Noam Scheiber’s dissection of how labor so successfully torpedoed the Trans Pacific Partnership in the House (thus far anyway, again I’m still suspicious this passes somehow) shows how labor can still win today. First, it is united and pushes very hard on erstwhile allies that are ready to abandon it. Second, it crafts alliances with other liberal groups, including environmentalists.

This time around, not only did the firefighters make a considerable investment — producing ads and paying to broadcast them in five congressional districts — but Mr. Schaitberger personally led the effort within the A.F.L-C.I.O. executive council to freeze all donations to members of Congress by the political action committees of the federation and affiliated unions until after the vote on trade promotion authority. (Mr. Schaitberger, who developed the motion, credits Mr. Trumka with helping create almost unanimous support for it.)

Mr. Schaitberger acknowledged some apprehension within the labor movement about denying money even to longtime congressional allies, but he argued that it had been the most effective way to persuade friendly members of Congress to pressure wavering Democratic lawmakers. “We wanted to encourage those members to use their influence, their passion for our position, to move some of their colleagues,” he said.

Even labor’s opponents marveled at the cohesion unions brought to the fight. John Murphy, senior vice president for international policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said he was mystified by the position of the Service Employees International Union, which represents two million workers.

“None of these workers are in any way negatively affected by competition with imports,” said Mr. Murphy. “Yet S.E.I.U. will be there, showing solidarity.”

The across-the-board mobilization by labor unions reflected two pivotal developments since the late 1990s. First was the dawning realization that even public sector workers who appear to be insulated from global competition could ultimately feel its dislocating effects. Mr. Schaitberger said the firefighters had learned all too well that deindustrialization leads to urban decay and declining property values, which can increase demand for public services while it drains cities of the revenue to pay for them.

More recently, the public sector unions, under increasing assault from Republicans in Congress and in several big states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Indiana, found that the rapid decline of industrial unions had left them politically vulnerable as well.

It’s not like unity, solidarity with other unions in situations that don’t directly affect your members’ jobs, and alliance-building with other progressives is always that easy to replicate. But this is a clear way forward and I hope organized labor can build on it.

We're learning more and more about just what a mother lode of intelligence information hackers got from raiding the US government's personnel files, and as John Schindler points out, if the hackers are working for the Chinese or Russians, then America is in real trouble. With each passing day the U.S. government’s big hacking scandal gets worse. Just what did hackers steal from the Office of

heartless-guttersnipe:

inthemoodforportnawak:

Buddah Cats - KyleKahotek (Imgur)

I didn’t know I needed this until now.

The best time to steal someone’s home is at Christmas.

That’s when folks find their budgets stretched the tightest by the gift-giving season. People put off their bills to focus on family. The holidays are distracting: friends and loved ones come and go, there’s all that merriment. Christmas is the perfect cover for taking a family’s home away from them.

Allan Blair took Lillian Ware’s home away from her on December 27, 1971, two days after Christmas. Legally, he purchased her Evanston home. She owed $41.57 on a lien for a special tax assessment, plus some fees. Blair bought that tax lien at an auction held by Cook County, in the hopes that Ware, an elderly black woman, would fail to pay off the lien within a two-year window.

Racist property assessments and predatory tax-debt sales went hand-in-hand in Chicago. It came to be known as the “Black Tax.”

But Blair didn’t leave it to chance. As Andrew W. Kahrl recalls in a new case study on Chicago’s predatory tax buyers, Blair had Ware’s final tax repayment date extended to December 27 to boost the odds that she would forget or fail to make the payment and wind up in default.

“Blair’s treachery knew no bounds, and respected no holidays,” writes Kahrl, a professor of African-American history at the University of Virginia.

There’s a happy ending to Ware’s story, sort of. Losing her home over such a small amount of money (at Christmas no less) won Ware the sympathy of the local press. The public outcry helped the elderly lady to buy back her home—the one she had already paid for—from the man who had scrooged her. It even seemed for a minute that Blair might pay for all that he’d done.

But Ware was only one of hundreds of Chicago residents who fell victim to Blair and a predatory tax-assessment scheme that served to strip black residents of the deeds to their homes. For his part, Blair was just one of many agents using the full force of the law to plunder the wealth of thousands of black homeowners.

And Chicago is only one among scores of cities where this scene has played out over the years—and continues today. For decades, racist property assessments and predatory tax-debt sales went hand-in-hand in Chicago. The system came to be known as the “Black Tax.”

Fedo Kenon, a mentally disabled man, lost his home to a tax-lien buyer after failing to make a payment of $3.05.

Chicago’s history here is especially egregious, but it isn’t unique at all. The Washington Post launched an extraordinary investigation into predatory tax-debt practices in Washington, D.C., in 2013, leading to a host of reforms the following year. The Baltimore Sun exposed in 2007 how homeowners have even lost their homes to the sales of liens on unpaid utility bills (namely water bills). Tax-debt sales enable powerful, wealthy, corporate actors to use the law to bully and exploit a city’s most vulnerable residents. Fedo Kenon, a mentally disabled man, and his wife, Hattie Mae Kenon, lost their home in Quincy, Florida, to a tax-lien buyer in 1979 after they failed to make a payment of $3.05.

“This is a predatory enterprise that's being conducted by the state,” Kahrl says in an interview. “Quite literally, Cook County is facilitating and helping to manage these predatory tax buyers who are preying on their own citizens. [The government is] not just complicit—they're cogs in this industry, key players.”

The origins of the ‘Black Tax’ in Chicago

Kahrl’s case study, which was released this month by the Journal of Urban History, traces the practice of tax-lien speculation to a 1951 reform in Illinois state law called the Revenue Act. During the same years when “redlining” emerged as a severely racially discriminatory mortgage practice, assessors in cities such as Chicago systemically over-valued homes in black neighborhoods for property-tax purposes.

The Revenue Act (and similar laws in other “harsh-law states”) made it easy for unscrupulous speculators to exploit homeowners who missed these higher payments or simply failed to grasp the law. Kahrl—who is the author of The Land Was Ours: African-American Beaches from Jim Crow to the Sunbelt South—likens the overvaluation of black-owned homes and the targeting of delinquent black taxpayers to the practice of “contract selling.” (Beryl Satter’s 2010 book, Family Properties: How the Struggle Over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago and Urban America, provides the exhaustive account of that topic. Ta-Nehisi Coates further explored contract selling in his June 2014 cover story for The Atlantic.)

“In 1960s and 1970s Chicago, tax buyers turned one of the most basic functions of local government—property tax collection and enforcement—into a mechanism of personal enrichment and private investment,” Kahrl writes in the study.

Blair, along with his partner, David Gray, elevated unscrupulousness to an art form. The associates leaned on public officials for insider tips about properties slated for urban renewal. They pushed policymakers to draft laws that suited their interests. According to Kahrl, the two “preyed on those who were least likely to understand redemption procedures and the tax delinquent’s rights under the law (the poor and illiterate, the elderly and senile, widows and shut-ins, the mentally disabled, persons who did not speak English), and thus most susceptible to forms of trickery and deception.”

Tax-lien speculation proved to be one hell of a business. Over the course of six months in 1973, for example, Gray acquired the deeds to 93 homes in Chicago’s Woodlawn neighborhood for a total of $70,000. Each parcel was worth as much as $20,000 at the time—and potentially much, much more to speculators once all the neighborhood’s black residents had been evicted.

Kahrl is working to compile an estimate for how much tax buyers such as Blair and Gray actually made during the 1970s. The associates often used shell companies (named after family members: “Lois, Inc.,” “Jocelyn, Inc.”) to disguise their activities, complicating the search. Market data for home values in these neighborhoods over this period can be hard to come by. Still, while it’s tough to access tax-sales data, these sales were conducted by the government, meaning there’s a public record for every predatory transaction. These records exist.

“[The government is] not just complicit—they're cogs in this industry, key players.”

“It's a lengthy, meticulous process, but all the numbers are there to see how much they're making, and quite literally, who they're making it from,” he says.

Just a glance at what Blair and Gray accomplished reveals the scale at which they worked for years. Kahrl passed along a list (culled from a 1973 report he discovered at the Chicago Historical Society) of homeowners for whom Blair and Gray acquired tax liens, along with the value of the home and the total figure for the delinquent tax bill. The values diverge by several orders of magnitude:

Catherine Catoor: $50,000 ($896)

Louis Balthazar: $16,000 ($500)

Lillian Ware: $18,750 ($59)

Bob Rosborough: $15,000 ($1,200)

Bertha Rankins: $12,000 ($118)

Mrs. Henry Riedl: $12,500 ($53)

Frank Wiggins: $10,000 ($90)

Carlee Robinson: $12,000 ($26)

Veronica Micetich: $10,000 ($3,000)

Kahrl estimates that Blair and Gray acquired thousands of liens and hundreds of homes in Chicago. (They worked in other cities in harsh-law states as well).

Not every tax-lien sale resulted in a transfer of deed, but they always resulted in a transfer of wealth. Many homeowners managed to pay off their liens at high interest rates—often 18 percent, the legal ceiling—along with a host of fees. Making real money depended on finding the poorest and most vulnerable owners in the poorest but most over-assessed neighborhoods. This practice was perfectly legal. The “Black Tax” was law.

“Judges often bent over backwards trying to find any procedure that the tax buyer failed to complete properly so as to invalidate the deed, because they knew this was a cruel and heartless practice and sympathized with the homeowner,” Kahrl writes in an email. “But Blair and Gray became so skilled at following the letter of the law that they won most of these cases.”

Predatory tax-lien practices today—in Chicago and beyond

Until only very recently in Cook County, collusion at the tax-lien auction was the rule of the day. Tax buyers bid on liens by interest rates. A competitive bidding process would yield a lien sale with a low interest rate for the homeowner. An uncompetitive (corrupt) auction yielded lien sales at the maximum interest rate: 18 percent.

In the 1990s, Cook County Treasurer Maria Pappas took aim at the “gentleman’s agreement” between institutional buyers to divide up the spoils of the auction without bidding against each other on them. In 2000, the Circuit Court of Cook County rules in Pappas’ favor in a suit brought against her by a bevy of these institutional entities, which operate under such anodyne names as “Midwest Real Estate Investment Company.” (While the bidding process is fairer in Chicago now, bid-rigging remains a pressing concern for tax lien auctions in Baltimore.)

The remarkably resilient predatory-tax-lien business continues to thrive, despite efforts at reform. The industry is enormous. Late in 2014, the Abell Foundation published a report on the state of the practice in Baltimore City. In 2013, the city sold tax liens for more than 2,000 owner-occupied homes. Almost one-tenth of these liens were attached to water bills. In 2014, of some 6,690 tax liens sold, 2,236 were for owner-occupied homes.

Given the interest, fees, and court costs, a homeowner’s $500 delinquent tax or water bill can mushroom to $3,000 over a two-year window—the time an owner has to pay down the lien. According to the report, there were 2,805 pending tax-lien foreclosure cases in Baltimore City in 2014. Noting the difficulty in tracking these tax-foreclosure evictions, the Abell Foundation report’s authors warn that in Baltimore, the “tax sale can lead to evictions, homelessness, and property vacancies and abandonment in a city already plagued by all three.”

Of 82 Baltimore homeowners facing a tax sale, most were black, most lived below the poverty level, half were elderly, and a third were disabled.

According to a survey of 82 homeowners in Baltimore facing a tax sale, most were black, most lived below the poverty level, half were elderly, a third were disabled, and one tenth were veterans.

Earlier this year, the Thriving Communities Institute released a report on tax-lien sales in Cuyahoga County. It’s a damning indictment of Woods Cove, the corporation with which the county contracted in 2011 to purchase and service tax liens for the Cleveland area. Woods Cove took Allan Blair’s Chicago playbook and turned it into a nationwide industry.

The story in Cleveland is the same as in Baltimore. A disproportionately high share of tax-delinquent properties are found in majority-minority neighborhoods. Of the 265 properties that Woods Cove came to possess between 2011 and 2013, 84 percent are on Cleveland’s east side or in its east inner-ring suburbs. The report’s authors further note that 93 of those properties are now vacant—and 87 percent of those vacant homes are located in Cuyahoga County’s most vulnerable communities.

Across the Cleveland area, the pattern is plain. The greater the share of minorities in a neighborhood, the more likely it is that tax-lien sales result in foreclosure.

Woods Cove are no angels. The Center for Community Progress has noted that the corporation has forced tax-delinquent homeowners to enter into a “confession of judgment” agreement to establish repayment plans—a form of systematic humiliation conducted in the service of a civic debt.

“It’s worth noting that harsh tactics like this are not employed by the County when it does its own tax collection,” said Frank Ford,* a senior policy advisor for the Thriving Communities Institute, in an interview with Community Progress. “Tax-lien sales transfer what is essentially a public function to a private, return-driven entity that has neither a duty nor an interest in protecting taxpayers and residents of Cuyahoga County.”

According to these 2015 reports, Woods Cove is guilty of the same predatory practices employed by the other big national player, Aeon Financial, which served as the corporate buyer and servicer on tax liens in Cuyahoga County prior to 2011. Aeon Financial came up for special condemnation in The Washington Post report for its practices in D.C. and Maryland.

The Plain Dealer described Woods Cove’s practices in Cleveland as “county-condoned distressed-property flipping." The criticism has yet to spur any real action. And if it ever did, the company would just move on. Aeon, Woods Cove, Heartwood, and other shadowy institutional tax buyers—Heartwood lists its address as a UPS mail drop in Chicago—operate everywhere at once.

Woods Cove made its latest mass purchase in Cecil County, Maryland, earlier this month:

Woods Cove IV LLC bought 195 tax liens for a total of $484,000. Western Asset Management Co. (WAMCo.) bought 112 liens for $268,000 in taxes. Stearns Bank purchased 80 liens for a total of $166,000 in taxes. Purchasers receive the interest accrued on the bill if the original owner fulfills their debt. Otherwise, the purchaser can begin the foreclosure process to ultimately own the property outright.

"They just move on to the next jurisdiction,” Kahrl says.

The long road to breaking up the tax-foreclosure industry

Large corporate tax buyers are extremely skilled at navigating tax codes that are by their nature set at the state and local level. There is no regulatory regime that oversees tax buyers specifically—not the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, not the Department of Housing and Urban Development, not the Department of Justice, not the IRS.

“Property taxes are the most local form of taxation in America,” Kahrl says. “It's hard to make blanket statements on the state of tax-buying on the whole. It's so localized. That works to the advantage of tax buyers who have mastered the intricacies of the process.”

Absent a regulatory regime, legislative reform is perhaps the only method to curb predatory tax sales. Outrage is enough to force change in some cases: Consider the protections introduced in Washington, D.C., after the release of The Post’s report. Nationwide, these protections (such as videotaped auctions) vary widely from one jurisdiction to another—and the industry appears to adapt to these laws faster than cities can adopt them.

The Center for Community Progress notes “The Michigan Model” as one alternative to tax-lien sales. Instead of selling the notes to debt collectors, cities and counties could instead borrow from banks on the back of “Delinquent Tax Anticipation Notes”—essentially tax-free municipal bonds. Crucially, in this model, the county operates both the tax collection and any subsequent foreclosures, lending a degree of direct accountability and transparency to the process. (This model is the work of U.S. Representative Dan Kildee of Michigan.)

“Wealth creation … is generated by the plundering of the poor and vulnerable in America.”

These small steps may one day curb future abuses. Justice is a different question. As it stands, efforts to correct the outrageously disparate treatment of black and white homeowners have only led to more unequal standards for taxation. Kahrl’s report casts the California Tax Revolt of June 6, 1978, as a hostile white reaction to a nondiscriminatory tax state. When municipal leaders tried to correct the balance sheet between white and black homeowners, whites rebelled.

Justice never came to Chicago, of course. In 1979, when Arthur Lyons, a University of Illinois economist, released a report on the disparity between black and white property assessments—a full analysis of the “Black Tax”—it landed with a thud. “Despite (or, perhaps because of) the irrefutable evidence presented in the Lyons report, the issue of discriminatory taxation failed to generate much outrage among white Chicagoans, who were, after all, the main beneficiaries of the county’s assessment practices,” Kahrl writes.

Neither did Lillian Ware’s personal story move the world against Allan Blair, who continued his predatory practice until his death in 1979. Today, corporate buyers such as Woods Cove and Aeon Financial continue his work—and at a scale that Blair could not have fathomed.

“Wealth creation, then and even more so today,” Kahrl says, “is generated by the plundering of the poor and vulnerable in America.”

Correction: This post cites remarks made in an interview by Frank Ford. It originally misattributed the quote to Luke Telander. The post has been corrected.

My former home of Georgetown, Texas is set to become the first city in the United States to be entirely powered by wind and solar energy. It’s remarkable how Texas has become the national leader on renewable energy. Of course, it’s not for some sort of political principle. Rather, Texas is gigantic with seemingly endless open, windy spaces in the western part of the state and the state has its own electricity grid to send that energy to the populated areas farther east. But Georgetown is a deeply Republican place. It’s not as crazy as, say, the Houston suburbs, but it’s quite conservative. Yet this is city that is pioneering the nation’s hopeful energy future.

I find it interesting how many people I hear talking about their sexuality and sexual interests, the way they describe things that turn them on as “dirty” and “freaky” and “nasty” and “perverted.”

As far as I can see, the fact that the things that arouse them are not “mainstream” — or at least are not openly acknowledged as normative — is a significant part of the appeal for a lot of people.  That they feel they are being transgressive is much of the point, and the source of most of the erotic value in these acts.

But it doesn’t make any sense to me.  I mean, sure, I can acknowledge it on an intellectual level, but I don’t understand.  I personally am turned on by a whole lot of things that are not particularly “standard,” by things which are certainly not the socially accepted, normative, typical-script sex stuff… but I don’t see any of it as “nasty” or “wrong.”  If there’s one thing I know with absolute certainly, having come of age in a world where it is so easy to digitally connect with people across the globe, it’s that nothing — absolutely nothing — is unique to me alone. “If it exists, there is porn of it,” otherwise known as “Rule #34,” is a relatively concise was of expressing much the same thing. Hell, just spending a bit of time lurking in /b/ will do wonders for showing you the sheer variety of things that people find sexually appealing! And yes, I used to. Not my scene anymore, but mostly because I’ve found other places to more effectively address many of my interests…

So, I know that I’m not alone in my sexual interests, varied as they are.  And I have learned very well that I don’t need to fear my sexuality — I had a pretty effective crash-course in that one, mostly as part-and-parcel of unlearning the shame and stigma instilled in me from a Mormon upbringing.  And I know that I feel better when I’m comfortable with who I am in any respect; shame about who and what I am is never anything but damaging to my overall well-being.

With all that in mind, I have made some conscious shifts in my vocabulary to better reflect my relationship to sex.  I avoid references to body parts that carry a negative connotation — I don’t have “junk” between my legs, thanks, my cock is quite a treasure!  When I’m fucking, I’m not “doing the nasty” and there’s nothing I could call “getting down and dirty” about eating out a partner’s ass (unless they haven’t washed there recently, in which case I might help them wash up as part of our play!) Wanting to be tied up or locked up by someone who cares for me, and then whipped, flogged, pounded and penetrated with toys or hands or other bits of flesh (or all of the above) doesn’t make me a “freak in the bedroom,” it makes me a woman who enjoys some particular things on some occasions, and other things at other times.

As I mentioned in a recent post, I don’t need to feel ashamed of who I am or what gets me off.  Plenty of things do, and I’m okay with that.  I’m much happier being okay with it than trying to convince myself that I’m supposed to enjoy getting off more because “they” don’t want me to, because it’s somehow forbidden and therefore better.

And when my approach to life is to “seek pleasure first and foremost” and constantly evaluate what there is to gain and what harm there is in things as I go, it’s foolish to deny myself pleasure because somebody else thinks it might not be “normal,” because somebody else says it’s always bad, can’t possibly be sexy, has to be “dirty” and “wrong.” When my own lived experience says otherwise, why should I trust anyone else’s judgement on the matter? If it makes me happy… it can’t be that bad!

Filed under: General

There's a common belief that people who don't have jobs somehow just aren't trying hard enough, and this belief is therefore based on the idea that there are enough jobs for everyone. To get a job, all one really needs to do is just try hard enough.

"Just go get a job."

The Harsh Reality of Jobland

Source: BLS

The number of unemployed people per job opening varies by year, but it is never 1 to 1. In mid 2009 it was 7 to 1, meaning there were seven unemployed people for every one job opening. Today we hear how great the job market is and there's still two unemployed people for every job opening. We must also keep in mind that those who have dropped out of the labor market entirely - as in they've given up looking for a job - means they aren't actually even counted anymore as unemployed even though they are not employed. So there are actually more than two people for every one job right now. It's just that some are waiting for more and better jobs to open up before they bother to start looking.

For those who are aware of this perpetual job shortage, there is then a belief that if we only break apart the data, and look at unemployment by job sector, we'll see that those who are unemployed are actually just "fools" who went to art school, instead of "wise" STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) degree holders. So let's take a look.

Source: EPI

As we can see, there are more unemployed people than jobs available across each sector of the job market, even including health care, and that one's considered practically a slam dunk at this point in terms of finding employment.

There are simply not enough jobs for everyone to have a job all at the same time.

Doesn't this sound kind of familiar? This idea that we walk around and around looking for something along with others looking for the same thing, only to find that some, and possibly even us, must in the end be excluded from what we seek?

It sounds like a game we all played as kids...

The job market is actually a game of musical chairs.

There is however a key difference between a game of musical chairs and the way our job market works, and that's that when the music stops in musical chairs, the winner is sitting while the loser is just left standing. But because the only way to gain access to the resources we need to survive is through the earning of income, those unable to earn an income aren't just left standing. They are left in poverty. And poverty hurts.

So now let's imagine a game of musical chairs played on a hot bed of coals. There are 10 people and 5 chairs, the same ratio as exists right now in 2015. Everyone is hopping around trying not to get burned, when the music stops. Five people are rewarded with security from pain, and five people begin to burn.

Let's look closer at these five burning people. Can we say anything about them in regards to ability or education knowing what we know about job scarcity? Can we truthfully say that all five sitting are the ones who rightfully deserve to sit, and all those standing rightfully deserve to burn? Has luck played no role in this?

According to Matt Bruenig writing for Demos using Census data, 1/3 of people experience poverty in any given year, and over the course of three years only 3.5% experience it the whole time. Looking at our entire working lifetimes, 40% of us will at some point live in poverty for a full year. Is this because four out of every ten people somehow deserve it?

This data instead appears to point to a large degree of luck in sitting or standing, with only around 3% of people having some kind of personal inability to find a chair. So at the absolute most, if we choose to view poverty as being somehow a matter of personal choice, only 3% can even potentially fit this description. For the other 97%, it's really just a matter of when the music stops.

Now let's look closer at the chairs themselves. We want to assume that if we are sitting, our feet are no longer burning and that we're entirely safe from the hot coals. But that's not actually the case. Some of the people sitting actually burn too.

Source: EPI

For every three people in poverty who are eligible to work, two are working. So, having a job does not prevent poverty. Or in other words, being fortunate enough to successfully grab a chair does not mean our feet are out of the coals.

So not only are people being punished for being unlucky when the music stops, but so are some of the people lucky enough to grab a chair. Does this make any sense at all? Does this sound like a fun game with fair rules? If not, why are we playing it?

I say it's high time we change the rules.

Here's how we can do it, and also why we have to do it.

Thanks to technology, there are going to be fewer and fewer chairs as the music plays on. The chairs themselves are going to offer less and less protection from the hot coals, and we'll never really know how good of a chair we're sitting in until our feet start burning. So here's what we do...

We build a concrete floor a few inches over the coals with a universal basic income.

With basic income, no matter what, no one's feet will burn. No matter whether you are sitting or standing, no more burning for anyone. This also doesn't mean that no one will play the game anymore. Don't we usually play musical chairs over an actual floor instead of hot coals? In fact, looking at it this way, doesn't it now seem kind of sadistic to not already be playing this particular game with a concrete floor instead of hot coals?

With basic income, the music will still start and stop. Some people will still get to enjoy sitting while others are still left standing, but no one will burn. No matter how many chairs are removed from the game, no one will burn.

So what effect will this have? Will all that not burning make people lazy? Do we need coals to motivate us?

Not according to what we newly know about safety nets. Their existence actually provides greater motivation.

Take food stamps. Conservatives have long argued that they breed dependence on government. In a 2014 paper, Olds examined the link between entrepreneurship and food stamps, and found that the expansion of the program in some states in the early 2000s increased the chance that newly eligible households would own an incorporated business by 16 percent. (Incorporated firms are a better proxy for job-creating startups than unincorporated ones.)

Interestingly, most of these new entrepreneurs didn’t actually enroll in the food stamp program. It seems that expanding the availability of food stamps increased business formation by making it less risky for entrepreneurs to strike out on their own. Simply knowing that they could fall back on food stamps if their venture failed was enough to make them more likely to take risks.

Just knowing food stamps existed as an option, encouraged people to take the risk to start their own businesses. This is also the same reason Denmark has year after year been considered the best place for business.

One of the keys to Denmark’s pro-business climate is the flexible labor market known as “Flexisecurity,” where companies can easily hire and fire workers with out-of-work adults eligible for significant unemployment benefits. Unemployed workers are also eligible for training programs. It creates one of the most productive workforces in Europe. “The model encourages economic efficiency where employees end up in the job they are best suited for,” says Weis. “It allows employers to quickly change and reallocate resources in the workplace.” Denmark is one of the most entrepreneurial countries in the world.

So in Denmark, we see a game of musical chairs being played where people are encouraged to stand up from one chair and go sit in another. Chair owners can even more easily dump people out of chairs or get rid of them when no longer needed. People standing can take their time finding new chairs, and the result is a country full of people not only finding chairs they like (which is great for productivity), but making new ones and destroying old ones, all with little if any burning.

It should also be no surprise that playing musical chairs on something other than coals actually leads to greater happiness, even in the midst of disappearing chairs.

When the researchers control for various factors like the unemployment rate, they find that happiness of people experiencing job destruction is higher in states with more generous unemployment benefits and lower in states with stingier benefits. This is likely because people are less worried about the job-destroying effects of technological change when there is a social safety net they can count on.

A feeling of security makes all the difference. Basic income provides that security in the most efficient and universal way possible, where everyone is guaranteed the same minimum level of opportunity with maximum freedom of choice.

Even F.A. Hayek, a Nobel prize-winning economist considered far to the right of center with his advocacy of free markets for free societies, believed a minimum income made sense as a means of "limited security"through the assurance by government of minimal sustenance.

There is then the important issue of security, of protection against risks common to all, where government can often either reduce these risks or assist people to provide against them. Here, however, an important distinction has to be drawn between two conceptions of security: a limited security which can be achieved for all and which is, therefore, no privilege, and absolute security, which in a free society cannot be achieved for all. The first of these is security against severe physical privation, the assurance of a given minimum of sustenance for all; and the second is the assurance of a given standard of life.

Basic income does not mean everyone earns the same amount of money. It means everyone starts with the same amount of money. It is a guarantee of opportunity, not of outcome.

Few would suggest a game of Monopoly where no one has a minimum amount with which to start playing. It makes no sense to start Monopoly with $0. Why not just make it so that we all as citizens start each month with $1,000 instead of $0? Then all income earned from our labor can be earned on top of our basic income. Some will use it to earn much more than others, but no one will start with less.

We can do a lot more with something than we can with nothing.

In Namibia, when given basic incomes, self-employment jumped 301%.

In Liberia, when given basic incomes, 1/3 of recipients started their own businesses.

In India, when given basic incomes, recipients were twice as likely to increase their productive work as those in control villages.

In Kenya, when poor people were given cash unconditionally, 90% of them used it to start their own businesses or purchase livestock.

When people have a minimum amount of money to start with, they use it to enable work. They use it to earn more money, or to pursue unpaid work they wish to pursue, like being a parent instead of paying someone else to be a parent for them. They also use it to pursue education. Students focus on school and even get better grades.

Giving everyone the same basic amount of cash - a basic income - is how we change the rules to make our fiery game of musical chairs work better for everyone through the creation of a room temperature protective floor.

Or we can just continue burning together, and watch as our machines begin sitting in the chairs themselves...

It's our choice.

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Take action: Contact your rep and tell them to support the Healthy Climate and Family Security Act of 2015 which would provide everyone with a Social Security number an equal share of the revenue raised by making polluting the air we all breathe more expensive, or in other words, a 'cap and dividend' partial basic income. You can also sign this petition to the President and Congress for a basic income for all.

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The heteronormative assumptions the rest of the world makes about everything are really depressing.

“For men and women, or the other way around” (women and men, that is) is supposed to be all-inclusive. Love is so much more beautifully varied than that! And I usually end up just taking the hetero bullshit and trying to find bits and pieces I can relate to, because there’s very very very very little out there that looks like me.

It’s not difficult to look around and see stuff that is clearly “role play” in the form of “Daddy’s Little Girl.” It’s a power exchange dynamic, one that benefits from social assumptions about gender roles and power. A guy in charge, a woman underneath him. I mean, what’s an insult you throw at a guy to highlight his supposed lack of masculinity? “Momma’s Boy.”

What about the gay men? For a long time I figured that George Michael song was supposed to be about men on men, because I had only heard “Father Figure” in the context of guys who like guys. Then I saw the music video (it’s kinda creepy, but then lots of creepy shit gets romanticized…)

What about the men who don’t have any problem with “women on top”? I’m thinking about a lot of the reading that I did for a while, blogs about dominant women and submissive men and shattering stereotypes of all sorts. I’m thinking of people like “Stabbity” at Not Just Bitchy or “Professor Chaos” of Lab Coats and Lingerie — I honestly read more for the perspective of loving, dominant women, and often did plenty of the same kinds of “find what bits I can relate to” as with most hetero stuff, but I DID relate to plenty there.

What about women like me, who want to find themselves safe in the arms of a mommy? You won’t find dozens of blogs dedicated to Mommy/Little Girl relationships, the way you’ll find ones about Daddy/Little Girl couples. But then, you also won’t find “I ❤ My Girlfriend” sparkly pink shirts and undies and everything else in most clothing stores, not the way that it’s simple to find a wide selection of incredibly femme “Best Boyfriend Ever” products.

And what about all the people who don’t fall into a ridiculously rigid binary classification of “boy or girl?” They are even less visible, less acknowledged than everyone else. What do they model their relationships on? Where do they get any voice in things?

I could also mention just how disgustingly white the Daddy/Girl stuff is, how overwhelmingly lacking most of the memes are in racial diversity… unless, of course, it’s to regurgitate racist tropes and hold up bigotry as somehow “beautiful” — but really, I’m not the one who should be tackling that topic.

I’m just… sad, I guess is the word, I’m sad at how invisible I feel, at how little the world seems to care about a small and off-the-beaten-path voice like mine. Seeing yourself in stories outside your own head, seeing reflections of yourself, knowing you’re not a monster… it’s important. Critical, even. I don’t see myself very often.

Filed under: General

Caroline Kennedy provides the worst possible argument for supporting the Trans Pacific Partnership: that her father supported free trade.

Serving as the U.S. ambassador to Japan has given me a chance to experience first-hand how our country is perceived in Asia. It has been a deeply moving experience to see how much the American dream still matters from 7,000 miles away.

The people of this region are eager for American involvement of all kinds—they cherish the free expression that we sometimes take for granted, their workers are seeking the kinds of hard-won protections the U.S. labor movement has gained, entrepreneurs are eager to innovate and young people are desperate to connect with us on a free and open internet that protects intellectual property and cybersecurity.

With assistance from the United States, Japan and other nations, developing countries throughout Asia are working to educate girls and young women and to protect their environments so future generations can reduce the risk of natural disasters and live sustainably.

This is a dynamic region that, right now, is at peace. It is also growing, presenting enormous economic opportunities for Americans. With a continued focus on President Barack Obama’s “rebalance to Asia,” we can keep it that way for generations to come.

A vitally important part of that strategy is the Trans Pacific Partnership. This ambitious, 12-nation trade agreement, now in the final stages of negotiation, has the potential to knit the United States and our allies into the world’s strongest, most prosperous partnership.

Yet, there are some who are reluctant to change the status quo and embrace the future. This is nothing new. But there is a proud Democratic free-trade tradition that we should not forget. For my father, President John F. Kennedy, expanding trade was integral to America’s prosperity and security. As he told Congress on January 11, 1962, when asking for a precursor to the same authority President Obama is requesting today, “Our decision could well affect the unity of the West, the course of the Cold War, and the economic growth of our Nation for a generation to come.”

It’s followed with a standard defense of the TPP and reminding us that Ted Kennedy also supported free trade, which is probably the worst policy position he consistently held.

And let’s think of the upshot of this. Should Democrats today then also support other Kennedy policies? Perhaps we should arm Cuban exiles to overthrow the Castro regime in a half-baked invasion plan. Or provided arms and advisers to Latin American nations to bust their unions in the name of development. Or move the nation significantly ahead toward a pointless war in southeast Asia. Or drag our feet on civil rights. Or this:

My dad, JFK, brought us to the brink of nuclear annihilation, and today's Democrats should do the same

— the beverage hunk (@pareene) June 12, 2015

Kennedy insults us with this argument. Regardless of where you stand on the issue, appealing to a mythical Democrat of the past is pathetic. Given that Caroline Kennedy is Obama’s ambassador to Japan, one has to wonder whether the administration didn’t ask her to openly appeal to the Kennedy myth to promote this specific policy. Never mind whether JFK would have actually supported the thing. I mean, our whole judicial system is based on trying to figure out whether James Madison would have approved of violent video games. But resorting to cheap nostalgia to a president mythologized all out of proportion to his actual accomplishments is really a ridiculous argument to make.

If there is a reason for Democrats to support the Trans Pacific Partnership, it sure isn’t because JFK’s daughter says he would have supported it too.

In conclusion, Caroline Kennedy deserved to be appointed to Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat in 2009 because of her lineage.

Quantities are limited

I will do your divorce for Blackhawks SCF Game 6 Tix

If you’ve been waiting to pull the trigger on a divorce I’m happy to help you with the filing and make sure everything is on the up and up. All I ask in exchange is that we attend game 6 together to discuss the details. From there I will handle everything else.

Lower level seats are going for in excess of $2500 apiece. A messy divorce could cost you millions. This is an amazing chance at an excellent value.

Contact me via email and let me know where your seats are. I’d consider any other kind of legal work you need done.*

Dave

*Willing to discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership for a small additional fee

PORTLAND, Maine — Natasha Mayers is a tried and true activist artist. With few exceptions, her art — paintings and murals and the banners she helps create as part of the Artists Rapid Response Team, or ARRT! — is focused on fighting for justice of every kind: racial, social, restorative, environmental — and calling out the bad guys. Her work ranges from the openly polemical and political to brilliant send-ups and witty rejoinders. She can do Leon Golub proud, but also channel Daumier.

In Men in Suits: Paintings by Natasha Mayers at the Maine Jewish Museum in Portland (through June 21), the painter continues her mission to speak truth to power, this time inspired by the financial crisis of 2008. Produced over the past four years or so, the 83 undated paintings in the show, all of them acrylic on canvas or board except for two monotypes with acrylic, play variations on the theme of men in suits. These are the corporate overlords who nearly ruined America and received bailouts and bonuses for their misdeeds — the wolves of Wall Street who inspired the Occupy movement.

In Mayers’ paintings, the suits, sometimes lacking heads, occupy everything: the landscape, boardrooms and bedrooms, farms. Their jackets, shirts and especially their ties turn up everywhere. Indeed, part of the appeal of the work in this show is related to the often clever way in which the painter incorporates business attire into the surroundings.

So the rocks in “Well-suited rocks” are, well, well-suited, their craggy shapes sporting the moneymen’s habilement. Likewise, the cliffs that overlook a boat full of abstracted veiled figures in “Refugee women” double as the torsos of the businessmen who traffic in immigrants.

Some of the most memorable pieces in the show are those that incorporate the suits in unusual configurations. In “Rollover,” the bodies of headless suited men follow the contours of a large bed surrounded by black shoes floating in an ambiguous, pinkish space. Mayers has taken that investment trading term and refigured it as a surreal image of brokers rolling over — as if, even in repose, they are playing their financial tricks.

The paintings often take their titles from the lingo of the business world: “Forced arbitration,” “Collusion,” “Underwater options,” and “Venture capitalists (crave scalable activities)” are a few. “Trickle down” shows four headless men in suits pissing what looks like blood.

In “Commodity Traders,” the table around which the faceless market manipulators gather is a farm, with grazing cows — they own the lay of the land. The men in “Corporate tax dodgems” drive those bumper cars one finds in a carnival. A distant relative here: James Ensor’s “Christ’s Entry into Brussels in 1889” (1888).

Mayers’ work fills up nearly all of the available space in the Maine Jewish Museum, which is housed in the former Etz Chaim Synagogue, a turn-of-the-century immigrant-era house of worship. In some cases she has used doorways, stairwells and other features of the space to set off thematic clusters. For example, nine paintings in one stretch of the entrance hallway revolve around medals and uniforms and the military folks who wear them. The titles help confirm their identity: “Neo-cons,” “War profiteers,” “Medal man.” In “Award ban(k)quet,” three huge medals hang behind a row of stick generals seated at a long table. Some lyrics from Tim Buckley’s late-‘60s anthem “Goodbye and Hello” come to mind: “The vaudeville generals cavort on the stage/And shatter their audience with submachine guns.”

On the basis of several paintings, Mayers would fit nicely into “The Guston Effect” show now at the Steven Zevitas Gallery. It’s not just the figures wearing triangular hoods in “Secret Society” and “Brotherhood” that provoke comparisons, but more generally, perhaps, the clunky—and strangely endearing—stylizations (don’t forget Guston’s Richard Nixon series). A similar connection could be made to Katherine Bradford’s paintings of Superman.

While we’re on aesthetic kinships, the distorted faces in Mayers’ “Secret society,” “Payday lenders at target practice” and several other paintings are reminiscent of Alan Magee’s Xerox collage portraits from the late 1980s of figures and faces that reflect the wages of sin and profit: “Gold Card” (1988), “Disinformation” (1988), and others. The aim is similar: represent mammon in a memorable manner.

At the same time, Mayers’ drive to respond to a specific ill/issue brings to mind Susan Crile’s 2006 series of drawings based on the infamous photographs taken at Abu Ghraib, the American-run prison in Baghdad. Crile was compelled, she said, to expose the images “as markers of brutality and viciousness,” using chalk to underscore the fragility of the victims.

Mayers, who lives in Whitefield, Maine, began her campaign to expose these predatory lenders, global pirates and their ilk by inserting them into hundreds of tourist postcards from around the world. These “World Bankster” collages, begun in the years following the recession, are clever and inventive — and are apt to provoke a laugh as much as a sneer. That sense of humor is what sometimes saves Mayers’ pieces from being a simple lash-out diatribe.

Are 83 paintings of men in suits overkill? Remarkably, Mayers maintains a level of outrage — and art —that holds one’s attention. Certainly, a few of these diss-of-the-day paintings might have been culled, if only to give their neighbors more room to make their point, but the dull moments are rare. If Monet could paint a hundred haystacks, who’s to say Ms. Mayers can’t offer 80-plus riffs on men in suits?

More to the point does the suit symbol work? Mayers at times seems to be putting the image through its paces for the sake of carrying the theme, but in the end the business attire seems perfectly tailored, if you’ll excuse the pun, to the painter’s resentment. If the suits are something of an easy target, they are contorted and refigured with enough variation and joie de put-down that we remain engaged.

In truth, the line between art and political expression doesn’t exist for Mayers. She is open about her calling and she believes others should follow suit. The citation Robert Shetterly chose for his portrait of her, from his “Americans Who Tell the Truth” series, reads in part, “We need artists to help explain what is happening in this country, to tell the truth and reveal the lies, to be willing to say the emperor has no clothes, to create moral indignation, to envision alternatives, to reinvent language.” May others follow Mayers’ example and take up the loaded brush.

Men in Suits: Paintings by Natasha Mayers continues at the Maine Jewish Museum (267 Congress Street, Portland, Maine) through June 21.

gradientlair:

christel-thoughts:

When you see me show me your bachelors, show me your masters. That’s the best thing you can do for me, as my fan.

YAAAAASS NICKI. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASSSSSSSS

i haven’t found the source video yet.

I love the way Nicki encourages people with education. I’ve seen her ask about report cards on Twitter and tell young people to bring their C’s up to B’s and B’s up to A’s. And this quote is too This is beautiful I love to see Black women lifting each other up and encouraging one another. I hope everyone that says she is a bad role model gets to see this

obviousplant:

Renamed paint colors.

lindsayetumbls:

mxdmaxs:

Parks and Max 1/?

please please do more of these. do all of these.

alienbotanist:

mcgrlabroad:

If Aphrodite had stomach rolls then so can I

This is veryveryvery important. My wife was feeling down about herself the other night and asked me “why do I look like this?” And I immediately brought up a photo I had taken of a sculpture of Aphrodite I had taken at the Chicago MOMA. I said, “look at this picture. What does she look like?” And my wife very shyly answered “Me…” (Literally her body is IDENTICAL to the sculpture) so I replied “that is the Goddess Aphrodite. THAT is why your body looks like this.”

editorincreeps:

jackscarab:

AT LAST, SIR LEE, WE MUST WALK TOGETHER.

“WELL, I HAD A GOOD RUN.”

INDEED. LONGER THAN MANY.

“INCIDENTALLY, I’VE ALWAYS BEEN A FAN OF YOURS.”

LIKEWISE.

“DOES THE HEAVENLY CHOIR PLAY METAL?”

IT DOES NOW.

(cries softly)

Spoiler alert. One of the most jaw-dropping moments of Christopher Nolan’s 2014 film Interstellar is the climactic moment when Cooper (Matthew McConaughey) enters a visually stunning environment that allows him to physically communicate through time using gravity. In the movie, the scene is manifested as a small library in his home that appears to infinitely repeat with versions of every moment that has ever occurred there. Essentially it’s a cube in four dimensions. Here’s a pretty good explanation of how it works:

The Tesseract is a means of communication for the bulk beings to express action through gravity with NASA. The bulk beings can perceive five dimensions as opposed to four, able to see every moment in the past, present, and future as well as influence gravity within any of those time frames. […] The tesseract allowed Cooper to communicate with Murphy Cooper [his daughter] in various time periods, presenting time itself as a dimension rather than linear. Everything is linked by the strings of time, which Cooper can manipulate. The beings made this comprehensible to Cooper by allowing him to physically interact with the Tesseract.

The idea of the tesseract scene alone was so daunting to the filmmakers, Nolan and his special effects team procrastinated for months before trying to tackle how it might work. After months of concepting and model building the team opted for the unusual approach of using minimal digital effects in favor of fabricating a massive set which the actors could physically manipulate. A remarkable feat considering not only the complexity of the concepts depicted, but the cost and labor of building something so large.

Included here are some shots of the set, a behind-the-scenes interview with Nolan and a number of people from the visual effects team explaining how it was done, and lastly the scene itself. You can watch even more of it here. (via Fubiz)

archiemcphee:

Today the Department of Phenomenal Papercraft is delighting in the awesomely lifelike bird sculptures made by London-based artist Zack Mclaughlin. He uses paper, wood and sometimes plastic resin, clay, and wire to create beautiful life-size models of birds ranging from tiny hummingbirds to large birds of prey.

“I have always loved creating things, be it a drawing, painting or 3d model making. My inspiration always comes from the natural world as I really do have a childlike sense of wonder and awe for everything that nature creates. As I have this fascination with nature I love trying to recreate it in my own way so I can take what magic there is home whilst leaving the true beauty out there to continue inspiring and growing. “

Mclaughlin turns some of his sculptures into dramatic light fixtures, such as this rook:

Visit Zach Mclaughlin’s DeviantArt portfolio to check out more of his creations, many of which are available for purchase via his Etsy shop.

[via Colossal]

These one-of-a-kind paper and wood bird creations are absolutely breathtaking. Inspired by the beauty of nature and birds Zach says he “takes what magic there is home whilst leaving the true beauty out there to continue inspiring and growing.”

Check out his available work on his Etsy shop.

anarchei:

Every Person With Political Power

Artist Clément Beauvais uses water and ink to create stunning images in this campaign for humanitarian NGO Solidarités International and its agency BDDP Unlimited. Read the rest

jmulvey writes: Think your SCADA systems are outdated? Environmental monitoring at 19 Grand Rapids Public Schools are still controlled by a Commodore Amiga. Programmed by a High School student in the 1980s, the system has been running 24/7 for decades. A replacement has been budgeted by the school system, estimated cost: Between $1.5 and 2 million. How much is your old Commodore Amiga worth?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Me, flirting.

The unassuming yet pretty damn good Kay’s Bar in Sellwood was so proud of this one-star review, they featured it on their website. Some of us do actually prefer gender neutral, cold fish femi-nazi bartenders, Dan G from Hillsboro.

Of all of the online reviews Kay’s has received these past several years, most of which are quite positive, this recently posted Yelp review might be the one that makes us the most proud…and it received the lowest possible rating: one star.

“This place ( Kay’s Bar ) is great as long as you’re not a proud upright-walking patriotic white American male. If you prefer gender neutrality and cold fish fem-nazi bartenders, then this is the place for you. A bunch of Reed College trust fund babies and assorted soldiers of ‘The Movement’ gathering together to giggle at the latest YouTube videos on their hand held devices while sipping the latest piss they call beer. Good Times, Cheers, Right On, No Worries, Peace, Hate, and any other one liner I may have forgot.” – (One Star) Dan G.’s Reviews | Hillsboro | YELP

(via ‘If you prefer gender neutrality and cold fish fem-nazi bartenders’ | Kay’s Bar)

ganondilf:

Just realised that Super Mario Bros and Jurassic Park have followed the same naming convention with their franchises.

Super Mario Bros / Jurassic Park

Super Mario Bros: The Lost Levels / Jurassic Park: The Lost World

Super Mario Bros 3 / Jurassic Park 3

Super Mario World / Jurassic World

What I’m saying is I’m very excited about the prospect of Jurassic Galaxy

Frustrated that your iPad has all that screen real estate, but you still have to use one app at a time? That won't be a problem when iOS 9 arrives -- Apple has revealed that its new mobile software will bring side-by-side app multitasking to its tabl...