#politics and bribing and taxes and SHUT. UP | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

nityarawal · 2 years

Text

10/21/22

Endangered Species

Morning Songs

Do Nazis Feel

They're An Endangered

Species, And

That's Why They

Witchhunt Us?

My Bro Was Headhunted

On Match.com

For My Land In Huelo!

His Starter Wife,

Ala,

Lost Everything

In Divorce Abuse

Over Immigration!

Forced Into Babies,

With A Boytoy,

Never Met Anyone,

As Smart, And Fun

As My Brother!

She Said He Was A

Great "Lover!"

Fulfilled Her With

Tantra Everyday!

We Had Fun Traveling

With Auntie "Ala!"

Don't Know

What To Do With

All These Match.com

"W" Words!

4 Were In

His Harem!

Are They Spies,

For A Sex Cult

Sent By Osho?

Attorneys,

Still Grooming

Our Kids,

With Dr. GARDNER

Methods?

Courts- Please Stop!

Our Tax Dollars

Won't Support This!

I Reported Marina,

Of Coldwell Banker,

To District Attorneys

And National

Association Of REALTORS!

Hopefully, They Work!

Better Than

National Domestic

Violence Hotline,

From Texas!

I Asked Hawaii DA

And California To

Stop Selling Their

Number On

Websites, And Digital

Media! We Don't

Want Victims

Mislead Any Longer!

No More Head Injuries

For Divorcees!

Or X Hasbeens!

Spies Comitted

Treason!

On USA,

Scotland And Iran!

We Won't Take

Anymore, 1st Wife Trumpleberry,

Plays!

Down Stairs!

"Ala" Needs 50%

I Do Too!

We Want Kings

Pool In Huelo And

You Can Have A Shed

Haydn, With $20

A Week For Ramen!

Like You Gave Me

In Hollocoast Detention!

Told Me To

"Shut Up!"

When I Cried!

On The Phone!

Subtext: "Obey! Officers

That Raped Us!"

Is That Advice

Your Broker

Gave You? "Shut-Up!

Be a Good Giggolo,

Like Us! And Keep Denise

Satisfied, Too?"

Did They Give You

Parasites?

Covid 19- 2

For Artificial Intelligence?

Are The Cannibals

Wanting To Rape

Me And My Kids?

"Selling us, to Get Food

The On Table," Officer Brown

Said! Dark Web

Bribes!

Does Marina Let

You watch Us?

Do Ladies Look At You,

With Dollar Signs

In Their Eyes?

You're Golden Goose,

Did They Hunt You

Down For You DNA

From 1,2,3 And Me?

#Metoo

Huntley Genes!

Last Namesakes,

For Now, In Our Family!

They Tried To Kill Me!

Why'd You Silence

Dad Off The Internet?

I Told Every Officer

I Could,

He Served "US Army"

With Grandpa

Haydn

And Don't Deserve

Any Intelligence

Data Rape

Or Bullying From Cambridge

Analytica!

Mari-time Law

Belongs Overseas!

Send Your Marina!

Back To The Caribbean,

For Her Pleas!

We Thought She Was

Cool- Said From Findhorn-

Land Of Faeries! In Scotland!

But She Obliterated

Her Brain! Self Medicating

On Prescription Drugs!

Both Her And Denise

Numb On Citalopram!

Like All Osho's "Good"

Sex Slaves,

And Subjects

Shellin' Out Blowjobs!

Osho Said His Partner

Was A "B" Word

When She Left Him!

She Attempted Life

Of Dr. & Tried To

Kill Him!

"I Like B's!" Osho Declared!

Now A Legend On Twitter,

"Sheela MA,"

Loved For Her Phrase,

"Tough Titties!"

Back To Him!

Firm Loving NANNIES

Motherin'

Is What Globe Needs!

Mixed Race, Light

Royals, Like Princess "Meghan!"

Don't Kill Her,

Please!

Political War By

Broker Nazi

Stings-Needs To Stop!

Daniel Smachtenberger

Doesn't Need To Advice

My Family Any Longer!

Or Real Estate Attorney,

Ken Carlsson,

With Hookers,

Happy Endings,

Boys' Club

Weaponizing!

Moms Aren't Cattle,

Not Chattel, For Coldwell

Banker

Or Sotheby's!

Paris Shut Down

Her Detention Center!

I Will Too!

No More Teachers

At Idyllwild Arts,

Sold To Courts!

Or Children Of Seabury

In Maui Getting,

No More Parents

Getting Beat On The Head

Like Bob Sagat

Or Marina's X!

Shocked You'd Do That

To Your Baby Daddy,

Marina! And Me, Sunil!

That's Not "Fairy Like!"

No Concussion

Courts Gave Me

For Buying Out

My Ex On Neptune

Beach Property!

We Had Civil Mediation,

Cost $8,000 Dollars,

Atty Anette Hallneville And

Carrie Took $20,000 More!

Hallneville Said She Couldn't

Report Lori Clark

Viviano- At The End

Of The Session For Walking

Out- the Door! Reporting

"Sunil's Balls Worked

Just Fine!"

After His Vasectomy!

In Slinky Low Cut

Black Halter Dress

Rayon

Clinging,

Quadruple E Boobs

Bouncing!

Told To Go On

Judge Judy, By

Atty Hotline And

Or 60 Minutes!

Scott Peters-

Congressmen Says

It's A civil Emergency!

Of Course, I Told

The Courts, Twitter

Journalists, Sang

My Songs About

"Barracuda Mamma!"

She Had Me Beat

When Persian Armenian Atty

Roseline Farrel

Defended Me From

Domestic Racism,

Terrorism,

UK,

Lori Hired Marine

Officer To Beat Me!

Sunil Lied To Cops

Said: "I Hit Him All

The Time!" Referring to

When We Sparred In

College

Marshall Arts!

Before We Were Even Lovers!

We Had A Non-Violent

Household! He Was Only

One Doing Crimes,

Groomed By British

Courts, Maritime

Law Genocide-Of

Indians From Dad!

Estranged By Schoolteacher, Mom,

Patricia Jones Rawal Campbell,

Tended To Broken Hearts! A

Art Students

Missin' Moms

Some From

Divorce, Some Parents

Didn't Want Them

Like Poor Keith Stewart

Campbell, Who She Fusses

Over; Her Boytoy!

Trumpleberry "Lost

Boys" Club!

They Drink

Themselves Into

Bladder Infections,

At Starbucks

Or Pubs!

Whatever Addictions Fit!

Don't Take A Bribe

On My Head,

For Your Decadent Life

Living, Outside Of

Your Means!

To Feed Parasites,

Brotherly,

From Cambridge Analytica!

Enough Spies Comitted

Treason!

On USA, Iran

And Scotland!

We Need Our

Peacekeepers To

Take Over

Today!

Need Mother Divine

Back!

Oh, My Pure Birgit,

"Sister Of My Heart,"

Divakaruni Poetically

Named That "Agape

Feeling!"

A Goddess Of Love,

From Germany!

Northerners Primal Hearts

Still Exist,

Despite Nazis!

We Want Her Back!

Back In Our Tribe,

She Was Disappointed

By A Monk!

When She Lost Her

Virginity,

On The First Night!

Both 30 Years Old

Oh My God! It's A Sin!

She Should've Had

My Brother!

He Could've Given

Her Orgasms!

He Wouldn't Have

Had An Abortion,

With A Woman He

Didn't Love,

Ashamed Of,

Seduced By Lior's

Sex Sting Cult,

"Passion Dancing!"

He Wouldn't Have

Violated My Mother

Or I At Harbon

Hotsprings,

Throwing Hookers

At My Family!

And Birgit

Wouldn't Have Gotten Pregant

Before Even

Having An

Orgasm!

Haydn Wouldn't

Have Been Groomed

By Judge Wasp Cougar

Beth, An Old Divorcee

In College, If

Birgit Would've

Married Him 30 Years

Ago!

Now She's Divorced!

2nd Chances Happen!

My Cuzband Said

Same Thing To Me!

He'd Wished He'd

Had Courage To Marry

Me Uin College!

When His Parents

Sent Him To My

College In The '90's!

Now He wants to Start "Fresh!"

No Cuzbands Left!

Instead, Poor Prince Ali

Was Almost Murdered

In A Hit And Run

Probably By My X-

Husband's Attorneys!

Car Came At Us

Thanksgiving Eve,

On Our Way Home

From Murietta Hotsprings,

Del Dios Highway

Winding

With Kiddies

In Back!

Car Rammed Us

Into A Canyon Wall

All I Could Say

Was, "Ali! Careful!"

Before He Smartly

Swerved

Out Of Way!

We Were On Our Way

To Hawaii

Next Day- Took Daughter

Anjali- And Saw Doctors There

Daily!

They Healed Us

Chiropractors

Massage,

But The Abuse From

Broker Marina

Horrendous!

She And Haydn

Lured My Daughter

Into Their Dirty

Sex Swing!

Identical One Appeared

In Sunil's Bribed

Listing!

Then They Bullied

Us To Sign Off

Selling Huelo-

I Said, "No! I

Have Three Days

Right Of Recision!

And Our School Teacher

Nanny, Bhavani,

Is My Alibi!"

It Was Stressful!

Haydn Took Us to "Thai,"

Goades Us To Sign

With Their Lawyer,

Who'd Just Been Bitten

By A Wild Cat,

Thru A Kitchen

Window!

Probably For Good

Reason!

Sex Swing Emerged,

In Sunil's Bribed Listing

With Tacky Decor

From Dorms Of Ikea,

Styled By "W" Words!

Neda Lost The Listing,

Sotheby's Blackballed

Us With Courts,

A Black Eye

And A Trip To ICU!

Said I Violated

A Restraining Order

From Sunils Atty

By Self Litigating

As A Realtor to

Buy My Home!

Why Didn't Marina

Use Her Brokers

License To Help?

Instead Numb!

Seems She Did!

But It Wasn't For

Our Family!

Lazing Around In

Careabean

Swingin'

Makin' My Brother

Build Her A Home

Alone

With His Bare Hands

Deserted

In A Draught

No Running Water!

She Sold Him A Lemon!

"An Alligator!" Dad Said!

We Were Bullied

Under Duress, To

Sign Off On Sale Of Huelo!

It Had An Ocean View,

Tiny House

Haydn Built,

Vastu,

Where You Could

Watch Sunrise

On The North Shore

On Ulalena Loop,

My Favorite

Valley- I Grew

Up At Kings And Queen's

Pools

Since My 20's!

That's Heaven For Me,

Huelo,

Welcomes Me!

Got What I Need

God Provides

And Listens!

My Friends Grow

Tumeric And Ginger!

Botanical Rainforest

Divine- Every Herb

And Bean

Abounds!

Abundance!

Why Would Marina

0 notes

anthonybialy · 2 years

Text

Skipping Learning

Joe Biden should declare cheesecake burns calories. Why not try to trick anatomies? He already thinks tearing up bills makes them vanish. A presidency dedicated to dividing by zero comes as close to literally buying votes as possible by announcing schools were just kidding about charging for professors and utilities. Technical adults will soon find they can’t afford items that are missing from shelves, anyway. Deadbeats with diplomas have absconded with useless funds.

It’s little wonder grifters don’t respect commerce. Universities run Ponzi schemes aided and abetted by an executive chancellor whose instinct is always to bill the collective. Discovering he can’t bribe the market will shock the incumbent despite countless examples of his previous woeful attempts at evasion. Retaking a failed class doesn’t help for enrollees who refuse to take notes. Biden tries to act like Santa while trying to convince permanent children he’s real.

Many undergrads major in holdups. The chance for career growth is tremendous. There are no other jobs for some unknowable reason. Sophisticated contemporary bandits don’t use a gun, which liberals think means it’s not a crime. The pilfered take of $10,000 won’t even buy the extension cord for a getaway car.

A half-assed measure using a full ass to think ticked off both sides. Everyone’s pleased otherwise. Why stop at five figures? Biden should’ve committed to the bit and said nobody has to pay for anything. Think of the savings. Raising the minimum wage ever higher to make everyone rich only fails because politicians don’t have the courage to order businesses to pay register operators one hundred dollars per hour.

If you’re dedicated enough to trying to get away with ripping off creditors, you could graduate and go on to be president, as well. The proclaimer doesn’t have the authority, but at least he doesn’t have the ability to make debt disappear, either. Someone else has to pay. Defying the Constitution is only the start.

The Supreme Court possessing enough sense to shut down a scheme too harebrained for high school would be the luckiest thing that could happen for a president who doesn’t deserve it. A tax hike paired with a wealth transfer to subsidize collegiate brats who learned not to settle their tabs should really put the recession in its place. The capricious order for charges to disappear will be disregarded by the economy. I hope he’s sued by someone who paid debts and knows how both government and math work.

The impossibility of getting something for nothing is the first message that should be taught in kindergarten. Sadly, growing up is discouraged as executive policy. Today’s insolent youths are instructed that they’re owed advanced education through retirement age. Qualification accumulators conclude they’re entitled to free stuff because their political science classes are that important to a functioning society. And you say they’re unprepared for reality.

Perverse incentivizes lead to demanding others fund services used. Organic negotiations lead to the best quality at reasonable prices. By contrast, the president deciding who gets to dash from payment creates the opposite of free exchange.

Bizarro economics make not paying for your things a virtue. Next, you’ll tell me letting shoplifters get away with their crimes and the elimination of cash bail turn cities into the early parts of Batman movies. We could’ve done without a practical example of theoretical damage.

Junior high whippersnappers should be capable of noticing simple patterns. Some of the allegedly educated lose information every academic year. Take paying for the very schooling they consume. A feral teen raised by wolves could grasp that college costs skyrocketed when Washington started throwing money at colleges. In lieu of deducing how cause and effect works, the smartest amongst us sober up with grain alcohol. It sounded smart on homecoming weekend.

The solution to tuition inflation is apparently to declare it was Monopoly money all along. Making currency worthless helps the problem like setting a car on fire saves money on oil changes.

Victims can’t report crimes when government authorizes them. Those issuing loans are screwed over like those who paid them off. There are healthier ways of finding common ground. Knowing thorough delinquents will have to suffer in the same crummy financial environment still can’t eliminate the sense that freeloading scholars are getting away with violating the honor code.

The urge to not pay for the dubious privilege of learning precisely how things don’t work makes sense in a sick way. But smug alumni think they know everything. Daft theories in classroom bubbles end up getting reinforced instead of punctured.

Graduates don’t gain knowledge about our world, which one might think is the point of al those credits. Those who spend six or seven years getting a credential sheet naturally don’t think they got a good value. The honest way to skip payment is to check the sheepskin’s back for a return policy.

The best case for going to work right after high school is the president looking the other way as educational shoplifters take classes in multiple senses. Otherwise, you might end up as a dissolute president who still hasn’t ascertained after nearly eight decades that one should pay for what one uses.

Biden spent a lot of time in school to obtain precisely zero insight. It’s almost like multiple useless degrees lead the recipient to never interact with the world off campus. The permanent remedial student celebrated by moving on to the only career where actuality is denied more fervently. Some centenarian professor should be mortified for not dissuading then-student Biden from concluding even more federal profligacy will spur prosperity.

Rewarding irresponsibility is some life lesson. But that’s the sort of abject claptrap that Professor Biden teaches. He’s from a very learned family, as his wife’s a doctor. A wholly underwhelming academic carer most notorious for serving as the start of his plagiarism precedent shows that numerous semesters pretending to study don’t necessarily lead to wisdom. Free school isn’t worth the cost.

0 notes

lnterjection · 3 years

Note

Wow, i didn't expect you also wrote an Hermitcraft fanfiction. I have wonder what angst are you pulled up on that series?

Politics Anon.

Well, I've written like 90k words worth of Hermitcraft fics, actually. For one, I'm the author of Maddening Circles, and I'm also part of the NHO (Non-Human Hermits Organization) Discord Server, which people familiar with Hermitcraft fandom fanfic might know.

My Hermitcraft fics are still listed on my account. Feel free to read them. Some even contain more worldbuilding.

I still watch Hermitcraft regularly, and while the series' tone is generally light-hearted and comedic, there's a surprisingly large well of angst to draw from if you take things more literally and seriously. Both the Dream SMP and Hermitcraft have large amounts of events that are very angsty when you take them as serious events of a story, and really funny when you take them as a literal block game. The difference between the two is that the Dream SMP treats itself as a serious story (mostly), and Hermitcraft treats itself as a literal block game. Hence, the difference in tone and "perceived" angst.

For example, let's consider some events in Hermitcraft's history and I'll present them in a more matter-of-fact way, detached from the light hearted attitude they're presented with.

- That time Grian and Scar committed human organ trafficking and dehumanization by breeding a ton of villagers, and then cutting their heads off, in order to submit the heads to win a competition with money as the prize

- That time Cleo made all the hermits fight and kill each other in the same competition while she laughed from a throne made of literal spider heads

- That time everyone started killing each other in general to win a giant pile of diamonds? Actually, they did that a lot of times

- That they made a death game where the goal was literally to survive until you got killed by someone else's trap and the goal was to be the last one standing and they did all sorts of really fucked up mind games on each other

- The like 20 times Cub or Scar or Doc or Mumbo or whoever else has done human experimentation on other Hermits

- That time everyone made a game out of trying to kill Mumbo because he had survived too long

- That time they had a court trial between a company and the people it had fucked over in an attempt to make more money, and during the trial people were bribing other people, taking drugs and drinking, commiting perjury, and trying to kill the witnesses (honestly it would be much easier to name the one or two hermits who hadnt commited a felony during that trial)

- That time Doc made a portal out of two portal blocks and diamonds and a ton of redstone shit I'll never have the fucking brains to understand and apparently its recreatable in a survival world by a survival player and it's so fucking cursed and one of Ren's characters just went in and never came out again and I think Doc encouraged him to go in as a test subject??? It's been years and I still cant wrap my head around the infinity portal

- The many, many times Hermits have lured other hermits (usually Bdubs or Scar) into traps or other dangerous situations to try and kill them

- That time Cub and Scar built a church and forced everyone to convert to their religion and pay taxes to appease them

- That time Cub and Scar created a giant monopoly and started trying to shut down everyone else's businesses

- Intentional sleep deprivation everyone has ganged up to inflict on Bdubs

- The like 3 cults Grian has started or something I cant keep track at this point

- The part where Mumbo declares his conscience is clear, he loves peace and love, and he hasn't kill any living thing, because he's mass producing end crystals to kill said living things instead of using his own hands and weapons

yeah these are just what i can remember off the top of my head but trust me there's plenty of angst to be found in hermitcraft if you think a little

#hermitcraft #dsmp x hermitcraft

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orange-positivity · 4 years

Note

Hi, I'm an Asian with very little background of Slovenian politics - could you please help me understand the situation on the ground and how's it come about?

Hi! I'm not the best with politics but I'll try my best

I'll first do a run through and then I'll put in bold what's happening right now but before I start, the main thing right now is that they want to shut down independent media

Just putting this first because it's the most important, okay now for the run through

Pretty much our former prime minister, Marjan Šarec resigned and so Janez Janša was elected by the National assembly in March, which is also when the coronavirus outbreak started in Slovenia. Now a lot of shit went on while we were in lockdown and I honestly can't tell you much about that because I wasn't really following politics at the time, but there was a thing with ordering unsuitable masks and respirators and also during the whole corona crisis, they tried to pass laws completely unrelated to the epidemic (because they knew all media attention was on the virus). Janez Janša and his political party (SDS) are also very right wing and corrupt (Janša actually went to jail for corruption a few years back)(he's also good friends with Orban, the Hungarian prime minister and I think he [Janša] owes him [Orban] some money?) and there were just a lot of allegations of corruption flying around during that time as well as bribing other parties into teaming up SDS to form the government (members of the parties who connected with SDS got promotions and raises). The government also gave themselves the highest paycheck possible, but they offered very little financial support to small businesses during the lockdown (as far as I know, the only thing small businesses got was that they can pay their taxes with a delay or something?). They also passed an amendment against the conservation of nature, but thankfully that's been put on hold by the constitutional court.

That was lockdown and the protests started in early April with people banging their pots and pans on the balcony. In late April, the bike protests started. So every Friday, people would ride their bikes on the streets around the parliament. There was a lot of shit with the police at the beginning, putting up fences on our protesting space for no good reason and writing people up or arresting them for BS. At this point I'd like to say that the protesters have never gotten violent. The most "violent" thing they did was throw massive paper airplanes across the fence.

But I feel like shit really hit the fan on the 24th of June. For context, 25th of June is Slovenian independence day.

So Slovenian Antifa organized an anti celebration on Prešeren square in Ljubljana (Slovenian capital) on the 24th, as to say "we don't support this government and what it's doing to our country". That's when the Nazis roll in. They saw what the antifa was trying to do and they said "okay, we'll go to Prešeren square as well as to show our support to the government". There were about 50 of them and they were all wearing neon yellow vests (no correlation with the Yellow Vests movement in France btw - they just stole their symbolism). Some (I think 11) of those "Yellow Vests" had Nazi tattoos and some of them were identified by other people as active members of the Slovenian neonazi group called Blood&Honour.

On the 24th, the police also put fences around half of Ljubljana city centre. People couldn't get to their homes, cars, bikes because the police wouldn't let them through... They [the police] did that so that the government officials could have their own private independence day celebration (on the Congress square which is about 200m from Prešeren square) without having to listen or look at the protesters.

After that, the nazis came to three more protests before deciding to "leave us alone" by mixing into our crowd (their words not mine), taking pictures of us and trying to expose us on their twitter account (@/RJopici). They call this "yellow monitoring" and they said they specifically target middle aged people employed in the public sector, NGOs and or on RTV (RTV is radio television Slovenia basically like the BBC)

What's happening right now

Janša is pushing to shut down RTV (the biggest independent media house in Slovenia). He says it's a leech to the Slovenian budget and not even necessary (because most of his voters watch Nova 24 TV anyway which is Janša's TV company and it's basically like the Fox news). Shutting down independent media is simply unacceptable. Hungary and Serbia already shut down most (if not all?) independent media and idk about Poland? But Janša looks up to those countries and wants Slovenia to be like them. So yeah, Janša and SDS are pushing to shut RTV down entirely or at least cut its funding. This on it's own is a bad thing, but it's really put in perspective when you see just how shitty and biased the reporting of politically owned media like Nova 24 or Planet TV is. They lie and turn everything around to cater to their agenda.

The other thing that's happening is we have an increased number of corona cases. We were down to only 6 active cases so the borders opened and a lot of Slovenians went to Croatia (which is a popular tourist destination for like most of Slovenians). So people brought in new cases from abroad and as of 25.7. we have 241 active cases (which isn't a lot compared to other countries but we are pretty small). Despite that, the government still doesn't want to shut down the borders again or at least put Croatia on the red list because putting Croatia on the red list would mean people returning from there would have to go into a two week self isolation period and that would mean people would be discouraged to travel to Croatia, obviously. But I'm pretty sure our government gets a share of the money Croatia makes from Slovenian tourists, which is why they don't want to restrict travel to Croatia just yet. Probably once the tourist season is over, they will restrict travel immediately.

Instead Nova 24 TV is blaming the protesters for the rise of infection numbers, which isn't true. If the new infections were in fact caused by the protesters, then Ljubljana would be the epicenter of the epidemic (since that's where the biggest protests are), but as of right now, Hrastnik is actually the epicenter and Hrastnik is in a whole different region than Ljubljana.

There's also now talk about stepping away from the Istanbul convention (just like Poland did) - but right now it's just some of the right wing politicians tweeting about it. As far as I know, Janša's government is also looking to privatize healthcare (rn we have free public healthcare). Obviously they won't do that in the middle of the epidemic, but it's one of their interests.

That's not even counting all the racists, xenophobic, homophobic, transphobic and misogynistic comments our politicians make on twitter daily.

Oh and if you're wondering where our president (Borut Pahor) is amidst all of this, he's posting selfies on Instagram and refusing to acknowledge the situation at all.

TLDR: our government is corrupt and wants to shut down independent media and just all in all make our country more like Poland or Hungary and people aren't happy with that

If anyone is from Slovenia, feel free to fill this in if I've missed anything or got anything wrong

#sorry this is so long!#and sorry if it's too vauge or too specific in certain areas i just really can't keep up with it all?#every week there's another bullshit going on #last week our minister of justice (Lilijana Kozlovič) went out and publicly blamed rape on the victims for example #today is Monday and already we have one deeply racist and transphobic tweet by one of the other politicians #i knew a lot about the amendment against the conservation of nature because that's my area #but THANK FUCK the constitutional court still has some brain cells left so they put a stop to this madness #ALSO i know that in regards of politics elsewhere (khm the USA khm) this seems mild #or like that pirates of the Caribbean meme that's like 'first time?'#but yeah I for one do not want my country to go to shit #also sorry it took nearly a whole day to answer #it was a lot to type #politics #personal #ask #anon #not positivity #long post

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moon-yeongjun · 4 years

Text

Jun’s List of Swynlake Unsavory Characters

To view the presentation, click here: https://www.canva.com/design/DAECc-xC7zE/z6a5kAF9yX-GegEo9FugzQ/view?utm_content=DAECc-xC7zE&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=publishsharelink

To read the plain text, read more below with half-assed formatting bc i hate formatting

The following characters should be WATCHED WITH UTMOST DILIGENCE! They have dangerous, violent, and/or otherwise disruptive tendencies and are a threat to not only the Moon Market but the greater Swynlake Community. Record any instances of erratic and disruptive behavior and anything that goes against store and town policy and law. If possible, take pictures, get the names, and signatures of eyewitnesses.

Threat Level 1-5

1: Nuisance. Purposefully argumentative and disrespectful.

2: Troublemaker: Disrupts the peace usually in the name of “fun.” Self-centered, a danger to themselves and potentially others because they are unaware of the full effects of their actions.

3: Thug. Has broken rules before even if they have not been caught and formally charged. They will break them again!

4: Criminal. They have been formally charged with a crime, no matter how petty. Keep a Very. Close. Watch.

5: Villain. A DANGER TO THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY. Unpredictable, powerful, exercise ABSOLUTE CAUTION.

**DO NOT SHARE THIS LIST WITH ANYONE WHO IS NOT MR. MOON**

Hades Acheron Threat Level: 5

DO NOT TRUST THIS MAN

Purported Medium, but he is absolutely at least half-demon!

Responsible for several town disasters, including the OPENING OF THE GATES OF HELL.

Has a hellhound for a pet. DO NOT LET THE HELLHOUND INTO OUR STORE

Avid coupon user, always offer him our latest deals

Belle Acheron Threat Level: 3

Married to Hades Acheron, and is therefore absolutely an accomplice

Undoubtedly bribed the judge to get her husband off on multiple different charges

Potential victim of stockholm syndrome, still cannot be trusted

Shock Adamson Threat Level: 3

Clinically insane (working on obtaining proof from the local psychiatrist)

Potentially has rabies and/or is on some kind of behavior-altering drug

Don’t look her in the eye

When she enters the store, have the cops on hold

Lock Adamson Threat Level: 2

Related to Shock Adamson

80% positive he shoplifted from the store

Tried to use expired coupon. Liar!

Mostly the first bulletpoint. Could be working on her behalf. Do not trust.

Barrel Adamson Threat Level: 2

Related to Shock Adamson

Appears not to wash his hair

Too quiet. Watch carefully.

Toulouse Bonfamille Threat Level: 5

A KNOWN WEREWOLF. Stay behind the counter whenever possible when handling him!

Good etiquette, but don’t let your guard down

Buys the most expensive products in the store though, so make sure you’re polite

Berlioz Bonfamille Threat Level: 2

Plays with the carts when he’s in the store.

Makes inappropriate jokes with fruit and vegetables

Werewolf sympathizer

Used to be a vandal, but once a vandal always a vandal

Deb Damselblu Threat Level: 1

Defends vampires and werewolves and other dangerous magicks VOCALLY

Disrespectful to her elders

Has some kind of magic she will not reveal (suspicious! Potentially a werewolf herself…?)

Merida DunBroch Threat Level: 5

A KNOWN WEREWOLF AND CONVICTED CRIMINAL

Should be in jail! Kidnapped Belle Acheron. Psychotic tendencies

She only comes in to buy beer. Where does she get the rest of her food? I think we all know where

Cops on standby

Sally Finklestein Threat Level: 1

Talks to ghosts and is therefore unbalanced and unpredictableHas had fits in the store Probably an accomplice of the Achersons. Do not trust

Sora Hamasaki and Mabel Pines Threat Level: 1

Always together

Treat the ramen aisle as their personal sex den

Clumsy and careless. Leave the store a mess! Knock over all my displays!

I charge them a 5% cleaning tax. Never asks for receipt so they have no idea. Tab in CL5 on all receipts

Vee Hauntley Threat Level: 5

KNOWN VAMPIRE. NOT INVITED IN OUR STORE IN THEORY

Shouldn’t come in, once came in with Mei Qin.

AVOID DIRECT EYE CONTACT SHE WILL COMPEL YOU

Do not be fooled by her size!

Simba Lyons Threat Level: 2

Thinks he owns the town and is above all the rules.

He is not above the Moon Market’s rules!

Treats the carts like his personal racing car and takes more than one sample

Werewolf sympathizer

Will not shut up while he is checking out

Mei Kusakabe Threat Level: 1

Talks to ghosts and is therefore unbalanced and unpredictable Probably an accomplice of the Acherons. They have spies everywhere

Mandy? Max? Threat Level: 3

They give a fake name every time

DEFINITELY has shoplifted!

Once came in with no shoes???

Made sexually inappropriate comments to customers

On the run from the government?

Moon Yeong-Tae Threat Level: 1

My brother

Tae, fix your attitude

Leaves streaks on the windows when he windexes. Make him do it again

Texts during work hours

Yes, I know you’re stealing soju from the store

Check in the back under the dishrags for his stash

Robbie Ryeo Threat Level: 5

VAMPIRE! DON’T LOOK IN THE EYE

Preys on the youth of Swynlake

Dresses like a satanic worshipper, is a satanic worshipper

Get cops on standby

Roscoe Sykes Threat Level: 4

Assaulted Toulouse Bonfamille when he was still a respected member of our community

Unstable and violent

Probably deals drugs. Watch him carefully. Any deals happening in the Moon Market will not be tolerated

#about #unsavories

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reading-writing-revolution · 4 years

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Heather Cox Richardson:

July 21, 2020 (Tuesday)

One of the day’s biggest stories came from Ohio, where the House speaker, Republican Larry Householder, and four other political operatives, were arrested by federal officials for racketeering. U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Ohio David DeVillers said the case was “likely the largest bribery money laundering scheme ever perpetrated against the people of the state of Ohio.”

Householder and his accomplices allegedly accepted more than $60 million in exchange for a public bailout for an ailing company. The bailout was worth more than $1 billion.

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) immediately demanded Householder resign. So did Ohio Republican Party Chairwoman Jane Timken, who tried to spread the blame by saying "Greed, lust for power, and disdain for ethical boundaries are not unique to any particular political party.”

Her words were, perhaps, unfortunate, because her description was one that many people would use for the president. That Trump is right now trying to argue that the Republican Party stands for “LAW & ORDER,” when a Republican leader in Ohio is arrested for a “pay-to-play” scheme is a coincidence that undercuts his message. ("This was pay-to-play,” said DeVillers in a new conference. “I use the term pay-to-play because that's the term they've used as alleged in the affidavit.”)

It was a moment that seemed to crystalize today’s politics: an elected official accepted a huge bribe in exchange for using taxpayer money to bail out a crony's failing business. It reminds me of the Teapot Dome scandal of 1922, when the Secretary of the Interior, Albert Fall, leased the oil production rights from naval oil reserves at Teapot Dome, Wyoming and Elk Hills, California to oil companies in exchange for large financial gifts. When the story came out, Fall became the first U.S. Cabinet official to go to prison.

The Teapot Dome scandal seemed to epitomize the administration of the president at the time, Warren G. Harding, although Harding himself was not implicated in that particular scandal. He had created an atmosphere in which the point of government was not to help ordinary Americans, but to see how much leaders could get out of it.

This same attitude is crippling today’s government as it tries to deal with the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic. Part of the reason that Trump and Republican leaders are hastening people back to work despite the spiking infections is that many Republican-led states do not have social welfare systems in place to support people through more weeks of lockdown, and Republican leaders do not want to develop them.

We are approaching a new crisis. At the end of July, the emergency unemployment benefits put into place in an early coronavirus bill will expire, leaving more than 20 million Americans unable to make ends meet and thus vulnerable to eviction, which would trigger another wrench in the already-ailing economy. At the same time, local and state governments, badly hit by falling tax revenues, will need to make cuts, as well, which will further stress the economy.

In May, Democrats used their majority in the House of Representatives to pass a $3 trillion spending package to provide another round of stimulus checks to individuals, give money to hospitals, and support state and local governments. Led by Republicans, the Senate refused to take the bill up.

Now, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is trying to write a Republican bill, but is running into the specific problem that Trump refuses to admit the coronavirus is a problem and the more general problem of a Republican ideology that opposes government funding for a basic social safety net.

Trump continues to maintain that the only reason we have so many coronavirus infections is because we are testing for them. He wants to block funding for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as well as money for testing and contact tracing. At the same time, he wants a payroll tax cut to stimulate the economy, and funding in the bill for a new FBI building.

More generally, Republican senators are mortified at the spending involved in a bill that focuses not on shoring up businesses, but rather on supporting ordinary Americans. “What in the hell are we doing?” Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) asked his colleagues. He warned that a large relief package would anger Republican voters in the November elections. Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) disagreed about the means, but not the end. He told his colleagues that if the Republicans don’t do enough to save the economy, Democrats will win in November and put in place policies that will cost even more money. A rescue bill now could save money in the long run by keeping Republicans in power.

As they calculate, the national unemployment rate is over 11%. The unemployment rate in cities closer to 20% as the coronavirus has shut down restaurants, theaters, gyms, and so on. And our vulnerability to Covid-19 increases. Almost 4 million Americans have been infected with coronavirus, and more than 140,000 have died of it.

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piratekingimogen · 4 years

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you don’t belong here (pirate king!imogen au, pt 3)

word count: 1794

“By the time I was allowed to see him, he had gone still, his skin colorless,” Gregor said. His voice was stiff with grief. “It was too late, I thought. She had killed him. I had begged and pleaded and bargained for so long, all in vain. His thoughtlessness had cost him his life, and Carthya its beloved king.”

“And then he saw me breathe,” I muttered.

“And then I saw him breathe,” Gregor said. I groaned quietly. Under the table, Amarinda’s hand found mine, and she squeezed my fingers.

“They’ve all heard this before,” I whispered.

“Shh,” she murmured. I slouched in my seat, my gaze wandering around the council room as Gregor’s voice faded to a drone in my ears. Based on the glazed looks of the gathered regents, I wasn’t the only one tired of hearing the epic tale of Jaron’s massive failure and Gregor’s heroic rescue. Gregor was not a very inventive storyteller.

Fortunately for him, that wasn’t a requirement for stewardship. And unfortunately for me, since he was appointed steward four years ago, the convening and adjourning of council meetings were up to him. Which meant I could be here listening to him for quite some time.

Imogen hadn’t poisoned me. The bitter drink was only a sleeping draft, to keep me from figuring out her ruse until it was too late. She made a deal with Gregor to secure a literal king’s ransom from Carthya’s coffers. In exchange, we were given safe passage back to Carthya. It turned out quite neatly for the two of them: she had enough gold to satisfy even the most vengeful pirates, and he had rule of Carthya. There was no hesitation from the regents when they voted: I wasn’t fit to be king. I probably would have voted the same way in their place.

The creak of the door brought me back to the present. Nura, the newest captain of the guard, entered quietly. Gregor paused, his story, arching an eyebrow. He’d had trouble finding a suitable successor to his old position, and his irritation at this interruption didn’t bode well for Nura’s continuing employment. “Captain?”

“My lord, I need a word with you.”

“A council meeting is in progress.”

“I understand, my lord,” she said steadily. “The matter is urgent.”

He ran his fingers through his graying hair. The meeting is adjourned. The meeting is adjourned, I chanted in my head. “Very well. The meeting is adjourned.”

“Finally,” I mumbled, earning another squeeze from Amarinda. I remembered to offer her my elbow before we emerged into the cool air of the palace corridor. Behind us, Nura and Gregor spoke in low voices.

“To your chambers?” I asked.

“The library,” she corrected, nudging me in the right direction. We didn’t speak as we walked down the halls. I couldn’t ignore the long stretches of newly blank walls. Amarinda had taken charge of raising money for my ransom so it wouldn’t have to be taxed from Carthya’s poor. Tapestries and paintings from my childhood, as familiar as my parents’ faces, disappeared into the houses of nobles across the continent.

Tobias was waiting for us on a sunlit couch in the library. I caught a glimpse of botanical sketches before he closed his book, straightening to attention. “How was the council meeting?”

“Terrible,” I said, dropping onto the couch beside him. He jumped up and motioned for Amarinda to take his spot, dragging over a stool for himself.

“Gregor went into his pirate king monologue again,” Amarinda explained. Tobias made a sympathetic face.

“I don’t know why he has to whip it out over and over,” I said, leaning back. “It’s been four years! We all know what happened!”

Amarinda exchanged a look with Tobias. “That’s a good question. Why don’t you like to hear the story?”

“Because it makes me look stupid, for one thing,” I said. “And I don’t need any help with that. And the way he tells it makes it sound like he single-handedly beat Imogen away from my bleeding body. He offered her a massive bribe. That’s all.”

“How might that affect the regents’ perception of him?”

I pulled a knobby pillow into my lap and frowned at it. Amarinda was doing this more and more recently: trying to coax me towards political awareness with a trail of leading questions. It was helpful, like her reminders to behave at council meetings. It was also just a little condescending. “Well, it makes him look smarter and more capable. It reminds them of why they put him in charge.”

“And how does that help him? Why might he feel the need to reinforce his authority?” she asked. I racked my brains. “Can you think of any upcoming events…?”

I sat up, sending the throw pillow tumbling to the ground. “My coming of age!”

“That’s my thought,” Amarinda said, using her toe to pull the pillow back into arm’s reach and tucking it behind my back.

“What does he think he’s going to accomplish? Stop me from turning eighteen?”

Tobias lifted a finger. “Actually, the regents could vote to postpone your coronation if they feel that you still aren’t ready. Amarinda, if I could reach past you...” She leaned aside to let him retrieve one of the books stacked on a table beside the couch. Flipping it open, he pulled a sheet of notes from between the pages. “Reassuming the throne when you come of age was expected, but the deadline was mostly arbitrary. There’s nothing that says the regents couldn’t keep a steward until you were twenty-one, or even longer.”

“Why wouldn’t anyone tell me that sooner?” I demanded.

“It’s a long shot,” Amarinda said. “The regents are warming to you, and you’re popular with the people-- especially since you started your public audiences to hear grievances and mediate disagreements. It’s a kingly thing to do.”

“Well, I’m glad someone appreciates it,” I said flatly. “Gregor says it’s a waste of time and a security threat to boot, letting so many people into the palace every fortnight.”

“Might Gregor have his own reasons to discourage you?” she asked delicately.

“I get it, I get it,” I said, lifting my hands. “I need to be more suspicious of people’s motives. I don’t want to stop holding the audiences. I’m just--” I sighed. “I’m nervous, I guess.” I remembered clearly being thirteen years old and knowing I could do anything. I didn’t know when this doubt had seeped into me, only that it had grown worse lately. I wanted to ascend the throne and carry on my family’s legacy, but some nights I couldn’t sleep for the fear that I would ruin it all. Coming of age. The coronation. The wedding.

Amarinda took my hand, offering a soft smile. “It’s alright to be nervous, Jaron. But we’ll get through this together. You know I’m on your side.”

“I know,” I said. After a moment’s hesitation, I lifted our intertwined hands to my lips and pressed a kiss to her skin. We were getting good at this: cultivating the warmth we would need to make marriage pleasant. I was determined to be a good husband to her. It was the least I could do to repay her for the endless patience and wisdom she had shared with me.

“I need to go,” Tobias said, startling me. I’d almost forgotten he was there. “To, uh, tell Mott you’re done with the council meeting. He had something to tell you.” By the end of the sentence he sounded almost convinced, but Amarinda grabbed his sleeve and I threw out a leg to block his exit.

“No, no, stay here,” I said, laughing. “We won’t do anything else embarrassing, I promise.” His ears were pink; this was a frequent reaction when Amarinda and I displayed affection in front of him. “Mott will find us soon enough.”

As if on cue, Mott appeared in the doorway. “There you are, Jaron,” he said. “And Amarinda, what a pleasure.”

“I assume the ‘what a pleasure’ part applies to both of us,” I said, grinning. He raised his eyebrows but didn’t contradict me. “Tobias said you had news?”

“I was talking to Nura,” he said, joining us in the patch of evening sunlight streaming through one of the library windows. “Sharp as a tack, that one. She’s been suspicious of covert activities in the city since she was appointed captain of the guard.”

“She interrupted the council meeting today,” Amarinda said. “But we didn’t hear what she had to say.”

“No, I didn’t think so. Gregor hasn’t acted on her concerns, that I know of, and she seemed wary to share them even with me. But I suspect that there’ll be more disruptions as your coronation approaches.”

“Cheerful thought,” I said. “Is that all?” Mott’s mouth clamped shut. I was immediately suspicious. “There is. Does Nura know who’s causing trouble?”

He looked relieved. “No, not that she shared with me.”

“But there is something else,” I said, tilting my head.

“It’s nothing,” Tobias said quickly.

“Oh, so you know it!” I said, rounding on him. “That makes this easier. Is it about one of my regents?” I inspected his expression. He glanced nervously at Amarinda. “No… the coronation? The wedding? Hmm. Avenia? Ooh. Vargan? Trouble on the border-- no. The coast? Pirates? Are they raiding Carthya again? Or is it-- you’ve heard news of Imogen.” His eyes flickered wider and I knew I’d guessed it. “Come on, Mott. You don’t have to act like I’m going to shatter if you say Imogen’s name.”

“I guess we’re just going to pretend the screaming fits never happened,” Mott said drily.

I wrinkled my nose. “That was twice. And also a long time ago. Also, do you realize that when I’m king you’re going to have to be respectful occasionally? I’ll settle for once or twice a month.”

“Duly noted,” Mott said.

“So what did you hear about Imogen?” I asked.

Mott sighed. “I received reports that she was involved in a raid in Gelyn.”

“That’s good news,” Amarinda said. “Isn’t it? She’s far away now.”

“Yeah,” I said. She was alive, and wealthy, and very far away. Good for her. “Great news.”

“And chances are she won’t be anywhere near here in time for the coronation, so that’s one less thing to worry about,” Tobias said. I didn’t care what Imogen was up to. I had let go of our unfinished business long ago. Laid it to rest, sunk it in the sea, buried it beneath years of life without her. My nails dug into my palms.

“Excellent! Thanks for the update, Mott,” I said, forcing a smile. “Now, Tobias was just telling me something interesting about the rules of Gregor’s stewardship.”

taglist: @ascendancejaron, @phrenic-a

#you don't belong here #pirate king imogen #the ascendance series #imogen #jaron eckbert artolius iii #two updates in two days!!!#my inspiration is either 100% or 0% with no in between #jennifer nielsen #also i love these kids #which helps #playing with a new format #bc while i like doing read mores to keep from eating up ppls dashboards #ppl seem more likely to read and comment when they don't have to click through to read the whole thing #and comments are my favorite :D

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berniesrevolution · 6 years

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The Republican Party has the run of the federal government. What sort of society do they wish to create? The Gilded Age — an often-overlooked period from the mid-1870s to 1900 — provides some important lessons.

The Gilded Age is part of the subject of an important new history by Richard White, The Republic For Which It Stands, the most recent entry in the Oxford History of the United States series. It's both an excellent piece of historical scholarship and an insightful view of what happened the last time the current Republican ideological platform was put into practice.

The basic idea is to reconfigure the American state to serve only the interests of business: forbidding as much regulation of industry as possible, and using violent state power to suppress the inevitable backlash from the rest of society. America once had much of its democratic nature cored out by rapacious capitalists. It could happen again.

1. Capitalist tyranny.

The Gilded Age was a time of rapid industrialization, and the concomitant consolidation of gigantic fortunes. Andrew Carnegie in steel, Cornelius Vanderbilt in railroads, J.P. Morgan in finance, and above all John D. Rockefeller in oil — such men built up incomprehensible piles of wealth with monopoly businesses, and therefore enormous political power. (Surrounded by lickspittles and yes-men, and isolated on vast estates, these men also tended to become weird shut-ins — sound familiar?)

Capitalists used their money to bribe politicians en masse to great effect, but probably their most important colonization of state power was through the courts. The vicious, parasitical financier Jay Gould developed the trick of using the judiciary to smash the working class after losing a strike in 1885. He sued one of his railroads with the other, thus driving it into federal receivership and making its workers federal employees. Hey presto, he could get legal injunctions and National Guard troops to smash the next strike in 1886.

The federal judiciary, stacked with capitalist ideologues, then gradually developed a ludicrous reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment as protecting the rights of business. "By making free labor virtually identical with substantive due process, the courts potentially made licensing laws, strikes, boycotts, the closed shop, and even some public health regulations the legal equivalent of slavery," writes White. This would later be formalized by the Supreme Court in Lochner v. New York.

This kind of encasement of the economy outside democratic control is precisely the current Republican plan for the judiciary. The GOP majority seems unable to pass any legislation save a huge tax cut for the rich, but they are stuffing the courts full of reactionary judges who will rule that state economic power is to be exclusively deployed on behalf of capitalists and the rich. For instance, President Trump's recent Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh, has held that it's illegal for workers to wear T-shirts disparaging their employer, but also that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional. Heads business wins, tails workers and consumers lose.

For a time it was thought that Rockefeller would stand forever as the richest man who has ever lived in the modern age, with an inflation-adjusted fortune of about $360 billion in 1916. But Jeff Bezos' fortune was recently estimated at $150 billion — up from "only" $57 billion just two years ago. It seems highly possible that he (or another of his cohort) will surpass the Rockefeller mark sometime in the near future.

2. Environmental contamination.

Businesses often pollute. The Gilded Age was a filthy time, when poison-spewing factories suffocated workers and cities alike. White notes that despite rising real incomes, both life expectancy at 10 years old and average adult height shrank steadily over almost the whole 19th century, brought down by poor nutrition, epidemic disease, and pollution, and only bottoming out in the 1890s. To be fair, the causes of the problem were poorly understood at the time, but efforts towards hygiene and pollution controls required regulation and taxation, and thus ran headlong into business and its ideology of liberal individualism.

Even successful cleanliness programs often increased inequality. Gilded Age Chicago meatpackers, for instance, whose offal had made their neighborhoods and the Chicago River a Stygian hell of disease, threatened to leave the city if they were required to clean up. A hygiene program had to be shouldered by the whole city, and thus "packers gained wealth; most other Chicago residents lost it."

And sure enough, under Republican rule the Environmental Protection Agency has been turned against its stated purpose. Former EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt issued regulations allowing for the use of a pesticide the agency's own research shows causes brain damage in children, suspended new clean water regulations, and delayed rules on chemical plant safety (inspired by the 2013 explosion at a poorly regulated Texas fertilizer factory that killed 15 people and injured over 160).

But the most important example of pollution today is carbon dioxide. All businesses which emit greenhouse gases profit at the expense of society as a whole, by pushing the immense costs of climate change onto others. Naturally, Pruitt axed the Obama-era Clean Power Plan (designed to wrench down emissions over time), and delayed regulations on motor vehicle efficiency.

Pruitt has since resigned, but his successor is by all accounts every bit the capitalist lickspittle he was.

3. Economic instability.

The Gilded Age was a time of clockwork economic disaster, as unregulated financial institutions and businesses regularly drove the economy into the ditch. In 1873 and again in 1893, capitalist markets folded in on themselves, creating a general economic panic — and a lack of government ability or will to repair the damage made for ensuing severe multi-year recessions. In both occasions, capitalist defense of the gold standard stopped even halting attempts to address the crisis with monetary stimulus. Unrest caused by mass unemployment and desperation was routinely put down with state violence.

New Deal regulations stopped general financial crises after the 1930s for about 50 years. They started once more in the late 1980s, as financial deregulators in both parties started dismantling those restraints. But it was in 2008 that everyone got clubbed over the head with what happens when you let finance off the chain.

(Continue Reading)

#politics #the left #the week #gilded age #economic inequality #capitalism #late capitalism #poverty #climate change

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hdvrpg · 6 years

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(Because these questions kind of assume a classic-old-school-run-of-play I tried to throw in an adventure hook into each of these because my games don't tend to follow that road).

The world was called Haftorang, First Warrior of the North Palace, and a multitude of other names. These survive only on the most ancient of maps.

In the most general of terms, it is hot, atmospherically soupy, and poor in metals. Most of it is given over to oily seas. The sun is distant and smouldering ulfire.

The game begins in an expanse known as Beyond-the-Goblin-Ear-Strait. It is a fatal gash of unbridled wilderness stretching north-south across the world across which sprawl thin skeins of mortal settlement. Our eclectic players are emigres, defectors, exiles, and vagrants from across the Strait. The bitter owner of the sewn Skrom-skin craft which ferried you here died in a storm or mutiny and now the boat is (a piece of shit, but) collectively owned by you.

What is the deal with my cleric's religion?

The gods, originally only nominally worshipped, have returned to the surface of the earth. None have so many temples beyond the Strait as Gurazzar, He-of-the-Ninety-Nine-Mirrors, The Naked God, ruler of the night sky, wind, storms, obsidian, smoke, discord, tigers, and father of sorcery. His sorcerer-priests desire divisive battle and every grey morality to be considered. every ninth new moon the Overlord must walk the streets naked, painted peacock-blue and bearing weapons like a sorcerer-priest slaying anybody he finds.

Where can we go to buy standard equipment?

The port gets all the finished goods– tools, guns, weapons and armour that aren’t made of skins, bone, or obsidian studded witch-wood. Although such things have been disappearing recently and being replaced with versions made of gold, carved from crystal, or tooled in elaborately pelagic ceremonial designs. Merchants say it is Ikma in her fish-aspect come to protect her seafarers in their poverty and destitution.

Where can we go to get plate-mail custom fitted for this monster I just befriended?

They won’t want it. Dwarves despise metal, elves will shrink/grow/warp out of it the moment they get in, and just about everything else will eat it or you first.

Who is the mightiest wizard in the land?

The high sorcerer-priest of the Naked God, Terrible Kandza, wields magic of the ninth order. Few challenge this power, for magic even of the first order is forbidden to common wretches; except for perhaps the witch hunting librarians of Hexelheim, said to maintain in their library tomes which reveal the weaknesses of the gods themselves.

Who is the greatest warrior in the land?

The Overlord. It is said half his blood is the mind-altering sap known only as The Holy Mountain due to the amount the queen mother partook during her twelve-year pregnancy. For this he feels no pain, can see his enemies through walls, and can chop a horse in half with a club.

Who is the richest person in the land?

The council of Guilds, the ninety-nine blessed merchants of the region advising the Overlord and his priests, holds collective decree as owners of all the wealth Beyond the Strait.

Where can we go to get some magical healing?

Temples: Priests of Ikma can only touch wounds of life-threatening importance; Priests of the Rat god will tell you to embrace the wound as a blessing; ascetics of the Tiger-path will offer to eat your seven souls for protection from earthly wounds.

Where can we go to get cures for the following conditions: poison, disease, curse, level drain, lycanthropy, polymorph, alignment change, death, undeath?

The first two: your own house. Your door will be nailed shut for thirty days and painted by a priest with the sign of Ikma in the black-green blood of the fleshtree, the god of necessity. Level drain you can suck up because if you’ve been touched by a ghost in the Land you must wear a mask of that spirit for the rest of your life. The last five (save alignment change) are best asked for at the goodwill of a local temple; if your alignment changes, accept the omen and embrace your new cause (Priesthoods often put the zeal of a convert to direct action).

Is there a magic guild my MU belongs to or that I can join in order to get more spells?

The librarians of Hexelheim, far south, accept the worthy; amongst other things you must renounce all religion, bring six witch-heads as tithe, and accept a gruelling apprenticeship which mostly involves fetch-quests, spell transcription, and gruesome public assassination of temple officials.

Where can I find an alchemist, sage or other expert NPC?

Alchemists are mostly devoted to explosives; in a well-avoided tenement or perhaps in the interrogative possession of the Librarians of Hexelheim. Temple priests function as much else; prophets, trip-guides, and healers. Oga the blind will fence anything in the Temple Markets for a cut and it is said Thirteen-Fingered Kalbo maintains his criminal court from within the city somewhere.

Where can I hire mercenaries?

Every temple has dedicated warriors who can be bribed for some gold or hired from their posts for more: or if you’re down and out consider a short monthlong stint in their ranks and they’ll pay you a favour back.

Is there any place on the map where swords are illegal, magic is outlawed or any other notable hassles from Johnny Law?

Yes. Everywhere (for magic) if you’re not noble or a priest; if you can get a sword made of metal the summary punishment for peasants is to be killed with your own sword.

Which way to the nearest tavern?

Alcohol is abhorred and anti-religious. Try imbibing the Holy Mountain at any of the regular temple trance-sessions.

What monsters are terrorising the countryside sufficiently that if I kill them I will become famous?

The Gods. Potentially seperate, considering it’s bold to assume it might help against gods: ask why any of the road patrols bother lugging around cannons everywhere they go

Are there any wars brewing I could go fight?

Wait till sunset; pick between any of the temples, guilds, and the various politically motivated violent groups that fill the darker streets and undercity at night with their state-sanctioned petty warfare.

How about gladiatorial arenas complete with hard-won glory and fabulous cash prizes?

There are street-leagues of Seven-Tongues-of-Fire players, a game where the main rule is to fight your opponent using a weapon that is “some form of live, poisonous, deadly, and previously enraged animal chained to the wrist of the wielder”. Also, try arranging a dawn duel with any of the merchant nobles; the prize is whatever’s on their corpse if you win and a fat bounty on your head.

Are there any secret societies with sinister agendas I could join and/or fight?

People keep disappearing for months on end and then reappearing at comfortable jobs amongst the king’s bureaucrats. Ask them.

What is there to eat around here?

The vicious, dark Skrom-beast is a trophy kill and life-giving staple here; one mature kill feeds a family for a season and the carcass is sold to shipwrights to be sewn into ships. Tax is recorded in Skrom-heads and is common unit of measurement (think fuckton). I. E. they are worth a lot.

Any legendary lost treasures I could be looking for?

The Yellow Hulks– solitary yellow ships with silent crews that arrive twice yearly carrying cargo of the finest textiles, slave-bands seeking life contracts, weapons made of real steel, and then leaving with equal weight in gold– have not arrived all year despite many sea-merchants having said to have passed them in the busy ocean routes or canals through the coastal swamps.

Where is the nearest dragon or other monster with Type H treasure?

Rivers of blood have been flowing from the semi-permanent villages in the inland wastes that spring up around the ancient temples there.

#DIYDND #dnd #jrients #campaign

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mostlysignssomeportents · 6 years

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The FCC will move to kill net neutrality over Thanksgiving and it thinks that we'll all be too busy eating and shopping to notice

FCC Chairman Ajit Pai (previously) is planning to make good on his promise to kill net neutrality this weekend, under cover of the holidays, ushering in an era in which the largest telcoms corporations can extract bribes from the largest internet corporations to shut small, innovative and competitive internet services from connecting to you.

Under this regime, a company like Fox News or Google could pay a bribe to a company like Comcast, and in exchange, Comcast would make sure that its subscribers would get slower connections to their rivals. This is billed as "free enterprise."

Net Neutrality was won in America thanks to an improbable uprising of everyday people who finally figured out that this boring, wonky policy issue would directly affect their futures, and the way they work, learn, raise their children, stay in touch with their families, start businesses, participate in the public sphere, stay healthy and elect their leaders. Millions of Americans called, wrote, marched and donated and won over the largest, best-funded corporations in America, beating them and forcing the Obama-era FCC to protect the free, fair, open internet.

Ironically, Trump owes his victory to the neutral internet, where insurgent racists and conspiracy theorists were able to gather and network in support of Trumpism without having to outbid mainstream political rivals. Across Trumpist forums, the brighter among his supporters are aghast that a Trump appointee is about to destroy the factors that made their communities possible.

Ajit Pai is planning to introduce his anti-neutrality fast-track vote over the holiday weekend in the hopes that we'll be too busy eating or shopping to notice.

He's wrong.

Thanksgiving is when students go home for the holidays to fix their internet connections and clean the malware out of their computers. Those students -- awake to the Trumpist threat to their futures -- will spend this weekend explaining to their parents why they need to participate in the fight for a neutral net.

Thankgiving is when workers stay home from the office, participating in online forums and social media, where they will have raucous conversations about this existential threat -- because a free, fair and open internet isn't more important than climate change or gender discrimination or racism or inequality, but a free, fair and open internet is how we're going to win all those fights.

Sneaking in major policy changes over the holiday weekend is a bad look. People are better at understanding procedural irregularities than they are at understanding substance. It's hard to understand what "net neutrality" means -- but it's easy to understand that Ajit Pai isn't killing it in secret because he wants to make sure you're pleasantly surprised on Monday.

The "failure to observe regular order" is the hallmark of looters and crooks, and it foiled the GOP's attempt to murder Obamacare and is about to kill their tax plan. Pai's arrogance and incompetence are the epitome of the Randian delusion of supermanhood, the belief that no one can figure out what you're up to because you are such a job-creating, 11-dimensional-chess-playing Galt.

https://boingboing.net/2017/11/21/failure-to-observe-regular-ord.html

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orbemnews · 3 years

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Evaluation: Trump's been enjoying the pardon lengthy sport his total presidency “Why would I take it off the desk?” Trump had stated on the peak of investigators’ stress for witnesses within the Russia investigation, Mueller famous in his closing report. The particular counsel regarded intently at whether or not Trump was obstructing justice by dangling pardons for his former advisers Roger Stone, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn — then all targets of the investigation. However these kinds of hints-in-progress would not come to fruition till Trump’s closing weeks as President, lengthy after Mueller’s work ended and the advisers sided with loyalism to Trump over the FBI and different investigators’ issues of election safety. The pardons additionally assist Trump make his case that the Mueller investigation ought to be discredited — even when its intensive findings about Russian interference, the Trump marketing campaign’s receptiveness to it and Trump’s makes an attempt to derail Mueller have held up beneath scrutiny. “Mr. Manafort has endured years of unfair therapy and is among the most distinguished victims of what has been revealed to be maybe the best witch hunt in American historical past,” the White Home wrote on Wednesday in its clemency announcement for a person who hid hundreds of thousands of {dollars} from the US authorities and as an alternative spent the cash on ostrich and python pelt outerwear and karaoke methods. And for Stone, who appeared to relish the limelight of his trial and booked an interview on Fox Information Wednesday evening, “Pardoning him will assist to proper the injustices he confronted by the hands of the Mueller investigation.” Virtually two years in the past, when Mueller’s investigation had ended, the particular counsel’s workplace was tripped up in its closing report from saying clearly the implications of what Trump had completed — partly due to Justice Division coverage that the President could not be indicted but in addition due to the timing of politics and an lack of ability to learn Trump’s thoughts. But Mueller documented extensively how a lot Trump had made identified to advisers to not flip on him or on the marketing campaign. Trump’s private counsel John Dowd had handed a message to Manafort and his deputy and co-defendant Rick Gates, for example, that they need to “sit tight” and could be “taken care of” when Mueller’s staff pushed for plea offers and cooperation, as conservatives gathered a authorized protection fund so the 2 may refuse and go to trial, in keeping with the Mueller report and witness interview memos obtained by CNN and Buzzfeed. Gates flipped first, and Manafort later, after he was convicted by a jury on a number of monetary fraud prices associated to his years of profitable political consulting in Ukraine. Manafort agreed to cooperate with Mueller, solely to then misinform the grand jury and investigators, nonetheless blocking them from attending to the underside of his ties to Russia in 2016. He served nearly two years in jail earlier than being launched to residence confinement due to the coronavirus. Gates acquired commendations from a federal decide and prosecutors for telling the reality about his crimes and Manafort’s and the marketing campaign’s actions. He has not acquired a pardon. Trump’s tweets and public statements about this a part of the Mueller probe had been a few of his most specific: at a rally, cheering a decide who questioned Mueller’s intentions; writing on Twitter “very unfair!” and “I really feel very badly” for his charged associates. “He refused to ‘break’—make up tales to be able to get a ‘deal.’ Such respect for a courageous man,” Trump tweeted following Manafort’s conviction at trial, earlier than the previous marketing campaign supervisor signed a plea deal in a associated case, admitting all his monetary and lobbying crimes. Trump that week was reeling from the announcement that one other former adviser, Michael Cohen, had grow to be a federal cooperator and implicated the President in a marketing campaign finance scheme. Cohen additionally has not acquired a pardon. In the course of the Mueller investigation, the President was additionally applauding Stone publicly for having the “guts” to not cooperate. Stone by no means did, and Mueller may by no means nail down what Trump and Stone talked about throughout the marketing campaign, or if Stone was profitable in his makes an attempt to weaponize leaks of Democratic emails for Trump. One other personal lawyer for Trump, Rudy Giuliani, stated throughout the Mueller probe that Trump would nonetheless have the pardon energy after Mueller ended his work. Trump may use it, Giuliani stated, if the President believed his convicted advisers had been handled unfairly. But pardons weren’t ripe then, in the midst of the presidency. It could have been a political third rail. Manafort’s crimes had been sweeping, banking and tax swindles partly outdoors of politics and largely predating his work for Trump. Even a Trump supporter on his jury had voted to convict him. Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham two years in the past known as a pardon for Manafort a “catastrophe for the President.” And Stone’s crimes, additionally confirmed to a jury past an inexpensive doubt, had first affected a Republican-held Home of Representatives in 2017. “In our establishments of self-governance, courts of legislation or committee hearings, the place individuals beneath oath must testify, fact nonetheless issues,” Michael Marando, then a prosecutor in Trump’s personal Justice Division, argued at Stone’s trial for his conviction. Trump’s preliminary grant to commute Stone’s sentence this summer time was critiqued even by the usually reticent Mueller, a longtime Republican bureaucrat. “Russian efforts to intervene in our political system, and the important query of whether or not these efforts concerned the Trump marketing campaign, required investigation … When a topic lies to investigators, it strikes on the core of the federal government’s efforts to search out the reality and maintain wrongdoers accountable,” the previous particular counsel wrote in a Washington Submit op-ed following Stone’s commutation. “Stone was prosecuted and convicted as a result of he dedicated federal crimes. He stays a convicted felon, and rightly so.” Following the announcement of Manafort and Stone pardons Wednesday, the response has been considerably extra muted to date. One Republican senator, Ben Sasse, has spoken up, calling it “rotten to the core” in an announcement. Andrew Weissmann, the chief prosecutor over Manafort’s case, wrote in a tweet Wednesday evening, “The pardons from this President are what you’d anticipate to get should you gave the pardon energy to a mob boss.” He additionally inspired prosecutors to subpoena Manafort and Stone as witnesses for grand jury testimony about Trump. Aaron Zelinsky, a pacesetter on the trial staff for Stone who turned a congressional whistleblower alleging improper political interference within the case by Justice Division leaders who needed to appease Trump, declined to remark by his lawyer. Mueller and his representatives did not reply to a request for remark. It is doable Trump’s pardon may nonetheless be investigated, particularly if investigators have purpose to imagine bribes had been provided or accepted. One pardon-bribery case is thought to have been explored in regards to the Trump period by prosecutors, although no prices have resulted, no pardon was given, and court docket information describing investigators’ steps did not implicate Trump or his shut advisers. Even when Trump’s pardons this week accomplished an try at obstruction by the President, any doable penalties could grow to be overdue with the tip of the presidency. Justice Division management has already declined to prosecute the President for obstruction, and the Democratic-held Home primarily placed on ice Mueller-related impeachment proceedings in 2019. Plus, reviving these pursuits would elevate thorny authorized questions on government energy. In the long run, particularly if it is the final main assertion on the topic, Trump’s pardon lengthy sport and embrace of his bully pulpit labored. Stone, Manafort, Flynn and others by no means totally divulged to the FBI or to the Mueller investigation their full information of the marketing campaign’s willingness to just accept Russian interference within the 2016 election or about different contacts with Russia. They’re nonetheless railing in regards to the Deep State of the US authorities, whereas the presidential administration has repeatedly regarded previous causes to be involved about election interference, particularly from Russia. It was “espresso boy” Papadopoulos whose lawyer made the clearest argument in actual time about what Trump was doing, evident even within the first days of his presidency. “On January twentieth, the President of the USA, the commander in chief, he informed the world that this was faux information and a witch hunt. Seven days later [Papadopoulos]’s introduced in for the interview. The President of the USA hindered this investigation greater than George Papadopoulos ever may,” protection lawyer Thomas Breen stated at Papadopoulos’ sentencing listening to in September 2018. “My level is that this,” Papadopoulos’ lawyer continued, “The man he labored for, who he needed to see President of the USA, is telling everyone that the investigation these fellas talked to him about is faux. And that is the mindset moving into there” when Papadopoulos lied to the FBI. This week, following his pardon, Papadopoulos thanked Trump for his clemency, and repeated his perception there was a “Russia hoax.” Supply hyperlink #Analysis #entire #Game #Long #pardon #Playing #Politics #Presidency #Trump'sbeenplayingthepardonlonggamehisentirepresidency-CNNPolitics #Trumps

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dreaminginthedeepsouth · 3 years

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 1, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Still operating on a generator without room for much revision, so again, apologies for typos or inelegance….

There is an increasing feeling of desperation coming from the White House. Trump continues to insist he won the 2020 election, although the states whose results he has challenged have all certified their votes for Joe Biden. Biden has tallied more than 6 million votes more than Trump, including significant majorities in all the states Trump claims, in the biggest win for a candidate challenging an incumbent since Franklin Delano Roosevelt challenged Herbert Hoover in 1932.

Today loyalist William Barr, Trump’s Attorney General, admitted that the Department of Justice has not found any evidence of widespread voter fraud that would mean Trump won the election. Trump’s lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Jenna Ellis promptly issued a statement saying “With the greatest respect to the Attorney General, his opinion appears to be without any knowledge or investigation of the substantial irregularities and evidence of systemic fraud.” Trump allies told PBS NewsHour correspondent Yamiche Alcindor that Barr’s statement was a “complete betrayal.”

For the last three weeks, Trump and his supporters in the Republican Party have attacked elections officials—including Republicans-- who failed to throw out Democratic ballots to give the election to Trump. The president called Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger an “enemy of the people,” and Trump’s loyalists are intensifying their rhetoric against officials who have persisted in defending the integrity of the election. Right-wing followers on social media called for jail, torture, or execution for a 20-year-old Georgia election technician, falsely alleging he manipulated election data. On NBC’s Today Show, the president’s lawyer Joseph diGenova called for former cybersecurity official Christopher Krebs, whom Trump fired after Krebs stated the election was not marked by fraud but was quite secure, to be “drawn and quartered. Taken out at dawn and shot.”

Social media accounts from right-wing loyalists are increasingly calling for violence. One user on the conservative media site Parler said that “[We the People] want to kill all of you cheating traitors….” Another called for “Civil war if Biden does steal the election.” These loyalists claim to be waiting for Trump’s “order” to start just such a war.

Today Gabriel Sterling, a voting systems manager for Republican Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger held a news conference in which he said: “It has all. Gone. Too. Far. It has to stop.” Of the young technician whose life is now in danger, he said, “[t]his kid… just took a job. And it’s just wrong. I can’t begin to explain the level of anger I have right now over this. Every American, every Georgian, Republican or Democrat alike, should have the same level of anger.”

Sterling attacked Trump for the death threats Georgia officials have been receiving, and chewed out Georgia Republican Senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler, who both face runoff elections in early January against Democratic challengers Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, for refusing to shut such language down. “Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions or this language,” he said. “Senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions. . . . Stop inspiring people to commit potential acts of violence…. That shouldn’t be too much to ask for people who ask us to give them responsibility.” Sterling also called out diGenova for his language: “Someone’s going to get hurt,” he said. “Someone’s going to get shot. Someone’s going to get killed.”

Trump and allies of Don Jr. have been fundraising on the idea that Trump must contest the 2020 election. Trump’s Save America Political Action Committee (PAC) has raised more than $170 million in contributions to overturn the election, but very little of that money goes to the recount effort. It goes primarily to whatever Trump wants—including golf memberships, travel, and salaries-- and to the Republican National Committee.

Don Jr.’s allies have formed the Save the U.S. Senate PAC. It is nominally about the Georgia run-off Senate elections, but can take in unlimited money from anyone, including corporations, and spend it however it wishes, so long as it doesn’t explicitly coordinate with a political campaign. As Washington Post correspondent Philip Bump puts it: “Trump and his team have figured out a way to parlay his base’s concerns about the election — concerns Trump has been hyping for months — into a well-stocked bank account with few limitations on how it is used.”

And yet, Trump seems to have accepted that he’s going to have to leave office, and to be exploring his options. New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Michael S. Schmidt tonight broke the news that he has discussed with advisers whether he should grant preemptive pardons to Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka, Jared Kushner, and Giuliani. This poses a problem for them, though, since to make a pardon stick it needs to be as specific as possible, which would mean he would have to suggest what they might have done that requires a pardon.

Pardons were in the news tonight for another reason, too, as news broke that the Department of Justice is investigating what appears to have been a bribe before the end of the summer. Someone apparently promised payments to either the White House or to a related political committee in exchange for a presidential pardon.

Meanwhile, the country continues to suffer from the coronavirus. While the White House appears to have given up addressing the spikes that are leaving hospitals overwhelmed and the economy faltering, today Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a Trump appointee, warned Congress that it must pass a coronavirus relief package or see even worse damage. To Republicans who insist there is no need for such relief, he responded, “The risk of overdoing it is less than the risk of underdoing it.” Powell encouraged aid to state and local governments, hard hit by the pandemic, noting they are some of the country’s largest employers. Because most cannot borrow to make up for their lost tax revenues, without relief they will have to lay people off, thus worsening the recession.

Former Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen, Biden’s nominee for Treasury Secretary, echoed Powell today. “Lost lives, lost jobs, small businesses struggling to stay alive are closed for good. So many people struggling to put food on the table and pay bills and rent. It’s an American tragedy. And it is essential we move with urgency. Inaction will produce a self-reinforcing downturn causing yet more devastation.”

In May, Democrats passed a $3 trillion relief package but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) refused to take it up. The Senate began to work on its own package in mid-July, just before federal unemployment benefits ran out, but McConnell could not bring his caucus together behind anything. So he turned his back on negotiations, leaving Democrats to negotiate with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who held to a $1 trillion limit. The Democrats offered to split the difference and agree to a $2 trillion compromise. The Republicans refused.

In September, McConnell offered a $500 billion bill that has the key measure he wants: a liability shield for businesses whose employees contract coronavirus at work. When the Democrats refused it, he accused them of partisanship.

Then, today, news emerged that a bipartisan group of lawmakers had tried to hammer together a stopgap relief measure of about $908 billion to rescue small businesses, the unemployed, and other hard-hit parts of the economy.

As soon as news broke of the new bipartisan bill, McConnell shot it down. Instead, he will insert exactly what he wants into the upcoming government funding bill, which Congress must pass by December 11 or face a government shutdown. This forces Democrats either to do what he wants or to shut down the government, a solution that is usually political poison.

McConnell’s new plan has no state and local aid and only one month of jobless aid, but it has liability protection for businesses.

There is overwhelming popular support for a multitrillion dollar package. A month ago 70% of voters, including more than half of Republicans, wanted such a package, including aid to state and local governments. But McConnell controls the Senate.

Biden hopes to initiate a sweeping economic relief and stimulus package immediately upon taking office. The upcoming elections in Georgia will be the difference between the fate of a new coronavirus bill, which McConnell can essentially dictate, and a tied Senate, where McConnell will have to negotiate.

—-

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

#quotes #political #election 2020 #corrupt GOP #criminal GOP #Letters From An American #Heather Cox Richardson

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garudabluffs · 4 years

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Except the oligarchy was with Lincoln. Both sides lost the Civil War. I don't even need to read this book to know it's bunk. The great historian of the American west, Dee Brown, describes the historical origins of political insider trading in his book, Hear that Lonesome Whistle Blow: The Epic Story of the Transcontinental Railroads, which was recently brought to my attention by John Denson. The book tells the story of a group of men who might be called the founding fathers of political insider trading, the most prominent of which was Abraham Lincoln. The rest were some of the founding fathers of the Lincoln’s Republican Party; many of them served as generals in the union army. In the mid to late 1850s Lincoln was a prominent railroad lawyer. His clients included the Illinois Central, which at the time was the largest corporation in the world. In 1857 he represented the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad, which was owned by four men who would later become infamous as “robber barons” for receiving — and squandering — millions of dollars in federal subsidies for their transcontinental railroad. Granting these men their subsidies would become one of the first orders of business in the Lincoln administration. These men — Thomas Clark Durant, Peter Dey, Grenville Dodge, and Benedict Reed — were easterners from New England and New York State who had “a store of hard experience at canal and railroad building and financing,” writes Dee Brown. And they must also have been quite expert at stealing taxpayers’ money for useless government-funded boondoggles. Prior to the War between the States, government subsidies for railroad and canal building were a financial disaster. So disastrous were these government pork barrel projects that by 1860, according to economic historian Carter Goodrich, Massachusetts was the only state in the union to have not amended its constitution to prohibit taxpayer subsidies to private corporations (Carter Goodrich, Government Promotion of American Canals and Railroads, 1800—1890, p. 231). In a dispute with a steamship company the above-mentioned men “sought out a first-rate lawyer, one who had a reputation for winning most of his cases,” writes Dee Brown. “They found him in Springfield, Illinois and his name was Abraham Lincoln.” The jurors in the case failed to reach a decision, but Lincoln’s performance “won him a considerable amount of attention in the Chicago press and among men of power, who two years later would push him into the race for President of the United States.” One of those “men of power” was Chicago newspaper editor Joseph Medill, whose newspaper trumpeted the Lincoln candidacy on behalf of the railroad interests of Illinois. This powerful clique of New England/New York/Chicago business interests “aroused the suspicions of the South,” says Brown, since they were so vigorously lobbying Congress to allocate huge sums of money for a transcontinental railroad across the Northern states. Southern politicians wanted the route to pass through their states, naturally, but they knew they were outgunned politically by the political clique from “the Yankee belt” (New England, Pennsylvania, Ohio, the upper Midwest). These Northern political insiders, who would form the core of leadership of the Republican Party and later, in some cases, of Lincoln’s army, positioned themselves to earn great riches from the proposed railroad subsidies. John C. Fremont, who would be a general in Lincoln’s army, was a wealthy California engineer who conducted an extensive engineering survey “to make certain that the most favorable route would end up not in San Diego but in northern California, where Fremont himself claimed sizable land holdings.” Another wealthy Yankee, Pierre Chouteau, “put his money into a St. Louis factory to make iron rails and went to Washington to lobby for the 38th parallel route.” Illinois Senator Stephen Douglas “owned enough strategically located land in Chicago to be a millionaire if his favored route westward through Council Bluffs and Omaha was chosen . . .” And “Abraham Lincoln, the future President evidently agreed with his debating partner that the route through Council Bluffs-Omaha and the South Pass was the most practical. Lincoln acquired land interests at Council Bluffs” (emphasis added). A short time later, after the Chicago/New England/New York “men of power” propelled him into the White House, Lincoln began signing legislation giving these men millions of acres of public lands and other subsidies for their railroads. Virtually all of the “leading lights” of the Republican Party got in on the political insider trading game by demanding bribes for their votes in favor of the subsidies. Pennsylvania congressman Thaddeus Stevens “received a block of . . . stock in exchange for his vote,” but he also demanded “insertion of a clause [in the subsidy legislation] requiring that all iron used in the construction and equipment of said road to be American manufacture.” In addition to being a congressman, Stevens was a Pennsylvania iron manufacturer. At the time, British iron was far cheaper than Pennsylvania iron, so that Stevens’s “restrictive clause” placed a bigger burden on the taxpayers of the North who, at the time, were already being taxed to death to finance the war. Congressman Oakes Ames, “who with his brother Oliver manufactured shovels in Massachusetts, became a loyal ally [of the subsidy-seeking railroad companies] and helped to pressure the 1864 Pacific Railway Act through the war-corrupted Congress.” (It took a lot of shovels to dig railroad beds from Iowa to California). During the post-war Grant administration the Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, Schuyler Colfax (later Grant’s vice president) visited the western railroad routes to attend a ceremony in his honor but, writes Dee Brown, “he preferred cash above honors, and back in Washington he eagerly accepted a bundle of Credit Mobilier stock from his follow congressman Oakes Ames, and thus became a loyal friend of the Union Pacific.” Another of Lincoln’s generals, General John Dix, was the Washington lobbyist for the railroads who “spent most of his time strutting about Washington in a general’s uniform.” (Dix was the same general who Lincoln ordered in 1862 to shut down all the opposition newspapers in New York City and arrest and imprison the editors and owners). General William Tecumseh Sherman was also sold land at below-market prices and, after the war, he would be in charge of a twenty-five year campaign of ethnic genocide against the Plains Indians, which was yet another form of veiled subsidy to the railroad corporations. After the war Grenville Dodge, who was also a Union Army general despite his lack of military training, proposed making slaves of the captured Indians and forcing them “to do the grading, with the Army furnishing a guard to make the Indians work, and keep them from running away.” These men — the founding fathers of insider trading — were responsible for the massive corruption of the grant administrations which was only the beginning of what historians call “the era of good stealings.”

#book review 5star amazon.com Haer That Lonesome Whistle Blow Dee Brown

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