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queenlegacyproductions · 4 years

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Mad Phoenix Rising (1)

Summary: Life in crime is never easy, especially when you’re a woman. But Riley, along with her fellow triplet sisters, Michelle and Jordan, managed to hold down their own territory in the state of Michigan in the heart of Detroit to establish the group known as The Carter Cartel. A few years later after leaving the cartel, Riley’s now caught in the heart of a civil war between humans and androids. What happens when She is forced to choose between the badge she swore to wield to protect her own kind or the oath made between her sisters to protect those the government deems dangerous to their order?

A/N: Hey, guys. It’s Riley here. I am back from the dead once again as I will be posting this story on my ao3 as well under QueenLegacyProductions. Here’s hoping that I can remain active as I was. But I hope you enjoy!

February 10, 2036

I never asked for this. I never wanted to be a part of a mob, let alone control one, but when circumstances and situations called for it, here I am. Here I am, bum rushing the hideout of Maxwell Two Face, the current boss of the Barthel Mafia. You know, the group that formed and ran Detroit back in the 1920s alongside Chicago. Yeah, that one. I think it’s safe to say that the faction has made a great deal of history here in the great city of Detroit.

History that I’m about to rewrite.

I chased down Maxwell to the rooftop of the building. He popped a few shots at me which caused me to duck behind the metal air duct. I smirked when I heard the gun click empty and him swear. I come out of my hiding spot, TEC-9 in my hand as I point it at him.

“Nowhere to run now, Maxwell.” I said , gun locked on him. “It’s over. I’m taking over Detroit and everything in it.”

“You won’t get far in your success, Carter.” Maxwell spat at me. “The mafia will come back for revenge.”

“Only way that happens is someone found a way to revive the dead.” I stopped to think. “Speakin’ of which, thanks for reminding me.”

“Reminding yo-?” Maxwell was unable to finish his question due to the huge amounts of bullets currently riddling him as I emptied the clip into his chest. I hear footsteps rush up the stairs as I tucked the TEC into my side when my baby sister, Jordan busted through the door with her M16 assault rifle in her hands, aiming it.

“Oh.” She said as she relaxed her stance, holding her gun by her side when she noticed Maxwell’s dead body by my feet. “You didn’t need my help at all.”

“Yes, I do. Call clean up crew and have them sweep up the area for evidence before the cops show. I don’t want anything to trail back to us.” I said as I took the rifle from her.

Jordan nodded her head. “All right. I’ll call Michelle while I’m at it. Tell her to round up the troops to spread the news of the city’s newest boss.”

“Tell her to be easy.” I told her. “I don’t want the people to think I’m another Maxwell. After all, that’s the reason why we’re doing this.”

“You got it, boss.” She responded as she walked away downstairs. I looked out towards the view of the downtown area, the Cyberlife tower standing out over the buildings like the big gem of a royal crown before I heard a thud near me. I drew the rifle, aiming towards the noise.

“Please, don’t shoot!” I see someone kneeling down with their hands together, pleading with me. I take notice of his clothing.

That jacket. With the blue triangle and armband.

An android? Here?

“State your model.” I commanded it.

“LM100.” The android trembled. I relax my stance a little with the gun still trained on him.

“What is an android doing here, an anti-android facility?” I questioned with a quirked eyebrow.

“I was taken from my original owner. She was killed by that man there.” He points to Maxwell’s dead body. “ Said I would be destroyed if I didn’t cooperate.”

I let his story process in my head for a few moments before I asked, “Do you have a name?” I lowered the gun.

The android lowered his hands when I put the gun on my back. “Austin.” I saw his LED go from yellow to a calm blue.

“Ok, Austin. You’re free to go.” I gestured to the rooftop door. He doesn’t move. “Go on. Get out of here.”

“Ma’am, I don’t have anywhere to go. And- And if I go to Cyberlife, I’d be destroyed.” Austin panicked.

“Well, what do you want me to do?” I shrugged.

“Let me work for you. I can do anything you want. Cook, clean,-.”

“Be my liaison.” I cut him off.

“What?”

“Be my liaison.” I said. I approached him when I noticed his head tilt to the side, LED yellow again in confusion. “See, I realize that I’m gonna be taking over Detroit’s criminal underworld and I won’t be able to be at two places at once.”

“So you need me to act on your behalf.” Austin buts in which makes me click my tongue in agreement before I go downstairs. “Excuse me, miss?” He asked me when he followed me. “What is your name?” I stopped on the stairs, pausing before I took at him.

“Riley. Riley Carter.”

Get Familiar with that name too, Ladies and Gentlemen, for I am Queen Shit of Detroit’s crime underworld.

…for now,at least.

~///~

August 17, 2036…..Six Months Later

“And it seems like the temperature in Detroit is looking to warm up…” Riley hears the weatherman on the T.V. drone on as she looked over the weekly income schedule that Jordan dropped off when she came to give her the week’s pay and that week’s finance log. She noticed that this week’s income was about $50 million as she predicted since she knew that nothing moves without her knowledge.

After Riley and the team disposed of Maxwell and the last of his mob, they managed to not only take over the drug distribution and supply that Barthel had but Riley took it a step further and expanded the business to some parts of Illinois, mainly Chicago, her hometown. As of right now, everything from gunrunning to even drug trafficking of weed and cocaine and every other drug in between moves under the Carters’ control. Riley thought it’d be better this way. The crew could keep an eye out to make sure it doesn’t give into the wrong hands.

Last thing she wanted is for some poor soul to OD on her product.

‘A mobster with mortals.’ Michelle, her younger sister, called her. Couldn’t really call her a liar. After all, Riley has been proving it true. While she and Michelle were getting the criminal aspect of the business together, Austin and Jordan believed that the girls could really establish dominance of the city if they had their hand in community related investments. Investments like city construction, so Austin managed to not only get Riley’s hands on potential construction blueprints but she also has some construction workers on her payroll as well. The team had this set up in motion because one of the city’s problems - or rather the nation’s problems - was homelessness due to high rent and low minimum wage.

‘There’s evidence of a trend where most humans that develop an drug or alcohol addiction are those that are in poverty and without a home.’ Austin stated in one family meeting.

‘That’s because drugs are cheaper and easier to obtain.’ Michelle said. ‘With it being in the streets because of small timers.’

‘And those bastards don’t give a damn who they hurt or strongarm as long as they’re getting paid.’ Riley stated. ‘Thankfully, that’s changing but what isn’t these broken families that are still on the streets. They need a place to go.’

Which led the team to make plans for better, affordable housing to the working class who struggled to make ends meet. They also made donations to the schools so the kids can properly learn.

‘Kids shouldn’t be in an environment, let alone a learning one, without the proper tools.’ Riley were the words she spoke that day on the subject of one of the team’s many city side projects. Yes, Riley was truly becoming a woman for the people.

“And the biggest threat of Detroit, The Mad Phoenix, Riley Carter is still at large within the city even though DPD has been cracking down on the sex trafficking ring within the state of Michigan.”

“If only they knew that it was actually you that was leaving them an anonymous care package about the trafficking ring.” Austin said as he stood in the doorway with her iced coffee in his hand. Riley gestures for him to step further into her office as she closed the folder she was viewing before muting the TV.

“We know the truth. The news and the police department want to paint me as the bad guy, despite the fact that the only reason they even knew about the ring was because everyone kept blowing up the office’s phones with information.” She gestures to the phones. “Because the people trust me to protect their identities more than the ones swore to protect and serve. But it’s fine.” She puts her hands up in surrender. “It has a bit of merit but let’s be honest here, the streets have never been safer.”

“I’m sensing that there’s a ‘but’ in that statement.” Austin put the coffee on her desk. Riley takes it, sipping out of it.

“Because there is one.” She sighed. “I’m worried.”

“Worried?”

“Yeah, worried.” Riley stood up, taking the file she was reading and handed it to him. “Read that.”

Austin looks over the file, LED yellow and blinking before it turns red. “Riley, these are-.”

“Yeah.” She nodded.

“And what do the girls think about this?”

~///~

“I think it’s suicidal.” Michelle said when they joined together during the meeting Riley called that afternoon. “Granted with the plan we have laid out, This could work but it just seems a bit much for just a hobby.”

“This coming from the woman that broke into a military base because she wanted the half-track truck that was there.” Jordan said with a sassy look towards her older sister.

“That was different.”

“You almost got blown up by a tank.”

“Ladies, argue about that later. Right now, let’s focus on this.” Riley called for their attention.

“Which is?” Michelle asked.

“Cyberlife warehouses. I willingly to bet that in a year, there are gonna be more androids made available to the public and those parts don’t come cheap.”

“So what? We’re hijacking parts from Cyberlife to feel that need?”

“Only enough until we can make the parts ourselves.” Riley said, which made Michelle raise an eyebrow.

“Why do I feel like there’s something that you’re not telling me?”

“Because there’s something you’re not asking.” Riley sassed her before she sighed deeply. “Listen, if we do this right, we all can benefit from this, not just me. Times are changing. Society is slowly but surely accepting androids. Machines that are faster and stronger, as well as highly expensive. We’re trying to make it easier on the working class, remember? Or have y’all forgotten the oath?”

“No.” Both Jordan and Michelle answered her.

“Ok, then. So what do you think?” There was a pregnant pause after Riley’s question. Michelle leans back in her chair, putting her feet up on the table.

“So….When do we start?”

A/N: Hey, you made it to the end! Thanks so much for reading. I appreciate it. Leave some comments. Let me know how I’m doing. Thanks!

#dbh markus #markus x oc #markus x poc #detroit: become human #detroit: become human markus #dbh #detroit become human #markus x original female character of color

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rachelclewis · 6 years

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Christmas Bites

At some point in the week, a truck (I assume?) came through the neighborhood and collected the discarded Christmas trees. I didn’t see it happen. One day I saw the trees lying in the gutter, a corpse in front of every home, and I thought of the Monte Python line, “bring out your dead!” Then the next afternoon they were gone. One final Christmas magic trick.

My holidays were a whirlwind. As a new step parent, I am learning that Christmas with a child is much more fun, but so much more work! It is possible that we over-do it. The kids don’t need the dozens of elaborate recipes executed to perfection, for instance. They are so focused on Santa and toys and chocolate… and… and… and… But it all feels so important! Who knows what will stick out for them in the decades ahead? What smell, taste, or activity will come to symbolize “Christmas” when they are my age and looking back on it all? That is what we are trying to accomplish here. We simply aren’t baking cookies and roasting turkeys and instigating sword fights with the spent wrapping paper rolls. We are constructing memories! We are making happy childhoods! What could be more important?

I can’t pretend it is only for the kids, I suppose. I always put way too much effort into Christmas. I always expect too much from the day. And I nearly always ruin it for myself by trying too hard and indulging too much. It’s a character flaw of mine, and it burns brightest during the holidays. Do other families have that person, too? The one who goes overboard, wanting everyone to feel her love vibrating through her gifts? The one baking up a storm, wearing light-up earrings, and wearing everyone else out with her enthusiasm? I hope not. I’m exhausting. I wouldn’t wish myself on anyone else’s family, either.

At one point before my family arrived, I started a blog post, but I didn’t finish it in time to post for the holidays. There never seemed to be any TIME! I was too busy putting antlers on things (see below). I’m finishing it now and posting, belatedly. Just in case there was someone else out there who found, once the trees vanished from the street, they weren’t quite ready for Christmas to be over, despite it all.

~~~

Every year, I take note of the holiday honking, but then I quickly forget about it. What is that all about? Most of the year, I will occasionally hear someone honking their horn at another car, usually for truly bad behavior. But between Thanksgiving and Christmas, an epidemic of honking breaks out. People are in a hurry, and they are self-absorbed. Everyone has end-of-year deadlines for work and a shopping list the length of their forearm and no time for your bullshit. Each day it hear multiple people honking at cars for making legal maneuvers too quickly or too slowly, or just for existing in space and time. Someone honks at every light the second it turns green. People honk at jaywalkers and bollixed pedestrians wandering aimlessly though a parking lot as if concussed, trying to make sense of it all. Don’t we all feel a little shell-shocked? Can’t we employ a little compassion?

No. This is not the season for compassion. It is the season for douchebaggery. And for grumbling over the line at the post office, at noon on December 19th, when what in God’s name did you think you would find going there on your lunch break? And it is the season for treating retail workers like foam stress balls to be crushed between the fingers and the palm because we are human and therefore terrible.

I was in line at the grocery store’s post office and the woman in front of me was glaring at a the lady at the scale, who was wearing a name tag that said “Hello! I am in training!” I looked over the shoppers shoulder to read the message she was typing on her phone, which said, something to the effect of “OMG, I’m NEVER getting out of here!”

I quickly saw the problem. They woman was trying to save time by posting a package at the grocery store. No big deal. Same thing I was doing. Only this woman was sending something to Myanmar, or Somesuch. And the poor lady behind the counter (who was in her fifties, at her first week of this new job, thinking she was going to be selling eggs and deodorant), was furiously trying to learn how to fill out the customs form. She was asking for her co-workers to help her, but they didn’t know either. Because this is a grocery store! You take complicated crap to a real post office! Especially two days before Christmas! After the woman sent her text, she looked back at me and rolled her eyes with luxurious indignance, inviting me to join in the shaming of the proletariat in the apron. I declined, gazing behind me, as if to see who she was looking at. The man behind me had a shopping cart full of packages; I counted fifteen. This is another shipping mission that, at least during the holidays, should be saved for the real post office, in my opinion. I tried to tell him so with my eyes, but I don’t think he got the message.

After I mailed my small package to an adjacent US state, I wandered back into the store to pick up some chocolates and eggnog flavored salt water taffy to fill up stockings. I stopped at a table for a free sample of brie and sour cherry preserves on a lemon flavored cracker, and as I licked every microscopic crumb off my thumb and index finger I asked myself, “what is wrong with everyone! It’s Christmas! It doesn’t have to be ‘every man for himself!’ Just don’t be an ass-hole. And take deep breaths. Especially in long lines. Keep your sense of humor and we will all get through it together!”

I was still thinking this as I walked out through the sliding glass doors and out to my car, when I passed a white haired lady and her male companion, probably her husband. “Oh, my!” She said to me, and I stopped. I thought maybe she was going to ask if she knew me. I have one of those faces and I get that a lot. “You have a beautiful, smile!” she exclaimed instead, making my day, my Christmas, and my year.

“Thank you so much for saying that!” I said, deciding at the last second not to hug her. “Merry Christmas!” I said to her and her fellow, and I walked to my car.

Here is my Christmas wish for everyone: be that lady. I know, Christmas is Carnage. It is exhausting, and it will kick your ass. Especially if you are a Mom. (Sorry guys, but that’s what I have witnessed. See this Onion article for reference.) But you can focus on the smiles, and call them out when you see them. And if possible, instead of making cashiers go home in tears, make someone smile.

#blog #blog humor #humor #christmas #learning to step

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-lower-taxes/

Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

Democrats Vs Republicans On Taxes

Why Do People Think Lower Taxes Help the Economy?

While Republicans believe in balancing spending cuts with tax cuts across the board, Democrats believe in cutting taxes for the middle and lower class, while raising them for the upper class. They believe in a higher marginal rate, with income tax being higher for those who make more, as opposed to the Republican views that taxes should be equal percentages for all income levels. In the 2012 Party Platform, 56% of republicans opposed raising taxes on those who earned over $250,000. This isnt to say that Republicans do not believe in focusing relief on the middle and lower classes; they do, however, believe in relief for all Americans, and not in raising taxes on the upper classes.

What Do Republicans Believe In

Do all Republicans believe the same things? Of course not. Rarely do members of a single political group agree on all issues. Even among Republicans, there are differences of opinion. As a group, they do not agree on every issue.

Some folks vote Republican because of fiscal concerns. Often, that trumps concerns they may have about social issues. Others are less interested in the fiscal position of the party. They vote they way they do because of religion. They believe Republicans are the party of morality. Some simply want less government. They believe only Republicans can solve the problem of big government. Republicans spend less . They lower taxes: some people vote for that alone.

However, the Republican Party does stand for certain things. So I’m answering with regard to the party as a whole. Call it a platform. Call them core beliefs. The vast majority of Republicans adhere to certain ideas.

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Conservatives Dont Hate Socialism They Hate Equality

They want to take away your hamburgers, former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka in February. This is what Stalin dreamt about America will never be a socialist country! The Conservative Political Action Conference audience cheered. The video played on my phone as I waved at Danny, the homeless man who begs for food every morning at the Newark Penn Station, where scores of poor people sleep in wheelchairs or lean on crutches or stand by the delis to ask for change.

These folks need more than hamburgers. They need jobs and homes. Yet, as the 2020 election season starts, Trump has branded progressives as socialists who will steal property and bring tyranny. The presidents fearmongering contrasts with the actual Green New Deal that some Democrats support but failed to pass in the GOP-controlled Senate. Its a fear driven by ideology. Republicans paint the poor as undeserving, marked by cultural or personal character flaws. Whereas Democratic Socialists believe people have the ability to run the economy and society to meet their needs. Why this difference in perception? It is because Republicans arent afraid of socialism they are afraid of equality with people they see as inferior.

Read Also: How Many Democrats And Republicans Are In The House

To Fund The $35 Trillion Budget Plan Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

To Fund The $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan, Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

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The 10% cuts were “across the board,” as he liked to say, implying they were of equal value to all. The dollar value of the cuts was, of course, far larger for those with larger incomes. Moreover, the tax law changes that accompanied the rate cuts made it easier for individuals and corporations to “write off” various forms of income and spending to lower their tax bills further. The tax rate for capital gains, money made from successful investing, would come down from 28% to 20%.

Reagan did not get everything he sought in this initial foray against high taxes and progressivity. The Senate trimmed the third year of the tax cut from 10% to 5%, and it would take a second bill, the Tax Reform Act of 1986, to pull the marginal top rate all the way down to 28%.

But Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 constituted the strongest move away from progressivity in the income tax since the tax was initiated in the Civil War.

They were the culmination of rising anti-tax sentiment in the late 1970s, when some states adopted tax limitations by popular referendum. That spirit was kept alive in the decades to come by groups such as Americans for Tax Reform, led by activist Grover Norquist. Starting in 1986, Norquist has challenged candidates for office to sign his “taxpayer protection pledge” not to raise taxes. The great majority of Republicans have signed.

Reagan Pared Back Progressivity

Reagan was able to reverse what had been a decades-long commitment to at least the look of progressivity. He could do it in part because his 1980 election coattails enabled his party to capture control of the Senate for the first time in a quarter century. Moreover, while Democrats still had a House majority, their ranks included scores of members from Southern and Midwestern districts that had also voted for Reagan.

When the budget resolution passed in that summer of 1981, 63 House Democrats joined all 190 Republicans in backing it. And when the tax package came to its critical votes in July, dozens of Democrats sided with Reagan and the Republicans rather than their own leadership.

In 1982, Democrats added to their majority in the House and negotiated some revenue increases with the Senate and the White House. And in Reagan’s second term, momentum built quickly for a tax overhaul that would combine still lower marginal rates with new business taxes and a paring back of tax preferences and other “loopholes.” The new overhaul’s main appeal to Democrats was that it exempted far more middle- and lower-income earners from the income tax altogether.

Career anti-tax advocate Grover Norquist, here in 2018, called the Trump administration’s 2017 tax cut “Reaganite” the ultimate compliment from the founder of Americans for Tax Reform.hide caption

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You May Like: Leader Of The Radical Republicans

Gop Real Estate Owners Make Out Big

Besides the laws benefits to real estate pass-throughs, real estate in general was hugely favored by the tax law, allowing property exchanges to avoid taxation, the deduction of new capital expenses in just one year versus longer depreciation schedules, and an exemption from limits on interest deductions.;

If you are a real estate developer, you never pay tax, said Ed Kleinbard, a former head of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation.;

Members of Congress own a lot of real estate. Public Integritys review of financial disclosures found that 29 of the 47 GOP members of the committees responsible for the tax bill hold interests in real estate, including small rental businesses, LLCs, and massive real estate investment trusts , which pay dividends to investors. The tax bill allows REIT investors to deduct 20 percent from their dividends for tax purposes.;

Who We Are

The Center for Public Integrity is an independent, investigative newsroom that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests.

Its Not Easy Being Green

Democratic socialism is not a Marxist fever dream; its a call for help. Its less socialism than humanitarian aid for a people in crisis. Millions of Americans are in dead-end jobs, slipping behind on bills, deep in debt and scared of climate change.

Something is wrong with capitalism, Martin Luther King Jr. told his staff in 1966. There must be better distribution of wealth and maybe America must move toward a democratic socialism. Saying the economic system causes pain means moving beyond the conservative image of the poor as flawed, personally or culturally, or the liberal image of them as unlucky victims of a more or less functioning meritocracy. To honor our human potential, capitalism must be dismantled, its pieces taken apart and recombined into a new world.

Climate change is one of the biggest existential threats to our way of life, Rep. Ocasio-Cortez said at the rollout of the Green New Deal. To combat that threat, we need to be as ambitious and innovative as possible. In its 14 pages, the plan envisions a World War II-scale mobilization of millions of workers. They will repair roads and bridges, build smart grids, upgrade industry to be zero carbon, build green public transit, remove carbon from the air, clean up waste sites, and clean up the poisoned land and waterways. When they come home, those workers can rest in new, green housing, and if sick or injured, they can go see a doctor, using a Medicare for All card.

Recommended Reading: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Most Welfare Recipients Are Makers Not Takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are takers rather than makers, is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

Consider Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly known as food stamps, which currently serve about 42 million Americans. At least one adult in more than half of SNAP-recipient households are working. And the average SNAP subsidy is $125 per month, or $1.40 per meal hardly enough to justify quitting a job.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, We have a welfare system thats trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.

Not true. Welfare officially called Temporary Assistance to Needy Families has required work as a condition of eligibility since then-President Bill Clinton signed welfare reform into law in 1996. And the earned income tax credit, a tax credit for low- and moderate-income workers, by definition, supports only people who work.

Workers apply for public benefits because they need assistance to make ends meet. American workers are among the most productive in the world, but over the last 40 years the bottom half of income earners have seen no income growth. As a result, since 1973, worker productivity has grown almost six times faster than wages.

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Lower Taxes, Higher Revenue

Republicans are generally accepting only of the Judeo-Christian belief system. For most Republicans, religion is absolutely vital in their political beliefs and the two cannot be separated. Therefore, separation of church and state is not that important to them. In fact, they believe that much of what is wrong has been caused by too much secularism.

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

Read Also: When Did Democrats And Republicans Switch Platforms

Orrin Hatch Tom Coburn And Richard Burr On Health Care

More recently, senators Orrin Hatch of Utah, Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, and Richard Burr of North Carolina have headed up the Republican fight on health care. Their proposal was named the Patient Choice, Affordability, Responsibility and Empowerment Act, and is based upon the principle of providing more flexibility and purchasing power to the individual. It shares some important similarities with the Affordable Care Act, such as the requirement to allow dependent coverage through the age of 26, and the inability of insurance companies to provide lifetime limits. When the three senators released their proposal, Burr stated The American people have found out what is in ObamaCare broken promises in the form of increased health care costs, costly mandates and government bureaucracy. We can lower costs and expand access to quality coverage and care by empowering individuals and their families to make their own health care decisions, rather than empowering the government to make those decisions for them.;The group stated that their proposal is designed to be roughly budget neutral over the first 10 years, leaving the financial burden on the American people at nothing. Coburn commented that they created this proposal because Its critical we chart another path forward. Our health care system wasnt working well before ObamaCare and it is worse after ObamaCare.

What The Needy Deserve

The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.

This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.

Indeed, America is not nearly as socially mobile as we like to think. Forty percent of Americans born into the bottom-income quintile the poorest 20 percent will stay there. And the same stickiness exists in the top quintile.

As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.

The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesnt accomplish its goals.

In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.

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An Exhaustive Lobbying Campaign

Almost immediately after Mr. Trump signed the bill, companies and their lobbyists including G.E.s Mr. Brown began a full-court pressure campaign to try to shield themselves from the BEAT and GILTI.

The Treasury Department had to figure out how to carry out the hastily written law, which lacked crucial details.

Chip Harter was the Treasury official in charge of writing the rules for the BEAT and GILTI. He had spent decades at PwC and the law firm Baker McKenzie, counseling companies on the same sorts of tax-avoidance arrangements that the new law was supposed to discourage.

Starting in January 2018, he and his colleagues found themselves in nonstop meetings roughly 10 a week at times with lobbyists for companies and industry groups.

The Organization for International Investment a powerful trade group for foreign multinationals like the Swiss food company Nestlé and the Dutch chemical maker LyondellBasell objected to a Treasury proposal that would have prevented companies from using a complex currency-accounting maneuver to avoid the BEAT.

The groups lobbyists were from PwC and Baker McKenzie, Mr. Harters former firms, according to public lobbying disclosures. One of them, Pam Olson, was the top Treasury tax official in the George W. Bush administration.

This month, the Treasury issued the final version of some of the BEAT regulations. The Organization for International Investment got what it wanted.

Recommended Reading: Snopes Trump Republican Dumb

How Democrats And Republicans Differ On Matters Of Wealth And Equality

A protester wears a T-shirt in support of Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is part of … a group of Democrats looking to beat Trump in 2020. Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg

If youre a rich Democrat, you wake up each day with self-loathing, wondering how you can make the world more egalitarian. Please tax me more, you say to your elected officials. Until then, the next thing you do is call your financial advisor to inquire about tax shelters.

If youre a poor Republican, however, you have more in common with the Democratic Party than the traditional Wall Street, big business base of the Republican Party, according to a survey by the Voter Study Group, a two-year-old consortium made up of academics and think tank scholars from across the political spectrum. That means the mostly conservative American Enterprise Institute and Cato were also on board with professors from Stanford and Georgetown universities when conducting this study, released this month.

The fact that lower-income Republicans, largely known as the basket of deplorables, support more social spending and taxing the rich was a key takeaway from this years report, says Lee Drutman, senior fellow on the political reform program at New America, a Washington D.C.-based think tank.

Across party lines, only 37% of respondents said they supported government getting active in reducing differences in income, close to the 39% who opposed it outright. Some 24% had no opinion on the subject.

Read Also: Senate Democrats Vs Republicans

Us House Democrats Seek To Roll Back Trump Tax Cuts For Wealthy Corporations

WASHINGTON, Sept 13 – Leading Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives on Monday proposed a substantial roll-back of former President Donald Trump’s tax cuts, including raising the top tax rate on corporations to 26.5% from the current 21%.

Democrats on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee said they will debate legislation this week that would achieve the changes as part of their broader, $3.5 trillion domestic investment plan.

In an attempt to finance the new spending, the Democratic-led committee will debate a proposal to raise $2.9 trillion in revenue over 10 years, according to a document circulated among members of the panel.

Besides increasing corporate taxes, wealthy individuals would see a jump in their income taxes as well as higher capital gains and estate taxes.

Even if the legislation as proposed passes Congress and is signed by Democratic President Joe Biden, corporate taxes would still be lower than they were before the enactment of the tax cuts pushed through by Republicans in 2017. But the top individual income tax rate would revert to its pre-2017 level.

The tax-writing Ways and Means Committee has scheduled work sessions for Tuesday and Wednesday to debate tax policy and other matters under its jurisdiction to be included in the $3.5 trillion “reconciliation” bill, which would require a simple majority to be passed in the Senate.

REPUBLICANS OPPOSED

Republican Senators Push Social Security Medicare And Medicaid Cuts After Supporting Ineffective Tax Cuts

Republicans Target Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

getty

The economy is recovering from the depths of the pandemic in large part due to the massive relief packages that Congress passed in 2020 and 2021. Just in time for this recovery, Senate Republicans are pushing for cuts to vital programs. According to news reports, five GOP senators are proposing a commission that would come up with proposals to balance the federal budget within a decade. Given that four of the five sponsors of this idea have signed on to the tax pledge to never, ever under any circumstances raise taxes, they are looking for programs to cut. They consequently take aim mainly at cuts to Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

These targeted programs are already and will continue to prove crucial to the financial and physical health of millions of Americans that have suffered from the pandemic. Many workers, especially older ones, have lost their jobs permanently and will move into early retirement with permanently lower benefits and little or no savings outside of those benefits. Millions of Americans, again particularly among older ones, experience long-term consequences from COVID-19, the disease caused by the novel virus. Those hardest hit by pandemic will need strong, expanded retirement and health benefits, not cuts to an already basic system.

Don’t Miss: Can Republicans Vote On Super Tuesday

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patriotnewsdaily · 3 years

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New Post has been published on PatriotNewsDaily.com

New Post has been published on https://patriotnewsdaily.com/the-craziest-spending-bill-in-history/

The Craziest Spending Bill in History

On the heels of the massive $1.9 trillion stimulus, relief, virus promotion, welfare bill, President Biden and his congressional delegation proposed a massive combination so-called infrastructure bill that created a totally new concept — human infrastructure. The latter portion was merely another effort to get more folks hooked on progressive give-away programs.

I was kind of hoping that human infrastructure meant that Uncle Sam would pay for a hip replacement if I ever needed one. Ooops! I forgot. I am on Medicare so Uncle Sam will be picking up the tab for most of that. My supplemental plan – for which I pay zero premium and have no idea who is paying it – will cover all the rest.

The idea of putting some $6 trillion of spending (the conservative estimate) in one bill seemed a bit over ambitious, to say the least. Even some congressional Democrats choked on that one.

It was decided – based on pressure from Republicans in Congress – that real honest-to-goodness infrastructure should be handled separate from the bag-of-goodies human infrastructure bill.

And so it was. Maybe … or maybe not.

Re-connecting the legislation

The radical left-wingers in the Democratic Party have prevailed on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to not pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill until after the Senate approves the $4 trillion so-called human infrastructure bill – essentially breaking the deal to handle them separately with the bipartisan bill moving through Congress first. Once again, Pelosi has shown her contempt of personal integrity and bipartisanship.

The economics of insane spending in Washington

While there is a lot of debate over the various Biden big spending bills, we need to understand the overarching economic realities.

Officially, the Biden administration is calling for the spending of $7-plus trillion dollars in its first six months in office – and that is if you believe the official numbers. If you do, you are very foolish.

There is an inviolate rule in government spending. Estimated future expenditures will far exceed the initial estimate – and the anticipated revenues to cover the cost will fall far short of the estimate. Ergo, more borrowing. Greater National Debt. Some economists already estimate that the cost of the three Biden legislative packages will exceed $10 trillion.

To get an idea of how much money $10 trillion really is … if we spend one dollar every day since the Big Bang launched our universe, we would only have reached the $5 trillion dollar mark today. It would take another 14 billion years to spend what Biden & Co. proposes to spend in six months.

If we gave away that $10 trillion dollars to every man, woman and child in America, we would all be getting a check for more than $30,000 each.

And keep in mind that Biden’s all NEW spending bill goes over the top of the $4.8 trillion annual federal budget for 2020 – with the biggest expenditures being Social Security and … INTEREST ON THE DEBT.

Much of that Biden money will be borrowed. America is currently borrowing more than 40 percent of the cost of the federal government every year. That means that we are placing an enormous economic burden on our children, grandchildren and even great grandchildren. We are destroying their economic future to satisfy our insatiable desires. There is now more obnoxious example of taxation without representation.

The Biden expenditures are being passed and proposed despite the fact that the December 2020 stimulus package poured excessive money into the economy – kicking off our current inflation. In addition, there are still $1 trillion dollars from past legislation that the government has not yet spent. This will put even more money into an economy that is already drowning in liquidity.

Jerome Powell, Chairman of the Federal Reserve has already admitted that he underestimated the inflationary impact from the flow of money into the economy – and that inflation is likely be worse than they recently projected. It is already worse – and will get worser.

Why all that spending?

The Democrat strategy of big spending is very simple. It is to make more and more of us dependent on government money. And that translates to more votes … more power … for the party that will provide that money.

The problem is not the money that is supposed to help the poor – although that is part of it. But most of those trillions upon trillions of dollars are not for the poor. They are for the middle class and the elite. It goes to academic institutions, civic groups, corporations and unions run by highly compensated executives. Universities and professors thrive on government grants. Government jobs are union jobs. This cuts out the more than 90 percent of the American contractors and workers who are not members of unions. The money flows to other government entities – states, cities, school districts. Millionaires like Al Sharpton have been the benefactors of government money – and he is by far not the only one.

Democrats see the federal treasury as a partisan bank that is the foundation of their political power. That is why all the excessive spending. As Benjamin Franklin once said, “When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.”

He also responded to a question as to what form of government they created. He replied, “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

Franklin’s pessimism was not unwarranted. His worse fears are being played out today. The only remaining question is whether America has the will and resolve to end this downward economic spiral leading to an inevitable disaster. It will be inflation for us and economic collapse for out progeny.

So, there ‘tis.

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newstfionline · 4 years

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Wednesday, March 17, 2021

Children Are Sleeping on Mats in Overcrowded Border Facilities (NYT) Migrant children are being forced to sleep on gym mats with foil sheets and go for days without showering as the Border Patrol struggles to handle thousands of young Central Americans who are surging across the southwestern border, some of them as young as a year old. Children are arriving in groups and alone, some of them clutching phone numbers of relatives scrawled on little pieces of paper, according to two court-appointed lawyers who are monitoring conditions at facilities along the border. Many of the children interviewed by the lawyers in recent days said they had not been allowed outdoors for days on end, confined to an overcrowded tent. “It’s an urgent situation. These children are caught up in a crisis,” said Leecia Welch, a lawyer who visited a holding facility for migrant children in Donna, Texas, that was built to house 250 people but which last week was holding about 1,000. More than 9,400 minors—ranging from young children to teenagers—arrived along the border without parents in February, a nearly threefold increase over last year at the same time, presenting the Biden administration with an urgent humanitarian challenge as it opens the door to children and gradually welcomes in families fleeing violence and poverty in Central America.

Automakers embrace electric vehicles. But what about buyers? (AP) The world’s major automakers have made something abundantly clear: They believe electric vehicles will dominate their industry in the years ahead. Yet for that to happen, they’ll need to sell the idea to people like Steve Bock. When Bock recently replaced his family’s 2013 Honda Pilot SUV, he considered—and then dismissed—the idea of buying an electric vehicle. An EV with enough room to carry his two dogs would cost too much, he decided. And he’d worry about driving long distances with too few charging stations. “I would consider it if the prices would come down,” Bock said, though leaving open the possibility of buying an electric vehicle next time. Opinion polls show that a substantial majority of Americans are aligned with Bock. An EV might be on their shopping list if it cost less, if more charging stations existed and if a wider variety of models were available. In other words, the time isn’t right. For now, EVs make up less than 2% of U.S. new-vehicle sales and about 3% worldwide.

A global minimum tax on multinationals? (Washington Post) Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is working with her counterparts worldwide to forge an agreement on a global minimum tax on multinational corporations, as the White House looks for revenue to help pay for President Biden’s domestic agenda. The effort, which would involve a fraught and challenging global negotiation of tax laws, could prove one of Yellen’s biggest policy legacies if it succeeds. It also could prove central to Biden’s presidency. The $1.9 trillion stimulus legislation signed into law last week was financed completely by additional federal borrowing. But the administration is expected to raise taxes at least partly to pay for its other big-ticket spending priorities, such as the massive infrastructure and jobs package being discussed by White House officials and congressional Democrats.

Stimulus payments are already arriving (Vox) Stimulus checks have begun to arrive in Americans’ bank accounts—just days after President Joe Biden authorized them by signing the American Rescue Plan into law. The speed with which eligible Americans are receiving their third and largest stimulus checks to date during the coronavirus pandemic—less than two months into Biden’s presidency—is a political victory for a president who was unable to garner bipartisan support for his bill, but was still able to swiftly pass a sweeping relief package along party lines. As Vox’s Emily Stewart explains, most Americans will be eligible for $1,400 stimulus checks: The full checks will go out to single people making up to $75,000 and couples making up to $150,000, and phase out at $80,000 and $160,000, based on 2019 or 2020 tax returns, depending on when people last filed their taxes. Previous checks phased out at higher income levels, meaning some people who got checks in previous rounds won’t get them this time. However, the legislation includes checks for adult dependents, such as college students and people with disabilities, for the first time.

Roughly 4 in 5 Manhattan Office Workers Will Not Return Full-Time, Survey Says (NBC New York) Manhattan’s largest employers are starting to plan for the post-COVID future of work, and it seems most of them are giving up on the traditional way of doing things. Just 22 percent of the island’s large employers will require all workers to return to the office full-time when they do eventually go back, according to a Partnership for New York City survey. Some 66 percent said they would adopt a hybrid model of days in the office and days at home, another 9 percent said they would not require workers to return to the office at all, and 4 percent said it would ultimately be role-dependent. Whatever model they choose, employers don’t seem to be in much of a rush either. Survey respondents said they expect just 45 percent of Manhattan’s roughly 1 million office workers to be back to the office by this September.

Here’s looking at you, England (Wired) The future coming at you: For the last two years police and internet companies across the UK have been quietly building and testing surveillance technology that could log and store the web browsing of every single person in the country. The tests, which are being run by two unnamed internet service providers, the Home Office, and the National Crime Agency, are being conducted under controversial surveillance laws introduced at the end of 2016. If successful, data collection systems could be rolled out nationally, creating one of the most powerful and controversial surveillance tools used by any democratic nation.

Europe’s vaccine mess (NYT) The number of new Covid-19 cases is declining, often sharply, in countries that have vaccinated a large share of residents. That’s the situation in Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Britain. Cases are also declining in the U.S. And on the other end of the spectrum is the European continent, where vaccine rollout has been slow, and new cases are surging. Europe—the first place where the coronavirus caused widespread death—is facing the prospect of being one of the last places to emerge from its grip. My colleague Jason Horowitz writes from Rome: “Governments are putting exhausted populations under lockdown. Street protests are turning violent. A year after the virus began spreading in Europe, things feel unnervingly the same.” As Eyck Freymann and Elettra Ardissino write in Foreign Policy: “Spring in the European Union is going to be dismal.” Bild, a German newspaper, recently ran the headline “Liebe Briten, We Beneiden You!”—a mixture of German and English that means “Dear Brits, We Envy You!” Wolfgang Münchau of Eurointelligence has said that Europe’s vaccination program rivals the continent’s budget austerity of recent years as “the E.U.’s worst policy error during my lifetime.” Over the summer, the U.S. was struggling more than any other country to contain Covid. Today, Europe appears to be in much worse shape.

Beijing haze (Reuters) China’s worst sandstorm in a decade caused mass disruptions on Monday as swaths of the country were engulfed in a thick, orange haze of dust and sand, forcing authorities to cancel hundreds of flights, shutter roads and schools, and suspend outdoor activities. In Beijing, poor visibility paralyzed traffic as residents posted photos of skyscrapers seemingly disappearing into the fog and compared images of the eerie haze to scenes in the dystopian 1982 film “Blade Runner.”

North Korea warns US not to ‘cause a stink’ before Seoul meeting (AP) In North Korea’s first comments directed at the Biden administration, Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister on Tuesday warned the United States to “refrain from causing a stink” if it wants to “sleep in peace” for the next four years. Kim Yo Jong’s statement was issued as U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin arrived in Asia to talk with U.S. allies Japan and South Korea about North Korea and other regional issues. They have meetings in Tokyo on Tuesday before speaking to officials in Seoul on Wednesday. “We take this opportunity to warn the new U.S. administration trying hard to give off (gun) powder smell in our land,” she said. “If it wants to sleep in peace for coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step.”

As Israelis head back to elections, there’s a new twist: Democrats in Washington (Washington Post) Israeli voters, trapped for two years in a vote-rinse-repeat cycle of toss-up elections, are about to go to the polls for a fourth time with at least one new factor to consider: Their next prime minister—even if it is their old prime minister—will have to deal with Democrats. Since the last campaign, the Republicans in Washington that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has held in a bear hug for more than a decade are out. The Democrats he largely alienated are ascendant. In Israel, however, the Netanyahu era has shifted the center of Israeli politics sharply to right not just in tone but on substance, bringing once-fringe positions into the mainstream and posing a challenge for any reset in relations with the Democrats. Even centrist parties have supported recent calls for Israel to annex Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank, and all but one of Netanyahu’s main election challengers have renounced the idea of a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Like him, they are deeply skeptical of President Biden’s diplomatic outreach to Iran. Netanyahu, who is battling corruption charges in an ongoing criminal trial, is scrambling to extend his record 14 years in office by reaching even further to the right for new partners. He recently embraced the remnants of the banned Kahanist party, a Jewish extremist group that called for stripping Israel’s Arab citizens of their voting rights. His next coalition, should he prevail, would probably be the most conservative of any of the candidates’.

After a decade of war, the plight of Syrian refugees is only getting worse (Washington Post) Ten years ago, protesters clamoring for political reform in Syria took to the streets, hoping for change. Instead, there has only been ruin and chaos. The past decade has shattered the nation and scattered its people. More than half of the population was forced to flee. “The United Nations stopped counting the dead in 2016 at 400,000. Six million Syrians fled their homeland, escaping across its borders into neighboring countries,” wrote my colleague Liz Sly. “Five million are still stranded, barely surviving in substandard conditions. A million climbed into flimsy boats to cross the Mediterranean to Europe.” Even as foreign humanitarian aid dwindles, millions still languish in limbo in countries bordering Syria, living on the margins of the societies hosting them but too afraid of the grim fate that may await should they try to return. Conditions are only getting worse. “Poverty and food insecurity are on the rise, school enrollment and access to health care are shrinking, and the COVID-19 pandemic has wiped out much of the informal work that refugees rely on,” noted a recent report from the U.N.’s refugee agency. “People are at a breaking point,” UNHCR senior communications adviser Rula Amin told CBS News. While “the attention of the world has shifted from the Syria crisis and people tend to think that maybe it has become easier, with every passing year, it becomes more difficult, not easier for Syrian refugees.”

#headlines #news

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orbemnews · 4 years

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How Shifting Politics Re-energized the Fight Against Poverty WASHINGTON — A quarter-century ago, a Democratic president celebrated “the end of welfare as we know it,” challenging the poor to exercise “independence” and espousing balanced budgets and smaller government. The Democratic Party capped a march in the opposite direction this week. Its first major legislative act under President Biden was a deficit-financed, $1.9 trillion “American Rescue Plan” filled with programs as broad as expanded aid to nearly every family with children and as targeted as payments to Black farmers. While providing an array of benefits to the middle class, it is also a poverty-fighting initiative of potentially historic proportions, delivering more immediate cash assistance to families at the bottom of the income scale than any federal legislation since at least the New Deal. Behind that shift is a realignment of economic, political and social forces, some decades in the making and others accelerated by the pandemic, that enabled a rapid advance in progressive priorities. Rising inequality and stagnant incomes over much of the past two decades left a growing share of Americans — of all races, in conservative states and liberal ones, in inner cities and small towns — concerned about making ends meet. New research documented the long-term damage from child poverty. An energized progressive vanguard pulled the Democrats leftward, not least Mr. Biden, who had campaigned as a moderating force. Concerns about deficit spending receded under Mr. Biden’s Republican predecessor, President Donald J. Trump, while populist strains in both parties led lawmakers to pay more attention to the frustrations of people struggling to get by — a development intensified by a pandemic recession that overwhelmingly hurt low-income workers and spared higher earners. A summer of protests against racial injustice, and a coalition led by Black voters that lifted Mr. Biden to the White House and helped give Democrats control of the Senate, put economic equity at the forefront of the new administration’s agenda. Whether the new law is a one-off culmination of those forces, or a down payment on even more ambitious efforts to address the nation’s challenges of poverty and opportunity, will be a defining battle for Democrats in the Biden era. In addition to trying to make permanent some of the temporary provisions in the package, Democrats hope to spend trillions of dollars to upgrade infrastructure, reduce the emissions that drive climate change, reduce the cost of college and child care, expand health coverage and guarantee paid leave and higher wages for workers. The new Democratic stance is “a long cry from the days of ‘big government is over,’” said Margaret Weir, a political scientist at Brown University. In the eyes of its backers, the law is not just one of the most far-reaching packages of economic and social policy in a generation. It is also, they say, the beginning of an opportunity for Democrats to unite a new majority in a deeply polarized country, built around a renewed belief in government. “Next to civil rights, voting rights and open housing in the ’60s, and maybe next to the Affordable Care Act — maybe — this is the biggest thing Congress has done since the New Deal,” said Senator Sherrod Brown, Democrat of Ohio and a longtime champion of the antipoverty efforts included in Mr. Biden’s plan. “People more and more realize that government can be on their side,” he said, “and now it is.” Conservatives are hardly giving up the battle over what some call a giant welfare expansion. Democrats face high hurdles to any further ambitious legislation, starting with the Senate filibuster, which requires most legislation to get 60 votes, and the precarious nature of the party’s Senate majority. Moderate Democrats are already resisting further growth of the budget deficit. But emboldened by the crisis, many Democrats see a new opportunity to use government to address big problems. In addition to the new legislation being broadly popular with voters, an intensified focus on worker struggles on both the left and the right, including Republicans’ increasing efforts to define themselves as a party of the working class, has scrambled the politics of economic policy across the ideological spectrum. Mr. Biden ran as a centrist in a Democratic Party where many activists had embraced progressive candidates like Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. But he will spend the coming weeks traveling the country to promote policies like his expansion of the child tax credit, a one-year, $100-billion benefit that most Democrats hope to turn into what was once a distant progressive dream: guaranteed income for families with children. Republicans have struggled to attack the full range of policies contained in Mr. Biden’s rescue plan, especially those like direct payments of up to $1,400 per person and expanded health care subsidies that benefit many of their constituents. Party leaders are trying to change the subject to issues like immigration. A Republican National Committee news release this week denounced the rescue plan’s expansion of the national debt, its funding for liberal states and cities like San Francisco and $1.7 billion in aid to Amtrak, but made no mention of the expanded child tax credit that will provide most families with monthly payments of up to $300 per child. Some prominent conservatives have welcomed the antipoverty provisions, applauding them as pro-family even though they violate core tenets of the Republican Party’s decades-long position that government aid is a disincentive to work. Updated March 13, 2021, 11:58 a.m. ET Many Republicans from conservative-leaning states have turned increased attention to growing social problems in their own backyards, in the middle of an opioid crisis and economic stagnation that has left rural Americans with higher poverty rates than urban Americans, particularly for children. An emerging strain of conservatism, often supported by a new generation of economic thinkers, has embraced expanded spending for families with children, to help lower-income workers and, in some cases, to encourage families to have more children. The conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt celebrated the expanded child credit in a series of Twitter posts on Friday, urging parents to use the proceeds to send their children to parochial school, and said he would work to make them permanent. Still, the law could provoke a Tea Party-style backlash of the sort generated by the Obama administration’s efforts to jolt the economy back to health in 2009. “They snuck it through and voters don’t know what they’re doing,” said Robert Rector of the conservative Heritage Foundation, an influential adviser to Capitol Hill Republicans. “The battle has yet to be joined,” said Mickey Kaus, a journalist whose criticisms of unconditional cash benefits to the poor helped shape the welfare overhaul under President Bill Clinton. Democrats say Mr. Biden has laid the groundwork for a durable victory by creating programs that help not just the very poor, but also lower- and middle-class workers. The package is projected to deliver thousands of dollars in benefits to families of all races, potentially neutralizing a long history of white voters souring on spending they perceive to be targeted to racial minorities. The rescue plan, which Mr. Biden signed into law on Thursday, features other temporary measures meant to help Americans with no or little income. They include extended and expanded unemployment benefits, increased tax breaks for child care costs and an enlarged earned-income tax credit. Mr. Biden’s antipoverty efforts, which researchers say will lift nearly six million children out of poverty, “came to be part of the package because families that earn in the bottom third of the income distribution, or at least of the wage distribution, have been disproportionately hurt by the pandemic,” said Cecilia Rouse, the chairwoman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. Democrats and poverty researchers began laying the groundwork for many of those provisions years ago, amid economic changes that exposed holes in the safety net. When a 2015 book by Kathryn J. Edin and H. Luke Shaefer, “$2.00 a Day,” argued that rising numbers of families spent months with virtually no cash income, Mr. Brown arranged for all his Democratic Senate colleagues to receive a copy. At the same time, many scholars shifted their focus from whether government benefits discouraged parents from working to whether the vagaries of a low-wage labor market left parents with adequate money to raise a child. A growing body of academic research, which Obama administration officials began to herald shortly before leaving office, showed that a large proportion of children spent part of their childhood below the poverty line and that even short episodes of poverty left children less likely to prosper as adults. A landmark report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine in 2019 found that aid programs left children better off. “That allowed us to change the conversation,” away from the dangers of dependency “to the good these programs do,” said Hilary W. Hoynes, an economist at the University of California, Berkeley, who served on the committee that wrote the report. By last summer, it became clear the pandemic’s toll was falling most heavily on disadvantaged workers, especially Black and Latino people, and Mr. Trump, who earlier had run up the deficit with a big tax cut, had joined both parties in Congress in adding trillions of dollars in federal debt to send out economic relief. Racial protests over the summer further increased the pressure for government help. “Just as the civil rights movement pushed Johnson, this movement is pushing Biden,” said Sidney M. Milkis, a political scientist at the University of Virginia who studies the relationship between presidents and grass-roots movements. While the expanded child tax credit would reach 93 percent of children, it would have its greatest effects on people of color. Analysts at Columbia University estimated the child benefit would cut child poverty from prepandemic levels among whites by 39 percent, Latinos by 45 percent and African-Americans by 52 percent. “Covid exposed the fissures of systemic racism and systemic poverty that already existed,” said the Rev. William J. Barber II, who helps run the Poor People’s Campaign, an effort to get the needy more involved in electoral politics. “It forced a deeper conversation about poverty and wages in this country.” White House officials and Democratic leaders in Congress say Mr. Biden’s rescue plan has now changed that conversation, creating momentum for permanent expansions of many of its antipoverty efforts. Multiple researchers project the bill will cut child poverty in half this year. Democrats say they will turn that into an argument against Republicans who might oppose making the benefits permanent. “You’re voting for doubling the child poverty rate — you’re going to do that?” Mr. Brown said. In selling the plan, Mr. Biden has blurred the lines between the poor and the middle class, treating them less as distinct groups with separate problems than as overlapping and shifting populations of people who were struggling with economic insecurity even before the pandemic. Last week, he at once talked of “millions of people out of work through no fault of their own” and cited the benefits his plan would bring to families with annual incomes of $100,000. “This is part of why I think it is more transformational,” said Brian Deese, who heads Mr. Biden’s National Economic Council. “This is not just a targeted antipoverty program.” In coming months, Democrats will face significant hurdles in making provisions like the child benefit permanent, including pressure from fiscal hawks to offset them by raising taxes or cutting other spending. But the swift passage of even the temporary provisions has left many antipoverty experts delighted. “A year ago, I would have said it was a pipe dream,” said Stacy Taylor, who tracks poverty policy for Fresh EBT by Propel, a phone application used by millions of food stamp recipients. “I can’t believe we’re going to have a guaranteed income for families with children.” Source link Orbem News #Fight #Politics #Poverty #Reenergized #shifting

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techcrunchappcom · 4 years

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New Post has been published on https://techcrunchapp.com/covid-19-news-latest-updates-the-new-york-times/

Covid-19 News: Latest Updates - The New York Times

Here’s what you need to know:

Members of the Wisconsin National Guard test residents for the coronavirus at a temporary test facility.Credit…Scott Olson/Getty Images

As coronavirus cases across the United States climb toward a third peak, the country surpassed a total of eight million total known cases on Thursday afternoon, according to a New York Times database.

Epidemiologists warned of a new, worrisome phase as 17 states are seeing surges unlike anything they experienced earlier in the pandemic. States including Alaska, Minnesota, Montana and Wisconsin reported more new cases during the seven-day stretch that ended on Wednesday than in any other week since the virus arrived in the country.

Reports of new cases are trending upward in 41 states over the last two weeks, while nine states are holding case numbers roughly steady. No state in the country is seeing a sustained decline.

Many of the 17 states seeing more new cases than ever — located mostly in the Midwest or in the Mountain West — had relatively few cases until recently. But cases are now steadily climbing. Intensive care unit beds in hospitals are few and far between in some rural communities, experts said, raising concerns about crowded facilities.

“What’s happening in the Upper Midwest is just a harbinger of things to come in the rest of the country,” said Michael Osterholm, an infectious-diseases expert at the University of Minnesota.

April 10

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New cases per day in the United States

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Already, signs of the uptick are appearing beyond the nation’s middle. In the Northeast, where cases have been relatively low since a spring surge, reports of new infections have started ticking upward again. In the South, where infections spiked this summer, the picture varies from state to state, with sustained progress in Florida and Georgia but worrisome trends in Arkansas and Kentucky.

The number of cases alone is not a full measure of the nation’s outbreak — it is difficult to compare the current numbers with earlier points in the U.S. outbreak when testing was less widespread — and deaths from the virus have been relatively flat in recent weeks, with an average of about 700 per day. But “we are headed in the wrong direction,” said Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University.

“That’s reflected not only in the number of new cases but also in test positivity and the number of hospitalizations,” said Dr. Rivers, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University. “Together, I think these three indicators give a very clear picture that we are seeing increased transmission in communities across the country.”

High levels of infection in colleges and universities, Dr. Osterholm said, are serving as one source of the spread. Transmission also has been prevalent at events such as funerals, family barbecues and birthday parties, he said, adding that the comeback of sporting events and dining has also added to the spread this fall.

“Pandemic fatigue has clearly set in for large segments of the population,” he said. “This is not even an uptick, this is a major surge of cases that is happening.”

He added, “It’s only going to get worse, we have to be prepared for that.”

Even as cases increased, President Trump continued to downplay the resurgence of this virus this fall during an appearance on Fox Business on Thursday morning. He added he did not support strictest restrictions by local officials to limit its spread. “We’re not doing any more lockdowns, we’re doing fine,” he said.

But Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, also warned on Thursday morning that the increase in cases across multiple regions of the country could have dire consequences over the coming months.

“The issue is that as we enter, as we are now, the cooler season of the fall, and ultimately the coldest season of the winter, you don’t want to be in that compromised position where your baseline daily infection is high, and you’re increasing as opposed to going in the other direction,” he said on “Good Morning America.” “So we’ve really got to double down on the fundamental public health measures that we talk about every single day, because they can make a difference.”

France’s health minister, Olivier Véran, this month. He was one of several officials whose home and office were searched by the authorities.Credit…Ludovic Marin/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Prime Minister Jean Castex of France on Thursday extended to the entire country health restrictions that had so far been imposed only in areas hard-hit by the virus. The new rules were announced shortly after the French police searched the homes and offices of several current and former officials as part of an inquiry into the government’s response to the coronavirus pandemic.

Starting Saturday, all restaurants will have to follow a strict health protocol that includes keeping registers of customers for contact-tracing and keeping seating to no more than six per table. Private parties will be forbidden in public spaces, and rules to encourage social distancing, such as limiting the number of spectators or visitors in cultural venues or customers in shopping centers, will be enforced throughout the country.

The rules are part of the renewed state of emergency announced by President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday. Other measures include a nightly curfew around Paris and eight other major cities, for at least four weeks.

Residents of affected areas will be barred from leaving their homes between 9 p.m. and 6 a.m. and will have to carry a form explaining the reasons for travel during that time slot, Mr. Castex said. Permitted outings include work, dog-walking, trips for health reasons, and travel to and from train stations and airports.

Some 12,000 police officers will be deployed throughout the country to enforce the curfew, said Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin.

The move is expected to deal a fresh blow to France’s restaurant and tourism industries, which make up nearly 10 percent of economic activity. The government said it would grant up to 1 billion euros in financial aid to businesses and extend an offer of cheap, state-backed loans. Officials will also direct money to theaters and other culture operations that can’t function under the new measures, and are encouraging people to continue taking vacations and patronizing hotels.

Mr. Macron highlighted the tension between economic and health concerns as he announced the curfew. A new lockdown for an already reeling economy would have been “disproportionate,” he said, yet the pressure on hospitals was intolerable. “Our caregivers are exhausted,” he said.

The seven-day average of new cases over the past week was 17,936 on Wednesday, and intensive care units were rapidly filling with virus patients. Mr. Castex said that slowing down the spread of the virus with targeted curfews was the “only real possible strategy.”

The police searches on Thursday included the homes and offices of France’s health minister, Olivier Véran, and Jérome Salomon, a top official at the health ministry, as well as the homes of former Prime Minister Edouard Philippe, the former health minister Agnès Buzyn and a former government spokeswoman, Sibeth Ndiaye.

The inquiry was launched in July by the French Court of Justice, a special court that hears accusations of government mismanagement. Over the past few months, more than 90 complaints had been filed, accusing several government officials of willfully failing to take appropriate action to combat the virus, endangering people’s lives.

The French Court of Justice examined all of the complaints but finally decided to accept only nine of them, with the charge of failing from fighting a disaster. This offense is punishable by two years of imprisonment and a fine of 30,000 euros.

The French government has been harshly criticized for its handling of the first wave of the virus, from March to May, which resulted in about 30,000 deaths. A critical shortage of masks and testing kits led to the virus’s rapid spread and prompted France to impose one of the world’s strictest nationwide lockdowns.

Workers preparing boxes of free food for distribution in Chelsea, Mass.Credit…Brian Snyder/Reuters

After an ambitious expansion of the safety net in the spring saved millions of people in the United States from poverty, the aid is now largely exhausted and poverty has returned to levels higher than before the coronavirus crisis, two new studies have found.

The number of poor people has grown by eight million since May, according to researchers at Columbia University, after falling by four million at the pandemic’s start as a result of a $2 trillion emergency package known as the Cares Act.

Using a different definition of poverty, researchers from the University of Chicago and Notre Dame found that poverty has grown by six million people in the past three months, with circumstances worsening most for Black people and children.

“These numbers are very concerning,” said Bruce D. Meyer, an economist at the University of Chicago and an author of the study. “They tell us people are having a lot more trouble paying their bills, paying their rent, putting food on the table.”

Significantly, the studies differ on the most recent month: While the Columbia model shows an improvement in September, the Chicago and Notre Dame analysts found poverty continued to grow.

The recent rise in poverty has occurred despite an improving job market, an indiction that the economy has been rebounding too slowly to offset the lost benefits.

The Democratic-controlled House has twice passed multitrillion-dollar packages to provide more help and to stimulate the economy, but members of a divided Republican-led Senate, questioning the cost and necessity, have proposed smaller plans. President Trump has demanded that Congress “go big” before the elections and canceled negotiations.

While the job market may have gotten better since hitting bottom in April, it recently flattened and is now declining again. American employers continue to shed workers at a staggering rate as a resurgent virus and the absence of new federal aid take their tolls.

The Labor Department reported Thursday that 885,000 Americans filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, an increase from the previous week. That figure is not adjusted for seasonal variations.

Over the past month, large employers including United Airlines, Disney and Allstate announced tens of thousands of layoffs, and more are expected as sectors like leisure and hospitality struggle. In some states, restaurants have salvaged some business by serving diners outside, but many will lose that option as temperatures fall.

The Soho area of London on Thursday. Matt Hancock, the British health secretary, announced tightened virus restrictions for the city and other areas of England.Credit…John Sibley/Reuters

London will join other big cities in Europe, including Paris and Berlin, in tightening restrictions to stem a rapidly rising second wave of coronavirus cases in the region.

Within London, the average number of cases now stands at 97 per 100,000 people, near the threshold for negotiating a move from medium to high risk alert level. Virus-related hospital admissions and deaths are on the rise.

People from different households will be barred from meeting indoors starting Saturday as the city shifts into England’s second-highest alert level, health secretary Matt Hancock announced in Parliament on Thursday. People will also be discouraged from using public transportation.

The increased measures will also apply to the city of York in northern England, as well as the Essex region and parts of central England.

The weekly number of new coronavirus cases in Europe is now at its highest point since the start of the pandemic, a top World Health Organization official said on Thursday, urging governments to impose tighter, targeted controls on social gatherings.

“We’re at a critical moment in our fight against Covid-19,” London’s mayor, Sadiq Khan, said during a meeting at City Hall on Thursday.

He sharply criticized the government’s virus testing program in a statement a short while later.

“I know these further restrictions will require Londoners to make yet more sacrifices, but the disastrous failure of the test, trace and isolate system leaves us with little choice,” he said in the statement.

While Mr. Hancock on Thursday said that testing capacity was up, the government’s test and trace system has been plagued with issues. In Birmingham, a local council was found to have distributed about 25 used swab-test kits to households by mistake.

Jonathan Ashworth, the opposition Labour Party’s lead lawmaker on health issues, also criticized the testing program, arguing that the measures announced Thursday would be insufficient to halt the spread of the virus. He reiterated his call for the government to impose a national lockdown — and to provide more financial support to mitigate the impact of virus restrictions.

Hospitality and travel industries were hit particularly hard by the impact of the new rules. Shares in Marston’s, a large chain of bars and pubs in Britain, fell as much as 8 percent and the company said it was looking to cut 2,150 jobs that are currently furloughed.

The announcement came after the government published data that showed the country’s jobless rate had already climbed to a three-year high and there were a record number of layoffs in August, adding to concerns that Britain will experience a sharp rise in unemployment this winter.

The head of the World Health Organization’s Europe office, Hans Kluge, said Thursday that restrictions on social gatherings were “absolutely necessary” and that more drastic action might be needed. The number of confirmed cases in Europe rose by a million to seven million in just 10 days, Dr. Kluge warned, and the number of daily deaths has passed 1,000.

British scientists have proposed that the government schedule a temporary “circuit breaker” lockdown for the last week of October and first week of November, when schools are closed for midterm break, to make it less disruptive. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson has resisted the idea, maintaining his position that targeted measures are best.

Senator Kamala Harris was scheduled to hold three events in North Carolina on Thursday but has canceled them.Credit…Hilary Swift for The New York Times

The Biden campaign announced Thursday that it was suspending Senator Kamala Harris’s campaign travel through Sunday after two people who had traveled with her tested positive for the coronavirus. Hours later, the campaign said a person who had been aboard Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s plane had also tested positive.

The announcements were the Biden campaign’s closest known brush with the virus. The two people who had traveled with Ms. Harris — her campaign communications director, Liz Allen, and a flight crew member — flew with her last Thursday, when Ms. Harris campaigned with Mr. Biden in Arizona.

The person on Mr. Biden’s flights who tested positive, an employee of the company that charters the plane, was aboard for trips to Ohio on Monday and to Florida on Tuesday, but was a great distance from Mr. Biden, the campaign said.

“Our campaign’s contact tracing remains ongoing, and my team will continue to share any significant developments with the American people,” Mr. Biden wrote on Twitter. “If anything, let this serve as an example of the importance of wearing masks and keeping a safe, social distance.”

Ms. Harris had been scheduled to campaign in North Carolina on Thursday and in Ohio on Friday. She will now return to the campaign trail on Monday. The campaign said she had tested negative for the virus on Wednesday and again on Thursday.

Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, said in a statement that Ms. Harris “was not in close contact, as defined by the C.D.C., with either of these individuals during the two days prior to their positive tests; as such, there is no requirement for quarantine.”

But Ms. O’Malley Dillon said Ms. Harris’s travel through Sunday was being canceled “out of an abundance of caution and in line with our campaign’s commitment to the highest levels of precaution.”

During a virtual fund-raiser on Thursday, Ms. Harris addressed the positive tests and the campaign’s response, and drew a comparison with President Trump. “We wanted to make sure that we were adhering to what has been, I think, a very appropriate and strict level of seriousness around the caution that we are exercising to make sure everyone is safe,” she said. “Obviously, it’s been in stark contrast to you-know-who.”

On Thursday afternoon, the campaign said that the person aboard Mr. Biden’s plane, an administrative employee with the charter company who had been contacted during contact tracing for the crew member who traveled with Ms. Harris, had also tested positive.

The employee was seated in the last row of Mr. Biden’s plane, a Boeing 737, on Monday and Tuesday, and was more than 50 feet away from Mr. Biden at all times, Ms. O’Malley Dillon said. “We have been advised by the vice president’s doctor and the campaign’s medical advisers that there is no need for the vice president to quarantine,” she said.

Mr. Biden will appear at an ABC News town hall event in Philadelphia on Thursday night. The campaign said that Mr. Biden had tested negative for the virus on Wednesday night.

On Monday, the Vatican said four guards were infected with the virus and showing symptoms. Now, seven more have tested positive, according to The A.P.Credit…Andrew Medichini/Associated Press

Eleven members of the Swiss Guard have tested positive for the coronavirus, according to a report in The Associated Press, prompting fears of an outbreak within the small corps charged with protecting the pope.

On Monday, the Vatican said four guards were infected with the virus and showing symptoms. Now, seven more have tested positive, according to The A.P.

The brightly clad Swiss Guards provide ceremonial guard duty during papal Masses and stand at the Vatican gates. They also serve as personal guards for the pope. Established in the early 16th century by Pope Julius II, the guard is considered the world’s oldest standing army.

Pope Francis, who is 83, is known for his relatively informal, friendly relationship with the guards. He has made a custom of shaking hands with them as he leaves his suite in the morning.

The Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported on Oct. 12 that Matteo Bruni, a spokesman for the Holy See, said “all the guards, on duty and not, wear masks — outdoors and indoors — and observe prescribed health measures.”

The pope has criticized priests who resist pandemic protection measures as “adolescent.” But Vatican observers have expressed concerns about his own habit of forgoing a mask in public settings.

Last week, Francis was photographed maskless at a large indoor gathering at the Vatican, speaking closely with attendees and kissing the hands of newly ordained priests.

Surgery in his early 20s left Francis missing part of one lung, a “pulmonary deficiency,” as one biographer put it, that might make it difficult to breath through a mask.

An early center of the pandemic, Italy kept the virus mostly under control through the summer. But the country has seen a sharp rise in new cases lately, with recent daily infection rates matching the country’s peak in April, according to a Times database.

Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council, boasted in February that the coronavirus was contained in the United States and that “it’s pretty close to airtight.” His private message was more ambiguous.Credit…Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

On the afternoon of Feb. 24, President Trump declared on Twitter that the coronavirus was “very much under control” in the United States, but hours earlier, senior members of the president’s economic team, privately addressing board members of the conservative Hoover Institution, were less confident.

Tomas J. Philipson, a senior economic adviser to the president, told the group he could not yet estimate the effects of the virus on the American economy. To some in the group, the implication was that an outbreak could prove worse than Mr. Philipson and other Trump administration advisers were signaling in public at the time.

The next day, board members — many of them Republican donors — got another taste of government uncertainty from Larry Kudlow, the director of the National Economic Council. Hours after he had boasted on CNBC that the virus was contained in the United States and “it’s pretty close to airtight,” Mr. Kudlow delivered a more ambiguous private message. He asserted that the virus was “contained in the U.S., to date, but now we just don’t know,” according to a document describing the sessions obtained by The New York Times.

The document, written by a hedge fund consultant who attended the three-day gathering of Hoover’s board, was stark. “What struck me,” the consultant wrote, was that nearly every official he heard from raised the virus “as a point of concern, totally unprovoked.”

The consultant’s assessment quickly spread through parts of the investment world. U.S. stocks were already spiraling because of a warning from a federal public health official that the virus was likely to spread, but traders spotted the immediate significance: The president’s aides appeared to be giving wealthy party donors an early warning of a potentially impactful contagion at a time when Mr. Trump was publicly insisting that the threat was nonexistent.

Interviews with eight people who either received copies of the memo or were briefed on aspects of it as it spread among investors in New York and elsewhere provide a glimpse of how elite traders had access to information from the administration that helped them gain financial advantage during a chaotic three days when global markets were teetering.

To many of the investors who received or heard about the memo, it was the first significant sign of skepticism among Trump administration officials about their ability to contain the virus. It also provided a hint of the fallout that was to come, said one major investor who was briefed on it: the upending of daily life for the entire country.

“Short everything,” was the reaction of the investor, using the Wall Street term for betting on the idea that the stock prices of companies would soon fall.

A coronavirus testing site in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Borough Park.Credit…Spencer Platt/Getty Images

A week after New York officials debated and then imposed new restrictions on areas with rising coronavirus positivity rates, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo again seemed a bit at odds over whether the strategy to contain the virus had yet proven effective.

On Thursday morning, Mr. de Blasio said at a news conference that the efforts to contain the virus in hot-spot neighborhoods in Queens and Brooklyn seemed to be working, without providing specific information about positivity rates in those areas.

“We are seeing a plateauing now of the test results, and that is a very, very good sign,” Mr. de Blasio said, though he also acknowledged that “we’ve got more to do.”

Not long afterward, Mr. Cuomo said it was “too early to tell” whether enough progress had been made containing the virus in the so-called red zones — the parts of the state with the highest positivity rates and the most severe restrictions on gatherings and businesses.

The governor also emphasized that any decision to lift virus-related restrictions in New York City would fall to him, not the mayor.

Mr. Cuomo said that the daily rate of positive test results in the state’s red zones was 4.84 percent; statewide, the rate was 1.09 percent. Hospitalizations also fell in the state to 897, a decrease of 41 that followed several days of increases.

In New York City, Mr. de Blasio said that the city’s seven-day average positive test rate was 1.49 percent and noted that the city had conducted 17,000 tests in hot-spot neighborhoods since Sept. 30.

Restrictions: Major Minor

But the mayor said it was difficult for him to present accurate information about positivity rates in the hot spots in part because of discrepancies between the way the state and city measure data. (State data showed that the positivity rate was 4.75 percent across the red zones in Brooklyn and 2.15 percent in those in Queens.)

Mr. de Blasio also said that it was a bad time to grow complacent about the virus.

“There is the possibility that maybe people are discounting the second wave, and what it could mean,” Mr. de Blasio said. “Look no further than some states in this country, or to countries in Europe. You do not want to experience a second wave.”

Mr. de Blasio said that the city and state would continue working together despite their perceived differences.

“In a crisis, you try and obviously minimize differences, get on the same page, but you’re still going to have some inherent differences of views,” Mr. de Blasio said. “It’s just, the state does a different thing than the city does, but we ultimately get to a lot of agreement, move forward together.”

Restrictions: Major Minor

The $1.8 trillion package that Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has proposed has proven to be a non-starter with Senate Republicans, making President Trump’s call for a bigger bill a complication.Credit…Pool photo by Chris Kleponis/EPA, via Shutterstock

President Trump, struggling to gain traction among voters just weeks before the election, called on Thursday for a bigger stimulus package than he had previously offered, and the White House signaled it was willing to make concessions to Democrats. But the proposals were unlikely to win the necessary backing from Senate Republicans who are preparing a far smaller bill of their own.

White House negotiators have proposed a $1.8 trillion relief package. Mr. Trump said that he wanted one that was even bigger and suggested, without explanation, that China would pay for it.

“I would go higher,” Mr. Trump said during an interview with the Fox Business Network. “Go big or go home.”

The comments came after Mr. Mnuchin said that the White House was willing to make additional concessions to Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California in hopes of rekindling a stimulus deal before the election. But the $1.8 trillion package that he has proposed has already proven to be a non-starter with Senate Republicans who have panned it as too costly, making Mr. Trump’s call for a more expensive bill another complication in the already fraught negotiations.

Investors, who have been following the stimulus talks closely, seemed unmoved by statements from Mr. Trump and Mr. Mnuchin on Thursday, with stocks on Wall Street dropping for a third consecutive day.

The president suggested that Ms. Pelosi’s $2.2 trillion proposal was littered with Democratic priorities that his “pride” would not allow him to accept. However, he also undercut his own Treasury secretary for not being able to secure a larger agreement.

“So far he hasn’t come home with the bacon,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Mnuchin.

The negotiations between the White House and Congress are expected to continue on Thursday, when Mr. Mnuchin and Ms. Pelosi are scheduled to speak.

Speaking on CNBC, the Treasury secretary said that he would agree to the language that Democrats had insisted on when it came to a coronavirus testing program and noted that the two sides had already agreed to spend an additional $75 billion on testing and contact tracing. The specifics of such a program have been an obstacle in the talks.

“We’ll fundamentally agree with their testing language, subject to some minor issues,” Mr. Mnuchin said. “We need to get money to the American public now.”

Mr. Mnuchin’s remarks came after the Labor Department reported that the number of new claims for unemployment benefits jumped to 886,000 last week.

But on Wednesday, Mr. Mnuchin acknowledged it would be difficult to pass and enact a deal in the next three weeks.

In the interview on CNBC, Mr. Mnuchin did not directly address the lack of support for a bill by Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, suggesting that he has been briefed on negotiations between the White House and House Democrats while acknowledging that Senate Republicans prefer a more “targeted” relief bill.

But Mr. McConnell downplayed the prospects of a larger bill on Thursday.

“He’s talking about a much larger amount than I can sell to my members,” Mr. McConnell said about the president’s comments.

Negotiators have been locked in fruitless talks for months. On Thursday, Mr. Mnuchin assailed Democrats for letting politics get in the way of reaching agreement before the election, though Mr. Trump scuttled the talks himself when he said in a tweet last week that he had called off stimulus negotiations until after the election.

Mr. Mnuchin also called on Congress to give him the authority to repurpose approximately $300 billion in unused relief money from the legislation that was passed in March. He said he could begin getting that money into the economy this week.

Tel Aviv on Wednesday.Credit…Oded Balilty/Associated Press

The Israeli government voted Thursday to lift some elements of its lockdown as the number of new coronavirus cases continued to decline.

The decision, which will go into effect on Sunday, will permit Israelis to go more than 1,000 meters beyond their homes without the need for a special reason, order takeout from restaurants, visit beaches, send their children to day care centers and kindergartens, and reopen some businesses.

But other restrictions will remain in place, including bans on the opening of bars, restaurants, malls, and event halls. Elementary, middle and high schools will also remain closed.

At a news conference, Yuli Edelstein, the health minister, pointed to “encouraging data” on the spread of the virus, but he said Israelis still had “a long road” ahead of them

When the lockdown began on Sept. 18 at the beginning of Rosh Hashana, the country’s seven-day rolling average was about 4,300 new cases, according to Our World in Data. As of Thursday, the number had fallen to about 2,500 cases.

Israel moved quickly to reopen the country in May after an earlier lockdown, throwing open the doors of schools, restaurants, bars and other gathering places. But experts say the government moved too hastily, allowing the virus to spread out of control.

On Thursday, Mr. Edelstein stressed that Israel would be reopened with “careful and calculated steps” in the hopes of avoiding a third lockdown.

While the latest closings appear to have helped stem the spread of the virus, they have taken a major toll on the economy. The central bank has estimated that it has cost the economy more than $2 billion per week.

Many business owners have also said that the government has failed to provide them with sufficient financial support as their companies teeter on the brink of bankruptcy.

Many first-time gun buyers say they are looking to arm themselves in anticipation of unrest.Credit…Mario Tama/Getty Images

Fears of instability in the United States, stoked by street-level clashes over public health measures and the upcoming election, are fueling apparently record gun sales.

According to the F.B.I, the nearly 29 million background checks conducted through September of this year have already surpassed the total conducted in 2019, which was, at the time, higher than in any previous year.

Still, Precisely measuring the extent of the surge is difficult, as neither gun companies nor the government provide comprehensive national data on gun sales. However, anecdotal reports of gun and ammo shortages have been widespread for months.

Many first-time buyers say they are looking to arm themselves in anticipation of unrest. They cite heated rhetoric surrounding the election, as supporters of both President Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. have said they expect a protracted fight over the election results.

But other first-time buyers and some of those buying again have said that their decision reflects general unease about growing discontent in the United States — where millions of people face permanent job losses because of the pandemic — as well as anger about public health restrictions, which has inspired armed protests in several states with open-carry laws.

Angst about the national mood has been exacerbated by several instances of actual violence during recent months, as several people have been shot and killed by fellow demonstrators during protests over policing and police violence.

Members of the intelligence community have warned of a growing threat of far-right extremism, which they said could become a greater problem closer to the election. On Tuesday, the F.B.I. revealed that a ring of 13 men had plotted to kidnap the Democratic governors of Michigan and Virginia over stay-at-home measures to control coronavirus outbreaks in those states, and that two of them were among a crowd of armed protesters who had effectively occupied the Michigan statehouse in April while the Legislature was in session.

Global Roundup

In Hong Kong on Thursday.Credit…Kin Cheung/Associated Press

Officials in Singapore and Hong Kong said Thursday that they had reached a preliminary agreement to establish a travel bubble between the two Asian financial centers, allowing travelers of all kinds to bypass quarantine.

Under the agreement, travelers must test negative for the virus and fly only on designated flights. Officials did not say when the bubble, which was first reported by The South China Morning Post, would begin.

Travelers from Singapore would be the first allowed to enter Hong Kong since the semiautonomous Chinese territory barred all nonresidents in March; residents returning to Hong Kong are required to quarantine for 14 days. Singapore currently requires travelers from Hong Kong to quarantine for seven days after arrival.

��Both our cities have low incidence of Covid-19 cases and have put in place robust mechanisms to manage and control Covid-19,” Singapore’s travel minister, Ong Ye Kung, said in a statement.

Hong Kong’s secretary for commerce and economic development, Edward Yau, called the agreement “a milestone in our efforts to resume normalcy while fighting against the long-drawn battle of Covid-19.”

Singapore and Hong Kong have both been reporting daily new cases in the single or double digits since late August.

Efforts to establish reciprocal travel bubbles in Asia and other parts of the world have been halting as case numbers fluctuate and new outbreaks emerge. Starting Friday, Australia will waive quarantine requirements for travelers from New Zealand, which recently stamped out the virus for a second time, though New Zealand will still require quarantine for travelers arriving from Australia.

Singapore has also lifted restrictions on general visitors from Brunei, Vietnam, New Zealand and Australia except for the state of Victoria, the center of the outbreak there. But all four of those countries are still closed to almost all foreigners, and in the case of Brunei and Australia residents must apply for permission to leave the country as well.

In other global developments:

The European Parliament announced on Thursday that it would cancel a meeting scheduled to be held next week in Strasbourg, in northern France, as the outbreak widens. The meeting would have been its first in-person session in Strasbourg since the start of the pandemic. Belgium, where most parliamentary staff and members are based, is also seeing a sharp rise in cases.

Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, went into quarantine for a second time in two weeks after being exposed to the virus. She tweeted on Thursday that she had tested negative, but a member of her office had tested positive. She wrote that she was leaving a European Council meeting in Brussels that was being held with strict social-distancing measures.

Portugal announced new virus restrictions on Thursday, including a five-person limit on public gatherings, after a rise in new cases. In Spain, which is seeing an even sharper increase, the city of Salamanca, famous for its 12th-century university, became the latest area to be cut off from the rest of the country, under new lockdown restrictions imposed by the regional government. The restrictions take effect on Saturday.

Two officials in Qingdao, China, have been fired amid a new virus outbreak there, the city government said on Thursday. The director of the health commission and the president of the Qingdao Chest Hospital are under investigation after six confirmed infections and six asymptomatic cases were linked to the hospital. The new cases are the first local transmissions China had reported in almost two months.

The weekly number of new cases in Europe is now at its highest point since the start of the pandemic, Hans Kluge, the W.H.O.’s director for Europe, said on Thursday. The number of confirmed cases rose by one million to seven million in just 10 days, and the number of daily deaths passed 1,000 for the first time in months. Many European countries are adopting stricter controls, which Dr. Kluge called “absolutely necessary,” as increased caseloads are raising fears of another surge as winter approaches.

India is now struggling with two major health challenges that are both assaulting the respiratory system and peaking at the same time. Coronavirus cases are spreading, putting the country on track to have the largest reported caseload in the world in the coming weeks. It’s also the start of the fall pollution season, and doctors say that if the ambient air suddenly becomes more toxic, as it does every year around this time in northern India, then more people who become infected by the virus might end up in the hospital or die.

After recovering from Covid-19, President Trump said he was now immune to the disease caused by the coronavirus.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Trump might want to wait a bit before he puts on a Superman T-shirt.

After recovering from Covid-19, Mr. Trump declared that he was now immune to the disease caused by the coronavirus and was said to have talked about wearing a superhero shirt under his dress shirt.

But if Mr. Trump is in fact now immune to the virus, he may not remain so, scientists warn. While reinfection is generally rare, the treatment Mr. Trump received may have prevented his body from making the antibodies necessary for long-term protection. The experimental monoclonal antibodies from the biotech firm Regeneron that Mr. Trump was given are synthetic, and they will most likely wane in a matter of weeks. Unless they are replenished, Mr. Trump may be left more susceptible to the virus than most patients who had Covid-19 and recovered, several experts warned.

There is another wrinkle for the president.

In addition to the monoclonal antibodies he was given, Mr. Trump also received the steroid dexamethasone. That suppresses the body’s natural immune response — including the production of antibodies of its own. (He was also given the antiviral remdesivir.)

“He may be not protected the second time around, especially because he didn’t develop his own antibodies,” said Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist at Yale University.

During an appearance on Fox Business on Thursday morning, Mr. Trump sounded hoarse and could be heard drinking a beverage between questions.

Asked if he was tested every day, he replied, “I’m not tested, not every day, but I’m tested a lot,” he said.

Given the results of the tests the White House has made available, Mr. Trump, who is appearing — probably maskless — at a town-hall-style event Thursday night, is not likely to transmit the virus to others, experts have said.

Mr. Trump praised the antibody therapy he received, falsely, as being “a cure” — then mused that maybe he would have been better “without taking anything.”

It is impossible to know whether the antibody cocktail or another treatment improved his condition. Although trials for Regeneron’s cocktail are still underway, its early data suggest the treatment can lower hospitalization rates in people who are in the early stages of the disease.

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Nobody is perfect. The various other point to look out for is a business with an ideal rating. I know business that pay customers to compose reviews for them, so obviously, they're mosting likely to be 100% ideal. Regardless, a good general rule is to avoid a firm with all perfect scores, stay clear of the company with all horrible scores, and also find the ones with really constant high scores.

A firm needs to agree to tell you if they have this coverage and offer copies of their policies at your request. Currently, understand that this contributes to the cost of operating a service company, which is why the rates are higher per hour or per work. Nevertheless, this degree of assurance is beneficial, especially when you're allowing a person right into your residence, and also could eventually be on the hook for something that goes incorrect bear in mind, we stay in a litigious globe! For how long have they been in organisation for? Does the firm have any kind of honors, accreditations, or associations with specialist companies? I like to look out for this since it makes me really feel comforted that a company is credible and concerned with their reputation.

These are points we have actually functioned tough to acquire as well as promote happily as a company. It shows our personnel, clients, and also possible customers, that we have done every little thing we can to provide exceptional solution. To give this a bit extra context, there are a couple of business right here in Toronto that have a poor reputation and merely shut down as well as re-open under an additional name.

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Does the firm take requests or supply a set solution? Exactly how detailed will they get? Depending upon what you intend to be done, inquire regarding what level of service is provided. If you can personalize it and also hire somebody ahead as well as tick a bunch of points off your to-do list, or if you just obtain ניקיון דירות the very same solution each browse through irrespective of what you want to be done, or, if you can do a combination.

Make certain to ask about breakage, damages, and complete satisfaction assures a firm needs to back up its work and its workers. If you're not pleased as a customer, what are they prepared to do for you, exactly how will they make it right? It's just a truth of life things will damage.

This appears crazy, and also I recognize numerous business do not do this. They tell the customer to claim it under their very own home owner's insurance coverage, or chalk it up to an inescapable error. If you're not happy with the cleansing, what will the firm provide you? A touch-up? A complimentary cleansing? Nothing? Companies have different plans concerning this so learn what recourse you have if you're not happy with the degree of service you've gotten.

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Normally, contract employees don't delight in the exact same advantages as staff members do, nor do they have the same kind of oversight. While they're normally less expensive to work with, they are commonly times inconsistently educated and are not as trustworthy because the truth is they're "replaceable" to a huge level by that I mean that there is little to no financial investment in their actual job item by the firm contracting out the work, so they can promptly move on to another professional while having lost little to no investment (training, taxes, advantages, etc.).

Workers also pay taxes and have actually tax obligations paid on their behalf by the employer, which sustains the district or state and country you stay in. These two classifications and the regulations surrounding them will certainly vary from country to nation. In Canada, I know the regulations throughout, as well as our team are staff members due to the fact that it is better for them (sadly, more pricey and less profitable for us!), as well as far better for the country.

Do they utilize their very own cleaning supplies and also tools, or do you have to provide your very own? We need our clients to supply their own and, naturally, help them determine exactly what they need. We sell sets or offer them with a buying checklist based on their specific needs.

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Better, each home has various needs; pets, individuals, coatings, and also whatnot. I'm a huge proponent of making use of the appropriate items and also tools on each surface, and I think it is better to give your own to decrease as well as reduce cross-contamination as well as prospective injury to surfaces. Figure out what the plan for terminating or altering your service is.

Many firms charge a termination fee because it can be hard to reschedule cleansers in the nick of time, and also the business has to cover off their lost wages. So, if you know this info, you can better prepare and plan for any scheduling problems.

The 6-Minute Rule for Move Out Cleaning

Keeping a house tidy can be a never-ending job that consumes much of our downtime. If life seems to revolve around wiping, vacuuming, cleaning and also altering bed linens, working with an expert housekeeping solution in your location may be the solution. This overview covers every little thing to anticipate from a housekeeping or house maid solution consisting of package options, what concerns to ask as well as what they charge.

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Depending upon your place or the business you use, these solutions are referred to by numerous names: caretaker, cleaning service or house maid. "House cleaning" historically referred to a salaried, live-in worker of rich homes that ran the family a lot like a butler. Today, it's simply one more name for a maid. Selecting the ideal solution is a simple process of research study and asking the ideal concerns.

Learn what solutions cover. Establish your budget as well as what you really require done. Meeting solutions as well as ask the ideal inquiries. Recognize what to expect when the solution starts. Before you choose a housekeeper, ask yourself if you really require it. If what you're trying to stay clear of is a messy mess, you may wish to go with a pda.

House maid solution are different as well as specialized. Many service companies begin with a base bundle after that move right into specialized recurring or single services for your details demands. Special residence cleaning company are commonly readily available for larger tasks such as garages, post-moving or post-construction. Maid services, staffed by trained specialist house cleaners, are available in a variety of alternatives including: On a regular basis set up regular check outs.

Cleaning Services Near Me Things To Know Before You Buy

Single help on unique celebrations. Requiring tasks such as garage or cellar cleansing. Events prior to as well as after. Some companies likewise offer present certifications. Residence cleansing needs differ considerably based on your residence size, location and what you actually want and also need. With the majority of large companies, you can expect a basic plan with optional solutions.

One-time brows through have a tendency to set you back twice as much as a frequently set up persisting browse through. However exactly how much is your totally free time worth to you? The average American invests about doing duties. House cleaning solutions expense approximately. For independent maids, anticipate to invest in between since they bill between.

You may be priced estimate extra per hour for a specialist firm, but they generally function in teams to obtain the task done quickly. Weekly, Bi-Weekly or Month-to-month. Full Cooking Area Cleansing Full Bathroom Servicing Vacuuming Dusting Transforming Linens Dishes Addons to the conventional package if you require something specific. Washing Relocating furnishings Sprucing up woodwork Ceilings & lights Window Drapery Upholstery Flooring waxing Carpet cleansing Includes anything from standard and also optional solutions in seldom used areas or prior to special events.

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You can additionally employ a local housemaid recommendation network for a mix of both. Independent cleaner service recommendations and referrals giving a trustworthy solution on a budget. You should still have these specialists complete a background check prior to working with. Bigger companies screen their employees in advance. Very same person every time Customized service Expenses less without overhanging Consistency gradually Insured as well as bound History checks finished No work paperwork or taxes Dependable Not generally insured Employment forms to file No background check Expensive Large teams several employees in your house per hour for a single person per hr normally for a team of two Much like any solution that will enter your house, you'll intend to comply with a couple of standards.

Prior to working with a solution, meeting companies or people. Examine out the questions listed below that you can ask in the interview Make certain to collect referrals as well as call them. After all, they will certainly have a whole lot of accessibility to your residence, and you should be comfortable with them. If they supply previous customer get in touch with details, ask those references how satisfied they were with the solution professional's: Preparation or schedule accessibility, Cleaning up abilities as well as equipment, Perspective or work values, as well as Professionalism and reliability or trustworthiness.

In some instances, a solution will request to utilize the property owner's products. If somebody in your house has allergies, consult your cleansing service to talk about particular items that might be beneficial. Before any kind of job begins, figure out the exact scope of the solutions you need. You may also intend to bargain extra jobs above a normal cleansing regimen, like washing.

The Definitive Guide to Home Cleaning Services Near Me

Think about co-creating a list of expectations and also responsibilities of the service. Be really specific and also don't anticipate the expert to understand precisely just how you desire something done. Spend a couple of mins going over locations you desire cleaned routinely. If it is essential that specific locations get unique attention each visit, aim them out.

Make certain you find a service that is open to personalized requests. Prior to each see, make certain to leave a list of problem areas. The kind of house you own might affect solution check outs. Accessible vehicle parking areas and also coded gates might create access obstacles that increase travel time and also therefore costs.

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financialconsultantjhau514-blog · 5 years

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Fascination About business Management Consultant

Overlook all of this, as well as your Share Point will rapidly turn right into a dumpster like your existing Drop Box or submit shares. It is constantly far better as well as a lot more comfortable to start things on the appropriate foot from the ground up than repair a currently existing mess. For an example of points that can misunderstand with Share Factor, referral one of my previous blog posts on " 12 reasons folders in Share Factor are a poor concept." Share Point as a tool/technology does not rest still.

In the past, every brand-new modification (i.e., Share Factor 2007, 2010, 2013) had its spins, interface modifications as well as new methods to do things. With the Share Point 2013 Online/Office 365 package, its pace of modifications has actually been sped up as Microsoft is taking on Google Apps as well as various other services.

No single person can be a professional in Share Point-- it is such a difficult innovation that there are numerous Linked In groups, seminars, as well as meetups devoted to it. So unless you spend substantial time in addition to your day work, you truly will not have time to discover it.

See This Report on consulting Companies

At the end of the day, whether you decide to work with an outdoors consultant or develop interior know-how and also do it on your own-- is your company decision. Successful Share Factor implementation relies on a range of factors, and this blog post only dealt with one little facet of it.

youtube

Post Is now the moment to establish a medical care REIT? The development of expert REITs focused on details possession courses is excellent information for both financiers and operators.

The Organization of Accredited Small Company Consultants ®( AASBC ®) is the world's leading academic and training qualification program for little business and also SME experts. Our exclusive training approach compresses a thorough step-by-step created as well as video clip educational program into a short-term training program. Hundreds of consultants, supervisors, local business owner, and also little business-related consultants worldwide have actually achieved the AASBC certification while preserving hectic professional timetables.

How firmsconsulting can Save You Time, Stress, and Money.

Dr. Weinberger, I just recently completed the ASBC certification (ASMEC given that I'm in Canada) and wished to let you know just how valuable I have found the program to be. My own individual path to consulting may be a little various than the majority of participants. After having worked in advanced for 20+ years, the dot.com bust annihilated the sector, and also I came under consulting due to the fact that no tasks were available.

Nonetheless, I soon discovered that being a consultant as well as being a worker are 2 really various things. The "SEMP Strategy" supplies a good introduction of small company challenges, diagnostic tools, and prospective remedies, however much more essential is your suggestions concerning how to efficiently advertise and run a consulting service.

It was informing to discover that a number of the problems I have encountered in the real life are usual to the consulting industry-- things such as the requirement for developments, rigorous confidentiality, and effective long-lasting customer connections. I would certainly advise the ASBC program to anybody thinking about becoming a specialist, joining the job economic situation, or perhaps simply beginning their occupation and also desiring to get a strong understanding of local business methods.

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Michael Davis knew it was time for a modification. Although he had actually worked with two salesmen, dealing with sales was still occupying a lot of his workday. That left valuable little time for Davis to concentrate on other aspects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/?search=business consultant of running his service, Savid Technologies, an IT protection working as a consultant in Chicago. "I understood I might shut offers," states Davis.

The topic of sales experts obtains combined responses from business owners. Some CEOs speak highly of them, while others reject them as serpent oil peddlers. Definitely, if you kind the term sales consultant right into Google, you will discover countless males and also females who claim to be specialists on the art of selling.

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Davis talked to four consulting firms before discovering one he suched as, Liability Allies in Aurora, Illinois. The finishing touch: The Chief Executive Officer and lead expert of Liability Partners, J.R. Samples, used to be the head of sales at one of Savid Technologies's competitors. "I knew he understood our organisation," states Davis, who consented to pay Responsibility Partners a hourly cost and an upfront retainer of $5,000.

The file likewise outlines a range of consumer circumstances and recommends means to come close to a sale. "That file became our training device," claims Davis, who, with the aid of his expert, worked with 3 brand-new salesmen. Davis wound up paying concerning $80,000 levyfinance.co.il/ליווי-עסקי/ for a year's well worth of speaking with solutions-- money he claims was well spent.

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bastardnev · 7 years

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Steal Your Heart Ch. 1

so for whatever reason when i shared the first chapter it didn’t show up in nev’s tag, so im gonna repost it because i can (i’ll be putting chapter two in another post bc if i put them together then this post would be Too Long)

also i am SO sorry to anyone on mobile lmao

Chapters: 1/? Fandom: World Wrestling Entertainment, Professional Wrestling Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Wade Barrett/Pac | Adrian Neville, Other Relationship Tags to Be Added Characters: Wade Barrett, Pac | Adrian Neville, Other Character Tags to Be Added Additional Tags: Alternate Universe - Detectives, Alternate Universe - Thieves Summary: Random happenings in the lives of Wade, a detective, and Neville, a thief who took a liking to him and decided to tag along with him during his investigations.

Ch. 1: Buddies

Why could Wade never be assigned to a simple case?

Even though he had been busting his ass for years, Wade's rank as a detective was still fairly low. Maneuvering has way through Manhattan to get to the office was no easy feat due to the traffic and groups of pedestrians everywhere he turned, and it was a miracle that he even showed up on time some days. His efforts were constantly being overlooked by his boss, however, who was far too preoccupied with the higher ranked sleuths to pay attention to him. Wade was forced to watch his superiors be assigned the easier cases, the boss claiming that they'd been working 'far too hard' lately and 'deserved' something less complicated. The cases that they should have been given were handed over to Wade and everyone else who wasn't 'deserving' of a break, lack of qualifications be damned.

This time, a man had been murdered in his room at a fairly prestigious hotel in Miami. At first glance, it looked like the suspect was easy to pinpoint -- an ex-business partner was apparently staying in a room on the same floor. There were rumors that he had been jealous of the victim's success, going on record saying that he felt like he should have gotten that big promotion, but no one ever thought he would resort to murder. He was 'too nice of a guy' for something like that. Wade, however, wasn't buying such a cheap and overused excuse, and he was ready to bring the suspect into custody and call it a day.

There was more to this case, though, as Wade soon learned once he further looked over the file. Everything was far more complicated than it really needed to be. In addition to the rumors of the suspect's jealousy, there was also some speculation that a few members of the hotel staff were in on the killing. The victim had died due to poison, and it appeared likely that one of the workers had slipped something into his food once he ordered room service. Despite all of that, there was still no concrete evidence, and Wade was required to find irrefutable proof that they were involved.

To do so, he needed to go undercover, which he hadn't had to do in quite some time. Wade reserved a room on the floor directly below where the murder had taken place, pretending to be a delivery person who was staying in town for the next few days. It wasn't the best occupation that he could have chosen, but it was better than nothing. Better than being a murderer, that's for damn sure. Wade thought to himself.

The first day on the job was relatively uneventful. Wade's flight had been delayed due to poor weather conditions and he didn't arrive to the hotel until late in the day. All that he had been able to do was scribble down a few points in his notebook, outlining what he would do on the second day of the investigation. As of that moment, Wade was planning on keeping an eye on anyone involved in delivering room service. If he chose to believe the rumors that a staff member was involved in the poisoning, then the most appropriate choice of action would be to order food and learn just who he was possibly up against.

It was while he was plotting that Wade remembered that he hadn't eaten anything since he had gotten off the plane. It was too late at night for him to be getting room service, so he settled on a snack from a vending machine down the hall. He kept telling himself that he needed to start packing extra, more healthier snacks in his suitcase so that he wouldn't have to rely on junk food all the time, but in the end he couldn't be bothered. Besides, he loved Doritos too much to give them up.

The vending machine was in a small room that served as a sitting area of sorts. Wade remembered passing by it on his way to his room and spotting a few couches around a coffee table. He had made a note to himself to spend some time there once his work the next day was done, compiling whatever new information he had gathered. Hopefully no one would be there and he would be able to work without fear of getting caught.

When he arrived at the machine, Wade inserted the money and punched in the number for his chips, crossing his arms as he waited for it to fall down. Once it did, he crouched to get it, pausing when he saw the slot. How the hell was he supposed to get it open? He couldn’t push it in like he usually could.

“Who the hell designed this?” He wondered aloud, sighing frustratedly. The genius who built this damn thing should be fired. He was going to find away to get this bag even if it killed him. Trying a few more times to push the slot in, he gave it a light smack. “Fuck you.”

And someone laughed.

Wade jumped, hitting his head against the machine in a somewhat embarrassing fashion. This just caused the person to laugh again. Once he had composed himself, Wade stood up, turning to face whoever had been watching him. He found a man not too much younger than him sitting on one of the couches, covering his grin with his hand. Wade could see that there was a DS sitting in his lap.

“I’m sorry, I don’t mean to laugh, but that was really funny,” the man said, giggling. “The machine tricked me up when I first got here, too.”

All Wade could do was stare at him for a moment. Aside from being embarrassed as hell at the fact that someone had witnessed the whole scene, he was also confused. How had he not noticed that someone was sitting there watching the whole time? “Yeah, it’s… it’s a pain,” he responded, averting his gaze and looking back towards the machine. “Stupid.”

“Here.” The man put the DS down on the couch and stood up. “I’ll get it for you. Watch and learn.” Wade watched as he crouched in front of the slot and pushed it down from the top, pulling out the chips and handing them over with a smile. “See? Easy!”

“You had to pull it down?” Wade’s eyes narrowed.

“Yeah! A bunch of machines are like that nowadays.”

“Who decided that?”

“Someone who’s clearly lost in life.” The man made his way back over to the couch, plopping down and putting his feet up on the coffee table. He crossed his arms behind his head and asked, "So, what's your name? I'm Neville."

"Neville?" Wade repeated. If he was being honest, it was a bit of a dorky name, but Wade kept that thought to himself. Now wasn't the time to be rude. "I'm Wade."

"What brings someone like you 'round these parts, Wade? You on vacation or something?"

"Uh, not exactly," Wade replied. Whatever he did, he absolutely could not give Neville any hints about his real profession. "I'm a delivery person."

"You're a delivery person? Seriously?" Neville looked confused. He appeared to eye Wade up for a moment, his eyebrows quirking up briefly. "That's... interesting."

"Yep. I've got some, uh, packages and things to deliver in this area. I'll be staying here for a little while."

"How much do you have to do if you gotta stay in a hotel for a few days? Seems like a lot."

"Yeah, well... It's part of the job. I don't get a say in it." Wade shrugged. Now that he'd said it out loud, the whole 'delivery person' thing was the worst lie he’d ever come up with, and that was saying something since Wade had had his fair share of bad lies in the past. Neville didn’t even look like he bought it. His eyes were slits and he was pouting, deep in thought. Wade could almost see the gears turning in his head.

Then Neville snorted, a smile returning to his face. "Sounds wild. I'm a professional thief."

"Oh, that's nice--" Wade stopped mid-sentence, his eyes widening. "Hold on, you're a what?"

Neville shrugged as if it weren’t a big deal. “I’m a thief. I steal shit. Oh, son of a…” He was looking down at the red light on his DS. He switched the system off. “I need to charge this damn thing.”

Neville had already moved on to the next subject, but Wade still couldn’t believe what he had just been told. This man who he’d met only a few minutes ago just admitted to being a thief as if it were nothing, like it was a regular 9 to 5 job. How was Wade supposed to react to that? Seeing as he technically worked with the police, should he bring this guy in? Or should he let him go? Neville might not even be worth the force’s time.

“What’s with the look?” Neville asked when Wade hadn’t said anything for a little while. “You’re making a weird face at me.”

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it,” Wade assured. “You… are a very interesting person, you know that?”

"I do know that, actually." Neville grinned cheekily. "And I'm also a pretty honest person. I don't feel the need to lie about my profession like you do."

Wade froze up, and he swallowed. How did Neville know that he'd been lying?! He knew that his excuse was lacking, but he didn't expect to actually be called out on it. "W-What makes you say that I'm lying, huh?"

"Because you are." Neville had begun to fiddle with the DS stylus, casually slipping it in and out of its slot. "I can tell."

"How?"

"Your badge is sticking out of your pocket. It has been the whole time."

"Are you serious?" Wade looked down. Sure enough, Neville was telling the truth -- his badge had been on display the entire time they were talking. Wade stuffed it back in, nervously shoving his hands in his pockets. "I, uh... Listen, you didn't see that."

"But I did!" Neville looked a little cocky.

"Neville, I'm being serious. You cannot tell anyone about who I really am, do you understand me?"

"Wade, don't worry. If there's anything that I'm good at, it's keeping things secret," he said. "How the hell do you think I've been living here for as long as I have?"

"Wait, you live here?" Wade cocked his head to the side. "How long have you been here?"

Neville thought his answer over, looking up towards the ceiling before looking back to Wade and saying, "About a month or so."

"How have you gone this long without being noticed? Does the staff really pay that little attention?"

"You would not believe the amount of unfilled rooms in this place. I just hole up in them and come out at night when no one's around. The patrons all think that I'm a really accomplished businessman since I always tell them that I'm here for a conference. They buy it every time."

"What about when someone reserves a room? What do you do then?"

"Then I move on to the next one. It's not that complicated." Neville stood up. "So, now that I've told you all about what I do, do you think you can fill me in about what your job really is? Pleeease?" He clasped his hands together, wearing puppy dog eyes. "If you have a badge, then it must be super interesting!"

"I really shouldn't..." Wade sighed, tapping his foot. Telling Neville the truth would defeat the whole purpose of going undercover. It was true that Neville had told him some pretty incriminating things about himself -- he admitted to a detective that he was a thief! Someone who was that brutally honest couldn't possibly have any malicious intent, could he? Besides, those eyes... Wade was weak for that sort of thing.

"Come on! At least tell me a little bit?"

"Well, if it's only a little..." Wade took a deep breath. "Okay, so you know that murder that took place here not too long ago? The one on the floor above us?"

"I know of it, yes. People were freaking out about it."

"I was sent here to investigate it, but I had to go undercover. The suspect is still staying here, and I need to gather information on him and a few other people who might be involved. There, are you happy now? I told you everything you need to know."

Neville pursed his lips, closing his eyes and crossing his arms as he processed what he'd just been told. "So you need to get some dirt on people, huh? Who else besides the suspect?"

"Some hotel staff members."

"Ooh, scandalous!" Neville rubbed his hands together, suddenly looking excited. "Lemme see the case file! I wanna know some names."

"I can't show you that," Wade said firmly. "That's confidential information."

"How do you expect me to help you if you won't even let me see the file?"

"You-- When did I say I wanted your help?" Wade's mouth fell open. "I never said anything like that!"

"Wade, I'm serious about helping you. This is a pretty big case. I've been staying here for awhile now and know the schedules of pretty much all the employees. If you need a second set of eyes to keep an eye on a suspicious staff member, then I'm your guy. So, what do you say? Are we buddies?"

"I'm not sure if 'buddies' is the right word to describe it..." Wade had to admit that Neville was onto something. There was no way that he would be able to keep an eye on so many people on his own. Even having just on extra person to help him would make things easier. Then again, could he really trust a thief? This definitely wouldn't look very good...

...Then again, his boss never gave a shit about anything that he did, so what would it matter?

"Fine..." Wade finally gave in, gesturing for Neville to follow him out into the hall. "Come to my room. You can read the file in there."

"Yes!" Neville pumped his fist into the air, hurrying after Wade. "Believe me, you won't regret this!"

"I'm sure I won't." Wade knew he would.

A day had passed since Wade and Neville were first introduced. Wade was seated at the writing desk in his room, his prior plans to work in the seating area thwarted by a family of five who insisted on hanging out there at that ungodly hour. It's too damn late for these little kids to be running around... Doesn't anyone have a bedtime anymore?

Wade tapped his pen against the page, propping his head up with his left hand. The second day of investigation bore a little more fruit than the first one, though Wade still didn't have any substantial leads to go on. After ordering room service for breakfast and dinner, all that he had learned was that the hotel had really good buffalo wings. Those things should be illegal... But I can't charge someone with murder for food.

He hadn't heard from Neville since last night. If he really only came out when it was dark, then that must mean that he spent the whole day lazing about in his room doing nothing. Why was Wade so worried about giving him the case info if he didn't seem to care too much...

Wade suddenly looked like he'd made a breakthrough, and he hurriedly wrote something down, smiling. He then crossed it out a few seconds later, frustratedly tossing down his pen. Those little kids aren't undercover spies, Wade. Get over the seating room thing and focus.

A knock on the door snapped Wade out of his thought, and he slammed the notebook shut. It wouldn't look very good if a staff member showed up and saw him speculating about their involvement in a crime. Then again, what would any employee want with him this late at night? He didn't order anything.

Then Wade remembered that there was only one person who would want to speak with him at that time. This should be interesting.

Wade stood up from his chair and went to unbolt the door. Sure enough, Neville was waiting for him on the other side, leaning up against the door frame with one hand and the other one on his hip. "Howdy," Neville greeted him with a wink.

"Alright, kid, what'd you find?" Wade stepped out of the way and allowed him to enter, shutting and re-locking the door. "Assuming that you actually found something and aren't just here to screw with me."

"I found out some top secret info." Neville leaned in close to whisper in his ear. "You ready? I learned... that this hotel..."

"Yes?"

"...has really good quesadillas." Neville pulled away with a cheeky grin.

"Are you kidding me?" Wade rolled his eyes, bumping Neville with his shoulder as he walked back over to the desk and sat down. "You're not taking this seriously at all."

"Oh calm down, would you? It's only a little joke to lighten the mood."

"Look, if you don't have anything relevant to add, then please leave." Wade came across a little harsher than he intended to. Neville didn't really mean any harm... Still, this was important. Now wasn't the time to be screwing around.

Neville sighed, reaching into his back pocket and pulling out some printed documents. "Okaaay..." He said, sauntering to the desk and showing the papers to Wade. "If you don't want me here, then I guess I'll have to leave and bring these with me."

Wade read over the contents of the papers. They were a series of emails, each one of them containing instructions.

Instructions about the murder.

"Holy shit--" Wade reached for the papers, but Neville pulled them away.

"You don't seem to want me here, so I'll just be taking these with me. Haaah..." Neville let out a dramatic sigh and slowly walked towards the door. "Maybe I'll catch up with you later."

"Hold on, kid!" Wade stood up again, grabbing his shoulder. "Where did you find those?"

"A thief never reveals his secrets." Neville winked at him from over his shoulder, but the look on Wade's face forced him to continue. "I, um, snuck behind the front desk when no one was around and printed these out."

"It was... that easy?"

"Mmhmm! You need to stop overthinking things. Sometimes the solution is right in front of you! Just like how I am right now." Neville patted Wade's arm. "But, y'know, you don't seem to want me here so... I'll be taking this back to my room with me."

"Nev, please. Stick around. I need that info."

"'Nev'?" Neville repeated, a smirk spreading across his face. "Is that gonna be my new nickname?"

"I guess." Wade shrugged. He didn't even mean to call him that -- it just slipped out.

"So am I like your little sidekick now? Are we... buddies?"

Wade took in a deep breath. He didn't really have much of a say in the matter, did he? He slowly let the breath out through his nose before responding, "We're... buddies."

"Hell yeah!" Neville grinned broadly and plopped down on Wade's bed, lying on his stomach and saying, "I think this is the start of a beautiful relationship."

"It's certainly the start of something, alright..." How does Wade keep getting himself into these situations?

#neville #adrian neville #wade barrett #wwe fanfiction #jess.txt #barrett x neville

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wewithus · 8 years

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The Five Minutes for Freedom series is a collection of small, step-by-step walkthroughs designed to help you take concrete political action in support of the principles of We With Us. The articles in the series are designed to be read and their steps followed in order, as later posts frequently build on earlier ones. A chronological index of all posts in the series can be found here. While this information is targeted primarily at US readers, we welcome readers from all countries and encourage you to adapt these strategies as necessary for your jurisdiction.

5M4F 12: Update Your Rolodex (Round 2) and Protest by Phone (Round 3) [Trump, Carson, Puzder, Perry, and the abortion ban] Dependencies: 5M4F10.

Much like last week, most of your 5M4F tasks this week will be to script, and then make, calls to your representatives to ask them to rigorously vet and ultimately reject the confirmation of Trump’s most dangerous cabinet and White House appointments, to protest those appointments after the fact, and/or to object to top-level legislative priorities of the incoming administration. But first, add this line to the other contact information for your representatives in your 5M4F document:

Donald Trump is now your president. That means that he is now answerable to you. You can very quickly start making him answerable to you by signing this WeThePeople petition to divest of his business interests or put them in a blind trust; and this WeThePeople petition to release his tax returns and any other information necessary to confirm that he is not in violation of the emoluments of the Constitution.

Once that’s done...

All three of the appointments you’ll be protesting this week are cabinet appointments and require Senate approval: Ben Carson, Andy Puzder, and Rick Perry (nominated for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Secretary of Labor, and Secretary of Energy, respectively). Your voice is also urgently needed to halt the enactment of a draconian abortion ban that threatens the rights and lives of womb-possessing people throughout the country.

Like last week: write yourself a script that you can use to walk you through your calls to your representatives (there is an in-depth breakdown of this process in 5M4F5, which is also excerpted behind the cut), then give your local field offices a series of calls to protest these appointments. To be most effective, you want to only call your representatives about one issue at a time, so you will need to make multiple calls throughout the week to best keep your calls focused and to the point.

I also strongly urge you to share this information with your friends and family offline and encourage them to join you in making calls with you. Our goal should be to keep the phones ringing at every field office in the country, all week long, demanding that our elected representatives do their jobs, i.e., represent us.

If you want to do this all in one go: unfortunately, these can’t be completely finished all in one go, because of the issue of keeping individual calls focused on a single issue. But what you can do is script all your calls together (that you can do today, and it’s basically a copy-paste job, so it shouldn’t be too onerous), then make your three calls about Carson in one block on Monday, your three calls about Puzder in one block on Tuesday, et cetera.

If you want to do this five minutes at a time: easier! Your three scripts for a single appointee will probably only take you about five minutes to assemble, and one call will probably take about five minutes to make. You can sprinkle your scripting throughout the day today, and sprinkle your calls throughout your field offices’ business hours during the week; or script your calls about Carson today, then call about Carson and script for Puzder Tuesday; whatever.

There is some starter info on each of the four nominees/appointees/issues, with reasons to call about them, behind the cut; as well as a template for your scripts, and some info about what to do if you can’t make calls. Shortcut links:

Ben Carson.

Andy Puzder.

Rick Perry.

Abortion rights.

A note on how to protest amid breaking news.

How to write your scripts.

What to do if you can’t make calls.

Once you've made your calls, check in on this week's poll to let your fellow humans know you've got their backs!

Ben Carson (nominated for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development): The most fundamental reason to oppose Ben Carson as Secretary of HUD is that he opposes efforts to end housing segregation. Housing segregation remains rampant in the US in large part due to racist governmental actions that themselves have ended, but the lasting effects of formal governmental racism in the past today mean that people of color are more likely than whites to live in areas without easy access to fresh, healthy food, are often more vulnerable to housing market instability and were on the whole hit harder by the crash, are more likely than whites to be zoned into de facto (previously de jure) segregated and underperforming schools, are set up for more frequent and more-likely-to-be-violent encounters with the police, and are harmed and held back on countless more metrics:

"[On] every measure of well-being and opportunity, the foundation is where you live," Nikole Hannah-Jones, the ProPublica reporter on whose reporting much of the episode was based, told TAL's Nancy Updike. "Cancer rates, asthma rates, infant mortality, unemployment, education, access to fresh food, access to parks, whether or not the city repairs the roads in your neighborhood."

[source]

Housing discrimination and the end of urban segregation needs to be at the top of HUD’s priority list. Ben Carson thinks that’s a bad idea.

Andy Puzder (nominated for Secretary of Labor): Puzder is an anti-regulation fast food executive whose employees face wage theft and a bananas 2 in 3 rate of sexual harassment, if they’re women; who opposes the new overtime rule and thinks robust worker protections constitute a “nanny state.” He is, just in case you’re curious, anti-abortion and anti-bathroom protections for trans people, but he does find it in his heart to support scantily clad women sexily eating burgers on TV. He is being nominated to run the department in charge of penalizing companies for breaking minimum wage laws and defending worker rights and safety. He thinks all of that is a bad idea.

Rick Perry (nominated for Secretary of Energy): There’s a misconception out there that the Department of Energy is responsible for handling things like the power grid; for the most part, it isn’t (it does do some stuff related to the grid, including securing it against cyberattacks, but a lot of the power-related stuff falls under the purview of the Department of the Interior). However, the Department of Energy is responsible for managing the US’s nuclear weapons and the security thereof, which I, personally, think is pretty fucking important. Rick Perry doesn’t know what the Department of Energy is called, but he is on record pledging to abolish it.

Oops.

Abortion Rights: A bill has been introduced in the house to make abortion illegal as soon as a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can happen as early as 6 weeks, when many women do not yet know they are pregnant. I want to be really clear about this: what I am about to say here in this post is an argument for abortion rights that specifically approaches this issue from a human rights perspective; it’s very, very far from the only reason why abortion should remain legal. However, this is the reason why if you want to defend the rights of your fellow humans, you must protest anti-choice legislation, no matter how you feel about abortion on a personal level: if abortion is made illegal, rich people facing an unwanted pregnancy will go to Canada or the UK or Japan or any other country where they can still get safe, legal abortions, and they will live. Poor people facing an unwanted pregnancy will have dangerous, illegal, unsupervised abortions, and they will die. Want proof? OKAY:

In 1930, abortion was listed as the official cause of death for almost 2,700 women—nearly one-fifth (18%) of maternal deaths recorded in that year . . . . By 1965, the number of deaths due to illegal abortion had fallen to just under 200, but illegal abortion still accounted for 17% of all deaths attributed to pregnancy and childbirth that year. And these are just the number that were officially reported; the actual number was likely much higher . . . . Poor women and their families were disproportionately impacted . . . . Of the low-income women in that study who said they had had an abortion, eight in 10 (77%) said that they had attempted a self-induced procedure, with only 2% saying that a physician had been involved in any way . . . . A clear racial disparity is evident in the data of mortality because of illegal abortion: In New York City in the early 1960s, one in four childbirth-related deaths among white women was due to abortion; in comparison, abortion accounted for one in two childbirth-related deaths among nonwhite and Puerto Rican women . . . . In the late 1960s, an alternative to obtaining committee approval emerged for women seeking a legal abortion, but once again, only for those with considerable financial resources. In 1967, England liberalized its abortion law to permit any woman to have an abortion with the written consent of two physicians. More than 600 American women made the trip to the United Kingdom during the last three months of 1969 alone; by 1970, package deals (including round-trip airfare, passports, vaccination, transportation to and from the airport and lodging and meals for four days, in addition to the procedure itself) were advertised in the popular media.

[source]

You cannot force someone to carry a fetus to term inside their bodies. I’m not saying you shouldn’t; I’m saying you can’t:

Estimates of the number of illegal abortions in the 1950s and 1960s ranged from 200,000 to 1.2 million per year. One analysis, extrapolating from data from North Carolina, concluded that an estimated 829,000 illegal or self-induced abortions occurred in 1967.

[source, same as above]

I’m telling you, it was really an awful situation. It touched me because I’d see young, [otherwise] healthy women in their 20s die from the consequences of an infected nonsterile abortion. Women would do anything to get rid of unwanted pregnancies. They’d risk their lives. It was a different world, I’ll tell you.

[source]

Women came to me mostly from Texas, Louisiana, Arkansas, and Oklahoma, but also from all parts of the country. It very quickly became apparent that there were too many women — I could not possibly see all of them. My primary care practice disappeared, and I ended up providing abortions full-time. And there was no way there were enough hours in the day.

[source]

The decades before Roe v. Wade were the bad ol’ days. It was horrible carnage — and every one of those deaths was preventable. These women weren’t dying of exotic diseases. They were dying of simple things like hemorrhage and infection, and any third-year medical student with adequate equipment could’ve easily handled it. But the reason those women were dying is because the country had not yet made the decision that these women’s lives are worth saving.

[source, same as above]

Abortion access is a human rights issue. Make sure your legislators know that.

A note on protesting amid breaking news: Because I’m drafting most of this several days before it’ll go live, and because I can’t know when, precisely, you’ll actually make your individual calls, the exact nature of how you protest these appointments and laws may need to change a little bit based on how far the confirmation/legislative process has got by the time you’re calling.

So. If the nominee you’re calling about is still undergoing confirmation hearings, then encourage your senators to rigorously question the nominee on issues critical to protecting the rights of your fellow humans. If the confirmation hearings for that nominee are finished, focus instead on encouraging your senators to vote against the nominee’s confirmation. If the confirmation has already gone through, either thank or criticize your senator’s vote, depending on which way they voted; and in any case make it clear to them that you continue to watch their voting behavior to see whether or not they will have your vote in 2018 (or 2020, or 2022--again, it’s worth also taking a second to check when your particular senators will next come up for re-election. Senators up for re-election in 2018 are listed here. Senators up for re-election in 2020 are listed here. Senators up for re-election in 2022 are listed here.).

Similarly, when you’re calling about legislative priorities, depending on what has happened around that legislative issue since this post went live, you will either be urging your representatives to vote a particular way; or be thanking or criticizing their vote, depending on which way they voted, and making it clear to them that you continue to watch their voting behavior to see whether or not they will have your vote in 2018 (or 2020, or 2022).

Also, when you call your congressperson in the House about Cabinet appointments, since the House doesn’t vote on Cabinet appointments, just encourage your House representative to go on-record as opposing the nomination. The goal here is to make a lot of noise, and also to try and muster the political left to come together and resist the incoming administration with full-throated determination and conviction.

Anyway, to handle how fast this is moving, I recommend that you plan on searching a reputable news source, like The Guardian, shortly before you make your calls, for any breaking-news updates on the confirmation process that may require you to tweak your scripts.

How to Write Your Scripts (excerpted from 5M4F-5):

The basic phone script for calling your representatives goes something like so:

Hi, {can I ask who I’m speaking to? <, if they don’t say when they pick up>} [Jot their name down.] Hi, <their name>. My name is <your name> and I’m one of <your representative’s name>’s constituents in <where you live>. I wanted to let <your representative’s name> know that I strongly <support | oppose> <the thing you’re calling about>, because <succinct explanation of reason why you’re calling>. Is <your representative’s name> planning to <do the thing you want>?

Then you have to plan for a few different responses:

They’re with you: Thank you. Could you please let <appropriate pronoun> know that <expression of gratitude> and <indication that you will continue to watch your representative’s behavior and hold them accountable>?

They’re neutral: This subject is very important to me because <longer, more in-depth and emotive reason why you’re calling>. I would very much appreciate it if you could let <your representative’s name> know that I feel very strongly about this and would really encourage <appropriate pronoun> to <do the thing you want>. Is there any way I could follow up with you or <appropriate pronoun> later?

They oppose you: This subject is very important to me because <longer, more in-depth and emotive reason why you’re calling>. Can I ask why <your representative’s name> is <not doing the thing you want>? [Let them give you a reason, and write it down.] Okay, thank you. I understand <appropriate pronoun> concerns, but as one of <your representative’s name>’s voting constituents, I would really appreciate it if <appropriate pronoun> revisited <appropriate pronoun> decision because <alternate succinct explanation of reason why you’re calling>. Is there any way I could follow up with you or <appropriate pronoun> later?

<expression of gratitude>! <polite send-off>!

I want to point out that you probably don’t actually really need to plan for all of these responses. You can probably make a pretty good guess where your representative stands based on their party affiliation. However, especially if your representatives are moderates and often vote across the aisle, it’s not a bad idea to spend a little time planning for all three cases, because then your behind is covered, and you can recycle this language over and over on later calls, to different representatives. And yes: we will be calling other representatives.

This is the sample script that I wrote back in November, on a different issue and to Barbara Boxer, who has been replaced by Kamala Harris, but it gives you an idea how the Mad-Libs-filling process works:

Hi, {can I ask who I’m speaking to? <, if they don’t say when they pick up>} [Jot their name down.] Hi, <their name>. My name is <Ginny Washington>, and I’m one of <Senator Boxer>’s constituents in <West Hollywood>. I wanted to let <Senator Boxer> know that I strongly <support> <her resolution to amend the Constitution to eliminate the Electoral College>, because <I think every American’s vote should count equally>. {I just wanted to thank her for all her hard work on behalf of the principles of equal representation and equal protection under the law.}

<Thank you so much for your time>! <Have a nice day>!

If you can’t make calls: I recommended before that if you can’t make calls, you copy down snail mail addresses so you can send snail mail letters, and that you grab an email address or online contact link no matter what. Calls are the most effective, if you can make them, but please, do send snail mail letters if you can’t, or an email if you also can’t swing a stamp or get to a post office. You can use the script above as a template for your letter, but you’re probably going to want to default to assuming that your representative opposes you, and you’ll have to of course make it sound like a letter and not a phone convo.

If you care about correct forms of address: weirdly, because these things are super arcane, technically the correct way to address your senator or representative is still “The Honorable <whoever>”, as in, “The Honorable Barbara Boxer.” That goes on the envelope. You can then write “Dear Mr./Mrs./Ms. <whoever>” as your salutation.

#we with us #5m4f #five minutes for freedom #oppose ben carson #oppose andy puzder #oppose rick perry #save abortion rights

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patriotsnet · 3 years

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Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/why-do-republicans-want-lower-taxes/

Why Do Republicans Want Lower Taxes

Democrats Vs Republicans On Taxes

Why Do People Think Lower Taxes Help the Economy?

What Do Republicans Believe In

So what do Republicans believe? Here are their basic tenets:

Conservatives Dont Hate Socialism They Hate Equality

Read Also: How Many Democrats And Republicans Are In The House

To Fund The $35 Trillion Budget Plan Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

To Fund The $3.5 Trillion Budget Plan, Democrats Aim To Undo Trump Tax Cuts

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But Reagan’s tax cuts in 1981 constituted the strongest move away from progressivity in the income tax since the tax was initiated in the Civil War.

Reagan Pared Back Progressivity

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Gop Real Estate Owners Make Out Big

If you are a real estate developer, you never pay tax, said Ed Kleinbard, a former head of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation.;

Who We Are

The Center for Public Integrity is an independent, investigative newsroom that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests.

Its Not Easy Being Green

Recommended Reading: How Many States Are Controlled By Republicans

Most Welfare Recipients Are Makers Not Takers

The first myth, that people who receive public benefits are takers rather than makers, is flatly untrue for the vast majority of working-age recipients.

As for Medicaid, nearly 80 percent of adults receiving Medicaid live in families where someone works, and more than half are working themselves.

In early December, House Speaker Paul Ryan said, We have a welfare system thats trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work.

Religion And The Belief In God Is Vital To A Strong Nation

Lower Taxes, Higher Revenue

Those are the four basic Republican tenets: small government, local control, the power of free markets, and Christian authority. Below are other things they believe that derive from those four ideas.

Read Also: When Did Democrats And Republicans Switch Platforms

Orrin Hatch Tom Coburn And Richard Burr On Health Care

What The Needy Deserve

The second myth is that low-income Americans do not deserve a helping hand.

This idea derives from our belief that the U.S. is a meritocracy where the most deserving rise to the top. Yet where a person ends up on the income ladder is tied to where they started out.

As for people born into the middle class, only 20 percent will ascend to the top quintile in their lifetimes.

The third myth is that government assistance is a waste of money and doesnt accomplish its goals.

In fact, poverty rates would double without the safety net, to say nothing of human suffering. Last year, the safety net lifted 38 million people, including 8 million children, out of poverty.

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An Exhaustive Lobbying Campaign

Almost immediately after Mr. Trump signed the bill, companies and their lobbyists including G.E.s Mr. Brown began a full-court pressure campaign to try to shield themselves from the BEAT and GILTI.

The Treasury Department had to figure out how to carry out the hastily written law, which lacked crucial details.

Starting in January 2018, he and his colleagues found themselves in nonstop meetings roughly 10 a week at times with lobbyists for companies and industry groups.

This month, the Treasury issued the final version of some of the BEAT regulations. The Organization for International Investment got what it wanted.

Recommended Reading: Snopes Trump Republican Dumb

How Democrats And Republicans Differ On Matters Of Wealth And Equality

A protester wears a T-shirt in support of Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont who is part of … a group of Democrats looking to beat Trump in 2020. Photographer: John Taggart/Bloomberg

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Us House Democrats Seek To Roll Back Trump Tax Cuts For Wealthy Corporations

Democrats on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee said they will debate legislation this week that would achieve the changes as part of their broader, $3.5 trillion domestic investment plan.

Besides increasing corporate taxes, wealthy individuals would see a jump in their income taxes as well as higher capital gains and estate taxes.

REPUBLICANS OPPOSED

Republican Senators Push Social Security Medicare And Medicaid Cuts After Supporting Ineffective Tax Cuts

Republicans Target Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid

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popolitiko · 4 years

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What’s wrong with the mail

As November nears, the Postal Service is facing a crisis that could interfere with the election.

By Adam Clark - Aug 14, 2020

The United States Postal Service is dealing with crippling backlogs of letters and packages. A postmaster in upstate New York recently told their union that the regular mail was two days behind and, for the first time in their career, Express Priority Mail was not going out on time. Despite a surge in package delivery during the pandemic, postal workers are no longer able to work overtime, and fewer mail trucks are on the road. If your own mail seems delayed or unpredictable, it’s not a one-off problem.

Mail service has been disrupted nationwide in recent weeks due to a series of factors. While the USPS has been suffering financially for years, the coronavirus pandemic has delivered an existential threat to the agency. The self-funded Postal Service has been seeking billions in aid from Congress — an effort that’s been stymied by President Trump, who has long had a contentious relationship with the USPS and has pushed to privatize it. And now, the USPS is adjusting to cost-cutting policies put in place by its new postmaster general, Louis DeJoy, who is a top Trump donor and longtime Republican fundraiser.

DeJoy announced a major restructuring of the Postal Service in a memo released on August 7. The plan involves the reassignment of 23 postal executives in an overhaul that, according to the Washington Post, “deemphasizes decades’ worth of institutional postal knowledge” and “centralizes power around DeJoy.” The shift in power stands to further complicate the new postmaster general’s relationship with Democrats in Congress, who want him investigated.

The Postal Service’s problems have continued to batter its reputation, as news emerged August 14 that the agency sent a letter to 46 states and Washington, DC, in late July warning it could not guarantee the on-time delivery of all of their mail-in ballots and calling for states to reconsider their ballot deadlines. Records show that these warnings were planned before the recent cost-cutting measures were implemented, meaning that the present delays could slow down the delivery of ballots even more. Among those measures are the removal of 10 percent of the Postal Service’s high-speed sorting machines. A large number of these machines, which process flat mail like ballots, are being removed from key battleground states like Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Florida.

All of this means the future of the Postal Service is in jeopardy. It was actually in big trouble months ago, when postal leaders warned that without intervention from Congress, the USPS could run out of cash as soon as September. What’s happening now is even more urgent. Decisions being made by Trump allies are leading to delays that could motivate the Postal Service’s biggest customers to send their packages through competitors like UPS and FedEx. And according to some, the strategy could have devastating consequences.

“It is unimaginable to think of an America without the Postal Service,” said John McHugh, chairman of the Package Coalition, a trade group that counts Amazon and eBay as members. “But if things go toward a worst-case scenario in this instance, which is entirely possible, that’s what would have to occur.”

It gets worse. A more serious and immediate consequence of the Postal Service’s recent problems has led to concern that the delays could interfere with the November election, when a record number of people are expected to vote by mail due to the pandemic. Given the facts and the president’s ongoing public criticism of mail-in voting, some are accusing Trump of intentionally kneecapping the Postal Service in an attempt to sabotage the election, as he trails Joe Biden in the polls. Democrats in Congress are worried enough about the reported delays and their potential effect on democracy that they called the new postmaster general to Capitol Hill in early August to demand he reverse the new policies.

The story of how we got here is complicated, and there is disagreement about what’s really going on. However, according to postal leaders and Democrats, the way to fix the mail in time for the election involves an infusion of cash and an end to the delays. Even then, the Postal Service faces a tough road ahead.

The Postal Service’s controversial new policies, explained

It’s tempting to blame all of the Postal Service’s service problems on the new postmaster general, DeJoy, but it wouldn’t be entirely fair. After years of money problems tied to a decline in certain types of mail and an obligation to prefund its retirement benefits, the USPS suffered a very serious financial blow when the pandemic hit.

Starting in March, the volume of first-class mail began to plummet (though a surge in package delivery has helped make up for that lost revenue). Meanwhile, tens of thousands of postal workers got sick or began quarantining, leading to a labor shortage and the need for more overtime hours. The Postal Service also spent hundreds of millions of dollars on personal protective equipment (PPE) and on retrofitting post offices with more plexiglass and more space for social distancing.

This is why postal leaders asked Congress for $75 billion when the CARES Act was being negotiated in April. (This is not something the USPS likes to do, by the way. It’s been 40 years since the Postal Service took taxpayer dollars.) In response, President Trump called the Postal Service “a joke” and threatened to veto the bill if it included any money for the USPS. Despite the president’s attempts to avoid giving the Postal Service any money at all, the agency ended up making an agreement with Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for a $10 billion loan with strict terms.

Postmaster General DeJoy took office in mid-June amid the coronavirus crisis. It’s worth pointing out that DeJoy was not appointed by President Trump. He was appointed by the six members of the Postal Service Board of Governors, all of whom were appointed by Trump. And it was after DeJoy got to work that the mail delays began, according to multiple postal service-related union leaders and trade groups interviewed by Recode.

DeJoy, a former logistics executive with no Postal Service experience, started his new gig by launching a series of pilot programs designed to slash USPS spending. Multiple postal worker unions reported that DeJoy’s policies limited mail transportation, causing mail to be left at the sorting plant for days longer than it normally would. Meanwhile, a crackdown on overtime hours meant that sorting machines are shut down before the day’s work is done. (“If the plants run late, they will keep the mail for the next day,” read one USPS memo obtained by the Washington Post.) As a result, mail is sitting undelivered across the country.

In response to questions about the recent issues, USPS spokesperson David Partenheimer used variations of the word “efficient” six times in explaining how the agency is adjusting its operations. “Of course we acknowledge that temporary service impacts can occur as we redouble our efforts to conform to the current operating plans,” Partenheimer said, “but any such impacts will be monitored and temporary, as the root causes of any issues will be addressed as necessary and corrected as appropriate.”

It’s not entirely clear how temporary the delays will be. In fact, none of the postal workers Recode spoke to were exactly sure what the new policies entailed, since DeJoy and his lieutenants did not communicate the details of the pilot programs to the unions or to individual postmasters.

“In the field, we don’t have the details — only that we can’t approve overtime, only the district manager can,” explained a postmaster who runs a post office in the Northeast and spoke on the condition of anonymity as they’re not authorized to speak to the press. “I’m in a delivery unit, so I can’t speak for delayed mail in a plant. But by cutting the overtime, it would certainly delay a lot of mail.”

Individual managers might be selectively enforcing the new rules, they said, but with such poor communication from DeJoy, it’s hard to tell exactly what’s happening. The postmaster, who is a 20-year veteran of the USPS, added, “Amazon parcels are given priority over everything at a national level.”

None of this confusion has helped DeJoy win any popularity contests in his short tenure as postmaster general.

Some have called DeJoy “a crony,” and many are scrutinizing his background and political ties. As a former logistics executive, DeJoy ran companies that counted the USPS as a client, and his family has invested $30.1 million to $75.3 million in USPS competitors or contractors, including UPS. DeJoy is also a celebrated Republican party fundraiser who contributed over $1.5 million to Trump’s campaigns in 2016 and 2020. His wife, Aldona Wos, served as ambassador to Estonia in the George W. Bush administration and has been nominated by President Trump to be the next ambassador to Canada.

Others want to give DeJoy a chance. After all, he did take on a tough job at a struggling agency in the middle of a pandemic.

“Just to be honest, we’re very suspicious of this new postmaster general. We have a healthy bit of skepticism,” said Jim Sauber, chief of staff for the National Association of Letter Carriers. “But I know my boss and officers are not going to level charges that we can’t substantiate, and we’re not gonna jump to a conclusion until we can get a better fix on this.”

Democratic leaders in Congress seem less accommodating with regard to what DeJoy has done so far. After the new postmaster general confirmed the details of the operational changes to the Postal Service in their early August meeting, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi demanded that DeJoy reverse the new policies. The Democrats said this and preserving funds for the Postal Service are essential for a deal on a new coronavirus relief package.

Still, even if the Postal Service does get an infusion of cash — you might call it a bailout — the agency’s future remains uncertain. Whatever damage to the reputation of the USPS that’s being done now stands to affect the broader perception of the agency under the new postmaster general. We might be hearing more about privatizing the Postal Service in the future, whether we like it or not.

Trump’s campaign against voting by mail

Considering DeJoy’s connections to Trump and the Republican Party and the reports of worsening mail delays with the election approaching, many are afraid that the president is plotting to rig the election in November by casting doubt on the dependability of mail-in voting.

“The Trump administration’s ongoing campaign to sabotage the US Postal Service is a direct attack on our democracy,” Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), chairman of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, which oversees the USPS, told Recode. “Rural and urban, Democrat, Republican, or independent, every American has come to rely on the Postal Service, and our election is increasingly dependent on it. Congress must with one voice and clear action ensure service standards are not allowed to falter.”

Delays and political connections aside, we don’t have much hard evidence of a Trump-led plot to overthrow the Postal Service. It does look bad that the USPS appears to be facing an existential crisis just weeks after a Trump donor took over as postmaster general. It looks worse that the president has spent months attacking the broader use of mail-in voting, even threatening executive action to stop it. But these things don’t quite add up to proof of a conspiracy against the Postal Service.

“The notion that the postmaster general makes decisions concerning the Postal Service at the direction of the president is wholly misplaced and off-base,” Partenheimer, the USPS spokesperson, told Recode. “With regard to election mail, the Postal Service remains fully committed to fulfilling our role in the electoral process when public policymakers choose to utilize the mail as a part of their election system, and to delivering election mail in a timely manner consistent with our operational standards.”

Still, Trump seems to be doing everything he can to undermine American voters’ confidence in mail-in voting. There are so many tweets:

And that might be all he needs to discourage people from voting by mail.

Different states have different laws about how mail-in ballots work. Currently, 34 states — including swing states like Arizona, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — require ballots to be received by election authorities by Election Day, so any delay in the mail could lead to untold numbers of votes going uncounted. Rules about when states count the mail-in ballots also vary, so results are bound to be delayed in states like New York, where ballots can only be counted after the polls close. It’s especially discouraging for voters that postal leaders felt the need to warn states that delays around Election Day could be so bad that voters could be disenfranchised.

The Postal Service and postal unions are quick to point out that they take mail-in voting very seriously, and the process for delivering ballots is tried and tested.

“The Postal Service has always given special attention to mail ballots,” said Sauber. “In general, in most places in the country, during election time, if the Postal Service has mail ballots, they move heaven and earth to make sure it’s delivered. They give top priority to the ballots.”

“We’ve been doing mail ballots as postal workers for generations,” said Mark Dimondstein, president of the American Postal Workers Union. “It’s been increasing in popularity. In the last election, 31 million people voted by mail. There’s virtually no fraud.”

Individual states can update their laws governing mail-in voting before November. Aware of this fact, the Trump campaign has sued state and local governments across the country over mail-in ballot rules. One suit, in Pennsylvania, argues that mail-in ballot drop boxes — which are designed to handle ballots, look like mailboxes, and are monitored closely — are unconstitutional and should be removed. Another lawsuit from the Trump campaign and other Republicans seeks to overturn a new law in Nevada that would require the state to mail everyone a ballot.

Still, assuming all laws remain as they are, disrupting the Postal Service is an obvious way to hinder the mail-in ballot process. If slowing down the mail isn’t enough on its own, even creating a perception of problems with the mail could be enough to discourage some Americans from mail-in voting. And it looks like Trump is being effective at doing this — perhaps too effective. A June-July poll suggested that some voters in Florida, Pennsylvania, and Michigan have become so distrustful of mail-in voting that they might rather not vote at all than rely on mail-in ballots. Not long after this poll was published, Trump assured voters in Florida that mail-in voting was safe there.

“We’ll be able to deliver. There won’t be a problem with vote-by-mail,” said Ronnie Stutts, president of the National Rural Letter Carriers’ Association. “I think even President Trump is starting to see that. I think he’s lightened up a little bit.”

The most anxiety-inducing part of all this is that there seems to be little for the average American to do. The Postal Service is an independent agency, and there’s only so much Congress can do to shape its policies. Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), chair of the House government oversight committee, has called DeJoy to Capitol Hill to testify. If he doesn’t show up, there’s a possibility Maloney would subpoena him, though it’s terribly clear at this point that members of the Trump administration don’t necessarily care about subpoenas or showing up in Congress when asked.

But again, the Postal Service’s problems extend well beyond Trump’s war on vote-by-mail. The election will come and go, and there’s a decent chance the USPS will still be in trouble. Depending on how negotiations go around the new coronavirus stimulus package, these recent delays could continue. Growing backlogs mean the mail delays could actually get worse in the weeks and months to come. Ongoing delays could chase big package senders like Amazon and eBay away from the USPS, and without that revenue, the Postal Service would be in even more serious trouble. After all, these customers have long been concerned about whether it might be better for their business to go through UPS or FedEx.

What the Postal Service needs right now — both to deliver mail and to keep existing — is money. What it needs in the long term, some say, is a bit of restructuring.

“If you think of the analogy of a house, it needs to be remodeled,” said Arthur B. Sackler, manager of the Coalition for a 21st Century Postal Service, whose members include not only Amazon and eBay but also catalog and greeting card companies. “And, at the same time, this house you’re remodeling, the roof is on fire. So you’ve got to put the fire out first before you can remodel.”

The vast majority of Americans do not want to let the house burn down, by the way. Americans don’t just rely on the Postal Service. They love it.

For years, the USPS has been the most popular government agency in the United States. According to a Pew Research Center study released in April, 91 percent of Americans have a favorable opinion of the Postal Service, and roughly the same percentage of Americans want to bail out the agency. Similarly, countless companies that do business with the Postal Service are fans. Online retailers, including Amazon, even spent millions of dollars on an ad campaign begging lawmakers to save the Postal Service.

These facts leave us with a very curious situation. The Postal Service is seriously struggling, but it’s never been more important. It’s critical to get prescriptions to the homes of people during a pandemic and to deliver ballots to state election boards. It’s even prized by huge corporations like Amazon, who could easily give their money to a competing private company but would rather work with the Postal Service. At the same time, President Trump seems to disdain the agency, and the new postmaster general seems to be doing more harm than good.

The upshot of it all is that the USPS has survived difficult moments in the past. The agency can trace its roots back to the days of the American Revolution. Two and a half centuries later, mail service has never been more essential. If anything, a crisis like this could serve to remind the country how much it needs the Postal Service, despite what a handful of powerful people might believe.

Additional reporting by Jason Del Rey.

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https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/7/21358946/postal-service-mail-delays-election-trump-mail-in-ballots

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