#owner-operator budget

[artisticdivasworld]

Financial Survival Tips to Help New Owner-Operators

We are starting a new series here on the blog. We want to talk to and help new owner-operators understand what exactly is involved with running a trucking business. We have identified 10 areas that cause issues for new owners, so we will address each one individually here. Since FRC was founded to help independent truckers succeed in an unfriendly economy, we hope that by talking about each of…

[aesethewitch]

Loopholes

Thinking about general versus specific spells and loopholes in magic today…

I find that general spells are often less effective than spells that are really specific. Or, at least, a general spell’s effects are more difficult to measure than a spell with specific instructions and expectations.

Leaving spells general also leaves room for loopholes. Now, depending on the paradigm you’re operating from, loopholes may not be an issue. But they can cause unexpected and sometimes unwanted side effects, or cause the primary desired outcome to manifest in a way that isn’t ideal.

For another example, consider if you cast a spell for someone to take a romantic interest in you with no specifications on the type of person you’re looking for. That coworker you don’t particularly like but who already thinks you’re neat is likelier to form romantic feelings for you than, say, the unattainable hot guy whose name you don’t know and with whom your only conversation is “Would you like that small, medium, or large?”

This, in my paradigm, is because those connections either already exist or they’re stronger. You know that coworker better, they know you better, and you have more ties than the hot barista you see once every three weeks.

If you want the barista’s attention and not the coworker’s, it’s important to specify that — to close the loophole.

I always think about connections working against me, too, when I’m doing magic. If a person who hates me is the primary interviewer at a company I’m interested in, I have to account for their rancid opinion if I want to get that job. I have to do extra work to either get around, rewrite, or disconnect the existing connection in order to increase the likelihood of a favorable outcome.

My partner and I are currently looking at buying a house (yay!). Our area is pretty expensive, and very affordable homes tend to be… well, to put it kindly… shitholes.

Those conditions (those connections) are strongly ingrained into the environment. I can’t single-handedly change the economy, though I wish I could. And I can’t force a house to spontaneously appear between two existing houses, even though that neighborhood is absolutely perfect and I desperately want to live there. There isn’t room, and that isn’t physically possible.

Well, alright, I suppose I could do a spell to convince both owners to chop up their parcels into smaller pieces for sale, do another spell to make the parcels affordable, and then another spell for someone to build an affordable house on the land. But that’d be a teeny little house and yard! It might work better in a location with bigger parcels and more space between houses, but this is a cute little rural-type suburb, not the country roads further out of town. As it is in this location we’re looking at, to make it viable for our wants and needs would be physically impossible; we’d be compromising too much one way or another, and it wouldn’t be worthwhile!

But I can do spells for houses with specific qualities to come onto the market, and I can include my particular price range! I can do magic to encourage the bank to give us a better deal on our pre-approval! I can do a spell to urge sellers to drop their prices or accept an offer that’s under their asking price but within our budget!

It’s a matter of identifying what I want and what might stand in the way. It’s also about considering the things I’m leaving unsaid, or that could be taken in multiple ways. Like, if I say I want a basement, and we find a house that’s perfect, fitting all our desired qualities!

…except that basement floods several times a year, and that’s why it’s unfinished, so it’s wasted space that requires expensive yearly upkeep or a massive, pricey overhaul to prevent for the future. That would be a hell of a loophole to discover. Closing as many loopholes as possible can help a spell produce a result that’s exactly (or close to exactly) what I expect it to be with as few unpleasant side effects as possible.

Another method I’ve seen, which I think comes from @windvexer, is the “if/then” method of creating conditions within a spell. I find it’s really useful for closing loopholes, since it keeps a spell from deviating from your instructions or fizzling out when it can’t fulfill its purpose as written.

The method looks like this in practice:

“This spell is a money spell. Its purpose is to bring $500 in tarot commissions to me by the end of April.

“If April is not possible, then by the end of June.

“If $500 is not possible, then no less than $300.

“If not by tarot commissions, then this money will come to me via tips and subscriptions.

“If not by tips and subscriptions, then this money will come to me via other types of contract work.

“If any final condition (end of June, no less than $300, contract work) is not possible, I will receive a sign in the form of three cardinals sitting on the hood of my car, and the spell will end.”

Thus, the loopholes I’m worried about are closed, and I have a condition set to end the spell and send me a sign if it isn’t possible. It’s a simple but very effective method that I’ve found really useful for getting super specific in my spellwork!

Anyways, point is, loopholes matter because connections matter and therefore the space between those connections matter. If one of my spells fails or produces an unexpected result, loopholes are the first things I look for. What happened, and could I have prevented it? How so? Then note it down, and do the next spell.

[bitterrobin]

Either I make multiple housekeeper ocs for my au or at least half of Wayne Manor is kept boarded up indefinitely. Sorry to burst people's bubbles but there is no conceivable way Alfred by himself is cleaning the entire mansion.

I've grown up helping my mother (who otherwise works alone w chronic back pain) clean middle to upper class homes here in SoCal. In very white oriented areas with housewives and large families with dogs and good financial situations. Now, there's a huge difference between large modern homes that have only two maybe three floors and the entire floor plan of a mansion that's at minimum built in the 1800s and has 30 rooms. But fundamentally the problems with upkeep are the same. You need to sweep all the floors, mop, wipe the baseboards, vacuum every carpet. You need to wipe clean windows, fans, HC units, lightbulbs, staircases, every surface used constantly - kitchen countertops, bathroom counters, showers/bathtubs/toilets. You need to do laundry, not only clothes, but towels and bedding used by the owners and the rags you use to clean. Fold that laundry. Make the beds. Take out every full trashbag and haul it out of the house. Wash dishes daily. Put those dishes away. Occasionally remind the owner that maybe a light needs fixing, there's a hole in their daughter's sweater, the dog peed inside, that their son tends to stuff trash under the couch cushions and now they have an ant infestation.

On average, with my help, it takes my mom 4-5 hours for one two-floor house. Takes longer by herself. That's not even getting into the amount of people and pets. If there's kids, you need to clean after their spaces more than the adults. With babies, there's diapers and toys all over. With dogs or cats there's always always fur to pick up. The bigger the family, the busier they are, the messier the house. And thats all for a housekeeper that visits every week and gets paid in numbers ranging from 6$0 to $100. (And often people will forget to pay you and you have to stretch out your budget for weeks and weeks and then they pay you and they forget again next month).

For Alfred, as an official butler and employee, he lives at the manor. There's no cost for him that comes from travel (no car to pay for fuel) or cleaning supplies (Bruce probably pays for them). But everything else? Not to mention the added chaos factor of BEING VIGILANTES. Alfred not only upkeep the house they live in, but prepares food, clothing, scheduling, and cleans the Batcave and feeds the bats, at least two large dogs, and one cat. Theres multiple cars and vehicles, guns, weaponry, technology to watch out for (and I know the average fanon enjoyer doesn't know Harold Allnut should be doing that). He picks Bruce's clothes and dresses him for godssake. Hell, Alfred even operates the Batcomputer when needed every night. He does their medical care (and people forget about Leslie yet again, even regarding her relationship w Bruce, still. still.) That's too much for one old man.

Realistically, either Bruce has a full house staff like nobles used to have, or Alfred simply does not do as much as people think. He's old. Forever aging. There's not going to be 20+ plus rooms ready all the time for people to sleep in. At best, the residents of the Manor are Bruce, Tim, and Damian. At best, their bedrooms are kept clean daily. All the other bedrooms are cleaned maybe monthly. The rooms that aren't bedrooms (foyers/attics etc) maybe every other month. Groceries are multiple day events. Same with cooking full meals, dietary plans. Galas and business functions require weeks and months. The pets take days for veterinary care and training. The kids all together take weeks, days individually and together. And they not only look at you as a butler but as family. You are responsible for their wellbeing, emotions whether you like it or not (bc Alfred frankly enables Bruce too much but thats for another day).

Only saving grace he has is that recently not many people live there anymore. Stephanie and Helena and Kate and Barbara shouldn't be living there in the first place. Dick and Jason have their own places. Tim and Cassandra are up in the air but I don't think they spend 100% of their time in the Manor because they're young adults with various circumstances.

[copperbadge]

Radio Free Monday

Good morning everyone, and welcome to Radio Free Monday!

Just a reminder, I do these every once in a while -- except in specific cases, unless folks fill out the Radio Free Monday submissions form, I generally don't put anything not submitted via form into RFM. Partly this is to ensure I even SEE the request (tagging me on tumblr has no guarantees, I'm afraid) but it's also to ensure that I have all the relevant information. The form is linked in the bottom of every RFM post, as well as in the header of my tumblr; if you want me to see something that's the place to put it, or if you want to direct someone to Radio Free Monday, giving them the link is super helpful. Thanks all!

Ways to Give:

webkinzcode is a disabled artist and unable to work at the moment; he's raising funds to cover rent, and currently accepting donations and offering commissions. You can read more, reblog, and find giving and commission information here.

Anon linked to a fundraiser for Ola, a grad student and teacher in the faculty of science at Al-Azhar University in Gaza, whose life is one of many turned upside-down at the moment; she's raising funds to cover basic needs like food and water for her and her family. You can read more and support the fundraiser here.

chibifukurou has a friend who has vertigo and EDS, and is raising funds for a second-hand Alinker (a foot-propelled mobility device); following an illness they are at an increased fall risk, and a recent fall subluxed the shoulder and collarbone on their crutch arm. You can read more and give via paypal here.

a-hackneyed-premise is raising funds for a car that is suitable transport for her disabled son; he is neurodivergent and frequently has mobility issues, and they need to be able to get him reliably to and from transport to his school. You can read more and support the fundraiser here.

Anon linked to longhorned's fundraiser for Laureae, a small Native farmer who has built up her farm over the last five years and was recently served an eviction notice; she had been promised by the land owner that she would be given a purchase agreement, but the land can now be sold off and both her and her tenants like Longhorned removed. You can read more and reblog here or support the fundraiser here.

liminalweirdo is raising funds for emergency vet fees for their cat Quintin; you can read more and reblog here or support the fundraiser here.

Anon linked to a fundraiser for Pillowfort, which needs to meet a $5K goal to keep in operation beyond December of this year; they're currently at just over $3K. You can read more and support the fundraiser here.

Recurring Needs:

thegeeksqueaks's school district has shorted her on her summer teacher's budget; she can't afford her own bills much less stocking her classroom for back-to-school. She's raising funds to get her students school supplies and personal support -- food and hygiene tools for underserved kids as well as various aids for neurodivergent kids. You can read more and reblog here, give via DonorsChoose here or via paypal here, or purchase from an Amazon wishlist here.

onedollopofsourcream is raising funds for food and medication for their family including young children; they need medication that is important for family mental health. You can read more, reblog, and find giving information here.

chingaderita's family was recently impacted by a house fire that destroyed their home; their partner has been unable to work and is now ill. They're raising funds for basic needs such as food and water, as well as medication for their partner and other family members. You can read more, reblog, and support the fundraiser here.

And this has been Radio Free Monday! Thank you for your time. You can post items for my attention at the Radio Free Monday submissions form. If you're new to fundraising, you may want to check out my guide to fundraising here.

[thenten]

@ahrencmeptn said: ❝ If you let me out, I promise I’ll behave. ❞ - Let Viola out of gay baby jail, Ben. You can trust her.

MUA3 Starters- Accepting!

When he'd gotten the alert of yet another Forever Knight prison operation, he already expected most of what he'd found tearing through it- innocent kidnapped aliens, unethical experiments, lots of new quirky knightly tech, Argit was there for some reason...

... but, as he blasted his way into the deepest, most secure section of the underground castle, he finally found something he didn't expect: a human, or at least someone that looked the part, locked up the tightest cell they could create on their shrinking budget. A sight that made the Opticoid on the other side tilt his head curiously.

Upon hearing the request with the ears taking up his entire face, the creature merely smirks and nods with little convincing.

"Sure, eye can handle that." He puns, painfully so, as the green eyes adorning his shoulders began to grossly merge together into larger ones, firing two beams of plasma that quickly melted through both the cell and the bindings that clearly weren't designed with his species in mind- freeing the other in seconds.

Clearly caring more about spiting the owners of the facility than he was why the girl was even here, already turning away.

"Exit is this way. Eye can-" The alien begins, before being quickly interrupted by an even angrier alarm than the ones he'd already triggered began to blare, followed by the sounds of every metal boot in the facility forgetting what they were doing and heading their way. "... high-priority prisoner, huh?"

[girlactionfigure]

🔘THE PENTAGON SAYS, GOOD MORNING FROM HEZBOLLAH - Real time from Israel  

ISRAEL REALTIME - Connecting to Israel in Realtime

✡️Shabbat Parshat Noach (Torah Portion “Noah”) - Genesis 6:9 - G‑d instructs Noah—the only righteous man in a world consumed by violence and corruption—to build a large wooden teivah (“ark”), coated within and without with pitch. A great deluge, says G‑d, will wipe out all life from the face of the earth.

( VIDEO - IDF demolishing Hezbollah town used to launch extensive attacks on Israel - Kfar Kila, street by street. )

💧RAIN tomorrow with strong wind in most of the country.  Prepare for the first rain on Shabbat.  ( For those overseas, Israel receives seasonal rains, for most of the country there has been no rain since last winter - people store things outside that can be water damaged until rainy season. )

▪️NEWSPAPER CEO SEMI-APOLOGIZES.. (Amit Segal) Owner Shoken made a reserved apology. He did not retract his call for sanctions on the State of Israel, does not say to whom did he meant are freedom fighters? Hamas in Judea-Samaria? Islamic Jihad? Shoken read his words from the script. Suddenly he "reconsiders" his words. Amazing what an advertiser and subscriber boycott can do.

▪️NATIONAL BUDGET.. The Minister of Culture and Sports Miki Zohar decided to vote against the state budget: "The treasury decided to delete the cultural bodies and sports support in Israel." ( The budgetary battles over must-have vs. nice-to-have vs. ministers defending their area will go on through the end of the year, due to war finance pressures. )

🔹PENTAGON SAYS.. The Pentagon: American Defense Minister Lloyd Austin talked tonight with Defense Minister Yoav Galant about "opportunities to reduce regional escalation". In a telephone conversation, the two discussed the demand of senior American officials to reach a solution to the situation in Gaza and Lebanon and to prepare for an Iranian response to Israeli attacks in Tehran.

♦️The IDF in an unusual official announcement: "Hezbollah rockets killed 7 civilians yesterday, Hezbollah attacks cannot go unanswered.”

♦️LEBANON - widespread wave of attacks overnight in Beirut, and Nabatia after evacuation warning.

♦️LEBANON - IDF airstrikes and artillery and the firing of more than 20 phosphorus shells in the area of ​​the Al Khayyam village detention center. A Lebanese source explained that the area of ​​the detention center is at a high point that allows fire control in the area.

♦️SYRIA - Syrian report, IDF forces attacked about half an hour ago Iranian militia sites in Kusayr in the western countryside of Homs.

⭕Overnight 2 INTERCEPTIONS OVER EILAT, suicide drones from Shia Militias Iraq.

⭕DRONE FROM IRAQ Shia Militias intercepted over Syria.

⭕HEZBOLLAH says good morning with a ROCKET BARRAGE (at least 20 rockets) at Upper Galilee towns.

⭕JUDEA-SAMARA.. 3 armed terrorist groups claim to have carried out 3 shooting attacks in the last few days in northern Samaria and in the northern Jordan Valley.  

.. IDF operating in Kalkilya and Shechem overnight - firefights!

🔸CEASEFIRE NEWS.. Lebanese origin: Great anger at the US envoy Amos Hochstein who did not even contact the decision makers in Lebanon before leaving the region yesterday and returning to the US.

[suzukiblu]

A bit more of "Match is technically also a Luthor".

Match frowns. Director Beta wasn’t involved in making Superboy, so what is Luthor talking about, “keep” making him children? 

Match and Superboy aren’t his children, obviously, because they’re metaweapons and clones, and no matter whose DNA was or wasn’t used to build them, they’re not anyone’s children or even anyone’s idea of people. But that’s the language Luthor is using, so Match is using it in his head and for clarity of communication. 

For the moment, at least. 

“So this is revenge?” he asks slowly, eyeing the man warily. 

“No,” Luthor says. “I’m perfectly grateful to her for her efforts. But I don’t want her in your lives, obviously.” 

“. . . ‘obviously’,” Match echoes, having no idea what should be “obvious” there. Luthor makes a dismissive little gesture, not looking up from his tablet. 

“You don’t need any other parents,” he says. “You have me. And all joking aside, I don’t like to share, in fact.” 

Match wonders why Luthor would expect him to want to share with Superboy, then, but supposes Luthor just doesn’t care about his opinion.

Which . . . well, why would he? 

He almost asks anyway, but he’s not stupid enough to question his new owner. Whatever the man’s calling himself, that’s obviously what he means. Match is being stolen–has been stolen–and he belongs to him now. 

He could’ve at least fought it, he supposes, but no one told him to. 

And no one has ever wanted him to do anything he hasn’t been told to. The only person Match has ever said “no” to in his life is still Superboy, because Superboy is still the only person he ever could have.

That’s . . . something he’s thought about, once or twice. 

“Now then,” Luthor says, glancing towards his chauffeur and bodyguard in the front seat. “I’m not used to children your age, so what do you need for your living space?” 

“. . . six hours of daily training room access and twelve thousand calories a day, for ideal performance,” Match replies, too mystified to know what else to say. Luthor will want to know how to keep him in optimal condition as a weapon, he supposes. Luthor just wrinkles his nose, though, looking appalled. 

“Only twelve?" he says. “You should be pushing twenty thousand, at this developmental stage.” 

Match has literally never once heard “you’re not eating enough”, but that seems to be, in fact, what Luthor is saying. 

“That would be over budget for the project,” he says, and Luthor immediately looks dubious. 

“I’m worth more money than most countries, Lysander,” he says, and Match feels–strange, being called that designation. Something about the way Luthor says it, maybe. “And budgets are for the board room.” 

“The project doesn’t have a budget?” Match says skeptically. 

“We’re going to start feeding you sixteen thousand and go up from there,” Luthor says. “I know you don’t have dietary restrictions, obviously, but I suppose dietary preferences would be too much to expect?” 

“‘Preferences’?” Match repeats blankly. What does that even mean, dietary “preferences”? 

“We’ll just start with the basics, I suppose,” Luthor sighs, looking exasperated. Match frowns. He doesn’t know what “the basics” are any more than he knows what dietary preferences are. Restrictions he understands, obviously, but . . . “preferences”? 

The drive is long and quiet. Match would be bored, if he were capable of boredom. It’s already the longest length of time he’s ever spent outside of an Agenda facility, but that’s not relevant to anyone but him, so it’s not an observation he voices. 

He doesn’t generally voice his observations at all. 

Why would he? 

It’s strange, though, that something so new and unexpected could be this boring. 

Not that Match can actually feel anything like that, again. 

Match doesn’t know where they’re going until the road signs tell him, and even then he’s mystified, because the road signs say Metropolis, and obviously that’s Luthor’s base of operations, but there’s also literally no way he’ll be useful in Metropolis. Nothing about his capabilities as a weapon is anything that Superman can’t handle, and Superman isn’t going to let Luthor keep a Kryptonian-based weapon around–even one that’s only half-Kryptonian. Match will end up in government custody the moment Superman finds out he’s here. 

He doesn’t . . . want to be in government custody, but it’s not as if he has a choice where he ends up anyway. And it’s not–he doesn’t want things anyway. It’s irrelevant, if Luthor’s being reckless with him. 

But the government might vivisect or dissect him, where Luthor already has his files and designs and doesn’t actually need to. So that’s . . . that’s . . . 

Relevant, Match thinks, and then pushes the thought back down. 

It’s not relevant. It isn’t up to him, and even if it were, it wouldn’t matter. He’s a weapon. If his owners want to take him apart, that’s their prerogative. 

Their right, really. 

It’s not up to him, and it never has been. 

The towncar stops in front of a shining skyscraper of an apartment building, and Luthor gets out. Match waits in the car, because Luthor doesn’t tell him to follow him. He assumes he’s going to be dropped off at a new lab, because obviously Luthor doesn’t intend to take him into an apartment building. Maybe the lab is outside Metropolis, and Match won’t immediately end up in government custody. That would make more sense, so–

Luthor leans down and looks back through the open door, raising an eyebrow at him.

“Problem?” he asks. 

Match stares blankly at him, not understanding the question. 

“. . . get out of the car, Lysander,” Luthor says. 

Match doesn’t understand that either, but it’s an order, so he follows it. He gets out of the car, and Luthor looks him over with a sigh. 

“We’re going to need to get you in actual clothes,” he says, then heads towards the front door as the chauffeur closes the car door behind him. The bodyguard follows him. Match doesn’t know what–“This way.” 

Match still doesn’t understand anything, but follows the order. He heads after Luthor, staying a step behind him with the bodyguard and wondering if he’s assuming too much, but figuring that until he has an actual assignment, he should operate under the assumption that his purpose here is parallel to hers. 

Assuming things doesn’t tend to work out well for him, but Luthor isn’t giving him enough to go off here, so he doesn’t know what else to do. He doesn’t know much, right now, but Luthor clearly isn’t prioritizing providing him with the necessary intel for . . . whatever he actually wants him for. 

Not like it’s the first time someone hasn’t bothered to do that, though, so Match can work with that.

[emeraldspiral]

Zim episode where Zim's budget gets cut and he needs to make some extra cash to fund his operations. He gets the idea to become a space DIY YouTuber posting tutorials on how to create devices and set-up elaborate schemes to complete your own invasion since you're obviously so inept you need the expert advice of the amazing Zim. Of course, most of Zim's tutorials aren't even for stuff that could be used to conquer a planet, they're just for petty mischief against annoying humans like his neighbors, classmates, and Dib. Most of Zim's viewers can plainly see the obvious design flaws and how his plans will either not have the desired effect or would do so in an extremely inefficient manner while others comment that they tried following his tutorials and were either led to their doom or just couldn't get anywhere because his instructions were so bad. Zim just deletes all the comments and blocks all the haters because they're clearly just naysaying his brilliant schemes out of jealousy. He quickly starts getting lazy and recycles content, posting the same clips in a different order as compilations so he can have new videos up every hour of every day without having to actually make anything new.

Eventually someone posts a video essay "exposing" Zim's schemes for being ineffective and dangerous and Zim responds by attacking them in-person. This only gets Zim a temporary demonetization because he uses bots to inflate his numbers on the platform to make the owners think he's a more valuable creator than he actually is. It's only when he shit-talks a sponsored product to deflect blame off himself for one of his inventions failing that advertisers drop him like a hot potato and he quits Space YouTube forever.

[clouds-of-wings]

Power Metal reddit currently has a discussion about Nuclear Blast, about what has changed with them and why, and man I have learned a lot of disturbing facts about what has happened there in the past 5 years. Someone posted an in-depth investigative article about it (from November 2021), which you should read if you speak German and are interested, otherwise or if it's too long here are the main points...

If you're into Nightwish, Sabaton, Blind Guardian etc., this is relevant information.

In 2018, the French Believe Music, which is a large corporation that mainly specializes in digital distribution, became majority owner of NB

Believe is not really interested in physical media like CDs and vinyls even though the people who worked at NB told their new corporate overlords that metal fans like physical media, both because many fans of especially the oldest and most successful bands are 50+ and because it's more ingrained in the subculture. Believe doesn't care and doesn't listen. They have their experiences from pop and hip-hop, where phone-based streaming subscriptions are the norm, and that's all they want to know. They are also ignoring printed magazines and don't advertise there much anymore.

Less focus on physical media means that bands now earn less, that they rank less highly in album charts, which in turn means that they lose negotiation power when they try to plan tours and negotiate with venues etc., because they "look" less successful

Believe has been dealing with this by signing mainly bands that are easy to market digitally and ending co-operations with bands that aren't, even ones that had been with NB for decades (like Rage and Nile, who went to Napalm)

The personal cooperation between bands and NB has really suffered, everything is more profit-oriented and impersonal, a lot of budgets have been decreased and the real decisions are made by Believe in Paris, not by any specific NB team

Believe has been stock market traded since 2021. Their stock value went down at first, was at about the price it had started out at when the article was written - I looked it up and in March 23 it's down 40% from its original value. Ouch.

The original founder of NB started a new label, Atomic Fire, and took "Amorphis, Helloween, Opeth, Sonata Arctica, Meshuggah, Primal Fear, Agnostic Front, Rise Of The Northstar, Silver Lake, White Stones and Michael Schenker Group" with him, also because Believe didn't really do much to keep many of these bands

It's certainly interesting to learn about, also because I had already wondered if NB, and some of their bands, had intentionally taken a more "commercial" approach in recent years, but I didn't know about the Believe thing. I thought it maybe had something to do with losses from the pandemic or something. Turns out they have a new owner.

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 4, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 05, 2024

Long tonight, folks, but it’s been quite a day. And even still, I did not mention the day’s horrific shooting at a Georgia school.

Today, Vice President Kamala Harris announced a series of proposals to help entrepreneurs create small businesses. Like President Joe Biden, she and her running mate, Minnesota governor Tim Walz, argue that small businesses and entrepreneurs are the “engines of our economy.” In a statement today, they noted that “small businesses employ half of all private-sector workers in America—creating 70 percent of net new jobs since 2019—and do trillions of dollars of business every year.”

The Biden administration has boasted of the record number of new businesses created since Biden and Harris took office. There have been 19 million new business applications in that time. Harris said she and Walz are setting a goal of 25 million new business applications in their first term. Their plan, they say, is to “kickstart…more young, small, and innovative firms.”

To make this happen, they propose raising the deduction for startup expenses from its current level of $5,000 to $50,000, noting that the average amount a new business spends to get set up in its first year of operation is $40,000. They also propose funding a network of new and existing “federal, state, local, and private incubators and small business innovation hubs” that will make it easier for small business and local suppliers to get technical assistance, funding, customers, and so on. 

They also promised to make low-interest and no-interest loans available for small businesses, to protect and expand the support of the Affordable Care Act for small business owners, and to guarantee that one third of federal contract money will go to small businesses. They promise to make it easier for small businesses to file taxes, reduce excessive occupational licensing requirements, and urge state and local governments to cut the red tape of burdensome regulations by streamlining them across jurisdictions. 

Harris and Walz said they are committed to making the investments that will build the economy while also paying for them and reducing the deficit. “They also know,” their statement said, that “we need to support America as a locus of innovators, entrepreneurs, and workers coming together to create a better future.  

Harris calls this a New Way Forward, but it is curiously close to the old Republican reforms of the Progressive Era, when entrepreneurs joined forces with workers and farmers to demand access to capital and a fair economic playing field after decades in which a few wealthy industrialists stacked the system in their own favor. When we look at that era, as well as the New Deal reforms of the 1930s, we tend to emphasize reforms designed to benefit workers and farmers, but members of those groups always allied with entrepreneurs shut out of the system by wealthy industrialists. The demand for securities and exchange law in the 1930s, for example, did not come from western farmers, but from entrepreneurs who knew they could not break into the system if established businesses made up the rules amongst themselves.

Harris recalled that Republican reform impulse when she said we must make the tax system fairer. She called for rolling back Trump’s tax cuts and implementing common-sense tax reforms for corporations and the richest Americans. She calls for setting a minimum income tax for billionaires, the corporate tax rate to 28% (it was 35% before the Trump tax cuts), and quadrupling the tax on the stock buybacks that overwhelmingly benefit the wealthiest Americans.

She emphasized that no one earning less than $400,000 a year will pay more in taxes under her plans, and called for a tax rate of 28% on long-term capital gains for those who earn more than a million dollars a year. This is up from the current 20% rate, but less than the 39.6% rate Biden proposed in his 2025 budget. 

A Fox News Channel host applauded some of Harris’s ideas, saying, “When a political candidate comes up with what I think is a good idea, I have to call it a good idea. And a fifty thousand dollar…tax credit for startups or small businesses, coupled with less red tape, I’ve got to say, that is a good idea, regardless of her other tax ideas.” 

This was a nice endorsement of Harris’s policies, coming as it did after yesterday’s assessment by economists for the Goldman Sachs Group saying that the nation’s economic growth would take a hit if Trump wins, but will grow under a Harris presidency if she also has the support of a Democratic House and Senate.  

In her statement about economic policy, Harris called out Trump for supporting “himself and the biggest corporations” and noted that sixteen Nobel laureates have said that Trump’s policies would ignite inflation and trigger a recession by mid-2025. That recession, economists project, would cost more than 3 million jobs, explode the deficit, and raise costs. Harris pointed out that Project 2025 would cut funding for the Small Business Administration and make it harder for small businesses to get access to money. 

For his part, Trump has doubled down on the idea that the United States is a failing nation. For the past week he has been telling a story about a residential building in Colorado taken over by a gang from Venezuela. But it appears the story is entirely made up. Similarly, Trump on Friday said at a right-wing Moms for Liberty event that public schools in America kidnap children and operate on them to change their sex. This is bonkers, but it is bonkers in a way that deliberately demonizes Trump’s opponents.

Trump’s vision of the United States is one of darkness and carnage. As Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz said today, “It is a deliberate effort by some people to make them believe that our political system is broken. To make them believe that things are pessimistic. My God, every time I hear Donald Trump give a speech, it’s like the next screenplay for Mad Max or something. They are rooting against America.”

That bleak version of the United States, it turns out, echoes the talking points Russian handlers gave to their operatives working in the U.S. in an effort “to steer the U.S. public opinion in the right direction.” The Russians directed their U.S. employees to emphasize the following “campaign topics”: “Encroaching universal poverty. Record inflation. Halting of economic growth. Unaffordable prices for food and essential goods”; “Risk of job loss for white Americans”; “Privileges for people of color, perverts, and disabled”; “Constant lies of the [Democratic] administration about the real situation in the country”; “Threat of crime coming from people of color and immigrants”; “Overspending on foreign policy and at the interests of white US citizens”; “Constant lies to the voters by [Democrats] in power.” 

The target audience of the campaign was “[Republican] voters,” [Trump] supporters, “Supporters of traditional family values,” and “White Americans, representing the lower-middle and middle class.” The focus was in particular on “[r]esidents of "swing states whose voting results impact the outcomes of the elections more than other states. 

This information came out today when the Departments of Justice, State, and the Treasury announced sanctions against 10 individuals and 2 entities, and criminal charges against two employees of RT, a Russian state-controlled media outlet, who allegedly funded a company in the U.S. to hire right-wing social media influencers to push Russian propaganda before the 2024 election. 

While the indictment does not name the Tennessee-based company the Russians funded, it appears to be Tenet Media, a company registered by Liam Donovan and Lauren Tam, who is associated with The Blaze and Turning Point USA, as well as RT. The two appear to be married. The indictment alleges that the company’s two founders knew they were working for the Russians, but suggests the six commentators—Lauren Southern, Tim Pool, Tayler Hansen, Matt Christiansen, Dave Rubin, and Benny Johnson, all staunch Trump supporters—did not know where their massive paychecks originated. After the story broke, five of the commentators denied any knowledge of the source of the company’s funding; some insisted their words were entirely their own. 

One of the videos the company pushed at the request of the Russians was what appears to have been right-wing host Tucker Carlson’s visit to a grocery store in Russia where he praised the low prices (which even the company’s founders thought “just feels like overt shilling”).

Separately, the Department of Justice seized 32 internet domains that “the Russian government and Russian sponsored actors” have used to influence the 2024 election. In a malign influence campaign called “Doppelganger,” these domains produced fake articles that appeared to be from major U.S. news sites, to which influencers and fake social media profiles on Facebook, X, Truth Social, and YouTube then drove traffic. 

Russian operatives called in bold type for Russia “to put a maximum effort to ensure that the [Republican] point of view (first and foremost, the opinion of [Trump] supporters) wins over the US public opinion. This includes provisions on peace in Ukraine in exchange for territories, the need to focus on the problems of the US economy, returning troops home from all over the world, etc.”

One of the documents produced in the affidavit justifying the seizure of the internet domains called for trying to stir up a conflict between the U.S. and Mexico in order to distract from the fact that the U.S. economy is “very healthy” under Biden.

Tonight, in an interview with Fox News Channel host Sean Hannity, Trump appeared to think he is running against Joe Biden. An internal email leaked to the press from the Trump campaign showed managers Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles warning staff not to communicate with the press and suggested anyone doing so would be fired.

Today, Steph Curry of California’s Golden State Warriors basketball team and former representative Liz Cheney (R-WY) endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris for president. “Endorsing Kamala Harris is important for me and my family,” Curry said. “Knowing Kamala and having been around her, I understand she's qualified for this job."

“There was never a doubt that the courageous Liz Cheney would endorse Vice President Harris,” conservative judge J. Michael Luttig wrote, “because  Liz Cheney stands for America.  She is the very embodiment of country over party and country over self.  And she fears no one—least of all the former president.”

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[hollywritesinstardust]

Hey all,

Unfortunately this isn’t anything fun. 2024 has been rough. But this is I think more important.

If you live in the United States, you probably know about the political tumult and the very real threat to our democratic institutions. Nearly every large platform has come out with a statement endorsing one candidate or another. Oftentimes this represents a fundamental ideological difference that I don’t believe I have the type or size of platform to talk about meaningfully. But in this case, the Washington Post - one of our largest national newspapers - was prevented from publishing a political endorsement by its owner, Jeff Bezos. You may know Bezos as the ultra-rich and exploitative founder of Amazon.

As a result, reportedly hundreds of thousands of subscribers to the Washington Post have canceled their subscriptions. Nowadays, media outlets like newspapers make a significant amount of their operating budgets from subscription fees. Regardless of the percentage of budget that comes from subscriptions, the subscriptions also serve as an indicator of readership and reach. We know that the staff of the paper are not the ones who chose to pull this article and in fact it appears that many of them are as frustrated as their readers are. While wholly understandable to pull away and “punish” the paper for this decision, this punishes the staff of the paper and may threaten the ability of the Washington Post to operate with the kind of political independence and integrity that we want our reporters to maintain.

So here is the message I want to share: keep your WaPo subscription if you have one. If you already cancelled, please consider re-subscribing. If you were considering buying one, please don’t change your mind because of this incident. There are better ways to lodge our mass complaints in ways that don’t have a greater impact on the wellbeing of a well-respected paper and its staff than on the person whose actions we object to.

For example, we could start a challenge to refuse to engage with Amazon on the week of the election. Spend no money. Watch no Prime. Don’t open any Kindle files. Don’t even open the apps. Amazon is where most of Bezos’ wealth comes from and his financial wellbeing is strongly tied to its shares. His wealth comes from our willingness to use his products, and his actions can have financial consequences.

What do you think? Should we spread the word?

[artisticdivasworld]

The Ripple Effect of Fuel Costs

Fuel pricing is one of those unpredictable forces that every trucker wishes they could control but can’t. It’s like trying to plan a picnic while watching storm clouds roll in—you know something’s coming, but you can’t be sure how bad it will get. For truckers, this unpredictability doesn’t just dampen the day; it can completely throw off budgets, schedules, and sometimes even livelihoods. When…

[ridenwithbiden]

I'M ONE OF THE "WASTEFUL EXPENDITURES" THEY WILL CUT.

The incoming Trump administration’s solution to government spending is a NEW Department of Government Efficiency led by co-department (2 NEW) CHIEFS: the world’s richest man and Trump’s former political opponent.

But while on the surface the plan to cut government spending seems simple, the “department,” led by multibillionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is fairly unorthodox. The U.S. Constitution states the President: “may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments.” That section implies a primary leader and explains why the 15 executive Cabinet departments including State, Defense, and Treasury have a single secretary with a chain-of-command from the President on down. However, other agencies, like the Federal Trade Commission, are governed by a commission structure; the President taps one commissioner to serve as chair.

What is it? In a statement on Truth Social Tuesday, president-elect Donald Trump gave the department a broad mandate to “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” Trump compared the department’s importance to that of the “Manhattan Project” which led to the creation of the atomic bomb in the 20th century.

Trump added in the statement that the co-leaders would target waste and fraud that Trump said exists throughout the $6.5 trillion yearly federal budget. The department will operate through July 4, 2026, wrapping up its operations just in time for the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, Trump said in the statement.

Co-leader Elon Musk said in a Wednesday post that the massive cuts and reforms “will be done much faster.”

Why two department heads? Both leaders of the department, multibillionaire Elon Musk and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, have been avid supporters of the president-elect. Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX and the owner of social media website X, reportedly supported Trump via his super PAC with about $200 million in funding and often spoke with him at campaign rallies leading up to the election. Musk is the richest man in the world, with a net worth of $319 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Although he ran against Trump in the Republican primary race, Ramaswamy dropped out and endorsed Trump in January. The entrepreneur, who founded pharmaceutical company Roivant Sciences, has also appeared with Trump on the campaign trail.

Some leaders of the democratic party have already criticized the co-leaders of the department, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.).

“The Office of Government Efficiency is off to a great start with split leadership: two people to do the work of one person. Yeah, this seems REALLY efficient,” Warren wrote in a Tuesday post on X.

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment.

Will the Department of Government Efficiency be a new government department? Contrary to its name, the new “department” will not be a part of the federal government, but rather more like a consulting arm that “will provide advice and guidance from outside of Government,” according to the statement. Musk flagged the fact that the new department exists outside of the government as “important details” in a post on X Wednesday. Musk especially has his hands full elsewhere with his other companies, Tesla, SpaceX, and social media site, X.

Despite its separation from government, the department’s leaders have Trump’s support and have pledged myriad internal changes to try to cut back on federal spending.

What have the co-leaders said about government spending? On the campaign trail with Trump, Musk said he wanted to cut the federal budget by $2 trillion, and added in an October rally that “some pretty big moves” were required.

“Our defense budget is pretty gigantic. It’s a trillion dollars,” Musk said during a rally. “The interest we owe on the debt is now higher than the defense budget. This is not sustainable. That’s why we need the Department of Government Efficiency,”

Ramaswamy has previously floated the idea of eliminating the Education Department, the FBI, and the IRS by executive order to cut spending, the New York Times reported. Ramaswamy has said the federal workforce should be cut by 75%.

The pair have said the cuts will be transparent and Musk added that the department would create a “leaderboard” to display the “most insanely dumb spending of your tax dollars.”

Will it work? Experts have cast doubt on whether Musk and Ramaswamy will be able to find $2 trillion to cut from federal spending without impacting long-untouched programs such as social security and defense spending.

The consequences of such big cuts could be massive layoffs for government employees and even some temporary economic pain. When a user on Musk’s social media site X wrote in October that Musk’s massive spending cuts could cause a temporary overreaction in the economy, Musk replied with “sounds about right.”

Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said in a speech at The Economic Club of New York on Tuesday that Musk would be lucky to find $200 billion worth of cuts, much less $2 trillion, CNN reported.

Why the acronym “DOGE?” The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE as Trump abbreviated it in his official announcement, is a callback to the meme cryptocurrency Dogecoin, which Musk has often promoted over the years.

The cryptocurrency was originally created as a joke but has grown to become the sixth largest cryptocurrency with a Wednesday market cap of $56 billion, greater than that of major companies such as Volkswagen or Ford.

The cryptocurrency jumped 20% following Trump’s announcement Tuesday and was up just over 1% on Wednesday afternoon.

[queersatanic]

The Satanic Temple’s owner Cevin Soling really hates public schools

Newly discovered passages from 2014’s “The Student Resistance Handbook” by Satanic Temple co-owner Cevin “Malcolm Jarry” Soling show that using “After School Satan” clubs to disrupt education isn’t a bug or a side effect of them; it’s the whole point.

Religious Accommodations

A religious belief must be sincerely held and “must occupy the same place in life of the [believer] as [would] orthodox belief in God.” In other words, so long as you sincerely believe something and that belief represents a significant part of your outlook, it can be deemed a religious belief under the law. This means you can create your own religion, or announce that you are part of a religious organization that supports individual autonomy and sovereignty such as Satanism. The benefits depend on what state you live in. Schools are designed not to treat people as individuals. The more students engage in asserting their individual religious beliefs and demand appropriate concessions, the harder it is for schools to operate.

Holidays

Some states that have enacted various forms of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) permit certain rights under the banner of religious freedom. For instance, in Texas students are excused from school to observe religious holy days. If you are a Satanist and live in Texas, you can insist on taking Halloween off. Obviously, you want to exploit this judiciously, but just doing this once will upset and disturb the administration because it invites others to do the same.

Hair Length and Dress Code

Religious exemptions can be requested to avoid having to adhere to school requirements for hair length and school uniforms. Be aware that this could involve being transferred to a campus that does not have these requirements.

Page 65 of “The Student Resistance Handbook” by Cevin Soling (2014)

Religious Symbols

Religious symbols are permitted and wearing a Satanic pentagram and other forms of Satanic jewelry is legally protected even though many school districts inappropriately ban such apparel.

Curriculum

In some states, you may be permitted to not attend classes or participate in activities that conflict with your religious beliefs by providing a written statement to your teacher that states a conflict exists. Remember, religious beliefs do not have to be rational or even self-consistent—just deeply held convictions. Please note that you cannot be exempt from an entire semester and you cannot be exempt from graduation requirements including those for advancing from one grade to another.

Page 66 of “The Student Resistance Handbook” by Cevin Soling (2014)

Form a Club

In most schools, students have great leeway in forming clubs of their choosing. Form a club that will likely offend the faculty. Some suggestions:

• Club for the Practice of Witchcraft and Dark Arts

• Club for the Worshipers of Satan

• Banned Book Club

• Advanced Studies in Contemporary Pornography Club

• End Compulsory Schooling Club

• Students for a Lower Drinking Age Club

• Students for the Legalization of Heroin Club

• Students for a Sensible School Budget by Lowering Faculty Wages Club

• Death Metal and Gangsta Rap Appreciation Club

Page 70 of “The Student Resistance Handbook” by Cevin Soling (2014)

Moreover, we’re still being sued by The Satanic Temple in federal court and now King County Superior Court.

TST is also still suing Newsweek and its reporter (but maybe not her anymore!) for writing about us. In addition, the Temple is now suing a TikToker in Texas for talking about our case. Check the pinned post for more.

[magnetictapedatastorage]

full article under the cut

June 12, 2024

By David Wallace-Wells

Opinion Writer

Here is what the indefinite pause on New York City’s congestion pricing program, if it sticks, will cost: 120,000 more cars daily clogging Lower Manhattan’s bumper-to-bumper streets, according to a New York State analysis, and perhaps $20 billion annually in additional lost productivity and fuel and operating costs, as well as health and environmental burdens and a practically unbridgeable budget shortfall for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority that will straitjacket an already handicapped agency and imperil dozens of planned necessary capital improvement projects for the city’s aging subway system.

Here is what it gains Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, who announced her unilateral decision about the suspension last week: perhaps slightly better chances for New York Democrats in a couple of fall congressional races. According to reporting, these are especially important to the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries, who may still be somewhat embarrassed about his state’s performance in the 2022 elections, when surprise victories for several New York Republicans kept the House of Representatives out of Democratic control. It has also handed the governor several news conferences so bungled, they have made reversing a policy unpopular with voters into a genuine political humiliation.

In her announcement, Hochul emphasized the precarious state of the city’s recovery from the Covid pandemic, but car traffic into Manhattan has returned to prepandemic levels, as has New York City employment, which is now higher than ever before; New York City tourism metrics are barely behind prepandemic records and are expected to surpass them in 2025. Tax coffers have rebounded, too, to the extent that the city canceled a raft of planned budget cuts. The one obvious measure by which the city has not mounted a full pandemic comeback is subway ridership — a measure that congestion pricing would have helped and pausing it is likely to hurt.

In announcing the pause, she also expressed concern for the financial burden the $15 surcharge would impose on working New Yorkers, though the city’s working class was functionally exempted from the toll by a rebate system for those with an annual income of $60,000 or less. In a follow-up news conference, she emphasized a few conversations she’d had with diner owners, who she said expressed anxiety that their business would suffer when commuters wouldn’t drive to their establishments. But each of them was within spitting distance of Grand Central, where an overwhelming share of foot traffic — and commercial value — comes from commuters using mass transit.

Robinson Meyer, a contributing Times Opinion writer, wrote for Heatmap that delaying the plan will be “a generational setback for climate policy in the United States,” adding that “it is one of the worst climate policy decisions made by a Democrat at any level of government in recent memory.” He called it worse than the Mountain Valley Pipeline and the Willow oil project in Alaska — not just because of the direct effect on emissions, though that would be large, but what a pause means for the morale and momentum of any American movement toward a next-generation, climate-conscious urbanism.

For years, the country’s liberals have envied the transformation of London by its Ultra Low Emission Zone, which generates hundreds of millions of pounds annually and quickly cut nitrogen dioxide air pollution in central London by 44 percent from projected levels. And liberals practically salivated over the remaking of Paris by Mayor Anne Hidalgo, whose policies have significantly reduced the number of cars in the city center, cutting nitrogen oxide pollution by 40 percent from 2011 levels, and turned huge swaths of the urban core into a paradise for pedestrians and bikers.

Similar programs have been carried out in Stockholm and Oslo, proving remarkably popular, and while it didn’t exactly seem likely that all the world’s cities were on the verge of leaving behind the car, the fact that any American city was taking the leap looked like a sign that change was possible. There aren’t many places in the United States that could plausibly hope to take even a few steps in the direction of the 15-minute city. But the New York City metro area — which has higher public transportation ridership than the next 16 American cities combined and whose residents account for 45 percent of U.S. commutes by public transit — was the obvious place to try. At least until last week.

To enthusiastic reformers, the reversal was all the more painful because the obvious hurdles had already been cleared. Especially after the Inflation Reduction Act kicked off a frenzied real-world spending spree, progress-minded Democrats have argued about the difficulties of building things at anywhere close to the necessary speed, taking aim at a bundle of obstacles to more rapid development and build-out of green infrastructure — rampant NIMBYism, burdens of environmental review, permitting and zoning challenges, social justice litmus tests. It had taken a few decades, but congestion pricing had jumped through all the necessary hoops. The everything bagel had been slathered with cream cheese and was ready to serve. And Hochul put the kibosh on it anyway.

The cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority has spent $500 million developing the system and installing its hardware, and the inevitable shortfall now means a much less ambitious future for the agency, to trust its spokesmen, which is now probably incapable of extending the Second Avenue Subway or undertaking the Interborough Express project, which promised to revitalize huge corridors of Brooklyn and Queens and give more than 100,000 New Yorkers more viable public transit commutes. (Hochul says the pause won’t imperil those projects.) The pause may even be illegal, as State Senator Liz Krueger argued last week in The Daily News.

But for all its inscrutability, Hochul’s reversal follows a recent partisan pattern, a sort of centrist backlash among establishment Democrats and their supporters against left-wing causes and their supporters in the run-up to the November elections, partly as a matter of electoral strategy and perhaps as part of a pre-emptive blame game in anticipation of Republican victories, possibly including Donald Trump’s re-election.

The backlash is perhaps most visible in commentary from liberal pundits, who in recent weeks have tried to blame the party’s left wing for President Biden’s dicey re-election prospects, though the most obvious drags on those chances are his age and voters’ perceptions about the cost of living. At the national level it is best embodied by Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, who rarely speaks at length but happily seizes opportunities to punch left, particularly toward those protesting the war in Gaza. More locally, it is embodied by Mayor Eric Adams, who won election in 2021 as a kind of centrist backlash candidate — hailed at the time as a political counterweight to progressive candidates like Maya Wiley and progressive forces like the Black Lives Matter movement and perhaps even as a future face of the Democratic Party — and whose approval ratings are now lower than any other New York City mayor in decades, even as the city has inarguably bounced back from its pandemic trough on his watch.

Hochul has been a less visible and less polarizing figure than Adams. But every time she has poked her head up and made national news lately, it has been in the same spirit, to roll her eyes at or pick fights with those to her left. In February she mocked critics of Israel’s war in Gaza by saying, “If Canada someday ever attacked Buffalo, I’m sorry, my friends, there would be no Canada the next day.” (She later apologized.) In March she suddenly deployed the state’s National Guard to patrol the subways, on the same day that Adams boasted about rapid declines in subway crime. And now on congestion pricing, just weeks after bragging she was proud to stand up to “set in their ways” drivers, she reversed course out of apparent deference to those drivers and their outsize political clout. The state government and the transit authority have hard-earned reputations for ineffectuality, and faced with an opportunity to do something big, the governor chose to retreat and do nothing instead.

“It makes me think about the fight for progress, and how any real progress in the moment seems impossible,” wrote Cooper Lund in a melancholy reflection he called “Who Gets to Be a Constituent?” Nine times as many people ride public transit into the central business district each day as take cars there. There are 11 times as many people living in Manhattan who breathe the air polluted by automobile exhaust each day as there are who drive there for work. And those who work in the greater New York area lose 113 million hours each year to traffic, at an estimated cost of nearly $800 for each commuter. “With N.Y.C.’s reputation you’d think that the Democrats would be eager to uphold the city as an example of what a liberal, multicultural society is capable of, and to foster it,” Lund went on. “But both the mayor or the governor proved that they don’t have any interest in that. Instead, the things that would improve the city are pushed away for the suburban lifestyle that both parties seem to agree represents their actual constituency.”

A generation ago, it was common for informed liberals to lament the transformation of the country’s densest and most walkable city into a traffic-snarled carscape at the hand of Robert Moses in the mid-20th century. But despite the rise of YIMBYism and a sort of conventional wisdom new urbanism, the city hasn’t become meaningfully less automobile-centric since. More cars traveled into Lower Manhattan in 1990 than in 1981, more came in 2000 than in 1990, and although the rates dropped a bit after Sept. 11, they were still slightly higher in 2010 than they were 20 years before and have remained pretty flat since. Decades into new urbanism, the country’s most walkable city has just about the same number of cars driving into its in-demand downtown.

Taxi registrations doubled from 1980 to 2010 and then grew even more rapidly through the Uber years that followed, so that there are now five times as many taxis registered in the city as there were nearly 40 years ago and two and a half times as many taxi rides. (The difference between the two figures suggests that a pretty big portion of the increase is empty cars idling or cruising without fares.) Since 2006, excess congestion has grown by 53 percent, and since 2010, the average travel speed in the central business district has fallen 22 percent, from a crawl of 9.1 miles per hour to a glacial 7.1. I can comfortably run faster.

As has been the case everywhere, the kind and size of cars in New York have changed, too. When I was growing up there in the 1980s and ’90s, I could look out at the streetscape and see things other than trucks and supersized sport utility vehicles — trees, storefronts, pedestrians on the opposite curb, each of them visible because the streets were much less packed with automobiles the size of small elephants. Parking spots were not walls of S.U.V.s back then but lines of sedans, nestled along the sidewalk, it seemed, almost like a string of small boats puttering by the boarding platform of a flume ride. I remember climbing down into cars then, even as a 9- or 10-year-old. As a grown-up, I’m now climbing up, into what feels more like a cockpit and an imperious claim to the street.

My parents and in-laws remember a different kind of city still, the kind where you could park right in front of restaurants, play stickball in the street with infrequent interruptions, ride bikes down the cobblestones of SoHo and see only the occasional delivery truck along the way. I never knew that world, except through photographs and the haze of secondhand nostalgia. By the time I came around, the streets were already pretty full of cars. But even so, the city as a whole didn’t seem to belong to them yet. Certainly they didn’t seem to be holding its future hostage.

[rjzimmerman]

Rising seas could swallow millions of U.S. acres within decades. (Washington Post)

There’s no longer much doubt about that, as scientists have increasingly documented how the warming of theplanet has acceleratedsea level rise along coasts around the world.

Sign up for the Climate Coach newsletter and get advice for life on our changing planet, in your inbox every Tuesday and Thursday.

But an analysis published Thursday by the research nonprofit Climate Central reveals a troubling dimension of the economic toll that could unfold in the United States, as hundreds of thousands of homes, offices and other privately owned properties slip below swelling tide lines over the next few decades.

Here are five takeaways from the research about the people and places that stand to lose most, the likely ripple effects and reasons the world must cut its emissions of greenhouse gases in order to eventually stem the rising waters:

1. Sea level rise will shift coastlines — and property lines

Researchers at Climate Central took scientific data on projected sea level rise, as well as information about state tidal boundaries, and combined that with records on more than 50 million individual properties across hundreds of U.S. counties to identify parcels most likely at risk. Their conclusion: Nearly 650,000 individual, privately owned parcels, across as many as 4.4 million acres of land, are projected to fall below changing tidal boundaries by 2050. The land affected could swell to 9.1 million acres by 2100. According to Thursday’s analysis, properties with a collective assessed value of $108 billion could be affected by the end of the century, based on current emissions. But, the authors noted, because complete property values were not available for all counties, the actual total is likely to be far higher.

2. The Gulf Coast and Atlantic Coast stand to lose most

It’s no surprise that Louisiana, where the seas are swelling and land is sinking, faces a daunting loss of property in the years to come. The Climate Central analysis estimated that more than 25,000 properties, totaling nearly 2.5 million acres in the state, could fall wholly below tidal boundary lines by 2050 — a number that far exceeds any other place in the nation. That would amount to 8.7 percent of Louisiana’s total land area, the report found. But other states also appear to face widespread threats. The top three at risk behind Louisiana are Florida, North Carolina and Texas, all of which have large swaths of low-lying, imperiled coastlines.

3. It’s not just about flooded homes. It’s about eroding tax bases.

The loss of homes and other properties — especially those along the waterfront — isn’t just a tragedy for owners. It is a surefire way to erode the revenue municipal governments need to operate. “Ultimately, this is a local problem and a local story,” Bain said. “We finance local government through our property taxes.”

4. The potential ripple effects are vast

Eroding tax bases are a big problem. But hardly the only one. The study also found a litany of other complications that likely will result as sea levels inch higher and higher. “The legal and political ramifications of these changes are complex, and will likely vary among locations,” the analysis found. “Those ramifications extend well beyond loss of tax revenue as property owners object to paying taxes on submerged land.” Beyond those initial shocks, municipalities and individuals will also be forced to confront the significant costs for removing inundated structures and flooded septic tanks. Governments could be on the hook for properties that get abandoned, adding additional expenses not covered by their budgets.

5. The future is not (entirely) set in stone

The world’s foremost scientists have found that given the carbon built up in the atmosphere after generations of burning fossil fuels, the rate of sea level rise is increasing and will continue over the next several decades.Those findings are in line with a major report earlier this year from the NOAA, which found that sea levels could rise along U.S. coastlines by roughly a foot between now and 2050 — roughly as much change over the next three decades as over the past century.