#she received welfare from when I was 5-18 at least

[ryukisgod]

I asked my mother this (she likes to yell at low level customer service workers), and she genuinely believes that the customer service worker will pass on the complaint to their boss, and the complaint will reach someone with the authority to change company policy.

She also believes that most customer service workers are stupid (she identifies as middle class), and that it’s ok to be mean to “stupid” people.

why do customers think the person working the cash register has any real authority over how the store is run? i'm not venting, i'm honestly curious if there's some culture or psychology thing or convoluted line of logic that feeds into it.

Posted by admin Rodney.

[afeelgoodblog]

#075 - The Best News of Last Week - February 27, 2023

🐈 - Do you know Gacek, the most famous cat in Poland?

Hey there! It's Erica here, and I'm excited to share with you some of the most uplifting news stories of the week. In a world that can sometimes seem filled with negativity, it's important to focus on the positive and find inspiration in the good things that are happening around us. Let's dive into this week's collection of wholesome news!

1. 8-year-old boy missing from Washington state for 8 months is found in Missouri

A boy who has been missing from Washington state since at least mid-June was found safe in Missouri, the FBI office in Seattle said Tuesday.

Authorities said 8-year-old Breadson John had vanished by June 17, when a welfare check at his home in Vancouver, Washington, just across the state line from Oregon, determined his absence.

2. World’s biggest four-day working week trial hailed a ‘major breakthrough’

The trial of a four-day working week in the UK, the largest of its kind in the world, has been celebrated as a “major breakthrough” after the majority of participating companies announced their intention to continue with the shorter week.

The trial, which ran for six months from June last year, required firms to reduce their working hours for all employees by 20 per cent without any reduction in wages.

At least 56 out of the 61 companies confirmed they will continue with the four-day working week, while 18 of them have made the policy a permanent change.

3. This dying baby turtle survived after drifting 4,000 miles to Ireland

A family strolling on a beach in Ireland earlier this month spotted a seafarer that had washed up on the rocks. Less than a year old, the female loggerhead survived a months-long journey across the Atlantic Ocean, teeming with dangers including predators and plastic. Although she was still alive, the turtle was dehydrated, massively underweight.

They called her Cróga, the Irish word for “brave.” After finding Cróga in the northwestern part of Ireland, the family called a few groups that rehabilitate whales and dolphins. There, Cróga’s rehabilitation began.

4. A Hernando toddler found alive after being missing for nearly 24 hours

A 2-year-old boy was lost in the Florida woods for 24 hours. Everyone feared the worst. Hundreds of volunteers came out to look for him.

One volunteer came to a fork in a field: right or left? He trusted his gut, went left and soon heard a whimper. It was the little boy, crying but in good health.

I found something interesting while reading this article: If you are part of a SAR team looking for a child to not only call their name but also that they aren’t in trouble. Young children sometimes hide from potential rescuers because they’re afraid they’ll get in trouble.

5. German man remains free of the HIV virus years after receiving stem cell treatment.

Researchers are announcing that a 53-year-old man in Germany has been cured of HIV.

Referred to as "the Dusseldorf patient" to protect his privacy, researchers said he is the fifth confirmed case of an HIV cure. Although the details of his successful treatment were first announced at a conference in 2019, researchers could not confirm he had been officially cured at that time. Today, researchers announced the Dusseldorf patient still has no detectable virus in his body, even after stopping his HIV medication four years ago.

6. South Korea court recognises same-sex couple rights for first time

A South Korean court has for the first time recognised the rights of a same-sex couple in the country. In a landmark ruling, the Seoul High Court found a government health insurer did owe coverage to the spouse of a customer after the firm withdrew it when it found out the pair were gay.

The men had held a wedding ceremony in 2019, but same-sex marriage is not recognised in South Korea.

Activists say the ruling is a leap forward for LGBT rights in the country.

7. A fat cat has become the top-rated tourist attraction in a Polish city with a perfect 5-star average on Google Maps

A fat black-and-white cat called Gacek has become the top-rated tourist attraction in the Polish city of Szczecin.

Gacek has a perfect five-star rating on Google Maps. His name, pronounced gats-ek, means "long-eared bat" in Polish. Gacek first drew international attention when he appeared in a YouTube documentary in 2020

- - -

That's it for this week. If you liked this post you can support this newsletter with a small kofi donation:

Buy me a coffee ❤️

Let's carry the positivity into next week and keep spreading the good news!

[missmeredithr]

It’s really interesting watching reaction channels and checking out some comments on social media about something you’re really enjoying. I start to wonder if I’m watching the same thing lol

I’m not saying they’re wrong or I’m right. My interpretations are mine, but wanted to ramble a bit after The Eclipse Series episode 11 and decided here was as good a place as any lol. I really should find myself some friends that watch BLs too :)

1. They thought Aye saw his uncle jump from the cliff - I assumed it was just a nightmare/scenario Aye had created. He was always presented as present Aye with his hairstyle and the fact he was wearing the necklace, which he would have received after the fact.

2. Teacher Sani and the picture. How? - well she took over from Dika so I just assumed she found it amongst anything he left behind as seems she took over his desk. Looked like she took it from the pages of (what I can only guess was Dika’s) student welfare manual, and if he and Chaddok were strained he probably didn’t care what got left behind.

3. But Thua was bullied so he should know better - don’t get me wrong outing someone is bad and would never agree to his actions, but people saying he’s been bullied so why would he do it… pretty sure in part his bullying is because of the rules and ‘curse’ both of which Akk has been supporting until recently, so if I was Thua and saw Akk frolicking in a pool with his boyfriend while (at that scene’s point in time at least) Kan had spent years?? pushing him away and even though they’d got close again he was hiding behind Bruce Wayne, so yeah I’d probably not prioritise how Akk might get treated when revealing everything either. Again, I don’t agree with what he did, but he’s a 17/18 year old kid making a knee jerk reaction to the situation, provoked by Aye trying to shut him down and protect Akk.

4. Why did Thua choose now? - Akk just got the best boy award, Aye was clearly supporting him. Then outside, the protesters show up and suddenly Aye is calling out in their favour. I get why Thua did it and had had enough and spoke out. As I said before I don’t agree to everything (ie the outing) but get why he did it. He was calling out Aye, the fact his love (and likely unknown to Thua, Akk’s mental state) had meant Aye no longer tried to get Akk to tell the truth and instead was encouraging him during the ceremony. Aye had presented himself as someone who would expose the curse, had in some ways pushed Thua from his neutral place, the ‘curse’ might not have been active but it and the rules remained in the background. At that point, Kan still wanted them to be a secret, maybe Thua thought his step dad would have been less ‘rough’ if not for his experience of the curse, after the doll incident I felt like he was shaken because any faith he had had left in the system, the teachers enacting justice, protecting their students was extinguished. So Aye was in love, the protesters being manhandled, he probably saw himself as the only option for the truth to come out.

5. A missing scene? Was there a time jump? The group made up really fast - I agree to some extent about the fast turn around but I personally didn’t have an issue with it or get confused thinking I missed something. They did talk and get everything out in the open and from what we know from an earlier episode, or at least Akk, Wat and Kan, the group resolves conflict the same day, doesn’t let it fester. Thua said he’d accept whatever Kan felt he should do about him. Not going to lie, I wouldn’t have minded a ‘sorry’ in Thua’s explanation… ‘sorry I did it but I did what I believed was right’… after that Thua went home as his mum was waiting so I assumed it was the end of the school day. Skip to the next day, or maybe it was a couple, and the short film discussion. I went with the idea that this was Thua’s apology, he’d help them which would help in particular keep Kan (and Wat) being exposed as liars, and also help back track the outing of Akk and Aye (any investigation into Akk and the cause of the curse I presume will be revealed next week - this is solely about covering for Wat and Kan and making the film).

6. Kan and Thua being cute - now these two… personally, I don’t know if I could be as forgiving as Kan but a) he loves Thua, and has finally been able to be brave and say it - love is a crazy thing, b) if he can forgive Akk’s actions, he can forgive Thua’s, c) Thua is helping with the film and to cover for them so making amends that way, d) Kan’s part of a friends group that resolves conflict quickly, e) maybe he has his own guilt as he believed in the curse, and he had kept Thua at a distance for so long. Maybe he felt bad he didn’t notice what was going on with the curse or Thua. That last bit is just me maybe-ing but whatever the reason they stay together, move on, and he takes another brave step forward, and I’m happy for him.

Ahhh that’s better. Just wanted to ramble out what I’d been thinking. Nobody might ever see this but phew, feels good. (Watch next episode tell me everything at the end of this episode was a dream and everybody actually hates each other and everybody is crying buckets!!!)

[whatdoesshedotothem]

Friday 16 May 1834

7 5/..

12 ½

Fine – ready in an hour F57° at 8 5 - reading till 9 ½ from page 25 to 76, volume 24 British prose writers to the end of Horace Walpole’s Reminiscences. Letter from Mr Scotts’ book-keeper ‘GW. Ellis, 3 Dove street, near the Nunnery York’ to say Joseph had brought away his livery hardly worn at all and to beg me to desire him to send it back again - the poor lad brought it away in ignorance, never dreaming, as nobody said anything to him about it, that he ought to have given it back. Letter 3 pages from M- (Lawton) dated Thursday 8th inst and lastly last Tuesday night 13th instant – hoped to have heard from me – disappointed tho saying she had now no right to be so - and indeed ought not as she had neither asked me to write to her at Lawton, nor had I promised to do so -  they arrived at Lawton on Tuesday 6th inst and were to leave there on Wednesday the 14th - writes to ask me to pay the ‘new servant James for a greatcoat Thomas had bought of him’- Found her scholars more stupid than formerly dined at Rode nothing interested her ‘Mary is not what she was or the same things would produce the same pleasures but it matters not’ ‘Time will do its best and worst, and after all is the short span of life worth a thought? A few short years and all is over and mine neither have given nor promise sufficient of comfort to induce a wish that they might be prolonged no one knows not, even you dearest Fred, what I have gone thro’ and at this moment I feel as little caring for the future of this world as if 24 hours would close my existence perhaps I should be thankful to know its duration was so limited – you, at least, I trust will be happy for you deserve to be so, and earnestly do I pray that it may be so’. And that those you love best may secure to you all the comfort necessary to your wishes for the present adieu then writes the more than half page of conclusion on Tuesday night Poor Mary how she has always marred her own happiness but how was it when I was so low two years ago she shewed no great pity for me. Breakfast in 20 minutes at 9 ½ wrote the above of today till 10 20 - some time out with Pickles and the rest -P- finished re-levelling the ground in front of the house before 12 and was at the railing in the afternoon with his 2 men. Had Joseph up twice for a good while about correcting his letter to Mr Ellis respecting the livery - had ½ hour’s nap. Wrote 3 pages and ends to M- as follows ‘Shibden Hall, Friday 16th May 1834. I have in this moment, my dearest Mary, received your letter dated lastly the 13th (Tuesday last) – three days from Lawton! These shews me, that my letter written on Sunday, and sent on Monday (the 12th) would reach Lawton a few hours after you were off. Surely it would be sent after you immediately and surely you have reached it ere this. Mary! I am very very sorry my pages were not with you at Lawton! - but they will convince you, you were not out of my thoughts, are not and are not likely to be – the more, my dearest Mary, I reflect upon the past, the more I am confounded at the appalling inconsistency of your conduct - that you should grieve so deeply over its consequences, is a heavy misfortune to us both. But this I can truly say, that whatever you may ‘have gone thro’ I can’t earnestly believe it to exceed the misery, the ruthless desolation of heart that fell upon myself – to me it was more sudden than the lightness glare - you had long warning – the storm came not but at your bidding, and from your own breast, sprang up the rock on which the hope of 20 years was wrecked. In pity and in common justice, remember this. Think too, that you can never have had one feeling of wounded pride to add its sting to all the rest. It was your own hand drew the card that sped the deadly shaft hope to the heart that had no shield but its affection Mary! Your aim did seem so coolly, so deliberately taken, the arrow scarce could miss her way. But no more - my regard is still perhaps worth having, and it will not be my fault if it does not serve you faithfully. For my sake, at least, take my advice this once more. Cheer up - rally round you those hopes that are scatted, rather than destroyed – let not your spirit turn coward but gather together your resources, calculate them fairly, manage them well – remember that you have a tried and steady friend who will help you to the uttermost, and, trust me, you have no need to despair of happiness even in this world. Despair is always a false calculation we can’t tell the good that may be in store for us and when our horizon seems lowest who knows that the brightest gleams of our existence are not at hand? Mary! I will do anything in the world I can for you - and surely it is my power to be a greater comfort to you than I can possibly have been, ever since the first moment when your mind became unsettled enough to entertain the 1st embryo thought of the now as it appears, strange resolve you came to, 2 years ago. But perhaps after all you were more right than you now believe. If all your tastes were indeed so changed as you told me, while mine as I honestly avowed, remained so nearly the same, how would it have answered to be still entirely dependent on each other? For you must not forget that, as the circumstance, which seems more particularly to tell you the secret of your own heart, would not then have occurred , you might still have been ignorant of it as ever, and I should not have had the strong advantage of being valued as at present. Mary! Is not this reasonable? You find travelling insupportable - you had other interest dearer than mine - you could not bear to leave Lawton - you even made a point of my promising to settle near there - and you, above all people, knew how I was situated towards my own place, where my family had lived between 2 and 3 centuries, I being the 15th possessor of my family and name. Mary! The spirit of my uncle started up before me and had my life been the sacrifice, idolatry must have yielded to honour. Mary! My dearest Mary, you thought of me too lowly then, as you think of me too highly now. Reflect upon these things - you will be happier by and by - you will trust my friendship regard implicitly and this will not be the least of the comforts that I firmly hope will attend us both – ask me to write, or to do anything. I do not feel as if I should ever disappoint you much - I have no feeling towards you but of affectionate regard and my greatest anxiety is for your welfare. But cheer up, Mary! Be comforted, my dearest Mary, if it be but for my sake. How my pen still lingers on this engrossing subject. I must answer the purport of your letter. James Clayton is no longer my servant - he came to me on the 24th ult. refused to wear Thomas’s livery - on the 26th and left me on the 28th sorry probably for his folly and not calculating that I should not retract the warning given at the moment. Mrs Williamson, Register Office for servants, Colliergate  

SH:7/ML/E/17/0034

(I think it is) York, is the only person I know of likely to know anything about the man. You will see from my last, as far as I can tell at present, what I am going to be about - I shall probably be in York by 12 on Tuesday and off in an hour towards Richmond. In my aunt’s present state of health,  I cannot be absent more than a week, I do not expect her surviving another winter - my father’s life, too, is very precarious, he had a very slight paralytic affection , more particularly in the left arm, 3 or 4 days ago -  Marian’s attention to him is quite exemplary. Her feelings towards me seem altogether changed into what is most comfortable. God bless you my dearest Mary! You can’t possible doubt my regard and how much I am always very especially yours. A. Lister’ Writing out this letter has taken me from 3 25 to 4 10 = 1 ¼ hour. What will π- think of it  I see three tears had fallen on her paper  What a goose she has been surely she never thought of losing she played upon me too much the history of our acquaintance may be summed in accepted refused accepted married offended refused repented. Reading over my letter and dawdling till out at 4 ½ - with Marian in the garden - with Mallinson etc - dinner at 6 ½ then coffee and Marian was with me till after 8 - then sent off my letter to ‘Mrs Lawton, Claremont house, Leamington, Warwickshire’ and Joseph took to the post his letter to Mrs Ellis to say he should have the livery hat and all on Tuesday - from 8 ½ to 9 ½ in the fields looking at the new railing - 18 posts and railing there to belonging set this afternoon - and all would be finished tomorrow if we had the posts but we shall not have enough by 8 - 2 plasterers came this morning from Shaw’s, and cleared away the dirt and plaster ready for pointing west side of the house - talking to Marian till 10 1/4 . Is Northgate, or will it be, sold or not – tonight at 7 the sale was to being – I have not thought much about it even this evening and not all during day. My day was spent over my letter and my eyes stiffish with the tears that fell or stood big in my eyes This weakness is too foolish - 10 minutes with my aunt and came to my study at 10 25 and wrote the last 10 lines - raining fast - seemed to begin a few minutes ago - fine day tho’ dullish - very good for growing - my father does not like the idea of flower-beds, so the ground before the front window is to be all sown down with grass and clover - till 11 ½ read from page 79 to 99 Horace Walpole’s letters British prose writers vol. 24.

[purplesurveys]

1045

surveys by lets-make-surveys 1 - What did you do to celebrate your last birthday? Did you get any decent gifts? Guh I honestly barely want to recognize my birthday this year because 2020 has been a huge waste of my time...but fine, I guess I’m 22. It had been during the peak of the quarantine/pandemic, so we had no choice but to stay home. I just played the Switch all morning, then I think I watched my dad play video games, and then Angela and Hans sent over a box of sushi to our place. Real chill day.

2 - What was the last “random act of kindness” you experienced? It was my first day at the office today and I had to go up and down the stairs several times to bring packages to delivery riders, since I had to send those out to certain people. A member of the maintenance staff in the area was super nice and offered to carry some of the boxes for me, since he saw how much I was struggling with the boxes.

3 - Have you ever “paid it forward” by putting money behind the counter somewhere so the next person can get a free coffee or similar? Not yet. I’d love to be able to do that soon.

4 - What caused the last injury that made you bleed? Was it a serious injury? I was trying to open a bottle of soju last night but the cap just would not budge. Next thing I knew my finger was already bleeding. Never got to drink my soju :(

5 - Who was the last person you spoke to on the phone? Are you close to that person at all? One of the delivery riders who took my package earlier. Bless his soul, he was very new to the delivering thing and I think I was his first-ever customer, and he kept asking for my help. I did my best for a while but eventually I had to tell him I genuinely did not know how to answer some of his questions as I wasn’t a driver myself.

6 - What was the last item you received in the mail? Something I had ordered online. It was the gift I’m planning to give my grandma for Christmas.

7 - When was the last time you received flowers? What kind were they? A year ago, I think. It was a single stem of a rose. We were saving up last year hahaha so I had gotten her a single stem as well.

8 - Are you a fan of salted caramel? What about other “odd” combinations like sea salt and chocolate or chilli and chocolate? Ooh, I didn’t know salted caramel was considered odd; it’s a pretty common flavor here and has even gotten more popular in the last few years. I like it as a flavor in desserts, like cupcakes with salted caramel frosting. When it comes to food, I’m generally open-minded and will try any combination that exists at least once; that said, chili and chocolate sound especially intriguing haha. I’ve only ever tried chili ice cream, which was delicious.

9 - Do you enjoy watching bloopers or outtakes from TV shows? If so, which series do you think has the funniest ones? Yes. Bloopers in general are great but it’s best when they come from shows that have a reputation for being more drama-heavy and serious - that said, Breaking Bad bloopers are the fucking best. ‘Bloopers’ from animated movies are hilarious too; they were always made so well too that as a kid, I legit thought the characters were actual actors as it never crossed my mind that animators would take the extra effort and time to make bloopers out of fictional characters and that they had to be real actors in some way lol.

10 - What’s your favourite dessert food? OMG macarons for the win. I’ve been craving them so much. Cheesecake is great too, and also cupcakes.

11 - Do you have any really dangerous wild animals where you live? Have you ever encountered any of them? Nope only stray dogs and cats, and probably some chickens somewhere.

12 - Have you ever dreamed of owning your own shop? What kind of thing would you like to sell? I’ve never dreamed of this; it’s never been a goal of mine and running a business doesn’t sound like my kind of thing.

13 - Are you a twin? If not, would you ever want to be a twin? If you are a twin, do you ever wish you weren’t? No. I’ve never really found myself wishing for it, either.

14 - Do you prefer wearing your hair straight or curly? Maybe just a little wavy. Definitely not in the extreme of either side of the spectrum.

15 - Would you ever want to go and visit the moon? If I had the chance and everything was paid for and stuff, hell yeah. It’d be cool to get to cross out one of my childhood bucket list items.

16 - What was the last hot drink you had? What about cold drink? Or alcoholic drink? My last hot drink was...probably the coffee I asked my mom to make last Friday, but I did wait it out until it was considerably cooler as I didn’t want to drink it hot. My last cold drink is the iced caramel macchiato I ordered tonight and still have with me at the moment. Then for alcoholic drink, I had soju mixed with Yakult about two weeks ago.

17 - Does anything on your body hurt or ache right now? My lower back, unsurprisingly. I also cut my right middle finger trying to open a soju bottle last week, andddd I gained a blister on my right foot today because of the shoes I picked to wear for work.

18 - When was the last time you struggled to get to sleep? Was there was a specific reason for that? I can’t remember exactly when, but it happened within the last week or the last two weeks. Sometimes I just drink too much coffee during the day that it affects how sleepy I’d ultimately feel at night.

19 - What three countries would you most like to visit? Morocco, India, and Thailand.

20 - Who’s your closest friend from another country? How did you come to meet this person? I don’t really have one anymore...I’ve grown apart from my internet friends from different countries a long time ago, and I also don’t tend to keep up friendships with my friends who’ve since migrated from the Philippines to another country. I suppose the one I’m on best terms with is Angel who migrated to Toronto around a decade ago; but I use ‘best’ very loosely as the most we do is comment on one another’s posts whenever we reach like a life accomplishment, like when we graduated college.

21 - When was the last time you had a cold? With everything going on in the news, did you worry that it was COVID? It’s been a while. I can’t remember; it was definitely pre-Covid.

22 - As of today (10th December, 2020) the COVID vaccine is being rolled out in the UK. Are you going to have it once it’s available to you (if it ever is)? A part of me is a little concerned because I know vaccines take years and sometimes even decades to be fully developed, but that doesn’t mean I don’t trust doctors and science. I very much do, of course. It’s just that I’d personally prefer to wait it out first to see if it’ll have any negative effects once rolled out on a massive scale.

23 - What are your favourite websites to browse when you’re bored? Wikipedia black holes are the way to go.

24 - Do you think people should have to pass a test in order to own pets? A local animal welfare NGO already does that; Nina had to go through several tests before she was allowed to adopt Arlee. There was a verbal interview, a written form she had to fill out, and a representative from the organization even visited our house to see if it was a suitable environment for Arlee; I’m sure there was a few more steps she was required to undergo. I certainly think it’s a good and responsible process. 

25 - When was the last time you fell asleep/had a nap during the day? Is this something that happens often? It’s been monthssssssssss. I don’t really take naps during the day anymore.

26 - Do you suffer/have you ever suffered with bad acne? What kind of things did you do to try and improve it? I’ve never had issues with acne and was always rather fortunate when it comes to my skin. I’ll have a pimple or two show up once or twice a year, but they go away within a week or so. Since I don’t want to jinx it, I just wash my face with water and I’ve never experimented with any skincare products ever.

27 - When you think about it, do you think it’s odd that we stop drinking human milk at a young age, but we happily drink milk from other species instead? Not really.

28 - How’s the weather where you are? Is this a good or a bad thing for you? These days it’s humid and hot during the day (as always), but now that it’s Christmas season the weather tends to plunge to like 24-26C during nighttime. I’d say the night part is good for me as I prefer being cold than hot, so I’m glad we’ll be having this weather until March at most.

29 - When was the last time you ate a pizza? What toppings did you get? Tuesday. Relatives came over then and my cousin got us pizzas. I don’t remember what toppings he got but both pizzas had stuffed crust in it.

30 - How often do you wear make-up? What kind of make-up do you wear? Wow, almost never. Gab used to put makeup on me but now that she’s gone, I don’t really see myself wearing makeup for the meantime as I definitely wouldn’t apply them onto myself. 

--

1 - If you have caffeine late in the day, does it cause you to struggle with your sleep? Eh, sometimes. Sometimes it’ll do what it’s supposed to and make me stay up for a while, but other times it doesn’t work and I’ll end up getting sleepy the same time I usually start feeling so.

2 - When you struggle to sleep, what do you do instead? Watching videos has eternally worked for me.

3 - Who was the last person you spoke to for the first time? How did you come to speak to this person? Hmm I met my co-workers Ysa and Bea for the first time today, if it counts. I’ve only ever talked to them through Viber since we’re on a WFH set-up, but we had to go to the office today to fix up some boxes that we needed to get delivered. But the last person that I really hadn’t met nor spoken to before was Jhomar, the company messenger who takes care of pickups for the day. 

4 - If you have a pet, have they ever embarrassed you in public or in front of friends or family members? What happened? Kimi is typically unfriendly towards strangers, so as cute and cuddly as he looks he would probably bite your finger off. I’ve had to explain that to guests who’ve felt puzzled about his demeanor. He’s my little baby though and I wouldn’t say he’s embarrassed me because of it. Cooper on the other hand is hyper-friendly to the point that he looks aggressive and it has scared some people away; in reality, he’s always SO pumped to meet anyone and everyone and can never contain his excitement haha. He’s literally the nicest dog.

5 - Do you leave the house every single day? I never leave the house, except if it’s to withdraw cash or go to the Starbucks drive through to pick up a coffee.

6 - Would you rather spend the day at the beach, or a day in the snow in the mountains? I would normally pick beach, but I think the mountains would be best for me at the moment.

7 - Do you prefer tops that are plain, or ones with patterns/logos/slogans? Plain.

8 - Are there any TV shows from your childhood that you still watch today? I’ll watch Spongebob every now and then. When I’m bored and have enough time on my hands I’ll sometimes watch other shows from my childhood just for that nostalgia wave, like Barney or Hannah Montana.

9 - How many texts would you say you send on an average day? Used to be hundreds, but now it’s probably like...5, on average. Sometimes I’ll need to text media for work and that’ll come up to around 15-20 texts but that happens only occasionally, like once every two weeks.

10 - Do you enjoy buying gifts for other people, or do you never know what to buy them? I never know what to buy for people. I like buying gifts for a significant other, though. I tend to spoil one to no end.

11 - Girls - if you get periods, do you suffer from period pain or any other horrible symptoms? I get the hormonal symptoms, but the physical symptoms are almost never there. My stomach will usually contract in a way that tells me it’s coming soon, but it never really aches. Most of the time, I just cry and mope a lot and that’s how I know it’s on its way, ha.

12 - The last time you were in a car, where you were travelling to? Were you the driver or a passenger? I was headed back home. but I came from the office. I was the driver as always.

13 - Who were you with the last time you went out for a meal? I took myself out on a date.

14 - What book do you wish they’d make into a film or TV series? The Septimus fucking Heap series, please. They’ve been trying to get it made into a movie series for years but as far as I know the talks have always fallen through.

15 - The age old question - do you prefer coke or pepsi? That’s a big ‘or’ for me. I don’t drink soda.

16 - What’s the last thing you watched on TV? Is this a programme you watch regularly? Bea took over the office TV earlier and she had it set to a BTS + Taylor Swift music video playlist so that we had background music while working. No, neither are my artists of choice, really.

17 - Do you have a favourite documentary subject (eg. nature, celebrities, history, crime)? Pro wrestling (a seriously underrated documentary subject) and crime. Documentaries on anthropological issues or discoveries are great as well. I do love history, but I prefer to absorb it in text/museum form.

18 - Do you prefer sweet or savoury snacks? What snack would you say is your overall favourite? Savoryyy. I get tired of sweet snacks pretty quickly. My current favorites to munch on are any salted egg flavored chips.

19 - Does having to wear a mask stop you from doing anything, just because you dislike them or find them uncomfortable? It can be harder to breathe and I get exhausted a lot faster with a mask on, but I keep it on because I would want to keep other people safe and because it’s so easy to keep a damn mask on.

20 - Do you prefer zip-up or overheard hoodies? Either is fine.

21 - If you have a yard or garden, how much time do you spend out there? I prefer the rooftop, and if I do go there I usually stay for a few hours during the evening just to have some time to myself. Being in a house with four adults can get pretty overwhelming and taxing sometimes.

22 - When was the last time someone bought you flowers? What was the occasion? I think it was for Valentine’s Day last year. If not, it was for the anniversary which was a week after Valentine’s Day.

23 - How often do you get takeaway? What’s your favourite thing to order? I don’t really do takeout. I usually dine-in or have food delivered to my place.

24 - Do you own a lot of clothing items in your favourite colour? What is your favourite colour, anyway? I don’t have a lot of clothes in pink. It’s not my best color, but I like it in everything else hahaha.

25 - When was the last time you stayed overnight away from home? Was this with friends, family or in a hotel somewhere? What was the occasion? Idk probably a sleepover at Gab’s place early this year.

26 - Would you ever be interested in seeing a live magic show? Sure. Magic shows are already a staple at kids’ birthday parties here, and I’ve always enjoyed them especially since magicians are quite the comedians too.

27 - What’s your favourite period to learn about in history? What got you interested in this particular era? I don’t have a favorite period per se but I’ve always had an affinity for the royalty. I like reading all about them, no matter what period they reigned or what house/country they’re from. Historians have kept impressive and super detailed accounts or records for most of them, so reading about their lives has also allowed me to learn more about the culture they lived through.

28 - Do you still use or carry cash, or do you pay for everything via card? I heavily rely on cash and I actually realized how behind I am just today, when Bea ordered lunch for the office. I paid her with cash and she looked at me all puzzled and was like, “Can you do bank transfer instead?” another big girl stuff I had to learn lol. Everyone in college used cash pls forgive me

29 - Are there any TV shows that remind you of your grandparents for some reason? Not really.

30 - Have you ever had to wear a tie for school or work? If not, do you know how to tie a tie without looking it up? I had a necktie as part of my uniform in my old school. I never knew how to tie it and always asked someone else to do it for me whenever it came loose.

[wheelygoodteddys]

I don't want to do this!:

I absolutely hate writing about religious discrimination!

Frankly, I wish that I wasn't putting fingers to keyboard about any discrimination.

I also desperately don't want the focus to be on discrimination against everything Islamic and Muslim.

However, sadly, it's the most venomous hated that I have ever encountered, second only to racism against the black human beings of our world.

All my life I must have lived under a rock, maybe I live under a rock now, yet the vileness and outright lies that come out of those obsessed with hating all Islam and Muslims, plus anyone who stands up and says this is wrong, is obscene.

I am disgusted in the way these people respond.

I have had differing opinions with both Muslim men are women yet been addressed with respect and politeness. They are peaceful and not intimidating in any way.

Speak to a person who is anti Muslim, they refuse to listen to anything that may contradict what they want to believe, they will call you a liar and slander you. They intimidate and bully, call you names, question your mental stability, stalk your FB and target your children. The insults and illogical reasoning is unbelievable.

I am horrified that there are people like this in the world!

More horrifying still is for once I can see the appeal in hating the West.

Imagine a young Muslim man, born here, and rather then allowing him to explain what his religion means to him, to try and teach people, that hate everything about him, that he deserves to be not discriminated against, he gets told what his religion is, he is called a murder, a terrorist, a paedophile, a Mysoginist, etc. His sister is spoken to about her husband beating her, being oppressed, asked if she still has her clitorus, threatened with physical abuse, has her hijab torn off, threatened with rape, told she is a bad mother because she sells her baby girls to be raped by old men.

And no matter what they say to try and explain their actual beliefs the abuse flows. And this is from their own countrymen.

Mate, I would want them all gone too! Be honest, who wouldn't!?

Yet if they report abuse or complain about their treatment they are accused of wanting to change things. "They come here and try to change everything", is the cry from the haters!

1) There is NO law that insists that ALL women wear a Burqa in Saudi Arabia: Hijab is only compulsory for Muslim women. Anything else is a choice for those in a practicing Muslim family.

2) Women are not allowed to get an education in Saudi Arabia: I urge you to look up any TV broadcast from local Saudi Arabia telecasts. Women, in hijab, reading the news. This suggests an education. However, both men and women are encouraged to gain knowledge in Islam.

3) WTF does Saudi Arabia have to do with every other Muslim world wide, especially in Australia?

4) FGM (female genital mutilation) is an Islamic practice: Far from it! The Islamic religion urges that both men and women enjoy sex and that a man sexually pleases his wife. FGM is a tribal practice. However, MGM (male genital mutilation) has and still is widely practiced in Australia.

5) There is NO "no go" zones in Australia!: This urban myth was started by a female, Canadian Islamphobe. It was said to be proved when the police removed her from Lakemba for disturbing the peace. The police weren't working for the Muslims to enforce their "no go" zones! How ridiculous. Others tell totally unbelievable stories about women walking there and being spat on for not wearing hijab. Firstly, not all Muslimah wear hijab, even in Lakemba. Also there are numerous non-Muslims that go to these fabled areas to eat, visit, shop, do business, etc. This rumor is absolutely ludicrous!

6) Muslim women are oppressed, even here in Australia!: It is naive that there is no abusive people in any religion or walk of life, however, Muslimah are not oppressed as perf the usual course. Quiet the opposite! Historically, and as it is today, Muslimah have the freedom to do and be whatever they want, just like Muslim men. There is no distinction between what male and females can do. In fact, men are encouraged to wash their own clothes, cook and do housework. Also the Qur'an makes it very clear that the mother is the head of the household.

7) It is always claimed that Muslims want to change things: Yet, the question, "what have they actually changed?", goes unanswered. Muslims are required to live by the laws of the land, and as such, really don't want to change anything but the way they are treated. Especially how the women are treated. Our hero Islamphobes always target women and children because Muslimah are more recognizable.

8) Why are these people so threatened by the hijab or niqab?: For fuck sake it's a piece of material! It's not what's on a woman's head that oppresses her. However, who are those that want to oppress Muslimah? Muslim men or the Islamphobe? I say without hesitation, the Islamphobe! They don't ask a Muslim women how she feels, they don't ask what she may want to wear. They rarely comprehend the meaning of the hijab to a woman but rather try to twist it into some sexually perverse. They proclaim that Muslim women shouldn't wear a head covering. As Australia is a free country, with a freedom of religion and freedom of lawful individually, the real oppression and discrimination, is telling Muslim women what to wear.

9) Telling Muslim women what they are: The idea that, to Islamphobes, Muslim women are stupid and therefore, don't know that they are oppressed, would have to be the most Mysoginist slap in the face ever! All I can say is, "at least Muslim men know a woman's worth is awesome".

10) Muslim men marry girl babies of 5 to 6 years old and Muslim mothers allow it: Firstly, American is the place booming in child brides at the moment. With some states having no minimum age for marriage and also no divorce for women. Compared to Malaysian Clerics, years ago, raising the age of concent to 18. Also contrary to European/western/Christian culture, women have been granted divorce since the 700s in Islam.

11) Women wear the Burqa in Australia: This is actually one of those urban myths, started by Pauline Hanson. To see a Burqa in Australia would be very unusual. Most Australian Muslimah are from cultures that don't don the Burqa. The Burqa is an Afghan tradition and is very rare in Australia. Then why fight "ban the Burqa"? In one word, principle! It is against a woman's basic rights to tell her how much she can or can't wear, within the laws of public decency. There is also a security argument, as a Burqa is rarely worn that argument is rather moot.

12) Muslim men have lots of wives and children and just live on welfare: This is so silly that it's laughable. Once again, it is rare for Muslim men to have more than one wife these days as it is financially impractical. Also most Muslim men prefer one wife. In Australia, on average, the Muslim family consists of 2 children. With all this being said, usually Muslim men and women are educated and professional people. If not they strive to own businesses. The stupid welfare claims are unfounded and actually go against most Muslim traditions and cultures that have a hard work ethic.

13) They come here are get more welfare than Australians with no waiting period: This information can be researched on government websites. There is a waiting time for new Australians, Muslim or otherwise, which often means charitable families that sponsor them and take them in during this time. When they do receive any benefit, before getting on their feet, it is no more or less than anyone else.

14) They receive a thousand dollar iPhone and designer clothes as soon as they arrive: Is this one even worth answering? I just shake my head in disbelief!

15) Muslims have been Australians for generations: It amazes me how many people actually believe that no Muslim is Australian born. The history of the Islamic people in Australia predates white colonization. Islamic men from Indonesia travelled down and through Australia. There was intermarriage with the Indigenous peoples and even revertion to Islam by some. A more constant move to Australia, by those of the Islamic faith, started in the 1800's.

16) All Muslims are the same because they read from the same book: this is like saying that all Christian denominations are the same because they read from the same book. Most know that this is not the case.

There are many different varieties of Muslim. Yes they have the Qur'an yet addition books vary between the sects.

There are 72 different sects, numerous sects within the main sects, different traditions, different cultures, different regions, different regions, different countries and different families.

As for the Qur'an: there is the subject context, further context, overall context, historical context and spiritual context. Then all the different ways it is interpreted. Also interpretation can be manipulated and cherry picked to suit an agenda or bias. This can be said of the Bible also.

Where interpretation is important is in the understanding of Arabic. To translate a language as complex as Arabic into simple English leaves the meaning truly lacking.

For example: Islam is a very sexually moral religion. Men and women are not meant to sexulise each other, There is no unsupervised dating and dressing is modest. However, it is commonly thought the men will receive a bus load of virgins to have an orgy with in paradise. However, "virgin" more correctly translates to "pure". This is a "spiritual" context and "heavenly beings/angels is probably a better translation into English.

17) Muslims want to kill all Jews and Muslims. The Qur'an tells them to kill all Christians: Unfortunately people are so off the mark on this one. Islam actually says that Muslims cannot destroy a place of worship nor hurt religious "ministers". The Qur'an refers to Christians and Jews as the "people of the book". In fact, the only other women a Muslim man is permitted to marry is either a Christian or a Jew. The wives of these two religions are also not expect to revert as they are seen as sisters to Islam. Christian and Jewish men and women are thought of as brothers and sisters to Muslims.

There is a long list of urban myth, propaganda, rumors and out right lies that are used as ammunition against Islam and Muslims.

The arrogance of the Islamphobe is to tell a Muslim what their faith is! With no other religion would a person, outside that faith, verse another in their religion.

[96thdayofrage]

In their ACLU report, “Cracks in the System: Twenty Years of the Unjust Federal Crack Cocaine Law,” Deborah J. Vagins and Jesselyn McCurdy noted that The Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986:

…established mandatory minimum sentences for federal drug trafficking crimes and created a 100:1 sentencing disparity between powder and crack cocaine. The Act provided that individuals convicted of crimes involving 500 grams of powder cocaine or just 5 grams of crack(the weight of two pennies) were sentenced to at least 5 years imprisonment, without regard to any mitigating factors. The Act also provided that those individuals convicted of crimes involving 5000 grams of powder cocaine and 50 grams of crack (the weight of a candy bar) be sentenced to 10 years imprisonment.

Race was not explicitly written in the 1986 law. Otherwise, it would have been easier to combat it, such as in the Supreme Court case of Brown vs. Board of Education of Topeka.

Still, what makes this law racist? During the 1980s and 1990s, the United States experienced a rise in crack cocaine, which became widely associated with Black people, particularly in working poor urban communities. On the other hand, powder cocaine was associated with affluence and particularly, white people.

By heavily penalizing “crack” versus “powder cocaine” the federal laws targeted racial groups without naming it.

In their study, “Powder Cocaine and Crack Use in the United States: An Examination of Risk for Arrest and Socioeconomic Disparities in Use,” Palamar, Davies, and associates explained:

Compared to whites, racial minorities were at low risk for powder cocaine use, and Hispanics were at low risk for crack use. Blacks were at increased risk for lifetime and recent crack use in unconditional models, but this association was lost when controlling for all other socioeconomic variables. Therefore, it appears that blacks are in fact at higher risk for crack use and associated outcomes, but this may be driven by socioeconomic factors—suggesting that SES may be a fundamental cause of racial disparities in crack use. In the conditional models for lifetime use, higher educational attainment was associated with increased likelihood of powder cocaine use and decreased likelihood of crack use, and higher income was associated with decreased likelihood of crack use.

Despite socio-economic factors, for decades, Black people were tied to a narrative of crack cocaine and white people were linked to powder cocaine. In 2003, although over 66% of U.S. crack cocaine users were white or Latino, Black people made up more than 80% of the convictions under the federal crack cocaine laws (Vagins and McCurdy, 2006).

Structural racism in a colorblind nation looks like Black people serving as much time in prison for drug offenses (58.7 months) as white people convicted of violent offenses (61.7 months) (Vagins and McCurdy, 2006). The incarceration approach to the drug epidemic that was disproportionately enforced on African-Americans ruled the day until 2010, when President Obama changed the sentencing from 100:1 to 18:1.

Presently, as the nation deals with a drug epidemic that is not popularly associated with African-Americans, our government has miraculously seen the racial white light in their approach. Instead of criminalizing, targeting, and heavily penalizing people with opioid addictions with mandatory minimums, there has been a broader appeal to sympathy and treatment.

The narratives give a backstory where the people tend to come from “good” families who are victims of structures beyond their control—targeted by the “evil” large pharmaceutical corporations.

They receive reparations for their victimhood in the forms of taxpayer supported treatment and settlements against pharmaceutical companies.

Despite all of these changes and talk of treatment, Black people are still targeted with an incarceration approach.

Bad Black Mothers and Vulnerable White Girls

I recall a different narrative from the United States’ War on Drugs. I recall the media working over-time to dehumanize Black mothers and families crippled by drug dependency and the disproportionate over-policing and heavier penalties. The media helped shape a narrative to shame and justify the lack of empathy and investment in treatment/care.

Sensationalized media portrayals about Black mothers on crack given birth to a new generation of crack babies out of wedlock sought to reinforce stereotypes and controlling narratives of inherent cultural deficiency among African Americans.

Bad Black mothers and fathers who use and deal crack were a plague to society to be controlled and destroyed. One day, as I was watching television, I saw a commercial focusing on the opioid crisis about “Amy’s Story” from Truth Initiative. On their website, they share part of her story:

When Amy was 14, a knee injury on the soccer field put her in the hospital and resulted in a prescription for Vicodin. Over the next five years, she endured several surgeries on that knee and received a flood of opioid prescriptions.

In this vulnerable state, Amy developed an addiction to Vicodin. When her supply ran out, she took drastic measures to get more. She started relying on self-harm to secure prescriptions for opioids. She would cut herself and smash her injured knee. At age 18, she reached the peak of her desperation. In hopes of getting more pills, she intentionally crashed her car into a dumpster at over 40 miles per hour…

The framing of the story signals virtues by which Amy is worthy of treatment and care. Amy gets the benefit of being young and innocent that more easily happens for white youth compared to Latino and African-American youth. She played soccer, became injured, “endured” surgeries, and received a “flood” of highly addictive pain drugs in her “vulnerable” state. In other words, Amy was a “good kid” who was a victim to a system out of her control. She was not portrayed as a culturally deficient junkie from a broken home who needed to take responsibility and be locked away from society.

Was Amy heavily penalized for possible insurance fraud, reckless driving, and destroying property?

Where was the public service campaign featuring a 14-year-old African-American girl in the 1990s who turned to recreational drugs to numb her pain and stole property to generate money to buy more? She had to be responsible and not a victim.

Young African-American girls do not tend to get funded national media narratives about being “vulnerable” with a dominant narrative that inextricably connects Blackness with innocence, not until a social issue impacts white middle-affluent youth. The National Women’s Law Center found that Black girls in every state in the United States are more than twice as likely to be suspended from school than white girls, and it is not because they misbehave more.

Overall, Black girls are over 5.5 times more likely to be suspended from school ad 2.5 times more likely to be expelled without educational services than white girls.

To their credit, Truth Initiative shares stories of individuals from diverse backgrounds to show that opioid addiction can impact anyone. Also, they have committed to creating a culture where all youth and young adults live free of tobacco. According to their website, Truth Initiative’s “20 years of lifesaving work has prevented millions of young people from becoming smokers — including 2.5 million between 2015 and 2018 — and helped drive down the youth smoking rate from 23% in 2000 to 4.6% in 2018.”

Nevertheless, the stories selected seem to appeal to dominant White middle-affluent definitions of worthiness of empathy. For example, Truth Initiative features the story of Chris, who can be visually identified as Black and possibly male. He experimented with opioids as a teen, after discovering his mother’s prescription pills in her medicine cabinet.

Later, after being injured on a job, he became addicted. This narrative has more marketing appeal in a colorblind racist society, for one about an unemployed Black man doing drugs for the sake of fun becoming addicted will not bode as well.

Examples of other stories include diverse youth taking drugs to cope with the stresses of school and being an overachiever or developing an addiction after being prescribed opioid painkillers after an injury. These narratives make the opioid crisis something that is not inherently a white problem and justify the need to support a treatment (instead of a heavy-handed incarceration) approach to the epidemic.

By doing so, White middle and affluent class mothers are spared the over-sensationalized news reports of their poor parenting. White fathers are not deadbeats because their children become dependent.

They are victims just as much as their children.

These same kinds of humanizing stories about opioid dependency could have been promoted during the years of the crack cocaine epidemic.

White mothers are spared from being essentialized by the media as broken sources of our social ills. They do not have to deal with the stereotypes of being welfare queens who give birth to crack or heroin babies.

Within a white supremacist society, there is a wrongfully assumed moral superiority connected the white race that denigrates certain Women of Color and uplifts white women in times of crisis.

A greater attempt exists to show that the opioid addiction is not a reflection of white cultural deficiency and that such drug dependence is not the result of some inherent racial flaw.

It is a fact that countless Black and Latino folks have been saying for years. When drug dependency was explained away on the flawed basis of our supposed cultural and even biological inferiority, numbers of people across race pushed back against the narrative to little to no avail.

Silence about the resulting racial devastation that still occurs from the racist approaches to handling drug epidemics further exacerbates the long-standing problem. Any person and organization dedicated to drug dependency and treatment have to contend with the deeply entrenched racist realities of how empathy and sympathy have a clear racial hierarchy in the social imaginations of U.S. individuals and enforcement of laws.

Many people might believe that we sympathize and empathize the same across race. The sad reality is that a blond hair teenage white girl who plays soccer will garner more empathy (and financial support) than an African-American teenage girl who drove her car into a dumpster like Amy to get more drugs.

Consequently, the use of Black people’s stories of drug dependency within this current colorblind framing of drug epidemics helps to further manipulate the greater public into ignoring decades of the adverse effects of racist drug laws and practices involving African Americans.

Is it just to pretend none of it happened? Is it just to ignore the long-lasting impact—the generational consequences? Is it empathetic to ignore that due to our racist drug laws and practices, that approximately twenty years ago, the United States had more Black men in prison than in college?

It is unsympathetic and unempathetic to point out these truths?

No.

It is possible to empathize with individuals like Amy, Chris, and their families and simultaneously address and hold accountability the legalized oppression that has been long ignored and condoned by the much of society.

To put it bluntly, it is sleazy, uncaring, underhanded, and racist use empathy to turn this matter into choosing between either to focus on the opioid epidemic or the handling/residual impact of the crack epidemic. It is a low-down attempt to escape any accountability and is the same tired melody about how racism works in this country.

This matter is a “both/and” issue desperately begging for resolution.

Signs, Frames and Ibu-fu*%king-profen

I saw signs of the emerging opioid crisis and the changing language approaches to “drug epidemics.” Here and there, I noticed that even local law enforcement talked about the epidemic in different way-less war and criminalizing to a greater ethic of care. It was a change for the better, and yet it was not better.

When they discussed treatment approaches for one group, did they forget about the others they locked away after criminalizing their addiction?

Signs in the Suburbs

Years ago, I was in a southern city with my husband, waiting in line at a restaurant that was a local and tourist favorite. In front of us were a group of African-American women, all friends on a girls’ trip from another part of the state. As they laughed and talked, I slowly became part of the conversation.

Two of the women had careers in the healthcare industry. Their voices lowered in the way as if keep a secret from the surrounding white people. They began discussing their observations about the drug addiction and use back home.

The middle class and wealthy white youth and adults were increasingly being affected by the opioids “White kids in the suburbs were dropping dead,” as one woman put it. White people were growing concerned and now they are looking for ways to help and treat them.

The mood became heavy with something that was not being said-a history revisited each of us. 1986 never went away. This part of the conversation also became a social test, for the women gave each other knowing looks and looked at me to determine if I was a Black woman who “got it.”

I got it.

In that moment, there was this shared knowing, as one woman looked off.

Another shook her head.

Then, one of the women in medicine, gave voice to what we seemed to thinking and only expressing on our contorted faces and changed countenances.

“They didn’t care about treating us. They were locking us up. When it is a white kid in the suburbs, now there is government money for programs and treatment.”

By “us,” she means the Black community.

As for the “they”—Again, 1986.

My stomach tightened. I was noticing the rhetoric, and I had not talked about it with anyone, yet. I was wondering if it was just me—or my imagination, as I watched the gentle crafting and shifting of the drug addiction narrative in a way that garnered sympathy and financial support for white people and used the same appeal for sympathy to ignore years of lack of it towards African-American people.

The story of “learning from the past” to move to a treatment approach became a tool to racially whitewash a host of atrocities against People of Color.

I wanted my suspicions to be wrong.

She confirmed it.

[littleredroseonthevalley]

An Opera on Separation - Chapter 16

Prologue | Ch. 1 | Ch. 2 | Ch. 3 | Ch. 4 | Ch. 5 | Ch. 6 | Ch. 7 | Ch. 8 | Ch. 9 | Ch. 10 | Ch. 11 | Ch. 12 | Ch. 13 | Ch. 14 | Ch. 15 | CH. 16 | Ch. 17 | Ch. 18 |

Summary: With Beau and Kassidy arrested, Nathan and Emily carry on with their lives. A misunderstanding, however, forces them into a precipitate decision.

Rating: T - Content not suitable for children.  Suitable for teens, 13 years and older, with minor suggestive adult themes.

Words: 2465

Notes: So, it’s been a couple of weeks/months ever since I last posted it, and it was because I was rethinking my ending. Since I got to no conclusion, I sent it all to Hell and decided to go on with it as planned.

I hope y’all enjoy it.

Blue Danube

Out of all stupid, crazy and adrenaline-high things she had ever done, this one took the cake.

Hartfeld is a rather large city, yes, being in southern New England and at a comfortable distance between both New York and Boston. But at one hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, mostly concentrated around the university, it wasn’t hard to meet an old face running errands.

Which was why she had to raise up the stakes.

She could not risk anybody seeing her with a pregnancy test. It would be the talk of the university in a few hours if such a thing passed. She had no car, and couldn’t very well ask someone to drive three towns over to go to a pharmacy, especially when there was plenty of those at walking distance.

So she went down to the drugstore, put on a bunch of beauty products on a basket and covertly hid a pee stick box on her overcoat, paid for the cosmetics and bailed out of there.

The only thing worse than having your poster girl pregnant out of wedlock is having her shoplifting a drugstore while pregnant out of wedlock. That shit would be on every paper and local TV station in inland Connecticut.

She rushed home, downing bottle after bottle of water. She ran through her apartment door and shut herself in the bathroom.

Both her roommates were out, having classes and projects of their own, which meant she could wait the test out in peace and no risk of being caught with a, God forbid, two-lined pee stick.

Or a soft cheese, sushi and vodka party, which is what she was planning for her evening tonight.

She pees on the stick and leaves it on the bathroom sink waiting for the most agonizing ten minutes of her entire fucking life. What would she do? She is a college girl. A broke one, for that matter. She had no job and a mountain of student debt.

She could not care for a child! She was stupid and irresponsible, as the situation clearly shows. How would she care for an infant at the same time she has to work to keep a roof over their heads?

Jesus Christ, she is so screwed.

Her phone beeped the end of the ten minutes, but she didn’t have the guts to look at it. She stayed there, leaning against the door and contemplating herself on the mirror, the tear-stricken face and the hair sticking out. She should be giving up on her vanity, anyways. If she was really pregnant, the baby would disfigure her entire body.

She finally had the guts to go over to the counter and take the paper that was covering the result away. And it was just like she expected.

Two lines.

Rebecca Davenport was pregnant and alone.

Nathan, as he often did these days, woke up with a smile.

He was young, handsome, rich and intelligent. He had a hot girlfriend who satisfied him in every sense of the word. His parents were off his back, and he had had the pleasure of enacting his come-uppance over Beau Han.

There was absolutely no reason for him to be unhappy. He was flying high as a kite and would not come down any time soon.

Yesternight, he and Emily went to this ethnic Brazilian steakhouse in Danbury, some fifty miles away. The food was good, even if they had the tendency of eating overcooked meat.

After they came back, Emily invited him to stay over for the night and do some… evening activities. Her roommates were out doing their own thing, so they had the place all to themselves.

The thought of sleeping a mild, late-Spring morning was very tempting, but his natural needs were asking for his attention. He disentangled himself very carefully from his redhead bedmate and tiptoed his way to the bathroom.

After his urges were taken care of, he walked over to the sink to brush his teeth. It would be a pleasant surprise for his girlfriend receiving the first kiss in the morning tasting like mint rather than steak-induced mouth grime.

It was then he saw it. The pregnancy test. The positive pregnancy test.

His breath hitched. It could not be Emily’s, could it? He was careful enough to always use protection, and his girlfriend had said she was on the pill.

He could not deal with that on his own. Much to his displeasure, Nathan needed some help. He finds a plastic bag and places the stick on it, careful not to touch the ‘peed-on’ area.

Racing back to the room, the blond quickly put on his clothes. Looking at the sleeping girl nested on the bed, he leans over to kiss her forehead goodbye, but stops himself only short.

If it was the truth, if this is nothing but a scam for his money, then Emily was not as special as he thought she was.

“We’ll pay her off to abort.” It was the pragmatic solution from Nathan Sterling.

The father, not the son. The two of them sat at the senior’s study on their home in New Haven. Soon after his discovery, the youngest blond hopped on his car and drove straight to see his father.

The relationship between Nathan and pretty much all of his family was strained, to say the very least, but they were certainly on his court this time, given the circumstances. The Sterlings had an image to maintain, and an estate to protect. Bastard children wasn’t conductive to neither.

His father was the young man’s first choice. Lois Sterling would not pass on a chance to demean her enfant terrible, and he didn’t quite trust his extended family not to crave a knife to his back like some pitiful interpretation of Richard III.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.” The son argued. “It still can all be an accident. If we corner her, she would react badly and it would be worse.”

“I follow your reasoning, but I don’t think the family’s welfare is your true motivation for coming after me for advice.”

The youngest hold on a snort at the word ‘advice’, preferring asking: “What do you mean?”

He sighed. “Nathan, be honest with me, do you even want to break up with this girl? Even if she has planned all this from the beginning just to trap you into a shotgun wedding?”

“Of course I do!” He defended, on a high tone. “I mean, if she’s not a gold digger, I prefer to maintain the relationship, of course, but if she is, then I don’t think how we can still be together.”

The man chuckles bitterly and paces around the room. “Son, look at me. I’m not particularly handsome. Not now, not ever. I wasn’t the brightest student my day, either, and people find me to be dismissive. But there’s one thing I am, which is rich beyond every measure.

“When I met your mother, I thought she was the prettiest woman I’d ever meet.” The young man looks at his father with disgust in his eye. “Don’t make that face. She’s never been very sweet, but she still is a very pretty woman. Anyways, of course I wanted to woo her, and I managed to do that with basically my affluence alone.

“And money, Nathan, money and lineage never go away. Looks fade, intelligence get boring and sympathy is tiring, but material goods are forever.” He smirks, take a deep breath and continues: “I know me and Lois aren’t the paradigm for a successful marriage. I know your mother married me just so she could finance her stupid researches. I know she would dump me in a heartbeat if she thought she could get away with it. But I am happy. Isn’t that what matters most?

“If you love this woman, marry her. You don’t have to care if she loves you back or if she just cares for your money, the important thing is for you to want her. We’ll tie her with an iron-clad pre-nup and be done with it.”

The patriarch sets a ring box on the desk, straight in front of Nathan.

“I know you haven’t had much joy in life, son. Allow yourself some now.” The man smiles softly.

The young man took the box and pocketed it. The conversation, as disturbing as it was, gave Nathan much to think about.

Emily was standing by the mirror, contemplating her figure on her wedding dress some half an hour from the actual ceremony.

The Sterling manor house in Martha’s Vineyard was handsomely decorated with the fairest white lilies you have ever seen. The guests congregated on the wide lawn, while the pastor waited by a gazebo overlooking the Atlantic Ocean and Nantucket Island. On the menu, Uruguayan steak or Danish trout, tiramisu as dessert.

On the guest list, besides Emily’s closest friends and her diminutive family, the entire Sterling clan, business associates, their A-list neighbours at the island and members of European royalty.

It was a dream wedding, planned around her wildest expectations to an absurd level of detail. Nathan gave her completely creative control and bottomless funds to make it happen. His only demand was a short engagement: he wanted to get married on Labour Day, which was around three months after his proposal.

And, yet, Emily cannot help but feel a deep, heart-wrenching misery slicing her soul.

“Emily, honey.” Queenie calls from the doorway. “We’re ready for you.”

She can’t help but let a few tears slip through her cheeks. “Mom…”

“Oh, my, honey! Why are you crying?” The woman runs to her daughter, a tissue at hand.

“I… I…” She hiccupped. “I can’t get married, mom. I just can’t.”

“What are you saying, Emily?” The matriarch shot the girl a piercing glare. “Is this about that nonsense again?”

“It isn’t nonsense!” She defended, raising her voice. “Just… just ask Nathan to come here. I need to speak to him.”

Queenie sighed and looked warily at her daughter. “Fine, but you’re making a terrible mistake.”

The blonde woman left and the redhead tried to recompose herself, wiping the tears away.

“Emily?” The groom pops his head into the room. “Are you alright? Your mom asked me to come and talk to you.”

She smiled melancholically at him. “Nathan. Come in, please.”

“Fine, but if it’s unlucky, I’m blaming you.” He smirked at his own stupid joke, walked over to his bride and they sat on a sofa. “What is it?”

“You know I really love you, right?” The woman said, throwing a forlorn look at him with her wide eyes.

He smiled sweetly and kissed her hands. “Of course. And I love you, too.”

“There is something I haven’t told you. Something important.” She said, gravely and firm.

That was it. She would finally confess she was pregnant. Nathan waited and pressed her to confess the whole summer, but she never once gave indication that she would cave in. Nevertheless, today was the day.

The man nudged for her to speak, and so she starts: “I don’t think I ever told you about my senior year in high school.”

“No, you didn’t.” He confirmed.

“I was a different person back then. I was brash and rebellious and opinionated. The Queen Bee type, you know.” She laughs, nervously. “I was head cheerleader and I dated the football quarterback, like some stupid cliché on a Saturday morning special.

“On my Senior-year homecoming ball, he and I had sex. It was my first time, and like every stupid teenager, we ended up forgetting all about protection. A few weeks later, I felt sick and you probably can guess what it was.

“It was legal on the state of Rhode Island to make an abortion back then, but my dad was very sick at the time and we couldn’t afford to go to Providence and pay for the procedure. So my mother and I decided to improvise.

“She went to the drugstore and bought me some vermin medicine and I took three tablets.” Tears started slipping through her eyes once more. “It worked. I aborted the foetus. But I wouldn’t stop bleeding, and we raced to the ER.

“I almost died. We claimed it was a natural abortion; the doctor was suspicious but didn’t confront our version. He did, however, say that my uterus was much too hurt.”

“Wait,” Nathan cuts her off. “Are you saying…?”

“I can’t get pregnant, Nathan.” Emily confesses and cries copiously. “I’m so sorry I never told you. I was afraid that you’d leave me over it, but I know how important bloodline is to your family. I noticed you have been hinting at children after we’re married. If you want to call off the wedding, I totally get it.”

The blond smiled placidly, digesting the news. “Emily, do you know what my dad said when I told him we were engaged? He said for me to do what makes me happy and worry about the rest later.

“You make me happy, Emily. So let’s get married today and worry about children and pregnancy and annoying Sterling aunts later.”

The redhead embraced him and kissed him hard, until them both were breathless and had their faces smeared by the lipstick. “I love you so, so much. And I swear I’ll be the best wife on Earth for you.”

About half an hour later, Nathan stood next to his mother on the altar as the string quartet played. First, enters his dad and Queenie, arm-in-arm. Then, the three bridesmaids: Abigail, Kaitlyn and Madison.

Nathan had no groomsmen, as his closest friends, if they can be called as such, were currently serving time for the rape of a dozen girls of all ages. He didn’t feel comfortable asking other acquaintances or relatives, and Emily didn’t want for him to feel obligated to ask any of her friends. A small blessing, as he held little but contempt for a NFL dunderhead, a faux-talented YA writer and Mr. Dean’s List.

Finally, the bride appeared through the flower arch, on the other end of the long aisle. She was beaming like the Sun that shone blessings over them that morning.

There was not a single reasonable observer that thought this wasn’t a happy bride.

Hours later, as the reception dwindled, but yet shortly before the newlyweds departed for their European honeymoon, Nathan was looking for Emily, who had slipped away from the celebrations some time earlier.

Following the indicative of the caterers, he was crossing the kitchens when he finally saw the bouffant white dress standing on the service door. Before he could call her name, though, he saw she was hugging someone.

A very pregnant Rebecca Davenport.

And, then, it all made sense.

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An Opera on Separation - Masterlist

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[thinktosee]

WHO ARE WE?

Image courtesy Asiaone.com

A. OPENER

“Slavery! Why, no, we’re against it! If we are forced to have it in the home or in factories, fine, that’s the normal run of things, but boasting about it, is going too far.”

-  From Nobel Prize recipient, Albert Camus’ 1956 novel, “The Fall”, which was recently featured in this memorial blog.

B. INTRODUCTION

This post is inspired by a parent of a dear friend of David’s. Recently she, a loving and thoughtful human being, shared with me, alarming news reports about the appalling living conditions in which the construction workers, most of whom are migrants from the Indian sub-continent, have had to bear in the wealthy and globalized city of Singapore. Admittedly, my knowledge of their plight prior to this was limited to tangential observations of these hard-working and disciplined folks slogging in the equatorial heat - paving roads, digging tunnels, building our majestic skyscrapers, and sacrificing their youth and good health in the process. And all for a pittance. 

There are over 284,000 construction workers and 255,800 foreign domestic workers or helpers in Singapore, according to the city’s administrators. (1)  A renowned academic research institution stated that “the average construction worker’s salary may be declared as S$1,200 but in reality, it is closer to as little as S$18 (US$12.60) a day, as their employers make deductions to pay for levies and housing. To get more overtime pay, most of them also work 12-hour days with only one or two days off a month.” (2)

A notion which should be clarified at this point is that these folks are not immigrants, as in the Western-derived sense. Instead, they are contract labour, legally trafficked to the city at great personal expense to them, by licensed agents, from among the least economically-empowered societies in the region. Their contracts in general are for two years or so. Following the expiration of the term, the contract is either renewed for another two years or if not, the worker is repatriated. A Singaporean citizenship is not generally offered to them. Compare this to Europe, Australia and the USA where the foreign worker is an immigrant. He or she is eligible for citizenship and the privileges which accrue from that, in due course. 

C. THE ROOTS OF THE PROBLEM

Image courtesy Shutterstock.com

Singapore was a creation of the British upper class. In colonial times, immigration mainly from China, British India and Dutch Indonesia was encouraged to support the large colonial plantations, growing transportation networks and other infrastructural needs in Malaya, of which Singapore was administratively a part of. A majority of these early immigrants were refugees or coolies displaced from wars and famines in their respective societies. Most Singaporeans today may trace our descendants, with justifiable pride, to these early settlers.

Labour policy in post-independence Singapore, especially from the late 1960s, somewhere between a budding democracy and the birth of a dictatorship, rescinded the colonial immigration practice, and conceived instead, a temporary or contractual non-immigrant, low wage, labour force from the region. This policy continues to this day. In the same period, immigrants with a professional background, and those of substantial means, were encouraged to take up residence and citizenship in Singapore. While this was justified at a national level toward economic gain and social cohesion, it however had an unintended, yet damaging effect of severing the egalitarian values embedded then among a settler population, particularly as the city progressed to a latent technocracy, and first world economic status. Once a worker is disenfranchised or denied a path to equal rights or to citizenship and its accompanying privileges, assimilation then is clearly no longer a favoured approach by the state. A whole new identity is thereon manufactured  – one which is physically, socially and emotionally divorced from the general population - a new working and disenfranchised class which for all intents and purposes, is ripe for wholesale exploitation, without any regard to its moral implications. I am one of those and regretfully, who had failed, as a citizen and human being, to speak out against this wanton abuse, until now. And to think that my grandparents emigrated from India as penniless settlers, once upon a time. 

D. COVID-19 PANDEMIC AND THE REVELATIONS OF THE WORKERS’ LIVING CONDITIONS

Image courtesy Edgar Su/Reuters/The Guardian

The on-going pandemic and media attention have made the public more aware of the appalling extent to the living arrangements of the migrant construction workers in Singapore. The following from the UK’s Guardian news media may be enlightening : “In recent weeks, as the coronavirus has ripped through the facilities, their unsanitary and overcrowded conditions have quickly become the subject of international attention. Singapore, recently lauded for its gold-standard approach to testing and tracing, now demonstrates both the dangers of neglecting marginalised communities, and the vulnerability of nations to a second wave of infections.” (3)

I recall an instance several months ago on a bright Sunday afternoon, whilst I drove through an old and dilapidated industrial estate on the island. There were thousands of workers, clearly on their time off, laying about, socializing and relaxing on the patchy fields, and outside the nearby ageing structures, which now were their dormitories. The thought of South Africa’s apartheid-era Bantustan, did cross my mind then, and starkly. (4)

With the onset of the pandemic, it was revealed that an extremely large and worrisome number of infections were attributed to the construction workers, many of whom were crammed in unhygienic dormitories featuring 15-20 individuals per room. I surmise this had been the standard for a very long time, which incidentally, was perhaps similar to the living arrangements of our forebears when they settled in Singapore long ago. A related question follows : Have we really progressed since?

Also of heightened concern, is the fact the dormitories are in general, operated by exchange-listed corporations. In an instance where I had the opportunity to explore online, I discovered, much to my consternation, that the total number of beds, and not rooms, appears to be one standard of measurement of the wealth or success of the corporation. It would be nice if they included rooms instead, the same way hotels do. And I would be doubly pleased if the corporation could kindly amend the legal status of the dormitory to a cooperative instead, where everyone, that is, the owners and tenants, may share in the profits. A partnership as this should be among the gold standard to aim for.

The large number of covid-19 cases in the workers’ dormitories is an unwanted, yet well-deserved reflection of our inhumane labour laws and practices. What have we done to these good folks who after all, are here to help us to make this a better nation? What have they done to deserve our hostility and ingratitude? Is this how our forebears, most of whom were penniless immigrants, would have wanted? Who are we? Aren’t we the spoilt and ungrateful brats!

E. RECOMMENDATIONS FOR A COMPASSIONATE SINGAPORE

Images courtesy Pinterest

It is clear our labour laws and practices have to evolve to justly reflect a first world culture and standard. To properly reflect who we are or aspire to be. The few prescriptions here are certainly not exhaustive, but should hopefully help point the way :

1. Universal legal minimum wage for everyone, regardless of citizenship status. There has to be public recognition that the low or slave-wage earners are in reality, subsidizing everyone else, especially the wealthiest.

2. Offer permanent residency and citizenship to workers who wish to stay, work and assimilate. Exclusionary practices are damaging to society. Diversity is a strength and not a liability.

3. Include the workers’ opinions and participation in every decision regarding their living conditions. Most importantly, assimilate them to society. This will be most fruitful for the nation.

4. Corporate dormitory owners and managers to share the profits with the workers. It is due to the absence of universal rights for the workers, including robust and independent workers’ unions, that profit-sharing and other worker welfare-related and sensible actions were regrettably never contemplated.

5. Singapore to accede to all related international conventions on labour rights. (5)

6. Singapore to accede to all international conventions on human rights, including the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) of 1948. (6)

7. Legislate against discrimination, in any form.

8. Include the foreign construction and domestic workers in the covid-19 relief funds which were offered to citizens recently. (7) We should no longer discriminate henceforth, as a matter of pubic policy and practice.

9. Create a fund for workers from the monthly levy which the state imposes on the employer for each worker. This levy, totalling billions of dollars, has been one of the most exploitative features of Singapore’s labour practices. It is a tax by the state for which the worker does not receive anything in return and hence does not materially benefit. He/she is by present appearance, a traded commodity.

10. For every edifice or structure which the workers helped to build, please do lay a plaque at the front entrance, listing their names and country of origin. This will of necessity, enhance their pride and dignity, as it will surely do to ours too. Perhaps someday, their descendants may view the plaque and appreciate the gesture, as I am sure, my descendants will too.

For now, we should reflect on our actions or lack of, which at present, have tragically and unacceptably imperilled the health and safety of these noble human beings. We have a good deal to answer for.  

F. CONCLUSION  - NO GOING BACK

Image courtesy Pinterest

To be a world class city, we must go beyond appearances. Our standards of labour practices and human rights must evolve to reflect the highest values of humanity. We are a long way from these, however. Equalitarian and egalitarian concepts are noble features for a stable, healthy and prosperous society. We must re-discover this long-lost path which our forebears worked so hard to lay. There are more than half a million low-wage, migrant workers in Singapore who are toiling round the clock, under very difficult situations, to embed the foundation for a better life for their families back home. Let us all help to see to it that they stay healthy and that they do prosper as our forebears did, and as we have since. I like to close with something which my friend, Rick lovingly shared recently in a post. He eloquently defines the essence of a great society :

“It is probably wiser to judge the health and welfare of a society by looking at its poorest, not its richest.”

-         Rick Cole https://thinktosee.tumblr.com/post/614807462821888000/stories-amidst-the-pandemic-the-coles

In the Spirit of David Cornelius Singh

Sources/References

1. https://www.mom.gov.sg/documents-and-publications/foreign-workforce-numbers

2. https://lkyspp.nus.edu.sg/gia/article/foreign-domestic-workers

3. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/23/singapore-million-migrant-workers-suffer-as-covid-19-surges-back

4. https://www.britannica.com/topic/Bantustan

5. https://www.ilo.org/dyn/normlex/en/f?p=NORMLEXPUB:11210:0::NO::P11210_COUNTRY_ID:103163

6. https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/

7. https://www.gov.sg/article/financial-support-to-help-singaporeans-affected-by-covid-19

[obvious-labyrinth-blog]

Part 3: Trump’s Other Wall

Trump has been president for less than a month so we don’t have quite the same amount of information to go on as we did with Bush and Obama. Because his presidency is in its infancy, there isn’t much to look at besides his cabinet (as far as this series is concerned), but that’s okay because the entire point of this 3 part series (part 1, part 2a, part 2b) has been to eventually lead up to this moment! Now we have the tools to understand what’s happening in the Senate and the historical context of the Bush Administration and the Obama Administration, which means we’re ready to look at present-day events to see if Trump really is facing “unpresidented” obstruction.

The Claims:

“But the most notable difference already has taken place: it is once again patriotic to obstruct the workings of government! Parliamentarians unite!” - op-ed in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

“Democratic senators plan to aggressively target eight of Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees in the coming weeks and are pushing to stretch their confirmation votes into March — an unprecedented break with Senate tradition.” - Washington Post

“Senate Democrats Obstruct President Trump’s Nominees” - (terrifyingly) The White House

Good Things Come to Those Who Wait?

There is one thing that is actually true - it is taking Trump longer than usual to assemble his cabinet, for a newly elected president [1, 2]. Currently, it’s taking an average of 16 days for his nominees to move from their committee meetings to the Senate floor, which is indeed longer than the 7 days it took for Bush’s first cabinet or the 11 days it took for Obama’s first cabinet [1].

But there are some things that are different about Trump and his cabinet nominees that neither Bush nor Obama faced:

1) Did He Really Win?

Trump didn’t win the popular vote - he only received 45.96% of the votes, compared to Clinton’s 48% [3, 4]. He did win the Electoral College, but why the Electoral College is (considered by some to be) an antiquated hold-over of a bygone era is a post for another time [3, 4].

There has been one other president in recent history that has won via the Electoral College but lost the popular vote: George W. Bush; he received 47.87% of the votes, while Gore received 48.38% [3]. There have only been 5 presidents in the history of the United States that lost the popular vote, including Bush and Trump [3].

Bush lost the popular vote by a margin of 0.51% and Trump lost by a margin of 2.04%, which doesn’t seem like a huge deal but that small percentage represents millions of people [3, 4].

2) The Apprentice Has a Higher Approval Rating Than the President*

*I have never watched the Apprentice in my life and I have no idea if this is factual

Trump has the lowest approval rating for a new president since at least Eisenhower [5]. Bush, even after not winning the popular vote, held an approval rating of 59% in February 2001, while Obama’s initial approval rating was 64%. Trump has hovered in the 40s, with an average of 44% [5].

I’m not a pollster or avid fan of polling to begin with (you can ask my friends and they will happily tell you that I vocally declare my dislike for polls pretty much every time they are mentioned), but there is evidence that approval ratings do matter for presidents and legislative success [6, 7].

3) The Clumsy Cabinet

I won’t mince words here: Trump’s cabinet nominees are almost universally unqualified for the positions they have been tapped for. If you’ve read the news or been on any social media site since Trump’s inauguration, you have likely heard that his cabinet is full of billionaires that might have business conflicts, people that have minimal government experience and people that don’t have the expertise necessary to run the department they’ve been nominated for but that’s not what I’m going to talk about because many of those things can apparently be contested regardless of how much evidence one presents.

Instead, I’ll put forth that many of his cabinet nominees are unqualified simply because they, their businesses, or their statements stand in direct opposition to the goals of the department they are hopeful to direct.

Environmental Protection Agency, mission statement: “to protect human health and the environment.”

Scott Pruitt, EPA Administrator (awaiting Senate floor) • The EPA accomplishes their mission by developing and enforcing regulations, giving grants, studying environmental issues, and educating people about the environment [8]. Scott Pruitt, Trump’s nominee to head the EPA and current Attorney General in Oklahoma, has sued the EPA 14 times [9, 10, 11]. Many of these lawsuits are being fought over perceived overreach by the EPA, with the complainants believing that the EPA has acted outside of its authority [10, 12]. Also, many of the complainants in these lawsuits are companies that have donated to Pruitt directly and would be forced to make potentially costly changes to waste disposal methods or renovations to facilities if EPA regulations were enforced [9, 10, 13]. When asked, Pruitt has not explicitly stated that he would recuse himself from any currently pending litigation, even if appointed as head of the EPA, instead saying he would follow the recommendations of his ethics committee [11]. Pruitt, while not an out-and-out climate change denier, has also said that “the degree and extent of human impact and what should be done about [climate change] are subject to continuing debate and dialogue” [10, 11, 12]. Addressing and reducing the effects of climate change are one of the EPA’s primary goals [31].

Department of Education, mission statement: “to promote student achievement and preparation for global competitiveness by fostering educational excellence and ensuring equal access.”

Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education (has been confirmed) • Betsy DeVos, Education Secretary confirmee, is a well-established champion of tax credits for parents to send their children to private/religious schools and charter schools, publicly-funded but privately-operated schools that can make impactful changes in communities, but can also lack oversight, decrease performance and drain funding from already struggling districts, but she hasn’t been a vocal advocate for public education [14, 15]. She was asked during her committee hearing if she could commit to not working to privatize public schools or cutting public education funding and she refused to give the requested yes or no answer, providing a vague non-answer instead [14]. She has also stated that she would support Trump if he were to repeal the Gun-Free School Zones Act and she has made statements that it should up to individual states how they choose to comply with the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), a federal law (which isn’t, you know, how that works)[14]. While it may be important for parents to have access to choices regarding their child’s education, an Education Secretary that doesn’t seem interested in advocating for public education as strongly as she has lobbied for privatized education is likely at odds with department goals [14, 15, 16].

Department of Labor, mission statement: “To foster, promote, and develop the welfare of the wage earners, job seekers, and retirees of the United States; improve working conditions; advance opportunities for profitable employment; and assure work-related benefits and rights.”

Andy Puzder, Secretary of Labor nominee (awaiting committee meeting) • Andy Puzder, CEO of CKE Restaurants (Carl’s Jr. and Hardees) and Secretary of Labor nominee, is critical of minimum wage increases and has a history of opposition to overtime rules and paid-leave policies, as well [9, 17, 19]. He is supportive of increased automation in the fast food industry, which is frequently cited as a threat to actual humans in the labor force [17, 18]. CKE has been the target of lawsuits alleging underpayment and has had to make back payments to employees [17, 19, 20]. Puzder has a history of undermining or explicitly working against the core values of the Labor Department, especially “promot[ing]... the welfare of the wage earner”,”improv[ing] working conditions,” and “assur[ing] work-related benefits and rights” [9, 17, 20, 21].

Department of State, mission statement: “The Department's mission is to shape and sustain a peaceful, prosperous, just, and democratic world and foster conditions for stability and progress for the benefit of the American people and people everywhere. This mission is shared with the USAID, ensuring we have a common path forward in partnership as we invest in the shared security and prosperity that will ultimately better prepare us for the challenges of tomorrow.”

Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State (has been confirmed) • Tillerson, confirmed Secretary of State, has a history of being critical of US sanctions against Russia when they stood in the way of deals brokered between Russia and the company he was CEO of before becoming Secretary of State - ExxonMobil [9, 22]. Tillerson also has an “unusually copacetic relationship with Vladimir Putin” [9]. And yes, I do mean the same Russia that is under investigation for possibly interfering in our election. The same Russia accused of war crimes in Syria by the UN. It may be difficult to tell from the mission statement alone, but the State Department oversees the international relations of the United States and also represents the United States at the UN [24]. To that end, I also mean the same Russia that is making the situation in Syria worse, resulting in a flood of Syrian refugees seeking asylum - indeed the same Syrian refugees the State Department has been trying to help (Trump’s Travel Ban notwithstanding)[9, 23, 25].

Other Nominees • Ben Carson, Department of Housing and Urban Development nominee, has had to walk back from statements he has made in the past regarding public assistance programs and fair housing initiatives, statements that were at odds with one of HUD’s primary goals - to provide quality rental homes and oversee public housing assistance programs [26, 27, 28]. 

And I realize that this one won’t win me any favors from Trump supporters or critics of the ACA, but Tom Price, Secretary of Health and Human Services nominees, has been a vocal opponent of the Affordable Care Act [9, 29]. HHS’s mission statement is “to enhance and protect the health and well-being of all Americans” and I would argue that stripping the access to health insurance that millions of Americans have through the Affordable Care Act is directly at odds with that mission statement (but if you’re not sold by that argument (I don’t blame you, but I had to try) his sweetheart deals may give you pause)[9, 29, 30]. 

And my personal favorite, Rick Perry, Department of Energy nominee, once advocated for the very same department he has now been tapped to lead to be eliminated (or he would have, if he could have remembered it)[32].

4) It’s the Principle of the Thing

Even if most of Trump’s cabinet members were not directly opposed to the goals of the departments they may one day one run, there have still been huge ethical hurdles for some candidates… mostly that they had hearings scheduled before the OGE had finished their ethics investigations [33, 34, 35]. The Office of Government Ethics is responsible for the investigations that prevent and resolve conflicts of interest, and with so many of Trump’s nominees being executives and philanthropists-cum-lobbyists, there are quite a lot of conflicts of interest, meaning an ethics investigation is highly important [33, 36].

The Unprecedented Obstruction?

As we’ve looked at with both the Bush and Obama administrations, maybe Senate Democrat’s BAD! obstruction isn’t actually all that novel. And maybe the obstruction is warranted.

Trump has a historically low approval rating and millions of people contest his win of the presidency and those millions of people are upset, which means that Democratic and Republican senators alike are receiving calls, letters, and faxes at an exhausting rate, asking them to either hold these unqualified nominees to task (or, for Republicans, at least reconsider casting their vote in favor) [38, 39, 40]. The boycotting and delaying of committee hearings has been done before, too - by Republicans. The debates and extended time on the floor has been a tactic used by both parties in recent presidencies, as previous posts have well covered. And Trump has a long way to go before he hits the average number of days it took to confirm Obama’s second cabinet (34 days)(and Obama’s approval ratings during the beginning of his second term are much closer to Trump’s approval ratings now)[1, 41].

Democratic senators throwing a wrench into the system may actually just be them doing their job. And Republican Senators calling for Senate Dems to ease up and just let cabinet nominees through may not actually be doing their’s, especially if there are ethical concerns or conflicts of interest that still need to be divested.

Oh, and those two fun vocabulary words from my last post?

kleptocracy (n, klep·toc·ra·cy) - government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed

kakistocracy (n, kak·is·toc·ra·cy) - government by the worst people

Navigation: Part 1 - Part 2a - Part 2b - Part 3 (this!)

[1] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Yx1i6xEgAZCKg2-moEnqv5lO_9gKg3XqnVcminrll6E/edit#gid=0

[2] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/20/donald-trump-will-start-his-presidency-with-the-smallest-confirmed-cabinet-in-decades/?utm_term=.a9b9d5fa2c25

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_elections_in_which_the_winner_lost_the_popular_vote

[4] http://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president

[5] http://www.gallup.com/poll/203198/presidential-approval-ratings-donald-trump.aspx

[6] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trump-won-despite-being-unpopular-so-can-he-govern-that-way/

[7] https://hbr.org/2017/02/trumps-low-approval-numbers-matter-heres-why

[8] https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/our-mission-and-what-we-do

[9] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2017/01/trumps-appointees-conflicts-of-interest-a-crib-sheet/512711/

[10] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2016/12/07/trump-names-scott-pruitt-oklahoma-attorney-general-suing-epa-on-climate-change-to-head-the-epa/?utm_term=.a9d177ee3402

[11] http://www.npr.org/2017/01/18/510472412/epa-nominee-scott-pruitt-acknowledges-existence-of-climate-change

[12] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/dec/07/trump-scott-pruitt-environmental-protection-agency

[13] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/14/us/scott-pruitt-trump-epa-pick.html?_r=1&mtrref=www.theatlantic.com&gwh=9EA39F71D3681CE53B9387328E4BB687&gwt=pay

[14] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/betsy-devos-education-public-schools-233720

[15] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/23/us/politics/betsy-devos-trumps-education-pick-has-steered-money-from-public-schools.html

[16] https://www2.ed.gov/about/landing.jhtml

[17] https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/08/us/politics/andrew-puzder-labor-secretary-trump.html

[18] http://www.businessinsider.com/self-service-kiosks-are-replacing-workers-2016-5

[19] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/andrew-puzder-donald-trumps-labor-secretary-pick/

[20] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/president-trumps-missing-labor-secretary/515655/

[21] https://www.dol.gov/general/aboutdol/mission

[22] http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2017/jan/12/rex-tillerson/tillerson-misleads-russian-sanctions-opposition/

[23] https://www.state.gov/s/d/rm/index.htm#mission

[24] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_State

[25] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/11856922/Russia-refuses-to-help-Syrian-refugees.html

[26] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/12/us/politics/ben-carsons-hud-housing-nominee-hearing.html

[27] http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-carson-hud-20170112-story.html

[28] https://portal.hud.gov/hudportal/HUD?src=/about/mission

[29] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/tom-price-health-secretary-confirmation-hearing-233796

[30] https://www.hhs.gov/about/

[31] https://www.epa.gov/climatechange/what-epa-doing-about-climate-change

[32] http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-trump-perry-20161213-story.html

[33] https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/ethics-official-warns-against-confirmations-before-reviews-are-complete/2017/01/07/e85a97ee-d348-11e6-9cb0-54ab630851e8_story.html?utm_term=.d2ad4925e7d6

[34] https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/08/trump-cabinet-nominees-ethics-review-conflict-of-interest

[35] http://thehill.com/homenews/senate/313175-ethics-office-accuses-gop-of-rushing-trump-cabinet-confirmations

[36] https://www.oge.gov/web/oge.nsf/Mission%20and%20Responsibilities

[37] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/10/us/politics/republicans-block-vote-on-nominee-to-lead-epa.html

[38] http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/betsy-devos-confirmation-senate-phone-lines-234216

[39] https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/02/is-betsy-devos-going-down/515346/

[40] https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/more-than-1100-law-school-professors-nationwide-oppose-sessionss-nomination-as-attorney-general/2017/01/03/dbf55750-d1cc-11e6-a783-cd3fa950f2fd_story.html?utm_term=.3c4f7dae6502

[41] http://www.gallup.com/poll/116479/barack-obama-presidential-job-approval.aspx

[socialjusticeartshare]

The Trump administration is turning away unaccompanied children at the border because of coronavirus

EL PASO, Texas – Miguel sat in a Phoenix hotel room for the third night in a row, taking meals alone, watching TV in a language he longed to understand.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the Trump administration has expelled 2,175 unaccompanied minors since March, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The expulsions include at least one 10-year-old boy who was returned to his native Guatemala, according to records reviewed by the El Paso Times of the USA TODAY Network. 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention unveiled unprecedented protocol March 20 ordering border agents to expel unlawful immigrants, to include minors traveling alone and asylum seekers. The order, which is open-ended, prohibits the Border Patrol from holding groups of people together in an effort to slow the COVID-19 outbreak.

Some 69 unaccompanied migrant children, of 1,250 in the government’s care at the end of May, had tested positive for coronavirus. All have since been removed from medical isolation, according to the Office of Refugee Resettlement.

Arizona's COVID-19 spread is 'alarming':Action is needed, experts warn

Immigrant advocates say the administration is unlawfully using a public health crisis to end protections for young migrants when it has a legal obligation and a shelter network prepared to receive them. 

"The CDC order is just being used to prevent unaccompanied children from coming into the country," said Mark Greenberg, a senior fellow with the non-partisan Migration Policy Institute who led the agency responsible for the welfare of children during the Obama administration. 

The policy skirts an anti-trafficking law enacted by Congress in 2000, routinely reauthorized, that protects minors under the age of 18 who cross the border without a parent or legal guardian. Under the rule, children are entitled to make an immigration claim and be taken into the care of the Office of Refugee Resettlement before they are transferred to a sponsor in the U.S., usually a parent or close family member.

The effort to send unaccompanied minors back to their home countries comes a year after the Trump administration faced widespread criticism over the filthy, overcrowded conditions in which children were held in Border Patrol cells in Texas last summer. A record 76,000 unaccompanied children arrived at the U.S. border last year, overwhelming the system designed to care for them. 

In response to the uproar, the U.S. government spent the past 10 months adding more beds to its $1.3 billion program for vulnerable migrant youth. Now those shelters ― including four in El Paso, plus one under construction ― are mostly empty, with some 12,000 open beds nationwide as the U.S. turns children away.

U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, called the expulsions of minors “disturbing.”

"It’s really a reflection of a new way of looking at children," she said. "Unfortunately, it is yet another example of the Trump administration seeking to erode any avenue of due process for immigrants, and it’s especially alarming because it’s an erosion of protections for children."

A child by any other name

Under the protocol, Border Patrol no longer automatically labels minors traveling alone as “unaccompanied alien children” except in narrow circumstances. Instead, the underage migrants are being called “single minors.”

But they are the same kids. 

The new designation is more than semantics, advocates say: It allows the government to avoid triggering the anti-trafficking law that protects vulnerable people, especially children. 

“We are trying to treat everyone the same based on health, because the virus knows no ages,” said CBP spokesman Matthew Dyman.

'We should be prepared':After the crisis of migrant children at the Texas border, what's next?

Immigrant advocates, however, say they worry about the consequences of expelling minors and question the government’s rationale, given that its shelter network is equipped with the resources to care for children, including isolating those who might have an infectious disease.

In an open letter in May, the directors of 15 organizations that shelter migrant children before they are transferred to a sponsor implored the Department of Homeland Security and CDC to treat the minors as required by law. 

The shelters are compensated by the refugee agency regardless of how many children are in their care or their length of stay. Officials who work at these organizations said it is simply wrong to send children back to dangerous situations, where many face threats of gang violence, abuse in their homes or trafficking. 

"Unaccompanied children who are denied protection are at risk for future victimization and forms of harm that no child deserves," the directors said.

Ali Noorani, executive director of the non-partisan National Immigration Forum based in Washington, D.C., expressed similar concern.

“While the virus may not know the difference between a kid and an adult, a human smuggler or a trafficker certainly knows the difference,” he said. "And we are deporting these kids into the hands of some potentially very dangerous people."

CBP declined to say how many of the 2,175 children targeted for expulsion from March 21 to June 2 are teenagers and how many are of "tender age" — under 12. A U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman confirmed that ICE has returned tender-age minors “on rare occasions.”

Miguel left home on May 5, fleeing deep poverty and a threat on his life. 

His mother had died three years ago. He lived in a small aldea, or village, near the Honduran border with a woman, Lucía — a pseudonym to protect him. He called her tía, although she was a distant relation in their indigenous community. 

Miguel didn't want to talk about the threat with his aunt, but she said she knew something was wrong.

"He was worried, scared," she said. "I asked him what happened. He said some men had stopped him on the road. He told me, 'I don't want to die. If I stay, I'm going to die.'"

He left a prized possession hung on the wall of his room: a necklace with a silver guitar pendant engraved with a cross and the Lord's prayer. He carried nothing with him but a phone and the clothes on his back.

Choosing to protect, or expel

The Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services, would normally have taken Miguel into the care of one of its 195 permanent, state-licensed shelters, where caseworkers would search for a parent or suitable sponsor in the U.S.

Nearly 3,200 children arrived alone at the Southwest border in March, according to CBP. Of those, Border Patrol deemed 2,871 "unaccompanied alien children" under Title 8 and entrusted them to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. Another 315 were dubbed "single minors" under authority granted by the CDC drawn from the Title 42 public health law, and returned to their home countries.

By April, a majority of children arriving alone at the U.S. border — 600 — were processed as "single minors." Just 166 were labeled "unaccompanied alien children" and turned over to the refugee agency, CBP said.

In May through June 2, the number of monthly expulsions doubled. Border Patrol deemed another 1,260 children as "single minors" to be returned, according to CBP.

Overall, arrivals of unaccompanied minors are well below year-ago levels, when more than 11,000 children crossed the border in May 2019 alone.

CBP's Dyman declined to explain how border agents determine which children should be chosen for protection and which should be expelled.

"I can’t get too specific because it’s law enforcement sensitive," Dyman said. "We don’t want smugglers to explain to people under the age of 18 how to avoid Title 42 expulsion.

"It’s not about being cold to the children," he added. "We’ve got this situation on our hands and we’re trying to keep it from spreading."

In its order, the CDC requires that DHS keep migrants out of "congregate settings," such as border holding cells, where the contagion could be easily transmitted.

"There is a serious danger of the introduction of COVID-19 into the land (ports of entry) and Border Patrol stations at or near the United States’ borders with Canada and Mexico," the CDC said. 

The CDC order states that immigrants arriving by land through Canada or Mexico without proper documents “must be returned to the country from which they entered the United States, to their country of origin, or to another appropriate location.”

Under a longstanding court settlement agreement known as “Flores,” the government has argued that the Office of Refugee Resettlement is set up to provide adequate care for migrant children in its centers, including those who might be sick, said Greenberg, the former Obama official.

"If that’s right, then the only time that arriving children would be in the potentially risky settings described in the (CDC) order is when they’re at CBP awaiting the determination of unaccompanied child status and transportation to ORR," he said. "So, if the federal government wanted to allow unaccompanied children to enter the country, the agencies could have worked together to figure out the fastest way to get the children to ORR shelters.

"But, there’s no evidence that they tried to do that or explored this at all," he said.

New shelters, 12,000 empty beds

Off a rural highway that runs through El Paso's eastern outskirts, a cluster of pastel-painted cottages is slowly rising in the clay-orange desert.

The cluster of homes, called “Trail House,” will be a 512-bed shelter for unaccompanied migrant youth: a partial answer to the crisis that last year left hundreds of migrant children in Border Patrol cells ill-equipped to shelter them.

In summer 2019, Office of Refugee Resettlement leadership determined that boosting capacity in its network of state-licensed, permanent shelters was the best way to prevent that dangerous bottleneck from happening again. Congress agreed and provided an extra $2.9 billion in emergency funding, in part to cover the costs of building new shelters.

“Migration trends are very difficult, if not impossible to predict," said Jonathan Hayes, then the refugee agency director, in an interview with the El Paso Times.

"Anyone who tells you they’ve got it all figured out is not being honest with you, because they really don’t," he said. "So that’s why we have a mission, a legal mandate and a moral mandate, to be prepared.”

The goal was 3,000 additional beds, to bring total capacity nationwide to roughly 16,000 beds. The build-out is now on hold because of the pandemic.

At the peak of last year’s immigration flows in May 2019, CBP apprehended 11,475 unaccompanied minors and the Office of Refugee Resettlement had more than 13,000 minors in its care.

Capacity grew so tight in the refugee agency’s system that it had difficulty placing children as quickly as they were arriving. Attorneys found children in Texas Border Patrol holding stations far beyond the 72-hour maximum that is DHS' own policy, sleeping on floors, wearing soiled clothing. The crisis spurred congressional hearings. 

The Stuff of Nightmares:Inside the migrant detention center in Clint, Texas

Hayes called for 20,000 permanent, state-licensed beds and got funding for about half of what he asked for..

Hayes said he hoped that increasing flexibility in the government’s network of permanent shelters would also allow the government to avoid the pitfalls of the influx shelters like the one at Homestead, Florida, or, previously, at Tornillo outside El Paso. Child advocates raised concerns about those influx shelters, which were stood up quickly, without state licensing and the checks that oversight provides.

But any facility under the purview of HHS, a welfare agency, would be better than leaving children in the care of DHS, a law enforcement agency, he said. 

As of March, Hayes is no longer overseeing the refugee agency. The Trump administration reassigned him to help with the coronavirus pandemic. 

Returned on ICE Air

For Miguel, the final flight came on a Friday.

He and 21 other minors boarded an ICE Air plane in Phoenix in late May, destined for Guatemala City. They were all quiet, Miguel said; if they were as anxious as he was about what would happen next, they didn't show it.

In a statement, ICE confirmed that the agency is returning minors on ICE Air flights to Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Ecuador, sometimes alongside adult deportees. Before the Title 42 protocol, ICE never handled unaccompanied youth, according to an ICE spokeswoman.

"During transport, minors will be separated from unrelated adults at all times and seated near officers and under their close supervision," El Paso ICE spokeswoman Leticia Zamarripa said in a statement.

CDC Director Robert Redfield on May 21 said the order will remain in effect until he determines that COVID-19 "has ceased to be a serious danger to the public health."

He called for a review every 30 days but said the public health risks "are unlikely to abate in the coming months."

Last week, Lucía learned that Miguel was being brought from Guatemala City to Chiquimula, a city about five hours from their village.

She made the journey to meet him and brought him home. Despite the hardship she knew he would face, and her concerns about the people who had threatened him, she was happy to have him back.

"I was worried sick,” she said. “He didn't have anyone to take care of him."

But what worried Miguel most was a debt of more than 20,000 quetzales, or $2,500, that he racked up to pay for his failed trip. The lender, an acquaintance, would have to be paid one way or another. 

The morning they got home, Lucía put him to work repairing the community's corn mill. He oiled the gears, scrubbed the grease off his hands, then rested under a canopy of green forest. He had no idea what would come next. He pulled at his eyebrow as he talked, fretting.

"It's so difficult here," he said. "I don't know what's going to happen."

What brought him some comfort was the silver necklace hanging on the wall, waiting for him with a guitar and a prayer.

Article Source

[iasshikshalove]

Daily Current Affairs for 2019-08-12

GS-2 Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2019 Why in news? The Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Bill, 2019, which was introduced in the Lok Sabha on July 19, was passed by a voice vote on August 5. A contentious provision that criminalised begging by transgender people has been removed from the Bill. Who is a transgender person?  The Bill defines a transgender as a person whose gender assigned at birth does not match with his/her perceived gender.  This includes trans-men, trans-women, “(whether or not such person has undergone Sex Reassignment Surgery or hormone therapy or laser therapy or such other therapy), person with intersex variations, genderqueer and person having such socio-cultural identities as kinner, hijra, aravani and jogta”. What are the provisions?  The Bill states that a transgender person shall have the right to self-perceived gender identity.  It prohibits discrimination against a transgender person on grounds including denial, discontinuation or unfair treatment in educational establishments, services, employment, healthcare.  According to an analysis by PRS Legislative Research, every transgender person will have the right to be included in their household, and in case the immediate family is unable to take care of the person, he/she may be placed in a rehabilitation centre.  The government shall provide education, sports and recreational facilities for transgender people.  Provisions for separate HIV surveillance centres and sex reassignment surgeries should also be provided by the government, as per the Bill.  The Bill mentions that the “appropriate Government” will formulate transgender sensitive, nonstigmatising and non-discriminatory welfare schemes and programmes.  Additionally, the government should also take steps for the rescue, rehabilitation and protection of transgender persons. The Grievance Redressal Mechanism  The Bill states that every establishment will have to appoint a complaints officer to deal with complaints relating to the violation of any provisions. What is the Certificate of Identity?  A transgender person will have to make an application to the District Magistrate, who will issue a certificate of identity to the transgender person.  Essentially, this certificate will be proof that the person is a transgender, reflecting their gender as “transgender”.  Subsequently, the gender of the person as reflected in the certificate will be recorded in all official documents.  In case of a minor child, such an application will be made by the parent or guardian of the child.  A transgender person will be eligible for a revised certificate only if he/she undergoes surgery to change their gender. What is the National Council for Transgender Persons?  In order to exercise the provisions and functions of the Transgender Persons (Protection of Rights) Act, 2019, the Central Government will set up the National Council for Transgender Persons (NCT), on appointment.  This body will consist of the Union Minister for Social Justice (Chairperson), a Minister of State for Social Justice (Vice- Chairperson), a Secretary of the Ministry of Social Justice, and one representative each from ministries including Health, Home Affairs, and Human Resources Development.  Representatives of the NITI Aayog and the National Human Rights Commission will also be included, along with five members from the transgender community and five experts from nongovernmental organisations.  This body will advise, monitor and review the policies and schemes formulated by the central government for transgender people. What constitutes offences and penalties under this Bill?  Any person who is found to be compelling a trangender person into bonded labour (barring compulsory service imposed by the government), denying right of public passage to a transgender person, evicting a transgender from his/her place of residence, causing physical, sexual, verbal, economic and emotional abuse, can be penalised with imprisonment of not less than six months, that can extend up to two years, and be also fined. PM Kisan Maan Dhan Yojana. Context: Registration opens for PM Kisan Maan Dhan Yojana. Aim: To improve the life of small and marginal farmers of the country. Salient features of the scheme:  The scheme is voluntary and contributory for farmers in the entry age group of 18 to 40 years.  A monthly pension of Rs. 3000/– will be provided to them on attaining the age of 60 years.  The farmers will have to make a monthly contribution of Rs.55 to Rs.200, depending on their age of entry, in the Pension Fund till they reach the retirement date i.e. the age of 60 years.  The Central Government will also make an equal contribution of the same amount in the pension fund.  The spouse is also eligible to get a separate pension of Rs.3000/- upon making separate contributions to the Fund.  The Life Insurance Corporation of India (LIC) shall be the Pension Fund Manager and responsible for Pension pay out.  In case of death of the farmer before retirement date, the spouse may continue in the scheme by paying the remaining contributions till the remaining age of the deceased farmer.  If the spouse does not wish to continue, the total contribution made by the farmer along with interest will be paid to the spouse.  If there is no spouse, then total contribution along with interest will be paid to the nominee.  If the farmer dies after the retirement date, the spouse will receive 50% of the pension as Family Pension.  After the death of both the farmer and the spouse, the accumulated corpus shall be credited back to the Pension Fund.  The beneficiaries may opt voluntarily to exit the Scheme after a minimum period of 5 years of regular contributions.  On exit, their entire contribution shall be returned by LIC with an interest equivalent to prevailing saving bank rates.  The farmers, who are also beneficiaries of PM-Kisan Scheme, will have the option to allow their contribution debited from the benefit of that Scheme directly.  In case of default in making regular contributions, the beneficiaries are allowed to regularize the contributions by paying the outstanding dues along with prescribed interest.  Significance of the scheme:  It is expected that at least 10 crore labourers and workers in the unorganised sector will avail the benefit of the scheme within next five years making it one of the largest pension schemes of the world. Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2019 Why in news? The Surrogacy (Regulation) Bill 2019, which proposes to ban commercial surrogacy, was passed by Lok Sabha on August 5. The Bill was introduced by the Minister of Health and Family Welfare, Harsh Vardhan, in the House on July 15. What is commercial surrogacy?  Surrogacy is defined as the practice in which a woman gives birth to a child for a couple, referred to as an “intending couple”, with the intention to hand over the child to that couple.  An ‘intending couple’ are a couple who have medically been proved as infertile. Ordinarily, in surrogacy, eggs are extracted from the intending mother and after fertilisation, are implanted in the surrogate mother’s uterus.  Surrogacy can be either altruistic or commercial. In the former, no monetary considerations are involved, except medical expenses and insurance.  In the case of commercial surrogacy, the woman who gives birth to a child for the intending couple is rewarded for it in cash or kind. Who can be a surrogate mother?  Chapter I of the Bill defines a surrogate mother as, “a woman bearing a child (who is genetically related to the intending couple) through surrogacy from the implantation of the embryo in her womb…”. A married woman between the ages of 25 and 35 who has a child of her own can be a surrogate or can help in surrogacy by donating her egg.  The surrogate mother needs to be a close relative of the intending couple and can become a surrogate only once in her lifetime.  Additionally, a woman cannot become a surrogate mother by providing her own gametes (unfertilised eggs). When is surrogacy permitted?  As per the Bill, only altruistic surrogacy will be permitted in India, in cases where either or both members of the couple suffer from infertility, of which the certificate of essentiality is proof.  Additionally, a certificate of eligibility is issued to the intending couple and is proof that the couple has been married for at least five years, and are Indian citizens.  The wife must be in the age group of 23-50, and the husband in the age group of 26-55.  The intending couple should not have any surviving biological child, through adoption or through surrogacy.  An exception is made if the intending couple has a surviving child who is mentally or physically challenged, or is suffering from a fatal illness with no permanent cure. Where can surrogacy procedures be carried out?  Only surrogacy clinics registered under the Surrogacy (Regulation) Act, 2019 will be able to perform procedures related to surrogacy.  The Bill defines surrogacy procedures as “all gynaecological, obstetrical or medical procedures, techniques, tests, practices or services involving the handling of human gametes and the human embryo in surrogacy”. Who can be guilty of commercial surrogacy?  According to the Bill, if an individual is found advertising or undertaking surrogacy, exploiting the surrogate mother, selling, importing, purchasing or trading human embryos or gametes for surrogacy, conducting sex selection for surrogacy, or has abandoned, exploited or disowned a surrogate child, he/she can be liable for imprisonment of up to 10 years and a fine of up to Rs 10 lakh. Other provisions  In case abortion of a surrogate foetus is considered, only the consent of the surrogate mother is required, as per the provisions under the Medical Termination of Pregnancy Act, 1971.  The intending couple has no say in this decision. On the other hand, after being born, the child is considered to be the biological child of the intending couple. The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act Why in news? Amendments to The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act were passed by Parliament last month. The Act, which came into force in 2012, is the first comprehensive law in the country dealing specifically with sexual abuse of children. The amendments to the Act include enhancement of punishment to include death penalty for child sex abuse. Why was the POCSO Act introduced, and what is its significance?  The Act came into force on November 14, 2012, and was specifically formulated to deal with offences including child sexual abuse and child pornography.  The Act through its 46 provisions increased the scope of reporting offences against children, which were not earlier covered under the Indian Penal Code.  This included aggravated penetrative sexual assault to include punishment for abuse by a person in position of trust or authority including public servants, police, armed forces, management or staff of an educational or religious institution.  It also defined the procedure for reporting of cases, including a provision for punishment for failure to report a case or false complaint.  It provided procedures for recording of the statement of a child by the police and court, laying down that it should be done in a child-friendly manner, and by the setting up of special courts. What are the amendments passed by the Parliament?  The Act has enhanced punishment under various sections of the Act including punishment for aggravated penetrative sexual assault to be increased to include death penalty.  Other sections under which the punishment has increased includes the minimum punishment for penetrative sexual assault, which has been increased from seven years to 10 years -- and, if the child is below 16 years of age, the minimum punishment has been increased to 20 years.  The Act has also tightened the provisions to counter child pornography. While the earlier Act had punishment for storing child pornography for commercial purposes, the amendment includes punishment for possessing pornographic material in any form involving a child, even if the accused persons have failed to delete or destroy or report the same with an intention to share it.  The Act has also removed the words "communal or sectarian violence", which had punishment for a person who sexually abused a child during the course of such violence. The words have been replaced with "violence during any natural calamity or in similar situations". Why were these amendments brought?  Union Women and Child Development Minister Smriti Irani cited a report of the National Crime Records Bureau from 2016 indicating an increase in the number of cases registered under the said Act "from 44.7 per cent in 2013 over 2012, and 178.6 per cent in 2014 over 2013, and no decline in the number of cases thereafter".  She said there was a strong need to take stringent measures to deter the "rising trend of child sex abuse" in the country to "deter the perpetrators and ensure safety" for a child.  The government has argued that there was a need to make rules for prescribing a manner in which pornographic material involving a child can be deleted, destroyed or reported. What was the feedback/criticism the amendment Bill received from child rights experts?  Many have criticised the provision for death penalty that has been added to the Act. Reports by NGOs working with children, as well as the latest National Crime Records Bureau's Crime in India Report, 2016, state that over 94 per cent of the accused in cases registered under The POCSO Act, are known to the victims, including close family members.  This may deter victims, or put pressure on them to not file a complaint, given the possibility of death now.  Further, while the Act states that the cases should be heard expeditiously, the pendency rate as per the NCRB is over 89 per cent.  The delays affect the probability of conviction despite the stringent sections," a prosecutor in a Mumbai court said.  The conviction rate is less than 30 per cent under the Act.  Last month, the Supreme Court directed the setting up of special courts in each district across the country within sixty days over the alarming rise of pendency. GS-3 CPSE ETF What is CPSE ETF?  CPSE ETF, as the name suggests, is an exchange-traded fund (ETF) comprising public sector enterprises (PSEs).  The ETF was launched by the government in March 2014 to help divest its stake in select public sector undertakings through the ETF route.  The ETF is based on the Nifty CPSE index that comprises 11 PSEs such as ONGC, NTPC, Coal India, Indian Oil Corporation, REC, Power Finance Corporation, Bharat Electronics, Oil India, NBCC (India), NLC India and SJVN.  The parameters based on which companies have been made part of the index include a criteria that they have paid at least 10% dividend in the last two consecutive years. What are the benefits of CPSE ETF?  Investors get to hold stake in the best of public sector enterprises — the so-called Maharatna, Navaratna and the Miniratna — that have a strong dividend-paying track record.  Incidentally, the dividend yield of the CPSE ETF index is around 5%, higher than the other indices.  While investors get an opportunity to diversify their portfolio through a single ETF, it also has the added advantage of an upfront discount that investors get if invested at the time of the further fund offering or fresh fund offering (FFO). Also, the fund has a very low expense ratio, which, in turn, enhances the returns. How has the response to FFOs been till now?  The new fund offer (NFO) of the CPSE ETF was launched in March 2014 and since then, there have been five rounds of FFOs. The popularity of the ETF can be gauged from the fact that each of the FFOs was oversubscribed, with investors across categories bidding in huge numbers.  Till the sixth FFO in July, the government had raised ₹38,500 crore through the CPSE ETF. The sixth FFO attracted bids worth ₹40,000 crore which is five times the issue size of ₹8,000 crore.  In other words, the last tranche has attracted as much subscription as the five tranches before it put together.  This also assumes significance as the government has set a record divestment target of ₹1.05 lakh crore in the current financial year. The CPSE ETF is managed by Reliance Mutual Fund.

[paulckrueger]

How Earned Income Tax Credit Works

A few years ago, I helped a recently divorced mom prepare her first tax return on her own.

She was anxious about dealing with taxes because her ex had always handled them for her and worried that she’d owe the IRS because she didn’t make much money.

Thanks to the Earned Income Tax Credit, not only did she not owe, but this single mom ended up getting a decent-sized refund she could put toward paying her bills.

That’s the power of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Read on to find out how this valuable tax credit works, and whether you can benefit from it too.

Understanding Earned Income Tax Credit

The U.S. federal income tax system is progressive, meaning the more money you make, the higher your tax rate. But Social Security and Medicare taxes aren’t progressive. As a result, low-income people end up paying a much larger percentage of their salary towards payroll taxes than high-income taxpayers do.

To help offset this and encourage people to work, Congress created the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in 1975. Forty-five years later, this tax credit is still available and providing tax relief to low- and moderate-income workers, especially those with dependent children.

The EITC is a refundable credit, meaning it can reduce your tax liability to zero, and you’ll receive any remaining credit in the form of a tax refund.

The maximum credit depends on the number of “qualifying children” you claim on your return. The IRS has a four-part test to identify a qualifying child:

Relationship. The child must be related to you in some way. They can be your son, daughter, stepchild, eligible foster child, adopted child, grandchild, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister, stepbrother, stepsister, niece, or nephew.

Age. The child must be under age 19 or a full-time student under the age of 24 at the end of the year. If you file a joint return, the qualifying child must be younger than either you or your spouse. However, if you have a dependent that is permanently and totally disabled, the age limitation doesn’t apply.

Residency. The dependent must have lived with you in the U.S. (or with your spouse if you file a joint return) for more than half the year.

Joint Return. Normally, you can’t claim someone as a qualifying child if they file a joint return with a spouse. However, there’s an exception for when the dependent was not required to file a tax return (because they did not earn enough income) but filed a joint return solely to claim a refund of taxes withheld.

For the 2019 tax year (returns filed in 2020), the maximum EITC credit is:

$6,557 with three or more qualifying children

$5,828 with two qualifying children

$3,526 with one qualifying child

$529 with no qualifying children

How to Qualify for Earned Income Tax Credit

The EITC can deliver significant tax savings for some taxpayers, but there are a lot of complicated eligibility rules for claiming it. Pay attention to these rules, because if you try to claim the EITC when you’re not eligible, the IRS can bar you from claiming it for up to 10 years.

Rule #1: Earned income below the limit

First, to qualify for the EITC, you need to have what the IRS refers to as “earned income.” Earned income includes wages, salaries, tips, commissions, or income from self-employment or farming. People whose only income comes from Social Security, welfare, pensions, or investment returns aren’t eligible.

And since the EITC is designed to benefit people with low income, it’s only available to taxpayers whose income falls below certain limits, based on filing status and the number of qualifying children listed on the return.

For the 2019 tax year, your earned income and your adjusted gross income (Line 8b of Form 1040), must each be less than:

$50,162 ($55,952 married filing jointly) with three or more qualifying children

$46,703 ($52,493 married filing jointly) with two qualifying children

$41,094 ($46,884 married filing jointly) with one qualifying child

$15,570 ($21,370 married filing jointly) with no qualifying children

Rule #2: Must have a Social Security number

You, your spouse, and any qualifying children listed on your tax return must have a valid Social Security number (SSN). You can’t claim the EITC using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number – a number issued by the IRS to foreign nationals and other individuals who aren’t eligible for an SSN but are legally required to file a U.S. federal income tax return.

Rule #3: Not filing married filing separately

You can’t claim the EITC if you are married and file separately from your spouse. Any other filing status can qualify for the credit.

Rule #4: You must be a U.S. citizen or resident alien

You (and your spouse if married) must have been a U.S. citizen or resident alien all year, or a nonresident alien married to a U.S. citizen or resident alien and filing a joint return.

Rule #5: Limited investment income

Your investment income for the tax year must be less than $3,600. Investment income includes interest, dividends, capital gains, rents, and royalties.

Rule #6: Not claiming a foreign earned income exclusion

If you file Form 2555 to claim an exclusion of income earned in a foreign country from your gross income, you cannot claim the EITC.

Rule #7: Can’t be the qualifying child of another taxpayer

You can’t be eligible to be claimed as a dependent or qualifying child of another taxpayer and claim the EITC.

Rule #8: Additional rule for people without a qualifying child

If you don’t have a qualifying child, you (or your spouse, if married) must:

Be at least 25 years old but younger than 65 by the end of the year, and

Have resided in the U.S. for more than half the year.

There are some additional rules for members of the military, ministers, members of the clergy, people who receive disability benefits, and taxpayers impacted by disasters. You can learn more about those special EITC rules from the IRS.

If you need more help with the EITC eligibility rules, the IRS offers an EITC Assistant tool. After answering a few questions and providing some basic income information, you can find out if you’re eligible to claim the EITC, determine whether your child or children meet the tests for a qualifying child, and estimate your potential credit.

Similar Tax Credits and Deductions to Consider

Even if you don’t qualify for the Earned Income Credit, you may be able to take advantage of other tax credits and deductions to lower your tax bill. Here are a few to consider.

Child Tax Credit

If you have at least $2,500 of earned income and at least one dependent child, you may qualify for the Child Tax Credit. This credit is worth up to $2,000 for each dependent child under age 17 at the end of the tax year.

The credit phases out for taxpayers with higher incomes, but the income limits are much higher than those for the EITC. Single taxpayers with adjusted gross income (AGI) over $200,000 or married couples filing a joint return with AGI over $400,000 will see their credit reduced by 5% of their AGI. The credit phases out entirely if your AGI is over $240,000 (for single filers) or $440,000 (for married couples).

If your available Child Tax Credit exceeds your taxes owed, you can receive up to $1,400 of the balance as a refund. This refundable portion is also known as the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC).

Credit for Other Dependents

If you have a dependent that doesn’t meet the requirements to claim the Child Tax Credit, you may still be able to claim the Credit for Other Dependents. For instance, you can claim this credit for:

A child who does not have an SSN but does have a Taxpayer Identification Number

A child who is age 17-18 or age 19-24 and in school

Other older dependents, such as an elderly parent

The maximum Credit for Other Dependents is $500, and it has the same phase-out threshold as the Child Tax Credit.

Child and Dependent Care Credit

If you paid a care provider to care for a child or other dependent while you worked or actively looked for work, you might qualify for the Child and Dependent Care Credit.

The credit is worth a percentage of your allowable care expenses. You can use up to $3,000 of expenses for one dependent or $6,000 of the costs of care of two or more dependents. The percentage ranges from 20% to 35% of your expenses, depending on your income. The higher your income, the lower your percentage. However, there is no upper limit on income for claiming the credit.

To qualify, you must have paid someone to care for:

A child under age 13 at the end of the tax year whom you claim as a dependent on your return

Your spouse, if they are unable to take care of themselves and lived with you for at least half the year

 Another person claimed as a dependent on your return, if that person can’t take care of themselves and lived with you for at least half the year

These are just a few tax deductions and credits available to individuals and families in 2019. If you might qualify for one or more of these tax breaks, take time to research the rules or talk to a tax professional. Claiming them can significantly lower your tax bill or even result in a generous refund.

How Earned Income Tax Credit Works is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Surety Bond Brokers? Business https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/earned-income-tax-credit/

[samuelfields]

How Earned Income Tax Credit Works

A few years ago, I helped a recently divorced mom prepare her first tax return on her own.

She was anxious about dealing with taxes because her ex had always handled them for her and worried that she’d owe the IRS because she didn’t make much money.

Thanks to the Earned Income Tax Credit, not only did she not owe, but this single mom ended up getting a decent-sized refund she could put toward paying her bills.

That’s the power of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Read on to find out how this valuable tax credit works, and whether you can benefit from it too.

Understanding Earned Income Tax Credit

The U.S. federal income tax system is progressive, meaning the more money you make, the higher your tax rate. But Social Security and Medicare taxes aren’t progressive. As a result, low-income people end up paying a much larger percentage of their salary towards payroll taxes than high-income taxpayers do.

To help offset this and encourage people to work, Congress created the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in 1975. Forty-five years later, this tax credit is still available and providing tax relief to low- and moderate-income workers, especially those with dependent children.

The EITC is a refundable credit, meaning it can reduce your tax liability to zero, and you’ll receive any remaining credit in the form of a tax refund.

The maximum credit depends on the number of “qualifying children” you claim on your return. The IRS has a four-part test to identify a qualifying child:

Relationship. The child must be related to you in some way. They can be your son, daughter, stepchild, eligible foster child, adopted child, grandchild, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister, stepbrother, stepsister, niece, or nephew.

Age. The child must be under age 19 or a full-time student under the age of 24 at the end of the year. If you file a joint return, the qualifying child must be younger than either you or your spouse. However, if you have a dependent that is permanently and totally disabled, the age limitation doesn’t apply.

Residency. The dependent must have lived with you in the U.S. (or with your spouse if you file a joint return) for more than half the year.

Joint Return. Normally, you can’t claim someone as a qualifying child if they file a joint return with a spouse. However, there’s an exception for when the dependent was not required to file a tax return (because they did not earn enough income) but filed a joint return solely to claim a refund of taxes withheld.

For the 2019 tax year (returns filed in 2020), the maximum EITC credit is:

$6,557 with three or more qualifying children

$5,828 with two qualifying children

$3,526 with one qualifying child

$529 with no qualifying children

How to Qualify for Earned Income Tax Credit

The EITC can deliver significant tax savings for some taxpayers, but there are a lot of complicated eligibility rules for claiming it. Pay attention to these rules, because if you try to claim the EITC when you’re not eligible, the IRS can bar you from claiming it for up to 10 years.

Rule #1: Earned income below the limit

First, to qualify for the EITC, you need to have what the IRS refers to as “earned income.” Earned income includes wages, salaries, tips, commissions, or income from self-employment or farming. People whose only income comes from Social Security, welfare, pensions, or investment returns aren’t eligible.

And since the EITC is designed to benefit people with low income, it’s only available to taxpayers whose income falls below certain limits, based on filing status and the number of qualifying children listed on the return.

For the 2019 tax year, your earned income and your adjusted gross income (Line 8b of Form 1040), must each be less than:

$50,162 ($55,952 married filing jointly) with three or more qualifying children

$46,703 ($52,493 married filing jointly) with two qualifying children

$41,094 ($46,884 married filing jointly) with one qualifying child

$15,570 ($21,370 married filing jointly) with no qualifying children

Rule #2: Must have a Social Security number

You, your spouse, and any qualifying children listed on your tax return must have a valid Social Security number (SSN). You can’t claim the EITC using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number – a number issued by the IRS to foreign nationals and other individuals who aren’t eligible for an SSN but are legally required to file a U.S. federal income tax return.

Rule #3: Not filing married filing separately

You can’t claim the EITC if you are married and file separately from your spouse. Any other filing status can qualify for the credit.

Rule #4: You must be a U.S. citizen or resident alien

You (and your spouse if married) must have been a U.S. citizen or resident alien all year, or a nonresident alien married to a U.S. citizen or resident alien and filing a joint return.

Rule #5: Limited investment income

Your investment income for the tax year must be less than $3,600. Investment income includes interest, dividends, capital gains, rents, and royalties.

Rule #6: Not claiming a foreign earned income exclusion

If you file Form 2555 to claim an exclusion of income earned in a foreign country from your gross income, you cannot claim the EITC.

Rule #7: Can’t be the qualifying child of another taxpayer

You can’t be eligible to be claimed as a dependent or qualifying child of another taxpayer and claim the EITC.

Rule #8: Additional rule for people without a qualifying child

If you don’t have a qualifying child, you (or your spouse, if married) must:

Be at least 25 years old but younger than 65 by the end of the year, and

Have resided in the U.S. for more than half the year.

There are some additional rules for members of the military, ministers, members of the clergy, people who receive disability benefits, and taxpayers impacted by disasters. You can learn more about those special EITC rules from the IRS.

If you need more help with the EITC eligibility rules, the IRS offers an EITC Assistant tool. After answering a few questions and providing some basic income information, you can find out if you’re eligible to claim the EITC, determine whether your child or children meet the tests for a qualifying child, and estimate your potential credit.

Similar Tax Credits and Deductions to Consider

Even if you don’t qualify for the Earned Income Credit, you may be able to take advantage of other tax credits and deductions to lower your tax bill. Here are a few to consider.

Child Tax Credit

If you have at least $2,500 of earned income and at least one dependent child, you may qualify for the Child Tax Credit. This credit is worth up to $2,000 for each dependent child under age 17 at the end of the tax year.

The credit phases out for taxpayers with higher incomes, but the income limits are much higher than those for the EITC. Single taxpayers with adjusted gross income (AGI) over $200,000 or married couples filing a joint return with AGI over $400,000 will see their credit reduced by 5% of their AGI. The credit phases out entirely if your AGI is over $240,000 (for single filers) or $440,000 (for married couples).

If your available Child Tax Credit exceeds your taxes owed, you can receive up to $1,400 of the balance as a refund. This refundable portion is also known as the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC).

Credit for Other Dependents

If you have a dependent that doesn’t meet the requirements to claim the Child Tax Credit, you may still be able to claim the Credit for Other Dependents. For instance, you can claim this credit for:

A child who does not have an SSN but does have a Taxpayer Identification Number

A child who is age 17-18 or age 19-24 and in school

Other older dependents, such as an elderly parent

The maximum Credit for Other Dependents is $500, and it has the same phase-out threshold as the Child Tax Credit.

Child and Dependent Care Credit

If you paid a care provider to care for a child or other dependent while you worked or actively looked for work, you might qualify for the Child and Dependent Care Credit.

The credit is worth a percentage of your allowable care expenses. You can use up to $3,000 of expenses for one dependent or $6,000 of the costs of care of two or more dependents. The percentage ranges from 20% to 35% of your expenses, depending on your income. The higher your income, the lower your percentage. However, there is no upper limit on income for claiming the credit.

To qualify, you must have paid someone to care for:

A child under age 13 at the end of the tax year whom you claim as a dependent on your return

Your spouse, if they are unable to take care of themselves and lived with you for at least half the year

 Another person claimed as a dependent on your return, if that person can’t take care of themselves and lived with you for at least half the year

These are just a few tax deductions and credits available to individuals and families in 2019. If you might qualify for one or more of these tax breaks, take time to research the rules or talk to a tax professional. Claiming them can significantly lower your tax bill or even result in a generous refund.

How Earned Income Tax Credit Works is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

from Finance https://www.iwillteachyoutoberich.com/blog/earned-income-tax-credit/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

[kennethherrerablog]

How Earned Income Tax Credit Works

A few years ago, I helped a recently divorced mom prepare her first tax return on her own.

She was anxious about dealing with taxes because her ex had always handled them for her and worried that she’d owe the IRS because she didn’t make much money.

Thanks to the Earned Income Tax Credit, not only did she not owe, but this single mom ended up getting a decent-sized refund she could put toward paying her bills.

That’s the power of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Read on to find out how this valuable tax credit works, and whether you can benefit from it too.

Understanding Earned Income Tax Credit

The U.S. federal income tax system is progressive, meaning the more money you make, the higher your tax rate. But Social Security and Medicare taxes aren’t progressive. As a result, low-income people end up paying a much larger percentage of their salary towards payroll taxes than high-income taxpayers do.

To help offset this and encourage people to work, Congress created the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in 1975. Forty-five years later, this tax credit is still available and providing tax relief to low- and moderate-income workers, especially those with dependent children.

The EITC is a refundable credit, meaning it can reduce your tax liability to zero, and you’ll receive any remaining credit in the form of a tax refund.

The maximum credit depends on the number of “qualifying children” you claim on your return. The IRS has a four-part test to identify a qualifying child:

Relationship. The child must be related to you in some way. They can be your son, daughter, stepchild, eligible foster child, adopted child, grandchild, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister, stepbrother, stepsister, niece, or nephew.

Age. The child must be under age 19 or a full-time student under the age of 24 at the end of the year. If you file a joint return, the qualifying child must be younger than either you or your spouse. However, if you have a dependent that is permanently and totally disabled, the age limitation doesn’t apply.

Residency. The dependent must have lived with you in the U.S. (or with your spouse if you file a joint return) for more than half the year.

Joint Return. Normally, you can’t claim someone as a qualifying child if they file a joint return with a spouse. However, there’s an exception for when the dependent was not required to file a tax return (because they did not earn enough income) but filed a joint return solely to claim a refund of taxes withheld.

For the 2019 tax year (returns filed in 2020), the maximum EITC credit is:

$6,557 with three or more qualifying children

$5,828 with two qualifying children

$3,526 with one qualifying child

$529 with no qualifying children

How to Qualify for Earned Income Tax Credit

The EITC can deliver significant tax savings for some taxpayers, but there are a lot of complicated eligibility rules for claiming it. Pay attention to these rules, because if you try to claim the EITC when you’re not eligible, the IRS can bar you from claiming it for up to 10 years.

Rule #1: Earned income below the limit

First, to qualify for the EITC, you need to have what the IRS refers to as “earned income.” Earned income includes wages, salaries, tips, commissions, or income from self-employment or farming. People whose only income comes from Social Security, welfare, pensions, or investment returns aren’t eligible.

And since the EITC is designed to benefit people with low income, it’s only available to taxpayers whose income falls below certain limits, based on filing status and the number of qualifying children listed on the return.

For the 2019 tax year, your earned income and your adjusted gross income (Line 8b of Form 1040), must each be less than:

$50,162 ($55,952 married filing jointly) with three or more qualifying children

$46,703 ($52,493 married filing jointly) with two qualifying children

$41,094 ($46,884 married filing jointly) with one qualifying child

$15,570 ($21,370 married filing jointly) with no qualifying children

Rule #2: Must have a Social Security number

You, your spouse, and any qualifying children listed on your tax return must have a valid Social Security number (SSN). You can’t claim the EITC using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number – a number issued by the IRS to foreign nationals and other individuals who aren’t eligible for an SSN but are legally required to file a U.S. federal income tax return.

Rule #3: Not filing married filing separately

You can’t claim the EITC if you are married and file separately from your spouse. Any other filing status can qualify for the credit.

Rule #4: You must be a U.S. citizen or resident alien

You (and your spouse if married) must have been a U.S. citizen or resident alien all year, or a nonresident alien married to a U.S. citizen or resident alien and filing a joint return.

Rule #5: Limited investment income

Your investment income for the tax year must be less than $3,600. Investment income includes interest, dividends, capital gains, rents, and royalties.

Rule #6: Not claiming a foreign earned income exclusion

If you file Form 2555 to claim an exclusion of income earned in a foreign country from your gross income, you cannot claim the EITC.

Rule #7: Can’t be the qualifying child of another taxpayer

You can’t be eligible to be claimed as a dependent or qualifying child of another taxpayer and claim the EITC.

Rule #8: Additional rule for people without a qualifying child

If you don’t have a qualifying child, you (or your spouse, if married) must:

Be at least 25 years old but younger than 65 by the end of the year, and

Have resided in the U.S. for more than half the year.

There are some additional rules for members of the military, ministers, members of the clergy, people who receive disability benefits, and taxpayers impacted by disasters. You can learn more about those special EITC rules from the IRS.

If you need more help with the EITC eligibility rules, the IRS offers an EITC Assistant tool. After answering a few questions and providing some basic income information, you can find out if you’re eligible to claim the EITC, determine whether your child or children meet the tests for a qualifying child, and estimate your potential credit.

Similar Tax Credits and Deductions to Consider

Even if you don’t qualify for the Earned Income Credit, you may be able to take advantage of other tax credits and deductions to lower your tax bill. Here are a few to consider.

Child Tax Credit

If you have at least $2,500 of earned income and at least one dependent child, you may qualify for the Child Tax Credit. This credit is worth up to $2,000 for each dependent child under age 17 at the end of the tax year.

The credit phases out for taxpayers with higher incomes, but the income limits are much higher than those for the EITC. Single taxpayers with adjusted gross income (AGI) over $200,000 or married couples filing a joint return with AGI over $400,000 will see their credit reduced by 5% of their AGI. The credit phases out entirely if your AGI is over $240,000 (for single filers) or $440,000 (for married couples).

If your available Child Tax Credit exceeds your taxes owed, you can receive up to $1,400 of the balance as a refund. This refundable portion is also known as the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC).

Credit for Other Dependents

If you have a dependent that doesn’t meet the requirements to claim the Child Tax Credit, you may still be able to claim the Credit for Other Dependents. For instance, you can claim this credit for:

A child who does not have an SSN but does have a Taxpayer Identification Number

A child who is age 17-18 or age 19-24 and in school

Other older dependents, such as an elderly parent

The maximum Credit for Other Dependents is $500, and it has the same phase-out threshold as the Child Tax Credit.

Child and Dependent Care Credit

If you paid a care provider to care for a child or other dependent while you worked or actively looked for work, you might qualify for the Child and Dependent Care Credit.

The credit is worth a percentage of your allowable care expenses. You can use up to $3,000 of expenses for one dependent or $6,000 of the costs of care of two or more dependents. The percentage ranges from 20% to 35% of your expenses, depending on your income. The higher your income, the lower your percentage. However, there is no upper limit on income for claiming the credit.

To qualify, you must have paid someone to care for:

A child under age 13 at the end of the tax year whom you claim as a dependent on your return

Your spouse, if they are unable to take care of themselves and lived with you for at least half the year

 Another person claimed as a dependent on your return, if that person can’t take care of themselves and lived with you for at least half the year

These are just a few tax deductions and credits available to individuals and families in 2019. If you might qualify for one or more of these tax breaks, take time to research the rules or talk to a tax professional. Claiming them can significantly lower your tax bill or even result in a generous refund.

How Earned Income Tax Credit Works is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

How Earned Income Tax Credit Works published first on https://justinbetreviews.tumblr.com/

[andrewdburton]

How Earned Income Tax Credit Works

A few years ago, I helped a recently divorced mom prepare her first tax return on her own.

She was anxious about dealing with taxes because her ex had always handled them for her and worried that she’d owe the IRS because she didn’t make much money.

Thanks to the Earned Income Tax Credit, not only did she not owe, but this single mom ended up getting a decent-sized refund she could put toward paying her bills.

That’s the power of the Earned Income Tax Credit. Read on to find out how this valuable tax credit works, and whether you can benefit from it too.

Understanding Earned Income Tax Credit

The U.S. federal income tax system is progressive, meaning the more money you make, the higher your tax rate. But Social Security and Medicare taxes aren’t progressive. As a result, low-income people end up paying a much larger percentage of their salary towards payroll taxes than high-income taxpayers do.

To help offset this and encourage people to work, Congress created the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) in 1975. Forty-five years later, this tax credit is still available and providing tax relief to low- and moderate-income workers, especially those with dependent children.

The EITC is a refundable credit, meaning it can reduce your tax liability to zero, and you’ll receive any remaining credit in the form of a tax refund.

The maximum credit depends on the number of “qualifying children” you claim on your return. The IRS has a four-part test to identify a qualifying child:

Relationship. The child must be related to you in some way. They can be your son, daughter, stepchild, eligible foster child, adopted child, grandchild, brother, sister, half-brother, half-sister, stepbrother, stepsister, niece, or nephew.

Age. The child must be under age 19 or a full-time student under the age of 24 at the end of the year. If you file a joint return, the qualifying child must be younger than either you or your spouse. However, if you have a dependent that is permanently and totally disabled, the age limitation doesn’t apply.

Residency. The dependent must have lived with you in the U.S. (or with your spouse if you file a joint return) for more than half the year.

Joint Return. Normally, you can’t claim someone as a qualifying child if they file a joint return with a spouse. However, there’s an exception for when the dependent was not required to file a tax return (because they did not earn enough income) but filed a joint return solely to claim a refund of taxes withheld.

For the 2019 tax year (returns filed in 2020), the maximum EITC credit is:

$6,557 with three or more qualifying children

$5,828 with two qualifying children

$3,526 with one qualifying child

$529 with no qualifying children

How to Qualify for Earned Income Tax Credit

The EITC can deliver significant tax savings for some taxpayers, but there are a lot of complicated eligibility rules for claiming it. Pay attention to these rules, because if you try to claim the EITC when you’re not eligible, the IRS can bar you from claiming it for up to 10 years.

Rule #1: Earned income below the limit

First, to qualify for the EITC, you need to have what the IRS refers to as “earned income.” Earned income includes wages, salaries, tips, commissions, or income from self-employment or farming. People whose only income comes from Social Security, welfare, pensions, or investment returns aren’t eligible.

And since the EITC is designed to benefit people with low income, it’s only available to taxpayers whose income falls below certain limits, based on filing status and the number of qualifying children listed on the return.

For the 2019 tax year, your earned income and your adjusted gross income (Line 8b of Form 1040), must each be less than:

$50,162 ($55,952 married filing jointly) with three or more qualifying children

$46,703 ($52,493 married filing jointly) with two qualifying children

$41,094 ($46,884 married filing jointly) with one qualifying child

$15,570 ($21,370 married filing jointly) with no qualifying children

Rule #2: Must have a Social Security number

You, your spouse, and any qualifying children listed on your tax return must have a valid Social Security number (SSN). You can’t claim the EITC using an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number – a number issued by the IRS to foreign nationals and other individuals who aren’t eligible for an SSN but are legally required to file a U.S. federal income tax return.

Rule #3: Not filing married filing separately

You can’t claim the EITC if you are married and file separately from your spouse. Any other filing status can qualify for the credit.

Rule #4: You must be a U.S. citizen or resident alien

You (and your spouse if married) must have been a U.S. citizen or resident alien all year, or a nonresident alien married to a U.S. citizen or resident alien and filing a joint return.

Rule #5: Limited investment income

Your investment income for the tax year must be less than $3,600. Investment income includes interest, dividends, capital gains, rents, and royalties.

Rule #6: Not claiming a foreign earned income exclusion

If you file Form 2555 to claim an exclusion of income earned in a foreign country from your gross income, you cannot claim the EITC.

Rule #7: Can’t be the qualifying child of another taxpayer

You can’t be eligible to be claimed as a dependent or qualifying child of another taxpayer and claim the EITC.

Rule #8: Additional rule for people without a qualifying child

If you don’t have a qualifying child, you (or your spouse, if married) must:

Be at least 25 years old but younger than 65 by the end of the year, and

Have resided in the U.S. for more than half the year.

There are some additional rules for members of the military, ministers, members of the clergy, people who receive disability benefits, and taxpayers impacted by disasters. You can learn more about those special EITC rules from the IRS.

If you need more help with the EITC eligibility rules, the IRS offers an EITC Assistant tool. After answering a few questions and providing some basic income information, you can find out if you’re eligible to claim the EITC, determine whether your child or children meet the tests for a qualifying child, and estimate your potential credit.

Similar Tax Credits and Deductions to Consider

Even if you don’t qualify for the Earned Income Credit, you may be able to take advantage of other tax credits and deductions to lower your tax bill. Here are a few to consider.

Child Tax Credit

If you have at least $2,500 of earned income and at least one dependent child, you may qualify for the Child Tax Credit. This credit is worth up to $2,000 for each dependent child under age 17 at the end of the tax year.

The credit phases out for taxpayers with higher incomes, but the income limits are much higher than those for the EITC. Single taxpayers with adjusted gross income (AGI) over $200,000 or married couples filing a joint return with AGI over $400,000 will see their credit reduced by 5% of their AGI. The credit phases out entirely if your AGI is over $240,000 (for single filers) or $440,000 (for married couples).

If your available Child Tax Credit exceeds your taxes owed, you can receive up to $1,400 of the balance as a refund. This refundable portion is also known as the Additional Child Tax Credit (ACTC).

Credit for Other Dependents

If you have a dependent that doesn’t meet the requirements to claim the Child Tax Credit, you may still be able to claim the Credit for Other Dependents. For instance, you can claim this credit for:

A child who does not have an SSN but does have a Taxpayer Identification Number

A child who is age 17-18 or age 19-24 and in school

Other older dependents, such as an elderly parent

The maximum Credit for Other Dependents is $500, and it has the same phase-out threshold as the Child Tax Credit.

Child and Dependent Care Credit

If you paid a care provider to care for a child or other dependent while you worked or actively looked for work, you might qualify for the Child and Dependent Care Credit.

The credit is worth a percentage of your allowable care expenses. You can use up to $3,000 of expenses for one dependent or $6,000 of the costs of care of two or more dependents. The percentage ranges from 20% to 35% of your expenses, depending on your income. The higher your income, the lower your percentage. However, there is no upper limit on income for claiming the credit.

To qualify, you must have paid someone to care for:

A child under age 13 at the end of the tax year whom you claim as a dependent on your return

Your spouse, if they are unable to take care of themselves and lived with you for at least half the year

 Another person claimed as a dependent on your return, if that person can’t take care of themselves and lived with you for at least half the year

These are just a few tax deductions and credits available to individuals and families in 2019. If you might qualify for one or more of these tax breaks, take time to research the rules or talk to a tax professional. Claiming them can significantly lower your tax bill or even result in a generous refund.

How Earned Income Tax Credit Works is a post from: I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

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