#raise money for funeral

[stoph8co]

Elizabeth has been a server who lights up guests with her energy, humor, and never-ending-smile at Thunder Road & Tommy Gunz for over five years. She lost her 15-year-old son the last week of January 2023. You can also donate by scanning the QR code on this flyer.

Please help us - help her.

Good-Will Fundraising EVENT

FREE-WILL DONATION AT DOOR

Saturday 2-11-2023 Starts at 5PM

DARTS + POOL + RAFFLE + GIFTS CARDS + HOUSE DJ

Tommy Gunz The Hideout

1607 S Locust St, Ste B

Grand Island, NE, 68801

308-395-3889

Help_E_85by11-01.jpg

[salvia-plathitudes]

Today at work I started talking to this lovely older woman from Texas who, I didn’t find out until later, came up here with a good friend (she drove four hours to meet her friend in another part of Texas, where they took off together for another twelve at least, to get here). They’re both into quilting and her friend was the one teaching a quilting club right above my break room. I had been invited to step into the carriage house on my first break to get details on how I could become a club member.

One woman told me that I can personally come over and use her “long arm” (it’s a sewing machine?!) if I wanted to.

Older quilting ladies are absolutely living up to the hype of being so encouraging to young people who are interested in joining the hobby. There were men there, too, and there should be as they have about 300 members scattered about my area, though not everybody attended!

[incorrecthpjo]

I know JKR is an asshole and Hogwarts Legacy sucks and shouldn't be played at all costs but there are more than 20k deaths in Turkiye, and i feel like people care more about cancelling Rowling and pretending to care about human rights than actually caring about people and making help

[bunnyb34r]

Lmao my cousin was the only hold out on signing our aunts will, bc she was mad that our aunts car (which was promised to her) wasn't in the will, and well... It came and bit her in the ass bc LEGALLY, like a fucking JUDGE in COURT told the executors that they have to SELL the car at market value ($11,000). Fuck around and find out bitch 💅

I mean had she signed it earlier it's not like she would've gotten the car, but she was trying to play chicken with the will in a dumbass attempt to get them to just give her the car

Sucks to suck biiiiiiitch

And to be perfectly clear, as someone who knows what every person got, she can afford that easily. She can afford to buy a brand new car. But nooo I NEED to have this 2008 Ford fusion! You HAVE to give it to me! You guys are just assholes!

I kinda hope she tries to steal it somehow, bc god that would be fucking hilarious. Like she'd be arrested. And I KNOW at least one of the executors WOULD press charges sgsgdggdgdg

[alpha-mag-media]

Beloved cyclist Zoe Clay dies after horror bike accident as family raises over $38k for funeral | In Trend Today

Beloved cyclist Zoe Clay dies after horror bike accident as family raises over $38k for funeral Read Full Text or Full Article on MAG NEWS

[inkskinned]

in the time loop the only way out is to leave her there but you don't ever leave her there, never in the roughly one thousand years you have been in the same day. it is probably like "50 first dates" but you haven't stooped so low as to watch "50 first dates" yet. (but who is to say what another thousand years of the same media will bring to you, maybe you will develop a new taste).

you spent about 200 of these years sulking in a bathtub or on the couch or staring at the seaside. 300 of them have been spent slowly mapping the geographical distance you can actually get before the time loop restarts. you have a list of favorite places: one library in Western Massachusetts called "The Bookmill", which has weird hours and has never raised an eyebrow to you arriving out-of-breath and panting, asking to see a specific book on a specific shelf. There is one beach without a name in North Carolina; it is an accident of geography and ownership title disputes - and it is pristine, untouched, warm and cozy. you've taken her on a lot of picnics there. Acadia National Park. One specific birdhouse in the mountains.

you were stuck in the time loop with the money you entered it with: not enough to rent a private jet. you've robbed a bank a few times, you don't like the way it ends. maybe next century you'll get the hang of it. you don't like the look on her face when you say hang on i have to stop at the bank.

you just have to leave her, and you can go back to being a person again. you took 5 years just catching a flight and sitting in the Grand Canyon. if there's one thing you regret more than anything, it's that you hadn't gotten your passport renewed before this fucking time loop. maybe you should spend some time learning forgery - but also, like, you look like an english teacher. nobody is going to be cool about you asking to see their paper printing machines.

the world is very big. that is one of the things groundhog day gets wrong. there are no consequences, so you have literally all the time (or none of the time?) in the world. in groundhog day, he does a lot of very cool things, but in reality - your muscle memory never gets better. you can't necessarily learn how to play piano or sculpt ice, because your hands never remember the practice. but hey - maybe you'll try violin next. drums. synth.

you can open any door and walk into any conversation. money isn't really an object. you can try every meal off every menu, forever. take her on helicopter tours and into every museum and on every event that is happening right-now at-this-moment. parades and funerals and calligraphy classes.

but you are somewhat trapped by the limitations of your body. if you were reading a book, you still need to get up and go back to the library and find that book again when the day resets. (thank god for the internet). it still takes like 2 hours to board a plane, and then takeoff and landing and traffic. you've gotten off to run around on the freeway. one of the little thankful things: since your brain isn't actually developing (it's a muscle too), the days thankfully don't feel shorter to you. that would be agony.

all you have to do to leave the timeloop is let that man get away with it. that's all. in every version of yourself - forever - you have stopped him.

the problem is that this experience has convinced you of the existence of the human soul. after all, how else are you forming memories? your very cells reset. information has to be transferred somehow. and if timeloops are real, you can convince yourself other magic exists. so you have two choices here: this hell, or the next. there might be a millennia where you have been worn down to the point you can accept fate's decision. this is just not one of them. ironically - she is the one thing you have left.

and besides! if you can't always find something new in your partner, aren't you failing them? there is something new about her, every day with the same morning. every brutal day with the same orange sunset.

after all, you wanted to live with her in heaven, in eternity, and, well - isn't this second-best.

[thedyke]

a 20 year old trans woman named dylan gurley was murdered in denton, texas last week. her family are raising money for her funeral. if you’d like to donate, you can do so here:

[usacounselingcredit]

Daughter raising money on GoFundMe for late father's funeral - The Bloomingtonian

The daughter of a Monroe County man who died while hunting Saturday has started a GoFundMe to raise money for her father Kevin Leech's funeral. Providence RI December 20, 2022 at 11:35PM

Hammond Louisiana Ukiah California Dike Iowa Maryville Missouri Secretary Maryland Winchester Illinois Kinsey Alabama Edmundson Missouri Stevens Village Alaska Haymarket Virginia Newington Virginia Edwards Missouri https://providencerhodeislandflorist.weebly.com/providence-rhode-island-florist--same-day-flower-delivery--get-well--funeral-flowers/daughter-raising-money-on-gofundme-for-late-fathers-funeral-the-bloomingtonian December 21, 2022 at 12:45AM Gruver Texas Glens Fork Kentucky Fork South Carolina Astoria Oregon Lac La Belle Wisconsin Pomfret Center Connecticut Nason Illinois Roan Mountain Tennessee https://coloradovirtualmail.blogspot.com/2022/12/daughter-raising-money-on-gofundme-for.html December 21, 2022 at 02:41AM from https://youtu.be/GuUaaPaTlyY December 21, 2022 at 03:48AM

[capitaylism]

Taylor Swift is a billionaire who has achieved said status by lying her way to the top and doesn’t care about anything other than money:

-She lied about being a ‘self-made’ artist whose family struggled financially (in truth, it was daddy’s money what allowed her to become a singer but alas!)

-Lied about SB ‘stealing’ her masters and made a great deal about it (as a result, she got to milk her fans even drier by re-recording her old stuff while her rabid cultists fanbase threatened SB’s wife and kids) then kept conveniently quiet when the truth got out.

-Lied when a Brazilian fan, Ana Benevides died at her concert saying she passed away before the show (it had already started) via an insta story and refused to acknowledge her at all on stage.

She didn’t lift a finger to help with the funeral expenses, either. It was the fans who raised all the money so that Ana could have a proper and dignified goodbye.

-Constantly lies and manipulates the truth in regard to her exes, the Kimye fiasco and literally everything else that happens/had happened to her so she is in complete control of the narrative and can play the victim every.single.time.

-Charges her fans obnoxious amounts of money for her concert tickets and merch (as if she’s not wealthy enough already)

-blocks her fellow (female) artists from reaching #1 by releasing variant after variant of the same album (there’s more than 60 at this point)

-hasn’t spoken out about Palestine, the US elections or anything political since 2019 (so much for wanting to be on the right side of history)

-On the same note, she has not addressed the Vienna terrorist attack attempt at all.

-She’s also a climate criminal who threatened to sue a university student who shared public data about her jet usage.

Other celebrities have been ‘cancelled’ for less. And yet, somehow, she always gets away with every shitty thing she does.

[ataliagold]

If Love Was Contagious I Might Be Immune To It

For @steddie-week day 2, prompts "hands" and "touch starved".

Title from an unreleased Noah Kahan song.

Pairing: Steve Harrington/Eddie Munson

Rating: T

W/C: 1916

C/W: Referenced death of a grandparent.

Tags: angst, hurt/comfort, Steve is touched-starved, Steve has bad parents, platonic soulmates Steve and Robin, Eddie Munson is a sweetheart

Summary: Steve's early life is mostly devoid of love - until Eddie Munson.

___

He’s eight years old, and his wrist is broken.

It’s the first time he’s broken a bone, but it certainly won’t be the last.

Steve cries silently in the school nurse’s room. His father hated it when he cried, always told him to man up, to grow up, to act like a Harrington.

He tried to keep the tears in, he really did, but his arm is throbbing and his wrist is turning a funny colour and he wishes he’d taken Tommy up on his offer to sit with him and wait for his mom to turn up but he’d wanted to be tough, tough like his dad, and he’d told him he wasn’t a baby and he’d be fine.

So, while he loses the battle against the tears cascading down his cheeks, he stays tight-lipped and quiet.

His mom arrives eventually. Steve sits there, clutching his wrist across his stomach as the nurse explains to Janet Harrington what had happened, that Steve had fallen in P.E, that the bone was definitely broken and he needed to go straight to urgent care.

Janet nods. Turns to Steve, expression tight and unreadable, and gestures quickly for him to follow her out to the car.

Steve quickens his pace behind her, little legs carrying him along behind the click-clack of her heels.

He reaches for her hand with his good one.

Knows he shouldn’t, knows he isn’t supposed to keep trying to touch because he’s a big boy now, he doesn’t need to be held and coddled anymore.

But he’s hurting, and he wants his mom.

She tightens her hand around his almost in surprise, squeezing sharply.

“For goodness’ sake, Steve,” she hisses, dropping his hand again like it’s something bad, “do you want all your friends to see you like this? Act your age.”

Steve snatches his hand back to his side. Blinks through the new flood of tears in his eyes, swallows thickly, keeps his gaze on the hard tiled floor.

He’s eight years old, and his mother doesn’t want to hold his hand.

*****

He’s fourteen years old when his grandma dies.

Smoking with Tommy behind the bike shed at the school, they are quieter than usual.

The funeral is this weekend. Steve’s never been to a funeral before.  His mom ordered him a suit the day after they got the news, the reality of it barely sinking in before he was being stood in front of the mirror in the store while a man wrapped a tape around him, taking his measurements while his mom tapped her foot behind him.

He wonders what will happen when his parents go away, now that he can’t go and stay with grandma. He’ll miss her. He’ll miss her like hell.

No more baking, no more helping her plant flowers in her sunny backyard, no more taking slow walks to the park with her little yappy dog.

“Sorry,” Tommy mutters eventually, stomping the butt of his cigarette into the dirt.

“Huh?” Steve asks, not looking up.

“You know. About your grandma.”

“Oh,” Steve waves a hand, cigarette between his fingers. Nonchalant. Unemotional. Harrington. “S’fine, she was just some old lady.”

Tommy sniffs, raises an eyebrow. “It was your grandma, man.”

Steve shrugs, forces a smirk. “Reckon she left me anything in her will?”

He burns as he says it.

He doesn’t want money. Doesn’t want things. He just wants his grandma back.

Tommy snorts out a laugh, shakes his head, punches Steve lightly in the shoulder. “You’re a dick.”

Steve takes a long drag on the cigarette, blows the smoke out towards Tommy’s face. His friend swears and shoulder charges him, wraps his arms around Steve’s waist and the two of them start to wrestle.

Here, with the stench of tobacco on his breath, grunting as he tightens his grip on Tommy and shoves him roughly aside, Steve thinks this is the closest he’s been to a hug for a long time.

A silent tear tracks down his cheek, and Steve wipes it away before Tommy can see it.

He’s fourteen years old, and his best friend would rather punch him than hug him.

*****

He’s seventeen years old and in love with Nancy Wheeler.

Nancy holds his hand, sometimes. She kisses his cheek, smiles shyly when he wraps an arm around her waist, lets him touch.

But only sometimes.

And that’s ok, Steve thinks. He knows he can be too much, that he asks for too much, that ever since he was a little boy all he wanted was for someone to hold him, and now that he’s older, to hold someone in return.

He had to keep that in check. Had to keep his touches few and light – just a brush of his thumb over Nancy’s hand where he wanted to interlock their fingers, where he wanted to squeeze her tight to his chest and burrow his head into her shoulder and turn himself inside out for her.

He dreams about the creature that came out of the wall, sometimes.

Wakes up sweat-drenched with his pulse galloping, feels across the bed for Nancy’s hand because he keeps sneaking into her bedroom at night to sleep because he can’t handle being on his own right now.

She wakes. Holds his hand briefly, tells him it was just a dream, rolls over, lets his hand go. Faces away from him.

Steve tells himself it’s fine. His heart is still pounding, he’s still trembling slightly, but it’s fine.

He wishes Nancy would hold his hand a little longer. Wishes she’d tuck herself closer to him, press her lips to the back of his head, hold him until he’s able to fall asleep again.

But he’s a man now. He’s a Harrington, and he doesn’t need to be held.

Nancy had nightmares sometimes, too.

She’d cry out in her sleep, and Steve would carefully wrap an arm around her, murmur into her ear, tell her she was safe, that he had her.

When Nancy woke, she’d push him away. Tell him she needed to breathe, that she needed some space.

Steve tried to give her space. Tried other ways to try and help Nancy feel better – then came Tina’s party, then came the drink staining Nancy’s top and a cold bathroom and bullshit.

Steve was seventeen years old, and his love was bullshit.

*****

Steve is nineteen years old, and he has the best friend in the entire world.

He and Robin are glued at the hip. She hugs easily, drapes herself across him, nudges him with bony hips and elbows and grabs his hand when the lights at Family Video flicker because she knows that still terrifies him.

Steve’s not used to it.

To having someone reach for him, to pull him into a hug, to voluntarily reach out and touch him like there isn’t something wrong with him.

And so, he never reaches for her first. Always lets her initiate contact, because he never wants to be too much, not like how he was with his mother, with Nancy.

She’s standing next to him at work now. Shuffling through returned tapes, letting out a bored huff, leaning back on her elbows on the counter.

The bell above the Family Video door chimes.

Steve doesn’t look up until Robin pokes him in the ribs, until she waggles her eyebrows at him.

“Look who it is,” she whispers, with zero subtlety.

He doesn’t have to look to know it’s Eddie.

Because they’ve been playing this game for a while, Robin doing her best to bring the two of them together, to nudge them from this painful will-they won’t-they situation into something more serious.

The truth is, Steve’s head over heels for the other man.

And he doesn’t know what to do with that, doesn’t know where to put it, because he doesn’t want to half-ass anything ever again – if he’s going to love Eddie, he wants to do it with everything he has, but everything Steve has always seems to be too much for everyone else.

If he ruins what he and Eddie already have, this easy friendship, it would put a strain on his relationship with the kids too, and everyone had already been through so much, he couldn’t…

“Oh my god, dingus,” Robin groans.

Eddie’s wandered on past the counter after shooting Steve a grin, headed for the sci-fi section tucked away in the corner.

“What?” Steve huffs.

“I can literally see the little cogs turning in there,” Robin flicks her index finger against the side of his head. “For the sake of my sanity, just talk to him. Please.”

“Fine,” Steve harrumphs, tossing a case to one side. “But if this goes badly, I’m blaming you.”

Robin smiles wide, reaches for his hand, squeezes it gently, encouragingly. “Go get him, Stevie.”

Steve is nineteen years old, and he finally has someone to hold his hand, even if not quite in the way he’d been longing for.

*****

Steve is twenty-two years old, and sometimes he’s so overwhelmed by love for this man that it stops him in his tracks.

He’s draped across Eddie, the two of them on the couch with the TV quietly playing something in the background but Steve doesn’t hear it.

His head is on Eddie’s chest, ear pressed to his heart, listening to the soothing rhythm of his boyfriend’s pulse.

Eddie has his arms wrapped tightly around Steve, one hand tracing gently up and down his bare back, fingers tracing over moles and scars and the ridges of his spine.

Steve breathes him in. Presses his head further into Eddie, like he could burrow into him. Wanted to, sometimes.

Eddie’s chest vibrates gently as he chuckles.

“Y’ok there, Stevie?” he asks, and kisses the top of his head.

“Mmmm,” Steve manages, voice muffled by Eddie’s chest.

It had taken him a long time to realize that Eddie wasn’t going anywhere.

In the early days of their relationship, Steve had been…restrained. Muted, afraid to overwhelm the other man, trying to carefully seek out where Eddie’s boundaries were, work out just how long he could hug him for, just how many kisses were too many, when Steve was starting to step over into being too damn much…

Three years later, and he still hadn’t found that boundary.

Eddie took everything Steve had to give him and poured it back tenfold.

He’d smile into Steve’s mouth when he kissed him, run his tongue along the seam of Steve’s lips until he let him in, he’d trace every mole and blemish on his skin with his fingers and then his mouth until Steve was squirming and laughing under him, he’d stroke and hold and squeeze and give and take.

Steve had so much love to give, and Eddie was hungry for it.

They’d been lying here for hours tonight. Skin to skin, Eddie warm and pliant under Steve, humming happily when Steve tightened his hold on him, when Steve’s breath puffed over his collarbone.

“Stevie?” Eddie asks eventually, hand resting in chestnut locks, nails scratching gently over Steve’s scalp.

“Yeah?”

“You ready for bed, sweetheart? You gotta get up early for work.”

Steve sighs, tucks himself back into Eddie’s chest. “Little longer?” he murmurs.

Eddie smiles. Lowers his hand to the back of Steve’s neck, massaging the muscle there, feeling the moment Steve sinks further into him.

“’Course, Stevie. As long as you like.”

Steve is twenty-two years old, and he finally has someone to hold him.

___

[thevoidstaredback]

How To Balance Your Daytime and Nighttime Activities So That You Don't Burn Yourself Out More Than You Already Have

A knock on the door was not what Danny was expecting that evening. In the two weeks of observation and one week of actually staying with the man, Danny had figured that Dick, for as friendly as he is, did not have many friends. And if he did, they didn't visit him a lot, if at all. So, a knock on the door exactly thirty minutes before Nightwing was set to go out was a suspicious surprise.

He answered it anyway.

On the other side of the door was a kid about his age, an inch or two taller. He had dark hair, pale skin, bright blue eyes, and eyebags dark enough to rival Danny's own. He also smelled faintly of coffee.

"Um," Danny started dumbly. "Hello?"

"I'm looking for Richard Grayson." The kid's accent was stronger than Dick's, putting him as a born and raised Gotham resident. There was also a hint of something that reminded Danny of Sam's parents. This kid comes from money.

"And you are?"

Obviously upset about being stalled, he huffed, "Timothy Drake. Are you going to let me in now?"

How does someone sound so rude and so polite at the same time? Obviously a skill Danny needs to learn. "Why-"

"Who's at the door, Danny?" Dick called from the hallway, making his way closer. He was in his Nightwing costume, minus the mask, but had covered it with a hoodie and sweatpants.

"Tim Drake," Tim introduced himself again, pushing Danny out of the way and entering the apartment to greet Dick with a handshake. "You're Bruce's Wayne's kid, Richard 'Dick' Grayson."

"Yeah, that's-"

"You need to come back and be Robin again."

There was a moment of silence as Danny closed the door softly. Then, "Excuse me?" Dick's smile was strained and his eyes narrowed slightly.

"You need to come back and be Batman's Robin again. You don't have to don the suit, but he needs you." There was a hint of desperation in Tim's voice now. "He's been spiraling since Jason died, and he's starting to hit harder. Most of the guys he beats up end up in the emergency room! Some of them have even died from their injuries! Batman needs your help! He needs a Robin."

Dick was quiet for a moment. "No."

"What?"

"I won't- I can't go back to being Robin. I can't go back to being in that house."

"Why not?"

"I just can't. Now, I don't know how you found me or how you found out who I was, but you need to go back to Gotham, Tim."

"But-"

"Now, Tim. You're parent's are probably freaking out about where you are right now."

Tim didn't say anything for a long moment, he feet rooted in place. Just as Dick turned around to go to the fire escape, he spoke, "My parents don't care where I am." Louder, he said, "Bruce is going to start directly killing people if you don't go back there and help him."

"Why should I help him?" Dick demanded. "He didn't even tell me that my little brother had died! I didn't even get to go to his funeral! And then Bruce had the audacity to punch me in the face and blame me for not being there! I'm not going back to Gotham, I'm not putting on the Robin suit again, and I sure as hell am not going to help Batman. he made it clear that he works alone, so let him." With his peace said, Dick took his hoodie and sweatpants off, donned his domino and escrima sticks, and left through the window fifteen minutes early.

Neither Tim nor Danny said anything for a long few minutes, neither bothering to move. Too many thoughts in each of their heads with no way to properly form words.

Finally, after nearly seven minutes, Danny's voice broke through the air. "I'm sorry he yelled at you."

Tim, having forgotten Danny was there, jumped and turned to face him. "What?"

"He hasn't been the same since Jason died, not that I know what he was like before."

"What do you mean?"

Danny moved into the kitchen, pulling down two cups, filling them with water before offering one to Tim and leading him to sit down on the couch.

"I don't know a lot about the situation, I've only been here for three weeks now, but I know that Dick is still hurting. Nightmares, hallucinations, the works. He's been more violent recently, too, but obviously not as much as Batman has been."

"You, uh, you know?"

"Yeah. Kinda hard not to figure it out while living here, and you coming in today didn't help that." Tim blushed and sipped his water. "Though, like you, I showed up on Dick's doorstep already knowing he's Nightwing."

"Oh? And how well did that pan out for you?"

Danny shrugged. "I offered him help and refused to leave until he accepted it."

Tim laughed. "That's what I did to Bruce!"

They shared a smile. Danny lifted his cup as if to toast. "Here's to a couple of goblins with hero complexes." Tim lifted his cup to join Danny's toast and they both took a drink.

Giggling, the two finished their water in relative quiet, the air around them comfortable.

"Say," Tim asked, putting his cup down on the coffee table, "How old are you?"

"Fourteen. You?"

"Same."

"Cool."

"You're parents know where you are?"

"Nope. I would ask if yours do, but you already answered that."

"Yeah, they aren't really around much. I did tell Alfred I'd be gone, though, so he knows I'm not home."

"Yeah, but does he know you're here?"

"No."

"Hm." A beat. "Who's Alfred?"

Another laugh startled out of Tim. "Bruce's butler. Did Dick tell you nothing?"

Danny shrugged again. "I haven't pushed for answers about anything; I'm not a therapist. I'm just here because he's going to end up killing himself at the rate he's been working himself."

"So is Bruce," Tim admitted softly, "But he's going to end up taking Gotham down with him if no one stops him."

"So what are you going to do?"

He thought for a long minute, weighing options in his mind before saying, "I guess I'll have to be the help he needs me to be."

Danny tilted his head sideways like a dog. "What do you mean?"

Tim squared his shoulders, though he was still hesitant. "Batman needs a Robin, and if Dick isn't going to be that for him, then I guess I'll have to be."

Another beat. "But do you want to be a vigilante?"

"Does it matter if I want to be?" Tim asks, "If I don't then no one will." He took a deep, steadying breath. "Gotham is my home. I can't let Bruce destroy it in his grief."

"I understand." Danny nodded, "But what you want does matter. I know I can't stop you, so I'm not going to try, but I'm going to make you promise me something." He made sure to hold Tim's gaze. "You ask for help when you need it." He held out his hand and waited.

"What?"

"You're phone. Give it to me." Reluctantly, he did so. As soon as the flip phone was in his hand, Danny put his number in it before giving it back. 'You don't have to do this alone, okay, Tim? Promise that you'll call me when you need help, okay? Any time of day, I'll answer."

Tim stared at his now closed phone, the weight grounding him for a moment. "Are you going to be a vigilante to help Nightwing?"

"I already am."

"Huh?"

"It's why I'm here, It's why I know I can't stop you and why I'm making sure you know I'll be here to help you."

Nothing else was said between the boys. Nothing else needed to be said.

Part 7 Part 9

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[badjokesbyjeff]

There were two evil brothers. They were rich and used their money to keep their ways from the public eye.

They even attended the same church and looked to be perfect Christians.

Then, their pastor retired and a new one was hired. Not only could he see right through the brothers' deception, but he also spoke well and true, and the church started to swell in numbers. A fund-raising campaign was started to build a new assembly.

All of a sudden, one of the brothers died. The remaining brother sought out the new pastor the day before the funeral and handed him a check for the amount needed to finish paying for the new building.

"I have only one condition." he said. "At his funeral, you must say my brother was a saint." The pastor gave his word and deposited the check.

The next day at the funeral, the pastor did not hold back. "He was an evil man" he said. "He cheated on his wife, abused his family, swindled his friends and the poor..." After going on in this vein for a small time, he concluded with "But, compared to his brother, he was a saint."

[fuctacles]

Remember late bloomers ?

Love popping into my wips and finding finished stuff I should have posted ages ago

Jeff gently informs him that getting running gear for the first date is a bit of an overkill.

“There is so much wrong with that idea. First of all, you hate running. Exercising, in general. And second, this is kinda pathetic.”

Eddie gasps.

“How dare you!”

“Dude, you just officially met today. Why would you waste money on something you might use once and then never again?”

Jeff was, of course, none the wiser that Eddie was about to enter his fit era. He’s going to jog every morning from now on, he’ll get cute matching sets with Miss Stephanie, drink smoothies, and get a gym pass. He’s going to turn his life around, lose the tummy fat he’s been harboring all winter, and turn it into a sixpack. Their fans are going to love it. Stephanie, too. They’ll run off into the sunset—or sunrise—together, they’ll make and raise the healthiest little babies—

“Are you planning your wedding or something?” Jeff interrupts his daydreams with a scoff.

Eddie bristles.

“I’ll be planning your funeral if you don’t start supporting your perpetually single friend,” he bites back.

Jeff raises his eyebrows.

“You sure that’s what you should be saying to the only friend who can lend you some jogging clothes?”

“Uh…”

“Thought so.” And Eddie hates his satisfied smirk but he’s desperate so he bites his tongue. “So, what you really need are good running shoes…”

He feels all kinds of stupid in his sporty get-up. He’s wearing his old Reeboks he wears only when his shitkickers are in repair (he will wear them to his grave), Jeff’s tracksuit pants, and his lucky Ozzy t-shirt. He woke up extra early today and his mug of coffee was almost empty by the point she, Stephanie, rounded the corner.

His mind goes blank when he recognizes his hoodie.

Maybe he hasn't woken up yet. What other explanation was there for this beautiful creature, backlit by the rising sun, to be walking up to him, decked in bright-colored leggings, and tank top and his hoodie, clashing unforgivingly with its blackness?  How else would he get a date with her if it wasn't a dream?

"You're actually dressed for running," she observes. No 'hello', no 'good morning', just her eyes roaming over his body from above. He quickly jumps up from the porch steps.

"Yeah! Lemme just..." He motions to the door with the mug, then quickly gulps down the last mouthful. "Want some water?" he asks, hand on the door. 

Stephanie's eyes snap up to his face.

"Yes."

It's weird, the way she says it, the way her eyes wander over his body. There's no way he's looking that good in borrowed sweats. They have some ugly gym logo on the side too.

"I don't really own gym clothes, but my friend was nice enough to share his," he explains, letting her in. She hums absentmindedly and follows him into the kitchen. He puts the mug in the sink and grabs a glass to fill it with freshly filtered water. When he turns around she's right there, now without the hoodie which she hung over on one of the chairs. Her tits are right there, but he holds her gaze, like a gentleman.

"Thanks." She takes the glass from him and takes a tiny sip, not breaking eye contact. Then puts it aside, on the counter behind him. "What's your stance on making out on the first date?"

Eddie's brain starts screaming.

"Not opposed to it," he answers and is immensely proud of himself for keeping his voice steady.

"Great," she says, almost relieved, as if he could give any other answer than an enthusiastic "ravish me, lady," and gently grabs his face, thumbs rubbing on the stubble along his jaw. She gives him a second to back away before leaning in.

She kisses his lips, just a little peck, a gentle caress. Dives in for another, and one more. Eddie reaches up to run his hands from her elbows up to her shoulders and feels little tremors running through her body. He frowns.

"Steph...?"

She groans instead of answering and her little kisses turn to kitten licks. When he parts his mouth for her, she licks across it, tongue pulling on his upper lip. He yelps in a pleasant surprise.

"I come here with innocent intentions," she says, her voice a bit strained, dipping into lower registers. "And you sit here, with your scrawny little ass in gym sweats." She lets go of his face so her hands can squeeze his waist minutely, before hauling him up onto the counter behind him. He squeaks, less dignified than the sounds he made before, holding onto her. Stephanie presses in and he opens his legs for her without hesitation. "And your dirty old sneakers, ready to jog with me. Eager like a puppy."

Eddie whines at the comparison.

"I'm not," he protests. He's just an adult man confronted with a beautiful woman out of his league.

"You're not?" she asks condescendingly against his ear. She's been rubbing her cheek against his stubble, nosing along the bones like she's the dog, trying to rub her scent all over him. Now she leans back to pout at him. Her lips are plush and pink and they haven't been kissed enough yet. "But I like strays."

Eddie's brain short-circuits.

"Uh... bark?"

She laughs and grips his thighs before capturing his mouth. She dominates the kiss without struggle and Eddie lets her use his mouth to her heart's content. He just wraps his arms around her neck and takes it, moves his tongue where she guides him. He can feel her hands on his thigh itching to touch more, but he doesn't want to part long enough to let her know she can, that she can take whatever she wants.

Eventually, she slides her hands up, thumbs digging into the crease of his thighs, and he mewls. His face immediately goes red at the sound that just left him.

"Well, that's something I'm not gonna un-hear."

Stephanie freezes and moves to pull away, but he traps her with his legs around her waist and presses his face against her shoulder, to hide his shame. Of course this is when Jeff decided to get up and walk into the kitchen.

"Uh, I'm sorry? And, good morning," Stephanie offers, seeing as her actual host won't be of any help. He makes a little wounded sound against her shoulder and she swats his thigh. 

"Good morning," Jeff offers back. "Stephanie, right?"

"Yeah."

"Jeff. I live here too, unfortunately. I was under the impression you were going out for a run, though?" He raises his eyebrows. "Did I lend him my exclusive membership sweats for nothing?"

"They're yours? Can we keep them?" she asks immediately. Eddie presses his nails into her skin not to make a sound at how she said 'we'. "He almost has an ass in them."

"Hey!" It's the first thing he says since Jeff walked in and the first time he moves away from the safety of Stevie-shield. Thankfully, his friend looks mostly amused, not angry or disgusted.

"Please," he makes a face. "I don't want them anymore."

"What is that supposed to mean?" Eddie's eyes narrow, the familiar back and forth giving him enough courage to release Stephanie from the clutch of his legs. She doesn't move far, just enough so the three of them can look at each other and chat comfortably. Well, considering the situation.

"I just saw you dry humping in them and you dare ask me?" Jeff scoffs.

The two culprits start protesting over each other with "We weren't dry humping!" and "We were just kissing?!" but he stops them, raising both his hands.

"I don't care! Just take them and leave the kitchen! I need some caffeine before work and the only bodily fluid I want in it comes from cow tits."

"Ew, dude," Eddie groans, but Stephanie lets out a surprised snort. 

"We're leaving!" she promises, pulling Eddie down from the counter. He scrambles to find balance but she grabs his hand to steady him. Despite them just making out, that's what makes his heart skip a beat. "it was nice to meet you, Jeff!" she offers, waving on her way out of the kitchen.

"Likewise. Good luck on your run!" he calls after them.

"Thanks!" 

Through the windows, he can still see them, Stephanie fixing Eddie's rumpled t-shirt while he's staring up at her with the dumbest expression he's ever seen. And he's seen a lot of them from his friend. 

"Good for him," he mutters to himself with a fond smile. 

[limeade-l3sbian]

Who was Kagney Linn Necessary?

(the gofundme for her memorial/funeral will be at the end.)

Kagney Linn Necessary was born in Harris County, Texas in 1987, and raised in St. Joseph, Missouri and in Ridgway, Pennsylvania. [x]

In her early years, she moved to California with ambitions of becoming an actress and a singer but entered work as an exotic dancer before signing with LA Direct Models, a pornographic agency. Karter entered the adult film industry in September 2008.[x]

But that wasn't the entirety of who Kagney was. At face value, the only information I could find with a quick search was the basic information above from Wikipedia. All anyone seemed to know about her was who she was when she was in the "industry." I wanted to see what I could find about her, the person. Not Kagney Linn Karter, but Kagney Linn Necessary.

I raked through interviews she had, her personal social media accounts, and any other articles that I could find just to find any little facts about her that I could.

I thought about omitting her time within the porn industry to focus solely on everything else except that. But I feel it would be tasteless to keep it out. I think it needs to be mentioned. I think it is important to show that women pulled into the porn industry are not these separate beings from any other woman with dreams. This was a 36 year old woman who was just like any other woman who was preyed upon.

Necessary released an EP, The Crossover, in 2018. In 2022, Karter released her debut album, titled The Take Over. [x] She would post clips of her singing covers of songs as well as songs from her upcoming EP on her Instagram.

In 2022, she began learning how to play the piano, even posting a video of her progress.

Necessary was also a recovering addict. In 2021, she posted about the things that helped her stay clean and how she was pleased at having a second chance at life. In an interview, she was intentionally vague about the substances she used, only referring to them as "candy" and "a little bit of everything." But with no insurance or money for rehab, she opted to detox herself at her parents home, working at their tanning salon for free in exchange for "produce."

She moved from Los Angeles to Ohio in 2019 and got involved with pole dancing fitness studios before being involved the opening of one in Akron, called Alchemy Pole Fitness. She posted many videos of herself having fun and practicing new/old moves.

In November 2023, she was posting pictures of her new house and how well it was coming together,

[their website leads to a website called Alchemy Space Studios and says that it was founded and run by a separate woman. But upon looking up the LLC for the business, Kagney is named as the registrant and she is named as the owner of the space in two separate articles.]

In 2015, Carter claimed musician Chris Brown paid her $2,500 to be his escort. She reportedly tweeted things like 'I WILL NEVER F*** A WOMAN BEATER EW DISGUSTING' and 'HE IS PURE EVIL' about Brown.

I just felt like adding that because what a queen.

From her students from the studio and friends, she was known to love animals, including her dog, Murphy, and had a deep devotion to the community she was cultivating in Ohio. She was known to be fearless and empathetic, creating her studio as a place for people to feel safe and accepted.

These were the things I could find of her from her personal accounts and the people who loved her. She wasn't an object that will be missed for what "uses" it had. She was a woman who had dreams, who had a community who love her, who had a husband who loves her, dogs she cared for and loved who loved her, and a mother who loves her. I didn't want her story to be another reblog of a lost life.

I know this post is sporadic and clunky, but I wanted to just grab any information I could without crossing boundaries (ex. contacting the family or something tasteless like that). I just wanted to share what she had already shared with the world.

Her friend, Megan Lee, has posted a gofundme that has already surpassed their goal. But I would still suggest donating if you are able. Rest in peace, Kagney Linn Necessary. 💜

[mostlysignssomeportents]

The long, bloody lineage of private equity's looting

Tomorrow (June 3) at 1:30PM, I’m in Edinburgh for the Cymera Festival on a panel with Nina Allen and Ian McDonald.

Monday (June 5) at 7:15PM, I’m in London at the British Library with my novel Red Team Blues, hosted by Baroness Martha Lane Fox.

Fans of the Sopranos will remember the “bust out” as a mob tactic in which a business is taken over, loaded up with debt, and driven into the ground, wrecking the lives of the business’s workers, customers and suppliers. When the mafia does this, we call it a bust out; when Wall Street does it, we call it “private equity.”

It used to be that we rarely heard about private equity, but then, as national chains and iconic companies started to vanish, this mysterious financial arrangement popped up with increasing frequency. When a finance bro’s presentation on why Olive Garden needed to be re-orged when viral, there was a lot off snickering about the decline of a tacky business whose value prop was unlimited carbs. But the bro was working for Starboard Value, a hedge fund that specialized in buhying out and killing off companies, pocketing billions while destroying profitable businesses.

https://www.salon.com/2014/09/17/the_real_olive_garden_scandal_why_greedy_hedge_funders_suddenly_care_so_much_about_breadsticks/

Starboard Value’s game was straightforward: buy a business, load it with debt, sell off its physical plant — the buildings it did business out of — pay itself, and then have the business lease back the buildings, bleeding out money until it collapsed. They pulled it with Red Lobster,and the point of the viral Olive Garden dis track was to soften up the company for its own bust out.

The bust out tactic wasn’t limited to mocking middlebrow family restaurants. For years, the crooks who ran these ops did a brisk trade in blaming the internet. Why did Sears tank? Everyone knows that the 19th century business was an antique, incapable of mounting a challenge in the age of e-commerce. That was a great smokescreen for an old-fashioned bust out that saw corporate looters make off with hundreds of millions, leaving behind empty storefronts and emptier pension accounts for the workers who built the wealth the looters stole:

https://prospect.org/economy/vulture-capitalism-killed-sears/

Same goes for Toys R Us: it wasn’t Amazon that killed the iconic toy retailer — it was the PE bosses who extracted $200m from the chain, then walked away, hands in pockets and whistling, while the businesses collapsed and the workers got zero severance:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/06/01/how-can-they-walk-away-with-millions-and-leave-workers-with-zero-toys-r-us-workers-say-they-deserve-severance/

It’s a good racket — for the racketeers. Private equity has grown from a finance sideshow to Wall Street’s apex predator, and it’s devouring the real economy through a string of audactious bust outs, each more consequential and depraved than the last.

As PE shows that it can turn profitable businesses gigantic windfalls, sticking the rest of us with the job of sorting out the smoking craters they leave behind, more and more investors are piling in. Today, the PE sector loves a rollup, which is when they buy several related businesses and merge them into one firm. The nominal business-case for a rollup is that the new, bigger firm is more “efficient.” In reality, a rollup’s strength is in eliminating competition. When all the pet groomers, or funeral homes, or urgent care clinics for ten miles share the same owner, they can raise prices, lower wages, and fuck over suppliers.

They can also borrow. A quirk of the credit markets is that a standalone small business is valued at about 3–5x its annual revenues. But if that business is part of a large firm, it is valued at 10–20x annual turnover. That means that when a private equity company rolls up a comedy club, ad agency or water bottler (all businesses presently experiencing PE rollup), with $1m in annual revenues, it shows up on the PE company’s balance sheet as an asset worth $10–20m. That’s $10–20m worth of collateral the PE fund can stake for loans that let it buy and roll up more small businesses.

2.9 million Boomer-owned businesses, employing 32m people, are expected to sell in the next couple years as their owners retire. Most of these businesses will sell to PE firms, who can afford to pay more for them as a prelude to a bust out than anyone intending to operate them as a productive business could ever pay:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

PE’s most ghastly impact is felt in the health care sector. Whole towns’ worth of emergency rooms, family practices, labs and other health firms have been scooped up by PE, which has spent more than $1t since 2012 on health acquisitions:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/17/the-doctor-will-fleece-you-now/#pe-in-full-effect

Once a health care company is owned by PE, it is significantly more likely to commit medicare fraud. It also cuts wages and staffing for doctors and nurses. PE-owned facilities do more unnecessary and often dangerous procedures. Appointments get shorter. The companies get embroiled in kickback scandals. PE-backed dentists hack away at children’s mouths, filling them full of root-canals.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/17/the-doctor-will-fleece-you-now/#pe-in-full-effect

The Healthcare Private Equity Association boasts that its members are poised to spend more than $3t to create “the future of healthcare.”

https://hcpea.org/#!event-list

As bad as PE is for healthcare, it’s worse for long-term care. PE-owned nursing homes are charnel houses, and there’s a particularly nasty PE scam where elderly patients are tricked into signing up for palliative care, which is never delivered (and isn’t needed, because the patients aren’t dying!). These fake “hospices” get huge payouts from medicare — and the patient is made permanently ineligible for future medicare, because they are recorded being in their final decline:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/26/death-panels/#what-the-heck-is-going-on-with-CMS

Every part of the health care sector is being busted out by PE. Another ugly PE trick, the “club deal,” is devouring the medical supply business. Club deals were huge in the 2000s, destroying rent-controlled housing, energy companies, Mervyn’s department stores, Harrah’s, and Old Country Joe. Now it’s doing the same to medical supplies:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/05/14/billionaire-class-solidarity/#club-deals

Private equity is behind the mass rollup of single-family homes across America. Wall Street landlords are the worst landlords in America, who load up your rent with junk fees, leave your home in a state of dangerous disrepair, and evict you at the drop of a hat:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/16/die-miete-ist-zu-hoch/#assets-v-human-rights

As these houses decay through neglect, private equity makes a bundle from tenants and even more borrowing against the houses. In a few short years, much of America’s desperately undersupplied housing stock will be beyond repair. It’s a bust out.

You know all those exploding trains filled with dangerous chemicals that poison entire towns? Private equity bust outs:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/04/up-your-nose/#rail-barons

Where did PE come from? How can these people look themselves in the mirror? Why do we let them get away with it? How do we stop them?

Today in The American Prospect, Maureen Tkacik reviews two new books that try to answer all four of these questions, but really only manage to answer the first three:

https://prospect.org/culture/books/2023-06-02-days-of-plunder-morgenson-rosner-ballou-review/

The first of these books is These Are the Plunderers: How Private Equity Runs — and Wrecks — America by Gretchen Morgenson and Joshua Rosner:

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/These-Are-the-Plunderers/Gretchen-Morgenson/9781982191283

The second is Plunder: Private Equity’s Plan to Pillage America, by Brendan Ballou:

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brendan-ballou/plunder/9781541702103/

Both books describe the bust out from the inside. For example, PetSmart — looted for $30 billion by RaymondSvider and his PE fund BC Partners — is a slaughterhouse for animals. The company systematically neglects animals — failing to pay workers to come in and feed them, say, or refusing to provide backup power to run during power outages, letting animals freeze or roast to death. Though PetSmart has its own vet clinics, the company doesn’t want to pay its vets to nurse the animals it damages, so it denies them care. But the company is also too cheap to euthanize those animals, so it lets them starve to death. PetSmart is also too cheap to cremate the animals, so its traumatized staff are ordered to smuggle the dead, rotting animals into random dumpsters.

All this happened while PetSmart’s sales increased by 60%, matched by growth in the company’s gross margins. All that money went to the bust out.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoinegara/2021/09/27/the-30-billion-kitty-meet-the-investor-who-made-a-fortune-on-pet-food/

Tkacik says these books show that we’re finally getting wise to PE. Back in the Clinton years, the PE critique painted the perps as sharp operators who reduced quality and jacked up prices. Today, books like these paint these “investors” as the monsters they are — crooks whose bust ups are crimes, not clever finance hacks.

Take the Carlyle Group, which pioneered nursing home rollups. As Carlyle slashed wages, its workers suffered — but its elderly patients suffered more. Thousands of Carlyle “customers” died of “dehydration, gangrenous bedsores, and preventable falls” in the pre-covid years.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/opioid-overdoses-bedsores-and-broken-bones-what-happened-when-a-private-equity-firm-sought-profits-in-caring-for-societys-most-vulnerable/2018/11/25/09089a4a-ed14-11e8-baac-2a674e91502b_story.html

KKR, another PE monster, bought a second-hand chain of homes for mentally disabled adults from another PE company, then squeezed it for the last drops of blood left in the corpse. KKR cut wages to $8/hour and increased shifts to 36 hours, then threatened to have workers who went home early arrested and charged with “patient abandonment.” Many of these homes were often left with no staff at all, with patients left to starve and stew in their own waste.

PE loves to pick on people who can’t fight back: kids, sick people, disabled people, old people. No surprise, then, that PE loves prisons — the ultimate captive audience. HIG Capital is a $55b fund that owns TKC Holdings, who got the contract to feed the prisoners at 400 institutions. They got the contract after the prisons fired Aramark, owned by PE giant Warburg Pincus, whose food was so inedible that it provoked riots. TKC got a million bucks extra to take over the food at Michigan’s Kinross Correctional Facility, then, incredibly, made the food worse. A chef who refused to serve 100 bags of rotten potatoes (“the most disgusting thing I’ve seen in my life”) was fired:

https://www.wzzm13.com/article/news/local/michigan/prison-food-worker-i-was-fired-for-refusing-to-serve-rotten-potatoes/69-467297770

TKC doesn’t just operate prison kitchens — it operates prison commissaries, where it gouges prisoners on junk food to replace the inedible slop it serves in the cafeteria. The prisoners buy this food with money they make working in the prison workshops, for $0.10–0.25/hour. Those workshops are also run by TKC.

Tkacic traces private equity back to the “corporate raiders” of the 1950s and 1960s, who “stealthily borrowed money to buy up enough shares in a small or midsized company to control its biggest bloc of votes, then force a stock swap and install himself as CEO.”

The most famous of these raiders was Eli Black, who took over United Fruit with this gambit — a company that had a long association with the CIA, who had obligingly toppled democratically elected governments and installed dictators friendly to United’s interests (this is where the term “banana republic” comes from).

Eli Black’s son is Leon Black, a notorious PE predator. Leon Black got his start working for the junk-bonds kingpin Michael Milken, optimizing Milken’s operation, which was the most terrifying bust out machine of its day, buying, debt-loading and wrecking a string of beloved American businesses. Milken bought 2,000 companies and put 200 of them through bankruptcy, leaving the survivors in a brittle, weakened state.

It got so bad that the Business Roundtable complained about the practice to Congress, calling Milken, Black, et al, “a small group is systematically extracting the equity from corporations and replacing it with debt, and incidentally accumulating major wealth.”

Black stabbed Milken in the back and tanked his business, then set out on his own. Among the businesses he destroyed was Samsonite, “a bankrupt-but-healthy company he subjected to 12 humiliating years of repeated fee extractions, debt-funded dividend payments, brutal plant closings, and hideous schemes to induce employees to buy its worthless stock.”

The money to buy Samsonite — and many other businesses — came through a shadowy deal between Black and John Garamendi, then a California insurance commissioner, now a California congressman. Garamendi helped Black buy a $6b portfolio of junk bonds from an insurance company in a wildly shady deal. Garamendi wrote down the bonds by $3.9b, stealing money “from innocent people who needed the money to pay for loved ones’ funerals, irreparable injuries, etc.”

Black ended up getting all kinds of favors from powerful politicians — including former Connecticut governor John Rowland and Donald Trump. He also wired $188m to Jeffrey Epstein for reasons that remain opaque.

Black’s shady deals are a marked contrast with the exalted political circles he travels in. Despite private equity’s obviously shady conduct, it is the preferred partner for cities and states, who buy everything from ambulance services to infrastructure from PE-owned companies, with disastrous results. Federal agencies turn a blind eye to their ripoffs, or even abet them. 38 state houses passed legislation immunizing nursing homes from liability during the start of the covid crisis.

PE barons are shameless about presenting themselves as upstanding cits, unfairly maligned. When Obama made an empty promise to tax billionaires in 2010, Blackstone founder SteveS chwarzman declared, “It’s a war. It’s like when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.”

Since we’re on the subject of Hitler, this is a good spot to bring up Monowitz, a private-sector satellite of Auschwitz operated by IG Farben as a slave labor camp to make rubber and other materiel it supplied at a substantial markup to the wermacht. I’d never heard of Monowitz, but Tkacik’s description of the camp is chilling, even in comparison to Auschwitz itself.

Farben used slave laborers from Auschwitz to work at its rubber plant, but was frustrated by the logistics of moving those slaves down the 4.5m stretch of road to the facility. So the company bought 25,000 slaves — preferring children, who were cheaper — and installed them in a co-located death-camp called Monowitz:

https://www.commentary.org/articles/r-tannenbaum/the-devils-chemists-by-josiah-e-dubois-jr/

Monowitz was — incredibly — worse than Auschwitz. It was so bad, the SS guards who worked at it complained to Berlin about the conditions. The SS demanded more hospitals for the workers who dropped from beatings and overwork — Farben refused, citing the cost. The factory never produced a steady supply of rubber, but thanks to its gouging and the brutal treatment of its slaves, the camp was still profitable and returned large dividends to Farben’s investors.

Apologists for slavery sometimes claim that slavers are at least incentivized to maintain the health of their captive workforce. This was definitely not true of Farben. Monowitz slaves died on average after three months in the camp. And Farben’s subsidiary, Degesch, made the special Zyklon B formulation used in Auschwitz’s gas chambers.

Tkacik’s point is that the Nazis killed for ideology and were unimaginably cruel. Farben killed for money — and they were even worse. The banality of evil gets even more banal when it’s done in service to maximizing shareholder value.

As Farben historian Joseph Borkin wrote, the company “reduced slave labor to a consumable raw material, a human ore from which the mineral of life was systematically extracted”:

https://www.scribd.com/document/517797736/The-Crime-and-Punishment-of-I-G-Farben

Farben’s connection to the Nazis was a the subject of Germany’s Master Plan: The Story of Industrial Offensive, a 1943 bestseller by Borkin, who was also an antitrust lawyer. It described how Farben had manipulated global commodities markets in order to create shortages that “guaranteed Hitler’s early victories.”

Master Plan became a rallying point in the movement to shatter corporate power. But large US firms like Dow Chemical and Standard Oil waged war on the book, demanding that it be retracted. Borkin was forced into resignation and obscurity in 1945.

Meanwhile, in Nuremberg, 24 Farben executives were tried for their war crimes, and they cited their obligations to their shareholders in their defense. All but five were acquitted on this basis.

Seen in that light, the plunderers of today’s PE firms are part of a long and dishonorable tradition, one that puts profit ahead of every other priority or consideration. It’s a defense that wowed the judges at Nuremberg, so should we be surprised that it still plays in 2023?

Tkacik is frustrated that neither of these books have much to offer by way of solutions, but she understands why that would be. After all, if we can’t even close the carried interest tax loophole, how can we hope to do anything meaningful?

“Carried interest” comes up in every election cycle. Most of us assume it has something to do with “interest payments,” but that’s not true. The carried interest loophole relates to the “interest” that 16th-century sea captains had in their cargo. It’s a 600-year-old tax loophole that private equity bosses use to pay little or no tax on their billions. The fact that it’s still on the books tells you everything you need to know about whether our political class wants to do anything about PE’s plundering.

Notwithstanding Tkacik’s (entirely justified) skepticism of the weaksauce remedies proposed in these books, there is some hope of meaningful action. Private equity’s rollups are only possible because they skate under the $101m threshold for merger scrutiny. However, there is good — but unenforced — law that allows antitrust enforcers to block these mergers. This is the “incipiency standard” — Sec 7 of the Clayton Act — the idea that a relatively small merger might not be big enough to trigger enforcement action on its own, but regulators can still act to block it if it creates an incipient monopoly.

https://pluralistic.net/2022/12/16/schumpeterian-terrorism/#deliberately-broken

The US has a new crop of aggressive — fearless — top antitrust enforcers and they’ve been systematically reviving these old laws to go after monopolies.

That’s long overdue. Markets are machines for eroding our moral values: “In comparison to non-market decisions, moral standards are significantly lower if people participate in markets.”

https://web.archive.org/web/20130607154129/https://www.uni-bonn.de/Press-releases/markets-erode-moral-values

The crimes that monsters commit in the name of ideology pale in comparison to the crimes the wealthy commit for money.

Catch me on tour with Red Team Blues in Edinburgh, London, and Berlin!

If you’d like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here’s a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/06/02/plunderers/#farbenizers

[Image ID: An overgrown graveyard, rendered in silver nitrate monochrome. A green-tinted businessman  with a moneybag in place of a head looms up from behind a gravestone. The right side of the image is spattered in blood.]

[a-frog-in-a-bog]

what rly fucks with me abt taylor swift is that woman who died at her brazil concert's family never got any money from her or anyone involved and her fans just didn't give a shit!!

even more egregious is the fact that when a white fan fainted at an american concert taylor paid her medical bill and gave her free tickets to the vip section, but when a fan died DURING her concert in brazil all taylor did was essentially say "um actually she died before the concert. so sad </3" and refused to pay for anything. fellow concert goers were the ones who raised money to send her body back to her family and for funeral expenses. but sure taylor swift is a feminist icon and definitely not racist