Y’all understand that the purpose of voting uncommitted in the primary is another form of protest to get Biden to choose between a second term and ending military funding for the IDF right?

I keep seeing posts that are frustrated about this because they assume the people who are voting uncommitted are doing it because they hate Biden (and if that’s the case I get it tbh), but I need everyone to understand that there is an inherent strategy in this tactic. The Democratic Party is putting all of its money behind Biden and not putting any other candidates in the Primary, leaving Democratic voters with only one option - the same person who refuses to call for a Ceasefire and is continuing to fund a whole fucking genocide while we tirelessly protest, write/call in to our representatives, and post online to spread awareness. They’re not giving voters a choice electorally. So by voting “uncommitted” instead of simply voting for Biden (in HUGE numbers btw) they’re sending a clear message about where their priorities really lie.

The whole point of voting is to use your voice to tell your leaders what you want! Voters are the only thing standing between politicians and any power they wish to wield. By not voting for Biden in the Primary voters are able to hold him accountable and say “you’re not holding true to the duty of your office, the office we put you in and pay for, to represent us faithfully, so now you don’t get to keep that office.” It’s essentially telling Biden to wise the fuck up, because the ultimatum is genocide or no more power. He will lose the privilege of getting to lead if he doesn’t listen to the people he represents.

I get being scared about this. Protesting can be scary sometimes. Trump is a huge fucking threat to everything and everyone I love. He is a literal fascist who can’t be trusted to run a lawnmower let alone an entire country. But Biden and the Democratic Party are banking all their money on that fear being the sole motivator this November, so that they can continue with business as usual and not do their fucking jobs. They don’t want to listen to voters about calling for a Ceasefire because they want to continue taking money from AIPAC and other zionists, and because they don’t want further conflict between the US and anyone else. By voting uncommitted voters are sending the message that Biden is not doing his job (democratically representing the American people) and they are prepared to fire him for it.

A few things you should know about shitty US electoral politics (long post)

Neither party gives a fuck about you, and the leadership of BOTH parties support the genocide in Gaza, but you already knew that.

HOWEVER, various prominent GOP figures ALSO supported a right-wing domestic coup attempt, want to ban abortion nationwide (overturning Roe v Wade was a step along the way to that), want draconian restrictions on birth control, to ban same-sex marriage, ban sex education, ban any and all queer-positive literature, want to "phase out" social security and medicare, to completely rewrite US history textbooks nationwide with a nationalist agenda that erases US crimes against non-white peoples (already done in some states), allow US law enforcement to stop anyone darker than mayonnaise and demand to see their papers, start a nuclear war, abolish the minimum wage, outlaw their political rivals, weaponize the justice department, FBI, and other federal agencies against their political rivals, outlaw dissent of any kind, and remove restrictions against using US troops against US citizens (see Tuberville's blocking of top military appointees so that a future GOP president can appoint GOP/Trump loyalists to those positions, the way they blocked judicial/SCOTUS nominees in order to get Roe v Wade overturned).

The GOP openly states that they know the only way they win elections is by keeping non-right-wing voters away from the polls, and they invest heavily in, among other things, online psyops to convince people not to vote. And it works, because right wing voters ALWAYS show up to the polls.

Every time a right wing candidate wins, Dem leadership goes, "Huh, I guess we need to field more conservative candidates if we want to win elections." The idea being that if they can somehow "meet in the middle," they'll get the conservative vote. (Hint: They won't.)

So what convinces the Dems to run more progressive candidates? Overwhelming support at the ballot box for leftist candidates on the local and primary levels--school board elections, senators and representatives at the state and federal level, sheriffs, judges, mayoral and city council races, and various other local and regional elected positions. That's it. The only two things they understand are money and winning.

Whomever wins the presidency and gets enough congressional support gets to appoint federal and supreme court judges, top military officials, and various other decision-makers. THIS IS HOW THE GOP WAS ABLE TO OVERTURN ROE V WADE.

The US can't be fixed in a single election cycle. Every cycle in which the GOP wins, however, pushes the Dems further to the right AND allows the GOP more power to enact their vision.

Yes, we need viable third parties. Unfortunately, barring a miracle, third parties and independents are right now viable only in some local, and possibly a few congressional races.

In order for third parties to be viable for things like presidential elections, we're most likely going to need ranked choice voting--which, again, we may eventually get by pushing progressive candidates at the state and local level--publicly-funded elections, the abolition of the electoral college (both Bush and Trump lost the popular vote, and were only awarded victory because of the electoral college), and the repeal of Citizens United (which essentially legalized large-scale corporate bribery of candidates).

Look, we all hate Biden, and refusing to vote for him (or whatever other shitbag candidate the Dems run) might feel good, but it is also likely to result in a GOP win--which means MORE support for genocide the world over, and the GOP gaining more power to enact their wish list, which I partially enumerated above.

How many people do you think will die under a nationwide abortion ban? How do you think it's going to work out if a far-right president has the authority to unleash US troops on protesters? How many seniors and disabled folks do you think will suffer and die if Social Security and Medicare are abolished? How many will suffer and die if Trump gets his wet dream of a nuclear war?

I mean, the US has already bombed its own people for not toeing the capitalist/white supremacist line, sponsored coups against foreign leaders and replaced them with dictators, and invaded or threatened to invade foreign countries for not bowing to US corporate interests (look up the origins of the term "banana republic," "overthrow of the Hawaiian Kingdom," and "1953 Iran coup," for just a few examples), experimented on US citizens without their knowledge (look up "tuskegee syphilus study," among many other things) and so on, and so on.

And if the GOP gains control of all three branches of government, it's going to get even worse.

Today's GOP is more rabidly extremist than at any other time in my life. And as I said, I'm OLD, dude. I was born the year Kennedy was assassinated. Among my early memories are watching the first lunar landing, watching Nixon's "I am not a crook" speech, and seeing news footage of the US withdrawal from Vietnam. And I'm telling you, today's GOP makes the GOP of my youth look practically benign in comparison.

I used to roll my eyes at the refrain of, "this is the most important election of your life," and the "blue no matter who" folks, but man... The 2016 election really WAS the most important, but only SO FAR.

Because the GOP--due to the facts that GOP/Trump supporters voted, and many others didn't--will most likely control the Supreme Court for DECADES to come, and currently control the Senate. If they gain the presidency, retain control of the Senate, and take control of the House, all may be lost.

Again, the far right openly states that keeping non-conservatives from voting is how they win, and they invest a lot in gerrymandering, voter roll purges, and online psyops to make that happen. Doing exactly what the fash want "but for leftist/progressive reasons" isn't the own you think it is. Funny--I hear the same folks who mock far right voters for voting against their own best interests say they're "protesting" by refusing to vote--when that's exactly how the far right wins.

Look, I'm old. I was planning to live my final years outside the US, eventually immigrating to the Republic of Ireland or Uruguay or somewhere like that, but now that I have a child, I'm being forced to return to the US for at least a few years so I can use my medical benefits to live long enough to see her grow up. If she ever needs an abortion, or birth control, or to fight a discrimination or sexual harassment case, or simply to speak her mind without fear of being arrested or killed for it, or needs social security or Medicare because of a disability, I want her to have those things.

Another argument I've heard is that, "Voting doesn't change anything." Well, when I was a kid, mixed-race marriages were FINALLY legalized across the US, and schools became multiracial. More recently, same-sex marriage was made the law of the land. Conservatives fought all of those things, but voting made them happen.

On the flip side, thanks to the far right takeover of SCOTUS, Roe v Wade was overturned as an end result of the far right winning elections. (And again, this is just part one of their plan for a nationwide abortion ban.)

So don't look at it as voting FOR whatever shitbag the Dems run; look at it as voting AGAINST a full-on right-wing takeover of the US and buying time to make some fundamental changes. Voting doesn't mean you can't ALSO march, etc.

Or I mean, if you want a nationwide abortion ban, a nuclear war, MORE genocide, and all the other stuff of right-wing wet dreams, and want a far right takeover of the US while you tell yourself, "Yeah, but I maintained my moral purity," then by all means withhold your vote. Just don't delude yourself about the outcome.

May 19, 2024

"Biden pledged to “call out the poison of white supremacy” and noted that he “stood up…with George Floyd’s family to help create a country where you don’t need to have that talk with your son or grandson as they get pulled over.” The administration is investing in Black communities and reconnecting neighborhoods cut apart by highways decades ago. It has reduced Black child poverty to the lowest rate in history. It is removing lead pipes across the nation to provide clean drinking water to everyone, and investing in high-speed internet to bring all households into the modern era. 

The administration is creating opportunities, Biden said, bringing “good-paying jobs…; capital to start small businesses and loans to buy homes; health insurance, [prescription] drugs, housing that’s more affordable and accessible.” Biden reminded the audience that he had joined workers on a picket line. To applause, he noted that when the Supreme Court blocked his attempt to relieve student debt, he found two other ways to do it. He noted the administration’s historic investment in historically black colleges and universities."

"“In a democracy, we debate and dissent about America’s role in the world,” Biden said. “I want to say this very clearly. I support peaceful, nonviolent protest. Your voices should be heard, and I promise you I hear them.” 

“What’s happening in Gaza…is heartbreaking,” he said, with “[i]nnocent Palestinians caught in the middle” of a fight between Hamas and Israel. He reminded them that he has called “for an immediate ceasefire…to stop the fighting [and] bring the hostages home.” His administration has been working for a deal, as well as to get more aid into Gaza and to rebuild it. Crucially, he added, there is more at stake than “just one ceasefire.” He wants “to build a lasting, durable peace. Because the question is…: What after? What after Hamas? What happens then? What happens in Gaza? What rights do the Palestinian people have?” To applause, he said, “I’m working to make sure we finally get a two-state solution—the only solution—for two people to live in peace, security, and dignity.”"

Highlights from Heather Cox Richardson's Letters from an American. Full newsletter under the cut.

Delivering the commencement address to the graduating seniors at Morehouse College today, President Joe Biden addressed the nation. After thanking the mothers, fathers, grandmothers, grandfathers, and all the people who helped the graduates get to the chairs in front of the stage, Biden recalled Morehouse’s history. The school was founded in 1867 by civil rights leader Reverend William Jefferson White with the help of two other Baptist ministers, the Reverend Richard C. Coulter and the Reverend Edmund Turney, to educate formerly enslaved men. They believed “education would be the great equalizer from slavery to freedom,” Biden said, and they created an institution that would make the term “Morehouse man” continue to stand as a symbol of excellence 157 years later. 

Then Biden turned to a speech that centered on faith. Churches talk a lot about Jesus being buried on Friday and rising from the dead on Sunday, he said, “but we don’t talk enough about Saturday, when… his disciples felt all hope was lost. In our lives and the lives of the nation, we have those Saturdays—to bear witness the day before glory, seeing people’s pain and not looking away. But what work is done on Saturday to move pain to purpose? How can faith get a man, get a nation through what was to come?” 

It’s a truism that anything that happens before we are born is equidistant from our personal experience, mixing the recent past and the ancient past together in a similar vaguely imagined “before” time. Most of today’s college graduates were not born until about 2002 and likely did not pay a great deal of attention to politics until about five years ago. Biden took the opportunity to explain to them what it meant to live through the 1960s. 

He noted that he was the first in his family to graduate from college, paid for with loans. He fell in love, got a law degree, got married and took a job at a “fancy law firm.” 

But his world changed when an assassin murdered the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King—a Morehouse man—and the segregated city of Wilmington, Delaware, erupted with fires, looting, fights, and occasional gunfire. For nine months, the National Guard patrolled the city in combat gear,  “the longest stretch in any American city since the Civil War,” Biden recalled.

“Dr. King’s legacy had a profound impact on me and my generation, whether you’re Black or white,” Biden explained. He left the law firm to become first a public defender and then a county councilman, “working to change our state’s politics to embrace the cause of civil rights.” 

The Democratic Party had historically championed white supremacy, but that alignment was in the process of changing as Democrats had swung behind civil rights and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Biden and his cohort hoped to turn the Delaware Democratic Party toward the new focus on civil rights, he said. In 1972, Biden ran for the Senate and won…barely, in a state Republican president Richard Nixon won with 60% of the vote. 

Biden recalled how, newly elected and hiring staff in Washington, D.C., he got the call telling him that his wife and daughter had been killed in a car accident and that his two sons were gravely injured. The pain of that day hit again 43 years later, he said, when his son Beau died of cancer after living for a year next to a burn pit in Iraq. And he talked of meeting First Lady Jill Biden, “who healed the family in all the broken places. Our family became my redemption,” he said. 

His focus on family and community offered a strong contrast to the Republican emphasis on individualism. “On this walk of life...you come to understand that we don’t know where or what fate will bring you or when,” Biden said. “But we also know we don’t walk alone. When you’ve been a beneficiary of the compassion of your family, your friends, even strangers, you know how much the compassion matters,” he said. “I’ve learned there is no easy optimism, but by faith—by faith, we can find redemption.”

For the graduates, Biden noted, four years ago “felt like one of those Saturdays. The pandemic robbed you of so much. Some of you lost loved ones—mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, who…aren’t able to be here to celebrate with you today….  You missed your high school graduation. You started college just as George Floyd was murdered and there was a reckoning on race. 

“It’s natural to wonder if democracy you hear about actually works for you. 

“What is democracy if Black men are being killed in the street?

“What is democracy if a trail of broken promises still leave[s]…Black communities behind?

“What is democracy if you have to be 10 times better than anyone else to get a fair shot?

“And most of all, what does it mean, as we’ve heard before, to be a Black man who loves his country even if it doesn’t love him back in equal measure?” 

The crowd applauded.

Biden explained that across the Oval Office from his seat behind the Resolute Desk are busts of Dr. King and Senator Robert Kennedy, challenging Biden: “Are we living up to what we say we are as a nation, to end racism and poverty, to deliver jobs and justice, to restore our leadership in the world?” He wears a rosary on his wrist made of Beau’s rosary as a reminder that faith asks us “to hold on to hope, to move heaven and earth to make better days.” 

“[T]hat’s my commitment to you,” he said. “[T]o show you democracy, democracy, democracy is still the way.”

Biden pledged to “call out the poison of white supremacy” and noted that he “stood up…with George Floyd’s family to help create a country where you don’t need to have that talk with your son or grandson as they get pulled over.” The administration is investing in Black communities and reconnecting neighborhoods cut apart by highways decades ago. It has reduced Black child poverty to the lowest rate in history. It is removing lead pipes across the nation to provide clean drinking water to everyone, and investing in high-speed internet to bring all households into the modern era. 

The administration is creating opportunities, Biden said, bringing “good-paying jobs…; capital to start small businesses and loans to buy homes; health insurance, [prescription] drugs, housing that’s more affordable and accessible.” Biden reminded the audience that he had joined workers on a picket line. To applause, he noted that when the Supreme Court blocked his attempt to relieve student debt, he found two other ways to do it. He noted the administration’s historic investment in historically black colleges and universities. 

“We’re opening doors so you can walk into a life of generational wealth, to be providers and leaders for your families and communities.  Today, record numbers of Black Americans have jobs, health insurance, and more [wealth] than ever.”

Then Biden directly addressed the student protests over the Israeli government’s strikes on Gaza. At Morehouse today, one graduate stood with his back to Biden and his fist raised during the president’s speech, and the class valedictorian, DeAngelo Jeremiah Fletcher, who spoke before the president, wore a picture of a Palestinian flag on his mortarboard and called for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, at which Biden applauded.

“In a democracy, we debate and dissent about America’s role in the world,” Biden said. “I want to say this very clearly. I support peaceful, nonviolent protest. Your voices should be heard, and I promise you I hear them.” 

“What’s happening in Gaza…is heartbreaking,” he said, with “[i]nnocent Palestinians caught in the middle” of a fight between Hamas and Israel. He reminded them that he has called “for an immediate ceasefire…to stop the fighting [and] bring the hostages home.” His administration has been working for a deal, as well as to get more aid into Gaza and to rebuild it. Crucially, he added, there is more at stake than “just one ceasefire.” He wants “to build a lasting, durable peace. Because the question is…: What after? What after Hamas? What happens then? What happens in Gaza? What rights do the Palestinian people have?” To applause, he said, “I’m working to make sure we finally get a two-state solution—the only solution—for two people to live in peace, security, and dignity.” 

“This is one of the hardest, most complicated problems in the world,” he said. “I know it angered and frustrates many of you, including my family. But most of all, I know it breaks your heart. It breaks mine as well. Leadership is about fighting through the most intractable problems. It’s about challenging anger, frustration, and heartbreak to find a solution. It’s about doing what you believe is right, even when it’s hard and lonely. You’re all future leaders, every one of you graduating today…. You’ll face complicated, tough moments. In these moments, you’ll listen to others, but you’ll have to decide, guided by knowledge, conviction, principle, and your own moral compass.”

Turning back to the United States, Biden urged the graduates to examine “what happens to you and your family when old ghosts in new garments seize power, extremists come for the freedoms you thought belonged to you and everyone.” He noted attacks on equality in America, and that extremist forces were peddling “a fiction, a caricature [of] what being a man is about—tough talk, abusing power, bigotry. Their idea of being a man is toxic.” 

“But that’s not you,” he continued. “It’s not us. You all know and demonstrate what it really means to be a man. Being a man is about the strength of respect and dignity. It’s about showing up because it’s too late if you have to ask. It’s about giving hate no safe harbor and leaving no one behind and defending freedoms. It’s about standing up to the abuse of power, whether physical, economic, or psychological.” To applause, he added: “It’s about knowing faith without works is dead.”

“The strength and wisdom of faith endures,” Biden said. “And I hope—my hope for you is—my challenge to you is that you still keep the faith so long as you can.” 

“Together, we’re capable of building a democracy worthy of our dreams…a bigger, brighter future that proves the American Dream is big enough for everyone to succeed.”

“Class of 2024, four years ago, it felt probably like Saturday,” Biden concluded. “Four years later, you made it to Sunday, to commencement, to the beginning. And with faith and determination, you can push the sun above the horizon once more….”

“God bless you all,” he said. “We’re expecting a lot from you.”

—

Notes and Citations available by subscribing to Letters from an American: https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/

Okay I’ve been thinking about this as an alternate history thing but do you think there was a way the country/court could have sided decisively with Anne and Henry in The Great Matter? <3

Decisively? I mean, they weren't decisively against either, in the wash. There's been a real push towards rehabilitating Chapuys as a credible source, and I wouldn't go as far as to say no credence should be given towards his dispatches at all, but what's elided in this push is that the reason he's not treated as one is he so often spoke in absolutes, and the world simply does not, and did not, exist in absolutes.

To speak to one example of how history is spoken of in absolutes that weren't there...this idea that Tudor England was universally pious or 'more religious' than we are today. Granted, in general terms, we live in a more secularized society, but you look at things like parish records from the time and church attendance was at times, stunningly low, people fined for such absences, frequently. The world then was much like it was today, there were people of different denominations that were extremely devout, moderately devout, passably devout, and there were even people that didn't believe in God, or were apathetic about whether or not there was one.

As such, that's also the terms of which we should discuss the GM. There were people that were very invested, people that would Die On Their Hills, but odds are a wide swath didn't care too particularly much; it's dissent that's recorded because it's dissent that was punished, not compliance. Many that speak of the 'tyranny' of the creation of the Church of England, Henry's title as supreme authority of such, the investment of Anne as Queen and Elizabeth as heiress, elide that all of these were affirmed by Parliament. That means they had representative sanction by majority. It's the same, for that matter, to the disinheritance and illegitimacy of Mary & Elizabeth in much firmer language in 1536 than of 1534.

Anyway, for Chapuys, his absolutes also (because, well...of course they do) always have evidence to the contrary (often, even contradicted by himself):

Every man of any position here is in despair that the Pope does not proceed against the King, and that commerce is not forbidden in Flanders and Spain, knowing that if speedy remedy is not taken, nothing can be done either for the good ladies, whose lives are in danger, or for religion.

But elsewhere, Chapuys speaks of men that are in 'the Lady's party' (an earlier one was Nicholas Harvey, the husband of Bridget Wingfield, her friend, another was Nicholas Hawkins, a cleric and diplomat, just to name some outside her family). These men had titles ('of any position'). Thus, it does not compute that "every man of any position [in England]" wished for the Pope to enforce an interdict in England, for certainly those of 'the Lady's party' would not. 'Most men of any position' could be exaggeration, but 'every man' is demonstrably false.

Anyway, to answer the counterfactual of it all:

Certainly it was unpopular in some quarters regardless, so as far as I see it, there's two ways it could have been less so 1527-32:

Dark, but...Catherine dies. There's still going to some nose-holding from council even if Henry gives respectable measure to a period of mourning, those that want Henry to wed for another foreign alliance, but no one can contend that he's risking Imperial invasion by his repudiation of Charles V's aunt.

Well, the most obvious one: Clement declares the union invalid on the grounds of some flaw in the dispensation, etc. This might not actually make Henry feel totally secure, though (he was still hoping for this as possibility as late as 1533); and there is an intriguing possibility that we would still see similar political moves regardless as an 'insurance policy' of sorts. There was a precedent for Popes reversing annulments, so there was always a chance that could happen.

Do anti-abortion states actually care about women and children, what does the data say? (Spoiler: "no")

All right, time for another one of my crazy data sets. One of the arguments you see pretty consistently from those who are pro-life is that they come to their beliefs through deep care for both children and pregnant women. With Roe v Wade officially having been struck down today I thought I'd take a look at the various states, their laws regarding abortion, and the actual status of children and pregnant women in those states.

There's going to be a lot of data and charts here, but if all you're interested in is the overall conclusion you can just skip straight to the Conclusion where I'll do a full wrap-up.

State Abortion Laws

First of all we need to categorize the states. Luckily, some journalists have already done the hard work of figuring out where the laws of each state stand, you can check out their work here:

For our purposes, I sorted the states into three categories. Those labeled "Yes" have laws that specifically make abortion legal, those labeled "No" have laws that specifically make it illegal, and those labeled "Maybe" are a bit of a muddle. I should note, however, that states in the "Maybe" category are likely to change now that the Roe v Wade, though not all in the same direction. Here's a graph with the number of states in each category as of this moment:

Population Statistics

As important as the number of states, though, is the number of people in each state. We often forget, when discussing political issues, that these issues affect real people. So here's the percentage of the population living in states of each category:

Population data was gathered from Wikipedia, specifically, here:

State Poverty Levels

So now that we have a rough idea of how many states fall into each category and how many people are in those states, it's time to start analyzing them. The first thing I want to look at is the poverty rates. This, I think, is an important metric because it tells us two things. First of all, the poverty rate is a measure of how much we care about individual outcomes but, secondly, the poverty rate also indicates the level of opportunity available in a state. A state with high poverty is a state where a person born there has less opportunity to succeed in life.

So, given that, let's take a look at the average poverty rates of the states in each category. As you can see, poverty rates actually have a pretty strong correlation with abortion laws:

This data is fairly widely available as it's collected by the US Census Bureau and I took this from the source that presented it in the easiest to read fashion, Wikipedia:

State Child Poverty Levels

Now, poverty rates don't directly relate to children and pregnant women, so I think it's worth focusing a bit more specifically. One might imagine that, even in an area with high poverty, a state might take special care of children and that child poverty might not be as bad. Unfortunately, this is not the case, child poverty rates are worse than standard poverty rates in nearly every state and the gap between states that protect abortion and states that ban it is about the same:

Again, this is widely available data collected by the US Census Bureau and I took it from USA Today because they had the most readable chart:

State Education Rankings

Beyond poverty rates we can also look at education. Education represents an investment in children as well as their opportunity to succeed. A state might have high poverty levels, but providing a student in poverty with a good education is one of the best ways to help them escape poverty, even if it results in them leaving the state and not contributing otherwise to its statistics. One might think that states interested in the well-being of children would do well in education.

Unfortunately, states that restrict abortion do much, much worse than other states in this regard. In fact, this was the single biggest gap in anything I looked at. You'll also note that, contrary our previous categories where "Maybe" states were midway between pro and anti abortion states, they look more like pro-abortion states here. Here's the average state ranking for each category of state:

Rankings for this category were taken from US News & World Report, generally considered to be the gold standard in the ranking of schools and education. I specifically looked at K-12 education instead of higher education because higher education tends to be mobile across state lines. Here's the source:

https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/rankings/education

Infant Mortality Rates

All right, onto the next category, infant mortality rates. I find this category particularly relevant since, if the intended purpose of anti-abortion legislation is to protect children in the womb, then it seems sensible to expect that you would want to protect them after leaving the womb as well.

On the contrary, though, this category is the third-worst of all of those I measured, with infants in anti-abortion states about 30% more likely to die than those in pro-abortion states. You'll also note that this is the reverse of our last category, in this one the "Maybe" states look similar to the anti-abortion states. Here's the data:

This data I took straight from the CDC website itself because it was convenient there.

Maternal Mortality

Moving on from children to pregnant women, one of the most important statistics is maternal mortality. We often forget that, until the advent of modern medicine, childbirth was one of the most common ways that women died and it's still disturbingly common today. Simply put, pregnancy can be very dangerous.

However, that danger can be mitigated with proper health care, prenatal care, and birth care. One might think that states that justify their opposition to abortion by stating their care for pregnant women might, therefore, have lower rates of maternal mortality, but one would be very wrong in this case as well. In fact, of all the categories I looked at this was the second largest gap I found between pro and anti abortion states. Here's the actual data:

Again, this is widely available data collected by the CDC and I took it from Wikipedia for my usual reasons:

Teen Pregnancy

Next we turn to teen pregnancy. This is, to my mind, another key indicator as teenagers who get pregnant are more likely to fall into poverty and less likely to have access to health care. A state that cared deeply about children and pregnant women would go to significant effort to prevent teen pregnancy.

As usual, though, the states that most tightly restrict abortion are also the states with the highest incidence of teen pregnancy:

Again, this is widely available data collected from government agencies and I took it from Wikipedia because it was convenient:

Rape

One common, and one of the most widely accepted, reasons for women to have an abortion is rape. One might think that, in the world before Roe was struck down and abortion could not be made illegal, that one of the best ways to reduce abortion rates would be to reduce rates of rape with the added benefit that this would generally improve conditions for women.

Of course, states with strict laws against abortion also do poorly in this category. Now, rape is a notoriously difficult crime to measure due to really poor reporting rates and enforcement, so I've actually run this twice with two different data sets. The "Maybe" data is also a bit skewed because Alaska is a massive outlier with a huge rate of rape, so definitely take that column with a grain of salt. Here is the data, though, flawed as it may be:

Anyways, here's the two sources of data that I used. As I said, this one is difficult to measure so any specific data is a bit suspect, but there does appear to a clear trend in the metadata.

Transition: Data to Analysis

All right, so I've basically looked at every broad indicator I could and the results were fairly consistent, the states that restrict abortion the most are also the worst states for women's and children's well-being. I'm going to do a quick summary of each category, then I'm going to talk a bit about some strange outlier states, and then I'll go ahead and wrap up.

Summaries of Each Category

Average Poverty Rate: The difference here is fairly obvious, states that restrict abortion more tightly have over 21% more poverty on average than states that protect abortion. Child Poverty Rate: This one's actually slightly worse, though I don't know if it's statistically significant. States that restrict abortion have over 23% higher child poverty rates on average than states that protect abortion. Education: This one, unfortunately, isn't really quantifiable, I could only find rankings for this one. Still, the difference between pro and anti abortion states is pretty massive, but take it with a grain of salt since the difference between all of the spots could be just 1/10 of a percent or the difference between any two spots could be double. Infant Mortality: This is the first kicker for me. If you actually care about the unborn fetus you'd think that you'd continue to care once it came out of the womb. Instead what we find is that the states with anti-abortion laws have drastically higher rates of infant mortality than states with pro-abortion laws. Maternal Mortality: This one is the second kicker for me. If you really care about pregnant women you'd care whether or not their pregnancies kill them. This is the widest quantifiable gap with women in anti-abortion states being over 36%(!!!!) more likely to die from their pregnancies than women in pro-abortion states. Teen Pregnancy: Another example of how much people care about women is teen pregnancy. Teen pregnancy will completely derail the life of a teenage girl resulting in massively higher poverty rates, lower education rates, and worse outcomes in just about every category you can measure or think of and states that restrict abortion have over 16% higher teen pregnancy rates than those that protect it. Rape: Again, one might imagine that if your goal is to protect women then rape would be a key thing you'd want to address. This one is hard to measure for reasons I mentioned earlier so I won't deal in specific numbers, but the clear pattern remains here: states that restrict abortion are worse places for women when reading broad trends in the data.

Of Special Interest

While putting together this data set I did come across a few things that piqued my interest. Here they are if you, too, are interested.

Variation in Maternal and Infant Mortality: Obviously there was a huge gap in maternal mortality between pro and anti abortion states, but the variation from state to state is also pretty insane. The state with the worst maternal mortality (Georgia at 46.2 per 100k) has more than ten times(!!!) the maternal mortality rate of the state with the best maternal mortality (California at 4.5 per 100k). Basically, we have some states that look like the advanced democracies of the western world and other states where you would literally be better off giving birth in third world countries like Cuba and Mexico. You see something similar when you look at the infant mortality rates. We'll toss out Vermont which has virtually zero infant mortality but we still find five states with infant mortality rates under 4 per 100k (CA, MA, MN, NJ, and NY) and another two on the cusp (OR and RI) and every single one of them is a state with pro-abortion laws. Basically, pro-abortion states look like the UK in terms of infant mortality while anti-abortion states look like some of the former Yugoslav Republics. It's bonkers. I'm extremely thankful that my wife gave birth to my daughter here in California where both of their chances of dying are ridiculously lower than in some other states. Poverty and Rape: One thing you start to notice really quickly when you look at the statistics for poverty and rape is that they're fairly well correlated at the high end. You also start to notice that the states near the top of those lists have one thing in common: high populations of Native Americans. I think there's a fairly good argument to be made based on the data that we have largely failed our tribal populations in terms of economic opportunity and law enforcement. Teen Pregnancy: Teen pregnancy is an interesting one to look at in that there's actually not a massive variation from the top to the bottom. Anti-abortion states do worse overall, but even many pro-abortion states still have relatively high rates of pregnancy. Colorado, on the other hand, is a huge outlier here with a teen pregnancy rate that's almost half that of the next best state. You might also know that one of the biggest differences between Colorado and other states in this regard is that Colorado has a program offering free or low cost IUDs (one of the most effective forms of birth control) to all women and allowing those under 18 to make birth control decisions independently. It certainly seems to work. Utah: I have to mention Utah because it's a pretty consistent outlier on the anti-abortion side of things. With the exception of its higher than average rate of rape and its infant mortality rate which is only slightly below average, Utah actually looks very good in all of the categories I measured here. Some anti-abortion states were better than pro-abortion states in a category or two, but Utah was the only anti-abortion state that consistently measured highly, higher than most pro-abortion states, in categories of well-being for women and children. We probably should check in on them because they're doing something right.

One Final Check

Okay, based on the data I've put together here I think it's fairly clear that states that have anti-abortion laws are generally worse for women and children than states with pro-abortion laws which calls into question the oft-stated rationale that opposition to abortion stems from concern for the well-being of pregnant women and their children. One thing, though, I did want to check, is whether those poor outcomes were actually the fault of government leaders, the same ones who supported and maintained the abortion restrictions, or whether they might simply be outside of their control. After all, we do see pro-abortion states, New Mexico being a significant one, that suffer very poor outcomes for women and children.

To check into this I decided to investigate the legislative agendas of the various anti-abortion states and compare them to the legislative agendas of the pro-abortion states. After all, what separates a bad outcome from a truly bad outcome is whether or not you try to do anything to make it better.

Well, I looked into it and… nope. The legislatures of anti-abortion states are not focused more on improving the health and well-being of women and children any more than pro-abortion states. In fact, if anything it's the opposite. The legislatures of pro-abortion states are spending a lot more time and passing a lot more bills trying to alleviate poverty and improve health outcomes than the legislatures of anti-abortion states.

Conclusion

So yeah, that's the ballgame. Here's a summary of what we've determined here:

States with anti-abortion laws do significantly worse on average in every measure of health and well-being for women and children than states with pro-abortion laws, about 20% worse in every single category I could think of to measure. And it gets even worse when I take out the hard to measure category of rape!

Even worse than that, the legislatures of states with anti-abortion laws are spending significantly less time and effort to increase the health and well-being of women and children than the legislatures of states with pro-abortion laws.

Given this we can say with relative certainty that the majority of people who oppose abortion do not do so out of concern for the well-being of women, their pregnancies, or their children. True concern is shown by actions and outcomes and both of these are clearly lacking in the case of those who pass and maintain anti-abortion laws. Based on the data we have gathered here we can say with a good deal of certainty that those who support abortion rights are likely to be significantly more concerned with the well-being of women and children.

#personal

I think there's been enough space between real life and my emotions to talk about it. I don't see the failure as any other way when it comes. And it has been a lesson in constants. That's the trick of isolation unfortunately without much validation. You try to convince yourself that your situation is different. And people are wall to wall around you trying to manipulate you into thinking worse. There's a point when you call bullshit. And for me and the rest of American society it just doesn't happen once. You have to be constantly vigilant of the world around you. When I sat in training for a shitty job at a culturally appropriated sushi shop I was told the reason sexual harassment laws exist is because of "snowflakes." I've heard that term more than I have wanted to since I've set back into mainstream society. It always comes from people who sound like they do too much cocaine. Which is a lot of people out here. I wish it weren't the easiest way to describe the "wall" but it is. I've never done the shit. I drink a lot of coffee black. But even that is limited to three cups a day. I set a lot of rules and routines for myself that I try to follow. When I walk into an environment that just lets caution and shit hit the fan, it is jarring. Have I been exactly cradled by society from a social justice perspective? No. I unfortunately know the true depth of the Alan Moore paradigm. You can try to reach out for help but nobody is in control. There's enough people to sound nice and make you feel wanted for a second. But ultimately they don't want to face or confront the root of these problems. Which is seriously not helping by not confronting or calling people out on their bullshit. I know how it is. You can and will be blacklisted. You'll be on Tumblr for years writing about it even through the writer's strike. You see I literally took a nine dollar and hour job with tips not for the YouTubes but because that was all that would pay attention to me for the last two and a half years. I've had resumes at major fashion houses, the ACLU, even the office of police accountability. And I'm just some invisible schmuck who should have learned my place in society and not invested in a rival EV company as to not piss off the mob or billionaires with my forcible retirement and pension. How do you even explain shit anymore without it sounding like a treatment for a shitty Tarantino movie. Which is why I probably took a few weeks off to digest it all.

I got punked at the sushi place like I get punked in the neigborhood. People want to excuse it away as my own fault and not listed up in a gang database. They want to use me as a soapbox to show everything that is wrong with a subgroup of people I don't actually belong to. They try with group interventions that skirt the boundary of legality because they know no one like me can afford 20k for a lawyer to retaliate. But there's some meat to it that drips off the bone like a real car wreck when it is allowed to acquiesce. It follows me around like a sick dog and I get it to do tricks. The performative cyclone that is just waiting for my big moment to break it up and cuck me back into my apartment thinks it gets away with murder. These shit heads are in broad daylight with the intimidation and retaliation. And I watch people helplessly wondering if I'll reach out and explain it to them so they can open their big fat mouth and make it worse. I've done that enough for years. The truth is I should have known how fucked up things were and I do. I spent most of my time saving money and looking for ways to pare down my own expenses. But never did I think I'd be sitting here making excuses for it for other people at this level. I honestly should be the one to break it to people that America is more than fucked right now. You have a Supreme Court that just casually rules against fair use and women's bodies. You have a performative layer of news that is just for profit propaganda. You have no way to be or feel represented other than writing on a dead social media platform to friends around the world. And you have every cokehead in this city riled up and soaking up the attention because they're desperate for annihilation. And I see no way for these people to be able to pay the bills at this rate. And this worries me in a lot of ways. I'm not just looking for a job for my future. I'm an only child with divorced parents. My mom could lose her house. My dad won't help her. People around this fucking neighborhood project their sitcom lifestyle of socially oppressed millienial and I'm living a fucking horror show. My life out here is nothing different from Cuba outside of the thin layer of constitutional rights and fuck you attitude that keeps people from getting in my face.

I don't see a future for me here. I don't see anything. I wake up. I go to sleep. I had my identity, my dreams, my friends and my narrative robbed and toyed with around the world by vile, petulant mother fuckers who deserve to eat curb repeatedly. And they will metaphorically speaking. I'm the one who has to clean it all up. Trash dripping from someone's balcony onto mine. Rabid animals roaming my garden. People looking the other way or making fun of my physical appearance or political beliefs with litter and trash. Alleys full of fentanyl and heroin needles. You people love that cheap low rent lifestyle that steals people's life savings and gives it back to the bank. The same bank running PPP loan scams so brazen you could leave it all in a James Joyce book out near the dumpster like the rockford files for a tenet style dead drop and nobody... I mean nobody will touch that shit with a ten foot pole. They'll never go on record. They'll make memes about you on their fake social media when you ask for help. These people are more than petty. These people are consistently vile. And people make excuses for what they did to me. Buried my narrative. Called me crazy. Turned me into the legend of curly's gold on the Internet. A living, breathing world heritage post locked behind a paywall that doesn't pay me at all. What part of my rights evaporated and shit the bed in the Stardew Valley sense. I don't even really believe I communicate to the outside world anymore. My mental health is of no concern to the people who actively as a group on this block with the help of nbc universal partake in Ed Burke style bullying on a daily basis. And the feds just watch. You might think they set this shit up. America is one step ahead of you. My country is nothing but an insurance company with an army. And I'm sure they'll write you a check if you survive. Most of us weren't meant to past forty. And that's why I'm already dead to people in a sense. My emotions towards apologies from people died a long time ago. I was always trying to move on. And in some ways, the writing is still on the wall that I don't belong here as a victim for a bunch of closet terrorists. But if the shoe were on the other foot. I'd rather terrorize you with my success. So I'm passing you the fail ball slugger. Make it count. <3 Tim

Minecraft Once, Minecraft Twice: Three Reasons why You Should not Minecraft The Third Time

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Heyyyyyy, I bet you were DYING to know stuff about that Google v. Oracle decision, huh?

You may have heard recently about a big deal Supreme Court decision called Google v. Oracle, a litigation that has dragged on for many, many, many years and focuses on Google having copied some pieces of computer programming owned by Oracle and known as APIs. Most of the write-ups I’ve seen about it have focused on its enormous repercussions for the technology sector, which makes sense since it’s a case about computer programming and APIs and other tech-y things.

But the thing about the decision is that it’s a fair use decision. The Supreme Court could have found that the APIs weren’t even protected by copyright. But instead, the Supreme Court used the doctrine of fair use, and this means that the case potentially has ramifications for all fair use situations, including fanfiction!

So, if you don’t know, fair use is a main defense to copyright infringement. Basically, you can use somebody else’s copyrighted work without their permission as long as what you’re doing with it is considered a “fair use.” E.g., you can write a story in somebody else’s fictional universe or draw art of somebody else’s fictional copyrighted characters without their permission as long as your use is a “fair use.”

“What’s a fair use?” is an incredibly complicated question. The long and tortured history of Google v. Oracle illustrates this: a jury found Google’s use was a fair use; an appellate court found that it wasn’t and basically said the jury was wrong; and now the Supreme Court says no, no, the jury was right and the appellate court was wrong. Like, this is not unusual, fair case rulings are historically full of disagreements over the same set of facts. All of the cases reiterate over and over that it’s a question that can’t really be simplified: every fair use depends on the particular circumstances of that use. So, in a way, Google v. Oracle, like every fair use case, is a very specific story about a very specific situation where Google used very specific APIs in a very specific way.

However, while every fair use case is always its own special thing, they all always debate the same four fair use factors (these are written into the law itself as being the bare minimum of what should be considered), and especially what’s known as the first and fourth factors. The first factor is formally “the purpose and character of the alleged fair use,” although over the decades of fair use jurisprudence this has come to be shorthanded as “transformativeness,” and the fourth factor is “effect on the market.”

Most of the energy and verve of a fair use case is usually in the transformativeness analysis; the more transformative your use is, the more likely it is to be fair (this is why AO3’s parent organization is called the Organization for *Transformative* Works – “transformative” is a term of art in copyright law). To “transform” a work, btw, for purposes of copyright fair use doesn’t necessarily mean that you have edited the work somehow; you can copy a work verbatim and still be found transformative if you have added some new commentary to it by placing it in a new context (Google Image Search thumbnails, while being exact reproductions of the image in question, have been found to be fair use because they’re recontextualizing the images for the different purpose of search results). The point is, transformativeness is, like fair use itself, built to be flexible.

Why? Because the purpose of copyright is to promote creativity, and sometimes we promote creativity by giving people a copyright, but sometimes giving someone a copyright that would block someone else’s use is the opposite of promoting creativity; that’s why we need fair use, for THAT, for when letting the copyright holder block the use would cause more harm to the general creative progress than good. Google v. Oracle recommits U.S. copyright to the idea that all this is not about protecting the profits of the copyright monopolist; we need to make sure that copyright functions to keep our society full of as much creativity as possible. Google copied Oracle’s APIs to make new things: create new products, better smartphones, a platform for other programmers to jump in and give us even more new functionality. The APIs themselves were created used preexisting stuff in the first place, so it’s not like anyone was working in a vacuum with a wholly original work. And, in fact, executives had thought that, the more people they could get using the programming, the better off they would be.

Which brings us to the fourth fair use factor, effect on the market (meaning the copyright holder’s market and ability to reap profits from the original work). There’s a lot of tech stuff going on in this part of the opinion but one of the points I find interesting from that discussion is that the court thought that Google’s use of the APIs was not a market substitute for the original programming, meaning that Google used the APIs “on very different devices,” an entirely new mobile platform that was “a very different type of product.”

But also. What I find most interesting in this part is the court’s explicit acknowledgment that sometimes things are good because they are superior, and sometimes things are good because people “are just used to it. They have already learned how to work with it.” Now, this obviously has special resonance in the tech industry (is your smartphone good because it’s the best it could be, or because you’re just really used to the way it’s set up?), but there’s also something interesting being said here about how not all of the value of a copyrighted work belongs *to the copyright holder* but comes *from consumers.* Forgive the long quote but I think the Court’s words are important here:

“This source of Android’s profitability has much to do with third parties’ (say, programmers’) investment in Sun Java programs. It has correspondingly less to do with Sun’s investment in creating the Sun Java API. . . . [G]iven programmers’ investment in learning the Sun Java API, to allow enforcement of Oracle’s copyright here would risk harm to the public. . . . [A]llowing enforcement here would make of the Sun Java API’s declaring code a lock limiting the future creativity of new programs. Oracle alone would hold the key. The result could well prove highly profitable to Oracle . . . . But those profits could well flow from creative improvements, new applications, and new uses developed by users who have learned to work with that interface. To that extent, the lock would interfere with, not further, copyright’s basic creativity objectives.”

This is picking up on reasoning in some older computer cases (like Lotus v. Borland, a First Circuit case from decades ago), but I think it’s so important we got this in a Supreme Court case: if WE bring some value to the copyrighted work through our investment in it, why should the copyright holder get to collect ALL the rewards by locking up further creativity involving that work? Which, incidentally, the Court explicitly notes is to the public detriment because more creativity is good for the public? This is such an important idea to the Supreme Court’s reasoning here that it’s the first part of the fair use test that it decides: that the value of the work at issue here “in significant part derives from the value that those who do not hold copyrights . . . invest of their own time and effort . . . .”

This case is, as we say in the law, distinguishable from fanfiction and fanart. APIs are different from television shows, and this case is very much a decision about technology and computer programming and smartphones and how old law gets applied to new things. Like, fair use is an old doctrine dating from the early nineteenth-century, and here we are figuring out how to apply it to the Android mobile phone platform. That, in and of itself, is pretty cool, and it’s rightly what most of the articles you’ll see out there about this case are focusing on.

But this case isn’t just a technology case; it’s also a fair use case that places itself in the lineage of all the fair use cases we look at when we think about what makes a use fair. And, to that end, this has some interesting things to say, about how much value consumers bring to copyrighted works and where a copyright holder’s rights might have to acknowledge that; about the fact that there are in fact limits to how much a copyright holder can control when it comes to holding the “lock” to future creativity building on what came before; about what part of the market a copyright holder is entitled to and what it isn’t. Think about the analogy you could make here: Given the investment of fans in learning canon, which is what makes the creative work valuable in the first place, allowing enforcement against fanfic or fanart would allow the canon creators to have a lock limiting future creativity, which would be highly profitable to the original creator (or, let’s be real, to Disney lol), but wouldn’t further copyright’s goals of promoting creativity because it would stifle all of that creativity instead. And just like Google with the APIs, what fandom is doing is not a market substitute for the original work: they’re “very different products.”

This is not to say, like, ANYTHING GOES NOW. Like I said, fanfic and fanart are very different from APIs. Fictional works get more protection than a functional work like the APIs at issue in this case. And there’s still a whole thing about commercial vs. non-commercial in fair use analysis which I didn’t really touch here (but which obviously has limits, since it’s not like Google isn’t making tons of money, and their use was a fair use). But this decision could kind of remind a big media world that maybe had forgotten that the copyright monopoly they enjoy is supposed to have the point of encouraging creativity; we grant a copyright because we think people won’t create without a financial incentive. (Tbh, there’s a lot of doubt that that is actually a true thing to believe, given all the free fic and art that gets produced daily, but anyway, it’s what the law decided several centuries ago before the internet was a thing.) Copyright is a balance, between those who hold the copyright and the rest of us, and the rest of us aren’t just passive consumers, we have creative powers of our own, and we might also want to do some cool things. And this case sees that. None of us are starting in a creative vacuum, after all; we’re all in this playground together.

How And What India Has Been Coping With During The Deadly Covid Second Wave

Last rites being performed by a family, like many, at the Seemapuri Crematorium Center in Delhi

The second wave of the coronavirus pandemic has been nothing less than that of one wreaking havoc and chaos for India - social media full of SOS messages asking for hospital beds, oxygen cylinders, medicines; crematorium centers had never witnessed such large amount of deceased being cremated, crematorium centers even had to be expanded with increased number of pyre-platforms at various parts of the country, and now the abandoned lifeless being found in rivers - simply nothing less than a catastrophe.

Heartbreaking visuals of people gasping for breath, lined outside hospitals unable to find beds, heavy shortage of important medicines like Remedesivir, lifeless bodies waiting for multiple hours at the crematorium centers for their turn to be cremated - this surely has been one of the worst health crisis India has ever seen. Exhausted frontline workers and workers at crematorium centers say they have never seen such huge crisis before. Woods have come to be short in numbers to cremate the dead. How have the authorities dealt with this?

There’s possibly not a single person in India who has not lost at least one of their relative, friend or a known one in last two months.

The centre alone did not fall well short and caught ill-prepared, states are equal culprits in their jurisdiction.

India has been under criticism by global media continuously for under-reporting of numbers of the deceased, and its lack of testing, with many reports from journalists on ground suggesting that the actual numbers of those deceased is actually at least 10-15 times more than the official numbers. A report showed that as the official data shows that in the capital of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal, had seen only around 1,000 deaths due to covid since the pandemic began last year, whereas the data kept at crematorium centers shows that around 3,700 funerals have been done according to covid protocols in the city in the month of April alone in 2021. Such is the scale of under reporting of numbers in the official data, be it Delhi, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, and a majority of the Indian states.

From VIP treatments to the well-off even during these hard times, a classic case of Delhi government’s attempt to book Ashoka Hotel for safety measures for Delhi HC Judges with no inputs from the latter raising many eyebrows recently, states too have had their own bit of criticisms of handling of things during the pandemic.

When urban parts, despite having all the infrastructure and facilities, have seen such destruction, things in rural India have slowly started to catch headlines. With lack of information amongst the people about the virus and vaccines, multiple people in villages have been dying everyday lately complaining of fever, fatigue and shortness of breath, with no oxygen and testing facilities in most of the rural parts of the country despite being 15 months into the pandemic. How cruel things could unleash in the rural areas is a dangerous thought having seen the recent peak in urban ones.

Almost all of the country have been either in a lockdown or strict curfew with almost all states imposing the same, and this has shown some positive results in the last week with positivity rate coming down in various urban areas. The issue of oxygen crisis, after weeks long deliberation by the Supreme Court and various High Courts, have been dealt with to an extent in some manner only after the apex court made a separate National Oxygen Monitoring body.

The true figures lay not in the official data, but the crematorium centers of this country.

People waiting in queues at vaccination centers to get their jabs

Vaccination drive in many states have come to a halt owing to shortage of vaccines, with even those who are due for their second doses having difficulties finding a slot in many parts of the country. When the second wave started to wreak havoc, the widely demanded move by the opposition to open the vaccination drive for not only 45+ but for all adults was being considered by the government and given a nod, only to open big loopholes in the world’s largest vaccination drive, with one being heavy shortage of jabs.

The gap between the two doses of Covishield vaccine has been increased to 12-16 weeks on the basis of scientific data to show for it, surely there must be data now to show for it, but if this is so, then why the same expert’s panel earlier in February 2021 had advised states that the second dose of covishield should not be administered after 8 weeks in any case as it may not work then, and why Union I&B Minister also tweeted this very advisory on the same day? We cannot possibly answer this question just like we cannot estimate that actually how many people have died due to covid in this country. But for the record, The Lancet and WHO have themselves clarified way before that the gap between two doses for AstraZeneca vaccine, or Covishield should be 12-16 weeks; The UK follows 12 weeks gap and Canada follows 16 weeks gap, and India will follow the same to tackle the heavy shortage of jabs. The gap between two doses of Covaxin, on the other hand, stands the same as before.

When The USA and the European Union gave vaccination orders of millions of dollars last year, India did not order a single jab. Should not have we placed such orders last year itself? Did or did not the experts gave this input at that time? Have we even been doing it till as late as earlier this month? If not, then this itself is a much larger issue, but there's no transparency. State governments have been left with no other alternative than to issue global tenders to buy vaccines, which actually the centre should do in the global market, and as a result, not India, but its states are competing each other in the global market to purchase vaccines. Starting with Uttar Pradesh, then Maharashtra, followed by Orissa, Delhi and Karnataka have issued global tenders already to purchase vaccines.

Not a single Indian media outlet is now projecting Atmanirbhar slogans anymore, which was literally served by the same media to its viewers for months, confining them in a whole different world altogether. And it's only a matter of time that a new slogan arrives, and literally the same channels project it again for months, confining its viewers to another new world altogether, yet again.

Surely, superpower India of 2021 would not have wanted itself to be projected in such a manner in the foreign media. The majority of domestic mainstream media would not show you this, and would continuously keep you distracted with bogus narratives and side of things, killing your ability to question the status quo and to sustain a healthy democratic India.

Indian media back in January widely publicised about the ‘World’s Largest Vaccination Drive’, which holds true given our population, but no questions were asked about procurement of vaccines. Frontline covid workers were the first priority to be vaccinated, rightfully, and plan was to vaccinate 30 crore frontline workers inside 3-4 months in first phase of vaccination drive; and 5 months into the drive not even all of the frontline workers could be vaccinated. By numbers, India is amongst fastest vaccinating countries, but when it comes to ratio of its population, it fares poorly with not even 3% people been fully vaccinated yet. It is important to look into the matter and understand how much India has spent on research and production of vaccines.

A report from The Guardian, issued on 2nd April, 2021, claimed that as the US and European Union nations have been spending billions of dollars as aids for companies for research, development and production of vaccines, there is no concrete evidence of India spending on research and production of vaccines. Before the coronavirus pandemic struck, India was the largest vaccine producer in the world, but when the pandemic struck, soon the US and China surpassed India as largest vaccine manufacturers. Indian media had to go from taking pride in largest vaccination drive to reporting of mass shutting down of vaccinating centers owing to lack of jabs, such has been the vast hallucination we have been served for some years now. Owing to this very pride of Indian media, which not only confuses its people between Indian companies and the Indian government, it also reminds its people everyday that their very ability to question to sustain the world’s largest democracy is being massacred everyday.

After this report from The Guardian on 2nd April, 2021, the Indian government submitted an affidavit in the Supreme Court on 11th May, 2021 in which the government has clearly and specifically stated that the Indian government has not issued any grant or aid to the Serum Institute of India or Bharat Biotech, which implies no funds on research or development even for domestically developed Covaxin. Only 46 crores were funded to Bharat Biotech for clinical trials of Covaxin, that too by ICMR. Which means Indian media has been taking pride in vaccines made by AstraZeneca and a domestic company Bharat Biotech, and did not question for even once that why we have not been helping at least domestic companies for vaccine research.

If the affidavit submitted in Supreme Court by the government stands firm on authentic data and information, then what about the announcement made on 13th May, 2020 about 100 crores being allotted as aids for domestic candidates developing vaccines? Around same time last year, the US was investing 15 million dollars in various vaccine developing candidates, and was advancing vaccine orders worth 300 million dollars even before vaccines were developed. On 12th December, 2020, Union Finance Minister announced 900 crores aid for vaccine production, but the affidavit submitted by the government itself in SC claims no such grants were ever made. 20th April, 2021, news came in that Finance Ministry is advancing loans worth 3,000 crores to SII and 1,500 crores to Bharat Biotech for vaccine production, the affidavit holds advancement of these loans valid, though the money is yet to reach the companies. Adar Poonawalla of SII said last month while talking to a media outlet that he has been expecting these loans on the basis of media reports, thus he too believes in the Indian media, and on the same expectations his company has taken heavy loans from banks to continue vaccine production of Covishield. By the way Adar Poonawalla has field away from the country citing pressure from "influential" people and has been shying away from answering to what might have led to such huge covid surge in India during its second wave.

Thus, there was no Indian penny involved thus far in the production of vaccines by both these companies according to the Indian government.

With how we have been coping with the pandemic, various experts have been giving their ideas and views to deal with issues, and “revolutions” in Indian healthcare system are urgently required in post covid-era.

When the UK and many members of the European Union were witnessing devastating second wave earlier this year, Union Ministers in India were claiming that India has defeated covid and that India is in the ‘endgame’ of the pandemic, in fact the numbers were actually very low during the same period, and India was starting to return to normal just when the second wave started to unleash around mid-March, exposing lack of plans to tackle a potential second wave. Lack of preparedness on health infrastructure was visibly evident, when every political party was busy campaigning in states assembly elections and large crowd gatherings were seen at Kumbh. Could not these two super spreader events have been avoided temporarily to control covid surge, just like Nizamuddin Markaz could have been avoided last year, which again acted like a spreader event in the last wave, and was presented as such a heated topic by the Indian media for months last year?

In order to cope with heavy shortage of jabs, many health experts have been demanding government intervention in expanding vaccine production by involving other vaccine manufacturers as well by providing them vaccine formula and advancing tenders for vaccine production, for which steps are being taken only in this last week. The pace of the vaccination process also has been under heavy criticism as to why door to door vaccination proposals by several states has been turned down by the centre citing the latter has no such policy, given that polio vaccination process was a great success with minimum volunteers.

If both, SII and Bharat Biotech, are providing vaccines to the centre, states and private hospitals at different prices, with lowest price being for the centre and highest for private hospitals, could not the centre itself buy vaccines and provide them to state itself given that if states buy them on their own then they will have to pay double the price compared to the centre. 

The money of 22,000 crore rupees Central Vista project, if used to buy covid jabs, would buy a whopping 146.66 crore jabs, potentially enough to fully vaccinate around 70-72 crore Indian citizens, which again is potentially enough to create herd immunity throughout the country, just a mere statistic based on facts.

It is important to keep current feedbacks in mind in order for the work to be done. No person in this country would have ever thought that private hospitals one day would run out of their capabilities to treat them, and potentially exposing that bulk of them are mere money making firms. It is high time India start to spend more on its healthcare and education, and the possibility of government taking complete control of healthcare and education, like successful western countries, should not be ruled out even after it being a slow process to come true.

Recent lockdowns and curfews by states have shown a dip in covid numbers and positivity rate, oxygen crisis seem to be in some control in the recent week, and vaccine production is being increased after government stepped in. Surely next few weeks are very critical to control the new surge of B.1.617 Indian mutant strain, with people hoping that they will overcome this health crisis soon.

But history will remember that India’s numbers ascribed not in the official data, but at the crematorium centers.

The Buy In

Chapter 5: Keeping Up Appearances

by @dracusfyre

Bucky stared sightlessly at New York traffic as he quietly panicked. He tried and failed to think of any way to get out of this, now that he was already in the car; if he could have, he would have given himself nausea and diarrhea immediately and suffered the indignity instead of escorting Tony Stark, the Mechanic, the single most powerful crime boss in Manhattan, to the Policeman’s Ball. What in the hell was he going to say to his handler? For three blocks he debated whether to give them any advance warning at all; it would be so much easier to deal with the fallout later by claiming that Stark had taken his phone before telling him where he was going. For three more blocks, he tried and failed to type something, each sentence he came up with sounding dumber than the last, so with only the barest bit of guilt he stashed his phone in the car’s glove compartment as Happy pulled into the drop off line for the ball.

Cameras started flashing almost as soon as he got out of the car to open Stark’s door, and while Stark climbed out, smiling and waving, he tried to look as boring as possible, mouth a flat line as he ignored the press and kept an eye out for anyone looking suspicious. Just what exactly was he supposed to be guarding Stark from, anyway? Other mob bosses in attendance? A mugger? The police?

“Want a drink?” Stark said once they got inside, and Bucky forced himself to shake his head even though he desperately wanted to say yes. He trailed behind Stark as he glad-handed the crowd, making jokes and asking after people’s kids, and miserably tallied the various important people in the room: the mayor, who gave Stark a handshake and a clap on the back for his donation to the Food Bank For NYC; a representative to the state house, who managed to solicit campaign donations in the guise of complimenting him on his philanthropic efforts; a US Senator that thanked him for his investment advice. And those were just the people that Bucky recognized; there was no telling how many government officials and CEOs that numbered among the people that subtly held court around Stark. He wondered how many knew about Stark’s criminal ties, and how many would care if they did know.

Finally, for Bucky’s sanity, they made the announcement for dinner and everyone filed dutifully into the main hall where they set up tables for the event.

“I was wondering if you were coming, Tony,” an amused voice said from behind them. Stark turned, and the smile he had been wearing all night widened and finally reached his eyes as a tall, slim redhead let him pull her down to kiss her on the cheek.

“Pepper, so glad to see you,” he said, taking one of her hands and putting it in his elbow. “Are you sitting next to me?”

“Of course.” Bucky recognized the woman from Stark’s case file; she was Virginia Potts, his personal lawyer. Though ‘lawyer’ didn’t really capture her, really; from a police perspective, she was Cerberus, the dragon guarding the tower, Gandalf on the bridge: in short, “You Shall Not Pass” in human form. She was largely the reason why Bucky was on this undercover assignment; faced with the potential of meeting her in court, no judge in the city would grant them a warrant without a literal smoking gun of Stark’s guilt. She was just as well connected as Stark was, to boot; one of the other senior partners at her firm was on the short list of the Democrats’ Supreme Court Justice picks and the other worked for the state as the deputy Attorney General. “How are you? Who’s this?” she asked, finally noticing Bucky following them to the dinner table.

“I’m fine, and this is a new guy,” Stark said as he pulled the seat out for Potts to sit. “I call him Blue Eyes.”

Potts rolled her eyes and offered Bucky a surprisingly kind smile. “Don’t worry, he can’t remember my real name either,” she said. “Don’t take it personally.”

“I don’t, ma’am,” Bucky said, returning her smile despite himself.

“Oh, Bill, it’s good to see you,” Stark said, and Bucky glanced away from Potts to see that sitting right across from Stark was the NY police commissioner.

 Tony hid a smile as he heard the strangled noise Blue Eyes made when he recognized the police commissioner. But after an evening of watching the man sweat as Tony rubbed elbows with the most powerful men in the state, he took pity on him. “I’ll be good for a while, if you need to take a break,” he said, and watched with amusement as the man all but fled from the table.

“What was that about?” Pepper asked with a small frown, thanking the wait staff as they filled up her glass with water and set a glass of white wine in front of her.

“I think his eyes aren’t the only thing about that guy that’s blue,” Tony said, looking significantly towards the police commissioner. Pepper’s eyebrows shot up and she took a drink of wine as she realized what he was saying, then she barely swallowed it in time before she laughed.

“And you brought him here? You are a terrible person,” she scolded him, clearly trying to suppress a smile.

“Yeah. It’s been fun watching him trying to avoid the cameramen all night. Especially because he’s been so worried about being photographed that he probably didn’t notice the fact that half of the conversations I’ve had tonight involved breaking the law in some way or another.” For example, what had probably sounded like a request for a campaign contribution was actually a solicitation for a bribe, which Tony was going to pay because politicians were just good investments, really, and honestly the Senator Walker should really talk less about how much money he made off of insider trading, particularly when he is using his committee positions to do it.

This time, Pepper’s eyes held a flash of warning instead of amusement, and Tony held up his hands in surrender, turning the conversation to safer waters as they ate.

                                                               ***

To Bucky’s surprise, Stark was ready to go not long after dinner; for some reason Bucky had the idea that he would want to stay all night, shaking hands and taking turns around the dance floor. He was all smiles as he left, but as soon as the car door closed behind him, he collapsed against the car seat with a sigh.

“You know,” Stark said, eyes closed as he rested his head on the back of the seat, “the funny thing about going to these events, is that I probably shook hands with more criminals tonight than I have in the past six months put together. But no one cares about that because the people who are supposed to care are criminals too.”

“That sucks, Boss,” Happy said, clearly having heard this complaint before. Now that they were far from the crowds and bright lights, Stark’s good mood seemed to be curdling; he sounded almost depressed. 

“It’s exhausting, is what it is. Blue Eyes, have you ever had to shake hands with and smile at someone that you hated all the way down to your bones?” Stark’s voice was muffled and Bucky looked back to see that his hands were over his face as he rubbed his eyes.

“Yeah, of course. There’s always that one guy at every job, right? The asshole that no one likes?”

Stark barked out a laugh. “Having only one would be nice, actually.” He sat up suddenly and scooted forward until he was all but in the front seat. “Let’s get dessert. Is there a late night ice cream place? Or pie? Or donuts? Back there they only had some sort of fancy baklava on the menu and I don't like honey.”

Happy and Bucky shared a look and Bucky patted his pockets for his phone before remembering that he’d put it in the glove compartment. Then he remembered why he’d left it in the car, and winced as he saw the notifications on his phone. But it was after midnight so that was going to be a Future Bucky problem. He pulled up the search bar and found a late night cookie company that was on their way home.

When they got there, there was no place to park, so Bucky got out with Stark to go inside while Happy stayed with the car. Unsurprisingly, they were the oldest people inside; the cashier and the two other customers looked like they were still in high school or college, because realistically who would be looking for a sugar fix this late at night except students. And one mob boss with a sweet tooth, apparently. Stark made a beeline for the display case and all but pressed his nose to the glass.

“What’s your favorite kind of cookie?”

“Something with fruit and nuts in it,” Bucky said. “You?” Bucky came up next to him to read all the labels. “Mexican chili cookie? Who wants a spicy cookie?”

“Can’t do better than chocolate chip,” Stark said.  “But that salted caramel is speaking to me.” He glanced up at the menu and said, “Ooh, ice cream sandwiches,” sounding so excited that Bucky had to smother a smile. It was hard to keep a straight face as Stark deliberated; the man was being so stupidly cute as he debated the merits of the different options that Bucky had the dumbest fucking desire to kiss him. Stark ended up buying a whole box of cookies and an ice cream sandwich because he couldn’t decide on which cookies he wanted, and because he kept thinking of people to give them to: “Happy will say he’s on a diet but I think he’ll want one of these M&M cookies. I don’t think I’ve ever seen mint in a cookie, I’ll get that one for Rhodey, but also this sprinkle one because it will be funny.”

Maybe it was the sugar or the impulsive shopping trip, but Stark seemed in lighter spirits as they drove the rest of the way back to his garage, telling funny stories about the people that had been at the event. It even made Happy unbend a little, as much as he ever did when he was working, and at one point Bucky was laughing so hard he was in tears.

“Here’s good, Happy,” Stark said before they could pull into the secured parking lot behind the garage.

“Are you sure, Boss?” Happy said dubiously. “It’s not safe-”

“I got Blue Eyes to protect my virtue, right Blue Eyes?” Stark said. Bucky almost bobbled the box of cookies as climbed out of the car at the mention of Stark’s virtue, and when Stark met his eyes Bucky knew he’d done it on purpose. “Come on inside with me,” Stark continued. “We need to talk about the event tonight.” He leaned over to look at Happy through the window. “You go on home, I’ll make sure he gets home ok.”  When Happy nodded, Stark tapped on the top of the car and stepped back from the curb as the car pulled away

Bucky’s hands tightened on the box of cookies as his heart gave a heavy thump and his mouth went dry. He swallowed against a spike of nerves. We need to talk was never a good sign, but also, he was about to be alone with Stark. Trying not to think about what had happened earlier, he trailed awkwardly behind Stark as he put in the security code for the door and stepped inside, turning on a few of the big banks of fluorescent lights as he went.

“You can change, if you want,” Stark said, gesturing towards the bathroom where Bucky’s clothes were still folded neatly on the sink. He shrugged out of his suit coat and unbuttoned the sleeves, rolling them up so the cuffs didn’t dangle. Bucky’s eyes lingered for a moment on the lean muscles of his forearm, the strong, slender wrist bracketed by the narrow-banded watch, and decided that a moment alone in the bathroom was a good idea.

He changed quickly and splashed cold water on his face, giving himself a stern lecture about professionalism in the mirror, reminding himself why he was really here. His boss would be telling him that this was a great opportunity, that he seemed to have Stark’s trust. That now would be the perfect time to dig a little deeper. Bucky told himself that even though Stark was handsome and funny and apparently the kind of guy that would stuff a hundred dollar bill in a tip jar didn’t mean that…

“Wait, start over,” he muttered, shaking his head. Even though Stark seemed like a good person he was, at the very least, the target of a massive criminal investigation, even if it did seem like maybe there were worse criminals out there they could be investigating. They weren’t friends, he reminded himself. Stark didn’t know anything about him, and would probably drop him into the Hudson if he did. With that sobering thought, Bucky sighed, gathered up the fancy suit and shoes Stark had lent him, and went back out to the main room.

Then that whole pep talk promptly went out the window as he came out to see Stark sitting on a metal table, swinging his legs like a kid as he ate a cookie. As Bucky came closer, he saw that Stark had kicked off his shoes and had also taken a signle bite out of half the cookies in the box. When he looked up at Bucky with a smile of welcome, Bucky knew that he was in trouble.

“So what did we need to talk about?” he asked, taking a seat on the table next to Sta- Tony. He might as well stop calling him Stark; it’s not as if thinking of him by his last name was helping him maintain any sort of objectivity.

“Just getting your impression about tonight. Did you notice anything I should know about?” Tony held out the cookie box and Bucky took one of the oatmeal craisin ones, one of the few that Tony hadn't taste tested.

He took a bite to buy himself some time to think; Bucky had a lot of observations from tonight, ranging from the completely inappropriate (the curve of Tony's ass when Ms. Potts dropped something and Tony bent over to pick it up) to the irrelevant (not impressed with the music selection) to the potentially explosive (the Commandant had a drinking problem and was probably cheating on his wife). Assessing which were relevant to Tony took a moment. “There were a couple of people that were giving you the evil eye all night,” he said finally. “Right after you shook hands with them they looked like they wanted to shank you.”

Tony threw his head back and laughed at that. “I’m sure. Was one of them a skinny tool with glasses? Justin Hammer?”

“Yeah, that was one. Another one was the Special Agent in Charge of an FBI satellite office-”

“Not surprising,” Tony commented. “She’s new. The new ones are always hungry, she’ll come around.”

“-And the other was a big guy, bald but had a beard. I didn’t catch his name, sounded like you called him Toby.”

“You mean Obie? Obediah Stane?” Tony said with surprise. He dug out his phone and pulled up a picture. “This guy?”

Bucky leaned over to look at the phone. “Yeah. I always saw him watching you when you were talking to other people. Guy had eyes like a shark. People like him can kill someone and pass a lie detector test while his hands were still bloody. Who is he?”

“A family friend.” Tony frowned down at his phone and tapped it against his palm thoughtfully. “At least, I thought he was.”

“Oh shit. I’m sorry,” Bucky said. “Maybe I’m wrong, you know, I’m not-” an expert, is what he was going to say, but he stopped because no matter how you sliced it, cop or criminal, he was. He was an expert in assessing threats, and that guy was definitely bad news.

Tony waved his words away and tossed his phone on the table with a clatter. “It’s fine. Better to know. I’ll look into it. Anything else?”

Bucky shook his head and took another bite of cookie. “Why do you go to these things if they are full of people you don’t like and apparently people who don’t like you?”

“Networking, mostly. Obligation. Gotta show my face every now and then. Spite,” he added with a smirk. “But it’s also a good reminder.” When Bucky made a questioning sound, he took another cookie from the box and nibbled the edge.  “Look, I was a rich asshole for a long time,” Tony said after a moment. “Too long. Then one day, I met a guy at a party. Don’t even know how he got invited because he wasn’t rich, wasn’t famous, he was just some doctor. And I don’t remember what I was saying, but at one point he looked at me with such pity,” Tony said, eyebrows drawing together. He studied his cookie like it was helping him remember. “I still remember his face. No one had looked at me with pity before, and he said, ‘Look at you. All this money and still you have nothing.’ And I was like, ‘excuse me? Do you know who I am?’ As you do, right, because I could have anything I wanted, I’m fucking Tony Stark. And he said, ‘Yeah, I know who you are. I’ve seen dozens of men like you. And despite all their money, all their fame, death came for all of them in the end, and they had nothing to show for it but a tacky tombstone.’” Tony bit his lip, frowning a little. “I’m sure I said something, but he just finished his drink and walked away, like I wasn’t worth his time. I wish I could say that I had this like, huge change of heart and changed my ways after that night, but it ended up being this gradual thing.”

Bucky realized he was staring. “What do you mean?” he asked, taking a bite out of the cookie he just remembered he was holding.

“Well, I looked him up later and found out he ran a free clinic downtown and on a whim I donated some money. Like, 'see what a good person I am, have some money.' Like I was proving him wrong somehow by doing that." Tony snorted and shook his head at the memory. "Anyway, doing that puts you on some kind of list somewhere, apparently, and one day I got an email about a runaway shelter. Then a food bank, then a refugee thing, and it kind of snowballed from there.”

“Wait, wait.” Bucky shook his head. “How did you go from ‘donating to a clinic’ to ‘mob boss over half of Manhattan’? That’s one hell of a snowball.”

“Well, after donating to a bunch of causes, I saw that a housing complex near all these nonprofits went up for sale, so I bought it,” he said with a shrug, fiddling with a napkin as he talked. He was already done with his cookie somehow, despite having done most of the talking.  He reached for another from the box and took a tiny bite. “I was kinda feeling like, I don’t know, tied to this area as I kept an eye on my pet projects. Then I started getting a bunch of complaints about the conditions and I was pretty fucking appalled at what I was seeing. Like, no one should live like that. It was a shame for rats to even be living there. So I fixed it up, and then I set up a trust for the building and gave it back to the tenants. All their rent goes in a fund, and they spend money on that fund to pay for what the complex needed.”

“Like a condo association?”

“More like a cooperative. They decide how much to charge everyone for rent, they decide if they want to spend money on painting the place or upgrading the light fixtures, you know, whatever. I think last time I checked they had put in a community garden. So when another came up for sale, I bought it, and then another, then I realized I might as well invest in some of the businesses here. After the fiasco of that first apartment building, I started looking at what I was spending my money on so I would know what to expect. Then when I was looking at a commercial building, people came in to shake down the owner of one of the businesses while I was there. Like, I was standing right there and those people didn’t give a shit who saw them. I was so surprised that I didn’t say anything until it was over, and then I asked the guy if that happened a lot. Can’t let that go on, you know, because...well, I mean, the owner looked so scared, and that made me mad because he's just trying to make a living, you know? Also, it cuts into the bottom line, so.” Tony shrugged again. “I put a stop to it. And then, well,” he gestured expressively around him with his cookie. “Like I said. Snowball.”

Bucky could only stare, bemused. If he had heard the same story on his first day of work, he might have been unable to keep from laughing in Stark’s face. But now…well, it was increasingly hard to square what the police knew – or thought they knew – about Tony Stark and what Bucky was seeing. “I guess no kid wants to be a criminal when they grow up,” Bucky said. “We all just kind of wander into it.”

“Yeah? Is that how you went from Bagram to Brighton Beach?”

Now it was Bucky’s turn to shrug, uncomfortable. After hearing Tony's story, he didn’t want to feed him some bullshit line from his cover story. “There’s only a few career opportunities for a grunt back home,” he said vaguely. “Even fewer that pay well.”

He glanced up to see Tony studying him thoughtfully. “Do you miss it?”

“The Army? Hell no.” That part was true enough.

“How about here? Are you happy here?”

Bucky’s mouth quirked. “Are you asking me about my job satisfaction? One means not at all satisfied, ten means highly satisfied?” He had the pleasure of watching Tony almost spit out a bite of cookie as he surprised a laugh out of him.

“Sure,” Tony said after a moment when he finished chewing. "One out of ten."

“Ten,” Bucky said truthfully. “I like helping people.” He had the traitorous thought that the past few months working with KT had been closer to what he'd thought it would be like to be a cop than what it had actually turned out to be like, and felt vaguely guilty.

“Yeah, me too.” 

They sat there in a surprisingly comfortable silence for a few moments before Bucky heard the ding of a notification on his phone. He silenced it without looking – his handlers were still yelling about the Policeman’s Ball – but sighed when he saw the time. “It’s getting late,” Bucky said reluctantly, more because it seemed appropriate rather than any desire to actually leave. He opened his mouth to say, I had a great time tonight and immediately felt like an idiot because, bare feet and half-eaten box of cookies aside, this wasn't, in fact, a date.

But apparently he wasn’t the only one who had lost the plot, because Tony said, “Would you like to come up for a dr-” before he cut himself off with a look of horror that would have been funny if Bucky hadn’t, deep down, wanted so badly to say yes. “I’ll call you a cab,” he said instead, looking away to grab his phone.

“I’ll wait outside,” Bucky said, and fled.

                                                ***

Tony watched from a window as Blue Eyes' taxi drove away, then as Tony went up the elevator to his penthouse condo he texted a sad face to Rhodey.

Told you it was a bad idea, Rhodey wrote back.

Don’t say I told you so. I’m sad, Tony responded.

You’re making yourself sad pining after an undercover cop. I don’t feel bad for you.

“That’s fair,” Tony said out loud. You should. I got you cookies and you’re being mean to me. Tony texted Rhodey a picture of the half-empty box of cookies and made himself sad all over again, remembering the intensity with which Blue Eyes had stared at the display of cookies when told to pick one, like it was a pop quiz that he was determined to pass.

Go to bed, Tones.

With a sigh, Tony tossed his phone on the bed and started peeling himself out of the monkey suit, setting the cufflinks he’d been wearing on his dresser as he threw the suit and shirt on the back of a chair to be dry cleaned. The problem was that tonight, like every night for the past few years, Tony was going to bed by himself. There had been a certain point where he’d realized that he’d tipped over from bending the rules, to breaking the rules, then to breaking the rules in a way that would get him put on lists written by people with badges, and at that point he’d realized that to bring anyone into his life was to put a target on them. The only way to avoid it was to not get close to anyone, but he’d done the one-and-done lifestyle and wasn’t interested in that anymore. It had been Pepper for a  while, because she was more than capable of protecting herself, but after a year she had gently but firmly told him that it wasn’t working for her, and that had been the end of it. Since then, there had been a few people that he thought maybe, maybe this one but in the end, they didn’t feel right.

Blue Eyes felt right. He knew it was dumb and he knew what Rhodey would say – star crossed lovers only exist in fiction, Tones - but as he slid between the sheets that night, he let himself daydream about it until he fell asleep.

Younger post-ep ramble 7x01

I joked in my finale ramble at the end of season 6 that the episode was called ‘Forever’ because that’s how long it would feel between seasons...well joke's on me because now, after 587 days, we are FINALLY here. The Younger drought has been a tough one, but we have been generously compensated by getting the first four episodes all at once, which is both exciting and also, turns out, incredibly overwhelming. As usual the thoughts and feelings are many, mostly feelings (read: I am NOT ok) but let’s start off with a delve into the premiere episode, ‘A Decent Proposal’.

The episode picks up within minutes of where the season 6 finale left off, with Diana and Enzo not wasting any time to hot foot it out of their wedding reception and into their happily ever after (Arrivederci bitches!). Of course I’m very happy for Diana and her happiness but there’s only one couple’s happiness that I am on tenterhooks about now that Diva is sorted and that is Charles and Liza, as they watch their sprinklers fizzle out in some sort of awkward, symbolic, anti-climax. 

You may recall that mere moments earlier, Charles had popped the question on the dancefloor before the two were separated by an obligatory conga line, and Charles quickly assumes that Liza’s lack of enthusiasm to shout her answer across the reception of another person’s wedding is an answer in itself. As anyone who has read my rambles before knows, I unapologetically fly the Team Charles flag, and let me tell you, despite her supreme stalling techniques (you’re not divorced yet, we should probably speak to the children blah blah), hearing Liza say, ‘my answer is, I love you’, my jaw hit the floor. I’m sorry, did Liza Miller just declare her feelings openly and directly and with absolute certainty??? We’re 33 seconds into the new season and I AM SHOOKETH DARREN. 

Speaking of declaring feelings openly and directly, I love absolutely everything about this opening scene. The music choice was perfect and really helped build the moment, as Charles told Liza he understands her hesitation before un-asking her to marry him (so that when the she’s made her mind she can pop the question - I kid you not, this has always been my dream...). The music cutting out and just hearing the crickets as Liza asks if he’s really withdrawing the proposal, his quip about her having to make the next move, assuming he’s still on the market (I love/hate this foreshadowing btw), it is Charles/Liza banter at its best and my sappy heart was soaking up every morsel. Throw in some CGI fireworks and the observation that they are sign (which may or may not play out at a later date) and you have yourself a pretty darn near perfect start to Younger’s final season.

Speaking of talking openly and directly, one of the staples of the Youngerverse, the Maggie morning debrief, is back as our way to gain insight into the thoughts, feelings and ponderings of Liza. Straight off the bat I am very pleased that Maggie has fully committed to ‘Chaz’ for Charles and I’m even happier that we actually hear these two talking about what’s going on because honestly, the last couple of seasons the Maggie/Liza convos, which we traditionally rely on heavily to know where Liza is at and to hear Maggie’s sage/sometimes terrible advice, have been skimmed over or felt rushed. We are also reminded that Liza has indeed seen Charles’ goods (the Empiriconda, she’s meaning the Empiriconda) and that the sex is hot, because we need to have all the information on top of the declarations of love to highlight how their relationship is pretty much perfect so that what transpires is even more painful.

Other things that are painful include the fact that Diana will be decidedly absent for most of the season (to be fair scheduling/covid are pretty legit reasons and in ep 1 we can chalk that up to her honeymoon, so more lamenting on that later), but early on it provides some pretty fab Lauren Diva-worshiping. Donning a baroque print Moschino suit that would’ve made Fran Fine jealous, Lauren is clearly distracted by the responsibility of her interim role at Empirical, as her mother frets about the theme for her 30th birthday party over face-time.

Keeping up the chaotic energy, we also discover that Kelsey has to go and let Quinn know she no longer needs her money (these characters’ ongoing relationship with the woman who has tried to ruin all of them at some point really needs unpacking with a good therapist at this stage) and Josh is in full frantic dad mode because he thinks Clare is trying to kidnap Gemma (lol that Lauren straight up calls her out on it later). Two quick points here:1) love seeing this side of Josh and 2) love Kelsey’s calm, measured reassurance that of course Clare would want her family to meet Gemma. I will say though, Josh meeting Rob for the first time when he’s about to go with Clare and Gemma to Ireland and hearing this guy he doesn’t know from a bar of soap exclaim, ‘I’m just in love with your daughter’ was super unfair. Not cool Clare, not cool. 

Kelsey keeps her cool as she breaks the news of her change of heart to our fave resident villain, who comes complete with a bowl of fortune cookies she ominously encourages Kelsey to consult while also enjoying her own fortune, ‘a new love will come into your life’. It’s all very OTT and ridiculous in it’s obvious foreshadowing and I am here for every minute of it because I sincerely love to hate Quinn very much.

My love of all things over the top is further fed by Lauren entering Diana’s office and making her way to the desk - the music, the way Lauren looks at the framed picture of Diana and Enzo before relegating it to the drawer, any moment I was expecting her to utter ‘my precious’ as she became more and more entranced by the power of the neckwear, before Liza abruptly broke the spell by asking what she was doing and warned her off her consideration of claiming Diana’s office as her own. Very much appreciated the continuity later in the episode when Liza is very distressed that Lauren has gone full-Trout with the chunky baubled ornament around her neck, though Lauren is less Invasion of the Body Snatchers and more Nancy Drew at this point, as she has caught wind of Charles’ proposal while reviewing video footage from Diana’s wedding which she decided, for some reason, to show Josh, who was ‘still not interested’ (we hear your words Josh but your face says otherwise). I am very on board the Liza/Lauren dynamic and their ‘circle of trust’ as Liza asks that Lauren keep the proposal to herself (we really haven’t seen the friendship between these two much) and Liza’s gratitude, ‘Thank you...Di-va’, is hilarious, as is the response, ‘my pleasure, Queen’.

We get many fine moments in the office this ep, the first meeting when there are formal announcements and speeches made welcoming Kelsey back...to a conference room of Charles, Liza, Lauren and a random guy we’ve never seen or heard from before and never will again it seems. It makes me laugh that every person in the room except the dude we’ll never know already knows everything but hey, formality is important I guess? The pitch for ‘Little Women in Space’ by an author played by an actress who is friends IRL with Sutton Foster and they were in the musical Little Women together is honestly too much but also just the right amount and this show does meta so well (not to mention Lauren’s excited outburst upon realising her party theme plus her making sure Liza knows that she knows about the proposal. Subtle as a sledgehammer is our Lauren). 

One not-so-fine moment is the extremely out of left field resignation of Zane followed by the completely douchey moment of him breaking up with Kelsey via face-time with the line, ‘I love you Kelsey, take care’. I’m sorry, what?? On the one hand, I get it that CMD wasn’t available for the season so in some respects better to deal with it swiftly and move on, but it was very abrupt and strange. I had zero investment in the pairing so it doesn’t overly affect my viewing, but any fans out there shipping those two, are you ok? Because that was a brutal way for a pairing to simply cease to exist.

So we have I love yous being thrown around by Kelsey and Zane as they break up because that makes sense (in retrospect I should’ve seen what was coming because these words clearly mean NOTHING *breathes deeply, exhales slowly*) but thank goodness Liza is there to comfort Kelsey, whose statement that she really doesn’t care would be a lot more convincing if she wasn’t crying inconsolably. We get a beautiful transition from Kelsey’s office to Charles’ with a sweeping aerial shot across the autumnal canopy of Central Park along with the gentle music adding to the relaxed pacing of the episode. Liza doesn’t want it to be weird between her and Charles now that the proposal is out there (well actually, its 100% in her court but yes), so he reassures her it’s not weird at all by planting a kiss on her that almost triggers the sprinklers because friends, it is HOTTT. Cue super cute exchange about pro and cons lists, lovingly looking into one another’s eyes and then, another ‘ I love you’ from Liza to Charles followed by Charles responding, ‘I love you too’, and despite my deceased status at this point, it was magical. But also WHAT. IS. HAPPENING. 

These two are so enamoured with one another and it’s as though it’s something they just say to each other all the time, but this is literally the first episode we’ve heard any kind of expression of feelings to one another since the season 6 premiere and even then it wasn’t this direct; Liza ran away and Charles told her he didn’t mind not being at the office because he did it for the woman he loves followed by a cute story about how he can do maths because he’s had feelings for her for 16 years. Don’t get me wrong, the entire scene this episode was perfect and it was SO well done in the way it captured the best parts of their dynamic (damn you Darren Star for being so good at what you do), but it also felt like we were being shown the dream version of what could have been before it’s all snatched away.

Not unlike Millennial, which is like naming a business Boomer Print according to the table of boomers at the investor meeting who blindside Kelsey and Charles by voting to restore the name Empirical (head boomer has clearly had it with millennials, indicated by his statement, ‘who gives a shit about millennials any more?’) and so it is done and Kelsey is officially having a very bad week. It is while enjoying a quiet bourbon in the bar that evening that Charles is joined by Quinn, who is allegedly on her apology tour to explain to investors why she dropped out of the Senate race, but also offers Charles what seems to be a sincere apology for treating his company like a toy (prediction: nothing is ever as it seems with Quinn). I have a confession to make and believe me, I don't like it any more than you do - they absolutely nailed the set up of tension and a little bit of a spark between Charles and Quinn in this scene IMO and I...I *whispers* I liked it.

What I liked even more was Lauren’s completely in character entrance to her own birthday party, omg it’s so ridiculous and perfectly her and Denise telling her daughter, ‘fix your crotch, good girl’ had me chuckling. I feel like we’re getting Kelsey’s set up for the season at this party too, as she’s feeling unsure of what defines her now, and the conversation about defining things carries over into Josh and Liza’s chat when he asks her if congratulations are in order. This exchange between the two of them is just lovely, with Liza clearly feeling a little awkward talking to Josh about Charles, but Josh reassures her that he does like him, for her, and that it brings him joy to know she’s happy. They agree that their relationship doesn’t need to be defined, and that they'll always be in each others’ lives no matter who they’re with. It feels very final for their romantic relationship and I would be celebrating the end of the triangle had I not clocked Josh’s fallen expression as Liza walks away. I really do hope that Josh finds someone he loves and who loves him the way he wants to be loved this season. Josh’s words gave Liza some clarity of her own and so we find ourselves at the magnificent Seaglass Carousel, home of Liza and Charles’ first proper date, once more.

Charles is clearly full of hope and expectation as he meets Liza and they remember the time he and the beard we try to forget about brought her there and it’s all amazing and beautiful and...*collects self*...Liza tells him that she just wants to keep riding the perfect ride. She once again tells him she loves him (we’re up to three times in one ep now for those of you playing at home), that all she wants is his heart and that she wants to be happily unmarried to him every day. To say this does not go down the way she is expecting is an understatement; we learn that Charles doesn’t want a ride, he wants to get off the carousel and not live in a fantasy. He believes in marriage whereas she believes they are now finally free and folks, this is why you talk about your stance on marriage in a relationship BEFORE you pop the question out of nowhere at someone’s wedding. 

You can see on his face, as Liza says she doesn’t want to define their relationship by the rules and obligations of marriage, that he’s hearing that she is not all in (whether that’s true or not) and he thanks her for letting him know what’s in her heart. You know the bit that actually plunges the knife into my heart? Charles shaking his head as Liza says his name, clearly overcome with emotion, before he kisses her on the head looking as though his world has just come crumbling down around him. That knife just gets twisted even further as Liza is left there in disbelief, (we are all Liza in that moment honestly), trying to process how her own declaration could be so easily rejected. You know, I knew it was coming, but it didn’t make it any less painful. I can see it from both perspectives and I have no doubt that these two characters have a lot they need to address and work through as a result of their own failed marriages if they’re going to have healthy relationships moving forward. 

I tell you what, after so long with no new episodes, this first episode of the season was concurrently beautiful and heart-breaking and one thing’s for certain - this final ride ain’t gonna be smooth. Now if you’ll excuse me I’m just going to go and regain some composure so we can start on ep 2...

Season 6 ramble collection can be found here

Bharatiya Janata party celebrates selection of Basavaraj Bommai as Karnataka chief minister as gangwars continue unabated on the streets of Bengaluru.

(03/08/2021)

Prime minister Narendra Modi and BJP should not celebrate Bommai's elevation to chief minister's post, they should be mourning for the pitiful state that so called world class city Bengaluru is in today. And predecessor Yeddyurappa's failure to free Bangalore from gangsters grip.

Basavaraj Bommai - New Chief Minister of Karnataka.

So finally the BJP parliamentary board on Yeddyurappa's recommendation choose Basavaraj Bommai as CM. That the chief minister's responsibility is towards all the cities within the state, but in Karnataka's case the problem of one city Bengaluru has been gigantic more than compared to cities like Hubli-Dharwad Mangaluru, Mysuru, Belgaum and others. And 61 year old mechanical engineering graduate Mr Bommai is well versed with Bengaluru's problems and who better than him, as he was the home minister before. And as rowdies go on wreaking havoc in city, my question is who is going to stop them? The hardworking family of Bengaluru and poor people who are struggling to provide the best for their families have completely lost faith in the Bengaluru police and it is they who get caught in the cross hairs of these gangsters. Can the new chief minister end the rowdies menace in Bengaluru? Can Basavaraj Bommai make a difference and show he has it in him to wipe out the rowdies from Bengaluru's every nook and corner unlike his predecessors Yeddyurappa, Kumaraswamy, Siddaramaiah, Jagadish Shettar and SM Krishna who were mere fence sitter chief minister's.

Why are the Bengaluru police hesitating to go in an aggressive mode against the gangsters? One reason here can be attributed to lack of support from the chief minister or home minister, and the political patronage provided by politicians to criminals. 6 out of every 10 MLA's in Karnataka assembly have links with notorious rowdies in their own constituencies. BJP on its part cannot wash hands off its sins here, because BJP is the party in power in Karnataka and Amit Shah holds the home portfolio here in central government. But the shame and irony within BJP remains and so does lawlessness in Bengaluru. The only good thing that Amit Shah has done in his capacity as home minister is to target opposition parties in rule in states like Kerala, West Bengal etc. He has continuously targeted West Bengal CM Mamata Banerjee over law and order issues in Bengal and goondaism by Trinamool Congress leaders, true that TMC leaders have indulged in goondaism and also urged it's party workers to create terror, but Mr. Shah before pointing fingers at others, you should first clear garbage in your own backyard. Amit Shah being the home minister of central government, you are right in your concerns of lawlessness in West Bengal, but what about the lawlessness in Bengaluru in Karnataka.

Also police reforms which needs to undergo a gigantic change here in India despite the Supreme court of India clearly stating that it be done at the earliest, the Modi government seems unperturbed and casual in its approach. Police reforms are a slew of measures that need to be undertaken to break the police-criminal nexus at lower ranks and many more problems in police department. But despite the police reforms remaining unchanged, that cannot be the yardstick of excuse for police commissioners for failure to bring down crime in their respective cities. In my view the police chiefs leave Bengaluru city but in any part of the world, their foremost priority should be to bring down crime to zero, if not zero but at the level at least where people can breath easy and feel safe, they must instill fear in the minds of criminals for law enforcement agencies, and above all no political interference in working of police. All these things are completely missing in Bengaluru. Its high time Bengaluru's police stop flexing their muscles on innocent public, I wish they take on rowdies seriously. Because the rowdies of Bengaluru have gone beyond the police lathis, it has no more effect on them, the only language they understand now is the language of bullets. Also we need to understand here that the servants learn what their masters teach. Now look at how much rotten subsequent Karnataka governments have become in terms of corruption, either it is congresses Siddaramaiah who was the chief minister or Kumaraswamy's tenure as CM and BJP's Yeddyurappa, these very Chief minister's who before elections blabbered about good governance, various schemes for poor people and other promises, once they got elected showed their true colours. For instance, post covid and the brutal second wave that led to lockdown all over India, in Karnataka things have come to such a pathetic state, that police have been entrusted with imposing fines on people without masks, I have no objection in them imposing fines for those without masks, but when these very politicians and their rowdy party workers did break the covid protocol by not following rules, the same police remained mute spectators. So law in Karnataka is only for common public the minister's, rowdies are free to break law. The police machinery in Bengaluru has been turned into hafta collection force more than law enforcement force. Increasing harrasement of motorists by Bengaluru's traffic police for fines, is another indication of frustration of Karnataka government. That the biggest investors in real estate industry in Bengaluru have been the Karnataka's politicians and it is not a hidden secret. Malls, flats and commercial complexes in every nook and corner of Bengaluru city, you name it and some other minister's, MLA'S are involved in investment. Also Bengaluru being an IT hub the main buyers or customers for real estate sector are the software professionals, post lockdown many of these IT employees played safe by not buying these properties, also those who came to Bangalore from other states went back to their homes as companies started work from home policy. And new upcoming real estate projects with huge investments by politicians faced the brunt, with construction work stopped and losses to the tune of thousands of crores of rupees. Now this has resulted in more frustration for government with fresh property registrations going down in huge numbers and extremely low income from real estate market. The frustrated Karnataka government has now taken to loot the public through police, by way of targeting motorists, for false traffic violations, wearing of masks etc, whereas rowdies have a field day on the streets of Bengaluru.

Also when I am saying false traffic violation cases, people may say it as an exaggeration of comment, but this is the fraud being committed by Bengaluru traffic cops for some time now. An incidence of proof of this fraud by police, was highlighted by my own family member, whose friend who had been staying in France for close to three months on his return back to India, received a slew of messages from Bengaluru traffic police for violations relating to traffic in various areas within Bangalore, irony as it is when the concerned person was not even present in India, just look at the desparate attempt to loot the public by the police and government. This is just a tip of the ice berg in corruption within Bangalore police. So deep rooted has the rot of corruption become in Karnataka state, that not just the Police department but even BBMP, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike has officials neck deep in corruption, I will come to the blog on irregularities in BBMP later on.

Left to right: Karnataka state BJP affairs incharge Arun Singh, former Chief minister BS Yeddyurappa and newly appointed CM Basavaraj Bommai.

Also Arun Singh the incharge for BJP party affairs in Karnataka needs to urgently address the happenings in Bengaluru to Prime minister Narendra Modi, if BJP on its part is serious in removing the dent on reputation of the city, which has happened not only at national level but at international level too, then they should take steps to turn it into a world class city as claimed by Yeddyurappa which in reality is not, also focus on one objective to end rowdies menace which has spread its ugly tentacles throughout Bengaluru.

(Above news of crime in 'Times of India' edition Bengaluru section dated 29th July 2021). Complete Lawlessness: Rowdy Harish Kumar who was murdered by his rivals in broad daylight.

Prime minister Narendra Modi who on every Sunday gives his opinion to the people of India through government run 'Doordarshan' channel titled, 'maan ki baat' is far away from reality of problems that the public faces. His speech can best be described as chest thumping of his governments scheme's, though there is nothing wrong in the prime minister of a country reach out to people and air the good work done by govt and it's benefits to the people, but will the prime minister be transparent and speak out his maan ki baat about the rising crime graph in Bengaluru? His own party rules Karnataka and his own partyman former Chief minister Yeddyurappa has called Bengaluru as a world class city. So honourable prime minister, what does your inner subconscious mind tells you? Do you agree with Mr. Yeddyurappa's comments? Prime minister Modi you need to rise above politics first, and talk about increasing lawlessness in your own party ruled state. But despite my severe criticism of BJP rule in Karnataka and it's failure of law and order in Bangalore, I must admit that Narendra Modi is the best prime minister India has had till date. Uri surgical strike and Balakot airstrikes go on to prove that he stood by his words before coming to power, about befitting reply to Pakistan, also aggressive combing operations in Jammu and Kashmir to flush out Pakistani terrorist's, shows the free hand given to Indian army by Prime minister Modi. The result in the past 2 years the highest number of Jaish and Lashkar-e-Toiba terrorist's including their top commanders have been killed. So PM Narendra Modi has delivered on his promise of hammering terrorist's, the result today we see is Pakistan became wary and quiet and Kashmir largely peaceful. So his efficiency in fighting terrorism has been largely successful, but when it comes to rising crime graph within India, and especially Bengaluru the Modi government has failed miserably. Now that Bengaluru is officially India's crime capital, looking at Bharatiya Janata party and it's leaders lethargic attitude, the city will very soon become the world's no 1 crime city.

Sorry for bringing up politics, but since today is the first Presidential Debate and you're working with the Democrats, I would like to ask for your opinion on how things are going and if you think Biden will win. I hope you have good predictions (and by that I mean Trump getting kicked out of the White House), but any info is welcome.

Ironically I’m going to be a bit late watching the event, because--well, I’m going to be working during it, but I’m gonna try and see if I can multi-monitor and squeeze it in on the side.

Okay so here’s the deal: All signs point to us winning. *Statistically.* But there’s a lot more than that going on right now. There’s us making sure the in person machines are running right minding all the corruption orbiting that. There’s the fact that a HUGE portion of democrats are voting by mail compared to Republicans because of COVID and Trump’s temper tantrums over that and his attacks on the post office, there’s a whole lot going on. Add in bog standard issues like the electoral college and whatever else, and the above issues are really what we have to be ready for.

The democrat plan is to make sure we come with such tremendous force we can’t be questioned. On the other hand, most of us ARE expecting what looks like a red wave on Nov 3. However, mail in ballots will be getting counted for days, or weeks afterward depending on the state. Some as late as Nov 17 or 20.

Biden is going to have to be stubborn and make sure he doesn’t concede. We’re going to have all kinds of voting rights advocacy groups ready to roll. ACLU has been all over some of these issues but those few weeks are going to be their true time to shine. 

So if anyone wants Biden to win, no matter what it looks like, vote like you’re losing. Get at least three people you know registered to vote (some states have already closed their voter registration doors). Educate everyone you know on their options on voting: mail in, early in-person to not be as jam packed into a building all at once. You can literally just google like “[state] early voting” to see if your state has it, and click a link to the secretary of state site to find where those locations are. Honestly there may be a more fluid way but my job just gives me a spreadsheet with a lot of this information so that when I’m talking to people I can inform them directly of dates etc.

Right now, about a quarter of eligible voters are registered to vote by mail. For every 4 people registered to do so, 1 is republican, 2 are democrat, 1 is independent-- and ~most~ independents are leaning blue right now. So that’s like almost 3 to 1 democrat, which is great. But also why to prepare for the appearance of a red wave Nov 3, because mostly MAGA are gonna be the ones packing into the polls. I mean yes, some democrats have sworn to go in person or do early voting, but to democrats right now that’s an act of bravery, whereas MAGA more airs with malicious lack of caring.

See if there’s drop boxes for your ballots in your area too, if you do vote by mail, because that can pull extra days/weeks (depending on mail speed) out of its transit.

If we so much as look ~close~ on Nov 3, we’ve got this though. There’ll be weeks of battles and Trump throwing temper tantrums afterward, but we’ll have it. But to do so we /have to make sure everyone goes out to vote./

Also, don’t lose eyes on senate. Recently Trump’s megadonors have been backing off of him (I dunno if they see him as a sinking ship or what) and putting everything into trying to save McConnell’s majority. Comparing Trump and Biden’s funds, Biden has about 80M more cash on hand personally than Trump for this final month. And while DSCC has considerably more than RNSC (like 48M to 8M), that’s where the real battle is gonna be at and it’s time to go bananas on October Surprises For All.

I’m gonna say it, if you’re the kind of person that donates politically, PLEASE STOP INVESTING YOUR EVERYTHING IN AMY MCGRATH. I love Amy, I wish her the best. But she is not polling very well and McConnell has thoroughly infected the area. We have far, far, FAR better chances of flipping states like North and South Carolina, Arizona, Maine, Montana and Colorado right now. We need to flip 4 minimum. If you want to donate towards a struggling campaign, consider Doug Jones in Alabama, because that was a very difficult seat to get to begin with and if we lose him then we need to flip ~five~ senate seats. But if we get those 4-5 seats, McConnell loses the majority and even if/when he beats McGrath HE WILL BE A NOBODY.

I get it, not all of these candidates are as progressive as everyone wants. But this perfectionistic idea is part of what sunk us into the seat where we’re fighting by the skin of our teeth to try to get a senate appointee in by Nov 30 (Arizona, Mark Kelly) to jam up losing the supreme court for GENERATIONS or in the very least, get enough government power to just go nuclear and expand the court by 3 heads after the years of nonsense pulled. 

End the Trump regime nightmare, we can pick each other apart over the details in 2-4 years.

I should add: If you’re healthy, brave, and not worried about possibly taking something home to immunocompromised family members and willing to self quarantine afterwards, please volunteer to be a poll worker. Not having poll workers is the standard GOP excuse to shut down voting locations. Even in big cities this matters--especially in the presidential one. Because the more locations, the more people vote, and presidential stuff isn’t regionally gerrymandered like senate etc. Some states are extremely narrow margins and could even be the difference between, say, flipping Texas and ending the madness with Biden only 1 point behind Trump there right now.

Today Americans were roiled by an article in The Atlantic,

Today Americans were roiled by an article in The Atlantic, detailing the method by which the Trump campaign is planning to steal the 2020 election. The article was slated for The Atlantic’s November issue, but the editor decided to release it early because of its importance.The article’s author, Barton Gellman, explains that Trump will not accept losing the 2020 election. If he cannot win it, he plans to steal it. We already know he is trying to suppress voting and his hand-picked Postmaster General is working to hinder the delivery of mail-in ballots. Now Trump’s teams are recruiting 50,000 volunteers in 15 states to challenge voters at polling places; this will, of course, intimidate Democrats and likely keep them from showing up.But if those plans don’t manage to depress the Democratic vote enough to let him declare victory, he intends to insist on calling a winner in the election on November 3. His legal teams will challenge later mail-in ballots, which tend to swing Democratic, on the grounds that they are fraudulent, and they will try to silence local election officials by attacking them as agents of antifa or George Soros. The president and his team will continue to insist that the Democrats are refusing to honor the results of the election.Gellman warns that the Trump team is already exploring a way to work around the vote counts in battleground states. Rather than appointing Democratic electors chosen by voters, a state legislature could conclude that the vote was tainted and appoint a Republican slate instead. A Trump legal advisor who spoke to Trump explained they would insist they were protecting the will of the people from those who were trying to rig an election. “The state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power. We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state,’ ” the adviser explained. The election would then go to Congress, where there would be two sets of electoral votes to fight over… and things would devolve from there.They would likely end up at the Supreme Court, to which Trump this morning said he was in a hurry to confirm a new justice so there would be a solid majority to rule in his favor on the election results. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court and I think it’s very important that we have nine justices, and I think the system’s going to go very quickly,” he said. "Having a 4-4 situation is not a good situation."Amidst the flurry of concern over The Atlantic piece, a reporter this afternoon asked Trump if he would commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election. "Well, we’re going to have to see what happens," Trump said. "You know that I’ve been complaining very strongly about the ballots and the ballots are a disaster." He went on to say: "Get rid of the ballots and you’ll have a very — we’ll have a very peaceful — there won’t be a transfer frankly, there’ll be a continuation."In response to this shocking rejection of the basic principles of our government, Adam Schiff (D-CA), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, tweeted, “This is how democracy dies.” He said: “This is a moment that I would say to any republican of good conscience working in the administration, it is time for you to resign.” But only one Republican, Mitt Romney (R-UT,) condemned Trump’s comments as “both unthinkable and unacceptable.”On Facebook, veteran journalist Dan Rather wrote of living through the Depression, World War Two, the Cuban Missile Crisis, the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, Watergate, and 9-11, then said: “This is a moment of reckoning unlike any I have seen in my lifetime…. What Donald Trump said today are the words of a dictator. To telegraph that he would consider becoming the first president in American history not to accept the peaceful transfer of power is not a throw-away line. It's not a joke. He doesn't joke. And it is not prospective. The words are already seeding a threat of violence and illegitimacy into our electoral process.”There is no doubt that Trump’s statement today was a watershed moment. Another watershed event is the fact that Republicans are not condemning it.But there are two significant tells in Trump’s statement. First of all, his signature act is to grab headlines away from stories he does not want us to read. Two new polls today put Biden up by ten points nationally. Fifty-eight percent of Americans do not approve of the way Trump is doing his job. Only 38% approve of how he is handling the coronavirus. Voters see Biden as more honest, intelligent, caring, and level-headed than Trump. They think Biden is a better leader.Trump’s headline grabs keep attention from Biden’s clear and detailed plans, first for combatting coronavirus and rebuilding the economy, and then for reordering the country. The Republicans didn’t bother to write a platform this year, simply saying they supported Trump, but Trump has not been able to articulate why he wants a second term.In contrast, Biden took his cue from Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren and has released detailed and clear plans for a Biden presidency. Focusing on four areas, Biden has called for returning critical supply chains to America and rebuilding union jobs in manufacturing and technology; investing in infrastructure and clean energy; and supporting the long-ignored caregiving sector of the economy by increasing training and pay for those workers who care for children, elderly Americans, and people with disabilities. He has a detailed plan for leveling the playing field between Black and Brown people and whites, beginning by focusing on economic opportunity, but also addressing society's systemic racial biases. Biden’s plans get little attention so long as the media is focused on Trump.The president’s antics also overshadow the reality that many prominent Republicans are abandoning him. Yesterday, Arizona Senator John McCain’s widow Cindy endorsed Biden. “My husband John lived by a code: country first. We are Republicans, yes, but Americans foremost. There's only one candidate in this race who stands up for our values as a nation, and that is [Biden].” She added “Joe… is a good and honest man. He will lead us with dignity. He will be a commander in chief that the finest fighting force in the history of the world can depend on, because he knows what it is like to send a child off to fight."McCain is only the latest of many prominent Republicans to endorse Biden, and her endorsement stings. She could help Biden in the crucial state of Arizona, especially with women. "I'm hoping that I can encourage suburban women to take another look, women that are particularly on the fence and are unhappy with what’s going on right now but also are not sure they want to cross the line and vote for Joe. I hope they’ll take a look at what I believe and will move forward and come with me and join team Biden," McCain said.That McCain’s endorsement stung showed in Trump’s tweeted response: “I hardly know Cindy McCain other than having put her on a Committee at her husband’s request. Joe Biden was John McCain’s lapdog…. Never a fan of John. Cindy can have Sleepy Joe!”And, of course, Trump’s declaration has taken the focus off the Republican senators’ abrupt about-face on confirming a Supreme Court justice in an election year. The ploy laid bare their determination to cement their power at all costs, and it is not popular. Sixty-two percent of Americans, including 50% of Republicans, think the next president should name Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s replacement.The second tell in Trump’s statement is that Trump’s lawyers confirmed to Gellman that their strategy is to leverage their power in the system to steal the election. Surely, they would want to keep that plan quiet… unless they are hoping to convince voters that the game is so fully rigged there is no point in showing up to vote.Trump’s statement is abhorrent, and we must certainly be prepared for chaos surrounding this election. But never forget that Trump’s campaign, which-- according to our intelligence agencies-- is being helped by Russian disinformation, is keen on convincing Americans that our system doesn’t work, our democracy is over, and there is no point in participating in it. If you believe them, their disinformation is a self-fulfilling prophecy, despite the fact that a strong majority of Americans prefers Biden to Trump.Trump’s statement is abhorrent, indeed; but the future remains unwritten.

Heather Cox Richardson September 23, 2020 (Wednesday)

Will movie theaters be relevant in a post-pandemic world? It's now up to you.

On Monday, the beloved Arclight and Pacific Theaters announced they’re closing for good. ArcLight Cinemas is arguably Hollywood's most cherished theater and Pacific has been a mainstay in Los Angeles since 1946. The announcement of their closing shocked many as another casualty of the Covid-19 pandemic.

In the company announcement, they said "This was not the outcome anyone wanted, but despite a huge effort that exhausted all potential options, the company does not have a viable way forward." One can understand how a movie theater might go under in the middle of a pandemic but I did find it interesting that they felt there was truly no way forward.

One might've expected some members of the Hollywood elite to come clamoring forward with a bucket of cash to at least front the company long enough to sustain it through the pandemic so that it could reopen when the time was right.

Back in 2014, Kodak faced a similarly dire situation (for different reasons, obviously) and was ready to close its doors. That was until J.J. Abrams, Christopher Nolan, Quentin Tarantino, Judd Apatow and other filmmakers banded together to save the floundering company. Their shared love of film compelled them to save the dying medium and, thanks to those filmmakers and their studio backers, the company is still alive today.

But that hasn’t happened with these theaters. I'm not saying that can't happen, of course. The announcement just came this week so time will tell. I will say, however, it sounds like the company may have already exhausted their options (in light of the no "viable way forward" statement).

The death of ArcLight Cinemas and Pacific Theaters may not just signify another casualty of the pandemic but may actually be a sign of the times. Even prior to the pandemic many were wondering, amongst cord cutting and increasing interest in streaming content, how much longer would movie theaters stay relevant?

The pandemic has shifted the world in general, of course, and one of those big changes coming post-pandemic may be a world where movie theaters have a drastically different business model. Perhaps, one that makes them unrecognizable to us as we know them today.

Does that seem like too bold a claim? Perhaps. Let's just look at the state of the business now.

The state of the business pre-Covid

Prior to the pandemic, movie studios were beholden to the theaters to release their movies in theaters for a certain period of time. So if Warner Brothers wanted to release "Godzilla vs Kong" in theaters, they would have had to wait 90 days before releasing the film on Blu-Ray or to a streaming platform. There was a bit of flexibility on this when it came to digital rentals but otherwise 90 days was the standard. Now, movie studios did have the option of by-passing the theatrical exhibition altogether if they wanted and just going straight to people's homes. Why didn't they?

One reason might've been the Paramount Consent Decrees. The Consent Decrees date back to 1948 when the Supreme Court ruled that movie studios had to separate their distribution operations from their exhibition operations. Essentially, studios were barred from owning movie theaters as it was seen as a monopolistic practice and not fair to consumers. At the time, the only way you could see a movie was in a theater. Gradually, over time, of course, that changed and technology enabled us to watch movies at home. We got VHS, then DVD's, then Blu-Rays, then iTunes Movies, then Netflix and so on. But the theaters remained as a mainstay. Why?

I know many of my friends would argue it's because there's no better way to see a movie than in a theater. If you said that twenty years ago I would have agreed. But today, I'd say that's become largely subjective given the technology available at home. From a purely business oriented perspective, though, there's a host of little reasons theaters remained important such as films not being eligible for Oscar nominations without a theatrical release and, possibly, because studios worried that bypassing theaters would result in further regulations by the courts.

But mostly, it's because we, the audience, were accustomed to theaters. It gave a film legitimacy when it was presented in a theater. It used to be that if a movie went “straight to home video” it was considered cheap and probably low budget. Because of that, even though the studios were giving up 50% of their revenue to the theaters, their gross still was greater than what home distribution netted them in the initial release window.

Even after the invention of Blu-Rays and iTunes Movies, studios were still sending movies to theaters (1) because it was a huge source of revenue and (2) because it helped market the movie. The movie’s success at the box office gave us a reason to want that movie at home.

A shift in Public perceptions

There's a growing number of people that no longer think that way. If a movie goes to streaming now (the new home video), we no longer assume the movie is cheap or low budget. The content on streaming is just as good as the stuff we're seeing in theaters. There’s been a massive shift in our perception of what great “cinema” is. Yeah, you might still wanna' see some things in theaters but it doesn’t cheapen the movie for you if you don't.

And that’s a big problem for theaters. The leverage they’ve had over the studios up till now has been the Consent Decrees and our perception of what great cinema is. Significant, no doubt, but those two things have changed. In August of last year, the Paramount Consent Decrees were terminated with a two-year sunset period on certain aspects of the Decrees all but ensuring that studios could now vertically integrate if they wanted to. Or just bypass the theaters altogether - as some studios already have been experimenting with.

Even at the start of the pandemic, many movies were removed from theaters and sent straight to streaming with studios reporting that the revenue gained from VOD and online rentals rivaled the profit gained from theatrical distribution. As various studios like Paramount and Warner Brothers enter the streaming game alongside Disney (Disney Plus, Hulu) and Netflix, they too are experimenting. As you may have heard, Warner Bros. is releasing all their movies this year on their streaming platform HBOMax on the same day the films are released in theaters (a practice known as "day and date"). No doubt, the bean counters at Warner Bros. will be looking to see if this is a practice that should stay. It’d be fair to say that these experiments are not true representations of reality given the state of the world we’re testing this new distribution model with. But it is changing our perception of how important movie theaters are.

Studios are altering the deal

During the pandemic, theaters have been brought to their knees and have been forced to renegotiate certain terms with the studios including the release window between theatrical and home distribution. Most studios now have negotiated a home release date that comes just 17 days after the movie debuts in theaters - far shorter than the original 90 days.

This, of course, can be argued to just be a by-product of the pandemic. Theaters don't have leverage now but once the pandemic is over they will and they'll renegotiate. Right?

That really hinges on whether or not audiences still think a movie has more value if it was presented in a theater before they got to see it at home. Does it enhance the movie for me if it gets shown in a theater or am I just as interested (or maybe even more interested) in seeing it if it is sent straight to my home?

Other big changes are happening

There's other factors to consider as well. One might be the massive shift of homeowners into the suburbs and away from the city during the pandemic. Many employers are making it possible to work from home (a trend that will likely continue post-pandemic as the internet improves and more businesses see the benefits of a remote workforce) resulting in a mass exodus from cities to suburbs. Living in the suburbs means you don’t have the same pull of massive audiences in large gatherings the way you used to. We’re also investing more in our homes to make them enjoyable places to not only live but play as well. It’s a shift in our culture.

Another factor is that our perception of long form content has changed. Episodic television used to be where big movie stars went to end their careers after a career starring in movies. Now, it’s the reverse. A lot of stars are starting in television rather than finishing there because we (the audience) love binging on serialized content and when we’re not binging episodes we’re watching four hour movies (The Irishman, Zack Snyder's Justice League). Those experiences don’t work well in theaters where you’re stuck sitting in the same place and can’t hit the pause button.

Ultimately, the biggest factor might be what it usually comes down to - money. Before the pandemic audiences were already lamenting about the cost of movie tickets. A single afternoon of me taking my wife and kids to see the latest Disney movie in a theater could cost me $50 - $60 just for admission (not to mention the cost of food and drinks). But during the pandemic I was able to rent “Mulan” for $30 from comfort of my own home. Or, if I wanted, I could just wait three months and then see it as part of my regular Disney Plus subscription (which I was already paying for anyways so I could watch “The Mandalorian”).

As things open back up, many people are not necessarily swimming in money and, while I think the Covid relief packages have probably helped, a lot of people are still hurting and will be looking for any which way to save money. It seems unlikely that theaters will be able to lower their costs at this point given the need to recoup their losses from the pandemic and the probable need to make new investments in their facilities to stay competitive. They will need to get creative to show real value to audiences that might be reluctant to rush back in to theaters.

So what will happen to theaters post-pandemic?

For those of you worried I’m predicting doomsday for theaters - relax. I think theaters are probably here to stay regardless of what happens. They’re too much a part of what movies are to simply disappear. That said, they are a business and, currently, a failing one. What they look like post-pandemic doesn’t look great, from my perspective, unless the business model changes.

One possible scenario is that theaters become like playhouses or music festivals. In other words, they’ll still exist but in fewer quantities and will become more niche, featuring elevated experiences centered around tentpole movie properties which audiences are willing to pay a premium for (think “Top Gun: Maverick” or “Godzilla vs Kong”). I can see this form of adaptation working well in everyone’s favor.

Another possibility is that the studios buy out the movie theaters. The termination of the consent decrees has made that a real possibility. And then, once they’ve purchased them, build brand experiences centered around their properties. Something like miniature Disney Lands. They would most likely close a significant number of locations leaving only the flagships they felt would bring in a large audience and use them to promote the movies on their slate. A company like Disney with a large library of films could also use the theaters as a means of re-presenting old films from their library, borrowing a tactic from LucasFilm, and refresh old content to make it new again for theatrical. In essense, the net effect would be the same as in the first scenario: fewer theaters, more niche experiences.

I say this because it is somewhat unclear, to me at least, how the current model can persist if studios own theaters. Yes, they’d control theatrical distribution but they’d likely only be purchasing a theater to distribute their own movies. Would a company like Paramount, who’s only releasing seven movies this year, see the value of owning a theater chain? Even Disney’s slate only consists of 14 movies. To make the business viable (at least as it exists now), they would have to present movies from other studios. Would one studio trust that the studio in ownership of the theater was giving them a fair number of screens for presentation? It seems untenable under the current model.

What happens next is really up to you

The biggest change from the pandemic is that we as audiences have changed the way we look at movies. We’re ok with watching movies at home and, thus, the leverage theaters have to negotiate longer release windows between theatrical and home distribution has all but disappeared. The artificial pillars that made theaters a necessity are all but gone. And yes, the Oscars will likely still require that movies be released in theaters to be eligible for nomination but the standards of what a "theatrical release" means do not require as vast a distribution as you might think (see page 2, sub-section D of the General Entry rules). Plus, let's be honest - not all movies are meant to be Oscar contenders.

So really, the only thing to keep theaters relevant now is you - the audience. My prediction is that we’ll initially see some high demand for theaters as cities are re-opened and we try to return to our regular lives. But after we get back to a sense of normalcy (whatever that means in the future) we’ll see how much audiences really want to keep paying $20 per ticket to see a movie when they could just pay $30 once to rent it at home with the entire family or binge the new hot show on Netflix / Amazon / Apple TV/ Paramount Plus / Disney Plus / Hulu / Peacock / whatever else is out there.

At that point, the studios will do some math and if the profit they’re making from streaming outweighs the profit from the box office, theaters won’t have much of a leg to stand on. That is, unless audiences continue to demand theaters be a relevant part of the movie watching experience. Without considerable innovation on behalf of the theaters, though, I question how likely that is to happen.

Last summer, after the killing of George Floyd ignited protests around the country, Brown got more calls from reporters than she’d received in her entire career. By the time President Biden promised, on his first day in office, to identify and dismantle systemic racism perpetuated by all federal departments, staffers on Capitol Hill were already consulting Brown about the Internal Revenue Service’s impact on racial disparities. “Suddenly people wanted to talk about race and tax,” she says.

With The Whiteness of Wealth, Brown has turned a notoriously boring topic into a surprisingly accessible and lively 288-page book, relying on examples from real families, including her own, to guide readers through the intricacies of a tax code provisioned for just about every milestone in a person’s life—education, marriage, homeownership, childbearing, death and inheritance. Generations of lawmakers have optimized the system for White people, she argues, with the result that in the U.S.’s supposedly progressive and race-neutral tax code, Black people end up paying more than White people with the same incomes.

The challenge for Brown’s research has been all the greater because the IRS doesn’t take race into account when it analyzes its giant trove of tax data. So she had to laboriously stitch together information from dozens of other sources to prove her book’s thesis. The best evidence that the system is unfair to Black people is the sheer size and persistence of the racial wealth gap. The median White family has a net worth eight times the typical Black family’s wealth. According to Federal Reserve figures, that’s the same size gap as in 1983, despite higher incomes, educational gains, and extraordinary progress by individual Black people, including to the highest office in the land.

The book also serves as something of a primer on how wealth works in America, showing how the rich pass assets to their children and why those starting from the bottom face such a difficult climb. Brown devotes her final chapter to advice for Black readers trying to navigate a system that disadvantages them at every turn. “Black Americans need to be defensive players,” she writes, “choosing strategies in their educations, careers, and family lives that compensate for oppressive practices and policies.” She also pushes for major tax changes to erase biases toward Whites and to assist all people, especially Black ones, who are trying to build wealth. Never again should politicians discuss tax reform without considering race, she says. “I literally want to change how America talks about tax policy.”

One afternoon in the early ’90s, Brown pulled out an essay she’d been looking forward to reading by her friend and mentor Jerome Culp, the first professor of color to receive tenure at Duke University’s law school. She’d been feeling isolated at her first academic job, with White colleagues who she says seemed clueless about race, at best. And here was Culp arguing that race should no longer be overlooked in important areas of the law. “There may be an income tax problem that would benefit from being viewed in a Black perspective,” he wrote by way of example, “but until you look, how will anyone know?” Brown called Culp and promised to try.

It took several years for her to publish her first research on the question, focusing on the taxation of married couples. Black Americans are more likely to be single, and if they’re married, it’s more likely both spouses will be working. These considerations wouldn’t have mattered when the income tax made its debut in 1913, because all earners were treated the same regardless of marital status. But in 1930 a rich White shipbuilder named Henry Seaborn persuaded the U.S. Supreme Court to lower his tax bill by imputing half his income to his wife. Congress eventually went along, and ever since, couples with only one high earner have paid less. Brown realized this policy had meant higher tax bills for her parents: The tax code essentially treats a plumber and a nurse who are paying for child care and commuting expenses with after-tax dollars the same or worse than it does a banker earning their combined salaries whose spouse stays home with the kids.

In the next 20 years, Brown went on to systematically catalog other ways in which, when Black families like her own tried to hoist themselves up the economic scale, the U.S. tax system pulled them down. Her colleagues, who were overwhelmingly White, expressed skepticism, however. “Dorothy, everybody knows your work is irrelevant, because Black people are poor and don’t pay taxes,” she says one professor told her, rudely laying bare an assumption she’s confronted countless times. (Four-fifths of Black households don’t fall below the poverty line.)

Brown’s father, James, with her nephew Jamaal in the early ’80s.

Brown’s early published work “caused her lots of professional grief,” recalls her friend Mechele Dickerson, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. “People thought you were just trying to be controversial—that you’re just making stuff up.” Those on the left asked if this was about class, not race. Conservatives posed a different question: Wouldn’t these disparities disappear if Black taxpayers just acted more like White ones?

Brown’s answer to both is that your class may change but your race can’t, no matter how differently you behave. “Blacks graduate from college with more debt, do not get jobs as easily as Whites, are not paid the same wages as their equally qualified White peers, are steered toward lower paying jobs, and have an unemployment rate twice that of Whites—yet are more likely to provide financial support for extended family,” she writes in her forthcoming book.

These present-day disparities are piled on top of a shameful history of Black Americans being purposely excluded from landmark federal legislation and programs. “For Whites, there were government interventions that created a middle class,” says New School economics professor Darrick Hamilton, an adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders’s 2020 presidential campaign who considers Brown a mentor. He points to the Homestead Act in the 19th century and much of the New Deal and the GI Bill in the 20th. “When Blacks were able to amass pockets of wealth, it’s been vulnerable to confiscation, theft, and terror,” he adds, citing the devastation wrought in Black neighborhoods by predatory subprime lenders as an example.

Brown argues that “tax policy adds insult to injury” by magnifying the financial toll of Blackness. The tax treatment of housing is a textbook case. Interest paid on mortgages is deductible, but there’s no comparable perk for renters, who are disproportionately Black. Also, White homeowners tend to pocket gains upon resale, which are largely tax-free. In contrast, Black homeowners are very likely to lose money on their investment, because homes don’t usually appreciate much in diverse neighborhoods that are shunned by White buyers. And losses aren’t tax-deductible.

Or consider tax incentives the federal government offers on 401(k)s and other types of retirement savings plans, which add up to more than a quarter trillion dollars per year, according to the Tax Policy Center. Only about half of U.S. workers have a retirement account, and they’re disproportionately White. Meanwhile, Black people are far more likely to have jobs that fail to provide 401(k)s and other corporate benefits, such as health care and flexible spending accounts, that are heavily subsidized by the tax code.

These discrepancies are nothing new—Brown’s father, locked out of the plumbing union for the first 20 years of his career, was employed by a small private company that offered no retirement or health-care plan. Now, though, the gap between different classes of workers might be widening, with the rise of the gig economy and corporations outsourcing more work to contractors. Brown is wary of the trend, seeing it as a “new form of occupational segregation” that’s ensnaring a disproportionate number of Black workers.