#money for American Lawyers

[nashvillethotchicken]

A subtle way you can tell lestat is very selfish and ignorant about race, especially in ep 6 is that he said that they'd go to Argentina, a country which at the time was explicitly looking for white Europeans (including n*zis) to move there after spending decades pushing their black and Indigenous populations to the fringes of society to whiten up the country

[isaacsapphire]

An issue that I’ve never seen any direct discussion of—how does the American state deal with cases of religious conflict between minors and their guardians? For instance, if a child of strict Christian parents decides to become a Muslim. Is there any precedent for a state intervention in the child’s favor to try to ensure them some sort of exercise of their religion?

My impression is that there is simply no guarantee of freedom of religion for a minor (or rather, freedom of religion is interpreted as supporting the guardian here against the state), allowing guardians to discipline their minors as they see fit, and that any state intervention in the minor’s favor would be limited to if the guardians met the normal standards of child abuse and no sooner.

Cases related to this are talked about all the time, especially with LBGT minors, but I’ve never seen one framed as a freedom of religion issue. Which is pretty bizarre to me.

Do you have any knowledge of any relevant precedent or practice here?

There was actually a case about this recently that did Not involve LGBTQ topics, just a horny teen boy getting it on with his girlfriend in the high school parking lot.

I have an uncomfortable suspicion that historically, USA case law may have been more supportive of minors who converted to Christianity than other religions, but this is a really interesting question. @barren-and-trivial-words or anyone else who has topical expertise know anything about this?

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Prison-tech company bribed jails to ban in-person visits

I'm on tour with my new, nationally bestselling novel The Bezzle! Catch me in BOSTON with Randall "XKCD" Munroe (Apr 11), then PROVIDENCE (Apr 12), and beyond!

Beware of geeks bearing gifts. When prison-tech companies started offering "free" tablets to America's vast army of prisoners, it set off alarm-bells for prison reform advocates – but not for the law-enforcement agencies that manage the great American carceral enterprise.

The pitch from these prison-tech companies was that they could cut the costs of locking people up while making jails and prisons safer. Hell, they'd even make life better for prisoners. And they'd do it for free!

These prison tablets would give every prisoner their own phone and their own video-conferencing terminal. They'd supply email, of course, and all the world's books, music, movies and games. Prisoners could maintain connections with the outside world, from family to continuing education. Sounds too good to be true, huh?

Here's the catch: all of these services are blisteringly expensive. Prisoners are accustomed to being gouged on phone calls – for years, prisons have done deals with private telcos that charge a fortune for prisoners' calls and split the take with prison administrators – but even by those standards, the calls you make on a tablet are still a ripoff.

Sure, there are some prisoners for whom money is no object – wealthy people who screwed up so bad they can't get bail and are stewing in a county lockup, along with the odd rich murderer or scammer serving a long bid. But most prisoners are poor. They start poor – the cops are more likely to arrest poor people than rich people, even for the same crime, and the poorer you are, the more likely you are to get convicted or be suckered into a plea bargain with a long sentence. State legislatures are easy to whip up into a froth about minimum sentences for shoplifters who steal $7 deodorant sticks, but they are wildly indifferent to the store owner's rampant wage-theft. Wage theft is by far the most costly form of property crime in America and it is almost entirely ignored:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jun/15/wage-theft-us-workers-employees

So America's prisons are heaving with its poorest citizens, and they're certainly not getting any richer while they're inside. While many prisoners hold jobs – prisoners produce $2b/year in goods and $9b/year in services – the average prison wage is $0.52/hour:

https://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2024/0324bowman.html

(In six states, prisoners get nothing; North Carolina law bans paying prisoners more than $1/day, the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution explicitly permits slavery – forced labor without pay – for prisoners.)

Likewise, prisoners' families are poor. They start poor – being poor is a strong correlate of being an American prisoner – and then one of their breadwinners is put behind bars, taking their income with them. The family savings go to paying a lawyer.

Prison-tech is a bet that these poor people, locked up and paid $1/day or less; or their families, deprived of an earner and in debt to a lawyer; will somehow come up with cash to pay $13 for a 20-minute phone call, $3 for an MP3, or double the Kindle price for an ebook.

How do you convince a prisoner earning $0.52/hour to spend $13 on a phone-call?

Well, for Securus and Viapath (AKA Global Tellink) – a pair of private equity backed prison monopolists who have swallowed nearly all their competitors – the answer was simple: they bribed prison officials to get rid of the prison phones.

Not just the phones, either: a pair of Michigan suits brought by the Civil Rights Corps accuse sheriffs and the state Department of Corrections of ending in-person visits in exchange for kickbacks from the money that prisoners' families would pay once the only way to reach their loved ones was over the "free" tablets:

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/03/jails-banned-family-visits-to-make-more-money-on-video-calls-lawsuits-claim/

These two cases are just the tip of the iceberg; Civil Rights Corps says there are hundreds of jails and prisons where Securus and Viapath have struck similar corrupt bargains:

https://civilrightscorps.org/case/port-huron-michigan-right2hug/

And it's not just visits and calls. Prison-tech companies have convinced jails and prisons to eliminate mail and parcels. Letters to prisoners are scanned and delivered their tablets, at a price. Prisoners – and their loved ones – have to buy virtual "postage stamps" and pay one stamp per "page" of email. Scanned letters (say, hand-drawn birthday cards from your kids) cost several stamps:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/14/minnesota-nice/#shitty-technology-adoption-curve

Prisons and jails have also been convinced to eliminate their libraries and continuing education programs, and to get rid of TVs and recreational equipment. That way, prisoners will pay vastly inflated prices for streaming videos and DRM-locked music.

The icing on the cake? If the prison changes providers, all that data is wiped out – a prisoner serving decades of time will lose their music library, their kids' letters, the books they love. They can get some of that back – by working for $1/day – but the personal stuff? It's just gone.

Readers of my novels know all this. A prison-tech scam just like the one described in the Civil Rights Corps suits is at the center of my latest novel The Bezzle:

https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865878/thebezzle

Prison-tech has haunted me for years. At first, it was just the normal horror anyone with a shred of empathy would feel for prisoners and their families, captive customers for sadistic "businesses" that have figured out how to get the poorest, most desperate people in the country to make them billions. In the novel, I call prison-tech "a machine":

a million-­armed robot whose every limb was tipped with a needle that sank itself into a different place on prisoners and their families and drew out a few more cc’s of blood.

But over time, that furious empathy gave way to dread. Prisoners are at the bottom of the shitty technology adoption curve. They endure the technological torments that haven't yet been sanded down on their bodies, normalized enough to impose them on people with a little more privilege and agency. I'm a long way up the curve from prisoners, but while the shitty technology curve may grind slow, it grinds fine:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/24/gwb-rumsfeld-monsters/#bossware

The future isn't here, it's just not evenly distributed. Prisoners are the ultimate early adopters of the technology that the richest, most powerful, most sadistic people in the country's corporate board-rooms would like to force us all to use.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/02/captive-customers/#guillotine-watch

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[lexirosewrites]

Steddie as rival lawyers who have very different careers.

Steve became a prosecuting attorney after graduating from a top school at his parents’ insistence. It pays well and makes them happy, even if it’s joyless for him to fight for things he doesn’t believe in.

Prosecuting innocent people and fighting for the sake of money without morals.

On the other end of the spectrum is free-spirited Eddie Munson. He’s a defense attorney who shows up in ill-fitting suits that show off his many neck and hand tattoos. Piercings in his ears and hair that’s not tidy or tamed in any way.

He’s a rebel who barely graduated from some lower tier law school with no prestige whatsoever.

Steve naturally assumed their first trial would be a breeze.

But somehow— sheer dumb luck, bad jury selection, or just stupid fate— Eddie wins. And he keeps winning.

Over and over for months.

Steve’s long uninterrupted winning streak becomes a losing one. If Eddie’s in the courtroom too, Steve knows he’s already lost his case.

It’s humbling.

Actually, it’s frankly embarrassing to lose to someone who’s so unprofessional and doesn’t take the law seriously like Steve.

Eddie is respectful of course, but he doesn’t use lawyer-speak unless he’s referencing a precedent of a law. Other than that, he’s overly casual and friendly. Everyone’s favorite lawyer.

He doesn’t lack passion though. No, the guy all but hops up on tables to make speeches about freedom or the American dream during every trial. Utterly ridiculous.

It works though. The juries fall for his bullshit about being down to earth and his clients walk free because of it.

Steve can’t stand it. He can’t stand Eddie and his mockery of his career.

This ultimately culminates in a confrontation in the parking lot one night after a particularly tense trial conclusion.

Once again, Eddie’s guy walked free and Steve knows he’s gonna hear about it from his boss (who also happens to be his dad).

So he might snap a bit when Eddie comes out whistling and looking happier than anything.

“Hey, jackass!”

Eddie looks around like Steve might be referring to some other jackass, despite the otherwise empty parking lot.

He points to himself in question and Steve rolls his eyes in answer.

“Hi, sweetheart,” Eddie finally greets him with a smirk. “Chinese takeout for tonight sound good?”

Steve’s stomach growls at the mere suggestion.

He’d accidentally skipped lunch earlier so he could make changes to his closing argument. Fat load of good that did him.

“Yeah, sure, whatever. You’re not off the hook that easily though. What the hell was that brutal cross examination on my witness, you dickhead?”

Eddie smiles extra sweetly and presses a quick but affectionate kiss to Steve’s forehead first.

“All’s fair in love, war, and court, baby. You can whine about it later when we’re home if you really want to. I happen to know some very nice pillows that would love to muffle your pretty little moans.”

Asshole.

He blushes, glancing around to make sure they’re still alone before he pulls Eddie into an embrace.

They’ve barely spent any time together this week because of the tense trial and he really missed his boyfriend (not to be mistaken for the jackass who argues with him daily in the courtroom).

As much as they can separate their personal and work lives, it’s hard to not be on the same side of things.

“What if I want you to hear me moan, Eddie? I think it’s only fair since you seem to get everyone else off and I’m the one always suffering for it,” he mumbles snarkily into Eddie’s shirt.

Eddie laughs at the pun. He knew that he would.

“Is that why you’re sulking, babylove? You want me to get you off too?” He nods with a pathetic whine. Not getting to cum for a few days can do that to a person. “I think that can be arranged. You’ve been such a good boy for me lately. You’ve earned a treat.”

Steve melts into his boyfriend’s arms, feeling loved.

“I missed you.”

Another kiss to the forehead, but this time Eddie’s lips linger there as he speaks.

“Missed you too, sweetheart. Not sorry for winning, but I am sorry that you lost.”

Steve knew the defendant was innocent. There wasn’t much of a case to be made anyway. It still stings though.

“Yeah... I’ve been thinking about that and it might be time to quit my dad’s firm. I’d much rather be on the same side as you,” Steve confesses.

Eddie pauses.

“Does that mean…”

Steve looks up smiling and confirms, “Yes. I’ll accept the job offer if it’s still on the table.”

The rival lawyer had offered him a job months ago, before they even got together.

By accepting the position, it means they’d finally be allowed to be a couple publicly and they’d be sitting on the same side of the court for once.

It would also free Steve from his dad’s control and disappointment.

“Stevie, I’d love nothing more than to have you as my partner. In both the court and life. I love you, sweetheart.”

He can’t resist.

“I love you too… jackass.”

Eddie makes good on his promise to get Steve off that night. He even brings out the handcuffs for accuracy sake.

[soberscientistlife]

"Before our white brothers arrived to make us civilized men, we didn't have any kind of prison. Because of this, we had no delinquents.

Without a prison, there can be no delinquents. We had no locks nor keys and therefore among us there were no thieves.

When someone was so poor that he couldn't afford a horse, a tent or a blanket, he would, in that case, receive it all as a gift.

We were too uncivilized to give great importance to private property. We didn't know any kind of money and consequently, the value of a human being was not determined by his wealth.

We had no written laws laid down, no lawyers, no politicians, therefore we were not able to cheat and swindle one another.

We were really in bad shape before the white men arrived and I don't know how to explain how we were able to manage without these fundamental things that (so they tell us) are so necessary for a civilized society."

John (Fire) Lame Deer, Sioux Lakota - 1903-1976

Be more like the American Natives

[lovinpelova]

to be continued | j. fleming

summary; jessie meets y/n at a party after ucla win the ncaa basketball championship. then again, then again and again.

🎵 a new kind of love - frou frou

whenever you told people you went to ucla their first response was always to ask what sport you played, expecting you to be there for division-one football or tennis, but when you told them you were simply just a british exchange-student looking for better educational standards their face always dropped. it's like they thought they were meeting a celebrity and found out it was only a look-alike when they got closer, you found it funny how people couldn't believe you came to the states purely for education.

being british you've obviously played football before and could even join the team if you wanted but you quit before your gcses for a reason; you didn't want any distractions. you'd promised your parents one day that you'd be able to give them a luxury lifestyle with all the money you earned from being a well-paid lawyer, aiming for the higher bracket of pay after learning your cousin was earning £78,000 annually. the number is massive and would be an immense help to your family after all the years of struggle you've gone through together, so you wanted to make sure you had the highest level of education and were definitely not wanting to go to oxford with all the snobby rich kids.

so you chose one of the top law schools in the states, of course!

"hey y/n, come over here!"

you were snapped out of your daydreams by a friend of a friend, one of your classmates taking law as a minor has a major in history, so they introduced you to hailie after you'd met at one of her games since you were dragged there. it's not like you hate football - you love it, and the atmosphere of college soccer is unmatched - but you would have rather been revising for an upcoming final that night instead.

you made your way over to hailie and noticed she was stood with her arm around a rather short brunette, the long-sleeved shirt (with the sleeves rolled up) that had 'ucla soccer' printed across it indicating you weren't going to get away from this football team any time soon - even though you were at a party to celebrate the men's basketball team winning the ncaa championship.

"y/n, this is jessie. one of our midfielders."

"hey, nice to meet you."

the canadian accent she greeted you with was striking, you weren't expecting her to be american but you definitely weren't expecting her to be canadian either.

"you're canadian?"

"i told you your accent was strong jess."

the midfielder nodded with a sheepish grin, hailie suddenly patting her on the shoulder after peering over yours and smiling at someone.

"i'll leave you to it then,"

the defender pulled you into a quick hug as you returned it, feeling her lean down into your ear to whisper something.

"jessie's been eyeing you up all night."

she winked and smiled at your blush, patting you on the back before leaving you and jessie to your own devices. you smiled at the canadian as she grinned in response, your eyes trailing down to see her fingers moving in a way that could only be described as anxiety-ridden.

"do you have social anxiety, jess?"

"er, yeah. is it that obvious?"

the canadian chuckled nervously - either at the fact that you've already given her a nickname or if it was because of her anxiety you wouldn't know.

"do you drink?"

"if it's the right drink, then yeah."

you leaned forwards with a charming smile and softly grabbed her hand, lacing your fingers together to make sure she didn't accidentally let go and lose you. within a couple moments you were back in the kitchen and by a table of alcohol, reaching beside it for two bottles of beer out of the fridge to stay safe. you turned and handed it to the canadian after opening it on the edge of the table, too impatient to look for a bottle opener and resorting to a party trick hailie had taught you the other day.

regretfully letting go of her hand, you leaned against the counter awfully close to her to make up for the loss of contact, both of you taking a swig of your drinks as jessie leaned in closer to you.

"do you play any sports then?"

"i used to play football but quit when i was about sixteen. wanted to focus on my studies instead."

the canadian nodded her head as you fell into a comfortable silence, watching people come and go from the kitchen as they pleased and giving each other knowing looks when couples walked past with drunken giggles or laughing together when someone was so drunk they couldn't even walk.

before you knew it you were both three beers in and completely focused on jessie, the alcohol in your systems making you far more confident than you were when you first met a couple hours ago. jessies hand was comfortable on your waist and yours were on her chest, tugging on the chain she wore as you drunkenly flirted inches away from each other. the canadian leaned down towards you after feeling you pull it more forcefully, your hips pushing against hers.

"you gonna kiss me, fleming?"

"what would you do if i did, y/l/n?"

you smirked up at jessie whilst looking into her eyes deeply, the moment so intense you nearly didn't hear hailie running into you and dragging you away from each other.

"president's here, we gotta go!"

the party was quickly being shut down as you all ran out the house, being caught by campus president was not something you wanted especially if the party was causing noise complaints. you found a couple people you knew and followed them to a safer space, looking behind you to check if jessie and hailie were there - only to find they weren't.

--------

working whilst studying wasn't always too bad, it was far easier if you had a part-time job. luckily for you, a local coffee shop five minutes outside of the ucla campus was hiring over the christmas season and you applied, working there happily for the past seven months. the pay wasn't bad - bi-weekly - and for an international exchange student it was keeping you able to buy the food you needed as well as luxuries when you were on the odd shopping trip with friends or out drinking.

the customers were the greatest part of the job, only regulars coming in daily for their usual orders as you recite them without a problem, the odd newcomer trying it out and either never coming back again or adding themselves to the list of regulars. today you noticed there was a newbie, the door opening at a time irregular to your memorised schedule of customers as you had your back turned to it, in the process of making a regulars order so you couldn't see who had walked in yet. you quickly served their order with a smile and walked back over to the counter whilst brushing off the coffee grounds all over your apron, looking up to see jessie grinning at you awkwardly.

"well, if it isn't the incredibly awkward canadian? haven't seen you since the party fleming."

"i know, hailie dragged me away from you and before i could try find where you'd ran off to the president found us again and started chasing us and then-"

"jess, calm down. it's fine. a party got shut down and we got split up, it happens everywhere. so, what can i get for you today then?"

you gestured towards the menu hung up behind you as the midfielder grinned at your acceptance of her unnecessary apology, looking over the choices of drink.

"erm, i'll just get a shaken espresso please."

"coming right up."

you made the drink as quickly as you possibly could, not wanting to have jessie waiting around for too long as she might have a class to get to or training to attend. you picked up a sharpie when you saw she wasn't looking in the corner of your eye, writing your number on the side of her cup with a smiley face before pouring her coffee into it and sliding it across the counter to her.

"thank you- how much?"

"on the house, jess."

you smiled brightly at her, holding your hand up when she opened her mouth to protest in a silent order for her to stay quiet and let you be nice for once.

"i'm paying next time though y/n/n."

"can't wait to see you next."

the canadian smiled gently, saying goodbye and walking out of the coffee shop whilst taking a sip, spotting a black mark underneath her nose and turning the cup to see your number written on it. without knowing, you'd just made jessies day.

--------

"so this is- like, a big game then?"

you asked hailie as she ran over to speak quickly after her warmup, the crowd you were sat in filled to the brim of ucla supporters, the other side of the pitch filled with usc supporters scowling across at you all.

"no, y/n/n. this is a big, big game. it's against a rival and it's the championship semi-final! have you not been listening to a word i've been saying the past week?"

"er, no. not really- sorry! i just zone out when you drone on about football. you know how much i don't care about sports sometimes."

hailie grunted in response as you smiled down apologetically, reaching for her hand and feeling her squeeze it in a silent acceptance of your apology.

"so how come you're here then? if you don't even know- oh my god jessie!"

"keep your fucking voice down hailie!"

you whisper-yelled whilst covering her mouth with your hand, raising your eyebrows in silent warning so she didn't blurt out jessies name again and make her come over to see why she was being yelled about. you and jessie had been texting non-stop since you gave her your number and she'd asked you to come to her game, hence why you were asking hailie about it. the defender had clicked onto the fact that you were clearly crushing on someone since your phone was making you smile with the odd notification and you suddenly had a very large interest in football- but she didn't expect it to be jessie.

"i knew you liked her! you were basically fucking in the kitchen the other night."

you flicked her on the forehead playfully as she scolded you, your chance to respond being ripped away as hailies coach called her into the changing rooms for a last minute teamtalk.

the game ran by fairly quickly, ucla absolutely hammering usc after a slow start. the first half consisted of one goal from your college rival and after half-time the scoreline just got bigger and bigger; jessie scoring one and assisting two as the end result was a massive 5-1. that meant ucla were going to the final in the ncaa championship against unc, the reigning champions, so you were definitely going to watch that game too.

"hey stargirl!"

you complimented smoothly as your arms opened wide for hailie, tears nearly running down her face as she picked you up into a bear hug.

"final two, baby!"

you cheered with the defender as she put you down and hugged you properly, spotting someone in the corner of her eye and grinning wildly.

"i'll leave you and your lovergirl to it."

you smacked her arm lightly as she walked away to celebrate with her teammates, turning around to see jessie beaming at you. not even giving her a chance to greet you, your arms went around her neck in a hug as hers went around your waist to pick you up, quickly putting you down to look at your broad smile with her usual blush across her cheeks.

"what a fucking game! i've never seen anyone play that well before jess."

"the pressure of knowing you were watching helped me a bit i guess."

the canadian scratched the back of her neck nervously, yourself scoffing at her shy nature as if she wasn't a finalist in the ncaa championship.

"nonsense, you're just amazing on the pitch no matter what. my midfield maestro."

jessie blushed even further at the new nickname you'd given her, smiling to match yours as she hugged you again tightly. when you pulled away you kissed her cheek, laughing at the way she froze up immediately.

"come on, you've got teammates to celebrate with."

--------

ucla had dominated their sports championships across the board. the mens basketball team had won the ncaa championship, as well as the mens soccer team and the womens field hockey team, the womens soccer team and womens basketball team added to that list within a week. the game was incredible, jessie had played another masterclass as usual and had a total of four goal contributions- ucla only scored four goals.

the win obviously called for another celebration, so the mens basketball team had offered to have another party the same place it occurred for their successes, meaning you and jessie were in the same kitchen as before but with a lot more people surrounding you. the amount of wins meant every supporter of each sport and player and friend and classmate (and the odd family member) had attended, so the house was packed.

you stared down at the ring jessie wore with 'ncaa champions' engraved into it, the ucla logo pressed into the middle. without thinking you grabbed jessies hand when she raised her other to take a swig of her beer, gently running your thumb over the engraved words with a proud smile.

"have i told you how proud i am of you yet jess?"

"only a million times y/n/n."

"well i'm making it a million and one. i'm so proud of you."

the canadian smiled down at you and wrapped her arm around your shoulders with your hand still holding hers, kissing the side of your head with confidence you knew she only had because of the alcohol running through her system.

"it's weird how last time we were in here we didn't even know each others last names."

jessie laughed softly with you at your statement, pulling you closer when more people began to flood into the kitchen to find any alcohol they could, everyone just wanting to get as drunk as possible since it was a friday and they had no classes to attend whilst taking care of their inevitable hangovers.

"i'm really happy hailie introduced us. i like you a lot."

the midfielder commented, looking deeply into your eyes when you turned to face her to show you she wasn't talking nonsense, it was just the alcohol letting things slip out.

"i like you a lot too, midfield maestro."

your eyes trailed down to her lips as she licked them carefully, watching the way she slowly began to lean in and torture you with her lips brushing over yours. you quickly leaned forward and closed the gap between you, kissing her passionately exactly the way you'd been wanting to for the past three weeks since you first met, your hands holding her in place so she couldn't move away faster than you wanted her to. eventually you were running out of breath and needed to pull away, smiling at each other after finally having made a move.

"glad the party wasn't shut down early this time?"

"very glad."

jessie responded immediately, pulling you into another kiss before you could even think about moving away from her.

[finsterwalds]

Got a very inspired ask inquiring about the villains in my Better Call Saul french AU so here's Gus aka famous chef Gustavo Faure and his main waiter Léo haha. More info under the cut as always...

So at first I thought about making Gus a fast-food owner like his canon counterpart, but it just doesn't fit really well if you wanna frenchify it all with nuance. We have fast-foods ofc and we do enjoy fried chicken lol, but Los Pollos Hermanos has this very distinct "patriotic" feeling that wouldn't translate as well in France, as fast-foods are american in conception. I thought about making Gus the owner of some cheaper chain like Courtepaille lmao, but it feels too memey and doesn't have the prestige that his character has canonically. Gus assimilates perfectly into american society with his brand, and caters to the people locally, so I thought it would be fair for him to do the same in France. And if you wanna cater to lovers of chic, gastronomy and prestige, what's better than being the chef of some fancy restaurant, right? It felt cliché af and looses the "close to the people" part but it honestly fits his character well, imo...

He would be extremely respected locally but still friendly and approachable due to him crafting some kind of tragic backstory for himself and his restaurant. Basically he would play the "Chilean refugee that climbed to the top of foreign cuisine" card and everyone would buy it. French people love to eat and are fond of mixing their culture's meals with more international food, so yes: I think he would serve a fusion of french/Chilean food!

He'd also be an entrepreneur as famous french chefs often have side businesses like bakeries or published books, which I think respects his canon personality pretty well. Fancy french chefs also like to hang out outside their kitchen to greet their guests and I can totally imagine Gus do that. He'd still be able to conceal his shady side nicely. He's canonically seen to like fine wine, good products, and cooks Paila Marina for Walt, so congrats to Gus for already being french in conception and not making this idea feel like a stretch lol.

I have no idea about his exact role concerning drug traffic in Europe, as I said I'm pretty ignorant about that… But he'd use his business and image to form connections and launder his money. His backstory with Max stays the same in the AU aka Max was his business """"partner""" who died killed by the Salamancas.

I don't think changing his first name was necessary, but his last name sounding american I thought I would just frenchify it a bit lol. I don't know what the name of his restaurant would be, but definitely something short, spanish, and aesthetic/poetic. Maybe a reference to Max to allude to the Hermanos part.

Bonus : I know they don't canonically meet, but in my AU I think Chuck, as a rich lawyer, would eat at Gustavo's often. They'd be acquainted :) And maybe Jérôme aka Jimmy meets him thru his brother and later discovers Gus' shady side, when the events of BrBa start.

[princeloww]

DAVID TENNANT ROLES STARTERPACK

(Different roles, where to find them and what they're like!!!) (+ more that I didn't go into included at the end)

*disclaimer: this is sort of UK orientated, 'cos I don't know any American streaming services or where stuff is available in other countries, so PLEASE comment other places you can watch things!!!!

- Takin' Over the Asylum (CAMPBELL BAIN)

Follows a DJ and a group of patients trying to keep a radio station going in a mental hospital. David plays one of the main characters, Campbell Bain, a mostly upbeat and energetic young boy with lots of enthusiasm and spirit. Some angst!

☆ YOUTUBE (free)

- Blackpool (PETER CARLISLE)

A body is found in an arcade run by Ripley Holden, and him and his entire family are pulled into the murder investigation surrounding it. DI Peter Carlisle is working on the case, and highly suspicious of Ripley. He's a pretty major character and has a romantic plot - as well as a few funny musical numbers. Includes sex scenes.

☆ UKTV PLAY (free in UK), AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

- Casanova (GIACOMO CASANOVA)

The (mostly sexual) adventures of Giacomo Casanova, a charming and fraudulent man who falls in love very quickly and very dramatically with a lot of people, all while essentially bullshitting through life and jumping on every opportunity to make money. Includes sex scenes but also angst, such as illness, injuries, some violence, and general suffering.

☆ MYFLIXERX.TO (free), AMAZON

- Recovery (ALAN HAMILTON)

A man and his family coping with the recovery and rehabilitation process after he (Alan, David Tennant) suffers from brain damage. Angsty. Lots of crying, suicide references, head injury stuff.

☆ YOUTUBE (free)

- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (BARTY CROUCH JR)

I recommend pirating this one so you're not supporting JK Rowling. DT plays Barty Crouch JR, an antagonist and the son of Barty Crouch. He's kind of a minor character, as he's not actually in a lot of scenes.

☆ Probably on most pirating sites (my go to is MYFLIXERX.TO)

- Learners (CHRISTOPHER ??)

Lighthearted movie about a woman trying to pass her driving test. David plays Chris, her driving instructor. He's a bit of a dork, very sweet and kind. Has a love plot, briefly fights a guy. No major angst.

☆ YOUTUBE (free)

- Hamlet (HAMLET)

Hamlet. Prince of Denmark wants vengeance after his father's death. I haven't actually watched this one yet but I assume it's got the same amount of angst and drama as Hamlet typically does.

☆ AMAZON PRIME VIDEO

- Single Father (DAVE TYLER)

After a fatal car accident, Dave Tyler (DT) is left to parent four children on his own. Still struggling through grief, Dave falls in love again and attempts to hide it. Has LOTS of crying, lots of kissing, sex scenes, DT being miserable and sobbing, etc.

☆ MYFLIXERX.TO (free)

- Rex Is Not Your Lawyer (REX ALEXANDER)

Unaired pilot. Only 40 minutes. Show wasn't picked up, but it is very good. Rex is a successful and skilled lawyer who is forced to stop practising when he starts having panic attacks every time he speaks in court. He decides instead to coach people who want to represent themselves. Lots of DT in very tight suits. American accent. Not MAJOR angst but he does has daddy issues and a panic disorder, so.

☆ YOUTUBE (free)

- Fright Night (PETER VINCENT)

A kid discovers that his neighbour is a vampire, and he seeks out a famous vampire slayer to help him. Peter Vincent (DT) does not live up to his name, and turns out to actually be sort of pathetic. No major angst, not a lot of clothes, no romance, but lots of eyeliner. He's very bisexual. Violence, vampire horror, creepy neighbour.

☆ DISNEY+, AMAZON PRIME

- The Decoy Bride (JAMES ARBER)

Celebrity Lara Tyler tries to get married to her author fiancé James Arber, but the paparazzi interrupts the wedding. Desperate to keep it private, she takes James to the island that he based his book on. Somehow, the paparazzi still find them, and they hire a decoy bride to pretend to be Lara. Romance, kissing, light hearted, minimal angst. David in a funny outfit. Fake dating trope?

☆ AMAZON PRIME

- Nativity 2: Danger in the Manger (Donald and Roderick Peterson)

Sequel to Nativity, but you don't need to watch the first one. Primary school teacher Donald Peterson (DT) is forced to take his class to Wales to participate in A Song For Christmas, a festive singing competition. Here he is put against his twin brother, who is a successful composer and with whom he has a strained relationship. Light angst - lots of daddy issues, but generally sweet.

☆ AMAZON, I think its on NOW TV???

- The Escape Artist (WILL BURTON)

A defence lawyer, Will Burton, gets a murderer off free, and very quickly grows to regret it, when his client comes after his family next. Lots of murder. Like three murders I think. Hot lawyer DT.

☆ AMAZON (I can't believe I forgot this one)

- What We Did On Our Holiday (DOUG MCLEOD)

A family go to Scotland for their grandfather's 70th birthday. Doug (DT) and his wife (Rosamund Pike) are getting a divorce, but are hiding it from the rest of the family. Movie is mostly focused on the kids and their grandad, but David has a few moments, and he's generally present throughout. Funny, slightly shocking at times, family film. No major angst. Character death.

☆ AMAZON PRIME

- Richard II (RICHARD II)

Shakespeare's Richard II. David plays the titular character, the extravagant, heartless and cold King of England, Richard II. We see his fall from grace as he is stripped of everything he owns and knows. Quite angsty. Long hair, androgynous David. Queer kiss scene (although they are cousins, soo...)

☆ you can find a link in a REDDIT comment if you search for it, AMAZON PRIME

- Broadchurch (ALEC HARDY)

An eleven-year-old boy is murdered in a small town, sending shock-waves through the community. Story follows both the family and communities response to the crime, as well as the investigation done by DI Alec Hardy (DT) and DS Ellie Miller (Olivia Coleman). Lots of angst from Alec. He is sick and hiding it. Injury, dizziness, panic attacks, that sort of thing - as well as a heart attack. He has a lot of trauma and daddy issues. Season three touches on topics of rape (warning).

- Mad To Be Normal (RD LIANG)

Biopic about RD Liang, a Scottish psychiatrist. Sex, misogyny, mental health topics, some self-harm (done by another character)

☆ AMAZON (sensing a pattern)

- Good Omens (CROWLEY)

An angel (Michael Sheen) and a demon work together to stop the end of the world. Queer romance (canon), some angst. Drama, comedy, LGBTQ+. David plays Crowley, the demon (who "sauntered vaguely downwards" rather than fell from heaven)

☆ AMAZON PRIME

- Staged (DAVID TENNANT)

A COVID lockdown comedy about David Tennant and Michael Sheen talking via Zoom during the lockdown. Actually quite sad at times? Mostly silly, though. Features Georgia Tennant and Anna Lundberg.

☆ BBC Iplayer (UK) (or VPN)

- Around The World in 80 Days (PHILEAS FOGG)

Phileas Fogg, a quiet and reserved man, decides to travel around the world in 80 days, after he receives an anonymous postcard calling him a coward. Cute found family, drama, angst (ex-lover stuff, internalised cowardice, illness, near death experience), some violence. There's a scene where Phileas gets flogged (whipped, essentially) quite violently, and it's somewhat graphic. Touches on themes of racism. Phileas is 100% neurodivergent.

☆ BBC Iplayer (UK) (or VPN)

- Inside Man (HARRY WATLING)

DT plays a vicar, Harry, who is involved in a murder after trying to protect his son - who was accused of having CP. Suicide themes, murder, self-harm - explores the idea that any person can murder, if they're pushed the right way. Includes topics to do with CP and pedophilia.

☆ NETFLIX, AMAZON

- Litvinenko (LITVINENKO)

Biopic about Alexander Litvinenko. A group of detectives investigate the poisoning of Litvinenko. David is bald in this show. (Scary)

☆ ITVX (UK) (or VPN)

- Doctor who (10TH AND 14TH DOCTORS)

Do I need to explain Doctor Who???? David Tennant plays the tenth and fourteenth regenerations of The Doctor, a Time Lord from outerspace. He travels around in the TARDIS with human companions.

☆ BBC Iplayer (UK)

I think I'm gonna leave it there, but there are a LOT that I have not touched on. This post is a very accurate and long list of everything on DT's filmography, so i recommend you check that out.

Other things I didn't mention (off the top of my head):

There She Goes, Bad Samaritan, Einstein and Eddington, Rab. C Nesbitt, Bright Young Things, LA Without a Map, Much Ado About Nothing, Duck Patrol, True Love, Gracepoint, Camping (US), Nan's Christmas Carol, Mary Queen of Scots, (You, Me and Him), Secret Smile, Deadwater Fell, Jessica Jones, Dramarama, Spies of Warsaw, AND A LOT MORE. (+ voice acting roles, and also his narrating work on Spy In The Wild (2017)

[liberalsarecool]

Keep in mind, Republicans are the same people who whinge on about 'weaponizing' the government and say nothing about DeSantis going after and punishing Disney.

The 'profoundly Un-American' legal attack of Disney is profoundly MAGA.

DeSantis wants attention. DeSantis is a lawyer. He knows these legal cases are not in the interest of citizens. The performance is all that matters. The waste of money? The waste of time? Those things don't matter to puffed-up villains like DeSantis shitting on his home state as the other 49 States reel in nausea at his pettiness.

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

Take a look at the names on the invitation. Among the notable figures are oligarchs Robert Mercer, Kelly Loeffler, Wilbur Ross, and Steve Wynn.

Mercer is the personal financier of Ted Cruz and gives him blank checks for each of his campaigns. He also bankrolls Breitbart and Cambridge Analytica. He’s openly racist and advocates turning the clock back to the 1950’s. He says most Americans would survive a nuclear war and the atomic bombing of Japan was advantageous for them and has made them healthier.

He has spent tens of millions fighting all gun laws in the US and helps fund the NRA. Mercer also owns the largest private machine gun collection in the Americas. When not sailing on his 203 ft yacht he strolls New Mexico with a gun and a badge as a “volunteer policeman.”

He bought a company that provides guns to movies moved it to NYC where it became a gun dealership. He procures arms from international arms dealers, some for sale but most being stockpiled for purposes unspoken. He has even procured for himself a MK-19 40mm automatic grenade launcher that is manufactured for the US military. He has his own secretive ‘’military compound” where he shoots his military weaponry and conducts other legally sketchy activities. Most of the deranged right-wing billionaires you see in the movies are loosely based on him.

People like this should not be allowed to exert influence over the government or the economy to say the least. If you read between the lines he’s prepping for a two things: 1. a hostile coup to take over the country and 2. the apocalypse that all right-wing fanatics are trying to instigate.

Google Robert Mercer and see how far gone this deranged right-wing extremist is.

[decolonize-the-left]

GENERAL STRIKE TIME BABEY. READ THE WHOLE POST.

While we're all mad at government sending money to Israel that police budgets are so inflated because of how often they pay settlements.

And also that it's a verified fact that our police train with Israeli soldiers. Remember when they were black bagging people in PDX? It reminded me of this ex-Israeli soldier talking about how they'd do the same thing to innocent Palestinians just to terrorize them and their neighbors. It was intentional terrorism when they did it.

Police budgets pay for all that.

Correction, we pay.

To put it more bluntly,

We pay for them to kill and terrorize people.

Just as our taxes pay for the deaths of Black and Brown people all over the world from Turtle Island to Sudan and Palestine.

In Dec. 2022, Louisville Metro Government agreed to pay Walker $2 million to settle lawsuits against the city. Metro government previously paid a $12 million settlement to Taylor’s family in Sept. 2020

We paid for Breonna Taylor's death.

And her murderers were never arrested btw. Not that there aren't still people trying to arrest them of course. But our money paid for their lawyers and wouldn't you know it, no charges have stuck.

Four years to the day after Breonna Taylor’s death, federal prosecutors are moving forward with a re-trial of one of the officers involved in the botched raid that ended her life. At a status conference Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Rebecca Grady Jennings scheduled Brett Hankison’s final pre-trial hearing for September 13th. His re-trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 15. In November of last year, Hankinson was tried for violating the Constitutional rights of Breonna Taylor, her boyfriend, and three neighbors when he fired through two covered windows during the raid. Prosecutors argued he used excessive force when he shot into the apartment complex blindly. Taylor’s boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, had fired at officers executing the search, claiming he thought they were intruders.

And Myles Cosgrove?

Yeah we're paying him to terrorize more people. He got a job as a fucking sheriff's deputy.

Myles Cosgrove, the former Louisville police officer, who was fired for fatally shooting Breonna Taylor in a botched 2020 police raid and hired earlier this year as a sheriff’s deputy in Carroll County, rammed a resident’s truck with his cruiser Monday and then pointed a gun at the owner and several bystanders, witnesses said.

Witnesses told The Courier Journal that Cosgrove barreled into Happy Hollow Private Resort Park trailer park at a high rate of speed without his emergency lights on, then struck William Joshua Short’s pickup truck with such force that it sent the vehicle flying into a building, breaking off two cinder blocks.

And Johnathan Mattingly wrote a fucking book about it to make money off of his role in her murder. $15 on Amazon.

He also wanted to sue Kenneth Walker, Breonna's boyfriend. You know why? For damages and injuries he sustained while killing Breonna Taylor.

WE PAID FOR ALL THAT. ALL OF IT.

Our power is in our dollar.

American politics and officials don't care for our lives. It's why they're content to watch us protest for months. Because we're still going to work. We are the worker ants simply fulfilling our duty, receiving the bare minimum to survive for our labor.

We're still building their bombs. Paying our taxes, so much that hardly any of us could afford more than rent.

We are just drones fulfilling our purpose to the upper class who doesn't give a shit about us beyond what we do for them and how little we will do it for.

If we want change we're gonna have to stop working. We're going to have to deprive them of products they sell, of our taxes, of our low cost labor.

And the strike that UAW is planning in May 2028 has inspired a lot of others to start looking at the opportunity to join in.

If you haven't heard of it yet, a strike is when workers organize and stop showing up for work. And a general strike is a mass strike across various industries around similar demands or bargaining positions.

There have been multiple calls for a general strike since then, predominantly from individuals and groups on social media, which has often resulted in confusion about what a general strike would actually look like. To be clear, a general strike is not a protest or a rally, a single picket line, or a boycott. It is, as I’ve previously defined, “a labor action in which a significant number of workers from a number of different industries who comprise a majority of the total labor force within a particular city, region, or country come together to take collective action.”

Throughout history, workers have used this tactic as a nuclear option to shut down entire cities when needed, including Philadelphia in 1835, Seattle in 1919, and beyond.[...]

If even four or five of the unions representing the workers mentioned above banded together in a nationwide general strike, the entire country would grind to a halt. When Shawn Fain asks his fellow unions to set the timer for May 2028, what he’s really saying is, get ready to shut sh*t down and level the playing field between bosses and workers once and for all.

JOIN A UNION. AND TALK ABOUT THIS.

And make one of the demands out to be an end of American support to countries participating in apartheid and genocide.

End the taxes for police budgets and settlements. If they want police departments so bad then they should FIND funding for themselves like the government makes USPS do.

One of the biggest pushbacks we hear is that there is never any official backing for calls to a general strike. Well here it is! Make sure you tell EVERYONE

This could be a global strike if other countries choose to participate on the same date

No, I don't think Palestine has 3 years so in the mean time join a union, keep protesting, start rioting, answer Every call to action coming from a Palestine and Sudan and the DRC and sign this strike card

[mostlysignssomeportents]

When private equity destroys your hospital

I'm on tour with my new novel The Bezzle! Catch me TOMORROW in PHOENIX (Changing Hands, Feb 29) then Tucson (Mar 9-10), San Francisco (Mar 13), and more!

As someone who writes a lot of fiction about corporate crime, I naturally end up spending a lot of time being angry about corporate crime. It's pretty goddamned enraging. But the fiction writer in me is especially upset at how cartoonishly evil the perps are – routinely doing things that I couldn't ever get away with putting in a novel.

Beyond a doubt, the most cartoonishly evil characters are the private equity looters. And the most cartoonishly evil private equity looters are the ones who get involved in health care.

(Buckle up.)

Writing for The American Prospect, Maureen Tcacik details a national scandal: the collapse of PE-backed hospital chain Steward Health, a company that bought and looted hospitals up and down the country, starving them of everything from heart valves to prescription paper, ripping off suppliers, doctors and nurses, and callously exposing patients to deadly risk:

https://prospect.org/health/2024-02-27-scenes-from-bat-cave-steward-health-florida/

Steward occupies a very special place in the private equity looting cycle. Private equity companies arrange themselves on a continuum of indiscriminate depravity. At the start of the continuum are PE funds that buy productive and useful firms (everything from hospitals to car-washes) using "leveraged buyouts." That means that they borrow money to buy the company and use the company itself as collateral: it's like you getting a bank-loan to buy your neighbor's mortgage out from under them, and using your neighbor's house as collateral for that loan.

Once the buyout is done, the PE fund pays itself a "special dividend" (stealing money the business needs to survive) and then starts charging the business a "management fee" for the PE fund's expertise. To pay for all this, the PE bosses start to hack away at the company. Quality declines. So do wages. Prices go up. The company changes suppliers, opting for cheaper alternatives, often stiffing the old company. There are mass layoffs. The remaining employees end up doing three peoples' jobs, for lower wages, with fewer materials of lower quality.

Eventually, that top-feeding PE company finds a more desperate, more ham-fisted PE company to unload the business onto. That middle-feeding company also does a leveraged buyout, pays itself another special dividend, cuts wages, staffing and quality even further. They switch to even worse suppliers and stiff the last batch. Prices go up even higher.

Then – you guessed it – the middle-feeding PE company finds an even more awful PE bottom-feeder to unload the company onto. That bottom feeder does it all again, without even pretending to leave the business in condition to do its job. The company is a shambling zombie at this point, often producing literal garbage in place of the products that made its reputation. Employees' paychecks bounce, or don't show up at all. The company stops bothering to pay the lawyers that have been fending off its creditors. Those lawyers sue the company, too.

That's the kind of PE company Steward Health was, and, as the name suggests, Steward Health is in the business of stripping away the very last residue of value from community hospitals. As you might imagine, this gets pretty fucking ugly.

Steward owns 32 hospitals up and down the country, though its holdings are dwindling as the company walks away from its debt-burdened holdings, after years of neglect that have rendered them unfit for use as health facilities – or for any other purpose. Tcacik's piece offers a snapshot of one such hospital: Florida's Rockledge Regional Medical Center, just eight miles from Cape Canaveral.

Rockledge is a disaster. The fifth floor was, at one point, home to 5,000 bats.

Five.

Thousand.

Bats.

(Rockledge stiffed the exterminators.)

The bats were just the beginning. One of the internal sewage pipes ruptured. Whole sections of the hospital were literally full of shit, oozing out of the walls and ceiling, slopping over medical equipment.

That's an urgent situation for any hospital, but for Rockledge, it's catastrophic, because Rockledge is a hospital without any hospital supplies. Steward has stiffed the companies that supply "heart valves, urology lasers, Impella catheters, cardiac catheterization balloons, slings for lifting heavier patients, blood and urine test reagents, and most recently, prescription paper." Key medical equipment has been repossessed. So have the Pepsi machines. The hospital cafeteria had its supply of cold cuts repossessed:

https://www.reddit.com/r/massachusetts/comments/1agc1j4/comment/kolicqo/

It's not just Steward's nonpayments that reek of impending doom. Its payments also bear the hallmarks of a scam artist on the brink of blowing off the con. The company recently paid off a vendor with five separate checks for $1m, each drawn on "a random hospital in Utah" (Steward recently walked away from its Utah hospitals; its partners there are suing it for stealing $18m on their way out the door).

This company – which owns 32 hospitals! – has resorted to gambits like sending photos of fake checks to doctors it hasn't paid in months as "proof" that the money was coming (the checks arrived 22 days later).

Steward owes so much money to its employees – $1.66m to just one doctors' group. But the medical staff keep doing their jobs, and are reluctant to speak on the record, thanks to Steward's reputation for vicious retaliation. Those health workers keep showing up to take care of patients, even as the hospital crumbles around them. One clinician told Tcacik: "I watched a bed collapse underneath a [patient] who had just undergone hip surgery."

Rockledge has nine elevators, but only five of them work – the other four have been broken for a year. The hospital's fourth floor has been converted to "a graveyard of broken beds." The sinks are clogged, or filled with foul gunk. There's black mold. Nurses have noted on the maintenance tags that the repair service refuses to attend the hospital until their overdue bills are paid. The fifteen-person on-site maintenance team was cut to just two workers.

Steward is just the latest looting owner of Rockledge. After the Great Financial Crisis, private equity consultants helped sell it to Health Management Associates. The hospital's CEO took home a $10m bonus for that sale and exited; Health Management Associates then quickly became embroiled in a Medicare fraud and kickback scandal. Soon after, Rockledge was passed on to Community Health Systems, who then sold it on to Rockledge.

Steward, meanwhile, was at that time owned by an even bigger private equity giant, Cerberus, which then sold Steward off. That deal was performatively complex and hid all kinds of mischief. Prior to Cerberus's sell-off of Steward, they sold off Steward's real-estate. The buyer was Medical Properties Trust, who gave Cerberus $1.25b for the real-estate: three hospitals in Florida and three more in Ohio. Steward then contracted to operate these hospitals on MPT's behalf, and pay MPT rent for the real-estate.

This complex arrangement was key to siphoning value out of the hospital and to keeping angry creditors at bay – if you can't figure out who owes you money, it's a lot harder to collect on the debt. The scheme was masterminded by Steward founder/CEO Ralph de la Torre. De la Torre is notorious for taking a massive dividend out of the company while it owed $1.4b to its creditors. He bought a $40m yacht with the money.

De la Torre was once feted as a business genius who would "disrupt" healthcare. But as Steward's private jet hops around "Corfu, Santorini, St. Maarten and Antigua" as its hospitals literally crumble, he's becoming less popular. In Massachusetts, politicians have railed against Steward and de la Torre (Governor Healey wants the company to leave the state "as soon as possible").

Florida, by contrast, is much more friendly to Steward. The state Health and Human Services Committee chair Randy Fine is an ardent admirer of hospital privatization and is currently campaigning to sell off the last community hospital in Brevard County. The state inspectors are likewise remarkably tolerant of Steward's little peccadillos. The quasi-governmental agency that inspects hospitals has awarded this shit-and-bat-filled, elevator-free, understaffed rotting hulk "A" grades for quality.

These inspectors jointly represent a mismatched assortment of private and public agencies, dominated by a nonprofit called Leapfrog, the brainchild of Harvard public-health prof Lucian Leape, who founded it in 2000. Leapfrog likes to tout its "transparent" assessment criteria, and Steward are experts at hitting those criteria, spending the exact minimum to tick every box that Leapfrog inspectors use as proxies for overall quality and safety.

This is a pretty great example of Goodhart's Law: "every measurement eventually becomes a target, whereupon it ceases to be a good measurement":

https://xkcd.com/2899/

But despite Steward's increasingly furious creditors and its decaying facilities, the company remains bullish on its ability to continue operations. Medical Properties Trust – the real estate investment trust that is nominally a separate company from Steward – recently hosted a conference call to reassure Wall Street investors that it would be a going concern. When a Bank of America analyst asked MPT's CFO how this could possibly be, given the facility's dire condition and Steward's degraded state, the CFO blithely assured him that the company would get bailouts: "We own hospitals no one wants to see closed."

That's the thing about PE and health-care. The looters who buy out every health-care facility in a region understand that this makes them too big to fail: no matter how dangerous the companies they drain become, local governments will continue to prop them up. Look at dialysis, a market that's been cornered by private equity rollups. Today, if you need this lifesaving therapy, there's a good chance that every accessible facility is owned by a private equity fund that has fired all its qualified staff and ceased sterilizing its needles. Otherwise healthy people who visit these clinics sometimes die due to operator error. But they chug along, because no dialysis clinics is worse that "dialysis clinics where unqualified sadists sometimes kill you with dirty needles":

https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/the-dirty-business-of-clean-blood

The bad news is that private equity has thoroughly colonized the entire medical system. They took hospitals, fired the doctors, then took over the doctors' groups that provided outsource staff to the hospital:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/04/a-mind-forever-voyaging/#prop-bets

It's illegal for private equity companies to own doctors' practices (doctors have to own these), but they obfuscated the crime with a paper-thin pretext that they got away with despite its obvious bullshittery:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/05/21/profitable-butchers/#looted

The financier who decides whether you live or die depends on an algorithm that literally sets a tolerable level of preventable deaths for the patients trapped in the practice:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/05/any-metric-becomes-a-target/#hca

Private equity also took over emergency rooms and boobytrapped them with "surprise billing" – junk fees that ran to thousands of dollars that you had to pay even if the hospital was in network with your insurer. They made billions from this, and spent a many millions from that booty keeping the scam alive with scare ads:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/04/21/all-in-it-together/#doctor-patient-unity

The whole health stack is colonized by private equity-backed monopolies. Even your hospital bed!

https://pluralistic.net/2022/01/05/hillrom/#baxter-international

Then there's residential care. Private equity cornered many regional markets on nursing homes and turned them into slaughterhouses, places where you go to die, not live:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/02/23/acceptable-losses/#disposable-olds

The palliative care sector is also captured by private equity. PE bosses hire vast teams of fast-talking salespeople who con vulnerable older people into entering an end-of-life system before they are ready to die. Thanks to loose regulation, the nation is filled with fake hospices that can rake in millions from Medicare while denying all care to their patients (hospice patients don't get life-extending medication or procedures, by definition):

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

If you survive this long enough, Medicare eventually tells the hospice that you're clearly not dying and you get kicked off their rolls. Now you have to go through the lengthy bureaucratic nightmare of convincing the system – which was previously informed that you were at death's door – that you are actually viable and need to start getting care again (good luck with that).

If that kills you, guess what? Private equity has rolled up funeral homes up and down the country, and they will scam your survivors just as hard as the medical system that killed you did:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/09/09/high-cost-of-dying/#memento-mori

The PE sector spent more than a trillion dollars over the past decade buying up healthcare companies, and it has trillions more in "dry powder" allocated for further medical acquisitions. Why not? As the CFO of Medical Properties Trust told that Bank of America analyst last week, when you "own hospitals no one wants to see closed." you literally can't fail, no matter how many people you murder.

The PE sector is a reminder that the crimes people commit for money far outstrip the crimes they commit for ideology. Even the most ideological killers are horrified by the murders their profit-motivated colleagues commit.

Last year, Tkacic wrote about the history of IG Farben, the German company that built Monowitz, a private slave-labor camp up the road from Auschwitz to make the materiel it was gouging Hitler's Wehrmacht on:

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

Farben bought the cheapest possible slaves from Auschwitz, preferentially sourcing women and children. These slaves were worked to death at a rate that put Auschwitz's wholesale murder in the shade. Farben's slaves died an average of just three months after starting work at Monowitz. The situation was so abominable, so unconscionable, that the SS officers who provided outsource guard-labor to Monowitz actually wrote to Berlin to complain about the cruelty.

The Nuremberg trials are famous for the Nazi officers who insisted that they were "just following order" but were nonetheless executed for their crimes. 24 Farben executives were also tried at Nuremberg, where they offered a very different defense: "We had a fiduciary duty to our shareholders to maximize our profits." 19 of the 24 were acquitted on that basis.

PE is committed to an ideology that is far worse than any form of racial animus or other bias. As a sector, it is committed to profit above all other values. As a result, its brutality knows no bounds, no decency, no compassion. Even the worst crimes we commit for hate are nothing compared to the crimes we commit for greed.

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

https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/28/5000-bats/retaliation#charnel-house

[switchcase]

✨ You Are American, Poor, and Have Some Sort of Health Problem ✨

This is not intended to say these things are easy to obtain or will be obtainable in every single circumstance. But especially for new adults, people who just started having health problems, people who have recently fallen on hard times, you may see things that you didn't know about.

Ethics:

Brush up on your patient rights. Knowing your rights and options is important.

Every hospital has a patient rights advocate.

There are typically state-wide patient rights and disability rights organizations.

There are state and federal boards that practitioners are licensed in. Reporting a practitioner to the board does NOT require a lawyer or court money. You are just reporting them/their behavior for the board(s) to investigate.

Cost:

Medicaid is a government program based on income, not disability. You can enroll during Open Enrollment at the end of the year or in special circumstances. This is the most commonly known one.

State, county, or city health insurance programs. Likely not available in very rural areas, but sometimes is. There is often a program for individuals who are low income but ineligible for Medicaid--each program has different names. Calling 2-1-1 or searching "state/county/city low income health insurance" will bring it up.

Hospital Charity Care. Charity Care are laws that exist in states that says people under a certain income level can have their medical costs/debts waived. The exact specifics will depend on the state. Hospitals try to hide this info on their website so if you can't find it best to ask directly for a charity care application and about eligibility with the billing dept or patient rights advocate.

Community clinics and teaching institutions generally offer very low cost care, and community clinics in particular will let you know about programs you may be eligible for.

There may be prescription cost help programs in your area.

Vocational Rehabilitation is a government program that exists in every state. Their goal is to get you functioning well enough to work or go to school. Which means they will pay for: doctors appts including diagnostic tests, disability aids, training, school costs, etc. You will not owe them if you end up unable to work/go to school.

You can write off medical costs and medically necessary items on your taxes. You can also get your taxes done for free if you're low income. Just let them know the costs if you aren't doing it yourself. This includes accessible home renovations, disability aids, regular appointment costs.

Search for bill help in your area or call 2-1-1 again. Much of the time, there will be charity organizations that assist with all sorts of bills. Most of them will be churches.

If you have a condition that is generally costly, you probably know this but if you don't, search "[condition] charity". Sometimes there are orgs that exist specifically to help fund care for that condition, eg the various MS orgs.

IF YOU ARE APPLYING FOR SSI/SSDI: be very aware that amounts you fundraise may be counted as your income/assets unless you SPECIFICALLY tell them that you're getting it as charity/on loan! If you are currently on SSI, fundraising from your personal acct does in fact affect your eligibility to stay on SSI. Be careful.

Logistics:

For transportation: sometimes, not always, there are local programs for getting you to/from doctors appointments. This can be helpful if public transport is not accessible to you.

Disability lawyers do not cost you money up front, they take the money from your backpay IF you win your case.

[contemplatingoutlander]

This is an excellent NY Times interactive article, so the above link is a gift 🎁 link so anyone can read the entire article, even if they don't subscribe to the NY Times. Here are some excerpts.

Upending the outcome of a free and fair presidential election is no minor endeavor. It requires time, energy, money and, especially, an awful lot of people willing to do the wrong thing — or at least go along with it. The network of people who allegedly helped Donald Trump try, without success, to stay in power more than two and a half years ago may seem hopelessly chaotic, but there was a method to the madness. American elections are, by design, entrusted to the states and therefore decentralized. To meddle in them requires national masterminds working hand in glove with plotters at the state and local levels — a tangle of conspirators, enablers and indulgent bystanders as messy and sprawling as our democracy itself. And while it can be tempting to downplay or dismiss the entire nightmare as the pathetic machinations of crackpots and fringe figures or even to wave it off as ancient history, that would be a mistake. Those who worked to overturn the 2020 election are the same kinds of people and groups Mr. Trump would surely surround himself with if elected to a second term: unscrupulous or timid federal and state officials, ethically flexible lawyers and Republican yes men and women. Except that in 2025 those figures would have a better sense of how to dismantle the guardrails that once stood in their way and how to exploit the fault lines and weaknesses in our electoral process. [emphasis added]

Below is the final graphic in the article that shows all the people connected with Trump's coup attempt, including some who refused to go along with it:

This interactive article is well worth reading, and I invite you to use the above gift link to do so.

______________ The text of this article is by Michelle Cottle; the graphics are by Taylor Maggiacomo and Norman Eisen.

[takiki16]

Just because I’ve seen this mistake crop up a lot lately in the context of the Alex Jones meltdown and it’s directly relevant to my irl job and it bugs me a little:

In the American legal system: a plaintiff’s lawyer is NOT a prosecutor

The USian legal system has two big general categories of legal cases: civil and criminal.  PLAINTIFFS are for civil law.  PROSECUTORS are for criminal law.*  Civil and criminal cases use a lot of the same procedures and terminology (subpoenas, cross examination, discovery, restitution, etc), so it’s understandable people get them mixed up.

The Alex Jones/Infowars case is a CIVIL defamation suit.  Mark Bankston, the lucky guy who got to grill Alex Jones about those leaked texts, is the plaintiff’s attorney.  Civil cases are about money, not about prison time or about how much the police/prison system can punish you.  If you want to sue your neighbor for money to pay for the time they crashed into your car and broke your leg, you hire a plaintiff’s lawyer and file a lawsuit. 

Pretty much anyone - good, bad, or ugly - can try to hire a plaintiff’s lawyer.  Johnny Depp hired a plaintiffs’ attorney to sue Amber Heard.  The families of the children who were killed at the Sandy Hook school shooting do not have the power to put Alex Jones in jail for the shit he’s spewed.  What they and Mark Bankston are trying to do is get money out of him for the damage he’s caused in their lives.   Prosecutors and criminal charges are not involved...YET.

PROSECUTORS (also called district attorneys, or DAs) are government attorneys who come after people for alleged crimes they have committed.   If a police officer arrests you for a crime, they file a report to their local prosecutor’s office.  A prosecutor will read that report and decide what, if any charges, to bring against you when you show up in front of the judge - do you get a misdemeanor weed hold for community service, or do you get felony possession for sale carrying up to 4 years prison? 

Prosecutors DO NOT work on behalf of individual clients - they may falsely CLAIM to be representing victims, but legally they are supposed to represent the concept of the state, the government, or “the people.”  This is why criminal cases are named “People vs. [client name here].”  The implication is that the defendant has caused harm to their community, and the prosecutor is the lawyer for that community trying to prove it.  Prosecutors also do not openly work to get money - they are generally looking for things that affect your liberty (i.e. jail, prison, probation, community service, etc). 

Prosecutors are cops in suits - when we say ACAB, we should ABSOLUTELY be including prosecutors. They will be in charge of any plea bargain you are offered.  Your local district attorney has IMMENSE power over the community.  They can choose to run on progressive platforms...but more often they choose to feed mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex.  This is why it is INCREDIBLY important not only to protest against the police and the injustices they perpetuate, but to pay attention to your local district attorney election and show up for jury duty.

*side note: i am AWARE that if you reeeeeally get into the weeds of local county systems the terminology is blurred, but i’m speaking in broad strokes here GIMME SOME SLACK