Okay.
I am being super, ultra cautious about how I'm wording this, but am going out on a limb here.
As someone who literally helped to care for her much younger brother (I had solo custody of him one night per week during his teens, I fed him, supervised homework, did his laundry, got him ready for school, made his lunches, all that jazz) I am just slightly familiar with what it's like to step in to be a guardian for a younger relative.
I'm reading Reborn. I'm reading basically all of Dick and Damian's appearances. I'm...not seeing a parent-child relationship here. I see mentoring and supervision, yes. I appreciated the "I was trying to have a night off" moment in Streets of Gotham. But a lot of this is just big brothering or vigilante mentor stuff.
I fully, 100% believe Dick and Damian bonded during their period together. I also believe they had a little family unit going on between Alfred, Dick and Damian. I respect people reading whatever interpretation they want to read of this material.
But from what I see on the paper? I think calling it parental is a stretch. Damian's in kincare, folks. On paper? Damian's physical needs are being provided by Alfred, his vigilante mentoring is being provided by Dick, as far as I can tell he's not even in education, and we get precious few insights into what's happening during daylight hours. (Especially, ESPECIALLY as I really have not seen Damian receive, well, boundaries outside of the field. Or consequences for his actions. Or...really, any active parenting)
Dick's looking after Damian, sure. But he's not Damian's parent.
And that's perfectly ok, not everything has to be reduced to a simple traditional nuclear family ideal.
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Toledo City Council just approved a plan to turn $1.6 million in public dollars into as much as $240 million in economic stimulus, targeted at some of the Ohio metro’s most vulnerable residents.
“It’s really going to help people put food on the table, help them pay their rent, help them pay their utilities,” says Toledo City Council Member Michele Grim, who led the way for the measure. “Hopefully we can prevent some evictions.”
The strategy couldn’t be simpler: It works by canceling millions in medical debt.
Working with the New York City-based nonprofit RIP Medical Debt, the City of Toledo and the surrounding Lucas County are chipping in $800,000 each out of their federal COVID-19 recovery funds from the American Rescue Plan Act.
The combined $1.6 million in funding is enough for RIP Medical Debt to acquire and cancel up to $240 million in medical debt owed by Lucas County households that earn up to 400% of the federal poverty line.
“It could be more than a one-to-100 return on investment of government dollars,” Grim says. “I really can’t think of a more simple program for economic recovery or a better way of using American Rescue Plan dollars, because it’s supposed to rescue Americans.”
How It Works
Under the RIP Medical Debt model, there is no application process to cancel medical debt. The nonprofit negotiates directly with local hospitals or hospital systems one-by-one, purchasing portfolios of debt owed by eligible households and canceling the entire portfolio en masse.
“One day someone will get a letter saying your debt’s been canceled,” Grim says. It’s a simple strategy for economic welfare and recovery.
RIP Medical Debt was founded in 2014 by a pair of former debt collection agents, and since inception it has acquired and canceled more than $7.3 billion in medical debt owed by 4.2 million households — an average of $1,737 per household...
Local Governments Get Involved
The partnership with Toledo and Lucas County is the third instance of the public sector funding RIP Medical Debt to cancel debt portfolios.
Earlier this year, in the largest such example yet, the Cook County Board of Commissioners approved a plan to provide $12 million in ARPA funds for RIP Medical Debt to purchase and cancel an estimated $1 billion in medical debt held by hospitals across Cook County, which includes Chicago.
“Governments contract with nonprofits all the time for various social interventions,” Sesso says.
“This isn’t really that far-fetched or different from that. I would say between five and 10 other local governments have reached out just since the Toledo story came out.”
What's the Deal with Medical Debt?
An estimated one in five households across the U.S. have some amount of medical debt, and they are disproportionately Black and Latino, according to the U.S. Census Bureau...
Acquiring medical debt is relatively cheap: hospitals that sell medical debt portfolios do so for just pennies on the dollar, usually to investors on the secondary market.
The purchase price is so low because hospitals and debt buyers alike know that medical debt is the hardest form to collect...
The amount of debt canceled for any given household has ranged from $25 all the way up to six-figure amounts. Under IRS regulations, debts canceled under RIP Medical Debt’s model do not count as taxable income for households...
Massive Expansion Coming Up
After not one but two donations from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott, totaling $80 million, RIP Medical Debt is planning for expansion.
It’s using a portion of those dollars to create an internal revolving line of credit to expand to places where it can find willing sellers before it has found willing funders.
The internal line of credit means the nonprofit now has new, albeit still limited, flexibility to acquire debt portfolios from hospitals first, then begin raising private or public dollars locally to replenish the line of credit later and make those funds available for other locations.
“People often ask, do you only work with nonprofit hospitals, or do you work with for-profit hospitals? And I’m like, I just want to get the debt, regardless of who created the debt. If it’s out there, I want it,” Sesso says.
Fundamentally, they are not solving the issue of medical debt, but easing its pressure from as many lives as possible — while also upping the pressure on lawmakers and the healthcare industry.
“We’re intentionally taking the stories of the individuals whose debt we have resolved, and putting their stories out into the world with intention in a way that tries to push and create more of that pressure to fundamentally solve the problem,” she says.
-via GoodGoodGood, 4/6/23
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Halloween prompts no. 14
Danny gets thrown into the Blue Exorcist universe, saw how Rin was being treated and straight up kidnapped him when no one was looking and took him to another dimension/reality/whatever to keep him safe.
Rin, as you can imagine, doesn't take kindly to being kidnapped and tries to roast Phantom. The fact neither understands the others language did not help. Danny, taking a gamble, dropped his phantom form and raised his hands in surrender.
Rinse eyebrow twitched and he asked wtf he thought he was doing. Danny got an idea and raised a finger ask if asking one moment please before bringing out his phone and typing into Google Translate.
Things go better after that, Rins still kinda mad and demanded to be taken home but Danny refused, saying he wasn't going to send him back to a place that would treat him like that! The fight escalated until Danny confessed he died because people ignored the abuse and neglect from his home situation and he terrified Rin will face a similar fate. This finally took the wind out of Rins sails. Rin comforts Danny who may or may not be crying.
This is when the local heros show up because it turns out they landed in the dc universe. They realize they've pretty much melted part of the city they were in during thier fight and scram before anyone can get a good look at them. They're branded as mysterious villains almost immediately.
Danny and Rin take to stealing in order to survive and start teaching eachother thier language so they don't have to keep relying of the translation app. (Also they can't reliably recharge the phone) They're bonding and building up eachothers self esteem. Rin enjoys having someone who let's him protect them as a big brother should and Danny enjoys feeling safe and protected for once in his afterlife. They both start wearing masks and start stealing bigger marks as supervillians in order to survive.
The Justice League Dark is absolutely freaking out because why is a Gahena demon and some kind of Lazarus Pit child working together?? Demons from Gahena never come here cause they shouldn't even be able to and they had no idea Pit People even existed up until now. And why are they stealing such strange things? The bank robberies they understood but the baby food incident? (They stole a bunch of baby food to help the homeless and low income population) The lab thiefts? (Danny recognized the type of machine they were making was designed to be a portal when the press conference about it said nothing about portals. So he stole it and destroyed it cause it was sus.) The JLD knew they were missing something.
Batman himself eventually tracks them down and finds out
1. They are 14 and 15 year olds.
2. Both are traumatized
3. Black hair blue eyes
4. Both have supernatural abilities they can't fully control
5. Both are very sweet and are being more vigilante than villain
Bruce has already mentally signed the adoption papers.
Unfortunately, Danny has bad memories of another billionaire who kept trying to adopt him and is avoiding both him both as Batman and as Bruce Wayne. The boys run in to Harley Quinn and she figured out these kids needed help. She aids in thier language endeavors and if the only reason she knows Japanese as well as she does is from her binging anime for a few months during a quarantine caused by Scarecrow then thats her business.
Anyway, she gives them not-therapy since she can't ethically give them therapy therapy and in exchange they pay her with cash they stole. Neato. Rin eventually gets onto an ADHD medication that suits him and he's doing so much better. He uses a lot of the coping skills aunt harley taught him and its like hes a totally different person. Granted Rin has to take an ungodly high dose for it to work due to his demonic heritage but they make due. They already rob banks, whats a few pharmaceutical companies?
Ivy and Harley pseudo adopt Rin and Danny and sometimes the boys would just come over to Gotham to hang out or play with the pets. Rin loves cooking and has taken over the kitchen in his and dannys safe houses. He does most of the cooking and keeps the kitchen spotless. Danny does the laundry and dusting and they share most other chores. Rins used to having Yukio sleeping in the same room as him so sometimes he sneaks into Dannys room in the middle of the night to sleep on the floor.
Danny keeps waking up and moving him to the bed. Neither say anything about it and Rin assumes he slept walked into the bed and flees before Danny can be woken up and weirded out. Miscommunication! Yay!
Meanwhile the birdie brigade are on thier tails and watching/spying on them every chance they get. They're already making preparations in the manor for two more people.
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