#we see how much party food we can ‘confiscate’ and have it distributed to the masses | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

deniigi · 5 years

Note

I had a really bad day (I wont say why because I wouldnt want you to feel like I'm guilting you into anything) and I was wondering if maybe you had a dfv/lfv or inimitable verse drabble you havent put up or one on here you really like you could point me to (navigation is hard on mobile) or even just some like hcs. If not its totally ok! You dont owe me anything. But I thought I'd ask and see if that's ok.

Oh no!

Sorry that you had a rough day my dear. I don’t have much in the works for those verses right now (I’ve been hammering my head against a wall, trying to write out a piece exploring Gwen and Murderdock’s relationship–it’s not working tho, so I’m stopping). Of course any of the Clint-based pieces are fun in those verses if you need a pick me up, but I am equally fond of Chapter 13 of Sidebars.

But! If you don’t mind a little piece from Lying by Omission/The Sprawl I’ve got cute little bit of Jack and Ben going out to dinner with Matt and Peter?

I’ll put it under the cut if you’re down

—-

“Dad, let’s go out to eat.”

Jack didn’t trust that. Jack had been scarred by the durian. Permanently scarred. He was never coming back from the durian. He was etching a durian with a big ‘X’ through it into the top of his next coffin for future archaeologists to find and have absolutely no questions about.

Matt, sensing that he was presently not receiving the amount of attention that he could be receiving, oozed out of the kitchen and draped himself over the back of the couch, right behind Jack’s shoulders. Jack glanced to the side and noted that he was wearing shoes.

He wasn’t chancing it.

“No shoes on the couch,” he said.

“It’s my couch,” Matt hummed, already migrating over to the couch’s arm, no doubt to burrow his way under Jack’s own arm.

“It’s a couch.”

“My couch,” Matt hummed, plucking Jack’s phone out of his hand and tossing it callously to the other side of said couch. He then executed the burrow and wriggled himself over so that he was the sole occupant of Jack’s lap. He waited, as sweet as could be, until he had Jack’s more or less undivided attention.

The kid was heavy. Jack couldn’t tell if he knew just how heavy he was.

He suspected that he was more than aware of it.

Matt beamed at him. He did not pull his shoed feet over the couch’s arm.

A sign of obedience. Or perhaps a buttering-up technique.

Tricky, tricky.

“Why do we need to go out to eat? What’s wrong with what’s in the fridge?” Jack asked Matt’s untrustworthy grin.

It faded a little because there was a pout which needed doing.

“I’m tired of eating potatoes,” Matt huffed.

“Take it back,” Jack scolded him. “I won’t hear any raggin’ on tatties in this household.”

“I want rice.”

“I’ll make you rice, Matty.”

“I don’t want your rice.”

Picky little shit. Just like his mother. She’d been the type to refuse a peanut butter and jelly sandwich if the slop wasn’t equally distributed.

Jack’s rice was perfectly fine. It even had bits of onion in it. If he was feeling real fancy, he might even cook it in broth or something.

“Fine, so make rice yourself,” he said. Matt squirmed up and wrapped arms around Jack’s neck. He put his cheek against it and immediately made the skin there it itch.

“You need a shave,” Jack huffed, reaching back for his phone. Vanessa was doing battle with her replacement: Bella the cat. She was giving their zombie group the play by play of the her and the cat’s opposing campaigns to win Wade’s favor. Thus far, Bella had broken a plate and gotten scratchies and kisses for it. Vanessa was outraged.

It was an outrage to behold.

“Daddy.”

Not this again. This was no reason to bring out the big guns.

“Get your shoes,” Matt whined.

“Baby, you can go out. I’m not stopping you from going out. No one is stopping you from going out, god help us,” Jack told him.

Matt abandoned his neck, stretched out, quick as a whip, and snatched the phone on the other cushion. He crammed it into his shirt and then replaced himself and his face-broom against Jack’s pulse point.

Yeah.

Yeah, Jack didn’t know what he’d expected to happen here.

“Matt,” he warned.

“Dinner.”

“The last time we went to dinner, you broke my heart, soul, and trust.”

“I won’t do it again.”

“Uh-huh. Yeah, right. ”

“I won’t,” Matt promised, pulling back to add puppy eyes to the mix.

That was unfair. Uncalled for. Totally underhanded.

“Why don’t you go out with Foggy?” Jack tried as a last-ditch effort.

“Because I want to go out with you,” Matt emphasized. “My pops. My old man. We gotta bond. It’ll make me more well-adjusted. The internet says so.”

Jack was confiscating the internet. The internet was a know-it-all snitch.

“DAD.”

“Fine, for fuck’s sake, boy. Get off, you’re drowning me here.”

Jack would go out to dinner on one condition.

Two conditions actually.

1) There was to be no durian. Anywhere. At all.

2) He got to bring moral support.

Matt was more than cool with that because it meant that he could replace the durian with another creative element which would equally torture Jack.

So Jack asked Ben Parker to come along. Parker was sharp as a tack. Compared to Jack, he was a man of the world. A reasonable and sensitive body with respect for his fellow humans. He promised to help Jack identify potential threats to his person flung his way by his uncaring and mischievous son.

Unfortunately, to that end, Matt insisted that they take Ben’s nephew, Peter, out with them too.

Jack knew from the start that this was Matt inserting his chaos element into what might otherwise be a perfectly tolerable and uneventful night out. But he also held out hope that Peter would be the sweet, kind-hearted boy he appeared to be.

It really was too much to ask for.

Peter latched his whole body onto Matt within seconds of their two parties meeting up and the two of them immediately set to whispering which bode poorly for everyone else involved.

“I believe we may have made a mistake,” Ben observed, rubbing thoughtfully at his chin.

Matt wanted rice and Peter wanted something sour enough to leave ulcers in his mouth, so the two of them decided that Thai food would achieve both of these effects. Jack was suspicious. Ben told him that Thai food was very tasty and he had little reason to fear, except.

Except.

“Peter hates durian, it’s fine, he won’t be setting up any conspiracies around it,” Ben promised him.

Mm.

They’d see about that.

Foggy had said something similar when he and Matt had dragged Jack out for Filipino food.

Jack was pretty sure that Peter just wanted a lime. He was 90% sure that all Peter’s cravings could be satisfied with a lime right now.

Matt, however, in an unlikely turn of events, convinced him that he should get food-substances to accompany his burning desire for limes. Peter grumbled at this and deferred to his uncle for support in the face of this logic.

Chaos element, located.

“Pick a carb,” Ben directed.

“Sugar is a carb,” Peter argued.

“Pick a carb in a less refined form,” Ben countered easily.

“If it’s raw sugar, it—”

“Veg, noodles, or rice,” Ben offered him.

Peter scowled.

“You said a carb,” he pouted. “I want sugar.”

“I have good news for you, sweet child of mine,” Ben said fondly. “There is sugar in everything served in the United States of America. You will have your sugar. Pick its structure: veg, noodles, or rice.”

Ben made Jack feel like a shit dad sometimes. Although, to be fair, Jack hadn’t been a dad as long as Ben had.

Peter, outwitted and bitter about it, agitated Matt to help him.

Matt saw no need for that.

“You’re gonna be hungry in an hour and then you’re gonna whine about it,” he declared.

Peter scowled at him and then turned his lethal puppy eyes onto Jack. Jack set up a menu between the two of them because he was not strong enough to cope with that.

Peter whined behind it.

Things were going too smoothly for too long. Jack did not trust the decent behavior happening at this table. Ben got a kick out of his paranoia, which was great because someone needed to.

“What are you hiding?” Jack asked Matt. Matt scoffed.

“Chill, old man,” he said. “We’re literally just having dinner. Maybe try to have a good time, huh?”

No.

Something evil was afoot.

Peter snickered. Matt swatted at him; he easily dodged the hand.

Trouble.

Dinner was eaten and paid for and Jack eventually gave up and settled down. Begrudgingly, he had to admit that Matt was right. Thai food was nice. No incidents had occurred. There was no durian. Ben and Peter made for good conversation, even if everything led back to Peter’s obsession with sci-fi films.

Ben told him that if he kept mentioning them, the aliens would hear him and his name would start to move up higher up on their list of potential captures.

The kid was horrified.

Matt helpfully started counting off the number of times Peter had mentioned aliens in the last week and Peter had briefly looked like he was going to cry.

“Is your wife not going to hear of this?” Jack asked Ben as they walked after the trouble duo who had determined that they were finding dessert at a different location. They seemed to know what they were after, so Jack and Ben left them to it.

“Oh, she will,” Ben said.

“And you don’t mind?”

“She encourages it. She’s convinced him that if you leave a tv on static, aliens can pick up on your watch history.”

Interesting parenting techniques going on here.

Ben laughed.

“Well, I guess we just figure that if you’ve got a weird kid, it’s easier on everyone if you just lean into it. My brother probably wouldn’t be so down with it, but he’s not here, so whatever.”

Ah, right.

“Peter’s your brother’s son, then,” Jack noted.

Ben hummed.

“I…guess,” he said uneasily. “I—it’s hard to explain. I mean, biologically, yeah he’s Rich’s son. But, you know, me and May’ve raised him for longer than Rich and Mary were ever in his life, so, I dunno. Is it fucked up that I kind of think of him as my son?”

No. Not at all.

“My eldest brother pretty much raised me,” Jack told him. “My mama couldn’t be assed to do anything more than scream at the drop of a hat and my daddy was busy drinking himself to death, so Bill was the one who got me up and dressed and off to school in the morning. I always thought of him as a mix between a brother and a mom.”

“No shit?” Ben said. “Where is he? He still around?”

Uuuuuuuh.

“We haven’t talked for a long time,” Jack said.

“Oh? Well, now’s your chance you know.”

Jack tried not to wince too sharply. Ben caught it anyways.

“Or not,” he said. “You don’t have to if its painful or something.”

Oh, buddy.

“We’ll see,” Jack decided. “I’ll need to think about it.”

He didn’t know how Matt would react. Hell, he didn’t know how he would react to seeing Bill again.

Matt and Peter presented Jack with a drink that had evil hiding in the bottom of it.

He should have known better to think he’d escape that night uninjured.

–

I hope this cheers you up my dear and that things get easier for you soon!

#fic #jack murdock #matt murdock #ben parker #I need to do smth for the sprawl for real #ficlet

82 notes · View notes

faithfulnews · 4 years

Text

How a small third world country became the top economy in Latin America

South America Map

So, I’ve been watching the Democrat debates, and I’ve noticed that all of their candidates are proposing economic policies that they say will improve the lives of Americans. But have the candidates ever been able to try out these policies, and proven that they work? One way to evaluate policies is to look at other countries that have tried them, to see if those policies are proven to work.

I’ve been reading a book called “Money, Greed and God” with my friend Carla, which talks about what does and does not work to alleviate poverty. The author basically outlined two approaches. In the first approach, the government 1) confiscates the wealth of the most productive workers, 2) nationalizes (takes control of) the businesses of the most successful entrepreneurs, 3) restricts trading between citizens and with other countries, with minimum wage, price controls and tariffs. In the second approach, the government does the opposite: 1) lowers taxes on the most productive workers, and 2) lets entrepreneurs compete to provide goods and services to consumers, and 3) lowers restrictions on internal trading and trading with other countries, e.g. – eliminating minimum wage, tariffs and price controls.

Let’s take a look at two Latin American countries that went in opposite directions. Venezuela and Chile. Then we can finally find out which policies actually achieve results for the people.

Here is how Chile started out in 1973.

PROBLEM: Price controls and tariffs:

Prices for the majority of basic goods were fixed by the government in 1973. Even though Chile was and still is a small economy, the level of protectionism was high. By the end of 1973, the nominal average tariff for imports was 105 percent, with a maximum of 750 percent. Non-tariff barriers also impeded the import of more than 3,000 out of 5,125 registered goods. Just as economic theory predicts, large queues in front of stores were usual in Santiago and other cities in Chile as a result of the scarcity caused by price controls.

PROBLEM: Government taking over private businesses:

The decline in GDP during 1973 reflected a shrinking productive sector in which the main assets were gradually falling under government control or ownership through expropriations and other government interventions in the economy.

PROBLEM: Deficit spending and government printing money:

The fiscal situation was chaotic. The deficit reached 55 percent of expenditures and 20 percent of GDP and was the main cause of inflation because the Central Bank was issuing money to finance the government deficit.

SOLUTION: lower or eliminate restrictions on trade:

The most important economic reform in Chile was to open trade, primarily through a flat, low tariff on imports. Much of the credit for Chilean economic reforms in the following 30 years should be given to the decision to open our economy to the rest of the world. The strength of Chilean firms, productive sectors, and institutions grew up thanks to that fundamental change.

SOLUTION: let competing entrepreneurs in the private sector provide goods and services to consumers:

A second fundamental reform was to allow the private sector to recover, adding dynamism to the economy. In fact, important sectors such as electricity generation and distribution and telecommunications were still managed by state companies. After we implemented a massive privatization plan that included more than 50,000 new direct shareholders and several million indirect (through pension funds) shareholders, these companies were managed by private entrepreneurs that carried out important expansion plans.

SOLUTION: let people take responsibility for their own lives instead of depending on government:

The 1981 reform of the Chilean pension fund system deserves special mention. Under the leadership of Minister José Piñera, an individual capitalization account program was designed with specific contributions, administered by private institutions selected by the workers. The Chilean Administradoras de Fondos de Pension (Pension Fund Administrators or AFP) has been replicated in more than 20 countries, and more than 100 million workers in different parts of the world use these accounts to save for retirement.

SOLUTION: allow parents to choose the school that fits their needs from competing education providers, and push school administration down from the federal government to the municipal level, where it would be more responsive to voter’s needs:

In 1981, Chile introduced a universal educational voucher system for students in both its elementary and secondary schools. At the same time, the central government transferred the administration of public schools to municipal governments… The financial value of the voucher did not depend on family income.

RESULTS: And I was able to find a nice short, description of how all that worked out for them on the far-left Wikipedia, of all places:

The economy of Chile is a high-income economy as ranked by the World Bank, and is considered one of South America’s most stable and prosperous nations, leading Latin American nations in competitiveness, income per capita, globalization, economic freedom, and low perception of corruption.

In 2006, Chile became the country with the highest nominal GDP per capita in Latin America. In May 2010 Chile became the first South American country to join the OECD. Tax revenues, all together 20.2% of GDP in 2013, were the second lowest among the 34 OECD countries, and the lowest in 2010. In 2017, only 0.7% of the population lived on less than US$1.90 a day.

According to the Heritage Foundation, Chile is ranked as the 18th freest economy in the world. The World Bank ranked Chile as the 50th highest GDP per capita for 2018, just below Hungary and above Poland.

Now, you can contrast those results with Venezuela. I have been blogging about Venezuela for years on this blog, and documenting how they raised taxes, banned guns, nationalized private sector companies, raised tariffs, and increased regulations. They are now ranked JUST ABOVE NORTH KOREA for economic freedom – #179 out of 180 countries measured. Basically, they did the opposite of everything that Chile did – transferring power away from parents, workers, business owners, churches and municipal governments to the powerful centralized federal government.

Wikipedia explains how Hugo Chavez took over in 1999 and enacted a communist revolution.

Since the Bolivarian Revolution half-dismantled its PDVSA oil giant corporation in 2002 by firing most of its 20,000-strong dissident professional human capital and imposed stringent currency controls in 2003 in an attempt to prevent capital flight, there has been a steady decline in oil production and exports. Further yet, price controls, expropriation of numerous farmlands and various industries, among other government authoritarian policies… have resulted in severe shortages in Venezuela and steep price rises of all common goods, including food, water, household products, spare parts, tools and medical supplies; forcing many manufacturers to either cut production or close down, with many ultimately abandoning the country as has been the case with several technological firms and most automobile makers.

They confiscated private property, took over private sector businesses, implemented tariffs and price controls, redistributed wealth via massive welfare programs, and pushed all decision-making out of families and municipal governments up to the federal government. By depriving the producers of their earnings, the country caused massive shortages of goods and services, to the point where people are fleeing the country, consuming zoo animals, and selling their bodies as prostitutes in order to get food and water.

Application

In the next election, we are not picking a tribe because of how they make us feel about ourselves. We are not choosing in order to see ourselves as “nice” and “not nice”. We need to look at specific policies being proposed, and see what works and what doesn’t work. The examples of Chile (rags-to-riches) and Venezuela (riches-to-rags) are helpful for voters who want to get RESULTS instead of FEELINGS.

I’ll leave you with a list of links from previous posts so you can see how communism worked out for Venezuela.

Before socialists in Venezuela could run over protesters, they had to ban gun ownership

Venezuela solves hunger by banning bread lines, and solves crime by banning self-defense

And now slavery: Venezuela’s socialist policies lead to forced labor camps

Do young Americans know how well socialism is working in Venezuela?

How well are Democrat Party economic policies working out in Venezuela?

How well does socialism work in countries and cities that adopt it?

How well are Democrat economic policies working in Venezuela and Argentina?

Marco Rubio’s speech exposing the horrors of socialism in Cuba and Venezuela

Obama silent as Venezuelan government violently represses democratic opposition

How well is government-run health care working out in socialist Venezuela?

Venezuela orders soldiers armed with assault rifles to impose price controls

An honest look at the many contributions of Hugo Chavez to Venezuela

What causes Colombia’s economy to grow? What causes Venezuela’s economy to shrink?

Socialist government of Venezuela announces devaluation of their currency

Obama’s buddy Chavez nationalizes an American company

Venezuela legislature votes to nationalize 11 US-owned oil rigs

80,000 tons of food rotting in Venezuela government warehouse

Hugo Chavez confiscates private property as Venezuelan economy declines

Owner of the last anti-Chavez TV station arrested in communist Venezuela

OAS report details violence and lost freedoms in communist Venezuela

Photos from the revolution against communism in Venezuela

Venezuelans riot as communist Hugo Chavez seizes control of TV channel

Hugo Chavez says that Haiti earthquake was caused by secret US weapon

Chavez marches Venezuela down the road to serfdom at gunpoint

Communist Venezuela introduces energy rationing in 2010

Hugo Chavez shuts down 34 radio and TV stations in Venezuela

Venezuela nationalizes Spanish-owned bank

Go to the article

0 notes

thomasreedtn · 6 years

Text

Timothy Glenn ~ A Game of Attachments

Another good one from Timothy Glenn: some friendly reminders that you are so much more than your sect, your tax return, or your party line. In a world of all possibilities, what would you love to create? How would you love to feel? What would you love to experience? What small step can you take towards those things right here, right now?

A Game of Attachments

by Timothy Glenn

In a few channeling sessions spread over the last quarter century, the Proterrians have asked audiences a probing question about their attachments; specifically religious, economic and political attachments.

Religious Attachments

This pertains to our philosophies. How do we perceive and interpret life, the universe and everything? Who are we, where did we come from, and where are we going? In general: what’s the point?

Economic Attachments

We all have our ideas regarding how to attain, cultivate and distribute resources. And in such processes, do we need to control and keep track of what comes and goes? If so, who controls and keeps track, and how do they go about it?

Political Attachments

How do we structure our societies? If certain people are to assume various positions of responsibility and authority, how do they attain those positions? This involves our traditions, laws and other forms of keeping order.

The Question

Reflecting on those three categories, which type of attachments do you feel would run the deepest?

Back in the 90’s, almost every audience member answered “religious” with little or no hesitation. After the turn of the millennium, more people started giving it a moment of thought and then selected “political”. It wasn’t until just a few years ago that the clear majority of an audience determined that the deepest would definitely be “political” attachments.

The Answer

Throughout the years, the Proterrian perspective has always been that our political attachments run the deepest.

Religious attachments revolve around abstract gods and goddesses you never see in your entire lifetime. You are told a lot of tall tales about someone who allegedly lives in another realm of existence. They claim to have created you, and thus claim dominion over you. In Churchianity, you are told that the Sky God will supposedly reward or punish you when your life here is finished. This remains extremely vague, so that it utterly fails to qualify as evidence. Of the three categories, religious attachments tend to be the shallowest.

Economic attachments run significantly deeper, because these involve the food on your table. This involves matters much more down to Earth because food, clothing and shelter register as a lot more basic and real to the average human. Games of the “haves and have nots” find their roots here. Physical hunger and other forms of deprivation make a more profound impression on your subconscious than phantasmagorical characters in myths and legends.

Your political attachments actually run the deepest, because here we have the guys who come along with weapons, and wield force against you for any real or imagined infraction of someone else’s rules. You may have had lifetimes of facing lethal force, having your possessions confiscated, or being locked up in cages. That’s about as real as it gets for just about anyone, and most people still harbor fears of experiencing such violations in this lifetime. As a result, locked away deep down in their unconscious knee-jerk reactionary inclinations, they will find their underlying political attachments.

An Age of Universal Deceit

We have been swimming in a ubiquitous ocean of lies for ages, and never more so than in modern times. With the advent of mass media, the average human has been propagandized, mesmerized and programmed to believe the false narratives of professional pathological liars.

Here is a useful rule of thumb: the more “mainstream” or “official” the source, the more suspect it is. But until someone sees through the illusion, they will probably continue believing in the illusion.

For those of us who have awakened to the nature of the game, it can be breathtakingly boggling to hear people back up their political narratives and attitudes by saying, “it was on the news” or “it was on television” or “it was in the newspaper”. And they state it with such conviction, it’s as though they are saying “God came down out of the sky, and lightning shot forth from his index finger and indelibly etched it into a five mile square slab of polished marble – now and forever more. Amen.”

Yep. It was on television, alright.

When Lightning Strikes

For the article Uranus in Taurus: The Preview, Laura Bruno included this caution in her helpful introduction:

“I know so many good-hearted, intelligent people about to have their world shaken like an electric popcorn maker struck by lightning. If you find yourself knee-jerk reacting to anything, it’s wise to step back and humbly reassess. Maybe your original assessment will hold, but it’s wise to examine any and all ‘of course’ ideas. Look for those areas you consider ‘so obvious’ that you’re certain anyone who disagrees with you is a neanderthal or idiot.”

The more emotionally charged your negative reaction is – the more loaded it is with denunciation, anger and fear – the greater the likelihood that your perspectives are skewed because you have been disinformed and are believing in something erroneous – even though it seems “so obvious” and “it was on the news”.

As the lightning bolt of Uranus dances in the earthy sign of Taurus for the next several years, the world will come to appear vastly different than it had. Illusions will be shattered, especially regarding “the system”.

Systemized Apparitions

The Matrix has conditioned people to fear the system. This fear helps the system herd the masses around. For almost everyone on Earth, our deepest mental and emotional body attachments have been rooted in this very fear.

The so-called “dark side” has only one power, and that is the power of deception. Its inner manifestation allows us to deceive ourselves into believing we are whatever we have been programmed to believe we are. For most of us, that illusion says that we are what Proterrian calls “nothing more than pathetic little snotlings from 3D Planet Earth”. For others, it allows them to perceive themselves as vampires or other kinds of predators.

Its outer manifestation deceives us into accepting the bogus belief that the “dark side” has power over us. But in the act of believing it, we give the “dark side” that power. This wool has been systematically pulled over humanity’s eyes for millennia.

But now we have a massive window of opportunity to see through the customary misapprehensions. We can look at the system and give it clever descriptors like “The Matrix” or “a movie” or “a dog and pony show” or “a video game” or “the deeper dream” or “a hologram” or “an acid trip” or “a computer simulation”.

We can step firmly and fully into our Creatorship. And this transformation can be filled with love and fun – whatever we choose.

As our old friend the Buddha said, “Change does not cause pain. Resistance to change causes pain.”

Timothy Glenn http://www.soulpurposereadings.com/

from Thomas Reed https://laurabruno.wordpress.com/2018/08/27/timothy-glenn-a-game-of-attachments/

0 notes