#the ones who’ve immigrated in the last 20 years I don’t get we have nothing in common | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thekillerssluts · 4 years ago

Photo

The Story Behind Every Song On Will Butler’s New Album Generations

Will Butler has a lot on his mind. It has, after all, been five years since his solo debut, Policy. A lot can happen in half a decade, and a lot has happened in this past half-decade — much of it quite dire. Butler was in his early 30s when Policy came out, and now he’s closing in on 40. He’s a husband and father. And he’s shaken by the state of the world, the idea of being an artist and a soon-to-be middle-aged man striving to guide his family through the chaos.

At least, that’s how it comes across through much of Generations, his sophomore outing that arrives today. Generations is a big, sprawling title by nature, and the album in turn grapples with all kinds of big picture anxieties. Mass shootings, the overarching darkness and anxiety of our time, trying to reckon with our surroundings but the system overload that occurs all too easily in the wake of it. Then there are more intimate songs, too, tales drawn from personal lives as people plug along just trying to navigate a tumultuous era.

Butler is, of course, no stranger to crafting music that seeks to parse the cultural moment and how it impacts in our daily lives. Ever since Arcade Fire ascended to true arena-rock status on The Suburbs 10 years ago, they have embarked on projects that explicitly try to make sense of our surroundings. (Not that their earlier work was bereft of heavy concepts — far from it — but Reflektor and Everything Now turned more of a specific eye towards contemporary ills and trials.) But as one voice amongst many in Arcade Fire, there is a cinematic scope to whatever Butler’s playing into there.

On Generations, he engages with a lot of similar concerns but all in his own voice — often yelping, desperate, frustrated then just trying to catch a breath. Butler leans on his trusty Korg MS-20 throughout Generations, often giving the album a synth-y indie backdrop that allows him to try on a few different selves. There are a handful of surging choruses, “la-la” refrains batting back against the darkness, slinking grooves maybe allowing someone the idea of brief physical release amidst ongoing strife.

Ahead of Generations’ arrival, Butler sent us some thoughts on the album, running from inspiration between the individual tracks to little details about the arrangement and composition of different songs. Now that you can hear the album for yourself, check it out and read along with Butler’s comments below.

1. “Outta Here”

I think this is the simplest song on the record. Just, like, get me out of here. Get me fucking out of here. I’m so tired of being here. No, I don’t have another answer, and I don’t expect anything to be better anywhere else. But, please, I would like to leave here.

I can play plenty of instruments, and can make interesting sounds on them, but kinda the only instrument I’m good at is a synth called the Korg MS-20. That’s the first sound on the record. It makes most of the bass you hear on the record. It’s a very aggressive, loud, versatile machine, and I wanted to start the record with it cause I’m good at playing it and it makes me happy.

2. “Bethlehem”

This song partly springs from “The Second Coming” by William Butler Yeats: “What rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?” Like a lot of folks, I woke up after the election in 2016 mad and sad and scared and exhausted. This song is born of that emotion.

My bandmates Jenny Shore, Julie Shore, and Sara Dobbs sing the bridge, and it’s a corrective to my (appropriate?) freaking out — this isn’t the apocalypse. You’re misquoting Yeats. Get your fucking head on straight. History has not ruptured — this shit we’re in is contiguous with the shit we’ve been dealing with for a long, long time. But still, we sometimes do need an apocalyptic vision to make change. Even if it’s technically wrong. I dunno. It’s an ongoing conversation.

There’s a lot of interplay with backing vocals on this record — sometimes the narrator is the asshole, sometimes the backing vocals are the asshole. Sometimes they’re just trying their best to figure out the world. This song starts that conversation.

3. “Close My Eyes”

I tried to make these lyrics a straightforward and honest description of an emotion I feel often: “I’m tired of waiting for a better day. But I’m scared and I’m lazy and nothing’s gonna change.” Kind of a sad song. Trying to tap into some Smokey Robinson/Motown feeling — “I’ve got to dance to keep from crying.”

There’s a lot of Mellotron on this record, and a lot of MS-20. This song has a bunch of Mellotron strings/choirs processed through the MS-20. It’s a trick I started doing on the Arcade Fire song “Sprawl II,” and I love how it sounds and I try to do it on every song if I can.

4. “I Don’t Know What I Don’t Know”

This makes a pair with “Close My Eyes” — shit is obviously fucked, but “I don’t know what I don’t know what I don’t know what I can do.” I’m not a proponent of the attitude! Just trying to describe it, as I often feel it. In my head, I know some things that I can do — my wife Jenny, for instance, works really hard to get state legislatures out of Republican control. Cause it’s all these weirdo state legislative chambers that have enormous power over law enforcement, and civil rights, and Medicaid, and everything.

The image in the last verse was drawn from the protests in Ferguson in 2015: “Watch the bullets and the beaters as they move through the streets — grab your sister’s kids — hide next to the fire station…” It’s been horrifically disheartening to see the police riot across America as their power has been challenged. I’ve got a little seed of hope that we might change things, but, man, dark times.

More MS-20 bass on this one, chained to the drum machine. This one is supposed to be insanely bass heavy — if it comes on in a car, the windows should be rattling, and you should be asking, “What the heck is going on here?” Trying for a contemporary hip-hop bass sound but in a way less spare context. First song with woodwinds — rhythmic stuff and freaky squeals by Stuart Bogie and Matt Bauder.

5. “Surrender”

This song is masquerading as a love song, but it’s more about friendship. About the confusion that comes as people change: Didn’t you use to have a different ideal? Didn’t we have the same ideal at some point? Which of us changed? How did the world change? Relationships that we sometimes wish we could let go of, but that are stuck within us forever.

It’s also about trying to break from the first-person view of the world. “What can I do? What difference can I make?” It’s not about some singular effort — you have to give yourself over to another power. Give over to people who have gone before who’ve already built something — you don’t have to build something new! The world doesn’t always need a new idea, it doesn’t always need a new personality. What can you do with whatever power and money you’ve got? Surrender it over to something that’s already made. And then the song ends with an apology: I’m sorry I’ve been talking all night. Just talk talk talking, all night. Shut up, Will.

Going for “wall of sound” on this one — bass guitar and bass synth and double tracked piano bass plus another piano plus Mellotron piano. The “orchestra” is about a dozen different synth and Mellotron tracks individually detuned. And then run through additional processing.

6. “Hide It Away”

This song is about secrets. Both on an intimate, heartbreaking level — friends’ miscarriages, friends’ immigration status, shitty affairs coming to light — and on a grand, horrible level: New York lifting the statute of limitations on child abuse prosecutions, all the #MeToo reporting. There’s nothing you can do when your secret is revealed. Like, what can you do? You just have to let the response wash over you. If you’ve done something horrible, god-willing, you’ll have to pay for it in some way. If it’s something not horrible, but people will hate you anyway, goddammit, I wish there were some way to protect you.

This song has the least poetic line on the record, a real clunker: “It’s just money and power, money and power might set them free.” But it’s a clunky, shitty concept — the most surefire protection is being rich and knowing powerful people. But even then, shit just might come out. Even after you’re long dead.

Came from a 30-second guitar sample I recorded while messing around at the end of trying to track a different song. I liked the chords, looped them to make a demo. And the song was born from there. This is the one song I play drums on. Snare is chained to the MS-20, trying to play every frequency the ear can hear at the same time on some of those big hits.

7. “Hard Times”

[Laughs] I sat down and tried to write a Spotify charting electro-hit, and this is what came out: “Kill the rich, salt the earth.” Oh well. Written way before COVID-19, but my 8-year-old son turned to me this spring and asked, “Did you write the song ‘Hard Times’ about now, because we’re living through hard times?” No, I didn’t.

In Dostoevsky’s Notes From Underground, the narrator is a real son-of-a-bitch—contrarian, useless. Mad at the strong confident people who think they’ve got it figured out. And they don’t! And neither does the narrator — but he knows he doesn’t, and he at times yearns for some higher answer, and he’s funny, and too clever, but still knows he’s a piece of shit. I read Notes From Underground in high school and kinda forgot how it shaped my worldview until I sat down with it a couple years ago. The bridge on this song is basically smushed up quotes from Notes From Underground.

I was asking Shiftee, who mixed the record, if there are any vocal plug-ins I should be playing around with. He pointed me toward Little AlterBoy, which is basically a digital recreation of the kind of pedal the Knife use, for instance, on their vocal sound. It can shift the timbre/character of a voice without changing the pitch. Or change pitch without changing character. Very fun! Very much all over this track. Tried to make the bridge sound like a Sylvester song.

8. “Promised”

Another friend song masquerading as a love song. I’ve met a handful of extraordinary people in my life, who stopped doing extraordinary work because life is hard and it sucks. People who — I mean, it’s a lottery and random and who cares — could be great writers or artists, who kind of just disappeared. And it’s heartbreaking and frustrating. I don’t blame them. Maybe they weren’t made for this world. Maybe it’s just random. Maybe they’ll do amazing work in their 60s!

We tracked this song before it was written. Julie and Miles came over and we made up a structure and did a bunch of takes, found a groove. Which I then hacked up into what it is now! The bed tracks are lovely and loose. Maybe I’ll put out a jammier version of this song at some point. The other big synth on this record is the Oberheim OB-8, and that’s the bass on this one (triple tracked along with some MS-20).

9. “Not Gonna Die”

This song is about terrorism, and the response to terrorism. I wrote it a couple weeks after the Bataclan shooting in Paris in 2015. For some reason, a couple weeks after the shooting, I was in midtown Manhattan. I must have been Christmas shopping. I had to pop into the Sephora on 5th Avenue to pick up something specific — I think for my wife or her sister. I don’t remember. But I remember walking in, and the store was really crowded, and for just a split second I got really scared about what would happen if someone brought out a gun and started shooting up the crowd. And then I got so fucking mad at the people that made me feel that emotion. Like, I’m not gonna fucking die in the midtown Sephora, you fucking pieces of shit. Thanks for putting that thought in my head.

BUT ALSO, fuck all the fucking pieces of shit who are like, “We can’t accept refugees — what if they’re terrorists?” FUCK OFF. Some fucking terrified family driven from their home by a war isn’t going to kill me. Or anyone. Fuck off. Some woman from Central America fleeing from her husband who threatened to kill her isn’t going to fucking bomb Times Square. You fucking pieces of shit.

In November/December 2015, the Republican primary had already started — Trump had announced in June. And every single one of those pieces of shit running for president were talking about securing our borders, and keeping poor people out, and trying to justify it by security talk. FUCK OFF. You pieces of shit. Fuck right off. Anyway. Sorry for cursing.

I kind of think of the outro of this song as an angry “Everyday People.” Everyday people aren’t going to kill me. Lots of great saxes on this track from Matt Bauder and Stuart Bogie.

The intro of the song we recorded loud, full band, which I then ran through the MS-20 and filtered down till it was just a bass heart-pulse, and re-recorded solo piano and voice over that.

10. “Fine”

I kind of think that “Outta Here” to “Not Gonna Die” comprise the record, and “Fine” operates as the afterword and the prologue rolled into one. An author’s note, maybe. It was kind of inspired by high-period Kanye: I wanted to talk about something important in a profane, sometimes horribly stupid way, but have it be honest and ultimately transcendent.

In the song, I talk semi-accurately about where I come from. My mom’s dad was a guitar player who led bands throughout the ’30s and ’40s. In post-war LA, he had a band with Charles Mingus as the bass player. Charles Mingus! One of the greatest geniuses in all of American history. But this was the ’40s, and in order to travel with the band, to go in the same entrances, to eat dinner at the same table, he had to wear a Hawaiian shirt and everybody had to pretend he was Hawaiian. Because nobody was sure how racist they were supposed to be against Hawaiians.

Part of the reason I’m a musician is that my great-grandfather was a musician, and his kids were musicians, and their kids were musicians, and their kids are musicians. Part of the reason is vast generations of people working to make their kids’ lives better, down to my life. Part of the reason is that neither government nor mob has decided to destroy my family’s lives, wealth, and property for the last couple hundred years. I tried to write a song about that?

Generations is out now via Merge. Purchase it here.

https://www.stereogum.com/2098946/will-butler-generations-song-meanings/franchises/interview/footnotes-interview/

#Arcade Fire #will butler #generations #interview #hq

29 notes · View notes

howardschatzphotography · 6 years ago

Text

On Seeing, A Journal. Above and Beyond: David Brooks December 11th, 2018

My most recent visitor to the studio for my Above and Beyond project is David Brooks, a Canadian-born American conservative commentator who writes a political and cultural column for The New York Times. He is a regular contributor to the PBS NewsHour and to NPR’s All Things Considered, and has been a reporter and op-ed editor for The Wall Street Journal. He is a senior editor at The Weekly Standard and also a contributing editor at Newsweek and The Atlantic. Brooks has written and edited several books, including the anthology Backward and Upward: The New Conservative Writing (1996) and Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000), On Paradise Drive: How We Live Now (and Always Have) in the Future Tense (2004), The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement (2011), and The Road to Character (2015). HS: You've said "politics is being overtaken by tribalism.” Would you expand on that? DB: We used to have community, and community is based on common affection and trust. Jane Jacobs, who wrote Death and Life of Great American Cities, described looking out her window one day and seeing a little girl trying to get away from a guy kidnapping her. And she (Jacobs) couldn't help, and she thought: Maybe I should go down and intervene. And then she noticed that the butcher’s wife had come out of the shop, the fruit stand guy had come out, somebody had come out, the locksmith, and the guy was surrounded. And it turns out it wasn’t a kidnapping, it was a just a dad calling his daughter. But, that's what community is like. And she describes it very famously as a ballet on the street. And we used to have those ballets in a lot of neighborhoods, where people could trust each other, they looked out for each other, they kept each other safe. Over the last 50 years, we sort of lost that, we lost social capital, as they say, and we’re more isolated and alone. And when people are isolated and alone, they do what the revolutionaries tell them to do, which is they revert to tribe. And tribalism looks like community, because it is a kind of bonding and belonging, but it’s based on mutual hatred and not mutual affection. So, it’s always us/them, friend/enemy distinctions. And if you look at polarization today, it’s not that people love their own political party so much, they just hate the other one. That's the motivator, that's tribalism. HS: Hasn’t humanity always been tribal? Isn't it in our bones? DB: Well, it’s in our bones to make friend-enemy distinctions. It’s not in our bones to have a set of communities that rule out other communities, that have to be hostile to other communities. But it is possible to have a set of people where I'm in my community, you're in yours, I've got nothing against you and we’re probably joined by a higher community, which is our national community. HS: How do you find civility? DB: I think you have to get away from that sense that people who have that are naked and alone in a world that's hostile. Where people can't be trusted. And so, my basic view is, you have to start with local dinners with neighbors, where people actually get to know each other. HS: I'm sure that happens, probably all over the United States, in various little towns, but it doesn’t seem to be infectious, it doesn’t seem to last. DB: Yes. And there are a lot of reasons for that. I would emphasize the culture of individualism that says, "I need as much space as I can to be myself." It’s also probably true that as we get more diverse, it gets a little harder to form communities.Then there are some values; we value privacy above all. And so, in most nations around the world and at most times in America, it was very normal to go up to somebody’s house who you sort of knew, and knock on the doorbell, or ring the door. And now that never happens. You would think, no, I'm invading their privacy. I'm not going to do that. We put incredibly high priority on privacy, also on work. We work really hard and then when we get home, we just want to relax, we don’t want to socialize. There's a lot of value put on that.

HS: The gulf between peoples seems pervasive all over the world. Within any country, there are us and them. Muslims and Hindus. Christians and Jews. It’s seems like your dream of a loving, compassionate vision is something that’s not within the human genome. DB: I covered the Soviet Union coming down, the coming together of community there. I covered Nelson Mandela coming out of prison, the end of apartheid there. I covered the unification of Germany. And you saw these surges of people trying to come together across differences. And we had a country here, a political system, where it wasn’t complete partisan warfare, the way it is now. That's been a deteriorating issue we’ve had for 30 years. HS: I think it goes way back, such as famous politicians who hated George Washington. DB: Of course, politics has always brutal, but then politicians also worked together across party lines. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, famously, hated each other, but they served in the same administration. And if you looked at the votes in most parties or most congresses, there was plenty of overlap. If you look at the Supreme Court, only two percent of cases 20 years ago, were decided on party lines. Now it’s well over 20 percent. There are concrete measures of growing tribal distrust. If you’d asked people a generation ago, do you trust the institutions of society, 70 or 80 percent said, yes; and now it’s only 20 percent. HS: Is this deterioration a sign of the end of our civilization? I mean, all empires self-destruct eventually? DB: Yes, it could be. When Gibbon described the end of the Roman Empire, he described it as a collection....Not a really functioning society anymore. Just a collection of isolated individuals. So, it could be, but I sort of doubt it. We go through bumpy times. If you look at 1968, it was way worse. If you look at 1932, it was worse. There have been times in our country where we’ve been in similar circumstances to today. HS: Is Trump as our president a symptom or a cause of our problems? DB: Well, it’s a symptom and a cause. He was elected because so many people are disgusted with Washington and hate what’s been done to them, or are disgusted with outsiders. And now he gets himself at the center of attention every single day by making friend-enemy distinctions, by saying those are evil people, we’re good people. He grew out of this distrust, but he plays on it and exacerbates it. HS: Can we survive him? DB: I think so. It won't be easy, I don't think our politics is going to recover for a long, long time. It will take a social recovery before we get a political recovery. But say he lasts another two years, we’ve endured two years of it, so far nothing. We’ve had a deterioration in norms and how we treat each other and think of each other. If he’s gone in two years, maybe it’ll get worse, maybe we get another version of Trump. But it’s possible that you can snap back. I just think that nothing is determined in life. And there are parts of the society that are actually kind of healthy, our economy, things like that. HS: Nothing’s determined, you can't predict the future for anything ever, really. What bothers me is the silence of good Republicans. There are bright Republican Congressmen and Senators. There are conscientious nation-loving human beings who are mute. They shudder that they have this president, but they relish what he brings them. DB: I've had many conversations with them on this subject. And, of course, I would like them all to speak up. And they say: Well, look at all the people who’ve spoken up, their careers are over. And so, what good would it do the country for my career to be over? Trump would still be Trump. You’d get some lunatic in place of me. And so, I’ll wait for my moment. I give them credit for some strength in that argument; if you speak up against Trump and you're in the Republican Party, you lose your next primary. The loyalty among Republican voters is to Trump. And not even to the party, just to Trump the person. HS: You've said: Trump takes every wound and repeatedly pokes holes in it. What do you mean exactly? DB: In our nation’s history, the most famous wounds are racial wounds. And so, he pokes at any racial prejudice and racial division. Religious wounds, city versus rural, pretty much all the divisions you can think of in society. The native versus the immigrant…he inflames one side or another of these divides. It’s just his marketing strategy. But, partly, it’s hard not to believe that he doesn’t have some level of bigotry. And then, finally, I think he just was raised in a culture of distrust. That the outsiders are out to get us, that life is a do or die battle. HS: What leaders do you most admire today? DB: I like a lot of senators. But mostly the happiest people I know are mayors, because they're actually doing stuff. The unhappiest are members of Congress. For example, a mayor I admire, though he’s controversial, is Rahm Emanuel of Chicago who came into a city that was vastly in debt, with school systems that were totally failing. He got the city out of debt and he closed some schools, and I think graduation rates have increased phenomenally, more than any other city in America. Not only because of him, it’s been through a ten-year project. And he’s just announced he won't run again, so he made a lot of enemies doing this stuff. But I think there are tens of thousands of children in Chicago now who have better education because of what he did. In Washington, you find people who are doing the best they can under bad circumstances. General Mattis, the Secretary of Defense, is doing the best he can in a bad circumstance. Some of the senators, Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, a Democrat. Ron Wyden, Ben Sasse, a Republican. They’re trying to do legislation in a bad circumstance. So I give them respect. HS: How would you change these negative circumstances? Obama tried. DB: He had the right feelings, he didn't have the right relationships. He didn't have a relationship of trust with the leaders of Congress, even in his own party. I don't think he liked hanging around with politicians, they just weren't his cup of tea. HS: How do you personally maintain a conservative bent, yet work for the New York Times? DB: I have a worldview. If I didn't have a worldview, I couldn't do my job. It’s informed by Edmond Burke and Alexander Hamilton, both of them conservative-ish guys, at least by the traditional definition of conservatism. So, I think my views are reasonably predictable. When you're writing for The Times, you're writing for a mostly progressive audience. And in that case, you just try to show respect. HS: Can you change people’s minds? DB: I think you can. I really think you can. By saying: Well, you believe X, here are the nine facts to prove that Y is possible. You can give people, a better way to live and their norms and values will subtly change.

HS: But what about the 40 percent of Americans who are pro-Trump, despite the fact he’s allergic to the truth? DB: I wish they would change their minds. But I spend most of my life with these people, and they say: Listen, I needed a change. I know he’s a jerk. I don't pay attention to all that circus stuff, all those tweets. But the economy is doing better, I feel like he’s shaken up Washington. I mean, they have their reasoning and it’s not completely idiotic. HS: You worked on a police beat in Chicago. How did that influence your thinking? DB: Profoundly, even though it was a very short time. I wasn’t even sure I wanted to do journalism, I knew I wanted to write. But when I did the police beat, I came home every day with a story, and it was fun and exciting. I was super left wing, and the parts of Chicago I covered were some of the worst parts of Chicago at the time -- Cabrini Green, and the Robert Taylor Homes -- these big projects. And what I saw was earnest, well-intentioned social reform that had disastrous consequences. And it taught me that society is really complicated. And if you're going to do change you should do it incrementally. And be aware that you're probably going to have a lot of bad consequences you can't anticipate. And that's more or less Edmond Burke’s philosophy, so it turned me a little more conservative. HS: What is your process? You must have a time when you write, and then when you read. You must have time when you go to movies or have fun. DB:The fun part is the hard part. My rule is the more creative the profession, the more rigorous the schedule has to be. So I write from eight ‘til noon every day. And my wife knows to get out of my way. Before I've written, I'm just not a good person. After that, I relax. And so, if I've got my thousand words in then I relax. I listen to movie soundtracks. I need music, but I can't have any lyrics, so I listen to music soundtracks. HS: What are your thoughts about immigration? DB: I'm wildly pro-immigration. I was sort of raised by my grandfather, who was an immigrant and had a strong immigrant mentality. So, I admire the hustle of people who are immigrants. And then, just objectively, I think that immigrants are great for this country. They're less prone to commit crimes than natives. They're much more economically creative than the rest of us. Their family values are better. They're much more communal. HS: And our racial division in this country? DB: I'm somewhat optimistic about it. Since Ferguson, there's been a period of truth-telling. A lot of African-Americans saying things they wouldn't necessarily say in public or in mixed company. And that has not always been pleasant. But I think it’s a necessary stage to go through. I travel around the country with a team from the Aspen Institute, and we hold these dinners with people who are working in communities. And sometimes our dinners will be 40 percent African American, and sometimes the mood is really angry. But, I think that has to be expressed for us to move on and understand the situation in the country. HS: Are there opinions you've written that you regret? DB: Oh, for sure. I was a strong supporter of the Iraq war, that was pretty clearly a mistake. When I was young, before my kids were born, I would write hit pieces on people. Really criticizing, making fun of people, taking advantage of my verbal abilities to make others look small. And once my kids were born, then I said, "No, I don't want my kids seeing me as this kind of person." And so, I more or less stopped writing them.

HS: You often talk about the soul and heart and how people have the desire to do good. DB: Maybe that's midlife awakening. A lot of our problems come from giving that desire to be good short shrift.

#davidbrooks interview portrait art photography howardschatz npr politics news

4 notes · View notes

burning-up-ao3 · 6 years ago

Photo

20 Penguins Thoughts: Mad about Erik Gudbranson? Blame the Flyers.February 26, 2019 8:06 AMBy Jason Mackey / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

There are two ways of viewing the Penguins’ trade Monday for defenseman Erik Gudbranson.

On one hand, there’s a large group of fans who like the deal. They think the Penguins could use someone with Gudbranson’s toughness and presence in the dressing room and figured what the heck, Tanner Pearson wasn’t doing much anyway.

The second sect haaaaaates the deal. Like in a steal-kids’-Christmas-presents sort of way.

Here, though, are two things I think we can agree on:

It’s all the Flyers’ fault.

And this surely will be a fun experiment to see play out.

I figured we’d work through these two items and more from Monday in this week’s 20 Thoughts.

2. An important starting date here is Feb. 11. In a game at Wells Fargo Center, Olli Maatta separated his shoulder in an awkward collision with Flyers winger Phil Varone.

According to an industry source, Maatta is expected to miss at least a month while his shoulder heals, and the Penguins remain hopeful that Maatta can avoid surgery.

But given Maatta’s history of shoulder issues and the uncertainty surrounding the possibility of re-injury once he does get back, getting a depth defenseman remained a possibility for Penguins general manager Jim Rutherford.

Then Saturday happened.

3. That’s when Brian Dumoulin was concussed, the result of Wayne Simmonds’ hit along the boards — for which he was not disciplined. Kris Letang was injured by Shayne Gostisbehere in a wrestling match while sticking up for Dumoulin.

Watching from above, Rutherford clearly was not happy.

During the 2016-17 Stanley Cup run, Rutherford sounded off to Ken Campbell of the Hockey News on the mistreatment of his star players — saying the NHL had devolved into a “[expletive] show” — and backed up his words that summer by acquiring Ryan Reaves.

Since trading Jamie Oleksiak to make room for Justin Schultz, Rutherford had been missing an element of the game he really likes and feels the Penguins need, even though there’s many who disagree with that approach.

“In Erik’s case, he’s a real heart-and-soul guy,” Rutherford said Monday. “He’s a good dressing room guy. He’s got good character. He can protect our players, and puts us in a stronger position to push back when we get into more physical games.”

4. This, though, isn’t about so much about Gudbranson as it is about how we got here, and I think that much is fascinating.

A key question to ask is this: Does Rutherford do this deal if neither the Feb. 11 injury to Maatta nor the Stadium Series shenanigans happen?

I don’t think so.

Rutherford can talk about team toughness all he wants, and I do see the value in what Gudbranson could potentially bring (more on that shortly). But I’m sorry, I just don’t see how Rutherford would’ve done this with a full complement of defensemen, and that could be scary given Gudbranson’s contract ($4 million per season through 2021).

5. What happens when everyone gets healthy?

Let’s say, for instance, that Dumoulin and Letang return soon as Rutherford indicated Monday; he said the team wanted to avoid putting them on injured reserve and expressed optimism they could be back this weekend.

By March 11, the Penguins’ blue line could consist of Dumoulin, Letang, Maatta, Schultz, Jack Johnson, Marcus Pettersson, Chad Ruhwedel, Juuso Riikola and Erik Gudbranson.

Two things there. One, that’s nine, a number that, before Schultz returned, was untenable. Either Rutherford doesn’t care because it’ll be mid-March, or two, they’re not nearly as optimistic on Maatta’s injury as they once were.

It’s also worth mentioning that everybody but Ruhwedel is either under contract or a restricted free agent whom the Penguins plan on re-signing (Riikola and Pettersson) for 2019-20.

6. Leave that for another day, though. What’s important this season is whether Gudbranson can add anything of value or whether things go the way they did in Vancouver, which is really bad.

Traditional or advanced, the numbers stink:

• League-worst minus-27.

• Last among defensemen who’ve played at least 600 minutes in five-on-five goals-for percentage (34.4) and scoring-chance percentage (38.6).

Try to make any sort of case that Gudbranson’s defense, at least on paper, represents an upgrade, and it’s tough sledding.

7. But games aren’t played on paper. We can predict a lot of outcomes, just not all of them. I’ll be curious to see how this plays out for that reason.

One, the Penguins deserve the benefit of the doubt based on what they’ve done with other defensemen who’ve struggled elsewhere: Ian Cole, Schultz, Oleksiak, etc.

The problem with Gudbranson, however, is that he’s played 448 NHL games. He is who he is at this point, and that’s a big body who hits and fights and doesn’t really skate all that well. Can he help their transition game? Maybe, but I certainly understand why people have questions.

8. The second part of this is the human element, the stuff people who’ve crushed the deal on social media don’t see.

Far too often this season, the Penguins dressing room has been quiet. There are no issues, as far as I can tell, and it’s full of some very good people. But you need a mix of personalities, the sort of thing the Penguins had while winning back-to-back Stanley Cups.

Earlier this season, I was watching a morning skate with a former Penguins player who couldn’t believe how stoic everyone was, stunned at the lack of chatter. “They need someone to stir the [expletive],” the player said.

Gudbranson should bring that.

9. I remember a couple years ago a game I covered in Vancouver. Believe it was the first time Derrick Pouliot played against his former team post-trade.

We were all waiting in the dressing room for Pouliot, and Gudbranson came bounding in the room, chiding a few of teammates. His personality and voice were unmistakable. They should really stand out at PPG Paints Arena or UPMC Lemieux Sports Complex.

Does this mean Gudbranson should stay in the lineup because he’s funny, even if he stinks? Of course not. And $4 million is a lot to pay for a character guy.

All I’m saying is the guy hasn’t played a game here yet. There are some elements the Penguins could use, if they can somehow figure out how to make the hockey part better — which, admittedly, is a steep hill to climb.

10. But one of the things that worries me about the deal involves the Flyers. Because of what the Penguins’ cross-state rival did, they made a trade out of need rather than want. That’s not always a great thing, although it has worked before.

Given the divide on this, it should be nothing short of fascinating to see it play out.

Especially given the heightened stakes, as Gudbranson was technically acquired for Carl Hagelin ... and has two more years left at a high cap hit for someone who does what he does.

11. Moving on …

Good on Rutherford keeping his first-round pick. If this trade turns out to be terrible, or if the Penguins can’t figure it out and ultimately either exit the playoffs early or miss them entirely, at least he has that.

It’s been far too long since Rutherford has stepped tp the podium on the first night of the NHL Draft … which ironically will take place in Vancouver this summer.

“This is a year that we’re on the bubble to get in. I did not want to risk that,” Rutherford said of potentially trading his first-round pick. “Also it’s a very good draft. It was important this year to keep that pick.”

12. It’s too bad for Pearson.

One, his wife is pregnant, and he’s on his third team — and second time criss-crossing coasts — since November. That can’t be easy.

Two, I got the sense he was beating himself up pretty good over how little he did here.

13. It started the summer after the second Cup with the Matt Hunwick and Antti Niemi signings, but at some point Rutherford needs to stop having to redo things.

I think it's one of his strengths as a general manager, his willingness to admit mistakes and correct them. Many in his position won't, whether it's because of ego or whatever.

But a couple years ago, the Penguins pushed this thing forward because Rutherford kept hitting on deals. They've been spinning their wheels lately, at least in part, because he has missed more often than he or anyone else would like.

14. Willing to bet Jean-Sebastien Dea is thrilled to be done with the Penguins.

They released Dea at the start of the season after deciding against using him in their bottom-six, then reclaimed him from the Devils and again stashed him in the minors.

On Monday, Dea went to Florida for another depth defenseman, Chris Wideman, who could potentially help the Penguins down the road.

Yes, the Penguins are Wideman’s fourth team this season, which isn't a great sign. But he's a decent puck-mover who isn't too far removed from being an NHL regular.

"In Wideman’s case, he gives us depth at defense," Rutherford said. "He’s a smaller guy, a puck-moving guy. He’s played some games in the league. He’s got some experience. He could see some time here at some point, too."

15. I think a lot of you were surprised that Ethan Prow didn't get a shot for Tuesday's game in Columbus with Gudbranson sorting out some immigration stuff.

My sense on Prow is that they'd rather see him push and win a job out of camp instead of the Penguins having to drop him into the lineup and pray that things went OK.

Zach Trotman is a much safer bet for something like that. Now, that being said, with the contract situation I outlined up top, I do wonder if there's going to be a spot available for Prow in 2019-20.

16. Some Stadium Series stuff ...

There's ample reason to dismiss outdoor hockey. Sightlines stink. Sometimes the weather, too. The NHL has had approximately 4,596 outdoor games since 2008, with 90 percent of them involving the Chicago Blackhawks. I get it.

But after walking through the parking lots Saturday, and seeing how that translated into a packed and raucous Lincoln Financial Field, I see why the league keeps pushing these.

They put butts in seats, and honestly, they're fun. That was a really good atmosphere Saturday.

17. And also, from what several players have said, the ice was actually pretty good.

It wasn't until the third period, when the rain really picked up, that things started to get ugly. All in all, I have yet to hear anyone say it was a huge issue.

18. Before the Stadium Series, I did a story about Jared McCann and the backyard rink his dad built him.

Something McCann mentioned made me laugh. He said his dad would even go so far as to put up protective netting. I was a little dumfounded when McCann said that.

"I missed the net a lot as a kid," McCann said. "At first we didn’t have the mesh, so I was losing a lot of pucks. The lawn cutters was getting [ticked] off at me because he kept running over the pucks. Put the mesh up. Started to hit the net a bit more."

Ironically, Gudbranson and McCann were actually traded for each other (plus draft picks on both sides) back in 2016.

19. I couldn't not share this. Might be one of the funniest things I've ever seen on social media:

After a lot of deep thought I think I finally figured out a lineup that the Pittsburgh Penguins Twitter and Facebook crowds would approve of #LetsGoPens

344 people are talking about this

Twitter Ads info and privacy

20. A couple quick thoughts on deadline day around the league ...

I kinda love what Columbus did. The same old thing wasn't working, clearly, so give Jackets GM Jarmo Kekalainen this: He's certainly taking a different approach. With Artemi Panarin and Sergei Bobrovsky potentially/likely leaving, talk about loading up for a run.

I like Colorado as a fit for Derick Brassard, although I couldn’t believe the minimal return he netted; along with a conditional sixth-round pick in 2020, the Panthers sent Brassard to the Avalanche for a third-round draft choice in 2020.

But Brassard will get top-six minutes, as he should represent an upgrade over Carl Soderberg.

Here's a random one: Last year the Penguins acquired Tobias Lindberg in the Ryan Reaves deal, although he stayed with the Chicago Wolves because of an AHL agreement the teams worked out.

Lindberg re-signed with the Penguins this summer, but they traded him to Ottawa, the team that drafted him, on Dec. 5. On Monday, the Senators included Lindberg in the deal that sent Mark Stone to Vegas.

So, I guess, what, next year the Penguins get Lindberg back?

I liked what Nashville did a lot, maybe more than Columbus, bringing in Simmonds and Mikael Granlund.

Jason Mackey: [email protected] and Twitter @JMackeyPG.

First Published February 26, 2019 8:00 AM

#pittsburgh penguins #Jason Mackey #Pittsburgh Post Gazette

0 notes

steven-heisler-law-firm · 4 years ago

Text

Danielle Roberts: What You Need to Know About Medicare

About Danielle Roberts: Danielle Roberts is a founding partner at Boomer benefits. Which is a National Agency specializing in Medicare-related insurance products since 2005. She’s been serving thousands of Medigap policyholders in 48 States. Boomer benefits help baby boomers learn the ropes regarding Medicare, a nationally recognized expert in the Medicare sector of the health insurance industry. Danielle is a past President of the Fort Worth chapter of the National Association of Health underwriters, and a Forbes financial council member. She’s been featured and or quoted by major news outlets around the country such as Fox, Yahoo, finance, and Business Insider.

In this episode, Steve and Danielle discuss:

1. Why do people feel so overwhelmed about Medicare when they’re approaching age 65?

I think it’s because your whole working life, you’ve had someone choose your health insurance for you, you work for a company, that company has an HR department, HR department reviews, a bunch of group health insurance plans, and they come and say here, you know, you can sign up for this plan. Here’s what it’s going to cost you out of your paycheck. And that’s what happens. Maybe you work for a company that gives you a choice between a PPO and an HMO they have two plants to choose from, but you never have to do any of the heavy lifting and learn what deductibles and coinsurance are, you know, you just sign up and go with whatever insurance that’s given to you. Well, when you turn 65, and you’re retiring and you’re leaving that group health insurance whenever if it’s at 65 or later. Either way, you’ve got to learn this National Health Insurance Program, which is a beast with four parts, 10 supplements, and literally thousands of Medicare Advantage or Part D drug plan options.

2. Why haven’t they made it easier to comprehend or done some type of Medicare course to help people get introduced and acclimated with Medicare?

Yeah, you’re speaking my language. We have a private Facebook group where we allow people to join and ask their Medicare questions. I have heard that same question. Probably hundreds of times, like people will say, Why didn’t anyone prepare us and I often like to say, there should be a class when you’re 50 that you have to take could be online, and they could do it in an hour, but preparing you for things that people generally don’t know about Medicare, namely, that it’s not free, that you’re going to pay for it, and also that it doesn’t cover 100% of the cost of your healthcare so that you have time Get ready for that. Because we have met over the years, many, many people turning 65 getting ready to retire who were just blown away to find out that there’s a cost to this healthcare that they’re going to pay their whole life, that it’s going to be deducted from the cost, their social security check, and they’re not ready. So we’ve seen a lot of people decide to work a few more years because they were so caught off guard. So the government really does need to do a much better job. They send out a handbook. It used to be mailed to you now not even everyone gets the book in the mail. There’s some legislation too, that’s in Congress right now to take place to try to do a better job of preparing people for when they should enroll. So they don’t end up with penalties that they incurred just because they didn’t know when and where and how they should have signed up for Medicare.

3. Is it because they’re so confused or just so not in the know about what it actually involves and what it’s gonna entail? Usually when there’s things that people don’t really know anything about, and they’re a little nervous about, they tend to avoid it.

Yes, people will procrastinate until the very last minute, or they just don’t make any decision at all. They sometimes end up in trouble for that. One example that we’re dealing with a lot now is that people who don’t have employer insurance who’ve been insured the last few years through the private health care exchange, they have had a subsidy which, which helps to make that insurance, very inexpensive for them. So they might be paying 50 or $100 a month for a health insurance plan because the government picks up part of the cost of the premium under the Affordable Care Act and so they’re like, well, I love the insurance coverage I have I just not going to sign up for Medicare. Well, what they find out later, is that it was never intended that the ACA Plans replace Medicare, they’re supposed to leave them and enroll in Medicare at 65. So not only will they pay a late enrollment penalty for signing up for Medicare because of that, but furthermore, once the government catches up with them, they’ll make them pay back all the subsidy dollars that they’ve been given since age 65. And you can just imagine there are literally thousands of people in that bucket who don’t know any better. So it’s so important that people start doing their research early. The early 60s is a good time, but certainly no later than age 64. You need to dive in and learn the parts of Medicare and learn the enrollment periods and familiarize yourself with all that so that you don’t accidentally make a huge blunder that is going to affect your coverage and what you pay for it for the rest of your life.

4. Can you fill in our listeners on exactly what that entails when you start being eligible for Medicare as far as price?

So part of the reason people think Medicare is free is that during your working years, you pay FICA taxes, and you see on your paycheck stub, the amount that’s pulled out of your paycheck to go toward Medicare and to go towards social security. So people think that they’re prepaying and that Medicare will cost them nothing when they get there. And on one part, that’s true, Part A, which is your inpatient hospital coverage under Medicare that is funded by the FICA taxes that you pay throughout your working life or if you were married to someone, you have to work at least 10 years here in the US or be married to someone who did to get Part A for free, and most people do work so about 99% of all Medicare beneficiaries, enrolling in part A will pay nothing for it. You can purchase If you a lot of times immigrants who are recent to America, maybe don’t have that work history, you can purchase it, but for most people, Part A costs nothing.

5. What exactly is Part A?

Part A is your inpatient hospital coverage. If you’re admitted into a hospital, Part A is the fund that pays for inpatient hospitals, skilled nursing, hospice, blood transfusions, things like that, that would occur in a hospital setting.

6. So that doesn’t cover all the other stuff? It only covers if you get sick, and you have to go into a hospital or you have to get skilled nursing?

Sometimes, people who can’t afford or didn’t know they have to pay, won’t sign up for the Part B which is the outpatient coverage, and that’s a big mistake if Medicare is going to be your primary coverage if you don’t have other coverage, such as through the VA or through retiree coverage through an employer, because although Part B does pay for outpatient things like you and I would think of as outpatient like doctor visits and lab work, it also covers things which may happen in the hospital because physicians perform services at a hospital and physicians fall under Part B. So if you were to have outpatient surgery or chemotherapy or radiation in a hospital, Part B is actually the part that covers those services. Part B is not free currently in 2020. The base premium, the standard base premium for Part B that most people pay is $144.60 per month. That typically goes up a little bit every year. People in higher income brackets about 5% of Medicare beneficiaries pay substantially more than that because they’re in a higher income bracket.

7. What about the senior or the aging person who doesn’t want to pay $144 for part B, and has either a pension which includes health benefits or is still working and has health benefits, do they need to get Part B?

They don’t. If you work for an employer, past age 65, and that employer has more than 20 employees, then you can keep your employer coverage and it’s going to pay primary and Medicare will pay secondary.

8. What is Part C?

Part C is the Medicare Advantage program. To understand how that works, I’ll first state that when you have your Medicare benefits in place. They work similarly to other insurance that you’ve had in the past when you have employer group health insurance. When you go to the doctor, you have a copay. If you go to the hospital, you pay a deductible. Well, Medicare has those same things. You have a deductible when you go to the hospital, there’s an outpatient deductible, and then Medicare covers only about 80% of your outpatient expenses. So you need some sort of supplemental coverage that’s going to cover that other 20% and also pay those deductibles for you. So you could choose to enroll in a traditional Medicare supplement that goes alongside the original Medicare that picks up those things for you or you could opt for the Medicare Advantage Program instead. And that is just a way where you can get your original Medicare Part A and B benefits through a private insurance company that operates a local network in your area.

9. What’s the difference if someone wants to do Part C and Part D, they can either get that through Medicare, or they could get it through private companies such as Boomer Benefits?

The Medicare Advantage program is not something Boomer Benefits offers, you would enroll in a doctor, a private insurance company, and all the same companies that you’re used to that operate in the under 65 world. They offer Medicare supplements and Medicare Advantage plans. So in your local area, you might be signing up with United Healthcare or Blue Cross or Aetna or Cigna Anthem. There are dozens of carriers that offer these plans. The main differences are with original Medicare and a Medicare supplement. Medicare is the primary payer and if you have a Medicare-approved claim which Medicare approves most medically necessary care. Medicare pays its share and then sends the rest of your supplement company and the supplement company picks up their share, leaving you little out of pocket. And the advantage of sticking with original Medicare and going that route is Medicare doesn’t have a network There are over 1 million providers that participate in Medicare across the United States. So you can see any doctor you want anytime you don’t have to pick a primary care doctor, you never have to get a referral.

10. If I was over 65 I could use any doctor, even in another state under my part C?

Original Medicare with a Medicare supplement is the one that you could see any doctor Part C is the one that has a local network.

“What’s really important to know Is that Medicare has election periods and you need to know how they operate and when to use them.”

— Danielle Roberts

To find out more about the National Injured Senior Law Center or to set up a free consultation go to https://www.injuredseniorhotline.com/ or call 855-622-6530

Connect with Danielle Roberts:

Facebook: Medicare Q&A with Boomer Benefits Instagram: @boomerbenefits Website: https://boomerbenefits.com/ Pinterest: Boomer Benefits YouTube: Boomer Benefits Phone: 855-732-9055

CONNECT WITH STEVE H. HEISLER:

Website: http://www.injuredseniorhotline.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/attorneysteveheisler/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-law-offices-of-steven-h.-heisler/about/ Email: [email protected]

Show notes by Podcastologist: Kristen Braun

Audio production by Turnkey Podcast Productions. You’re the expert. Your podcast will prove it.

The post Danielle Roberts: What You Need to Know About Medicare appeared first on The Maryland Injury Lawyer.

0 notes

jamesgeiiger · 6 years ago

Text

Don’t Be Your Worst Enemy: Self-Inflicted Wounds Are The Worst

A self-inflicted wound is so sad. Unlike financial blindspots, where you can plead ignorance for your actions, a self-inflicted wound is a willful and always a harmful action that puts you in a worse off situation than before.

As the markets tumble, it’s worth highlighting some self-inflicted wounds that could have prevented this fall. We’ll also learn about other common self-inflicted wounds that may derail one’s journey to financial independence.

Remember, the easiest way to never saying, “if I knew then what I know now,” is to simply listen to people who’ve been there before.

Examples Of Self-Inflicted Wounds

* Jerome Powell, telegraphing more rate hikes in 2019. Despite the S&P 500 already correcting 12%+ from its highs in 2018, Jerome decided to raise rates again on Dec 19, 2018, and telegraph another two rate hikes in 2019. Although the market was expecting the Dec 19 rate hike, it had lowered its expectations for any further rate hikes in 2019 to less than 25%. As a result, broader markets went from +1.5% to down ~2% that day, further deepening the sell-off.

Jerome could have taken a wait and see approach to help restore some investor confidence by pausing in December or providing more dovish language for 2019. Alas, he decided to keep stubbornly moving forward in spite the carnage and the expected carnage. Due to pride and a $100M+ net worth, he feared being viewed as a puppet to Trump. Now, he will be viewed as one of the most reviled men in the world as millions of investors suffer financial loss. He has hurt his reputation, his family’s reputation, and lost friends in the remaining years of his life. Do you really think his rich friends at the country club are going to give him the time of day next time he pops in for an Arnold Palmer? Of course not.

If the downturn worsens, corporations will be forced to stop hiring and start firing. It’s one thing to lose money in your investment portfolios. It’s another thing to lose money and also lose your job. The livelihoods of millions of people are at stake from Jerome’s refusal to simply take a pause and see what the next quarter’s economic data reveals.

It doesn’t matter whether you think what JP did was right or wrong. The end result was a collapse in the financial markets in the ensuing days. If you had any stocks, you lost big.

* Companies that completely change their business model overnight. Zillow is one of the biggest tech disappointments because it could have revolutionized the way we buy and sell homes by significantly lowering transactions costs. But 14 years after its founding in 2004, real estate commissions are still around 5%, while the internet has compressed downward every other fee known to man.

The reason why real estate commissions are still so high, despite Zillow and the internet, is because the real estate industry has a powerful lobby group, and Zillow’s main advertising revenue comes from real estate agents who advertise their services or listings on Zillow. Therefore, Zillow isn’t willing to hurt their customers’ bottom lines while also trying to take their money.

You better believe that if transaction costs dropped down to a fixed rate or a lower commission percentage average, many more properties would sell. Yet, the industry stubbornly holds on for dear life, thereby screwing itself in the process as fewer transactions occur.

But the real shocker about Zillow is its decision to get into the home flipping business of buying and selling homes. They’ve also bought a mortgage lending business at what appears to be a late stage in the real estate cycle. Their ultimate goal is to use their data to try and lowball some desperate seller who has imperfect information and sell their house to another sucker with imperfect information for a nice profit.

What made Zillow interesting as an investment was its asset-light business model. However, due to what I imagine is FOMO caused by a private company called Opendoor, which raised lots of money to get into the home flipping business, Zillow has decided to follow suit this year.

Who was the genius at Zillow who decided that after a 60% – 100% rise in property prices in just six years, that now is the time to use the company’s balance sheet to buy and sell expensive assets? Going from an asset-light business to an asset-heavy business has destroyed the company’s valuation. It’s now Redfin’s turn to shine.

* Bad politics. We know that most politicians on both sides are egomaniacs who are primarily focused on obtaining and maintaining power for themselves. There are countless examples of political corruption that occur every year in every country at the expense of the people they are supposed to represent. It is truly fascinating how millions of people continue to get duped by such people.

The CEO of FedEx, which reported disappointing results and slashed 2019 earnings and revenue guidance summed bad politics up perfectly,

“This is very, very important, and I’ll just conclude by saying most of the issues that we’re dealing with today are induced by bad political choices, I mean, making a bad decision about a new tax, creating a tremendously difficult situation with Brexit, the immigration crisis in Germany, the mercantilism and state-owned enterprise initiatives in China, the tariffs that the United States put in unilaterally. So you just go down the list, and they’re all things that have created macroeconomic slowdowns.”

* Not properly managing your burn. Although the startup failure rate is high, due to inexperience and irrational confidence in their product and market opportunity, a large reason for their failures is the inability to properly manage their monthly burn (expenses).

For example, during a podcast interview, the founder of a food delivery startup called Bento admitted he did not realize he spent $70,000 more than expected (30% – 40% more) one month. As a business owner, I find that very hard to imagine.

Another example is a virtual assistant company, whose CEO fired 400 of its employee via e-mail overnight after “suddenly” discovering the company had run out of money. The CEO mentioned there had been no finance guy keeping an eye out on the numbers until it was too late.

Running a new business is extremely difficult, no doubt. I salute all those who’ve had the guts to try. It’s imperative that all startups and all businesses frankly, focus more on profitability, and less on growth at any price as the economy slows.

Related: Career Advice For Those Joining Startups: Sleep With One Eye Open

* Giving up on the cusp of success. I cannot believe how many people give up before the going gets good. I’m referring to the constant job hopping after just one or two years because things aren’t just perfect. I’m talking about quitting the side hustle after 10 months because it’s not generating enough money for your liking. The longer you last, the more lucky breaks you will have!

There is no closer correlation between effort and reward than in the blogging world. This correlation is one of the main reasons why blogging is one of today’s best businesses. One of the main reasons why people hate their jobs is because they feel that no matter how hard they try, they’ll never get ahead. With blogging, the more you write, the greater your traffic.

No matter how much revenue I generated for my previous firm, it was never enough because I had to subsidize money-losing businesses. I understood the importance of being a team player, but after 13 years, I figured I should strike it out on my own instead of staying and complaining.

Despite having such a tight correlation in the blogging world, so many people quit before a year is up. But it takes 6 – 24 months to be found by the community and by search engines. Once you get through that initial cavern of silence, things start getting better and better due to increased organic traffic and a growing audience.

It’s like not spending a small fortune to watch a movie at the theatre when it first comes out. Once you patiently get through the initial hype, you’ll have a new movie to watch on DVD or streaming practically every week at a low fixed cost.

Why give up when you can keep on going?

* Quitting instead of getting laid off. A baby panda dies in the forest every time someone quits his or her job. I have seen countless examples of people who have quit their jobs only to sorely regret their decision because their colleagues who didn’t quit got laid off with a nice severance package months or sometimes days later.

Even worse than quitting your job without a severance is quitting your job without a severance, plus having little money and nothing else lined up. The master severance negotiator is able to successfully negotiate a severance, take time off, and have a new job ready to go before his or her severance runs out.

In a downturn, the ability to find another job at a salary you want will become more difficult. Therefore, it is imperative that you leave with as long a financial runway as possible.

* Thinking you just can’t lose. Whenever you think you just can’t lose is usually the time when you lose the most. My personal example is buying a Lake Tahoe vacation property in 2007 the year after earning the most I had ever made in my life. I was second-year VP and felt like the sky was the limit for my career. Of course, the financial crisis happened and I ended up losing 100% of my 20% downpayment and then some because the condo declined in value by over 40%.

Ever since that fateful misstep, I’ve had to do a lot of self-reflection before taking more risk outside my normal parameters. I suggest you give yourself a gut check as well whenever you are feeling extremely swell.

* Harassing someone in the workplace. If you are discovered harassing someone in the workplace or worse, especially if you are more powerful, your reputation will be destroyed in a nanosecond. It doesn’t matter how much good you provided to the world over the decades, you will be tarnished for life.

There is no coming back for men like Charlie Rose, Matt Lauer, and Les Moonves. There is definitely no coming back for guys like Harvey Weinstein and Bill Cosby. I am sure they would donate all their fame and fortune to get back their reputations. Even more devastating than their lost reputations is the dishonor their actions inflicted upon their respective families.

* Social media time sinkhole. Think twice, speak once. But for some reason, folks over social media continue to speak twice and not think at all! Spewing incredible nonsense on social media has a great way of coming back to haunt you. We are living in a hypersensitive world. There’s no upside in offending anyone anymore. Even comedians, whose goal is to find humor in the offensive, are getting thrashed.

Keep your time spent on social media to a minimum. Besides, Facebook is reading and sending all your private messages to other companies in order to sell you more ads anyway. So why bother?

* Being an insufferable a-hole. Sooner or later, all of us will need a helping hand. But if you’ve treated people poorly in the past or have always decided to take, take, take before ever giving, nobody will come to your rescue.

Adopt the good habit of giving as much as possible without any expectations. Treat your staff as well as you would treat your most prized customer. Fight to pay for the bill. Do your best to let go of any jealous or hate you have for someone else. It’ll only end up eating you up inside.

People will never forget your act of kindness and will go out of their way to return the favor one day.

youtube

Don’t Be Your Worst Enemy

On your road to financial freedom, you want to try and minimize your self-inflicted wounds by thinking logically. Consistently try to hit singles and the occasional double, instead of always trying to go for the home run. If you want to go for a home run, do so with 10% or less of your investable net worth.

I’ve seen too many people make a small fortune and lose it all because they didn’t manage their risk parameters properly. Be wiser by making sure your asset allocation fits your risk profile.

The self-inflicted wound I’m trying to deal with at present is working too much and stressing about how to manage FS and my investments when I would be happier taking it easy and spending more quality time with my family.

If only the good times could go on forever. Alas, tougher times are ahead.

Readers, what type of self-inflicted wounds have you caused? What are some self-inflicted wounds that you recommend others be aware? Featured image is by http://bit.ly/2Cr3fLf.

The post Don’t Be Your Worst Enemy: Self-Inflicted Wounds Are The Worst appeared first on Financial Samurai.

Don’t Be Your Worst Enemy: Self-Inflicted Wounds Are The Worst published first on https://worldwideinvestforum.tumblr.com/

0 notes

mcjoelcain · 6 years ago

Text

Don’t Be Your Worst Enemy: Self-Inflicted Wounds Are The Worst

Remember, the easiest way to never saying, “if I knew then what I know now,” is to simply listen to people who’ve been there before.

Examples Of Self-Inflicted Wounds

It doesn’t matter whether you think what JP did was right or wrong. The end result was a collapse in the financial markets in the ensuing days. If you had any stocks, you lost big.

The CEO of FedEx, which reported disappointing results and slashed 2019 earnings and revenue guidance summed bad politics up perfectly,

Related: Career Advice For Those Joining Startups: Sleep With One Eye Open

Why give up when you can keep on going?

In a downturn, the ability to find another job at a salary you want will become more difficult. Therefore, it is imperative that you leave with as long a financial runway as possible.

Keep your time spent on social media to a minimum. Besides, Facebook is reading and sending all your private messages to other companies in order to sell you more ads anyway. So why bother?

People will never forget your act of kindness and will go out of their way to return the favor one day.

youtube

Don’t Be Your Worst Enemy

I’ve seen too many people make a small fortune and lose it all because they didn’t manage their risk parameters properly. Be wiser by making sure your asset allocation fits your risk profile.

If only the good times could go on forever. Alas, tougher times are ahead.

Readers, what type of self-inflicted wounds have you caused? What are some self-inflicted wounds that you recommend others be aware? Featured image is by http://www.pejac.es/seppuku/.

The post Don’t Be Your Worst Enemy: Self-Inflicted Wounds Are The Worst appeared first on Financial Samurai.

from Money https://www.financialsamurai.com/dont-be-your-worst-enemy-self-inflicted-wounds-are-the-worst/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

0 notes

theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

Link

It might be as late as 8 or 9 pm when the Lutheran Social Services office in Phoenix, Arizona, gets the call: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has just reunited another group of asylum seekers with their children, and the newly reunited families — say, two vans, or 20 people in all — will arrive for intake in 10 to 15 minutes.

The staff and volunteers at Lutheran Social Services (with help from national advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union and FWD.us) are ready, with everything from shoelaces to stuffed animals to pastors on call. Meanwhile, in Washington, DC — where it’s 10 or 11 at night — staffers for FWD.us are preparing to spend another few hours as impromptu travel agents, booking next-day flights from Phoenix to wherever the families are set to go.

Over the past several days, racing to comply with a court-imposed deadline, the federal government has reunited hundreds of families whom it separated at the US-Mexico border earlier this year. By the end of Thursday, more than 1,600 children ages 5 to 17 will be reunited with their parents.

Hundreds of those families are released from detention into an unfamiliar country, with instructions to appear for a check-in with ICE — maybe in as little as seven days, in a city a thousand miles away, with no money to get there. Their only experience of the US has been at the hands of the Trump administration, which treated the parents as criminals and the children as collateral damage.

But advocates and service providers — with assistance from everyone from church congregations to major airlines — have stepped in as an impromptu welcoming committee. They’ve hastily thrown together a system to get families from the parking lots of the local nonprofits in Arizona, New Mexico, and Texas where they’re formally “released” by ICE contractors to the towns and cities all across the US where they’ll stay while their cases are under review.

The welcoming committee is trying to ensure that families make their initial check-in dates, something they feel the government should be helping with but isn’t. But they’re also trying to show another face of America to the victims of the family separation policy. “The American public is going to step in where the government has failed,” said Alida Garcia, the coalitions and policy director for FWD.us, on a press call Tuesday. “It’s going to provide comfort and love and care to these families.”

Sometimes comfort looks like an airplane ticket. Sometimes it’s an impromptu “Happy Birthday” sing-along — complete with a Hostess birthday cupcake — for a 7-year-old who’s just been reunited with his dad.

There’s something special about sharing a birthday with a little boy who’s just been reunited with his family. His best gift was probably seeing his mom again. pic.twitter.com/9Eh6MokyUL

— Sam Aguilar (@SamAguilarATL) July 22, 2018

As of Monday, the federal government had reunited 1,012 children ages 5 to 17 with their parents. By the end of Thursday, it’s expected to reunite 1,637.

Many of those families are being kept in detention — many, in fact, are facing the difficult decision of whether to be deported together or to separate again so that the children have a chance to stay.

But some families, when the parents have passed initial asylum screenings and been granted parole or posted bond, are more fortunate. They’re released from detention when they’re reunited — sometimes seeing their children for the first time in months in the parking lot of a detention center on a hot day — or shortly after.

But for many families, there’s not a lot they can do with that freedom. In addition to having just suffered a traumatic experience, they’re in a massive country whose language and transit systems they don’t understand. They may have no money to get to the cities across America where they’ve told ICE agents they’re headed (usually to stay with relatives or friends) for the duration of their cases. They may have nothing more than “the shirt on their backs,” in the words of Connie Phillips, the president of Lutheran Social Services Southwest.

As part of Judge Dana Sabraw’s reunification order, the government is supposed to drop off families at intake centers run by local nonprofits, like Lutheran Social Services in Phoenix. On July 12, according to Philips, the government called LSS and asked if it would be able to do intake for reunited families; by July 13, it was ready to go.

LSS didn’t actually get its first families until a few days later. And the pace has been erratic — one day last week, the center processed nearly 90 people; one day this week, it processed only four or five. Between that and the lack of advance notice, Phillips says, “we have to be ready all the time” — even if some of that time is just waiting. Disproportionately, families are sent to them in the evening — often as people at the office are packing up, they’ll get another call.

Lutheran Social Services isn’t typically staffed for this; it doesn’t usually work with people apprehended at the border at all, much less 90 of them in a day. But it quickly mobilized staff from Phoenix and Tucson, and a small army of volunteers — from the existing volunteer network, congregations LSS partners with, and people who were outraged by family separation and wanted to help.

“People just … responded,” Phillips says. Anyone who spoke Spanish was mobilized — “even our HR manager, she speaks Spanish, so she’s over at the hotel” where families stay for the night. Others were put to work scanning documents or driving shuttles to carry families from the intake center to the hotel, or the hotel to the airport.

Donors are bringing in three meals a day — “everything from spaghetti to beans and rice” — to feed families and staff, at the intake center and at the hotel where families are sent to stay the night.

Volunteers work two shifts, Phillips says: 6 am to noon, and “noon to … end.” At the intake center, the “end” doesn’t come until the last families have been processed and driven to the hotel; at the hotel, it doesn’t come until the last families have cleared out of the meeting room volunteers have claimed as a “communal space” and everyone has been checked in for the night.

But “we don’t want to hurry” anybody, Phillips says. “They’re so raw” — some families have been together for an hour or less by the time they arrive at the intake center. “Hotel rooms can be pretty lonesome.”

In one New Mexico hotel where recently reunited families are being housed, staff and volunteers set up a “welcome stage” with toys and coloring books ready for children. Courtesy of FWD.us

Intake staff is supposed to make sure the families know where they’re going and provide them with information about legal representation. But in practice, it’s clear that families need so much more.

“There’s an immediate need for a change of clothes, underwear,” Phillips says, ticking off the list. Men may want a shave, so they’ll need to have razors. Adults and children alike may have had their shoelaces removed while in detention — to prevent self-harm — so they’ll need replacements. They’ve been awake for a long time, shuttled from detention center, to the ICE processing center, to the intake center, and they’ll need a meal.

They’ll need to know how to charge the ankle bracelets the adults are wearing, or whether they can wear them in the shower (a question that a FWD.us staffer at a hotel texted Garcia, in DC, in a panic). Many of them have never stayed in a hotel before; they might need to be told how to use the keycard to get into the room, or how to turn on the television.

They might want to talk about what happened to them to an understanding ear, or even a priest or pastor. They might want to call the family they’re going to meet in the US to tell them they’re on their way, or the family they left back home to tell them they “got out.” They might simply want to be together, as a family, for the first time in a while.

“We do have one happy story to share. Our client Vilma was separated from her child for 58 days, having fled violence in Guatemala, and we were able to reunite them this past weekend.” – @MimiMarziani (Pictured: Our law clerk Priscilla with Vilma and her son) pic.twitter.com/sGsPKdXakA

— Texas Civil Rights Project (@TXCivilRights) July 24, 2018

They probably won’t ask for any of these things. “These people are very reserved, very quiet, very compliant,” says Phillips. “We have to say over and over again that ‘we’re here to help you,’ because they’re very suspicious of us.” They are, in a word, traumatized. “I’ve had children ask us, ‘Are you going to take my mom or my dad away now?’”

So the hotel meeting room, set up by a group of ACLU staffers who’ve traveled from San Diego to Phoenix to help reunited families, has become a space where families can find what they need, even without asking. For kids, there are coloring books and stuffed animals — which they cling to, desperately, like security blankets. For adults, there’s pastoral care: Spanish-speaking pastors from some of the congregations Lutheran Social Services works with in the Phoenix area, who have volunteered their time.

ACLU volunteers are able to answer legal questions. They’ve set up a station with accounts on prepaid phone cards for the most popular call service to Guatemala, so that Guatemalan families can call their relatives back home.

On Sunday, a local ACLU staffer brought in a projector. Someone else brought a Bluetooth speaker. They had an evening movie screening on the meeting-room wall: Coco, Disney’s 2017 film about a Latino boy looking for a family member in an unfamiliar world.

As the family separation crisis dominated the news, I heard from people who had been unable to watch Coco because of the resonances. But for families celebrating their first night together, Alida Garcia of FWD reports the next day, “it was a hit, I would say. It was a moral victory.”

Traded TX for AZ to help reunify families who were separated at the border.

It’s my 5th day w/ #FlightsforFamilies and, despite the challenges, I’m happy to see parents + kids enjoy @pixarcoco and a quiet night.

Tomorrow we’ll work to bring more families together… pic.twitter.com/H4nC9JJWj7

— Zaira R. Garcia (@ZairaRuthGarcia) July 23, 2018

FWD.us is an advocacy group run out of DC and founded by Mark Zuckerberg and other tech donors. But since mid-July or so, it’s been moonlighting as a travel agency — booking flights for families, the day after they’re reunited and processed, from wherever they’ve been dropped off to wherever they need to go.

“These families have gone through enough. Putting them through a 30-hour, three-stop cross-country bus trip is not what they need right now,” says Garcia. Not that all of them could even afford a bus ticket — at least one family in Texas ended up stuck at a shelter after reunification because they had no money to leave town. (Migrants tell ICE where they’ll go once released, and ICE sets a check-in location at the nearest field office — but knowing the name of the town where your cousin lives isn’t the same as having a way to get there, or even knowing how.)

Many of them don’t have a lot of time to spare, either. ICE is scheduling check-ins for seven to 10 days after it releases families in Phoenix, with little regard to how far the location of the check-in is. Miss your check-in and you’re presumed to have absconded — another example of what the Trump administration pejoratively calls “catch and release,” even though there’s suggestive evidence that many families are ordered deported despite trying to comply with the rules. For some families, FWD.us president Todd Schulte worries, travel by bus — with its complicated itinerary and risks of breakdown that could make a days-long trip all the longer — “could put them in legal jeopardy.”

So instead, when families arrive at Lutheran Social Services in Phoenix, or at one of the other intake centers where most families are being released, FWD.us staff are there to get travel information. They relay that information to their colleagues in DC and on the West Coast, who start booking next-day flights that would be prohibitively expensive if families were booking them on their own.

FWD.us is partnering with RAICES and the Families Belong Together coalition to provide at least $3 million for flights; Delta has provided some local organizations with vouchers, and United Airlines announced Wednesday that it will provide “hundreds” of tickets for reunited families in the coming days. But the work of actually scheduling the flights is still falling to FWD.us staff, led by Garcia, Alexis Sacasas, Daniela Chomba, and Katie Aragón.

At 5 pm on Monday, several staffers in the DC office are circled on couches around a massive whiteboard, calling their colleagues in Phoenix and Albuquerque and getting updates on delayed flights in Denver and Dallas. (Much of the US is facing heavy rain — all flights out of Denver have just been grounded for weather — which is throwing a wrench into many families’ itineraries.) Empty Starbucks cookie bags litter the coffee table; a spray bottle of OxiClean is kept on hand for “the next time we spill something.”

It’s the environment you’d expect for people who, when Garcia says they haven’t slept in three nights, protest, indignantly, that they did in fact sleep — last night. One out of three.

It’s not so simple as finding a flight between two airports. If the family isn’t going to arrive at the hotel until 11 the night before, they don’t want to schedule a flight that leaves at 7 the next morning. They want to make things as easy as possible for parents traveling with younger children.

Not only does a volunteer have to be available to drive them to the airport, but they’re providing “airport escorts” to accompany families all the way to the gate — to help them navigate an airport for what may well be the first time. TSA screening checkpoints can be particularly nerve-racking given families’ recent experiences with high-security environments (and given that they’re traveling with documents provided by ICE rather than standard American drivers’ licenses). Explaining in advance what to expect is helpful — as is the fact that with so many reunited families coming through, says Connie Phillips, “at this point, the airport’s getting used to it.”

The most important consideration might be the hardest to guarantee. Most seats available the day before a flight are single seats. But “these are families who’ve been separated,” Garcia stresses — children who cling to their parents when they go to the bathroom. “We’d like them to sit together.” Delta has assured FWD.us that if the names of travelers are sent to the airline the day before, it will make sure parents are seated with their children on the flight.

The point, says Maria Praeli of FWD.us, is to show support to families “who probably never expected to be treated with such care. Even though I’ll never meet them and they’ll never meet me.”

THREAD: This is Edin and his 8-year-old daughter (pictured right). They were separated for a month, and had no funds to leave the shelter after they were reunited — but with assistance from us and @FWDus, they are on their way to family in the Midwest. pic.twitter.com/EPoCRuOZjx

— Texas Civil Rights Project (@TXCivilRights) July 20, 2018

You might expect families to ask to be sent to typical immigrant-heavy cities: New York, LA, Chicago, DC. But Garcia says there’s “no discernible pattern” to where people are headed; it’s incredibly diffuse.

She pulls up a spreadsheet and reads a few entries at random: North Carolina, Utah, a small town in the Plains, a town I’ve never heard of in Kentucky.

By the time the family steps onto a plane, they have contact information for organizations in their area that can provide low-cost or free legal representation to immigrants in deportation hearings. But the biggest problem for families seeking asylum is knowing when their next court date is, and getting there. And FWD.us is already trying to think ahead to how to best coordinate that.

“We’re now trying to get as many people prepaid cellphones as possible, because people don’t have them,” says Garcia. Their early attempts to do this ran into a snag: State laws and store policies keep people from buying more than two prepaid cellphones at a time (due to the association of “burner” phones with street gangs). FWD.us was looking for more like 700 or 800.

They were considering what Schulte called the “Dunkirk plan”: putting out a mass communiqué to supporters. “People of America, buy two cellphones, and send them to this hotel in Phoenix.”

They got help from somewhere else instead. “I got a guy at T-Mobile now,” Schulte boasts with a laugh. “I could get you a couple thousand, if you need.”

But the Dunkirk plan probably would have worked. There are so many people who were enraged by the administration’s separation of families, and who are still enraged by the fact that not every child will be reunited with her parent even after the court-set deadline. They have donated millions of dollars to RAICES to pay parents’ bond so they can seek out their children.

America’s official response to these families — the response of the US government — has been to punish them, either to send a message to other people not to cross the border or simply because they feel they deserve it for crossing between ports of entry to seek asylum. They have been separated for weeks, or often months.

The parents have been sent to cattle-call court hearings where they barely understood they were being convicted of crimes, and housed in federal criminal prisons. The children have been kept in jail-like temporary holding facilities, then sent to temporary caregivers who may not have even known they were separated from parents at the border. They were told if they cried or misbehaved, they would never see their parents again.

They had no idea they would see each other again. The government had no plan to make it happen.

It was only because the American people disagreed with what was being done in their name that family separation is no longer widescale policy. For those Americans, welcoming families after they’ve been reunited is an opportunity to show that the government does not speak for them.

The groundswell of support can’t guarantee that families will ultimately be able to stay in the US. Central American asylum seekers, especially families, don’t have a great track record of ultimately getting asylum — partly because they’re less likely to make their court date, but partly because the things they’re fleeing don’t perfectly line up with what the US government (especially this US government) considers itself obligated to protect people from.

But while the welcoming committee is adamant that families deserve at least the opportunity to make their case for asylum, they’re not doing this simply for the purposes of due process. They’re doing it to show kindness to people they feel have been mistreated in the name of the United States. They’re doing it to show a different face of America.

“The generosity of the community has been amazing,” Phillips says. “These families — we’ve been told this is the first time in the United States that anyone’s been kind to them.”

Original Source -> Americans are stepping up to show reunited migrant families there’s more to their country than Trump

via The Conservative Brief

#IFTTT #The Conservative Brief

0 notes

takenews-blog1 · 7 years ago

Text

Activists received Democrats to close down the federal government. Can they do it once more?

New Post has been published on https://takenews.net/activists-received-democrats-to-close-down-the-federal-government-can-they-do-it-once-more/

Activists received Democrats to close down the federal government. Can they do it once more?

“They caved.”

“#SchumerSellout.”

As quickly as Democrats struck a deal on Monday to reopen the federal authorities, the statements and tweets started pouring in from progressive and immigration teams. The goal of their anger was Senate Minority Chief Chuck Schumer, who initially received sufficient Democrats (and a handful of Republicans) to vote towards a short-term spending invoice over the dearth of a Deferred Motion for Childhood Arrivals program deal on Friday.

However underneath Schumer’s management, Democrats had reversed course by noon Monday, with nearly all of the caucus supporting one other short-term funding invoice to open the federal government.

“They stood up and fought; it was nice,” mentioned Ezra Levin, co-executive director of the nationwide activist group Indivisible. “We have been behind [Schumer]. Then unilaterally to fold on Monday whereas getting completely nothing … was completely stunning and baffling. It felt like an actual betrayal.”

Democratic senators, in fact, don’t see it that approach. They consider they efficiently cornered Senate Majority Chief Mitch McConnell by getting him to publicly promise an open immigration debate within the coming weeks if a deal isn’t reached by February eight.

“I believe he’s made his commitments so publicly, so unequivocally, it could be very troublesome for him to attempt to discover a approach out of assembly that dedication,” Sen. Angus King (I-ME), who causes with the Democrats, instructed Vox’s Dylan Scott.

However activists and immigrant rights teams view this as the other of a win. Many say they wished Democrats to safe a concrete deal, fairly than settling for assurances from Republican management.

“We don’t see it,” mentioned Cristina Jiménez, government director of United We Dream, the nation’s largest DREAMer advocacy group. “The plan that they’ve laid out thus far by way of having a flooring dialogue and modification course of, all of that doesn’t assure a vote and doesn’t assure an consequence that’s going to avoid wasting lives.”

Democrats are brazenly dangling the potential for one other shutdown when the subsequent funding deadline comes round on February eight, after they consider they’ll have extra leverage as a result of the Youngsters’s Well being Insurance coverage Program is now funded for the subsequent six years.

That February eight deadline is the final inflection level for Democrats earlier than the DACA program totally sunsets in March. After that, a whole bunch of 1000’s of DREAMers will lose their authorized standing and be weak to deportation. However can these activists persuade Democrats to close down the federal government once more? And are they any likelier to get a deal in three weeks’ time?

“We won’t take no for a solution,” Jiménez mentioned.

The dynamics of an immigration deal being reached by February eight are already wanting murky. On Tuesday, Schumer pulled a earlier supply of $20 billion value of border wall funding after the Trump White Home scuttled a deal.

“The wall supply’s off the desk,” Schumer instructed reporters. A bipartisan group of 39 senators are going again to the drafting board on the parameters of an immigration deal, beginning to draft their proposals on Wednesday afternoon.

It’s going to be an uphill battle. Even when senators can come to some form of deal, there’s no assure it’ll maintain within the Home of Representatives. Conservative Home Republicans are planning to carry Home Speaker Paul Ryan to his promise to not cross immigration laws if a majority of Republicans don’t assist it, as Vox’s Tara Golshan reported.

And even when a invoice cleared the Home and Senate, it’s completely unclear if Trump — well-known for calling Mexicans “rapists” and labeling sure African, Central American, and Caribbean nations “shithole international locations” in a closed-door assembly — would ever signal a deal legalizing a whole bunch of 1000’s of unauthorized immigrants.

No matter occurs within the Home and the White Home, activists are clear that momentum for a invoice should start within the Senate. They wish to maintain Democrats to their guarantees once more earlier than the February deadline.

“I would love Sen. Schumer to assist us assist him,” Levin mentioned. “He and different Democrats have embraced that purpose; they are saying they need to get this finished. If he accomplishes it, he deserves the credit score for it. If he doesn’t, he deserves the blame.”

Although some Democrats have been nervous in regards to the political penalties of inflicting a shutdown, progressive teams have been clear there may be political penalties if Democrats don’t maintain agency in assist of undocumented youth. Some even started calling the 5 red-state Democrats who unsuccessfully voted to fund the federal government on Friday the #DeportationCaucus on social media.

Activists are persevering with to bombard Democratic senators with emails and cellphone calls encouraging them to push for an immigration deal. Many are additionally exhibiting as much as Senate workplaces in particular person. Schumer, specifically, has been a goal of protests. Over the previous few months, undocumented youth have been arrested for staging sit-ins in his workplace. Extra have staged protests outdoors the minority chief’s dwelling in New York Metropolis.

That’s prone to proceed. Jiménez mentioned greater than 100 immigrant youth will probably be on Capitol Hill over the subsequent few weeks having face-to-face conferences with senators to press them to come back to an immigration deal that provides DREAMers a pathway to citizenship.

The politics of presidency shutdowns are difficult, particularly for Democrats, who need to painting themselves because the accountable governing social gathering.

Republicans have largely shouldered the blame for previous shutdowns, however centrist Democrats have been nervous about being implicated within the 2018 shutdown, particularly with midterm elections looming in November. On this specific battle, who had the political leverage in a shutdown battle was much less clear-cut.

“It’s a really difficult enterprise to say we are able to pin a shutdown on one social gathering and one social gathering alone,” John Sides, an affiliate professor of political science at George Washington College, instructed Vox in a current interview.

Regardless that Democrats (and 4 Republicans) technically voted towards the short-term spending invoice, President Donald Trump had brazenly referred to as for a authorities shutdown in previous statements and tweets.

“A shutdown is as a lot a danger for [Trump] as it’s for different Republicans,” Sides mentioned. “His actions, I believe, might be interpreted as contributing to it.”

And a minimum of at first, it regarded like Trump and Republicans have been once more getting nearly all of the shutdown blame. A Washington Publish/ABC Information ballot carried out earlier than Friday’s vote discovered Individuals blaming Trump and congressional Republicans for the shutdown by a 20-point margin. Issues have been much less clear-cut after the shutdown occurred, with an NBC Information/SurveyMonkey ballot discovering that Democratic voters have been principally blaming Trump for the shutdown, whereas Republicans voters blamed Democrats in Congress. Impartial voters have been additionally extra prone to blame Trump over congressional Democrats, by a 17-point margin, 48 p.c to 31 p.c.

As a result of the shutdown solely lasted three days (two of which have been over a weekend), it in all probability received’t develop into a lot of a political problem. However progressive teams say they assume Trump would have shouldered extra of the blame if Democrats had held the road.

“The longer it went on, the extra painful it could have been to Trump and the extra Trump would have felt he needed to do one thing,” mentioned Navin Nayak, government director of the Middle for American Progress Motion Fund. “The shutdown was resolved so rapidly that the true supply of the issue and the true political ache was not delivered to bear on the president.”

Nayak believes if the shutdown had gone on longer, it could have begun to mirror on the dysfunction of Trump’s White Home and the president’s lack of ability to carry Republicans and Democrats collectively to strike a deal.

“I believe that may have been an enormous profit to Democrats,” Nayak mentioned.

Schumer’s job is to carry collectively a Democratic caucus that contains liberal senators for whom the DREAM Act is a prime precedence, in addition to moderates and red-state Democrats who’re far more involved with long-term spending priorities together with funding for the opioid disaster, pensions, and group well being facilities.

Activists are proud of the 18 Democratic senators who voted towards the CR on Friday. The checklist incorporates liberal stalwarts who’ve voted towards short-term CRs from the start, together with Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Bernie Sanders (I-VT), Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY), and Jeff Merkley (D-OR). It additionally consists of centrists and one red-state Democrat, Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT).

Tester was the one red-state senator to vote no on the three-week CR on Monday, however he was withholding his vote not over an immigration deal, however fairly a selected piece of the Youngsters’s Well being Insurance coverage Program funding package deal.

The political hazard isn’t a lot that immigrants and their allies will change events and vote for Republicans politicians. As an alternative, it’s that activists and immigrants might keep dwelling on Election Day, not canvassing or voting for Democratic candidates who they really feel don’t characterize their pursuits in Washington.

There’s additionally an opportunity some Democratic senators might face major challenges if there’s an absence of an immigration deal. At present, only one, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-CA), is going through a major opponent, 37-year-old progressive candidate Alison Hartson. However some teams are speaking brazenly about extra.

Faiz Shakir, the political director of the American Civil Liberties Union, instructed the New York Instances’s Jonathan Martin and Alexander Burns that his group and others are “actively exploring” the potential for placing up Democratic major challengers.

As a nationwide grassroots group, Indivisible is made up of many native and state chapters. Levin mentioned it’s as much as every Indivisible chapter to determine whether or not to endorse sitting Democratic lawmakers in 2018 or throw their weight behind different candidates.

“Particular person teams throughout the nation are upset and dissatisfied” after the vote, he mentioned. “I believe they underestimate the significance of that grassroots vitality for constructing the large blue wave they need to obtain.”

However different organizations, just like the Middle for American Progress Motion Fund, aren’t so fast to leap to major speak. With a blue wave beginning to construct, Nayak mentioned he’s optimistic that Democrats can broaden their numbers in 2018, merely based mostly on a backlash to Trump and the GOP.

“I’m nonetheless comparatively optimistic for just a few causes in that the largest driver of vote selection is dislike for the opposite social gathering,” he mentioned. “I’m hopeful that folks will nonetheless be energized and it will likely be an enormous benefit. It partly relies on what occurs to DREAMers.”

One factor is obvious: Progressive teams are totally aligned with immigration activists on this battle, and will probably be making use of stress to Democrats with a unified voice.

“All the progressive motion is behind the lives of those younger folks. Individuals won’t settle for no for a solution and proceed pushing,” mentioned Jiménez.

#Activists #Democrats #Federal #News

0 notes

douchebagbrainwaves · 7 years ago

Text

I'VE BEEN PONDERING DANGER

For example, I doubt it would be closer to the truth to treat stuff as worthless. To most hackers, getting investors seems like a lot because it's compressed into a short period. Most people in America do.1 They are a perennial topic of heated discussion on Slashdot. The founders all learned to do every job in the company. Could civil liberties really be a cause, rather than the other way around.2 One of the worst things that can happen to a startup—so important that morale alone is almost enough to determine success. Because they're at the bottom of the file; don't feel obliged to cover any of them; write for a reader who won't read the essay, but really the thesis is an optimistic one—that hackers can implement software, but not as measured in press releases, but not random: I found my doodles changed after I started studying painting.3 One of the founders might decide to split off and start another company, so I figured it had to be prepared to explain how to make them look impressive, and b avoid the danger of fooling yourself as well as writing software, I had to add a new application to my list of known time sinks: Firefox. But two guys who thought Multics excessively complex went off and wrote their own. That's nonsense. Nothing owns you like fragile stuff.

It seems to me the business guys who did the most for Google were the ones who were smart enough to find you by themselves.4 So far all the suggestions for fixing the problem seem to involve new protocols.5 Being friends with someone for even a couple days will tell you that they don't meet so many people who've done it.6 Wall Street didn't buy. Their stock price has been flat for years.7 Three days later, having spent twenty hours staring at it, you should think far more about who you can recruit as a cofounder than the state of the economy doesn't matter much either way.8 Mass-market digital cameras are doing it to the car makers that preceded him. What they all have in common is that a lot of them. I started to make the most money the soonest with the least impedance.

You don't simply get to do whatever you want; the board still has to act in the interest of the shareholders; but if you have kids.9 A few grammatical tweaks, and a good speaker.10 Wealth is what people want, read Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People.11 One reason it was hard to convince galleries even to do that.12 If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next to the name of each person with an MBA, you'll learn something important about business school.13 I know delivering a prewritten talk makes it harder to engage with an audience. And the Japanese don't like immigration.14 You set up a still life to make a winning product. And once you apply that kind of work often develop a protective incompetence at it. Why should we care especially about civil liberties?15 Civil War were. But that is at least a couple days considering different ideas, instead of where it should be helpful to anyone who wants to distract voters from bad times at home, you can solve that problem by stopping entirely.

An emergency could push other thoughts out of your space, and perhaps even move to the sort of problems hackers are used to solving, giving customers what they want will also tend to be less insistent. They can take months to find a place where there are a few cases where this isn't true: the urls at the bottom of the hierarchy. Viaweb. If success probably means getting bought, why not think of that as your task? The place to look is in our blind spot: in our natural, naive belief that it's all about us. Something that used to be valuable, and now that we were savages and our world was stupid. When I look back at photos from the 1970s.16

Your old bad habits now help you to work. If you feel you're really helping people, you'll keep working even when it seems like your startup is cheap to run a startup are commonsense things people knew before there were business schools, or even universities. Conversely, if you try. Startup ideas are ideas for companies, and potential employees. There was another speaker who was much better than me. When I was in the middle of the twentieth century. They'll pay attention next time. We may be able to brag about the good terms they got. Like most startups, we changed our plan on the fly.17

That could be a problem in fussier countries. Its more general version is our answer to the Greeks: Don't see purpose where there isn't. Most hackers who start startups wish they could do searches online. Mihalko, made that year something his students still talk about, thirty years later. They seemed a little surprised at having total freedom. They would be in the best position to conquer the rest of your life.18 The trouble is, they're not drifting. But are these just outliers? Success for a startup. It's a lot more interested.19 Two or three course projects?20 If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters as your parents believe, nor because life actually is awful as you believe.

Notes

Rice and Beans for 2n olive oil or mining equipment, such a low valuation to see artifacts from it, whether you have to be a big company, but the meretriciousness of the world in which case immediate problem solved, or editions with the definition of property is driven by bookmarking, not eating virtuously.

Convertible debt can be compared, per capita income. One of the technically dynamic, massively capitalized and highly organized corporations on the ability to solve the problem is not a problem that they take away with dropping Java in the biggest winners, from hour to hour that the people working for large companies, executives at large companies will one day is the other students, he was made particularly clear in our case, companies' market caps will end up saying no to science as well as down. A has an operator for removing spaces from strings and language B doesn't, that it even seemed a bad idea.

This is what you do it now. A good programming language ought to be able to formalize a small business that isn't the last they ever need. The founders who go on to the modern idea were proposed by Timothy Hart in 1964, two years investigating it.

The threshold for participating goes down to you. Adults care just as you can help in that category. The solution is to try to go sell the bad groups and they have that glazed over look.

There is of course, that I didn't need to raise the next round is high, so I have a standard piece of casuistry for this situation: that startups usually lose money at first you make something popular but apparently unimportant, like speculators, that I hadn't had much success in doing something different if it was considered the most visible index of that generation had been raised religious and then using growth rate early on when you have two choices and one or two, I'd say the raison d'etre of prep schools improve kids' admissions prospects. Here's an example of applied empathy.

There will be, and that there's more of a startup you have to want to invest in a certain threshold.

I wonder if they'd been pretty clever by getting such a large pizza and found an open booth. Indiana University Publications.

Price Bubble? It's hard to predict at the last step in this article used the term whitelist instead of happy. Hint: the company by doing another round that values the company goes public.

It derives from efforts by businesses to use an OS that doesn't have dangerous local maxima, the fatigue hits you like shit. There is archaeological evidence for large companies will one day have an email address you can skip the first half of it in action, there is money.

Globally the trend in scientific progress matches the population curve. Correction: Earlier versions used a technicality to get good grades. The empirical evidence suggests that if there were, we found they used it to steal the company they're buying.

But his world record only lasted 46 days. I recommend you solve this problem, any claim to the biggest sources of pain for founders, if the students did well they do, just that it was. 4%? We didn't know ourselves which VC firms regularly cold email.

These anti-dilution provisions, even in their hearts that if you ban other ways to do is assemble components designed and manufactured by someone who doesn't understand what you're doing something that flows from some types of startup: Watch people who interrupt you. 25. As Clinton himself discovered to his surprise when, in Galbraith's words, it's easy to get users to succeed in a startup at a friend's house for the linguist and presumably teacher Daphnis, but you should seek outside advice, before realizing that that's what they give it additional funding at a regularly increasing rate to impress investors. I'd encourage anyone starting a startup in question usually is doing badly and is doomed anyway.

Peter, Why Are We Getting a Divorce? Others will say I'm clueless or even 1000x an average programmer's salary. But the usual suspects in about the nature of the Garter and given the Earldom of Rutland.

Most of the 1929 crash. I think is happening when you say something to bad groups is that the http requests are indistinguishable from those of popular Web browsers, including the order and referrer. Someone who's not a problem so far done a pretty comprehensive view of investor who for some reason, rather than making the broadest type of mail, I asked some founders who had recently arrived from Russia.

But the question of whether public company not to pay the most successful startups of all, economic inequality as a result, comparisons of programming languages either take the hit.

All you have no way to find may be the least VC-like.

Vision research may be enough, the top startup law firms are Wilson Sonsini, Orrick, Fenwick West, Gunderson Dettmer, and cook on lowish heat for at least 3 or 4 YC alumni who I believe, and degenerate from 129. I don't know how to deal with the best case. Indiana University Publications.

In some cases e.

For example, it's not as facile a trick as it needs to learn to acknowledge, but nothing else: no friends, TV, go running.

But when you ask parents why kids shouldn't swear, the way to fight back themselves. We didn't let him off, either, that it killed the best startups, who've already made it to the company's PR people worked hard to get frozen yogurt. But not all, economic inequality. This is actually from the compromise you'd have reached after lots of people.

0 notes

clubofinfo · 7 years ago

Text

Expert: He said he absolutely did not meddle in our election. He did not do what they are saying he did. – President Trump re Vladimir Putin after their meeting in Vietnam. Putin later added that he knew “absolutely nothing” about Russian contacts with Trump campaign officials. “They can do what they want, looking for some sensation. But there are no sensations.”1 Numerous US intelligence agencies have said otherwise. Former Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, responded to Trump’s remarks by declaring: “The president was given clear and indisputable evidence that Russia interfered in the election.” As we’ll see below, there isn’t too much of the “clear and indisputable” stuff. And this, of course, is the same James Clapper who made an admittedly false statement to Congress in March 2013, when he responded, “No, sir” and “not wittingly” to a question about whether the National Security Agency was collecting “any type of data at all” on millions of Americans. Lies don’t usually come in any size larger than that. Virtually every member of Congress who has publicly stated a position on the issue has criticized Russia for interfering in the 2016 American presidential election. And it would be very difficult to find a member of the mainstream media which has questioned this thesis. What is the poor consumer of news to make of these gross contradictions? Here are some things to keep in mind: How do we know that the tweets and advertisements “sent by Russians” -– those presented as attempts to sway the vote -– were actually sent by Russians? The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS), composed of National Security Agency and CIA veterans, recently declared that the CIA knows how to disguise the origin of emails and tweets. The Washington Post has as well reported that Twitter “makes it easy for users to hide their true identities.”2 Even if these communications were actually sent from Russia, how do we know that they came from the Russian government, and not from any of the other 144.3 million residents of Russia? Even if they were sent by the Russian government, we have to ask: Why would they do that? Do the Russians think the United States is a Third World, under-developed, backward Banana Republic easily influenced and moved by a bunch of simple condemnations of the plight of blacks in America and the Clinton “dynasty”? Or clichéd statements about other controversial issues, such as gun rights and immigration? If so, many Democratic and Republican officials would love to know the secret of the Russians’ method. Consider also that Facebook has stated that 90 percent of the alleged-Russian-bought content that ran on its network did not even mention Trump or Clinton.3 On top of all this is the complete absence of even the charge, much less with any supporting evidence, of Russian interference in the actual voting or counting of votes. After his remark suggesting he believed Putin’s assertion that there had been no Russian meddling in the election, Trump – of course, as usual – attempted to backtrack and distant himself from his words after drawing criticism at home; while James Clapper declared: “The fact the president of the United States would take Putin at his word over that of the intelligence community is quite simply unconscionable.”4 Given Clapper’s large-size lie referred to above, can Trump be faulted for being skeptical of the intelligence community’s Holy Writ? Purposeful lies of the intelligence community during the first Cold War were legendary, many hailed as brilliant tactics when later revealed. The CIA, for example, had phony articles and editorials planted in foreign newspapers (real Fake News), made sex films of target subjects caught in flagrante delicto who had been lured to Agency safe houses by female agents, had Communist embassy personnel expelled because of phony CIA documents, and much more. The Post recently published an article entitled “How did Russian trolls get into your Facebook feed? Silicon Valley made it easy.” In the midst of this “exposé,” The Post stated: “There’s no way to tell if you personally saw a Russian post or tweet.”5 So … Do the Cold Warriors have a case to make or do they not? Or do they just want us to remember that the Russkis are bad? So it goes. An organization in Czechoslovakia with the self-appointed name of European Values has produced a lengthy report entitled “The Kremlin’s Platform for ‘Useful Idiots’ in the West: An Overview of RT’s Editorial Strategy and Evidence of Impact”. It includes a long list of people who have appeared on the Russian-owned TV station RT (formerly Russia Today), which can be seen in the US, the UK and other countries. Those who’ve been guests on RT are the “idiots” useful to Moscow. (The list is not complete. I’ve been on RT about five times, but I’m not listed. Where is my Idiot Badge?) RT’s YouTube channel has more than two million followers and claims to be the “most-watched news network” on the video site. Its Facebook page has more than 4 million likes and followers. Can this explain why the powers-that-be forget about a thing called freedom-of-speech and treat the station like an enemy? The US government recently forced RT America to register as a foreign agent and has cut off the station’s Congressional press credentials. The Cold War strategist, George Kennan, wrote prophetically: “Were the Soviet Union to sink tomorrow under the waters of the ocean, the American military-industrial establishment would have to go on, substantially unchanged, until some other adversary could be invented. Anything else would be an unacceptable shock to the American economy.”6 Writer John Wight has described the new Cold War as being “in response to Russia’s recovery from the demise of the Soviet Union and the failed attempt to turn the country into a wholly owned subsidiary of Washington via the imposition of free market economic shock treatment thereafter.” So let’s see what other brilliance the New Cold War brings us. … Ah yes, another headline in the Post (November 18, 2017): “British alarm rising over possible Russian meddling in Brexit”. Of course, why else would the British people have voted to leave the European Union? But wait a moment, again, one of the British researchers behind the report “said that the accounts they analyzed – which claimed Russian as their language when they were set up but tweeted in English – posted a mixture of pro-‘leave’ and pro-‘remain’ messages regarding Brexit. Commentators have said that the goal may simply have been to sow discord and division in society.” Was there ever a time when the Post would have been embarrassed to be so openly, amateurishly biased about Russia? Perhaps during the few years between the two Cold Wars. In case you don’t remember how stupid Cold War Number One was … * 1948: The Pittsburgh Press published the names, addresses, and places of employment of about 1,000 citizens who had signed presidential-nominating petitions for former Vice President Henry Wallace, running under the Progressive Party. This, and a number of other lists of “communists”, published in the mainstream media, resulted in people losing their jobs, being expelled from unions, having their children abused, being denied state welfare benefits, and suffering various other punishments. * Around 1950: The House Committee on Un-American Activities published a pamphlet, “100 Things You Should Know About Communism in the U.S.A.” This included information about what a communist takeover of the United States would mean:Q: What would happen to my insurance?A: It would go to the Communists.Q: Would communism give me something better than I have now?A: Not unless you are in a penitentiary serving a life sentence at hard labor. * 1950s: Mrs. Ada White, member of the Indiana State Textbook Commission, believed that Robin Hood was a Communist and urged that books that told the Robin Hood story be banned from Indiana schools. * As evidence that anti-communist mania was not limited to the lunatic fringe or conservative newspaper publishers, here is Clark Kerr, president of the University of California at Berkeley in a 1959 speech: “Perhaps 2 or even 20 million people have been killed in China by the new [communist] regime.” One person wrote to Kerr: “I am wondering how you would judge a person who estimates the age of a passerby on the street as being ‘perhaps 2 or even 20 years old.’ Or what would you think of a physician who tells you to take ‘perhaps 2 or even twenty teaspoonsful of a remedy’?” * Throughout the cold war, traffic in phony Lenin quotes was brisk, each one passed around from one publication or speaker to another for years. Here’s U.S. News and World Report in 1958 demonstrating communist duplicity by quoting Lenin: “Promises are like pie crusts, made to be broken.” Secretary of State John Foster Dulles used it in a speech shortly afterward, one of many to do so during the cold war. Lenin actually did use a very similar line, but he explicitly stated that he was quoting an English proverb (it comes from Jonathan Swift) and his purpose was to show the unreliability of the bourgeoisie, not of communists.“First we will take Eastern Europe, then the masses of Asia, then we will encircle the United States, which will be the last bastion of capitalism. We will not have to attack. It will fall like an overripe fruit into our hands.” This Lenin “quotation” had the usual wide circulation, even winding up in the Congressional Record in 1962. This was not simply a careless attribution; this was an out-and-out fabrication; an extensive search, including by the Library of Congress and the United States Information Agency failed to find its origin. * A favorite theme of the anti-communists was that a principal force behind drug trafficking was a communist plot to demoralize the United States. Here’s a small sample:Don Keller, District Attorney for San Diego County, California in 1953: “We know that more heroin is being produced south of the border than ever before and we are beginning to hear stories of financial backing by big shot Communists operating out of Mexico City.”Henry Giordano, Commissioner of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics, 1964, interviewed in the American Legion Magazine: Interviewer: “I’ve been told that the communists are trying to flood our country with narcotics to weaken our moral and physical stamina. Is that true?”Giordano: “As far as the drugs are concerned, it’s true. There’s a terrific flow of drugs coming out of Yunnan Province of China. … There’s no question that in that particular area this is the aim of the Red Chinese. It should be apparent that if you could addict a population you would degrade a nation’s moral fiber.”Fulton Lewis, Jr., prominent conservative radio broadcaster and newspaper columnist, 1965: “Narcotics of Cuban origin – marijuana, cocaine, opium, and heroin – are now peddled in big cities and tiny hamlets throughout this country. Several Cubans arrested by the Los Angeles police have boasted they are communists.”We were also told that along with drugs another tool of the commies to undermine America’s spirit was fluoridation of the water. * Mickey Spillane was one of the most successful writers of the 1950s, selling millions of his anti-communist thriller mysteries. Here is his hero, Mike Hammer, in “One Lonely Night”, boasting of his delight in the grisly murders he commits, all in the name of destroying a communist plot to steal atomic secrets. After a night of carnage, the triumphant Hammer gloats, “I shot them in cold blood and enjoyed every minute of it. I pumped slugs into the nastiest bunch of bastards you ever saw. … They were Commies. … Pretty soon what’s left of Russia and the slime that breeds there won’t be worth mentioning and I’m glad because I had a part in the killing. God, but it was fun!” * 1952: A campaign against the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) because it was tainted with “atheism and communism”, and was “subversive” because it preached internationalism. Any attempt to introduce an international point of view in the schools was seen as undermining patriotism and loyalty to the United States. A bill in the US Senate, clearly aimed at UNESCO, called for a ban on the funding of “any international agency that directly or indirectly promoted one-world government or world citizenship.” There was also opposition to UNESCO’s association with the UN Declaration of Human Rights on the grounds that it was trying to replace the American Bill of Rights with a less liberty-giving covenant of human rights. * 1955: A US Army 6-page pamphlet, “How to Spot a Communist”, informed us that a communist could be spotted by his predisposition to discuss civil rights, racial and religious discrimination, the immigration laws, anti-subversive legislation, curbs on unions, and peace. Good Americans were advised to keep their ears stretched for such give-away terms as “chauvinism”, “book-burning”, “colonialism”, “demagogy”, “witch hunt”, “reactionary”, “progressive”, and “exploitation”. Another “distinguishing mark” of “Communist language” was a “preference for long sentences.” After some ridicule, the Army rescinded the pamphlet. * 1958: The noted sportscaster Bill Stern (one of the heroes of my innocent youth) observed on the radio that the lack of interest in “big time” football at New York University, City College of New York, Chicago, and Harvard “is due to the widespread acceptance of Communism at the universities.” * 1960: US General Thomas Power speaking about nuclear war or a first strike by the US: “The whole idea is to kill the bastards! At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian, we win!” The response from one of those present was: “Well, you’d better make sure that they’re a man and a woman.” * 1966: The Boys Club of America is, of course, wholesome and patriotic. Imagine their horror when they were confused with the Dubois Clubs. (W.E.B. Du Bois had been a very prominent civil rights activist.) When the Justice Department required the DuBois Clubs to register as a Communist front group, good loyal Americans knew what to do. They called up the Boys Club to announce that they would no longer contribute any money, or to threaten violence against them; and sure enough an explosion damaged the national headquarters of the youth group in San Francisco. Then former Vice President Richard Nixon, who was national board chairman of the Boys Club, declared: “This is an almost classic example of Communist deception and duplicity. The ‘DuBois Clubs’ are not unaware of the confusion they are causing among our supporters and among many other good citizens.” * 1966: “Rhythm, Riots and Revolution: An Analysis of the Communist Use of Music, The Communist Master Music Plan”, by David A. Noebel, published by Christian Crusade Publications, (expanded version of 1965 pamphlet: “Communism, Hypnotism and the Beatles”). Some chapters: Communist Use of Mind Warfare … Nature of Red Record Companies … Destructive Nature of Beatle Music … Communist Subversion of Folk Music … Folk Music and the Negro Revolution … Folk Music and the College Revolution * 1968: William Calley, US Army Lieutenant, charged with overseeing the massacre of more than 100 Vietnamese civilians in My Lai in 1968, said some years later: “In all my years in the Army I was never taught that communists were human beings. We were there to kill ideology carried by – I don’t know – pawns, blobs, pieces of flesh. I was there to destroy communism. We never conceived of old people, men, women, children, babies.” * 1977: Scientists theorized that the earth’s protective ozone layer was being damaged by synthetic chemicals called chlorofluorocarbons. The manufacturers and users of CFCs were not happy. They made life difficult for the lead scientist. The president of one aerosol manufacturing firm suggested that criticism of CFCs was “orchestrated by the Ministry of Disinformation of the KGB.” * 1978: Life inside a California youth camp of the ultra anti-communist John Birch Society: Five hours each day of lectures on communism, Americanism and “The Conspiracy”; campers learned that the Soviet government had created a famine and spread a virus to kill a large number of citizens and make the rest of them more manageable; the famine led starving adults to eat their children; communist guerrillas in Southeast Asia jammed chopsticks into children’s ears, piercing their eardrums; American movies are all under the control of the Communists; the theme is always that capitalism is no better than communism; you can’t find a dictionary now that isn’t under communist influence; the communists are also taking over the Bibles. * The Reagan administration declared that the Russians were spraying toxic chemicals over Laos, Cambodia and Afghanistan – the so-called “yellow rain” – and had caused more than ten thousand deaths by 1982 alone, (including, in Afghanistan, 3,042 deaths attributed to 47 separate incidents between the summer of 1979 and the summer of 1981, so precise was the information). Secretary of State Alexander Haig was a prime dispenser of such stories, and President Reagan himself denounced the Soviet Union thusly more than 15 times in documents and speeches. The “yellow rain”, it turned out, was pollen-laden feces dropped by huge swarms of honeybees flying far overhead. * 1982: In commenting about sexual harassment in the Army, General John Crosby stated that the Army doesn’t care about soldiers’ social lives – “The basic purpose of the United States Army is to kill Russians,” he said. * 1983: The US invasion of Grenada, the home of the Cuban ambassador is damaged and looted by American soldiers; on one wall is written “AA”, symbol of the 82nd Airborne Division; beside it the message: “Eat shit, commie faggot.” … “I want to fuck communism out of this little island,” says a marine, “and fuck it right back to Moscow.” * 1984: During a sound check just before his weekly broadcast, President Reagan spoke these words into the microphone: “My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you I have signed legislation to outlaw Russia, forever. We begin bombing in five minutes.” His words were picked up by at least two radio networks. * 1985: October 29 BBC interview with Ronald Reagan: asked about the differences he saw between the US and Russia, the president replied: “I’m no linguist, but I’ve been told that in the Russian language there isn’t even a word for freedom.” (The word is “svoboda”.) * 1986: Soviet artists and cultural officials criticized Rambo-like American films as an expression of “anti-Russian phobia even more pathological than in the days of McCarthyism”. Russian film-maker Stanislav Rostofsky claimed that on one visit to an American school “a young girl trembled with fury when she heard I was from the Soviet Union, and said she hated Russians.” * 1986: Roy Cohn, who achieved considerable fame and notoriety in the 1950s as an assistant to the communist-witch-hunting Senator Joseph McCarthy, died, reportedly of AIDS. Cohn, though homosexual, had denied that he was and had denounced such rumors as communist smears. * 1986: After American journalist Nicholas Daniloff was arrested in Moscow for “spying” and held in custody for two weeks, New York Mayor Edward Koch sent a group of 10 visiting Soviet students storming out of City Hall in fury. “The Soviet government is the pits,” said Koch, visibly shocking the students, ranging in age from 10 to 18 years. One 14-year-old student was so outraged he declared: “I don’t want to stay in this house. I want to go to the bus and go far away from this place. The mayor is very rude. We never had a worse welcome anywhere.” As matters turned out, it appeared that Daniloff had not been completely pure when it came to his news gathering. * 1989: After the infamous Chinese crackdown on dissenters in Tiananmen Square in June, the US news media was replete with reports that the governments of Nicaragua, Vietnam and Cuba had expressed their support of the Chinese leadership. Said the Wall Street Journal: “Nicaragua, with Cuba and Vietnam, constituted the only countries in the world to approve the Chinese Communists’ slaughter of the students in Tiananmen Square.” But it was all someone’s fabrication; no such support had been expressed by any of the three governments. At that time, as now, there were few, if any, organizations other than the CIA which could manipulate major Western media in such a manner.7 NOTE: It should be remembered that the worst consequences of anti-communism were not those discussed above. The worst consequences, the ultra-criminal consequences, were the abominable death, destruction, and violation of human rights that we know under various names: Vietnam, Chile, Korea, Guatemala, Cambodia, Indonesia, Brazil, Greece, Afghanistan, El Salvador, and many others. Al Franken Poor Al, who made us laugh for years on Saturday Night Live, is now disgraced as a woman molester – not one of the worst of the current pathetic crop, but he still looks bad. However, everything is relative, and it must be pointed out that the Senator is guilty of a worse moral transgression. The erstwhile comedian would like you to believe that he was against the war in Iraq since it began. But he went to that sad country at least four times to entertain American troops. Does that make sense? Why does the Defense Department bring entertainers to military bases? To lift the soldiers’ spirits, of course. And why does the military want to lift the soldiers’ spirits? Because a happier soldier does his job better. And what is the soldier’s job? For example, all the charming war crimes and human-rights violations in Iraq that have been documented in great detail for many years. Didn’t Franken know what American soldiers do for a living? Country singer Darryl Worley, who leans “a lot to the right,” as he puts it, said he was far from pleased that Franken was coming along on the tour to Iraq. “You know, I just don’t understand – why would somebody be on this tour if they’re not supportive of the war? If he decides to play politics, I’m not gonna put up with it.”8 A year after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, Franken criticized the Bush administration because they “failed to send enough troops to do the job right.”9 What “job” did the man think the troops were sent to do that had not been performed to his standards because of lack of manpower? Did he want them to be more efficient at killing Iraqis who resisted the occupation? The volunteer American troops in Iraq did not even have the defense of having been drafted against their wishes. Franken has been lifting soldiers’ spirits for a long time. In 2009 he was honored by the United Service Organization (USO) for his ten years of entertaining troops abroad. That includes Kosovo in 1999, as imperialist an occupation as you’ll ever want to see. He called his USO experience “one of the best things I’ve ever done.”10 Franken has also spoken at West Point (2005), encouraging the next generation of imperialist warriors. Is this a man to challenge the militarization of America at home and abroad? Tom Hayden wrote this about Franken in 2005 when Franken had a regular program on the Air America radio network: “Is anyone else disappointed with Al Franken’s daily defense of the continued war in Iraq? Not Bush’s version of the war, because that would undermine Air America’s laudable purpose of rallying an anti-Bush audience. But, well, Kerry’s version of the war, one that can be better managed and won, somehow with better body armor and fewer torture cells.”11 While in Iraq to entertain the troops, Franken declared that the Bush administration “blew the diplomacy so we didn’t have a real coalition,” then failed to send enough troops to do the job right. “Out of sheer hubris, they have put the lives of these guys in jeopardy.”8 Franken was implying that if the United States had been more successful in bribing and threatening other countries to lend their name to the coalition fighting the war in Iraq the United States would have had a better chance of WINNING the war. Is this the sentiment of someone opposed to the war? Or in support of it? It is actually the mind of an American liberal in all its depressing mushiness. To be put on the tombstone of Western civilization On November 15, 2017, at Christie’s auction house in New York City, a painting was sold for $450,312,500. * Washington Post, November 12, 2017. * Washington Post, October 10, 2017. * Washington Post, November 15, 2017. * Reuters, November 12, 2017. * Washington Post, November 2, 2017. * Wikipedia entry for George Kennan * Sources for almost all of this section can be found in William Blum, “Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire�� (2005), chapter 12; or the author can be queried at moc.loanull@6mulbb * Washington Post, February 16, 2004. * Ibid. * Star Tribune, Minneapolis, March 26, 2009. * Huffington Post, June 2005. http://clubof.info/

0 notes

nofomoartworld · 7 years ago

Text

Hyperallergic: B&H Photo Workers Protest Outside New York Mayor’s Mansion

B&H Photo Video warehouse workers outside Gracie Mansion at last night’s protest (photo courtesy Laundry Workers Center)

Last night in front of Gracie Mansion, the Upper East Side residence of New York City’s Mayor, a group of roughly 70 demonstrators — including about 20 B&H Photo Video warehouse workers and another 50 labor rights activists — protested the imminent closing of the electronics retailer’s two Brooklyn warehouses and the relocation of the workers’ jobs to central New Jersey.

Standing by the gates to and on the street corners directly across from the mayor’s residence, the protesters — under the watch of a handful of NYPD officers — brandished signs, chanted slogans, and handed out flyers to passersby, some of whom engaged in conversation and a couple of whom even joined the protest. The demonstrators blamed Mayor Bill de Blasio for not doing anything to prevent B&H from closing its warehouses — resulting in more than 300 jobs moving out of the city — and for his complicity in what many see as union-busting efforts on B&H’s part.

For almost two years, employees at B&H’s warehouses have been involved in an ongoing labor struggle (punctuated with charges of discrimination and mistreatment), which escalated when they voted to unionize in November 2015. Although the workers voted to join the United Steelworkers (USW), B&H management and the union have yet to negotiate their first agreement. Many workers and their supporters see the proposed move of B&H’s Brooklyn warehouses (one on Evergreen Avenue in Bushwick, the other in the Navy Yard) to New Jersey as a way for management to avoid making an agreement with them. Earlier this year, USW filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleging that B&H was violating federal labor laws by moving its warehouse operations to central New Jersey. Because the city owns the Brooklyn Navy Yard warehouse that B&H has been renting since 2008, protesters see the mayor’s lack of action as siding with B&H management against the workers. They saw last night, when de Blasio was hosting a reception celebrating Dominican heritage (a majority of the protesting B&H warehouse workers are Latino), as the perfect time to take their fight to the mayor’s mansion.

B&H Photo Video warehouse workers outside Gracie Mansion at last night’s protest (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

The goal was to “push the mayor for public support,” explained Rosanna Rodriguez, Co-Executive Director of the Laundry Workers Center (LWC), which facilitated last night’s protest. “I’m Dominican, and some of the B&H workers are, too. The mayor says he’s pro-immigrant, but his actions are not reflecting that.” She added that in the spring, B&H workers tried to set up a meeting with the mayor’s office to discuss their situation, but so far nothing has been scheduled. According to LWC, B&H will shut down its Bushwick warehouse later this month, while it plans to vacate Navy Yard Building 664 later this year.

Ramon Cedano, a Dominican who has been working at B&H’s Navy Yard warehouse for eight years — his first and only job since he moved to the US — said he’s increasingly disappointed in the USW, which didn’t participate in last night’s protest. “When we started meeting with the union, it looked OK, but the union isn’t being helpful,” he said.

“The union doesn’t seem to be participating in the protest, and that’s an interesting fact,” said B&H spokesperson Michael McKeon. He added that B&H is still negotiating with USW concerning workers at the company’s Midtown Manhattan headquarters — which houses both its retail operation and, beneath it, a warehouse — the only part of the B&H operation that’s staying put. In a recent press release, the company pointed to the July 24 withdrawal of the case USW brought against it as evidence that the NLRB had “dismissed allegations that B&H was moving its Brooklyn warehouses to New Jersey to avoid the union that represents its warehouse employees.” USW has not responded to Hyperallergic’s inquiries and the NLRB has not replied to our Freedom of Information Act request for the letter approving withdrawal of the case against B&H.

B&H Photo Video warehouse workers outside Gracie Mansion at last night’s protest (photo courtesy Laundry Workers Center)

As for the hundreds of warehouse workers in Brooklyn who stand to lose their jobs, McKeon says that B&H is “trying to offer a rational package to those who want to move [to New Jersey] or a severance package to those who don’t. We’re trying to do the right thing.” Asked about the number of workers who have agreed to move, McKeon responded: “It’s a handful at this point but so far we’ve only asked Evergreen [Avenue warehouse] workers to make a decision,” a share of the B&H workforce he estimates at about 50 union workers. He added: “We will ask the Navy Yard workers, by far the majority, to make decisions in the coming weeks.” However, packages or not, the move may prove impossible for many workers who’ve made their lives in Brooklyn.

“I would follow the company, but they won’t offer transportation [from New York to the New Jersey warehouse],” said Cedano, who lives in Bushwick and can’t uproot his family. “In a private car, it would take three hours to get there; with public transport, even longer.” He added that he knows of only a few fellow workers who are following their jobs out of state.

Members of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice at last night’s rally outside Gracie Mansion in support of B&H Photo Video’s warehouse workers (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)

In addition to highlighting the challenges the B&H warehouse workers are still facing, last night’s protest brought a few larger questions to the fore. I asked the youngest protester in attendance, Justin — the 14-year-old the son of LWC’s other co-director — why he thought this action was important. “It’s important because it involves the status of immigrant workers fighting for their rights,” he said. “They don’t want to work all night and they want to get paid as much as their coworkers.”

The protest brought out members of many groups beyond the B&H workers and LWC organizers, including members of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, the Internationalist Group, and City University of New York students, who chanted: “What’s disgusting? Union busting! What’s outrageous? B&H wages!”; and “Unión, Fuerza, Solidaridad!” The B&H warehouse workers themselves arrived about two hours after the official start of the protest, clearly exhausted — they had to work late last night.

The post B&H Photo Workers Protest Outside New York Mayor’s Mansion appeared first on Hyperallergic.

from Hyperallergic http://ift.tt/2vnnQLe via IFTTT

#IFTTT #Hyperallergic

0 notes

thoughtspainter-blog · 8 years ago

Text

On my Drive Back From El Paso

El December 21st 2016:

I made two trips to Goodwill in the Westside of El Paso, from my apartment at the Essex Alley, Unit 3, at 513 W. San Antonio Avenue.

I played, for the last time for a while, my favorite Spanish stations, EXA 94.3 FM (which played Latin America’s Top 40) while passing by the Starbucks near Sunland Park, that I used to go to each Friday and Saturday to explore my passions for 3D art and painting, to avoid the nightclub noise in my neighborhood. The beautiful Franklin Mountains I drove past by is something I still miss to this day as there’s a certain underrated tranquility to the mountains that make it a hidden gem.

The drive back from El Paso, Texas was incredibly reflective to me, but also a close to a chapter in my life that has changed me forever. These were thoughts that came up in my mind as I spent my last month in El Paso:

Three years ago, I thought that I had plans to go to Taiwan, get in touch with my Chinese heritage, speak Chinese, and utilize my urban planning degree in Kaohsiung, Taiwan. Instead, due to visa regulations, I could not go to Taiwan. Saddened, I continued applying for jobs and ended up in El Paso, Texas. Not knowing anything about El Paso other than being a city across the border, I accepted the job and went on an adventure for a lifetime.

El Paso, Texas is a border town - the El Paso - Juarez border-plex region is a population of 2.2 Million, is the 19th largest city in the United States, and among the most populated regions in the US-Mexico Borderland. It’s a working-class city with one of the most poorest Census tracts in the Country.

As a result, El Paso doesn’t have a lot of upscale amenities, shopping, retail, and restaurants you see in many American cities. El Paso has a brain drain problem, where college graduates often move to other cities to seek better job opportunities and higher wages. As the education levels here are below the national average here, it’s tough to find a good job here.

People have told me that there’s little to do in El Paso - compared to San Francisco; honestly, this was a impetus for me to create entertainment and art from nothing.

Living in El Paso was probably one of the best things for me to happen to me.

In the past two years I’ve lived there, I’ve created over 20 paintings, am a conversational speaker in Spanish, and developed a passion for cooking Mexican, Italian, and Indian food. The limited amenities actually meant that I had more focus to be who I truly am, versus being in San Francisco, where it’s easy to be distracted by everything that is happening.

Through this intense focus, I developed a strong understanding of El Paso culture and the complicated reasons why people remain here. It’s best summarized through The Chamanas song, Purple, Yellow, Red and Blue:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gyy2-OzeSlw

Whenever I miss El Paso, I play this song. I connect with the Spanish lyrics of the song. In El Paso, there’s this feeling of being stuck: it’s very geographically isolated in West Texas; very few flights go to El Paso: it’s a immigrant border town with very few job opportunities. It’s common in El Paso to bash El Paso for being a poor city with very little things to do, and very common to compare El Paso to other wealthier cities. That’s why in the lyrics of the song:

De grande yo quisiera ser famosa en la televisión / El trabajo ya no es para mí / Desesperarme es inútil / Sólo el tiempo me puede aliviar.

When I grow up I wanna be on TV 'Cause workin' just don't work for me Being exasperated is useless: So I’l just try to relieve myself

The last two lines - there’s a contrast, a feeling of being stuck. There is that desire to grow and want a better life, but it’s that feeling of being stuck.

But, that feeling of being stuck creates this unique border town subculture that’s hard to describe until you actually live here. People create their own music and their own art of West Texas life in the Chihuahuan desert.

As a poor border town and gateway from Mexico to the United States, for people who’ve lived here for generations, El Paso teaches you to be grateful for what you have. You’ve immigrated to a new country for a better life, and compared to being in Mexico, living in the United States, in El Paso is an improvement in quality of life compared to living in Mexico.

While we are poor, we have our families, we made it to the country to seek better opportunities. El Paso, for being a big city, has a very small town feel: families are very tight knit, and surprisingly, people know each-other, and since there isn’t a large out-of-town population in El Paso, most people here are very local: it’s this strange cycle that creates a unique, border-town culture that, in some ways, is very beautiful. With a town with very limited disposable incomes, you are forced to be creative about how to have fun. Yes, there’s a sense of grittiness of El Paso art - living in the West Texas desert makes you a more thick-skinned person as your standards of beauty are much more... rougher.

That’s what it means to feel stuck. You want to be more famous, but the isolation here makes it challenging to go out, so you have to make due with what you have. You pool together with your friends and family that you have grown up with all your life, and you use your limited resources to find new ways to have fun.

This cycle is what El Paso Borderland culture is; being creative under limited constraints is what it takes to survive the borderland. I’m grateful for my time in El Paso as it’s made me a more stronger, resilient person ; as one of my colleagues stated, El Paso is like bootcamp, and other cities will seem like a piece of cake.

I believe for some El Pasoans, this small-town feeling, tight-knit community, and unique crafty culture is what drives some people to return to El Paso to make it a better place. I really loved it - I knew its limitations, but I loved it.

I’ve felt guilty, at times, for leaving El Paso. It took me several months to understood why I had to leave.

I discovered my passion for art, painting, and design here. I had many opportunities to visit Mexico for vacation, and traveling there changed my life.

At the end of the day, I left because I hit a plateau regarding how far I could go as an artist; I also recognized I wanted to put more time as an artist, but El Paso didn’t have enough of the infrastructure, workshops, and resources I needed to make it happen (this is improving, but if one is used to living in San Francisco, you’re used to the level of infrastructure and resources available there). I understood that many people I talked to wanted me to stay in El Paso, and those feelings do exist.

The biggest thing to improve El Paso is to increase its tax base and job opportunities.

However, I knew that it would be difficult for me to do this because: I’m not a STEM professional, nor I was a entrepreneur that had a strong product that could be exported out of El Paso and create lots of jobs.

My biggest strength in life is to use art to improve the quality of life in a city, place, or a person’s life. I’m not at the level where I could contribute artistically at that scale.

I also knew that, on a personal level, I needed to explore other areas of my personality. I loved the relaxed life in El Paso, but knew that I got very comfortable that it would be hard for me to learn more about myself if I didn’t make a next step. Due to the low cost of living in El Paso, it’s easy to buy a house, settle down, have a family and kids.

But, there was a world I needed to explore. And, I didn’t want to begin this phase in my life too early yet.

Leaving El Paso was very difficult, but I reflect this way:

As much as I wanted to improve El Paso, there were things that I felt I needed to explore personally, or I would have regrets in my life later. If I did not make the leap to dedicate time to learn how to be a better painter, I would be devastated.

I rather be authentic and stay true to my strengths, rather than half-heartedly stay somewhere and keep a happy facade, where in reality, I felt unhappy.

I still have a very complicated relationship with El Paso. I won’t forget my time there, and it’s made me a tougher resilient person.

But, I need some space away from it. There’s a sense of nostalgia I have for the relaxed life I had there, but it became a double edged sword where I became the character in Purple Yellow Red and Blue where I became stuck.

I do want to revisit this chapter in my life again - it will take me some time to process and reflect on my experience there, and how I’d give back.

0 notes