the minute everybody becomes motivated by the emotion of anger. And this kills any chance of negotiating settlements. Out of their anger, they don't want to feel weak. The military reacted on its own accord by implementing marshal law in every province bordering America, and began hunting down the insurgents wherever they could. They began throwing every piece of military hardware at this insurgency, but could not seem to make any progress. The insurgents themselves were fractured among many factions who each had different ideologies and aspirations, but somehow were able to sustain themselves in the face of an entire military.

In another front, I faced resistance from Mexico's oil corporations. After growing to become the largest oil company in the world, PEMEX had been dissolved into four separate corporations after the Supreme Court deemed it to be a monopoly. One of these oil companies sought to consolidate another, but this was being blocked by the Supreme Court. A new judge was to be nominated soon, whose economic philosophy could change the direction of this case. These company executives wanted to win over my support. Likewise, the second largest industry in Mexico had become the steel and manufacturing industries. They had formed powerful lobbies that would stop to no avail to push forward policies that benefited them. This often meant the prevention of a creation of minimum wage, or regulations to protect workers safety. They were very self-centered, and never bothered to consider the needs of the people below them. Sometimes I wondered if they were so insulated in their shiny, sterile and clean towers that they didn't even know that poverty existed everywhere else. Other times, I just figured that they didn't have the capacity to feel empathy. I could never find a good explanation for it.

One night I was summoned to a meeting with a group of powerful investors, and these were the kinds of meetings that I could never ignore even if I wanted too. Although it wasn't stipulated in law that I had to meet with these people, a list of unwritten but understood rules existed that mandated that I must. The consequences for not following these rules were immense. These types of meetings were always behind closed doors, and never visible to the public. My diplomats and myself were transported in a heavily armed convoy, sitting behind layers of steel and armor with enough weapons guarding us to level a city block. But as we traveled through the city, I could feel the resentment arising around us. Some areas of the city had devolved into looting and violence as political unrest had culminated in riots. This is where the most radical elements of the country reared its head, brandishing red flags and calling for a dramatic economic reform.

When I reached my destination, I was transported to a conference room situated almost a mile in the sky. Sitting just above us was the largest communication mast in the country, sending thousands of television signals and telephone communications across the country. Before me lay investors in oil, steel and the booming industry of micro-electronics. They informed me that they had shareholders to keep satisfied, and that if these satisfactions were not met, economic troubles lay ahead. I quickly learned that they were giving me an ultimatum, and not seeking to negotiate with me on economic policy.

One of the guards in the room but a rifle to my head, stopping me in the middle of my sentence. I guess they were bored with me lecturing them about economics, and wanted to cut to the chase. Shouting in aggressive Spanish, a man with the rank of a colonel ordered one of his men to bring in a radio into the room. Before me, a military-grade transistor radio was placed and tuned to the frequency through which generals communicated. At first I had difficulty discerning what was happening. There was shouting, along with abrupt interference, filling the radio-space. I soon could make out the sound of gunshots through the radio, and in the distance soft thumps began filling my ears. The General in the room informed me that, with the funding of a few business men who feared potential government regulations, a section of the officer corps had decided to take matters into their own hands and 'reestablish the temporary military government.' They were to form an emergency committee that would act as the legislative and executive body, with final say in judicial decisions, and wanted me to give them verbal support.

I remained silent. I wouldn't say anything out of a mixture of fear and shock. They transported me to another room with a group of soldiers who kept watch over me. This wasn't like the last time the military overthrew the government. This was messy, and poorly put together. The officer corps was engaged in infighting with other parts of the military, and I could feel the thump of tank fire and bombing reverberating through the superstructure of the building I was now trapped in. I now had a choice laid before me, to either take heed to their wants and be given an opportunity to live, or be killed.

I hobbled across the cafeteria towards the country to get my lunch. Today they were serving extra rations provided by the military, with a carton of almost spoiled milk to drink. The kitchen was situated to the side of the cafeteria, built into the wall like a cave on a mountain side. The glow of fluorescent light bulbs fizzled out into the dark cafeteria, which would otherwise be completely dark save for a little light provided by small windows far above. I made my way past a crowd of people towards the counter, desperate for something to eat.

The whole room was filled with the stench of old food and kids who hadn't showered in days. Above me, a dangling fluorescent light flickered. The government didn't care to pay anyone to repair broken light fixtures or plumbing for a school of lost orphans like ours. The decayed state of this place was a constant reminder of the value society had placed in us, reminding us that we were to be cast aside as soon as the government was done doing its bare minimum to educate us.

"Joseee!" a girl obnoxiously yelled as I walked towards the table. She was always so awkward around me and it was incredibly annoying. I tried to mask how much she bothered me but sometimes others could distinguish that her awful attempts to flirt agitated me.

Next to me, a few of my friends talked about the football match in Caracas. The Russian team had been on a long winning streak, and were set to win the world cup again, but it was killed by the skilled defenders of the Filipino team. But I couldn't care today because a teacher this morning had killed my mood.

"José, what's up?" Asked Emannuel, a very popular but unfortunately very insecure kid. He made himself feel better by being humorous, and compensated for his insecurities through seeking attention. It made people like being around him, but his motivation for socialization originated from a place of sadness.

"Nothing, you?" I responded, taking a swig of milk.

"Oh, nothing much. I don't have much going on," he responded. I knew he had something he wanted to talk about because I could see a look of excitement in his face.

They made really shitty milk now, it was pasteurized artificially in these massive plants a hundred miles outside of the city. The Russians had used biological weapons to target American agriculture during the war, and spread a potent virus that decimated the cow population. The dairy industry had no choice but to invent an artificial process. It was really disgusting. They grew masses of fat in these large vats, which was then ground into fine particles before being mixed with water.

I remember seeing pictures in history class of cows piled on-top of each-other, creating hills of these dead cows. Government employees who gathered the cows in these spots had to wear gas masks and full body suits to protect themselves from the stench of decaying flesh. They had nowhere else to put them so they just created mass graves. According to the history texts, the population of cows and chickens actually used to outnumber the global population of people.

My mind snapped back to the conversation. "You really have nothing going on?" I asked Emmanuel, prying at his need to talk.

"Really, if I'm going to be honest, I do. You remember that girl I had been talking with? Well, last night, we were talking over the communication line. I asked her if she wanted to hang out and she came over to my ... " I'll spare you the details because you get the idea. Emmanuel likes to talk a lot about things he can't get. I guess he's at least an imaginative person.

"That's great, Emmanuel." I said as he trailed off. Sometimes he bothered me, but I tried to be a paitent person and let him talk. Patience is supposed to be a virtue, after all.

Another kid chimed in, who took note of my mood.

"What's bothering you José? You look all pissed off today." Marcos said.

"He's just tired of squinting all day." Emmanuel added, what a dick. My glasses were broken and I couldn't afford a new pair, so I had to squint sometimes to see far. It wasn't that big of a deal but Emmanuel liked making fun of people that he felt were better than him, and the only thing he could prod at was my eyesight and my leg.

I know why he felt the need to do that, he and others thought I was good with girls. The truth was, I just wasn't a dick to people. Or, I tried not to be. They spent so much time chasing after something they could get if they didn't place so much importance on it.

"That's not it, Emmanuel. My eyes are fine." I responded.

"Then why are you pissy?" Marcos insisted.

Well, that morning my teacher had given me a failing grade on an assignment that I had worked hard on. I didn't care about that class at all, but I had to write an essay on the government which I hated. It's hard to focus when the couple in the apartment next door can't stop fighting. And the bare pipes above me coursed with hot and cold water which sucked away my attention. I hated the government provided housing and I wanted nothing but to get out. It was an improvement from boarding school racks but it still sucked. I don't like having to walk around puddles of piss and arguments between drug dealers every morning. And having an asshole with a shitty attitude as a teacher didn't help my goal of getting out.

"It's nothing serious, I just got a bad grade in government. I'm fine, though." I said.

"Yeah, that teacher is a real bitch." Emmanuel stated.

"Don't stress so much about it. That shit doesn't matter. Your grades will be fine." Marcos said, who cared a little too much about football and a lot less about school.

"Why are you still worrying about your grades, José? You act like you'll be a fucking-" Emmanuel said.

"I don't know." I responded.

"Then shut the fuck up about it." Emmanuel added. I gladly will, Emmanuel. I didn't want to talk about it in the first place.

Maybe, though, I just wanted to be able to drink actual milk someday. And I didn't want to have to swat roaches in my apartment. But forget about all of that.

The ring of a bell marking the end of lunch ended, and I headed to class. Next was mathematics, which was really intuitive so I didn't have to pay attention in that class.

Next to me sat Isabella, who I thought was actually good-looking and had a personality that I could enjoy being around. Her friends sat at our table with us, but only made small-talk with them, so I can't say much about them. During class we'd usually talk about gossip, and other people, occasionally stopping when a difficult lesson would come up.

Our teacher had clearly given up on life, because the most thoughtfulness he could muster for educating us was just lecturing for a little while. He ignored it when we talked or slept through the class, and even said that he didn't care about that. The district wasn't sending its finest to us. I honestly think they had just given up.

Isabella talked about some people who had been mad at her friend, and I honestly didn't care. I just knew to nod my head and listen, because for some reason people appreciated that a lot. I've been told again and again that I'm a good listener, when I didn't even listen.

"So I told him that he needs to relax, and try to let go of the situation. Like, if he wants to make things work, he can't be so angry all the time." She said. "Right?"

"Yeah." I responded.

"And I don't understand why she can't just stop flirting with other guys. Like, I know she thinks it isn't anything intimate, but he does. And I really just want them to be happy for each-other, but they can't be." Isabella said. She always seemed concerned about other people.

"I know," I said.

"It's just... I don't know, it's just a lot." Isabella said.

That was cool and all, but what captured my minds attention was the fight that was supposed to be happening tonight at a bar a few blocks away from our school. They regularly held kickboxing bouts, which had surged in popularity recently. A local fighter and somebody from another side of town were set to fight.

"Isabella," I asked.

"Yeah?" She responded.

"Do you want to go watch the fight tonight?" It wasn't a date or anything, but I don't like showing up to events like that by myself.

"The one at, at La Niebla?" She asked.

"Yeah." I responded.

"Is that the place where Lucas lost last year?" She asked. That was another story for another time.

"I think so," I said.

"I think I can go," she said. "Where do you want to meet up?"

"Near my apartment block?" I asked. "Does that work for you?"

"Yeah, sure." She said. It was kind of dangerous walking around alone but she should be fine since she lives near the school, and if anybody tried doing anything to her people would act to enforce some sort of a punishment. That way, we all stayed protected.

Class ended. Then I went phased through the rest of the day and headed home.

The buzz of clicking electrodes filled my room. A copy of the city newspaper printed onto my terminal through the telephone line. The green light of the cathode-ray tube screen illuminated my room while I prepared dinner. The flickering fuzzy letters read; '2001-10-14: Important Message from the Government of the Socialist Republic of Mexico.' The government distributed all of these stupid messages all the time, meant to keep people informed on updated laws or whatever else they think impacts them. I usually ignored them but that day I was bored, so I scanned the first paragraph.

Something about paratroopers landing on Cuban soil. They said on the television that it was going to be an easy fight, because the air force had been bombing the country for nearly two months. Much of the Cuban military was destroyed when they assaulted an American port on the Island when the war happened. They didn't have the ability to fight back. I didn't understand why the government was attacking them, because they were supposed to be comrades in ideology, but I guess they thought it would be an easy catch.

Noodles were really easy to prepare. You pulled a string, there was a muffled pop and a small puff of smoke came out of a ring of ventilation in the container. You then screwed open the metal canister, and your noodles were fresh and ready to eat. I ate dinner, before putting on my jacket and exiting my apartment. I entered my identification code into the keypad to exit the complex, and walked down the street.

The street was caked in sodium light. In the distance I could see Isabella's figure waiting for me near the Palestinian corner restaurant. The smell of Mediterranean food wafted down the street, and filled my nostrils. I know I had a stumble in my walk, but I walked with enough confidence to recover it. A city bus flew past, illuminating Isabella's face with the green light of its display which showed what street it was heading too.

The weather was dreary. A drizzle rained down. It was a little chilly, too. I immediately felt bad for making her wait out here for me, but I couldn't head over to her apartment. It wasn't safe for me

"How long have you been waiting out here?" I asked.

"Only for a minute," she said. I couldn't tell if she was lying, or if she just said that to make me feel better. Below the rising apartment blocks, we headed towards 'La Niebla' - the infamous bar that was holding tonight's fight. We walked under an overpass where passenger trains rushed through, the wind blowing our hair as they passed. Neon lights from shops dotting the sidewalk helped illuminate the path forward. Through the deepened smoggy atmosphere echoed the sound of sirens, and the screaming whir of electric sports cars racing through city blocks. Below the familiar rumbling of cargo trains passing through the vacuum-compressed military tunnels shook the foundations of the buildings around us as they sped through near the speed of sound.

Mexico City didn't seem to have a sense of order. With the overgrowth of the city, the municipal government had been spread thin and seemed to forget about petty crimes. They decided to prioritize on more important things, like tax collection or protecting important places. I always tried to keep a keen awareness of my surroundings, because I never knew which desperate crack-head would be next to try and jump me. I noticed some sketchy people on the way, but they didn't do anything but glance at us with contempt.

Refracting through a crack in my lenses, a neon purple light entered into my eye. A gambling casino was situated to our left, with a few stragglers scrounging for whatever money they could find outside. Past that, I could see the rising refineries branded with the inscription of an important oil corporation. Toxic fumes and fire spewed into the sky. This area marked the beginning of the industrial sector of the city, where refined oil entered compressed pipelines to travel to the Yucatan and Baja peninsula's before being exported to the world. In a dilapidated office high-rise sat a street-level door, otherwise inconspicuous save for a flickering fluorescent sign indicating its location. Around the door old coffee-cups and paper fluttered in the wind, and a few glass bottled rolled along with. The wall was tagged with various street gangs and a few posters for the fight were plastered nearby. We entered the door, stepping down into the basement to find ourselves in the bar.

Once we entered, our ears were met with a rush of noise. Holding Isabella's hand, I pushed forward. A tipsy person stumbled into me, and I tried pushing through the crowd towards the ring where the fight was to be held. I wandered around the bar with Isabella, and tried to avoid the stench of alcohol as people breathed onto me. The blue sound of drum machines and synthesizers reflected through the room as music played over old speakers. At first, I didn't pay attention to my surroundings. But the more I wandered through, the more I noticed the tension hanging over the air.

The establishment had set up a few slot machines over in the corner, near some booths where couple's and hooligans drank. Gambling was actually illegal in Mexico. It had been outlawed five years ago under a new Socialist program. But no one bothered to enforce it. I remember being told something about the evil's of money, how it corrupted men's minds and had the potential to suck all of the happiness out of them. They showed us videos of well off Americans or Western Europeans, from documentaries well before the war. Each video was formatted the same, with an American or French or German living in a happy home with a family before gradually reaching the end where the man no longer had a smile. Instead, it was replaced with a frown on his face, wrinkles, and sad, sunken eyes. All of the signs of age due to stress.

It actually looked a lot like those people outside of the gambling houses, I thought. Maybe the Socialists were actually onto something. But for all the evil money must possess, it really would have solved a lot of the problems I had. The government spent a lot of time demonizing the thing they hoard the most. That truth made you a very nihilistic person sometimes. Over by one of those gambling booths, an argument devolved into a fist fight. I didn't see how it ended as too many people crowded around to watch.

I know that people's emotions ran high over the identity they held for their particular part of the city they called home. I saw fighting over it all the time. At school, kids would fight over what city blocks they lived on. It seemed petty and stupid, but people clung to any identity they could find when they were desperate for a reason to live.

"This place is really messy," Isabella said.

"I know, their are a lot of people who don't care about cleaning up here." I responded.

"Do you come to this place a lot?" She asked.

"Not really, I don't like this place that much." I said. I liked to hang out at another place, somewhere that was a little safer.

"So... Where do you go to hang out?" She nudged.

I didn't know why she was engaging in awkward small talk but it wasn't going to be the end of the world. "Another place, near my apartment. I can show you the place sometime if you'd like."

"Will you really?" She asked.

"Yeah, of course." I said.

"So, who are you going to cheer for?" She asked.

"I'm not really cheering for anybody, but I've placed my bet on the fighter from Colombia." I said.

"Oh, with who?" She said.

"You know that one kid you take chemistry with?" I said. "The guy who never shaves?"

"Jose, that's a lot of people." Isabella responded.

"I know, but I can't remember his name." I explained.

"You can't remember the name of someone you made a bet with?" She asked.

"He's not really a friend, I just talked to him about the fight the other day." I said. "Errr, Raul. That's his name, Raul."

"Oh, he's an asshole." Isabella said.

"Yeah, I know. That's why I don't consider him a friend." I said.

The main fight was about to begin. Stepping under the ropes was Rigoberto Abellán, the champion of the hour. Born in Bagota, his family escaped to Mexico after political violence ripped through the city a few years before the war begun. They settled down in this neighborhood, the place that we all loved dearly. He humbly walked around the ring, chin up, looking at the audience like he was a commander observing his comrades before they stepped into battle. He greeted the referee, shaking his hand, and bowed. What a well-mannered fighter.

Next up was Miguel Xirau, the antagonist. He had a wide grin on his face, like he was better than everyone else and he knew it. He flexed his muscles, and shouted a roar to cheer himself for the fight. Miguel was from the other side of the sprawling city, a place that many people here resented for its opulence and success. Miguel prepared for the fight by stretching and shaking his limbs, acting as though he were getting ready to sprint the one-hundred meter.

The referee's rang the bell, and the fighters stepped forward. Rigoberto calmly moved on the balls of his feet, his left foot always in front of his right, approaching the enemy. Xirau meanwhile circled Rigoberto like a hawk, evading his approach and waiting for a moment to strike. Like a drunk entering an argument, Xirau aggressively throwing the first straight. Rigoberto responded by parrying with his hand-wrapped fists, and landing a rear-leg kick on Xirau's lower-ribs. Stunned, Xirau backed up to the ropes but stepped back into the fight with a more clever approach. Xirau landed a few jabs on Rigoberto, and blocked a return jab of his.

"They're really aggressive," Isabella said.

"Yeah." I agreed.

Studying the fighters, I noticed that Rigoberto was getting tired. He attempted to wear down his own opponent by staying near him consistently, but now that Xirau was doing most of the punching, Rigoberto was busy trying to protect his face. It looked like Xirau was a little better than Rigoberto. His technique wasn't as sketchy, but Rigoberto worked harder, I thought. He sustained hit after hit, and did not once back up.

Responding to the argument, Rigoberto counted with more rear-leg kicks. One after the other, they slammed into Xirau and nearly forced him off of his feet. Xirau was stunned again, and attempted to recoup the situation by clenching his hands around Rigoberto's neck. Rigoberto responded by doing the same to Xirau, and the clenching-battle began. I heard some rumors before the fight that Xirau had even traveled to Myanmar to train in Muay-Thai, so were that true, this would be an easy opportunity for him to knock the lights out of his opponent.

But Rigoberto landed a well-placed knee on Xirau's stomach, knocking the wind out of him. Xirau tried doing the same to Rigoberto, but was too winded to land it properly. Just before it seemed like Rigoberto was going to break out of the clench-hold and destroy Xirau, the round ended and both fighters returned to their corners. Their coaches bitched at them, and Xirau's coaches rubbed ice over his body. The thirty-second break was almost over. The fighters mentally prepared themselves to return to the event.

This time, Xirau went head on into the brush. Rigoberto ducked under a hook, before landing one of his own. Xirau stayed quick on his feet, ready to take down his rival and put this puto in the right place. He was eager to protect his pride and show the audience his bravado. But Rigoberto remained steadfast in the face of Xirau's aggressive tactics, giving back everything that was given to him. Xirau tried seizing an opportunity to land a kick on Rigoberto's left leg, but the kick was shin-blocked and Xirau was now left limping. But he was still determined, landing a few more jabs on Rigo, leaving his nose bleeding. Drenched and sweat and blood, the fighters gave their last energy reserves towards winning. Adrenaline was rushing through their veins now, giving them one last boost before they collapsed from exhaustion.

[incomplete]

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The 'Limitless' Capacity of Government to Create Money

New Post has been published on https://britishdigitalmarketingnews.com/the-limitless-capacity-of-government-to-create-money/

The 'Limitless' Capacity of Government to Create Money

In 2007, while working for Procter & Gamble, fashion model Gisele Bündchen, wife of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, insisted on being paid in euros rather than U.S. dollars.  Since Ms. Bündchen was the highest paid model in the world at the time, playing the demanding diva must have come easily for her.  However, a proper prima donna would have demanded that she be paid in gold rather than some “fiat currency” like the euro or the dollar.

On October 5, the Kansas City Star ran an op-ed by guest commentator Geoff Coventry, which was posted online the night before as “The government isn’t a business or household. Democrats should reject ‘pay-go.'”  Coventry doesn’t approve of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s renewed pledge to abide by PAYGO should she again become speaker of the House.  PAYGO is a policy that allows Congress to spend money on new programs only if that spending is offset, either by cutting spending elsewhere or by raising taxes.

PAYGO is a misnomer, as it was designed only to keep the federal deficit from growing; it wasn’t designed to balance the budget and eliminate the deficit, which is what “paying as you go” would mean to normal people not corrupted by the D.C. swamp.  If you’re running a deficit, you’re not paying as you go.

Pelosi’s pet policy is more honored in the breach than the observance.  Coventry should know that Pelosi is only flapping her yap in her bid to become speaker again.  She made the same promise to abide by PAYGO back in 2006 and then, after attaining the speakership, ran the nation’s first trillion-dollar deficits.

Coventry wants more public “investment.”  That might be due to the fact that he is the founder and owner of Tradewind Energy, Inc., which dabbles in solar energy.  Tradewind appears to be the same sort of thing that Obama “invested” in.  Does Coventry think his enterprise should be the recipient of federal loan guarantees, like the defunct Solyndra?

What’s interesting about Coventry’s essay is his theory of money.  He thinks it entirely unnecessary to hitch Congress to spending restraints because, after all, the government creates money, dontcha know (italics added):

Congress has the power to create dollars.  It never needs to receive back a dollar it previously created before it can create another one.  It has a limitless capacity to deploy the nation’s currency in the service of public needs.

Notice the progressive rhetoric: “deploy the nation’s currency.”  Would that maybe mean spend the people’s money?  There are four links in the article to progressive websites, including two articles by Coventry himself at the 501(c)(4) nonprofit Patriotic Millionaires, of which he is a member.

Coventry seems to be a proponent of Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT.  Perhaps he attended the First International Conference of Modern Monetary Theory, a jamboree of economists held right here in Kansas City in 2017.  Perhaps he was converted to MMT by Stephanie Kelton, one of MMT’s bigger backers, who until recently was on the economics faculty of UMKC.

The main idea behind MMT concerns nations that have their own fiat currencies – i.e., currencies that aren’t backed up by anything tangible, like gold.  MMT posits that such nations can simply “print” money to pay for government programs.  In September, the Cato Institute ran an article by Michael Tanner, who’s skeptical:

[MMT is] an idea prominently promulgated by Bernie Sanders’s chief economic adviser, Stephanie Kelton, that is now being used to argue that lawmakers shouldn’t worry about the size of the national debt.

MMT essentially says that the government’s capacity to finance its debt is limitless.  Since the U.S. government is the sole printer of dollars, it faces no binding revenue constraint because more dollars can always be printed.  Therefore, the theory goes, the national debt is mostly a harmful fiction preventing us from having nice things such as “free college” or “free health care.”

So, if politicians want to buy votes by giving voters “free stuff,” don’t worry; just print the money.  (Why didn’t anyone think of this before?)  You may have noticed the use of a certain word here that is part of the lexicon of left-wingers and other romantics.  The word is “limitless,” as in a limitless capacity to create money.

Anyone with a little familiarity with history knows that creating lots of new money is not without its consequences.  MMT apologists seem not to have noticed what’s happening in Venezuela: the Venezuelans have replaced their currency yet again.  In August, they began phasing in the new bolívar soberano to supplant the old bolívar fuerte.  A July headline at Quartz says it all: “With 1,000,000% inflation, Venezuela is slashing five zeroes from its currency.”

If “printing” money is so benign, then why not print off $21T and pay off the national debt?  Why not print off a billion dollars for every adult American?  The reason normal folks intuitively grasp those ideas as wacky is because such money creation would mortally devalue the dollar, and prices would skyrocket, as they’re doing right now in Venezuela.  But don’t fret; your pet will make a tasty fricassee.

If printing up $21T in one fell swoop is unreasonable, then how about the feds merely creating enough money to “pay as you go”?  In other words, from now on, all federal spending would be provided by MMT-style money creation.  This year, the feds would need to create a bit more than $4T, which is quite a bit less inflationary than $21T.  And here’s the nifty thing: Congress wouldn’t need to tax.  Congress would create whatever money it wants to spend and let the folks keep their money.  There’d be no more federal taxes.

The snag in such a scheme is that taxation is the way MMT proposes to control inflation.  Even Paul Krugman thinks MMT is a recipe for inflation.  Under MMT, Congress would continue to tax to keep inflation at bay, and the amount of money it could create must be something less than total federal spending.  So what amount of money could Congress create each year without bumping into what appears to be limits?

One amount of money Congress might consider creating each year is the difference between revenue from taxes and spending.  We call that difference the “deficit,” and it is currently financed by borrowing, primarily through the sale of T-notes.  Under MMT, the deficit could be paid for with newly created money.  The deficit for FY2018 was $779B.  Under MMT, Congress wouldn’t have had to borrow that sum, and it’s more manageable than $4T.

The idea of paying for the deficit with printed money rather than borrowed money must have occurred to a lot of folks.  The nifty thing about it is that the national debt would be frozen, like a fly in amber.  But isn’t this still a dangerous amount of money to create each year and spend into the money supply?  And if inflation kicks up, won’t the MMT crew advise hiking taxes?

When they borrow to cover the deficit, the feds take money out of the economy by selling treasury securities and then spend it right back into the economy.  When the securities mature, they create money to pay them back.  But with MMT, the feds create new money and pump it into the economy and then take it out with higher taxes when inflation kicks in.  It seems like “six of one, half a dozen of the other.”  Whether they’re familiar with the MMT catechism or not, members of Congress have been operating like converts to this economic religion for decades; they just create money a little differently from how the MMT people want it created.  Heresy!

The problem with expanding government spending right now is that America entered a new era of sovereign debt rollover on Oct. 1.  The 10-year treasuries sold during Pelosi’s first trillion-dollar deficit are coming due.  With interest rates on the 10-year treasury rising, the market has sagged a bit.  Best to tread lightly.

President Trump has commented on the Fed’s recent interest rate hikes.  But the Fed is only trying to stay ahead of inflation.  One action the government could take that might ease the Fed’s worries is to start dealing with our budget deficit by spending less.  Trump recently made a move in that direction by instructing his Cabinet to make five-percent spending cuts across most federal departments.  Let’s hope it happens and the Fed responds by slowing its interest rate hikes.

The MMT people are Big Government types.  They want to increase the size and scope of the central government.  They want more government spending, a lot more, which should please Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.  Maybe they’ll embrace MMT and fire up the printing presses so they can fund Obamacare for illegal aliens and for the Honduran caravans coming to our border.

Jon N. Hall of ULTRACON OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.

In 2007, while working for Procter & Gamble, fashion model Gisele Bündchen, wife of Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, insisted on being paid in euros rather than U.S. dollars.  Since Ms. Bündchen was the highest paid model in the world at the time, playing the demanding diva must have come easily for her.  However, a proper prima donna would have demanded that she be paid in gold rather than some “fiat currency” like the euro or the dollar.

On October 5, the Kansas City Star ran an op-ed by guest commentator Geoff Coventry, which was posted online the night before as “The government isn’t a business or household. Democrats should reject ‘pay-go.'”  Coventry doesn’t approve of Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi’s renewed pledge to abide by PAYGO should she again become speaker of the House.  PAYGO is a policy that allows Congress to spend money on new programs only if that spending is offset, either by cutting spending elsewhere or by raising taxes.

PAYGO is a misnomer, as it was designed only to keep the federal deficit from growing; it wasn’t designed to balance the budget and eliminate the deficit, which is what “paying as you go” would mean to normal people not corrupted by the D.C. swamp.  If you’re running a deficit, you’re not paying as you go.

Pelosi’s pet policy is more honored in the breach than the observance.  Coventry should know that Pelosi is only flapping her yap in her bid to become speaker again.  She made the same promise to abide by PAYGO back in 2006 and then, after attaining the speakership, ran the nation’s first trillion-dollar deficits.

Coventry wants more public “investment.”  That might be due to the fact that he is the founder and owner of Tradewind Energy, Inc., which dabbles in solar energy.  Tradewind appears to be the same sort of thing that Obama “invested” in.  Does Coventry think his enterprise should be the recipient of federal loan guarantees, like the defunct Solyndra?

What’s interesting about Coventry’s essay is his theory of money.  He thinks it entirely unnecessary to hitch Congress to spending restraints because, after all, the government creates money, dontcha know (italics added):

Congress has the power to create dollars.  It never needs to receive back a dollar it previously created before it can create another one.  It has a limitless capacity to deploy the nation’s currency in the service of public needs.

Notice the progressive rhetoric: “deploy the nation’s currency.”  Would that maybe mean spend the people’s money?  There are four links in the article to progressive websites, including two articles by Coventry himself at the 501(c)(4) nonprofit Patriotic Millionaires, of which he is a member.

Coventry seems to be a proponent of Modern Monetary Theory, or MMT.  Perhaps he attended the First International Conference of Modern Monetary Theory, a jamboree of economists held right here in Kansas City in 2017.  Perhaps he was converted to MMT by Stephanie Kelton, one of MMT’s bigger backers, who until recently was on the economics faculty of UMKC.

The main idea behind MMT concerns nations that have their own fiat currencies – i.e., currencies that aren’t backed up by anything tangible, like gold.  MMT posits that such nations can simply “print” money to pay for government programs.  In September, the Cato Institute ran an article by Michael Tanner, who’s skeptical:

[MMT is] an idea prominently promulgated by Bernie Sanders’s chief economic adviser, Stephanie Kelton, that is now being used to argue that lawmakers shouldn’t worry about the size of the national debt.

MMT essentially says that the government’s capacity to finance its debt is limitless.  Since the U.S. government is the sole printer of dollars, it faces no binding revenue constraint because more dollars can always be printed.  Therefore, the theory goes, the national debt is mostly a harmful fiction preventing us from having nice things such as “free college” or “free health care.”

So, if politicians want to buy votes by giving voters “free stuff,” don’t worry; just print the money.  (Why didn’t anyone think of this before?)  You may have noticed the use of a certain word here that is part of the lexicon of left-wingers and other romantics.  The word is “limitless,” as in a limitless capacity to create money.

Anyone with a little familiarity with history knows that creating lots of new money is not without its consequences.  MMT apologists seem not to have noticed what’s happening in Venezuela: the Venezuelans have replaced their currency yet again.  In August, they began phasing in the new bolívar soberano to supplant the old bolívar fuerte.  A July headline at Quartz says it all: “With 1,000,000% inflation, Venezuela is slashing five zeroes from its currency.”

If “printing” money is so benign, then why not print off $21T and pay off the national debt?  Why not print off a billion dollars for every adult American?  The reason normal folks intuitively grasp those ideas as wacky is because such money creation would mortally devalue the dollar, and prices would skyrocket, as they’re doing right now in Venezuela.  But don’t fret; your pet will make a tasty fricassee.

If printing up $21T in one fell swoop is unreasonable, then how about the feds merely creating enough money to “pay as you go”?  In other words, from now on, all federal spending would be provided by MMT-style money creation.  This year, the feds would need to create a bit more than $4T, which is quite a bit less inflationary than $21T.  And here’s the nifty thing: Congress wouldn’t need to tax.  Congress would create whatever money it wants to spend and let the folks keep their money.  There’d be no more federal taxes.

The snag in such a scheme is that taxation is the way MMT proposes to control inflation.  Even Paul Krugman thinks MMT is a recipe for inflation.  Under MMT, Congress would continue to tax to keep inflation at bay, and the amount of money it could create must be something less than total federal spending.  So what amount of money could Congress create each year without bumping into what appears to be limits?

One amount of money Congress might consider creating each year is the difference between revenue from taxes and spending.  We call that difference the “deficit,” and it is currently financed by borrowing, primarily through the sale of T-notes.  Under MMT, the deficit could be paid for with newly created money.  The deficit for FY2018 was $779B.  Under MMT, Congress wouldn’t have had to borrow that sum, and it’s more manageable than $4T.

The idea of paying for the deficit with printed money rather than borrowed money must have occurred to a lot of folks.  The nifty thing about it is that the national debt would be frozen, like a fly in amber.  But isn’t this still a dangerous amount of money to create each year and spend into the money supply?  And if inflation kicks up, won’t the MMT crew advise hiking taxes?

When they borrow to cover the deficit, the feds take money out of the economy by selling treasury securities and then spend it right back into the economy.  When the securities mature, they create money to pay them back.  But with MMT, the feds create new money and pump it into the economy and then take it out with higher taxes when inflation kicks in.  It seems like “six of one, half a dozen of the other.”  Whether they’re familiar with the MMT catechism or not, members of Congress have been operating like converts to this economic religion for decades; they just create money a little differently from how the MMT people want it created.  Heresy!

The problem with expanding government spending right now is that America entered a new era of sovereign debt rollover on Oct. 1.  The 10-year treasuries sold during Pelosi’s first trillion-dollar deficit are coming due.  With interest rates on the 10-year treasury rising, the market has sagged a bit.  Best to tread lightly.

President Trump has commented on the Fed’s recent interest rate hikes.  But the Fed is only trying to stay ahead of inflation.  One action the government could take that might ease the Fed’s worries is to start dealing with our budget deficit by spending less.  Trump recently made a move in that direction by instructing his Cabinet to make five-percent spending cuts across most federal departments.  Let’s hope it happens and the Fed responds by slowing its interest rate hikes.

The MMT people are Big Government types.  They want to increase the size and scope of the central government.  They want more government spending, a lot more, which should please Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats.  Maybe they’ll embrace MMT and fire up the printing presses so they can fund Obamacare for illegal aliens and for the Honduran caravans coming to our border.

Jon N. Hall of ULTRACON OPINION is a programmer from Kansas City.

Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2018/10/the_limitless_capacity_of_government_to_create_money.html

[onthetechpresstk-blog]

Eleven Reasons To Be Excited About The Future of Technology

"The most grounded drive moving human advance has been the quick progress and wide dispersion of technology." — The Economist

In the year 1820, a man could hope to live under 35 years, 94% of the worldwide populace lived in extraordinary neediness, and less that 20% of the populace was proficient. Today, human future is more than 70 years, less that 10% of the worldwide populace lives in outrageous neediness, and more than 80% of individuals are proficient. These changes are expected essentially to progresses in innovation, starting in the mechanical age and proceeding with today in the data age.

There are many energizing new advancements that will keep on transforming the world and enhance human welfare. Here are eleven of them.

1. Self-Driving Cars

Self-driving autos exist today that are more secure than human-driven autos in most driving conditions. Throughout the following 3–5 years they'll get even more secure, and will start to go standard.

The World Health Organization gauges that 1.25 million individuals bite the dust from auto related wounds every year. Half of the passings are people on foot, bicyclists, and motorcyclists hit via autos. Autos are the main source of death for individuals ages 15–29 years of age.

Similarly as autos reshaped the world in the twentieth century, so will self-driving autos in the 21st century. In many urban areas, between 20–30% of usable space is taken up by parking spots, and most autos are stopped around 95% of the time. Self-driving autos will be in practically nonstop utilize (in all likelihood hailed from a cell phone application), in this manner significantly lessening the requirement for stopping. Autos will speak with each other to dodge mischances and congested roads, and riders will have the capacity to invest driving energy in different exercises like work, training, and mingling.

Source: Tech Insider

2. Clean Energy

Endeavors to battle environmental change by decreasing the interest for vitality haven't worked. Luckily, researchers, architects, and business people have been buckling down on the supply side to make clean vitality advantageous and savvy.

Because of relentless mechanical and assembling propels, the cost of sun based cells has dropped 99.5% since 1977. Sun based will soon be more cost proficient than petroleum products. The cost of wind vitality has additionally dropped to a record-breaking low, and in the most recent decade spoken to about 33% of recently introduced US vitality limit.

Ground breaking associations are exploiting this. For instance, in India there is an activity to change over airplane terminals to self-managing clean vitality.

Air terminal in Kochi, India (source: Clean Technica)

Tesla is making elite, reasonable electric autos, and introducing electric charging stations around the world.

Tesla Model 3 and US supercharger areas

There are cheerful signs that perfect vitality could soon be achieving a tipping point. For instance, in Japan, there are presently more electric charging stations than corner stores.

Source: The Guardian

What's more, Germany creates so much sustainable power source, it now and then delivers considerably more than it can utilize.

Source: Time Magazine

3. Virtual and Augmented Reality

PC processors just as of late turned out to be sufficiently quick to control agreeable and persuading virtual and enlarged reality encounters. Organizations like Facebook, Google, Apple, and Microsoft are contributing billions of dollars to make VR and AR more immersive, agreeable, and reasonable.

Toybox demo from Oculus

Individuals at times think VR and AR will be utilized just to game, yet after some time they will be utilized for a wide range of exercises. For instance, we'll utilize them to control 3-D objects:

Expanded reality PC interface (from Iron Man)

To meet with companions and associates from around the globe:

Expanded reality video chat (from The Kingsman)

What's more, notwithstanding for restorative applications, such as treating fears or restoring loss of motion casualties:

Source: New Scientist

VR and AR have been envisioned about by sci-fi fans for a considerable length of time. In the following couple of years, they'll at last turn into a standard reality.

4. Automatons and Flying Cars

"Streets? Where we're going we don't require… roads." — Dr. Emmet Brown

GPS begun as a military innovation yet is currently used to hail taxis, get mapping bearings, and chase Pokémon. In like manner, automatons begun as a military innovation, yet are progressively being utilized for an extensive variety of customer and business applications.

For instance, automatons are being utilized to assess basic foundation like scaffolds and electrical cables, to overview zones struck by catastrophic events, and numerous other inventive uses like battling creature poaching.

Source: NBC News

Amazon and Google are building automatons to convey family unit things.

Amazon conveyance ramble

The startup Zipline utilizes automatons to convey medicinal supplies to remote towns that can't be gotten to by streets.

Source: The Verge

There is likewise another flood of new companies dealing with flying autos (counting two supported by the prime supporter of Google, Larry Page).

The Terrafugia TF-X flying auto (source)

Flying autos utilize the same propelled innovation utilized as a part of automatons yet are sufficiently substantial to convey individuals. Because of advances in materials, batteries, and programming, flying autos will be fundamentally more moderate and helpful than today's planes and helicopters.

5. Counterfeit consciousness

''It might be a hundred years before a PC beats people at Go — maybe even longer." — New York Times, 1997

"Ace of Go Board Game Is Walloped by Google Computer Program" — New York Times, 2016

Counterfeit consciousness has made fast advances in the most recent decade, because of new calculations and gigantic increments in information accumulation and figuring power.

AI can be connected to any field. For instance, in photography an AI system called creative style move changes photos into the style of a given painter:

Source

Google assembled an AI framework that controls its datacenter control frameworks, sparing a huge number of dollars in vitality costs.

Source: Bloomberg

The wide guarantee of AI is to free individuals from dull mental undertakings a similar way the modern upset freed individuals from redundant physical assignments.

"On the off chance that AI can enable people to end up noticeably better chess players, it makes sense that it can enable us to wind up noticeably better pilots, better specialists, better judges, better teachers." — Kevin Kelly

A few people stress that AI will wreck occupations. History has demonstrated that while new innovation does surely wipe out occupations, it additionally makes new and better employments to supplant them. For instance, with appearance of the PC, the quantity of typographer employments dropped, yet the expansion in visual planner occupations more than compensated for it.

Source: Harvard Business Review

It is significantly less demanding to envision employments that will leave than new occupations that will be made. Today a large number of individuals work as application engineers, ride-sharing drivers, ramble administrators, and online networking advertisers—occupations that didn't exist and would have been hard to try and envision ten years back.

6. Take Supercomputers for Everyone

By 2020, 80% of grown-ups on earth will have a web associated cell phone. An iPhone 6 has around 2 billion transistors, about 625 times a greater number of transistors than a 1995 Intel Pentium PC. Today's cell phones are what used to be considered supercomputers.

Guests to the pope (source: Business Insider)

Web associated cell phones give standard individuals capacities that, only a brief span prior, were just accessible to a world class few:

"At this moment, a Masai warrior on a cell phone amidst Kenya has preferred portable correspondences over the president did 25 years back. On the off chance that he's on an advanced mobile phone utilizing Google, he approaches more data than the U.S. president did only 15 years ago." — Peter Diamandis

7. Cryptographic forms of money and Blockchains

"On the off chance that you asked individuals in 1989 what they expected to improve their life, it was impossible that they would have said a decentralized system of data hubs that are connected utilizing hypertext." — Farmer and Farmer

Conventions are the pipes of the web. A large portion of the conventions we utilize today were produced decades prior by the scholarly world and government. From that point forward, convention improvement generally halted as vitality moved to creating restrictive frameworks like informal organizations and informing applications.

Digital currency and blockchain innovations are changing this by giving another plan of action to web conventions. This year alone, a huge number of dollars were raised for an expansive scope of creative blockchain-based conventions.

Conventions in view of blockchains additionally have capacities that past conventions didn't. For instance, Ethereum is another blockchain-based convention that can be utilized to make savvy contracts and trusted databases that are insusceptible to debasement and control.

8. Brilliant Online Education

While school educational cost skyrockets, anybody with a cell phone can concentrate any theme web based, getting to instructive substance that is generally free and progressively high caliber.

Reference book Britannica used to cost $1,400. Presently anybody with a cell phone can in a split second get to Wikipedia. You used to need to go to class or purchase programming books to learn PC programming. Presently you can gain from a group of more than 40 million developers at Stack Overflow. YouTube has a large number of hours of free instructional exercises and addresses, a considerable lot of which are created by top educators and colleges.

UC Berkeley Physics on Youtube

The nature of online instruction is showing signs of improvement constantly. Throughout the previous 15 years, MIT has been recording addresses and aggregating materials that cover more than 2000 courses.

"The thought is straightforward: to distribute the greater part of our course materials on the web and make them generally accessible to everyone." — Dick K.P. Yue, Professor, MIT School of Engineering

As maybe the best research college on the planet, MIT has dependably been in front of the patterns. Throughout the following decade, anticipate that numerous different schools will take after MIT's lead.

Source: Futurism

9. Better Food throug

[dallasareaopinion]

Stepping into deep water because someone should

Normal political discourse is difficult. People cannot seem to be able to sit down and have a rational conversation. Well is seems that way. Or people seem to be afraid to have a conversation with someone who disagrees with them. Anyone not afraid usually has an agenda that is far flung from mainstream needs.

 Now this is for very basic issues.  People forget it is okay to disagree and have point counter point discussions. If you bring up a topic that is controversial though, it is just about impossible for anyone to put forth a rational argument, yet at some point someone needs to say something very blunt

 Racism and poverty are problems that neither the Republicans, nor the Democrats have a clue how to solve. I know many Democrats will go up in arms about they are the ones fighting these battles. Okay you are, but you are failing miserably at overcoming racism and poverty with your policies and at this point in history I am going to say lack of policies. Democrats are as closed minded as Republicans, just in a different way.

 On the surface, many people will say they know how Republicans are not helping solve these issues, yet they miss deeper problems. They will interchange the word conservative and Republican. And believe it or not, the mass everyday Republican is a truer conservative than I give credit to the National leadership of the Republican party. They, unfortunately, let themselves be led astray by false promises of conservative action. So, at this point the Republican leadership has no intention of even trying to eradicate poverty or racism. It serves them well with how they disguise their policies.

 Yet many hard-working conservatives who call themselves Republicans would actually like to see these issues addressed and a better resolution than what we have seen. They approach the issue seriously different than Democrats.  Democrats on the other hand tend to fall back on forty-year-old verbiage about the problem and propose no new ideas to solve poverty or racism.

 If you think that Democrats have done something, then think about this, just like the middle class the standard of living for people in poverty has declined. How does a poor person’s standard of living decline? Basically, they are more reliant on the government than they were 50 years ago. Their education is worse than it was 50 year ago. Their health is worse than it was 50 years ago. Poor people have suffered historically, yet we have created a whole new level of poverty in multi-generational welfare families.  If the Democrats had really done something, don’t you think things would have gotten better than worse. And do not say it is because the Republicans have prevented this from happening. No, they haven’t. Yes, they have not produced any programs of their own. They want to reduce spending for social programs. They give tax breaks to the rich. So, it looks like this is all their fault. Yet what have the Democrats done that has moved the needle in any positive direction regarding improving the plight of the poor or improving race relations. Certain black people have done more than the Democrats to improving the standards of black people, and some of those people call themselves Democrats, but the Democratic party has not done anything new.

 Let’s start with Hillary Clinton. She ran as the great hope for women in our country. Proof that we have moved forward as a society because we could elect a woman as president. Yet if you delved into her policies? They were a hodgepodge of individual statements to try and sound socially liberal by saying we are here to protect all the various groups from the mean old Republican Party. Seriously go back and read her website if still available. This isn’t a way to move forward and really is why the Democrats are just at fault for poverty and racism as the Republicans. You cannot accuse one group of people being against another if you yourself cannot offer more than lip service. And also, Hillary’s candidacy is proof how closed minded the Democrats have become. They were so obsessed that we must have a woman president they forget you need to nominate someone that might actually win. There are many people who really do not like Ms. Clinton, do not respect her, nor trust her. Yet the Democrat elites were dead set on shoving Ms. Clinton down our throats because that is what they wanted. This had nothing to do with what the people wanted. Sanders would have never won the general election against any of the regular Republicans because most of this country tends to lean to the moderately conservative side. It has always been this way. Yet the race would have been more traditional without all the madness if it had been between Sanders and someone else. There would have had some modicum of respect. He would have been roundly defeated, but his populist movement would have gotten a viable start.

 And the young people he would have inspired would be more open to new ideas to fight racism and poverty. They would not have been tied down to 50-year-old failed policies. The only reason Clinton was close was because Trump was nominated. She also would have lost against most other Republicans, yet the close-minded aspect of the Democrat party would have prevailed and going into 2020 we would still be getting the same message from them as before. No real chance to address doing something about poverty and racism. And now the extreme elements, especially for racism have a stronger hold in the mainstream conversation than they have had in a long time. And why? The Democrats and Republicans didn’t do anything to PREVENT this from happening.

 Yes, the wonderful, we know everything that is best for you party, doesn’t have a clue that they along with the Republicans have destroyed one of the most basic elements to prevent racism and to lift people out of poverty. And that is better education. You can throw money at education or you can improve it and neither party has done anything to raise the level of education in this country. Ignorance is a tool of evil and to fight it you have to give people the tools to become better.

 And what is worse the party of business, the Republicans have left their constituency down. Advancing technology means people need to know science and math etc, yet we are not producing quality candidates to fill all the jobs. And it isn’t just science, people need to be able to communicate effectively so English is important. And they need to work well together so knowledge of civics and courtesy are important. And it doesn’t hurt if young people are the future of our country they understand our history so they can do even better. Yet at all accounts our kids are not getting the overall education throughout the whole of our country as they need. So now we have immigrants getting the better jobs at lower salaries than what our people should receive. Why,,??? Because the very same businesses that complain that they cannot fill positions support a party and platform that shoots ourselves down. The Republicans have created a vicious cycle that destroyed American ingenuity and one of our most basic values to go to school get a good job and do well. Sure, there are people who still fit this scenario, but they are fewer and far between. We need to offer opportunity throughout the country, not just in certain locales.  Republicans try to tout these values, but the reality is except for their kids, it is all noise to look good.

 And here is the real kicker, child development models with some slight differences in ages, but overall say kids’ education is the most important from 2-8 or so. If they do not get a good foundation at this point then it becomes much harder for them to catch up. And along with this, they need a healthy diet, and exercise. And this is the best time to instill values in a child. Everything we said we needed in the 1950’s was correct. A strong family, a parent with them to teach them values, people who strived to be successful to be their role models and an improving public education system. So basically, when people talk about that idyllic time of when America was great they are almost right. What happened was we did not follow through. Hence the Republican and Democratic leadership failed us by not putting this ideal into daily practice for the whole country. Instead they spoon fed political noise to their constituencies and left us with a whole host of problems from ingrained poverty, racism, under employed workers, terrible health education, obesity, pollution and poisons in our environment, random acts of violence to extreme acts of violence, child abuse, sex trafficking, gangs lifestyles more important than the family and a whole host of problems that can be solved with the right action. It will take a generation to turn the ship. And where does it start? It starts with the wonderful little toddler or baby in your neighborhood, rich or poor, white or black, or any other ethnicity, by making sure they get the right start. Whether you demand more from your local schools, or help parents learn to be parents, or create a safer community, this is where you make America great again, with the most innocent.

 Kids will always play with kids, some maybe shy or unsure of themselves, yet overall kids will be kids given the opportunity. We teach them to hate and we fail their future because we spend more wasted energy and time fighting each other than just stopping and talking to each other about our children’s future. I make it sound so simple to make monumental changes, yet giving a two-year-old your time with love, patience, and finding them opportunities to learn will do more than anything the Republicans or Democrats have done in three generations. Sure, this is more, yet you need to start on the foundation to build something great.

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