#philadelphia taxes | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

mariacallous · 3 months

Note

lol philadelphia inquirer bodying nyt

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/first-presidential-debate-joe-biden-donald-trump-withdraw-20240629.html

President Joe Biden’s debate performance was a disaster. His disjointed responses and dazed look sparked calls for him to drop out of the presidential race.

But lost in the hand wringing was Donald Trump’s usual bombastic litany of lies, hyperbole, bigotry, ignorance, and fear mongering. His performance demonstrated once again that he is a danger to democracy and unfit for office.

In fact, the debate about the debate is misplaced. The only person who should withdraw from the race is Trump.

Trump, 78, has been on the political stage for eight years marked by chaos, corruption, and incivility. Why go back to that?

To build himself up, Trump constantly tears the country down. There is no shining city on the hill. It’s just mourning in America.

Throughout the debate, Trump repeatedly said we are a “failing” country. He called the United States a “third world nation.” He said, “we’re living in hell” and “very close to World War III.”

“People are dying all over the place,” Trump said, later adding “we’re literally an uncivilized country now.”

Trump told more than 30 lies during the debate to go with the more than 30,000 mistruths told during his four years as president. He dodged the CNN moderators’ questions, took no responsibility for his actions, and blamed others, mainly Biden, for everything that is wrong in the world.

Trump’s response to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection he fueled was farcical. He said a “relatively small number of people” went to the Capitol and many were “ushered in by the police.”

After scheming to overturn the 2020 election, Trump refused to say if he would accept the results of the 2024 election. Unless, of course, he wins.

The debate served as a reminder of what another four years of Trump would look like. More lies, grievance, narcissism, and hate. Supporters say they like Trump because he says whatever he thinks. But he mainly spews raw sewage.

Trump attacks the military. He denigrates the Justice Department and judges. He belittles the FBI and the CIA. He picks fights with allies and cozies up to dictators.

Trump is an unserious carnival barker running for the most serious job in the world. During his last term, Trump served himself and not the American people.

Trump spent chunks of time watching TV, tweeting, and hanging out at his country clubs. Over his four-year term, Trump played roughly 261 rounds of golf.

As president, Trump didn’t read the daily intelligence briefs. He continued to use his personal cell phone, allowing Chinese spies to listen to his calls. During one Oval Office meeting, Trump shared highly classified intelligence with the Russian foreign minister and ambassador.

Trump’s term did plenty of damage and had few accomplishments. The much-hyped wall didn’t get built. Infrastructure week was a recurring joke. Giant tax cuts made the rich richer, while fueling massive deficits for others to pay for years. His support for coal, oil drilling and withdrawal from the Paris Agreement worsened the growing impact of climate change.

Trump stacked the judiciary with extreme judges consisting mainly of white males, including a number who the American Bar Association rated as not qualified. A record number of cabinet officials were fired or left the office. The West Wing was in constant chaos and infighting.

Many Trump appointees exited under a cloud of corruption, grifting and ethical scandals. Trump’s children made millions off the White House. His dilettante son-in-law got $2 billion from the Saudi government for his fledgling investment firm even though he never managed money before.

Trump’s mismanagement of the pandemic resulted in tens of thousands of needless deaths. He boasts about stacking the Supreme Court with extreme right-wingers who are stripping away individual rights, upending legal precedents, and making the country less safe. If elected, Trump may add to the court’s conservative majority.

Of course, there were the unprecedented two impeachments. Now, Trump is a convicted felon who is staring at three more criminal indictments. He is running for president to stay out of prison.

If anything, Trump doesn’t deserve to be on the presidential debate stage. Why even give him a platform?

Trump allegedly stole classified information and tried to overturn an election. His plans for a second term are worse than the last one. We cannot be serious about letting such a crooked clown back in the White House.

Yes, Biden had a horrible night. He’s 81 and not as sharp as he used to be. But Biden on his worst day remains lightyears better than Trump on his best.

Biden must show that he is up to the job. This much is clear: He has a substantive record of real accomplishments, fighting the pandemic, combating climate change, investing in infrastructure, and supporting working families and the most vulnerable.

Biden has surrounded himself with experienced people who take public service seriously. He has passed major bipartisan legislation despite a dysfunctional Republican House majority.

Biden believes in the best of America. He has rebuilt relationships with allies around the world and stood up to foes like Russia and China.

There was only one person at the debate who does not deserve to be running for president. The sooner Trump exits the stage, the better off the country will be.

274 notes · View notes

whencyclopedia · 9 days

Photo

Constitutional Convention

The Constitutional Convention was held at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from 25 May to 17 September 1787. Spurred on by economic troubles left over from the American Revolution and compounded by the weak Articles of Confederation, delegates from twelve states met to draft a new framework of governance, the United States Constitution, which created a stronger federal government.

Background

In March 1781, the Articles of Confederation went into effect as the framework of governance for the fledgling United States, after having been ratified by all thirteen states. Under the Articles, each state essentially operated as a semi-independent republic, bound to one another in a loose 'perpetual union'. The federal government – which at the time consisted only of a unicameral Congress – was intentionally kept weak, to ensure the sovereignty and independence of the states. Congress' only real powers were those relating to war and foreign affairs, and even then, it needed the consent of at least nine states before it could declare war or borrow money from foreign lenders. The framers believed that they needed to keep the federal government weak to protect the rights and liberties of American citizens; their recent experience with the British Parliament seemed to suggest that a powerful central authority would not hesitate to squander those rights. But, before long it would become apparent that weak governments carried their own sets of issues that would be just as dangerous.

The most glaring problem was Congress' inability to levy its own taxes. Rather than raise its own money, Congress instead had to rely on donations from the states to fill the national treasury. But, especially after states began to focus on their own interests after the end of the American Revolutionary War, these donations were not consistently forthcoming. This left Congress with no funds to pay federal soldiers or meet its many other financial obligations. Nor did Congress have the power to compel the states to send money or comply with any other federal legislation. Several attempts to amend the Articles to allow Congress to raise money through tariffs were vetoed by the states. Additionally, a lack of unified foreign policy left Congress ill-equipped to deal with foreign powers, with Britain, France, and Spain all putting restrictions on American trade that the federal government could not retaliate against. Finally, Congress had been unable to respond to Shays' Rebellion when it broke out in western Massachusetts in late 1786. Although the rebellion was eventually suppressed by a privately funded army, it led to fears that future insurrections would not be crushed so easily.

For these, and other, reasons, many Americans became convinced that the Articles of Confederation were not working and that unless the Articles were revised, the United States would soon unravel. This reality weighed heavily on the minds of the delegates who met in Annapolis, Maryland, on 11 September 1786. Representing five states (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, and Virginia), the delegates had merely been sent to discuss trade between states. But as their discussion touched on other issues caused by the weak Articles of Confederation, the delegates realized that something drastic had to be done. In their final report to Congress, drafted by Alexander Hamilton of New York, the delegates proposed that a constitutional convention should be held in Philadelphia the following May to discuss revisions to the Articles. On 21 February 1787, Congress endorsed the suggestions of the Annapolis Convention, and stated that it would write up a report on which changes to the Articles were necessary. Ultimately, twelve of the thirteen states decided to send delegates to the upcoming Constitutional Convention – the sole holdout was Rhode Island, which believed there was nothing wrong with the existing Articles of Confederation and refused to send delegates to amend them.

#History #American #ArticlesofConfederation #Congress'#WHE #[#]

41 notes · View notes

gatheringbones · 1 year

Text

[“There is not one banking sector. There are two—one for the poor and one for the rest of us—just as there are two housing markets and two labor markets. The duality of American life can make it difficult for some of us who benefit from the current arrangement to remember that the poor are exploited laborers, exploited consumers, and exploited borrowers, precisely because we are not. Many features of our society are not broken, just bifurcated. For some, a home creates wealth; for others, a home drains it. For some, access to credit extends financial power; for others, it destroys it.

It is quite understandable, then, that well-fed Americans can be perplexed by the poor, even disappointed in them, believing that they accept stupidly bad deals on impulse or because they don’t know any better. But what if those deals are the only ones on offer? What good is financial literacy training for people forced to choose the best bad option?

Poverty isn’t simply the condition of not having enough money. It’s the condition of not having enough choice and being taken advantage of because of that. When we ignore the role that exploitation plays in trapping people in poverty, we end up designing policy that is weak at best and ineffective at worst. When legislation lifts incomes at the bottom—say, by expanding the Child Tax Credit or by raising the minimum wage—without addressing the housing crisis, those gains are often recouped by landlords, not wholly by the families the legislation was intended to help. A 2019 study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia found that when states raised minimum wages, families found it easier to pay rent. But landlords quickly responded to the wage bumps by increasing rents, which diluted the effect of the policy. (This happened after the COVID-19 rescue packages, too, but commentators preferred discussing the matter using the bloodless language of inflation.)

In Tommy Orange’s début novel, There There, a man trying to describe the problem of suicides on Native American reservations says, “Kids are jumping out the windows of burning buildings, falling to their deaths. And we think the problem is that they’re jumping.” The poverty debate has suffered from a similar kind of myopia. For the past half century, we’ve approached the poverty question by attending to the poor themselves—posing questions about their work ethic, say, or their welfare benefits—when we should have been focusing on the fire. The question that should serve as a looping incantation, the one we should ask every time we drive past a tent encampment, those tarped American slums smelling of asphalt and bodies, every time we see someone asleep on the bus, slumped over in work clothes, is simply: Who benefits? Not Why don’t you find a better job? or Why don’t you move? or Why don’t you stop taking out such bad loans? but Who is feeding off this?”]

matthew desmond, from poverty: by america, 2023

#matthew desmond #history stuff #currently reading #cw suicide

228 notes · View notes

dreaminginthedeepsouth · 9 days

Text

On this day in 1787, thirty-nine brave men signed the proposed U.S. Constitution, recognizing all who are born in the United States or by naturalization, have become citizens

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

September 17, 2024

Heather Cox Richardson

Sep 18, 2024

In 1761, 55-year-old Benjamin Franklin attended the coronation of King George III and later wrote that he expected the young monarch’s reign would “be happy and truly glorious.” Fifteen years later, in 1776, he helped to draft and then signed the Declaration of Independence. An 81-year-old man in 1787, he urged his colleagues at the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia to rally behind the new plan of government they had written.

“I confess that there are several parts of this constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them,” he said, “For having lived long, I have experienced many instances of being obliged by better information, or fuller consideration, to change opinions even on important subjects, which I once thought right, but found to be otherwise.”

The framers of the new constitution hoped it would fix the problems of the first attempt to create a new nation. During the Revolutionary War, the Second Continental Congress had hammered out a plan for a confederation of states, but with fears of government tyranny still uppermost in lawmakers’ minds, they centered power in the states rather than in a national government.

The result—the Articles of Confederation—was a “firm league of friendship” among the 13 new states, overseen by a congress of men chosen by the state legislatures and in which each state had one vote. The new pact gave the federal government few duties and even fewer ways to meet them. Indicating their inclinations, in the first substantive paragraph the authors of the agreement said: “Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.”

Within a decade, the states were refusing to contribute money to the new government and were starting to contemplate their own trade agreements with other countries. An economic recession in 1786 threatened farmers in western Massachusetts with the loss of their farms when the state government in the eastern part of the state refused relief; in turn, when farmers led by Revolutionary War captain Daniel Shays marched on Boston, propertied men were so terrified their own property would be seized that they raised their own army for protection.

The new system clearly could not protect property of either the poor or the rich and thus faced the threat of landless mobs. The nation seemed on the verge of tearing itself apart, and the new Americans were all too aware that both England and Spain were standing by, waiting to make the most of the opportunities such chaos would create.

And so, in 1786, leaders called for a reworking of the new government centered not on the states, but on the people of the nation represented by a national government. The document began, “We the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union….”

The Constitution established a representative democracy, a republic, in which three branches of government would balance each other to prevent the rise of a tyrant. Congress would write all “necessary and proper” laws, levy taxes, borrow money, pay the nation’s debts, establish a postal service, establish courts, declare war, support an army and navy, organize and call forth “the militia to execute the Laws of the Union” and “provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States.”

The president would execute the laws, but if Congress overstepped, the president could veto proposed legislation. In turn, Congress could override a presidential veto. Congress could declare war, but the president was the commander in chief of the army and had the power to make treaties with foreign powers. It was all quite an elegant system of paths and tripwires, really.

A judicial branch would settle disputes between inhabitants of the different states and guarantee every defendant a right to a jury trial.

In this system, the new national government was uppermost. The Constitution provided that “[t]he Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States,” and promised that “the United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion….”

Finally, it declared: “This Constitution, and the Laws of the United States which shall be made in Pursuance thereof; and all Treaties made, or which shall be made, under the Authority of the United States, shall be the supreme Law of the Land; and the Judges in every State shall be bound thereby, any Thing in the Constitution or Laws of any State to the Contrary notwithstanding.”

“I agree to this Constitution with all its faults, if they are such,” Franklin said after a weary four months spent hashing it out, “because I think a general Government necessary for us,” and, he said, it “astonishes me…to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does; and I think it will astonish our enemies, who are waiting with confidence to hear that our…States are on the point of separation, only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats.”

“On the whole,” he said to his colleagues, “I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the Convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility—and to make manifest our unanimity, put his name to this instrument.”

On September 17, 1787, they did.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#U.S.Constitution #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson #history #American History #Benjamin Franklin

25 notes · View notes

tax-experts · 1 year

Text

One of the hallmarks of the top accounting firms in Philadelphia is their expertise and specialization. These firms often have a team of highly qualified and certified professionals, including Certified Public Accountants (CPAs) and financial experts who have a deep understanding of the complexities of both state and federal tax regulations.

#accountants in philadelphia #accounting firms near me #small business accounting services #accounting services #small business accountant #tax services philadelphia #bookkeeper for small businesses #accountant philadelphia #philadelphia taxes #tax services

0 notes

odinsblog · 9 months

Text

“All this happening at once is really startling,” said Joseph Schwieterman, a DePaul University professor who researches intercity bus travel and directs the university’s Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development. “You’re taking mobility away from disproportionately low-income and mobility-challenged citizens who don’t have other options.”

Roughly three-quarters of intercity bus riders have annual incomes of less than $40,000. More than a quarter would not make their trip if bus service was not available, according to surveys by Midwestern governments reviewed by DePaul University.

Intercity bus riders are also disproportionately minorities, people with disabilities, and unemployed travelers.

A spokesperson for Greyhound, which is now owned by German company FlixMobility, said it strives to offer customers the most options for connections, but has “encountered challenges in some instances.” The spokesperson also said they “actively engage with local stakeholders to emphasize the importance of supporting affordable and equitable intercity bus travel.”

The terminal closures have been accelerating as Greyhound, the largest carrier, sells its valuable terminals to investors, including investment firm Alden Global Capital.

Last year, Alden subsidiary Twenty Lake Holdings purchased 33 Greyhound stations for $140 million. Alden is best known for buying up local newspapers like The Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News and The Baltimore Sun, cutting staff, and selling some of the iconic downtown buildings.

Alden has started to sell the Greyhound depots to real estate developers, speeding up the timetable for closures.

“I don’t know the specific details of each building, but it is clear what is happening here: an important piece of transit infrastructure is being sacrificed in the name of higher profits,” said Stijn Van Nieuwerburgh, a professor of real estate at Columbia Business School.

“The public sector has turned a cold shoulder to buses,” DePaul’s Schwieterman said. “We subsidize public transit abundantly, but we don’t see this as an extension of our transit system. Few governments view it as their mandate.”

Bus terminals are costly for companies to operate, maintain and pay property taxes on. Many have deteriorated over the years, becoming blighted properties struggling with homelessness, crime and other issues.

But terminal closures cause a ripple effect of problems.

Travelers can’t use the bathroom, stay out of the harsh weather or get something to eat while they wait. People transferring late at night or early in the morning, sometimes with long layovers, have no place to safely wait or sleep. It’s worse in the cold, rain, snow or extreme heat.

Bus carriers often try to switch to curbside service when a terminal closes, but curbside bus service can clog up city streets with passengers and their luggage, snarl traffic, increase pollution, and frustrate local business owners. In Philadelphia, a Greyhound terminal closure and switch to curbside service after its lease ended turned into a “humanitarian disaster” and “municipal disgrace” with people waiting on street corners.

(continue reading)

#politics #infrastructure #bussing #public transportation #mass transit #mass transportation #capitalism #economic racism #the commons #greyhound #flixmobility #greyhound bus #greyhound bus lines #bus stops

71 notes · View notes

on-partiality · 10 months

Text

Today's the 250th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party so here's some information on the Sons of Liberty, the lead up to the Boston Tea Party and what happened after!

apologies for any inaccuracies, I wrote this pretty late

The conflict between the American colonies and New England started after the French and Indian war ended with the Treaty of Paris on the 10th of February, 1763. The French and Indian war started because of conflicting territory claims in North America between the British and the French. Originally it was fought between only the British Americans and the French colonists with Native Americans helping on either side (especially with the French because they were severely outnumbered). However two years into the war the United Kingdom - except for ireland - decided enough was enough and officially declared a war with France which started a large world-wide conflict over many territories. In the end, the war was won by the Colonial Americans and British, the French lost all of their North American territory and what used to be their territory was split somewhat evenly between the Spanish and the British but that was only sorted out after the British fought in a war against the Spanish called the Anglo-Spanish war (the first one). So a victory, that sounds good for America right? Wrong. Wars are expensive, maintaining an army is expensive and the British were dealing with many other wars in all different territories at around the same time so England had a national debt of nearly 177.645 MILLION modern day USD.

England had a HUGE poverty crisis. They had to come up with a way to get money and quickly so on April the 5th 1764 the British parliament amended their pre-existing Sugar and Molasses Act. A tax on the importation of wine, molasses, indigo and sugar from places that weren't part of Britain, mainly the non-British Caribbean. This act also banned all foreign rum. Then on March the 22nd, 1765 the British parliament passed the stamp act. A tax on playing cards, newspapers, legal documents. The main problem with this tax was that it couldn't be paid in the paper money used in the 13 colonies, it had to be paid off using the British Sterling which wasn't easy to obtain in America. That and paper was possibly the most important resource in the 18th century. Later in October 1765, a Stamp Act Congress was held in Philadelphia to discuss all of the problems with this act. Then on March the 24th the British passed the Quartering Act which stated that if British troops want to stay at your house you have to provide them with food and let them inside of your house. This was a clear invasion of two very basic rights of Englishmen, private property and personal security.

The Americans fought back against these acts like with Boston's non-importation agreement where merchants from Boston agreed not to buy or sell anything from/to Britain and the Golden Hill riot in New York and the Gaspée Affair which was when a group burned a British ship while the soldiers were off looking for smugglers in Rhode Island, the group was then accused of treason. The most notable of all of these protests though was the later Boston Tea Party.

The Boston Tea Party happened because of a group called the Sons of Liberty which was created in 1765 out of a strong hatred of the Stamp Act. They believed that it was ridiculous that the British could tax the Americans when the Americans didn't even have a representative in parliament, their phrase was 'no taxation without representation'. There's a lot of dispute over what kind of organisation the Sons of Liberty actually was. I might go into all of the theories in another post but for the moment if you want to come up with your own idea on it I suggest looking into them yourself, for this post I'm just going to call them a group or organisation because it's pretty ambiguous. Anyway, the Sons of Liberty usually met at liberty poles/liberty trees which are believed to have been marked as meeting places using the Sons of Liberty's flag. The group was founded in Boston in the Massachusetts Bay colony and it's leader was Samuel 'Sam' Adams.

The Sons of Liberty's first big really move was to burn an effigy of the local Stamp Act enforcer, Andrew Oliver and then burn his office and destroyed the house of his associate. The group's protests were more often then not violent but they got their points across. It didn't help when the Boston Massacre happened in 1770, which only further outraged the colonists, expect the Boston Massacre to get it's own in depth post one day because the court trial was super interesting. Then on the 10th of May, 1773 the British made another act called the Tea Act which made it so that the colonists had to pay more for tea that wasn't legally imported. The Tea Act was meant to help the British East India Tea Company because they were making most of Britains money and they'd gone into a huge debt which caused 20-30 English banks to collapse and started the British Credit Crisis of 1772-1773. The problem was that because the imported tea from Britain was really cheap people didn't buy from local businesses which caused farmers to go completely bankrupt. The Tea Act was the final straw for the Sons of Liberty and many Americans.

Britain sent a shipment of East India Company Tea to America and all of the American colonies that the tea was going to be sent to convinced the people on the ship to resign except for Massachusetts. So the Dartmouth, a ship full of tea arrived in Boston Harbour, Samuel Adams called for a meeting at Fanueuil Hall and thousands of people turned up so they had to move meeting places. During the meeting the Colonists discussed possible resolutions, they decided to have a medium group of men watching the tea to make sure it wouldn't be unloaded and pleaded for the ship to leave. The governor of Massachusetts refused to let the ship leave and two more ships arrived. On December the 16th, 1773, Samuel Adams met with the people of Massachusetts again to tell them about the governors refusal, the meeting caused total fury amongst all of the colonists.

In protest of the Tea Act and all of the other taxes the British had put on the Americans, the people ran out of the meeting room, some of them put on Native American costumes both in an attempt to conceal their identity because what they were about to do was illegal and as a symbolic choice to show that America's their country, not Britain. They then ran onto the 3 tea ships while Samuel Adams was telling everyone to calm down and stay for the end of the meeting. And spent 3 hours hurling all of the chests of tea into the water.

The British did not respond well, they believed that the Colonists needed to be punished so they passed the infamous Intolerable Acts which consisted of the Boston Port Act, meant to force Boston to pay for the tea by closing the port until the people of Boston paid for the tea which the Colonists argued was unfair because it was punishing the whole population for something only about half of them did, the Massachusetts Government Act which changed the way that the government of Massachusetts worked by giving people appointed by the British Parliament/King far more power, this made it easier for the British government to manage the Massachusetts Bay colony from England, the Administration of Justice Acts which state that any accused Royal officials can get a trial in England if they don't believe that they would be judged fairly in Massachusetts - which seems like a strange thing to add given how the Boston Massacre trial with John Adams went? - And I've already talked about the last intolerable act, the Quartering act which states that you have to let British troops stay in your house if they want to and you have to give them food.

#amrev #american revolution #american revolutionary war #american history #history #revolutionary war #sons of liberty #boston #boston tea party #massachusetts #world history #military history #on this day #on this date

55 notes · View notes

3416 · 2 years

Text

Inside the strange and secretive business of team-mandated NHL fines

By Joshua Kloke | Mar 27, 2023 | The Athletic

Ryan Hartman walked into the Minnesota Wild practice facility with a sense of resolve. The nine-year NHL forward had been a healthy scratch the previous evening against the Philadelphia Flyers.

But righting a wrong was only one of the items on his to-do list.

“Today,” Hartman said, nodding while looking around the Wild dressing room, “is tax day.”

As he does once a month, Hartman will work his way around the Wild dressing room and collect money from his teammates.

The previous night, Hartman pored over a spreadsheet with updated tallies of who owes what. He sent out a flurry of text messages to teammates: “This is what you owe. I’m coming for you tomorrow.”

Call Hartman what you want: the taxman, the team treasurer, the fine master. Hartman has a volunteer position in charge of handling a consistently growing pot of money accrued from Wild players. Most teams require a player like Hartman because large amounts of money changing hands among teammates is a tradition in the NHL. That money is gathered in large part to encourage team building. Part of the money collected is because players voluntarily have put “money on board,” a practice of promising an amount of money before a game a player will owe should the team win, be it for playing in their hometown or, say, if they’re playing in a milestone game.

And then there’s another practice: getting fined for a variety of unconventional infractions.

“There’s so many things you get fined for,” Maple Leafs defenseman Mark Giordano said.

Not every team fines players. And many that do see it as a dwindling yet good-natured practice. It’s one some veterans believe has merit.

Welcome to the strange, almost-secretive world of team-mandated NHL fines.

–––

Almost a generation ago, Marc-André Fleury was a reserved young goalie trying to man his way through the rules of his new life in the NHL: the unflappable importance of being on time for meetings and flights, the heightened dress codes compared to junior hockey — and, um, being well-mannered.

“There was a guy on Pittsburgh who would always pick his nose in the locker room,” Fleury said. The embarrassment of being caught wasn’t punishment enough. “So every time, guys would shout at him, ‘Hey, 10 bucks.’”

Early in Fleury’s rookie year, he got hit with his own first hefty fine.

“I couldn’t tie my tie,” Fleury said, recalling how then-veteran teammate Marc Bergevin would chirp him relentlessly. “So, I got fined because my tie looked terrible.”

A large percentage of team-directed fines remains contingent on wardrobe choices.

Leafs forward Zach Aston-Reese remembered a former teammate getting fined for wearing Cole Haan shoes. Even with the slowly shifting dress codes among NHL teams, teammates aren’t afraid to dole out fines if a player’s look starts to slip. That goes for accessories, too.

“At training camp, you get a (swag) bag with a bunch of stuff in it,” Maple Leafs defenseman Morgan Rielly said. A former teammate was using it as his travel bag. “We said if he showed up for the next flight with that bag, it’s a $500 fine.”

Most players surveyed for this story agree $500 is the de facto fine amount.

Flyers forward James van Riemsdyk said one of his teammates might get fined this season because “all of his clothes and all of his luggage are either team-issued or NHLPA-issued.”

“You’re in the NHL,” Rielly said. “You’re not supposed to be wearing the same shirt six days in a row. I always think that’s pretty funny.”

It’s always veterans who enforce these kinds of fines.

“This year, we had a younger guy who had a little incident with his wardrobe choice at a dinner,” Buffalo Sabres captain Kyle Okposo said. “Sweatpants on the road. That’s worth a fine. He’s learning.”

Fines don’t stop at wardrobe-related infractions.

“I’m a big believer in the common sense fine,” Columbus Blue Jackets defenseman Erik Gudbranson said. “A cheap one.”

Example: Should an NHL player get caught wearing white socks with dress shoes or leave their towel on the floor after coming out of the shower, these are fineable offenses according to Gudbranson, even if it’s just $50.

“Sometimes it can be funny,” Gudbranson said. “But it can also be a sign of respect.”

Not every team takes this approach, however.

New Jersey Devils defenseman Damon Severson was adamant that the Devils don’t have a strict dress code and, therefore, have barely had to fine any players this season.

“If you want to wear white shoes with dress socks, we don’t give a s— about any of that stuff here,” Severson said. “We believe just in being yourself. If you go back a few years, (former Devils general manager Lou Lamoriello) had rules with the dress code and shaving, but it’s kind of the opposite now — and that’s no disrespect to Lou. We want our personalities to be shown.”

Speaking of grooming habits, van Riemsdyk said if one of his Flyers teammates gets caught with a flashy new haircut, that’s a fine. He admits it’s a struggle for players like him who keep it tight up top. He said, almost quietly out of fear of getting found out by nearby teammates, that he got a haircut a few days prior.

“It almost works the other way: You get a haircut every two or three weeks, it doesn’t look like you’ve gotten a cut. Then you can steer clear of (a fine),” van Riemsdyk said.

Edmonton Oilers forward Derek Ryan knew he was going to get hit with a fine ahead of a game against the Arizona Coyotes on Dec. 7. While taking standard laps in warmup, Ryan bumped into a teammate and fell to the ice.

“My helmet went flying everywhere, stick on the ice,” Ryan said.

Wow, that’s embarrassing, Ryan thought to himself.

Equally embarrassing would be the shame of having to pay for the mistake afterward. Every team The Athletic surveyed agreed that when players fall on the ice during warmups, they’re on the hook for $500.

“I remember I knocked (then-teammate Brendan Shanahan) over in warmups,” Islanders forward Zach Parise recalled of the one season he spent alongside the Hall of Famer. “I wasn’t about to impose a fine for that.”

The rule has taken on different iterations league-wide. Fleury said the Wild charge double if a player loses his helmet. The Nashville Predators go the other way, according to defenseman Ryan McDonagh.

“If you fall on one knee, that’s only half the fine. But if it’s a full wipeout, that’s a full fine. You’ve got to be careful out there,” McDonagh said.

Then there’s the fine players are almost terrified of: being late for a team function, a meeting or a departing bus or flight.

“A team sin,” Severson said.

Driving through downtown Columbus en route to a team gala recently, Blue Jackets forward Sean Kuraly realized he was well behind schedule.

“The fine just stamps that you were late,” Kuraly said. “It’s embarrassing. It’s like you’re the guy who’s not following the things that help the team.”

Leafs forward Noel Acciari remembers during his time with the Florida Panthers that if a player was late for a meeting, they’d be on the hook for the next team dinner.

But that would easily be more expensive than a standard $500 fine, no?

“Especially when you know someone else is paying for dinner,” Acciari joked.

The list of fineable offenses doesn’t stop there: If a player, before puck drop, is taking part in a game of Sewer Ball — which players try to keep a soccer ball from hitting the ground in a circle to limber up — and you kick the ball to the ceiling, that’s a fine. Getting the ball stuck in the ceiling raises the fine even more.

If a cellphone starts ringing in a team meeting? One player said that’s a fineable offense on his Western Conference team.

Fleury recalled getting a $250 fine for breaking a stick.

“I was real mad after a game, and I swung my stick,” he said. “It was a wood stick, too, so it was only $60. So, they made a profit.”

Still, plenty of players surveyed by The Athletic insist they’ve avoided being fined throughout their entire NHL careers.

“You have to really screw up to get fined,” Rielly said.

–––

OK, so you owe money for a fine, and it’s time to pay the piper. Sabres fine collector Zemgus Girgensons offers many payment options.

“I’ve got everything. Venmo, Square, check,” he said.

Every fine keeper throughout the NHL has their own manner of collecting fines, but most of them, like Predators fine keeper Colton Sissons, prefer payment electronically.

“We had to change with the times,” Sissons said, noting how he acquired a Square chip reader to accept payments. Sissons set up a separate bank account just for the team’s fine and money-on-the-board funds, and he owns a credit card for that account if he needs to make team-related purchases.

“It’s a business,” he said, only partly in jest. “I catch guys when we’re stuck on the plane together. They know I don’t take any s—.”

Hartman also uses a credit card swiper to collect fines.

“No excuses. If someone says, ‘I don’t have a check today,’ I’m like, ‘Well, hand me your wallet,’” he said.

There are other methods. Some teams such as the Blues and the Oilers take fines directly out of players’ paychecks.

“You didn’t even have to worry. Which is better, because you know it’s being taken care of,” Acciari said of his time with the Blues.

Some teams, like the Leafs, prefer to keep it old school and deal in cash only.

“It’s a hassle to go to the bank,” Leafs defenseman Justin Holl said.

To mitigate the hassle for Rielly, the Leafs collector, he had a safe built into his dressing-room stall at Scotiabank Arena. He’ll remind players of their dues on game days so he can quickly throw the money into his safe, though he openly admits “it’s hard to track guys down.”

It’s hard not to read Rielly’s efforts as him tiring of the process.

“I liked doing it (when he started),” Rielly said of being the fine keeper. “I don’t like doing it as much anymore.”

–––

So why do it? What benefit is there for the fine keeper?

“Someone’s got to do it,” Girgensons said, shrugging his shoulders.

Multiple NHL players said for a player to be appointed the fine keeper, they only have to tick a few boxes: If you’re a well-liked and trusted veteran, this glamorous job may be yours for the taking.

“It’s actually a lot more work than anyone thinks,” Sissons said.

What about some slight interest in numbers? Perhaps balancing books for an NHL team’s fine fund is a precursor to a career after hockey in finance?

“I did like math class,” Sissons said. “But that’s not why I took the job. I guess people think I’m trustworthy.”

Modest as some of the fine keepers might be, there are perks to the job if you put the effort in. If you’re able to manage large sums of money and transfer them back and forth between a bank account and a credit card, you could be in for some sneaky benefits.

“I pay for things out of my own account, and I get all the points,” Sissons said.

Hartman agrees. After collecting payments from players, he uses a credit card to use that money to shell out for team events.

“The credit card is maxed out right now. We’ve had a few trips recently … with some big dinners,” Hartman said.

He’s not bothered though. The recently-engaged Hartman is thinking long-term: Stay on top of guys, and then use that money to pay for team functions, and those points will add up.

“Maybe I’ll get a honeymoon out of it,” he said, a smile creeping out from behind his thick beard.

Hartman’s plan isn’t devious by any means. Even for him, there is a team-building element to being the collector of the fines, and some NHL players informed of his process appeared slightly jealous. Every month, Hartman will buy three $500 Best Buy gift certificates and hand them out to his three Wild teammates who paid the most money that month into the team’s fund. It’s partly an incentive both for paying on time and for contributing to the team fund, but partly born out of Hartman’s own guilt.

“It’s a discount,” he said, modestly. “I feel bad. But we do spend it.”

And spend they do. Come the end of the season, there is always an effort to put the money back in the hands of the team.

For the Leafs, perhaps that means the team taking in an NFL game on the road. There are Super Bowl parties and Masters parties, too. And on Feb. 27, multiple Leafs took in a Bruce Springsteen concert in Seattle for some team-building and to help accelerate the bonding process for newcomers. The Leafs welcomed recently acquired teammates Sam Lafferty and Jake McCabe then.

“To get into an environment like that and get to know the guys is perfect,” McCabe said of the concert.

The year-end team party often sucks the most money out of the fine fund. The amount of money teams will spend on food, drinks, event space and the event itself varies, but multiple NHL players said somewhere in the range of $50,000 for a year-end party is a fair estimate.

Gudbranson noted how after the team’s head equipment manager, Jamie Healy, logged his 2,000th professional game on Jan. 29, the team dipped into the fund to purchase him a gift.

Ultimately, many NHL veterans view the money they can raise through the fine fund as less of a benefit to the team than the practice itself.

“Us veteran guys have to hold the young guys accountable more,” McDonagh said.

Gudbranson is adamant: The practice of good habits in the NHL has been “lost a little bit.”

The argument that fining young players heightens standards of professionalism league-wide is rooted in history. Gudbranson recalls his rookie duties while playing junior hockey for the Kingston Frontenacs: Unloading equipment from the team bus, mopping floors and helping out with laundry. These duties were not rituals to make players feel beyond uncomfortable, a practice that has no place in hockey. But, according to Gudbranson, understanding the benefits of working for the team is a concept that should be applied in the NHL. And if those concepts, such as respecting the dressing room, are forgotten, Gudbranson believes “the fine system can help with that.”

“You move away from home and your parents aren’t there to parent you anymore. Those little things, they teach you a lot,” Gudbranson said.

Of course, no young NHL player is going to be asked to mop the floor as a form of punishment.

But if fining young players for otherwise asinine offenses maintains a level of professionalism in the NHL, then veterans like Gudbranson aren’t going to be afraid to remind young players to have a credit card nearby at all times.

“You’re a professional athlete,” Gudbranson said. “You’ve got to act the part.”

#nhl #hockeymedia #toronto maple leafs #minnesota wild #new jersey devils #buffalo sabres #pittsburgh penguins #edmonton oilers #philadephia flyers #columbus blue jackets #arizona coyotes #this was such an intriguing look at nhl culture honekstjkldsjfkl #u get fined for FALLING IN WARMUPS?? FJLSDFKL LIKE HELP #the leafs only taking cash why is that so funny... what are u old MEN?

219 notes · View notes