Land Grab

To get settlers to move west there was a push to grab as much land as possible in which to build wealth. This often meant large stretches of dry barren land. In Texas and Oklahoma that land begat wealth when oil was discovered and a new land baron was born. Some turned to Cattle and in the West that became land dedicated to harvesting forest and wood. Farmland has never generated much wealth and that is why today most farming is Corporate or now owned by Bill Gates and in turn a new type of sharecropper is born as you know he sure isn’t out there turning the soil.

That was the early days of America and the new Barons came of out Industry, taking raw goods and producing steel, fabric and with that building a new economy from manufacturing. With that came the growth of finance to handle the money from the new marketplace and that is the story behind the Lehman Brothers bank that so famously collapsed in 2008 leading to that massive recession. The Lehman Family were Immigrants and with that opened a dry goods store in the South then in turn became distributors of cotton and then moved into banking and finance as there corporate interests grew and their wealth did alongside it. The Lehman Trilogy is a great book made into an even greater play and there is not at time I don’t go into the Metropolitan Museum to wander the Robert Lehman Gallery which houses some of the massive troves of art he collected in his lifetime. That is what we call “old money”

New money is tech and medicine. That is what remade Nashville as a med and and ed city as the area surrounding the city is loaded with colleges and universities giving it the name, “Athens of the South.” The irony is that the State itself produces few to little college graduates of its own residents and remains in the bottom five in the country with regards to Education. And then a flood came and with that the city rebuilt and became a Tourist/Convention destination that brought in a new kind of money and industry and that fuels much of the growth in that area. With the new competition for companies to relocate and build more jobs with more wages tax incentives, the lack of an income tax is the bribe and the reason many do move there and to Texas as who doesn’t love money? Well that the Bible Belt and the home of the Prosperity Pulpit, they sure don’t. But with it comes the issue of housing. In all honesty housing is just a part of it. The infrastructure which includes roads, trash, water and schools are all part of the larger picture and the ones we ignore when we are in search of a better life. Then once you move and find the cost of living absorbing whatever gains you make that better life seems further out of reach and in turn you are now a hostage as you cannot afford to stay but you cannot afford to leave.

What is also worrisome is that these same places claim to be havens for the ones who want to avoid regulations and stop freedoms, while going out of their way to do just that but on a highly personal level but even in some cases business with states forbidding the states and the municipalities within said cities to do business with banks that promote climate change, want to retain abortion rights or any other civil rights issue such as diversity training as illegal. So which is it? Again I have a neck problem from the constant turning my head to go WTF?

And with that comes the migrants, not the Immigrants as they will be bused out to blue states and a war using people as Chess pieces begins, but the poor from other communities who see the shiny keys and will relocate for better jobs. Despite the fact that the last decade the migration of the American worker has slowed and more are moving out of states that too expensive and this trend seems now focused on the rich who can afford to do so further imperiling stability in once thriving busy urban areas. So the new land barons seizing up property in Wyoming and Colorado and Idaho are doing it while also causing the residents who have lived there for decades to lose their homes and cannot find anywhere to rent or buy in which to remain. This is truly a Catch 22 in every sense of the word as the rich need those workers to serve them. So get those robots going tech geeks.

From trailer parks to multi family and single family housing much of it is being bought up by investors. The push out the current residents/tenants and in turn rent at higher prices or sell and flip at inflated prices. In LA some house flippers are now renting their own inventory as they cannot sell at a profit that you once saw on such shows as Flip or Flop which again is a part of the problem, along with the AirBnb bullshit that takes up a great deal of certain markets, such as Nashville and Austin, which are also what again? Big tourist destinations and college towns that requires housing needs for the long term but still temporary basis.

I reprint below this article about a housing issue in Austin, a city I also once lived in. Name an “it” city and I lived in it and found it awful. See I see the bigger picture and when you see what is in background and foreground of a painting you are seeing the Artist’s perspective, until you step into the frame you are not aware of what is within that creation beyond that sight frame. Texas and Tennessee are nightmares politically and with that I am glad I left them in my rear view mirror. I have also lived in both San Francisco and San Diego and again the problems facing that state are less about legislation, taxes and business, as there are real environmental problems that need to be addressed. Add to that the NIMBY bullshit is greater there then likely anywhere else in the country. It is heavily class based and not fueled by Racism as it was in Nashville, Nashville won’t expand public transport as the White rich fear Black people being able to bus in their communities. And do what? Work? No rob them. It is laughable. And much of that fear is promoted by the owner and wealthy Oligarch who owns what? Car Dealerships. Self interests and money trump race every day in the South. But politics aside, home ownership is going to become a thing of the past. And with that what that means to build wealth and have house security is largely a method that will be at risk for most Americans. And Politics will matter as the generous tax subsidies and deductions for home ownership must change (and with that again stiff the rich) and move it to those who rent, and with that be based on income with more buildings also including low income tenants; You know the ones that ride the bus.

Austin is a great place to visit, live there no. But when I read one of the Queer Eye Guy moved there I realized that bubbles apparently cannot be popped or you are so busy you don’t know the reality of where you live. Austin folks is the State Capital and a college town and there is ample ways of knowing facts if you want to, so ignorance in this case is willful. But hey we all have to live somewhere, own it, that is not going to happen anymore for many of us. Live with that.

American dream of owning a home out of reach for many in tight markets

Many middle- and lower-income Americans are left with a dwindling number of options or forced into renting while supply increases for the wealthiest buyers

Tom Perkins in Austin, Texas The Guardian Fri 19 Aug 2022

Samantha Hawkins had a clear vision for her first home: the 29-year-old from Austin, Texas, wanted a detached house surrounded by a yard for her dog, a garden and a stable space where she could put down roots.

By January, when she bid $230,000 on a tiny, yardless condo converted from a rental studio, she had “bent on a lot of the things I valued”. She found herself beaten by investors willing to pay cash far above the listing price, and buy sight unseen in gameshow-like bidding wars.

The 496-sq-ft condo was one of the very few Austin homes she could still afford as prices soared in January. Her offer put her among the finalists, but at the last minute, the seller threw a new curveball: the other bidders had signed an appraisal waiver. Hawkins needed more cash she didn’t have, so she “bowed out”.

Across the US, many have faced similar roadblocks: prices popped as a confluence of forces suppressed supply and inflated demand, leaving many middle- and lower-income buyers with a dwindling number of housing options, or forcing them into rentership.

Now, with interest rates rising and the housing market cooling, things are supposed to be different. So far they aren’t. Nationally, house prices hit an all-time high in June of $416,000, up 13.4% from a year ago.

The challenges Austin buyers are still experiencing show just how difficult the dream of owning your own home has become for a broad swath of Americans.

“I’ve worked really hard the last year or two and made the right choices financially to try to have a chance, but it seems like I can’t really win in this market,” Hawkins said.

The problems plaguing tight markets nationally have all hit Austin. Hawkins is competing with investors who now account for more than 30% of single-family home sales, Airbnb operators and any number of the about 125 people moving to Austin daily amid dizzying job growth. Meanwhile, builders haven’t kept pace with demand and zoning laws limit new multifamily housing that could provide relief.

May’s median sale prices in Austin and surrounding Travis county hit new peaks of $676,000 and $625,000, respectively – up from around $400,000 just before the pandemic. That’s put pressure on the rental market, pushing the median rent above $2,700 and fueling displacement.

And even though Austin’s June home inventory doubled over the prior year as interest rate hikes cooled demand, supply is only increasing for the wealthiest buyers.

The portion of national listings that someone earning $75,000 annually could afford dropped from 40% to 25% between January and June as home prices and mortgage rates climbed, National Association of Realtors’ (NAR) data shows.

“The higher inventory is promising, but not for middle- and lower-income groups,” said Nadia Evangelou, an economist with NAR.

There’s some evidence of that on the ground. Austin realtor Sherry LeBlanc, who focuses on finding homes for first-time buyers, recently listed a house that could have fetched $515,000 last year for $435,000 with the expectation that middle-income buyers would snap it up. Instead, showings were slow and only investors bid.

“Families are scared off by interest rates,” she said. “They say, ‘Well, shit, that’s out of my budget.’”

For those like Hawkins stuck in rentership, the crisis hits on a financial level. Homeownership is a key instrument for wealth building and security, and loss of access to it represents a “breach of the social contract”, said Austin realtor Socar Chatmon-Thomas.

“It’s pissing me off because somebody who went to school, got a degree, or otherwise did everything right and now has a job making $60,000 can’t buy a home,” she said.

Investor demand

Even with a six-figure tech salary, Courtney McKinley couldn’t buy in the city. The parks, restaurants, pools and friends that attracted her to a rental in Austin’s Zilker neighborhood were off the table as the lowest house prices had inched toward $1m.

But even as she looked around the city’s edge and suburbs, she couldn’t top the cash offers. A $350,000 bid on an over 40-year-old townhouse that “needed some help” was beaten by an investor who offered $50,000 more in cash. Weeks later, she lost on a dilapidated townhome despite including a $50,000 escalation clause. The next month, an offer $30,000 over asking price on a sun-filled, three-bedroom home that felt perfect was turned down. “That was a heartbreak moment. I cried after that one,” McKinley said.

After more dead ends, she finally won with a $400,000 bid for a two-bedroom that needed a new kitchen, patio, floors and other improvements. It’s in Pflugerville, a sprawling suburb of strip malls and big box stores that’s in a “kind of isolating” location, McKinley said. Ultimately, however, she says she feels lucky: friends have put in up to 15 offers and still don’t have a house.

“It was a rollercoaster, but no matter how difficult and frustrating it was, at least I’m building equity now,” she said.

For middle-class Austinites like McKinley being outbid by cash offers in Austin, this much feels clear: investors are part of the problem.

While some argue the percentage of investor-owned single family purchases nationally remains low, tight “sun belt” markets like metro Austin have seen it double from about 15% throughout the mid-2010s to over 30% in 2022’s first quarter. And investors often target the type of homes that middle-income earners like McKinley are seeking, as well as those in lower-income, minority neighborhoods

“Investors are not focused on the higher end of the market,” said Georgia Tech urban planning professor Elora Lee Raymond. “It’s entry-level homes that are being snapped up and are incredibly difficult to purchase at this time.”

Beyond having the resources to place higher bids and pay with cash, investors often buy homes sight unseen, and typically skip appraisals and inspections. Some companies also use algorithms to place bids within hours of homes being listed, and Wall Street-backed institutional investors are viewed as particularly problematic.

The five largest private equity buyers added 76,000 homes to their portfolio between March 2018 and September 2021, and their model has been derided by critics as “industrial housing” as they maximize profits by raising rents and skimping on maintenance.

A June US House committee investigation highlighting private equity’s role in local housing crises noted corporate landlords in Atlanta were up to 205 times more likely to evict tenants, and increased rents by an average of 37-57% within a year of purchasing properties.

However, it’s virtually impossible to quantify how much investors are pushing up home prices, and the situation is a “chicken and egg” question, said Thom Malone, an economist for real estate data analyst CoreLogic.

“Where investors go, prices go up, but to what extent is this because the prices were going up because demand increased?” Malone asked. “It’s probably a bit of both.”

Meanwhile, another breed of investor is depleting stock in tourist-friendly areas: short-term rental operators. Though the city says Airbnb owners operate about 3,000 units, housing advocate Inside Airbnb gleaned the company’s listings and found about 12,000, including 10,000 whole home units. And that accounts for one company – the true number of short-term rentals is probably much higher.

In one east Austin neighborhood, Airbnb in June controlled about 12% of the housing units, Inside Airbnb found. While about 270 units were available for long-term rent during a 2020 US census survey, more than 1,300 whole home units were available on Airbnb in June.

“Even without some economic researcher looking into it, common sense tells you that these are entire apartments that are no longer available, and people will be directly or indirectly displaced,” said Inside Airbnb founder Murray Cox.

Short supply

The signs of a construction boom are evident across Travis county, the fifth-most populous county in Texas. Along the metro region’s edges, new neighborhoods and strip malls are multiplying, while closer to the city core in south Austin, expensive new condo buildings have sprouted among the old restaurants, strip malls and pawn shops on Congress Avenue.

Though Austin has grown at an exceptional clip for decades, the recent population spike is partly driven by tech: Oracle, Tesla, Meta, HP Enterprise and many more have relocated or opened offices here. That’s coupled with demand from New York and California buyers who relocated during the pandemic, and millennials entering the market.

Monthly new construction home closures in Austin in 2021 were up by 53% from pre-pandemic highs, CoreLogic data shows, but the city is struggling to build its way out of the crisis: supply chain squeezes and labor shortages observers pin on Trump’s immigration policies have slowed the construction cycle.

“Supply is a tortoise and demand is a gazelle, so when there’s a sudden increase in demand, it takes years for new supply to come on the market, and in the meantime there’s this huge surge in prices,” said Jake Wegmann, a University of Texas regional planning professor.

A recent proposal to overhaul Austin’s zoning ordinance would have allowed for more apartment buildings, increased the number of townhomes and simplified the approval process. The changes would allow the city to build “thousands more units” annually, but Nimby-ism and anti-growth forces shut it down, Wegmann said.

“I don’t want to make it sound like this would’ve solved everything, but we’re really tying our own hand behind our back,” he added.

‘I pray every night’

Soaring home prices ultimately create pressure lower in the market, hitting the city’s most vulnerable the hardest. Six months ago, Paola Valdez and her husband made the last $500 payment on their three-bedroom trailer set in a south Austin mobile home park. The extra money was welcome as the couple raised two young kids, and they were proud to own the home outright.

But everything changed in early July. The California investor who recently purchased the Congress Mobile Home Park handed 60-day eviction notices to its residents, and leaving isn’t easy – Valdez’s trailer can’t be transported because it’s 30 years old.

A new, smaller trailer is $1,500 a month plus the lot fee, and three-bedroom apartments in her neighborhood top $3,500 a month. The family is at a loss over what it will do next, but Valdez expects her days of staying home to raise the kids are done.

“One day you’re fine, you’ve paid off your home and you’re making a nest, then all the sudden you’re bombarded with ‘You’ve got to leave in 60 days’,” Valdez said. “I’m trying to stay strong. I pray every night.”

As median rent jumped 48% year over year, state records analyzed by the Guardian data show Travis County evictions hit record monthly highs in March and April. That’s partially fueled by investors purchasing apartment buildings with affordable rents and turning them into pricey condos, said Mincho Jacob, a spokesperson with housing advocate Basta Austin.

“That’s destroying the heart of Austin because people with long roots here are evicted and forced out,” he said.

There are few tools to do anything about it in Texas where the Republican-controlled legislature largely banned rent control, and though housing advocates have had some success in warding off developer purchases of affordable housing, it hasn’t been enough. Similarly, wide-scale displacement continues even though Austin voters since 2018 have approved $550m for affordable housing and anti-displacement measures.

Another link between the higher home prices and rental pressure is those like Hawkins, who have been shut out of ownership. But with a recent salary increase in her career, she’s regrouping and saving money, and says she’s determined as ever to own.

“It’s been a goal of mine for a really long time, and since there’s been so many failed attempts, I just want to prove to myself that I can do it,” she said.

If I Were a Rich Man

Well the answer is here. I read this this morning in The Washington Post, irony given the owner of the Post is one of the richest in America and has been busy using his billions to literally jack off in space. The idea that the richest of the rich are the saviors of America through their ability to create jobs and donate their largess to varying Philanthropic organizations that will do good for those in need. Okay sure, whatever.

I have written extensively to the extent how the rich avoid paying taxes, all quite legal as they have access and have available the type of experts in tax law and accounting in which to do so, and they also have the more illegal methods as we have come to learn via the Panama Papers and other leaked info as to how they move money offshore in which to cover assets. And lastly the foundations they create are also a version of such as they simply shift money from one coffer into another with only a small required amount by law in which they must donate to keep said tax status as a non profit legal and valid. But again in America the real big lie was Trump’s net worth and business acumen and that too is under scrutiny in New York by the AG here as he inflated said worth in which to both access funding and also then turn around and take the legal deductions whenever possible. Wow inflating and deflating the same businesses takes a special kind of accountant that much is certain. And given what we have seen of Trump as a President he is not beyond bribes and threats in which to get what he wants.

So what do rich people want? More money, duh. Even Bill Maher asked the former CEO of Microsoft, Steve Ballmer, how much money do you need? And with that Ballmer simply side stepped the question and moved into more hyper bullshit of which he was quite famous for during his tenure at Microsoft.

As you read the article below you can make your own conclusions and ask yourself what would you do with even a Million more dollars than you currently have? I think about it all the time and then I realize that wow, even that seems never enough to do what one wants.

The moral calculations of a billionaire

After the best year in history to be among the super-rich, one of America’s 745 billionaires wonders: ‘What’s enough? What’s the answer?’

By Eli Saslow The Washington Post January 30, 2022

BOCA RATON, Fla. — The stock market had been open for only 17 minutes when Leon Cooperman picked up the phone to check how much money he’d made. He dialed a private line to his trading desk in New Jersey, just as he did a dozen times each day.

“Decent start to the morning?” he asked.

“Oh yeah. The market’s shaky, but you’re up.”

“Give me numbers.”

“Looks like six, seven million.”

“Fine. Thank you. Let’s keep holding steady,” said Cooperman, 78. He hung up and watched a stock graph on his computer screen as it rose from one minute to the next, charting another good day to be a billionaire in America. Outside the office, he could see his wife leaving to play in her weekly bridge game and a group of golfers strolling past on a private course. He’d chosen to live in Florida for at least 183 days each year in part to benefit from the state’s low tax rate for residents, and from 7 a.m. until midnight he was typically seated at the desk in his office, managing the more than $2.5 billion he’d made during a career as an investor and a hedge fund manager.

He’d been earning more than his family could spend since about 1975, and in the decades since then he’d come to see the act of making money less as a personal necessity than as a serious game he could play and win. He invested it, traded it, lent it, gave it away and watched each day as the accounts continued to grow beyond his needs, his wants and sometimes even his own comprehension.

“I don’t want to say it’s all play money at this point, but what else could I possibly spend it on?” he sometimes wondered. His wife’s walk-in closet was already bigger than the South Bronx apartment where he’d grown up. Their Florida home had a custom-built infinity pool, and in five years he’d never once gone in for a swim.

He checked the stock graph on his screen and called his trading desk again.

“Still good? Any news?”

“Very good, yeah. The highfliers are getting killed, but the value stocks are doing great. You’re up about 10 million.”

The past year had been the best time in history to be one of America’s 745 billionaires, whose cumulative wealth has grown by an estimated 70 percent since the beginning of the pandemic even as tens of millions of low-wage workers have lost their jobs or their homes. Together, those 745 billionaires are now worth more than the bottom 60 percent of American households combined, and each day Cooperman could see that gap widening on his balance sheet — up an average of $4,788 per minute in the stock market, $1.9 million per day and $700 million total in 2021. As a record amount of wealth continued to shift toward a tiny fraction of people at the pinnacle of the economy, Cooperman could sense something else shifting, too.

“Billionaires shouldn’t even exist in America,” read one note he’d received after he went on TV to recommend stock picks.

“One day, we’re coming after all of you with pitchforks,” read another message.

“Wake up, moron. YOU and your insatiable greed are at the root of our biggest societal problems.”

He responded to most of the personal emails, kept record of the occasional death threats and wrote letters to politicians such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) whenever they criticized billionaires in their speeches, because he couldn’t understand: What exactly had he done wrong? What rule had he broken? He’d been born to poor immigrant parents on the losing end of a capitalist economy. He’d attended public schools, taken on debt to become the first in his family to attend college, worked 80-hour weeks, made smart decisions, benefited from some good luck, amassed a fortune for himself and for his clients and paid hundreds of millions in taxes to the government. He had a wife of 57 years, two successful children, and three grandchildren who were helping him decide how to give most of his money away to a long list of charities. “My life is the story of the American Dream,” he’d said while accepting an award at one charity gala, and he’d always imagined himself as the rags-to-riches hero, only to now find himself cast as the greedy villain in a story of economic inequality run amok.

And now came another series of emails from a stranger who ran a charity in New Jersey. She said billionaires were avoiding paying their fair share of taxes by using loopholes in the tax code. She said their legacy of excessive wealth was “burdening future generations.” She said Cooperman had no idea what it was like to live in poverty or to choose each month between paying rent or buying food.

“She makes decent points,” Cooperman said as he read the email again, and it made him think back to a question he’d begun wondering about himself: In a time of historic inequality, what were the moral responsibilities of a billionaire?

“Thank you for your emails. It might be helpful for me to provide you with some background about myself,” he wrote back, and then he attached a short biography and copies of his letters to politicians. “There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of who I am.”

He knew what people imagined when they thought of a billionaire. He’d read the stories of excess and extravagance and witnessed some of it firsthand, but that wasn’t him. He didn’t spend $238 million on a New York penthouse like hedge fund manager Ken Griffin; or vacation at his own private island in Belize like Bill Gates; or throw himself $10 million birthday parties featuring camels and acrobats like investor Stephen Schwarzman; or drop $70,000 a year on hair care like Donald Trump; or buy a preserved 14-foot shark for an estimated $8 million like Steven Cohen; or spend more than $1 billion on art like media mogul David Geffen; or budget $23 million for personal security like Facebook did for Mark Zuckerberg.

He didn’t have his own spaceships like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos; or a 600-foot flying airship like Sergey Brin; or a decommissioned Soviet fighter jet like Larry Ellison; or a $215 million yacht with a helipad and a pool like Steve Wynn; or a private train with three staterooms like John Paul DeJoria; or a $5 million luxury car collection like Kylie Jenner.

What Cooperman had for transportation was a 25-year-old Schwinn bicycle he liked to ride around the neighborhood and a Hyundai he used for running errands a few times each week.

He rechecked the stock graph on his screen and picked up his phone to call his wife, Toby, who was sitting in her office suite down the hall.

“I’m going to head out and grab some of those Costco lamb chops later,” he told her.

“We need anything else?” she asked.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “I’ll just see what’s on special.”

They’d been together since they met at Hunter College in 1962, when tuition at the public New York university cost as little as $24 per semester and the promise of a life in America was that each generation would surpass the one before. She was the daughter of a struggling pillowcase salesman from Romania; he was the son of a plumber’s apprentice who emigrated from Poland at age 13, never finished high school, worked six days a week and later died of a heart attack while carrying a sink up the stairs of a fourth-story apartment.https://9c31c658abe8b28896fe069c2900d1c8.safeframe.googlesyndication.com/safeframe/1-0-38/html/container.html

His father left behind an estate worth less than $100,000, but Cooperman also inherited his father’s belief that the economic ladder between poor and rich was short enough to climb with determination and hard work. More than 90 percent of children born in the United States during the 1940s would go on to out-earn their parents; two-thirds of those born into poverty would rise into at least the middle class. Cooperman waited tables during the summers, worked for Xerox while he went to business school at night and then started as an analyst at Goldman Sachs making $12,500 a year. “My PhD is for poor, hungry and driven,” he liked to say. He told colleagues that capitalism was like a battle for survival in the African safari and that the key to success was to adopt the mind-set of a lion or a gazelle during a hunt. “When the sun comes up, you’d better be running,” Cooperman told them. Within nine years, he’d been named a partner. Within a decade, he was a millionaire.

Together, he and Toby had learned how to be rich, which mostly meant deciding how not to spend their money. He still felt most comfortable shopping for clothes wholesale and commuting to work on New Jersey public transit. Toby enjoyed her job as a special-education teacher even if she didn’t need the $25 an hour, so she continued working and donated her salary back to the school. They bought a house for $325,000 in New Jersey in the 1980s and later built their $5 million home in Florida. They worried about demotivating their two children by giving them a massive inheritance, so instead they put a small fraction of their wealth into a trust that could be accessed only once their sons turned 35, at which point one was already a successful businessman and the other was an environmental scientist with a PhD.

Cooperman eventually left Goldman Sachs to start his own hedge fund, Omega, and for two decades he compounded his millions at an average of 14 percent each year as the stock market soared, until he and Toby were among the wealthiest few hundred billionaires in the United States. They were invited to dinner in 2010 by Gates and Warren Buffett, who had just started a program called the Giving Pledge, asking billionaires to donate at least half of their money to charity, and the Coopermans committed that night.

“I could buy a Picasso for a hundred million, but it doesn’t turn me on, so then what?” Cooperman told them. “We live a very rational lifestyle. What better use is there for our money?”

They’d given away $150 million to a hospital in New Jersey, $50 million for college scholarships to Newark high school students, $40 million to Columbia Business School, $40 million to Hunter College, $30 million to performing arts, $25 million to the Jewish Family Fund, $20 million to skilled nursing, $15 million to food banks, and on and on it went. But no matter how much they gave away, their money continued to make more money even as wages for the middle class remained essentially flat. In the past 50 years, the gap between poor families and the top 0.1 percent had increased more than tenfold. Children now had only a 43 percent chance of out-earning their parents.

“Mr. Cooperman, your donation is needed to keep the American Dream off life support,” read one of the dozens of solicitations he received each day.

“Mr. Cooperman, more than 11 million American children are now living in poverty …”

“Mr. Cooperman, please help us provide clean drinking water …”

“Mr. Cooperman, the pandemic has left 60 million families at risk of losing their homes …”

He donated to more than 50 organizations each year and also to a number of people who wrote to him in personal distress. “Other than my family, writing checks is the most meaningful thing I do,” Cooperman said, and yet no matter how many zeros he included, it left him wanting to do more. “We’re going in the wrong direction in this country in so many depressing ways,” he said. He believed in the meritocratic ideal of capitalism — “equal opportunity if not equal results,” he said — but it seemed to him that the odds of success remained stacked by race, by gender and increasingly by economic starting position. Rates of intergenerational poverty had gone up in each of the past three decades. The most disadvantaged children were falling further behind. He believed from his own experience that a college education was the best answer, and yet tuition costs were continuing to skyrocket.

“It’s not exactly a fair system until you even up the odds,” he said, and after looking over the list of worthy causes, he and Toby had decided that donating half of their money didn’t feel sufficient. Sixty percent wasn’t enough to meet the country’s needs. Neither was 75. So they’d agreed to set up a family foundation that would eventually give away more than 90 percent of their money, and Cooperman had decided that rather than retiring in earnest, he would continue to manage their account so there would be more to give away.

“He who dies rich dies disgraced,” read a quotation attributed to Andrew Carnegie on Cooperman’s office desk, but on this day he was still rich and getting richer. “What’s enough?” he wondered. “What’s the answer?” He checked the stock graph on his screen — up $2.6 million in the past five hours. His accounts were equal to the average net worth of 23,000 middle-class American families.

Each day when the stock market closed at 4 p.m., he checked the final numbers on his 40 stock holdings, reviewed his investment strategy for the next day and then left for a two-mile walk around the palm trees and putting greens of St. Andrews Country Club in Boca Raton. The community was set off from the surrounding suburbs by a canal, a gatehouse, a 10-foot wall and an infrared security system. A few of the 700 homes were owned by other billionaires, and most others belonged to millionaires who wintered in Florida. All of the residents had gotten richer during the pandemic as the luxury real estate market exploded and their home values surged by more than 40 percent.

Cooperman walked past an old designer home that was being torn down and rebuilt into a new designer home. He continued up the road toward the clay tennis courts, the spa and the terraced clubhouse. A resident drove by in a new Bentley, and Cooperman waved and then watched the $200,000 car drive on. “You get a lot of people who show off their wealth,” he said, “but I could buy and sell that guy 100 times.”

He and Toby had spent almost all of their time during the pandemic within the gates of St. Andrews, eating dinner outside at the clubhouse and playing cards with friends, but every few days they liked to go for a drive. Once, early in the pandemic, they’d driven to a quiet, nearby park only to find more than 150 cars lined up in the parking lot as people waited for bags of canned goods at an impromptu food bank. “Depressing and staggering in a country of such wealth,” Cooperman said, and it made him remember a poem his granddaughter had written and published when she was in middle school, called “Seven Miles,” about the physical proximity between the extreme wealth of Short Hills, N.J., where Cooperman had his other home, and the extreme poverty in nearby Newark. “At one end we have too much,” she’d written. “At the other, they have nothing. Spread it all just seven miles.”

She’d gone on to graduate Phi Beta Kappa from Stanford, becoming an “ultraliberal, socialist type in favor of wealth redistribution,” Cooperman said. He adored her and admired both her empathy and her intellect, but he’d repeatedly fought against the liberal idea that one way to redistribute that wealth was to tax billionaires at a rate of 70 percent or more. He’d written to Sen. Warren about her “soak-the-rich positions,” and to President Barack Obama about “villainizing success.” He was a registered independent, and he’d voted for Joe Biden in the last election because he considered President Donald Trump a “would-be dictator whose comportment in office was beyond disgraceful,” but Cooperman believed most of all in the basic tenets of capitalism. He’d earned his money, and therefore it was his to spend or give away. He sent in a quarterly check for $10 million to the federal government in estimated taxes and said he paid an effective tax rate of 34 percent. He’d told politicians in his letters that he was willing to pay more, but he believed the highest effective tax rate should be no more than 50 percent.

“What made America great is our system of capitalism, incentivizing work and effort and ingenuity,” he’d written. “Capitalism has flaws, but socialism has no benefits. Why not spread my work ethic instead of just my wealth?”

Now he looped around a cul-de-sac and turned back toward his house. For years, he’d been doing these daily walks with his brother, Howard, until he died in December at age 85, and lately Cooperman had been thinking back over their lives. Cooperman had chosen to wake up at 5:15 each morning and devote 80 hours every week to his work, taking off only the Friday after Thanksgiving. His brother, meanwhile, had chosen not to go to college and then retired as soon as he could. He preferred to play racquetball, go to the casino with friends and volunteer as a wheelchair transporter at the hospital. Cooperman had ended up with his billions and his name on top of the hospital entrance; his brother had died with relatively modest amounts of money but with a cellphone loaded with numbers for dozens of close friends.

“We both got what we worked for,” Cooperman said. “We were best friends, and we admired what each other had, but it would have been wrong to take what I earned and given it all over to him.”

He walked up his circular driveway, into the house and back toward his office.

“Different choices, different outcomes,” he said. “The world isn’t meant to be totally even.”

His choice: 12 more hours anchored to the chair in his office, monitoring the market and calling in to his trading desk again and again as the sun reflected off the swimming pool outside his window. The market fell. The market rose. He bought $3 million in distressed bonds. He gave another $5 million away to charity. He was $18 million up for the day. He was $6 million down. He was beating the market again by mid-morning, losing at lunch, winning an hour later, and then losing again. “Does it make any sense?” he asked himself, watching the numbers change on his screen. “To sit inside all day in front of a machine, making money I don’t need so I can give it to someone I don’t know?”

He’d been wondering since his brother’s death whether there were better ways to spend some of his time, so one afternoon before the stock market closed, he shut off his computer and drove a few miles outside the gates of St. Andrews to visit Florida Atlantic University. The school’s president had invited Cooperman to speak to a group of low-income college students about his career and his values.

“Believe it or not, I have a great deal of commonality with all of you,” Cooperman said as he stood at the lectern and looked out at the crowd of about 40 students from a university scholarship program much like the one Cooperman and his wife had started in New Jersey. Most were students of color who had been born to immigrant parents. All of them came from families with incomes of $30,000 or less. The students had been living on campus during the pandemic as some of their families were upended by layoffs, by evictions, by a Haitian earthquake, by a Dominican drought, by coronavirus infections and covid-19 deaths.

“I can understand some of the challenges you’re facing right now,” Cooperman said, starting a short PowerPoint presentation about his journey from a one-bedroom apartment to the Forbes 400 list of wealthiest Americans.

“I worked very hard. I wanted to win,” he told them as he flipped to the next slide.

“I’m a great believer in capitalism,” he said. “We have the best economic system in the world.”

“How do you become wealthy?” he asked. “You develop a product or a service that people want. The world is better off for a Larry Ellison, a Bill Gates. Look at the jobs they created. Look at the good they did for the world. The attack on wealthy people makes no sense to me.”

“I’m giving the money away,” he said. “It’s been my pledge, and my wife’s pledge, to give it all away.”

He finished going through the slides and then asked for questions, and after a while a student in the center of the room raised her hand and waited for the microphone. She said she was also interested in a career in business, and she explained that one of the many barriers in her way was the start-up cost. “In Florida, you need $200,” she said.

“You’re going to need a lot more than that,” Cooperman said.

“I know,” she said. “I just mean two hundred to get the license, the paperwork, from zero.”

Cooperman looked at her for a moment and tried to imagine what it would mean to start again from zero, and what it would be like to ascend from poverty to extreme wealth not in the 1960s but in 2022, when that gap had multiplied 10 times. But he’d occupied these students’ place in the American economy once. His faith in the American Dream required him to believe that they could one day occupy his.

“I’ll admit, it’s very hard,” he said. “It’s gotten harder. But the 99 percent can still join the 1 percent. It’s possible with enough luck and commitment.”

He told them about how he’d gotten up each morning at 5:15; how he’d chosen a job that he loved; how he’d gotten his PhD in being poor, hungry and driven; how he’d followed his instincts; how he’d attacked each day like a lion chasing a gazelle as he raced to the pinnacle of the economy and the 99 percent receded behind him.

“I can speak to the issues of both being rich and being poor,” he told them, and as a billionaire in the bifurcating American economy, there was one truth of which he felt certain.

“Being rich is better,” he said.

Billions and Billions

Is how Carl Sagan used to describe the universe and with that said the Billionaire Boys Club they too want to explore the final frontier. From Bezos, to Branson, to Musk the new toy in the garage of cars and yachts is having a space ship. One of the Disney Heirs who is a member of the Patriotic Millionaires, a group that are very supportive and vocal about taxing the rich on the wealthy said: Billionaires may be brilliant – and I don’t doubt Elon Musk’ IQ – but they don’t do anything on their own”. She also attacked their predominant philosophy of Ayn Rand and her Libertarian nonsense and cited during a recent walk the number of boats named after characters in Rand’s books. She rightly said, “They need to come to their senses.”

There is no logic nor sense in much of the notion, idea and belief that Billionaires have regarding the great unwashed, for they assume that is all intrinsic failures due to a lack of whatever genetics and ethics can overcome. It always veers to the negative and of course the Government that they seem to think is about redistributing wealth and taking something from you. Mr. Musk the stoned CEO of his companies I am sure can tweet all day about that and his cult of idiots who will never see a six figure check in their life, unless they win the lottery, can backslap him for his verbal prowess as telling it like it is. And the belief that with an increase in taxes said Billionaires will be less inclined to donate and expand their philanthropic efforts. I see as Mr. Musks largest recipient of said donations is his own foundation. From Vox: Musk’s main charitable vehicle has been the Musk Foundation, which he founded in 2002. In an age of philanthropic showmanship, the Musk Foundation is almost entertaining in its simplicity and yet is strikingly opaque: The entire website is 33 words on a plain-text Yahoo page with no links, staff information, or contact forms. And he is not alone as Zuckerberg has the same type of arrangement, as does Bill Gates the largest of the namesake which has come under more scrutiny of late due to his divorce but it was never the magnanimous gesture of free cash for everyone.

We are supposedly an individualistic society that contributes to the idea of Meritocracy and the idea we are independent “thinkers” who create and make our own successes. That is of course sheer bullshit as we are very tribal and that has been of late well demonstrated and exemplified from our Government to those who raced to protest whatever societal ill that finally rose its ugly head during the pandemic. From those who took to the streets over George Floyd to the maniacs of Stop the Steal or any other protest that developed during that time, it was like versus unlike. They both think they are right and the idea that one is wrong is all that matters. And yesterday I had coffee with the asshole who back in March of 2020 exposed me and a local Barista to Covid. He was enroute with his family to get tested and stopped for coffee, the hem and hawed when I followed up with an email about Covid and never admitted he had contracted it and was sick. Until that time he had spewed the falsehoods and nonsense found on social media, he is still an anti masker and anti vaxxer and tried to have a temper tantrum at the same coffee shop yesterday when requested to put on a mask. I was very patient and watched his ire rise as he seemed to think the request was a question with regards to his character or manhood and I let it rest until the end of our “coffee talk.” I concluded with my own personal reasons for why I wear a mask despite being vaccinated and that the reality of how this is with us for the long haul and I have no interest in having that be also long haul Covid. I spoke of how medical bills are strangling families, of my own issues with the medical system and that while they have some treatments there is no cure and I will go out of my way to avoid being hospitalized at all costs, so vaccine and a mask seem to be a small price to pay for that insurance that is way cheaper in the overall. And with that I touted that vaccines have their own efficacy and with that so do we, and we can choose what we wish to do with regards to our health but that does not include doing harm to others by unwittingly or deliberately flaunting our own abuse of our health and possibly transmitting it one who could not get vaccinated or like his cousin once removed who he does not speak to but died of Covid even after getting vaccinated, (this is the Nikki Minaji excuse, a friend who knew of a friend who heard of one who had this). I asked him since he does not speak to him how did he know how he died and the entire story behind it… of course this was through social media and that he was really old. Well then at least he tried to keep his health but it sounds as if there is more to the story lacking and again nothing is 100% but I will be like your dead second cousin and take a risk in which to stay alive. And with that I feel that is why I have no problem with the J&J vaccine as it is great for the young and healthy as the efficacy is 75% and with following great protocols this should be not a problem as it is like a flu shot and not made of the same MNRA as the other two which is again the equivalent of getting a dose of Covid. And I used the Shingles example of one said vaccine that few discuss and that had that person had a chicken pox vaccine in the first place it would not be needed. Again which do you choose?

These are my conversations of late and why I have so little time to talk to others as frankly they are IDIOTS. And when you see how Billionaires view society at large they seem to think they are in isolation and segregation from it all. No, they did not make it on their own and they do not know it all and here is another story of the idiocy of the rich. From the Washington Post.

Billionaire investor Charlie Munger doesn’t mind some shade.

Munger, vice chairman at Berkshire Hathaway, has donated hundreds of millions of dollars to universities and high schools to build school facilities he designed himself. But the amateurarchitect’s latest idea for a mostly windowless mega-dorm to be built on the University of California at Santa Barbara campus faced objection this week when a university architectural consultant quit, calling the plan “unsupportable from my perspective as an architect, a parent, and a human being.”

Dennis McFadden, a Los Angeles architect and member of the university’s design review committee of 15 years, wrote in his resignation letter that he was “disturbed” by the 11-story, 1.68 million-square-foot building with just two entrances. The massive dorm would house 4,500 students, 94 percent of whom would not have windows in their compact single-occupancy bedrooms. McFadden called the dorm the “wrong answer” to the need for more housing ― raising the question of how much authority wealthy donors have when it comes to planning the buildings their names are etched on.

Munger, who has no formal architecture training, says he’s unfazed by McFadden’s objections, telling The Washington Post that “this is not some crazy idea.” He said his plan has been in the works for years and compared virtual windows that would simulate sunlight in the dorm rooms to those in Disney cruise staterooms.

So only two doors to enter and exit and no windows. Wow, just wow. It is akin to a jail and the idea that it would ever get permitted with such limited egress is insane. So he has designed it as a Disney Cruise ship. Well there is Covid friendly non-ventilation right there. Of course the criticism is flowing over this assholes aged head so go forth and build the cell block and make sure that the kids are given some of Facebook Virtual Reality headsets to fake they are in the light.

Retiring or Retreading

I have long said that in America there are two things we value, youth and money. And my Uber driver in Maine said, sex and violence. Same diff as in reality youth is equated with sex and money is often earned through violence. The word violence comes from the most recent debate over the word “violation”. If you have the misfortune of watching the Beverly Hills Housewives you would know of this regarding a woman, Sutton, knocking and entering another woman, Crystal’s room. The trip to Tahoe is now in its third week and the women have been back that many weeks but hey let’s show how idiotic and self involved these women are by endlessly talking about an issue over and over again to stir the shit, while the most infamous, Erika Jane/Girardi is sitting there waiting for the courts to take her money or Tom to die before the divorce is final so she can contest the will. I mean if he hasn’t included her did he have time to change it before the Alzheimer’s kicked in? Either way it ain’t looking good so girl hide the Chagall in the closet as art is the new money laundering, no trace!

And these are the kind of women’s issues I wished I faced after a year of pandemic living. I am lucky as I had savings but I am also turning 62 in a few months, and with that the big decision of drawing on my poor social security earnings. I have worked only part time for the last few years and was never a big earner before that so in other words my draw is around 300 bucks a month. It’s garbage regardless and with that in mind I will maintain the status quo for the next 4 years and 10 months as required by Social Security in which to draw my full benefit of wait for it around 700 bucks. Yikes. That is what it is to be a woman in America, Melinda Gates and Mackenzie Bezos I am not. They could ostensibly draw from their spouses Social Security, without their knowledge as both women were married for over 10 years. I assume they will pass on that but then again who knows, the rich in fact draw from Social Security, the same program they are determined to destroy and go out of their way to reduce payroll taxes which funds the program. And the irony is that when they draw upon it their taxes are reduced so again the girls might just I can tell you Bezos will, there is a long reason why he relocated to Seattle, Washington, no income tax. (I want to point out that Nashville and Seattle are both in no income tax states but the way cities make money are through many other forms of taxes that disproportionately hurt the poor.) But the poor and dumb think it is great when Trump declares a new tax cut as they get more “take home” it just; however, comes out the other end, in retirement. America the land of the free and dumb. I see why now the GOP cut funding for education if you are stupid you can’t ask too many questions and math is hard and shit.

As for those who were forced to take an earlier retirement due to economic conditions which this pandemic qualifies, many may find themselves in an struggle. This is especially true if they had extensive debt to income ratio (as small business owners often have), live in a state where taxes are higher for property, regardless if they own or rent, as this is how you do the math – it may be 2000 a monthly mortgage to own, with a 5K property tax but if you rent it may be 5K a month. Taxes are annual so you take that 3K and divide by 12 means your payments are around 2400/month. And many rents are now over that but again with the pandemic, the eviction moratorium coming to and end and of course outstanding debt on rental properties there wil be a rise in inventory. As of now buying is expensive and renting may be a deal. Now true the costs of maintaining a property are also expensive but unless you a buying a high rise condo in a seaside town with a poor board and extensive issues regarding building soundness you can do fine. As I watch the Seaside condo issues unfold the problems with the building were years old and many buyers did not ask for a forensic accounting (which would have shown all the assessments levied against owners), a full sheet of issues in the building and management and other essential information that would have told them to not. If you think Real Estate Agents fail to do their job this is one of those times. In fact one Agent told a seller who died in the collapse that her unit was worth a million and several other units had just turned which makes one wonder what the buyers knew? Nothing I assume knowing that realtors are largely shoe salesman with a “license”. And again HOA’s are owners who are not always experienced in many issues and so they are looking at costs and frankly we all do when we own a property; HOWEVER, this is a shared property and with that comes a larger responsibility. Think of the vaccine issues and well there you go, you are fucked if your neighbor is Ramona Singer. Another Real Housewife who is now a realtor and well if you watched New York you would not buy a rubber stamp from that crazy bitch let alone live in a building with her. New York real estate is complicated enough.

But there are other issues with Social Security especially surrounding the disabled. This from the Guardian discussing the problems many are facing, including homelessness and long term financial crisis. We truly believe in America that all problems are intrinsic and that somehow we personally failed to do something that prevented you from being functioning physically or mentally and that explains also the mental health crisis in this country. Americans are not well educated even when they possess degrees, trust me I have worked with many of them in Education. It explains why the rich want to privatize it and give Teachers canned curriculum. It solves two problems. A good workforce is a dumb one and that explains Jeff Bezos and Amazon with their surreal turnover of staff. The largest in the nation in every sense of the words. How prime is that? You cannot plan for retirement let alone rely on Social Security and that may again be a secondary point. If we can’t kill the program will make it impossible for anyone to ever collect it.

Work until you die it is the new way we can solve those unemployment issues we keep hearing about. Well if you work in a hotel however it seems that you won’t be working. I said in another post about this issue, you will not be having that room cleaned and as I got on my last flight from Portland, Maine, I was handed a wet wipe as it was impossible to clean that plane between the two flights in that time from arrival to departure. Expect more of that as many are now facing that reality but the GOP is sure it is thanks to due to extended benefits. Yeah okay. Automation is here to stay and self preservation is also on the menu if you can get a server to acknowledge you. No wonder McDonald’s is rethinking its strategy, business is booming and wages are stagnating or not dependent upon the owner of the franchise and the pressures of the community. But what do these workers make? Well there are wages and restrictions and agreements that make one wonder if this is a way better job than it is? Seriously why? And with that it may explain why there are few applicants running into said doors.

We like being young it makes shit easier and we can do without thinking and stuff. Okay. Then we have a lot of sex, can get drunk get into fights and have riots and raid the Capitol and say we were just doing what our Big Daddy said. There is something freeing about being a 35 year old man child and denying culpability and responsibility. Hell Zip Tie Guy brought his Mother. Well the family that serves time together definitely stays together or not as they don’t have a family prison – yet. Ah another housewife would have loved that, right Teresa? I need a new hobby as those shows are really really boring and yet I watch like I am still in lockdown.

As I role up to September I am hoping to be back in the classroom, vaxxed and waiting for my booster while trying to figure out the next act in life to close out the final one in this six hour series, an hour for each decade, like Angels in America only less Gay? But what are your plans in the months and years ahead. We are facing a new world and one just as divided and segregated as the last in both race and economics or is it?

Hey Big Spender

The week I was away much happened in the 1% class, Pro Publica released the tax returns showing how little many of our most infamous Gazillionaires paid; there was an investigation into Tax laws/rules that the Trump Dog and Pony Show put in affect discreetly prior to his exodus enabled the Venture Vultures even more ways to hide income and lastly Jeff Bezos is taking off into space with his Brother and a Guest who bid 28 Million dollars. And of course the Bill Gates Divorce continues to unfold in the public media with more details of his infidelity by largely cruising the office, both and Microsoft and the Foundation. Did he not learn the rule of never shitting where you eat?

The wages and perks of being a CEO has only grown during the pandemic. Shocking, not really they were rigged and gaming the system is what they do best, pay living wages, offer benefits, training and long term job security, not so much. And yes, while The wages of workers are slightly growing due to the ongoing labor shortage but that my friends is only temporary as history has proven, and likely has little to do with the unemployment benefit that lasts through September, a coincidental (yeah sure) ending, as that is when schools across the country are scheduled to reopen, with distance learning also coming to an end. What is more distressing is that despite money being allocated to upgrade and repair, it appears there have been little to no changes to the actual facilities or a way to reduce class sizes; all of it seemingly relies on the belief that vaccines with save it all. Sure, okay, whatever.

Now what should I truly address in that pile of shit that has enabled, allowed and maintained the lifestyles of the rich and infamous? The tax issue has long been a silent scream and now to see in print exactly what was earned and what was paid to maintain the society and country that provided them with the access and availability in which to prosper is insulting and of course no surprising in the least. Just the opening salvo says it all:

In 2007, Jeff Bezos, then a multibillionaire and now the world’s richest man, did not pay a penny in federal income taxes. He achieved the feat again in 2011. In 2018, Tesla founder Elon Musk, the second-richest person in the world, also paid no federal income taxes.

I selected that as we currently have a dick off ongoing with these two with regards to space, you know the final frontier. And while Musk has sent off some successful, some not, rockets into space, this is the first that one where a private person is doing so manned and he is the MAN! The costs of this experience, exploration, circle jerk or what-have-you has not been disclosed but before the Space Shuttle program retired, NASA said it cost an average of $450 million each mission to launch the spacecraft. Space X, Musk’s neophyte space program has cost upwards of a total of 90 Million and with that he has had to face serious cutbacks to the program to manage costs. So we can presume Bezos has come close to 500 Million in which to make this 11 minute trip to the edge of space. With that he could have written off a portion of the Student Loan Debt which is now at 1.7 trillion. Built several housing complexes to eliminate homelessness in Seattle where he has his business.

This according to The Alliance to End Homelessness: A chronically homeless person costs the taxpayer an average of $35,578 per year. This study shows how costs on average are reduced by 49.5% when they are placed in supportive housing. Supportive housing costs on average $12,800, making the net savings roughly $4,800 per year. Congress will need to invest in permanent supportive housing to drive progress while reducing tax payers’ spending. Congress should provide at least the $2.487 billion in the House bill for HUD’s Homeless Assistance Grants in FY 2017.

Or he could have paid off some of the Medical Debt of Covid Survivors, enhance National parks and Greenlands to offset global warming of which his company and this program is doing little to circumvent, or just fund scholarships for students of color/kids at risk to attend highly successful schools for their lifetime to pursue an education in which to lift they and their families out of poverty. Or maybe, just maybe, raise the wages of the Amazon workforce, make them all employees, not contractors, offer benefits, training and other job security perks (such as allow them to unionize) that enables a strong middle class path to benefit the larger community. Gosh, ya think? They will pay their taxes.

I want to end on this note from the Pro Publica investigation:

To capture the financial reality of the richest Americans, ProPublica undertook an analysis that has never been done before. We compared how much in taxes the 25 richest Americans paid each year to how much Forbes estimated their wealth grew in that same time period.

We’re going to call this their true tax rate.

The results are stark. According to Forbes, those 25 people saw their worth rise a collective $401 billion from 2014 to 2018. They paid a total of $13.6 billion in federal income taxes in those five years, the IRS data shows. That’s a staggering sum, but it amounts to a true tax rate of only 3.4%.

It’s a completely different picture for middle-class Americans, for example, wage earners in their early 40s who have amassed a typical amount of wealth for people their age. From 2014 to 2018, such households saw their net worth expand by about $65,000 after taxes on average, mostly due to the rise in value of their homes. But because the vast bulk of their earnings were salaries, their tax bills were almost as much, nearly $62,000, over that five-year period.

Persecution Complex

No group suffers from this , the Persecution Complex, more than the Religious right. What more can one say as they see evil in the shadows, constantly seeing enemies that wish to destroy if not crucify them for their believes. Hence the concept of Staurophobia, a crucifixion complex akin to PTSD. The irony is this is all while mocking and eschewing other religions for being less “christian” this cohort are sure that Jews, Catholics, Muslims, and all the other believers and especially non-believers are going to take their faith away from them. Where we are taking it to I am unclear and I have no ambition like fanatical Islamic crazies or Evangelical domestic terrorists to take Bibles or other books of religious dogma burn them and then force everyone into Socialism or whatever single Theocratic belief system the enemy will do once they assume power. I thought a Democracy was the antithesis of that where we are free to pursue our faith, or lack thereof, without fear. Funny that is the same group that want a single Church State so go figure. Religious wars dominate history across time and this is just another version of Empire building and burning, only this time by a bunch of interchangeable angry white guys with beards and their Mothers and the few women willing to fuck them. Or just lonely angry women who are not getting fucked and have little to no obligations or commitments, just a desire to be committed perhaps?

Yet again, I do think that the religious elements should not be lost or ignored during the riots of January 6th, as they have significant import in how the message of conspiracy is passed and that is largely through the Church “network.” Yes Social Media not withstanding but few of the ones interviewed and the photos that showed the heavy religious symbolism affirm the bonding trait of being white and Christian. And Churches are a powerful source of information as well as misinformation. That is there stock in trade, spreading myths and messages to ensure the sheep will follow the flock into the churches and from that the coffers will be filled and the positions of power securely held in the hands of designated savior of faith, that comes from the hand behind the pulpit. And that hand is both white and black, feet clad in everything from Gucci Loafers to high end sneakers. The hand that both threatens and loves, the hand that washes the feet of the believers, also takes with another hand the money to ensure that whatever the message, the messenger stays aloft in private planes which fly above the heavens to communicate apparently directly to God. In other words, crazy begets crazy. And it explains why they followed Trump’s “orders as they believe he is a messenger from God. All religions are cults and Trump’s is no different.

And yes I do not follow nor practice faith based studies, I again respect those who do so with an eye on facts and knowledge. While Georgia has elected their first Black Senator and yes he is an ordained and studied Minister who ministers from a Church that Martin Luther King once stood to pray with and for the lost and forgotten, Reverend Warnock has also taken the same mantle of Christianity with regards to Social Justice. And with that crown rests a heavy head and for him I do wish (pray whatever) him success. His path is one well worn but not out in any stretch and he seems very much in the mantle of what I once learned and practiced when it came to Christianity. Just like Veganism, Atheism became a choice and a life practice. And perhaps we are seeing some of this in President Biden, a lifelong practicing Catholic, who seems to embrace a similar philosophy. In God’s steed as they say.

**For the record few Atheists come without clear knowledge of both scripture and of faith based practices. It comes from a place of fact and thought not emotion nor rejection but of understanding and with it acceptance. Funny how the Evangelicals don’t do the same.**

And with faith and religion all hopes and ambitions are tied to a book of myths. It takes a great suspension of disbelief to actually think that anything found in any book of Scripture, the Bible, the Q’ran, the Torah and all other variations of the same, is in fact FACT. It is a culmination of stories that were translated and repeated over time while few shared the same language, even the same period in history in which to validate or confirm such stories. Fact checking not possible and hence why the books often contradict if not often invalidate one version over another. But hey whatever rocks your world, just remember that I have no problem believing that you believe, but why do you care so much that I don’t?

When I read this in the Tennessean, once again, the I told you so button was hit. Like the one on Trump’s desk you hit for a Diet Coke, it seems to be in permanent rotation when discussion the events of January 6th. Religious people are crazy.

Survey: Nearly half of Protestant pastors say church members are sharing conspiracy theories

Nashville Tennessean January 27 2021. By Holly Meyer

People in the pews are spreading conspiracy theories. 

A new survey from Nashville-based Lifeway Research found nearly half of Protestant pastors in America regularly hear members of their congregations share these unsubstantiated, grandiose narratives about why something is happening in the U.S. 

Thirteen percent said they strongly agreed their congregants frequently repeat conspiracy theories and 36% somewhat agreed, the survey said. On the flip side, 26% of pastors strongly disagreed while 20% somewhat disagreed.

The LifeWay survey did not specify what exactly was being shared by church members, but conspiracy theories have a long history in the U.S.

In recent years, some, like the unfounded QAnon conspiracy theories, have become more mainstream, seeping into presidential politics and beyond. Misinformation and disinformation have also spread amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Lifeway Research found white pastors were more likely than Black pastors to agree that they had heard their church members share conspiracy theories. Men were more likely to agree than women; and pastors who lead churches whose services draw more than 250 people were the most likely to agree. 

Lifeway Research surveyed 1,007 Protestant pastors via phone and online interviews. The survey was conducted Sept. 2 to Oct. 1, 2020 and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. 

ETA: Since I composed this yesterday another Nashvillain.. yes villain as I refer to almost all the religious crackpots I encountered there… made the local news for his histrionics over the press covering his business of late. This is Dave Ramsey the credit counselor whose headquarters are just outside Nashville and basically runs a pyramid scheme to get people to sell his information, tools much like Avon or Tupperware. They buy the packets then in turn they sell these to others and so on. It is the entire business premise of Amway, Herbalife and MaryKay. Dave is an autocrat and well nut job and this article in the Nashville Scene discusses another investigation into his business practices, but from all things the Religion News Service. They liken it to a cult. Hmm where have I heard that before..

But I want to point out that tax deductions, exemptions and other labor laws often are not applied to religious organizations and while Dave is a Christian and his business is modeled on some type of Christian dogma (the gun part I am not sure) and it requires his employees to sign waiver’s and agreements (which again we have heard about in the secular community, including McDonald’s) many of his “restrictions” and requirements may not be legal. Once again this is why the Christian right is very politically active and they are aggressive to the point where they cross lines and do so without repercussions or even taxes. I think of the Catholic Church on their long history of sexual assaults. Good times.

Yeah, it sucked

I have long discussed and written about Nashville and am now editing and revising posts to become essays in which to assemble in book form as a way of trying to explain what it is about the South and why many of the stereotypes and beliefs are in fact true but not in the way one believes. The South itself is complicated and is not easily defined by a single quality or characteristic, it in fact is much like where I was originally from, Seattle, divided by class, by money and by race. The singular exception and distinction is the obsession and reliance upon religion in which to both build community and ostracize others from said community. It is the greatest crutch and the biggest tool in which to destroy and in turn demonize anyone who simply cannot agree to comply and accept that without the Bible there is no sense of law and order and that is the only book in which matters, from which both the learned and the unlearned share. It is fucked up beyond belief that co-dependent relationship and in turn explains the racism, the sexism and the overall resistance to a cohesive rule and secular government.

I read this op-ed in the Tennessean and once again it states the facts as it is, neglecting of course the religious aspect as that is one critique which is not permitted nor tolerated under any circumstance, including those who have been victims of the Church’s dogma. The reality is that Nashville is not an “it” city, it is cheap man’s Vegas and is a city lost among itself as what it wants to be versus what it is. The rising Covid stats, the Governor’s and Legislatures avoidance of any type of guidance regarding staving off the disease, the business communities endless obsession with money over the lives of the citizens is what defines the region. Add to it the crime, most of it committed by teens or very young adults, the access and availability of guns and of course race makes the city utterly untenable as a safe space in which to live and work. Endless shootings, endless petty crimes and misdemeanors and sheer level of disregard by Police to engage in prevention and community building, leading to a new Chief finally being hired after decades of problems continues to demonstrate the priorities of what makes Nashville a shithole. Memphis has a much better hold on the reality of the area and it in turn is a by far more interesting city over Nashville but then again it’s a chocolate city and if you like vanilla then Nashville is all yours.

Nashville is appealing to higher-income earners, but everyone else is struggling

Why are people moving to Nashville? A recent article noted the relaxed COVID atmosphere, the availability of land, and the lack of income tax as reasons. Not diversity, equity or fair policies.

Maryam Abolfazli Guest Columnist. The Tennessean December 18 2020

What if I told you about a place that has great private schools, huge homes for relatively less than Austin or Arlington, beautiful backyards and hills, awesome private pools and sports clubs, great sports venues, tons of land and no income tax?

What would you think?

Maybe you’d be enticed, or perhaps you’d be concerned with other matters that I failed to mention. What about the public schools? Is the rent affordable? Are there good public parks and pools for kids? Decent public transportation? How much are average grocery costs? Food deserts anywhere? And how is the sales tax?

There is an invisible but distinct line that divides Nashville residents in our perceptions of progress. Depending on your own demographics, you might see Nashville and its “perks” very differently.

For instance, while zero state income tax might feel, for some, like a benefit to living in this city, it actually disproportionately harms the poor. According to a report by the Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy, when there is no income tax, “the lowest-income 20 percent pay up to six times as much of their income in taxes as their wealthy counterparts” through the burden of a high sales tax. 

Low- and middle-income earners find it hard to live in Nashville

For many, Nashville seems to be a great seductress as a city, even during a pandemic. However, looking through a different lens shows a city in decline.

For a wealthy transplant or a current resident who is financially secure, a competitive housing market is at the forefront of selling points for the city. 

This is very different from the viewpoint of Nashville’s low-to-middle income residents, many of whom are forced to leave the city due to the prohibitive cost of making a life here.

The reality is that Nashville ranks as more expensive to live in than Atlanta, Charlotte and Orlando — other major Southeastern cities. Average rent is $1,400 for a one-bedroom, while average hourly wage is about $17 an hour. While this would be considered a good wage for many, it means that over 50% of this wage could go to monthly housing costs, versus the recommended 30%. 

If you’re at the minimum wage which, it should be noted, hasn’t changed in Tennessee in the last 10 years, you’re making more like $15,000/year. It might be easy to say, “Get a better job, then.”

If you’re looking for jobs with growth potential and training, many of the hospitality jobs that support Nashville’s success don’t offer these things. Despite programs with great intentions like Nashville Grad, there are still insufficient certification programs, and community college hasn’t quite solved the need for wrap-around services including transportation, childcare, and basic college counseling.

If you’re trying to build a life for yourself and your family and get out of a low-to-middle-income rut, Nashville may not be as appealing. 

Affordable housing continues to be a vital issue for residents

At a meeting last year of the Metro Human Relations Commission (of which I am a member), an older resident made the significant effort to attend the meeting to make one simple request:

Please address the housing crisis in the city. She practically begged us. The discomfort in the room was palpable; we were faced with the desperation and truth she conveyed, juxtaposed to the reality of the booming real estate outside our windows.

The pandemic has shined a light on these differences, as the number of people experiencing homelessness increases and two more shelters have been opened to address the issue.

Employment claims have gone up in the lowest income neighborhoods, and organizations that support low income families in predominantly Black and brown neighborhoods are seeing an increase in need. And yet, while many who have lost already low-earning jobs are forced to leave, others are eying Nashville with imperialistic aim.

So why are people moving here? A recent article in the Tennessean noted the relaxed COVID atmosphere, the availability of land, and the lack of income tax as reasons.

Socioeconomic and racial equity, diversity, and good policies for making a level playing field were not mentioned. Looking at the businesses and corporations relocating, from Amazon to Daily Wire, the appeal certainly isn’t a city solving or even taking responsibility for its social ills. 

During a pandemic when some have lost everything while others have made notable gains, it’s easy to just focus on our individual realities, and double down on meeting our individual needs.

But Nashville has always been about more than individual wealth and comforts, and as it attracts more corporations and individuals looking for more wealth, it should remember those that are already here, making it the great town it is, who simply want to stay

Opening the Gates

This blog has evolved as have I in the ever changing landscape that is America.  I grew up in Seattle when it was a one company town, Boeing, but had thriving other industries and businesses that to this day are still a part of the larger landscape that existed there before Microsoft and Amazon. Shocking, I know. Not really. Blue collar to the core Seattle loved that it had some white collars to be the philanthropists and cognescenti in which to have galas and fund raising events to sustain the arts and education landmarks in the city of Oz. Yes Seattle used to be called, The Emerald City.  But the working class, the rough riders were there and they wore their Dr. Martens right into the music industry and it gave another edge to a city that well eventually became a Diamond versus an Emerald.  And with it the division of class, labor and economics took hold in ways that have permanently changed my childhood home.

I have long been a naysayer about the billionaire class as when I grew up the line that divided did not conquer, my Mother went to the Nordstrom family home for holiday gatherings, I went on a European vacation with the Curators of the Seattle Art Museum and well the sinners mixed with saints often and without issue until the rivers of tech blew in to clearly divide the have and the have nots.  Not that that contributed to the infamous Seattle Freeze as that was about outsiders trying to come in and it came out of Emmet Watson, a late newspaper columnist for the late newspaper, The Seattle Post Intelligencer, who came up with KBO. That stood for Keep the Bastards out when Californians trying to escape high taxes migrated up the coast and landed in our sound. Well we needed them as in the 70s finances were so bad a billboard was put up – Last person out of Seattle turn out the lights.  Ah the times are changing to be like the ones they are today.

But while Bill Gates has his strong arm around Seattle he was never quite as interested in leaving quite the footprint there as his late partner, Paul Allen did. Seattle today has almost all of it marked by him versus that of another big foot, Jeff Bezos, as he never had any interest in the landscape of Seattle or establishing any legacy other than business.  That has also changed and I feel like many who have walked that same path and followed those same footprints they too will ebb away for another in the future.  That never changes either.

Bill Gates has a global view and a narcissistic one to match with his personality.  I have found that of course he right now in crazy town is believed to be Covid lab rat number 3 after the Chinese did it on purpose, the 5G towers are super spreaders and lastly Bill Gates did it.  No but he will profit from it.

Funny that his partner in crime, Warren Buffet, is shedding stocks like the virus Covid, he is not buying up pharmaceutical ones which are the ones that matter now.  And no Bill Gates in a WSJ interview claimed to have discussed vaccines in 2015 at a global health conference, that is of course a truth wrapped in a lie. That it had to do with the current pandemic predicted back in  2008 after another SARS/MERS crisis Bill was not there he was still bullying and bossy boots at his first child, Microsoft. His last full day there was June 27, 2008.  Gee I just wrote about the Physician and others who back in 2008 tried to sell a vaccine but with no luck as it was not profitable. Bill where were you?  Hence that is why the Oxford lab, the Jenner Group,  had a head start they had been working on this on a back burner and are a non-profit which Gates cannot fund in the same manner he does Big Pharma as there is no money there.  But Astra Zeneca has come in for the kill and partnered with them. Too bad so sad for Bill.. who is running out buying stock right now!  But in the intervening years he was busy with the Common Core and other meddling in U.S. Education so his viral efforts and crowd funding and the rest were all focused on developing nations where money was to be made, the saving folks a great offshoot however.

The Nation did a great investigative piece that ties in Billy boys’ financial interests with his philanthropy and well lets just say that as his foundations wealth grew Bill’s grew even more so.  Oh that is right when he is dead he pledges it all to charities. Which one? His natch. Such bullshit and all tax free and how they continue to contribute to the decline of nations, the very one he lives in primarily.  Imagine how that money could fund eduction, public health, the infrastructure to build world class cities, and that of the arts and well sciences!  Who would have thunk it?

Go fuck yourself Bill Gates and take your Bride of Frankenstein with you as she is no better nor different.  Takes one to know one and you two are peas in a pod. They are a plague and they have the first symptoms – conflicts of interest, tax exemptions, political clout.   Not far behind in the race – Michael Bloomberg.  To think that the right wing continues its attacks on George Soros. Oh but the right have the Mercers, the Koch’s, Sheldon Aldeson and many many more who are by far more influential and way more dangerous than Covid as they are like squid with tentacles in every stream and access and availability to the halls of power in ways Gates, Buffet and Bloomberg wishes.  But then maybe they just want money, power they already have and they can let others do the dirty work while they take all the credits.  Plural as in tax breaks, financial incentives and other tools given to them to enable to build their wealth on the backs of disease, poverty and income inequality. Fuck them all, without lube or dinner.

Bill Gates’s Charity Paradox
A Nation investigation illustrates the moral hazards surrounding the Gates Foundation’s $50 billion charitable enterprise.

By Tim Schwab
March 17, 2020
The Nation

Last fall, Netflix premiered a three-part documentary that promises viewers a rare look at the inner life of one of history’s most controversial businessmen. Over three hours, Inside Bill’s Brain shows us a rare emotional side to Bill Gates as he processes the loss of his mother and the death of his estranged best friend and Microsoft cofounder, Paul Allen.

Mostly, though, the film reinforces the image many of us already had of the ambitious technologist, insatiable brainiac, and heroic philanthropist. Inside Bill’s Brain falls into a common trap: attempting to understand the world’s second-richest human by interviewing people in his sphere of financial influence.

In the first episode, director Davis Guggenheim underlines Gates’s expansive intellect by interviewing Bernie Noe, described as a friend of Gates.

“That’s a gift, to read 150 pages an hour,” says Noe. “I’m going to say it’s 90 percent retention. Kind of extraordinary.”

Guggenheim doesn’t tell audiences that Noe is the principal of Lakeside School, a private institution to which the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has given $80 million. The filmmaker also doesn’t mention the extraordinary conflict of interest this presents: The Gateses used their charitable foundation to enrich the private school their children attend, which charges students $35,000 a year.

The documentary’s blind spots are all the more striking in light of the timing of its release, just as news was trickling out that Bill Gates met multiple times with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to discuss collaborating on charitable activities, from which Epstein stood to generate millions of dollars in management fees. Though the collaboration never materialized, it nonetheless illustrates the moral hazards surrounding the Gates Foundation’s $50 billion charitable enterprise, whose sprawling activities over the last two decades have been subject to remarkably little government oversight or public scrutiny.

While the efforts of fellow billionaire philanthropist Michael Bloomberg to use his wealth to win the presidency foundered amid intense media criticism, Gates has proved there is a far easier path to political power, one that allows unelected billionaires to shape public policy in ways that almost always generate favorable headlines: charity.

The billionaire class: Warren Buffett (left) and Bill Gates, two of the Gates Foundation’s three trustees, sharing a laugh. (Jeff Christensen / WireImage)

When Gates announced in 2008 that he would step away from Microsoft to focus his efforts on philanthropy, he described his intention to work with and through the private sector to deliver public-goods products and technologies, in the same way that Microsoft’s computer software expanded horizons and created economic opportunities. Describing his approach by turns as “creative capitalism” and “catalytic philanthropy,” Gates oversaw a shift at his foundation to leverage “all the tools of capitalism” to “connect the promise of philanthropy with the power of private enterprise.”

The result has been a new model of charity in which the most direct beneficiaries are sometimes not the world’s poor but the world’s wealthiest, in which the goal is not to help the needy but to help the rich help the needy.

Through an investigation of more than 19,000 charitable grants the Gates Foundation has made over the last two decades, The Nation has uncovered close to $2 billion in tax-deductible charitable donations to private companies—including some of the largest businesses in the world, such as GlaxoSmithKline, Unilever, IBM, and NBC Universal Media—which are tasked with developing new drugs, improving sanitation in the developing world, developing financial products for Muslim consumers, and spreading the good news about this work.

The Gates Foundation even gave $2 million to Participant Media to promote Davis Guggenheim’s previous documentary film Waiting for Superman, which pushes one of the foundation’s signature charity efforts, charter schools—privately managed public schools. This charitable donation is a small part of the $250 million the foundation has given to media companies and other groups to influence the news.

“It’s been a quite unprecedented development, the amount that the Gates Foundation is gifting to corporations…. I find that flabbergasting, frankly,” says Linsey McGoey, a professor of sociology at the University of Essex and author of the book No Such Thing as a Free Gift. “They’ve created one of the most problematic precedents in the history of foundation giving by essentially opening the door for corporations to see themselves as deserving charity claimants at a time when corporate profits are at an all-time high.”

McGoey’s research has anecdotally highlighted charitable grants the Gates Foundation has made to private companies, such as a $19 million donation to a Mastercard affiliate in 2014 to “increase usage of digital financial products by poor adults” in Kenya. The credit card giant had already articulated its keen business interest in cultivating new clients from the developing world’s 2.5 billion unbanked people, McGoey says, so why did it need a wealthy philanthropist to subsidize its work? And why are Bill and Melinda Gates getting a tax break for this donation?

These questions seem especially pertinent in light of the fact that the donation to Mastercard may have delivered financial benefits to the Gates Foundation; at the time of the donation, in November 2014, the foundation’s endowment had substantial financial investments in Mastercard through its holdings in Warren Buffett’s investment company, Berkshire Hathaway. (Buffett himself has pledged $30 billion to the Gates Foundation. )

The Nation found close to $250 million in charitable grants from the Gates Foundation to companies in which the foundation holds corporate stocks and bonds: Merck, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline, Vodafone, Sanofi, Ericsson, LG, Medtronic, Teva, and numerous start-ups—with the grants directed at projects like developing new drugs and health monitoring systems and creating mobile banking services.

A foundation giving a charitable grant to a company that it partly owns—and stands to benefit from financially—would seem like an obvious conflict of interest, but judging from the sparse rules that Congress has written governing private foundations and the IRS’s light enforcement of them, many in the federal government do not appear to see it that way.

The Gates Foundation did not respond to specific questions about its work with the private sector, nor would it provide its own accounting of how much money it has given to for-profit companies, saying that “many grants are implemented through a mixture of non-profit and for-profit partners, making it difficult to evaluate exact spending.”

At business-friendly events, however, Bill Gates openly promotes his foundation’s work with companies. In speeches delivered at the American Enterprise Institute and Microsoft in 2013 and ‘14, he trumpeted the lives his foundation was saving—in one speech he said 10 million, in another 6 million—through “partnerships with pharmaceutical companies.”

Yet the foundation is doing more than simply partnering with companies: It is subsidizing their research costs, opening up markets for their products, and bankrolling their bottom lines in ways that, by and large, have never been publicly examined—even as you and I, dear reader, are subsidizing this work.

Bill Gates frequently boasts about having paid more taxes—​$10 billion—than anyone else. That may or may not be true; the Gates Foundation would not release his tax forms or provide any substantiating information. But he may also end up avoiding more taxes than anyone else, through charitable giving.

By Bill and Melinda Gates’s estimations, they have seen an 11 percent tax savings on their $36 billion in charitable donations through 2018, resulting in around $4 billion in avoided taxes. The foundation would not provide any documentation related to this number, and independent estimates from tax scholars like Ray Madoff, a law professor at Boston College, indicate that multibillionaires see tax savings of at least 40 percent—which, for Bill Gates, would amount to $14 billion—when you factor in the tax benefits that charity offers to the superrich: avoidance of capital gains taxes (normally 15 percent) and estate taxes (40 percent on everything over $11.58 million, which in Gates’s case is a lot).

Madoff, like many tax experts, stresses that these billions of dollars in tax savings have to be seen as a public subsidy—money that otherwise would have gone to the US Treasury to help build bridges, do medical research, or close the funding gap at the IRS (which has resulted in fewer audits of billionaires). If Bill and Melinda Gates don’t pay their full freight in taxes, the public has to make up the difference or simply live in a world where governments do less and less (educating, vaccinating, and researching) and superrich philanthropists do more and more.

“I think people often confuse what wealthy people are doing on their own dime and what [they’re] doing on our dime, and that’s one of the big problems about this debate,” Madoff notes. “People say, ‘It’s the rich person’s money [to spend as they wish].’ But when they get significant tax benefits, it’s also our money. And so that’s why we need to have rules about how they spend our money.”

Naturally, Big Philanthropy has special interest groups pushing back on the creation of such rules. The Philanthropy Roundtable defends the wealthiest Americans’ “freedom to give,” describing itself as fighting the “increasing pressures from some public officials and advocacy groups to subject private philanthropies to more uniform standards and stricter government regulation.”

The nonprofit group receives funding from influential right-wing billionaires, including hundreds of thousands of dollars from the private foundation of Charles Koch. And it gets substantial funding from the Gates Foundation: nine grants from 2005 to 2017, worth $2.5 million, mostly for general operating expenses. A spokesperson for the foundation says these donations are aimed at “mobilizing voices to advocate for public policies that further enable charitable giving.”

At a certain point, however, the Philanthropy Roundtable seems primarily to serve the private interests of billionaires like the Gateses and Koch who use charity to influence public policy, with limited oversight and substantial public subsidies. It’s unclear how the Philanthropy Roundtable’s work contributes to the Gates Foundation’s charitable missions “to help all people live healthy, productive lives” and “to empower the poorest in society so they can transform their lives.”

While there is no credible argument that Bill and Melinda Gates use charity primarily as a vehicle to enrich themselves or their foundation, it is difficult to ignore the occasions where their charitable activities seem to serve mainly private interests, including theirs—supporting the schools their children attend, the companies their foundation partly owns, and the special interest groups that defend wealthy Americans—while generating billions of dollars in tax savings.

Philanthropy has also delivered a public relations coup for Bill Gates, dramatically transforming his reputation as one of the most cutthroat CEOs to one of the most admired people on earth. And his model of charity, influence, and absolution is inspiring a new era of controversial tech billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos, who have begun giving away their billions, sometimes working directly with Gates.

Gates was already one of the richest humans on earth in 2008, but he was also an embattled billionaire, still licking his wounds from a series of legal battles around the monopolistic business practices that made him so extravagantly wealthy—and that compelled Microsoft to pay billions of dollars in fines and settlements.

Gates did not respond to multiple requests for interviews, but in a recent Q&A with The Wall Street Journal, he revisited his legal face-off with antitrust regulators, saying, “I can still explain to you why the government was completely wrong, but that’s really old news at this point. For me personally, it did accelerate my move into that next phase, two to five years sooner, of shifting my focus over to the foundation.”

Gates’s view of Microsoft as the victim of overzealous antitrust regulations may help explain the laissez-faire ethos driving his charitable giving. His foundation has given money to groups that push for industry-friendly government policies and regulation, including the Drug Information Association (directed by Big Pharma) and the International Life Sciences Institute (funded by Big Ag). He has also funded nonprofit think tanks and advocacy groups that want to limit the role of government or direct its resources toward helping business interests, like the American Enterprise Institute ($6.8 million), the American Farm Bureau Foundation ($300,000), the American Legislative Exchange Council ($220,000), and organizations associated with the US Chamber of Commerce ($15.5 million).

Between 2011 and 2014 the Gates Foundation gave roughly $100 million to InBloom, an educational technology initiative that dissolved in controversy around privacy issues and its collection of personal data and information about students. To Diane Ravitch, a professor of education at New York University, InBloom illustrates the way Gates is “working to push technology in classrooms, to replace teachers with computers.”

“That affects Microsoft’s bottom line,” Ravitch observes. “However, I’ve never made that argument…. [The foundation] is not looking to make money from this business. They have an ideological interest in free markets.”

Education isn’t the only area where Gates’s ideological interests overlap with his financial interests. Microsoft’s bottom line is heavily dependent on patent protections for its software, and the Gates Foundation has been a strong and consistent supporter of intellectual property rights, including for the pharmaceutical companies with which it works closely. These patent protections are widely criticized for making lifesaving drugs prohibitively expensive, particularly in the developing world.

“He uses his philanthropy to advance a pro-patent agenda on pharmaceutical drugs, even in countries that are really poor,” says longtime Gates critic James Love, the director of the nonprofit Knowledge Ecology International. “Gates is sort of the right wing of the public-health movement. He’s always trying to push things in a pro-​corporate direction. He’s a big defender of the big drug companies. He’s undermining a lot of things that are really necessary to make drugs affordable to people that are really poor. It’s weird because he gives so much money to [fight] poverty, and yet he’s the biggest obstacle on a lot of reforms.”

The Gates Foundation’s sprawling work with for-profit companies has created a welter of conflicts of interest, in which the foundation, its three trustees (Bill and Melinda Gates and Buffett), or their companies could be seen as financially benefiting from the group’s charitable activities.

Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway has billions of dollars in investments in companies that the foundation has helped over the years, including Mastercard and Coca-Cola. Bill Gates long sat on the board of directors at Berkshire, announcing his departure just last week, and he and his foundation together hold billions of dollars of equity stake in the investment firm.

The foundation’s work also appears to overlap with Microsoft’s, to which Gates, in recent years, has devoted one-third of his workweek. (Gates announced last week he would be stepping down from the company’s board, but remain involved with the company as a technology advisor). The Gates Foundation’s $200 million program to improve public libraries partnered with Microsoft to donate the company’s software, prompting criticism that the donations were aimed at “seeding the market” for Microsoft products and “lubricating future sales.” Elsewhere, Microsoft is investing money studying mosquitoes to help predict disease outbreaks, working with the same researchers as the foundation. Both projects involve creating sophisticated robots and traps to collect and analyze mosquitoes.

“The foundation and Microsoft are separate entities, and our work is wholly unrelated to Microsoft,” a Gates Foundation spokesperson says.

In 2002, The Wall Street Journal reported that Gates and the Gates Foundation’s endowment made new investments in Cox Communications at the same time that Microsoft was in discussion with Cox about a variety of business deals. Tax experts raised questions about self-dealing, noting that foundations can lose their tax-exempt status if they are found to be using charity for personal gain. The IRS would not comment on whether it investigated, saying, “Federal law prohibits us from discussing specific taxpayers or organizations.”

Gates is notoriously secretive about his personal investments, however, making it difficult to understand if he stands to gain financially from his foundation’s activities or the extent to which he does if this happens.

“It’s hard to draw the line between a) Microsoft; b) his own personal wealth and investment; and c) the foundation,” says consumer advocate Ralph Nader, one of Microsoft’s fiercest critics in the 1990s. “There’s been very inadequate media scrutiny of all that.”

The foundation’s clearest conflicts of interest may be the grants it gives to for-profit companies in which it holds investments—large corporations like Merck and Unilever. A foundation spokesperson said it tries to avoid this kind of financial conflict but that doing so is difficult because its investment and charitable arms are firewalled from one another to keep their activities strictly separate. Bill and Melinda Gates are trustees of both entities, however, making it difficult to draw a sharp line between the two.

And in some places, the Gates Foundation explicitly marries its investing and charitable activities. Gates’s “strategic investment fund,” which the foundation says is designed to advance its philanthropic goals, not to generate investment income, includes a $7 million equity stake in the start-up company AgBiome, whose other investors include the agrochemical companies Monsanto and Syngenta. The foundation also gave the company $20 million in charitable grants to develop pesticides for African farmers. Similarly, the foundation has a $50 million stake in Intarcia and an $8 million investment in Just Biotherapeutics, to which it gave $25 million and $32 million in charitable grants, respectively, for work related to HIV and malaria. At one point, the foundation held a 48 percent stake in an HIV diagnostic company called Zyomyx, to which it previously awarded millions of dollars in charitable grants.

Asked about these apparent conflicts of interest, the foundation says that grants and investments “are simply two tools the foundation uses as appropriate to further its charitable objectives.”

When Gates began his foundation in 1994, he put his father, Bill Gates Sr., in charge. A prominent lawyer in Seattle, Gates Sr. was also a civic leader and, later, a public advocate on issues related to income inequality.

Working with Chuck Collins, an heir to the Oscar Mayer fortune who gave away much of his inheritance during his 20s, Gates Sr. helped organize a successful national campaign in the late 1990s and early 2000s to build political power around preserving the estate tax, the taxes levied against the assets of the wealthy after they die.

In interviews Gates Sr. gave at the time (he has Alzheimer’s disease now and was not contacted for an interview), his advocacy work seemed designed not to generate tax revenues but to inspire philanthropy.

“A wealthy person has an absolute choice as to whether they pay the [estate] tax or whether they give their wealth to their university or their church or their foundation,” he told journalist Bill Moyers.

That’s because when the rich give away their wealth, they reduce the assets that the estate tax targets. But such an arrangement, whereby the wealthiest Americans get to decide for themselves whether they want to pay taxes or donate their money to charity—including to groups that influence government policy—sounds like a peak example of tone-deaf privilege. In many respects, that’s how the tax system works for the superrich.

“The richer you are, the more choice you have between those two,” says Collins, who today works on income inequality at the nonprofit Institute for Policy Studies.

For some billionaire philanthropists, it may be less of a choice than an entitlement. Buffett and Gates have recruited hundreds of millionaires and billionaires to sign the Giving Pledge, a promise to donate most of their wealth to charity, which some signatories explicitly cite as an alternative to paying taxes.

According to Collins, Bill Gates Sr. had a nuanced view that included limiting billionaires’ tax benefits.

“He said to me…it’s a problem that his son is going to give—at the time, it was like $80 billion—to the foundation and never have to pay taxes on any of that wealth,” Collins recalls. “His view was that there should be a cap on the lifetime amount of wealth that could be given to charity where you get a deduction.”

Around the time that Collins and Gates Sr. were putting pressure on Congress to make sure the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes, the younger Gates was running a multinational company aggressively looking for tax breaks. According to the assessor’s office for King County, which includes Seattle, Microsoft has filed 402 appeals on its property taxes. Likewise, a 2012 Senate investigation examined Microsoft’s aggressive use of offshore subsidiaries to save the company billions of dollars in taxes. And The Seattle Times reported that Microsoft spent decades creating lucrative, tax-reducing barriers around corporate profits.

Bill Gates, nevertheless, has managed to become a leading—and seemingly progressive—public voice on tax policy. Every year around tax time, he and Buffett make media appearances decrying how little they pay in taxes, calling on Congress to raise taxes on the wealthy. At times, however, they advocate policies that may not actually touch their wealth, such as promoting the estate tax, which they will likely avoid through charitable donations.

Gates, along with a growing chorus of billionaires, has also used his public platform to push back on a proposed wealth tax, supported by both Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders. A wealth tax would take a percentage of a billionaire’s assets every year, limiting the accumulation of wealth—and possibly the amount of money spent on philanthropy. Gates counters that charity work reduces income inequality.

“Philanthropy done well not only produces direct benefits for society, it also reduces dynastic wealth,” he wrote on his blog, GatesNotes.

When the Gates foundation has faced criticism in regard to its endowment—including investments in prisons, fast food, the arms industry, pharmaceutical companies, and fossil fuels—conflicting with its charitable mission to improve health and well-being, Gates has pushed back in black-and-white terms, calling divestment a “false solution” that will have “zero” impact.

The Gates Foundation’s investments are not an insignificant part of its charitable efforts. Its $50 billion endowment has generated $28.5 billion in investment income over the last five years. During the same period, the foundation has given away only $23.5 billion in charitable grants.

In 2007, in one of the few investigative journalism series ever published about the foundation, the Los Angeles Times profiled the foundation’s investments in mortgage lenders involved in subprime loans and for-profit hospitals accused of performing unneeded surgeries. The Times also noted the foundation’s investments in chocolate companies that depend on cocoa production using child labor.

The Gates Foundation spokesperson says it “does not comment on specific investment decisions or holdings,” but did note that the “sole purpose” of its endowment is “to provide income to support the Foundation’s mission and to be capable to do so over the long term.”

The Gates Foundation’s endowment currently has an $11.5 billion stake in Berkshire Hathaway, which in turn has $32 million invested in the chocolate company Mondelez, which has been criticized in relation to the use of child labor. The foundation made $32.5 million in charitable donations to the World Cocoa Foundation, an industry group whose members include Mondelez, for a project to improve farmer livelihoods. The project doesn’t appear to address child labor.

The tax reform act of 1969 created special rules to limit the influence that wealthy philanthropists could exercise through private foundations—in theory ensuring they produce public benefits rather than serve private interests.

In practice, these rules give wealthy donors like Bill and Melinda Gates enormous latitude in their philanthropic activities. For example, when it comes to self-dealing, the IRS prohibits only the most egregious conflicts of interest, such as foundations awarding grants to companies controlled by board members. Likewise, IRS rules broadly allow charitable donations to for-profit companies, as long as the foundations keep paperwork showing that the money was used to advance their charitable missions.

But because the Gates Foundation views market-based solutions and private-sector innovation as public goods, the line between charity and business can be indistinguishable. Sociologist Linsey McGoey says, “They’ve defined their charitable mission so broadly and loosely that literally any for-profit company could be said to be meeting the Gates Foundation’s general goal of improving social and global well-being.”

The IRS’s oversight of private foundations is constrained by recent budget cuts and its limited mandate to collect taxes from nonprofits like the Gates Foundation, which are largely free from paying them.

“If you’re the IRS commissioner and you’re given a finite sum to spend on the agency, and your job is to make sure the US Treasury has money in it, you are going to give a token nod to tax-exempt organizations,” says Marc Owens, a former director of the IRS’s tax-exempt division who is now in private practice. “One [IRS] agent looking at restaurants in Washington or New York City is going to generate a lot of money…. One agent looking at private foundations will probably pay their salary, but it’s not going to bring in tax dollars.”

According to IRS statistics, there are around 100,000 private foundations in the United States, housing close to $1 trillion in assets. However, foundations generally pay a tax rate of only 1 or 2 percent, and the IRS reports auditing, at most, 263 foundations in 2018.

State attorneys general can exercise oversight of private foundations, as the New York attorney general’s office did in 2018 when it investigated Donald Trump’s private foundation, which shut down amid allegations that he used it for his personal benefit. The Gates Foundation’s location in Seattle gives the state of Washington purview over its charitable work, but the state attorney general’s office there says it did not have full-time staff dedicated to investigating charitable activities until 2014, a decade after the foundation became the largest philanthropy in the world. The Washington AG’s office would not comment on whether it has ever investigated the Gates Foundation.

Bill Gates’s outsize charitable giving—​$36 billion to date—has created a blinding halo effect around his philanthropic work, as many of the institutions best placed to scrutinize his foundation are now funded by Gates, including academic think tanks that churn out uncritical reviews of its charitable efforts and news outlets that praise its giving or pass on investigating its influence.

In the absence of outside scrutiny, this private foundation has had far-reaching effects on public policy, pushing privately run charter schools into states where courts and voters have rejected them, using earmarked funds to direct the World Health Organization to work on the foundation’s global health agenda, and subsidizing Merck’s and Bayer’s entry into developing countries. Gates, who routinely appears on the Forbes list of the world’s most powerful people, has proved that philanthropy can buy political influence.

Gates’s personal wealth is greater today than ever before, around $100 billion, and at only 64 years of age, he may have decades left to donate this money, picking up a Nobel Prize along the way or—who knows?—a presidential nomination. The same could be said of Melinda Gates, who, at 55, recently took a big step into public life with a highly publicized book tour.

But it’s also possible that a day of reckoning is coming for Big Philanthropy, Bill Gates, and the growing number of billionaires following his footsteps into charity.

Economists, politicians, and journalists continue to put a spotlight on billionaires who aren’t paying their fair share of taxes but who shape politics through campaign contributions and lobbying. Charity is seldom regarded as a tax-avoiding tool of influence, but if income inequality continues to gain attention, there is simply no way to avoid asking tough questions of Big Philanthropy. Do billionaire philanthropists have too much power, with too little public accountability or transparency? Should the wealthiest Americans have carte blanche to spend their wealth any way they want?

It may seem like a radical proposition to challenge the ability or desire of multibillionaires to give away their fortunes, but such scrutiny has a historical precedent in mainstream politics. One hundred years ago, when oil baron John D. Rockefeller asked Congress to provide him with a charter to start a private foundation, his ambitions were soundly rejected as an anti-democratic power grab. As Theodore Roosevelt said at the time, “No amount of charities in spending such fortunes can compensate in any way for the misconduct in acquiring them.”

The Fugitive

Well as the under-utilized naval ship sailed away from the harbor (whosever idea that was showed how tax payer dollars are abused that one was it) to the temporary closing (as in still set up but not being used) Javitz Center and the tents of the Salvation Army or whatever weird fucking religious crew run by homophobe Franklin Graham on public lands, which could have been used well for the public to go while being locked down, get folded up we are back to just the overworked and underprepared/supplied public hospitals, and those private ones stocked by Warren Buffet, to treat the  new/next/more Covid patients. The ones in the prisons or in Convents, nursing homes well you will be fine if no one notices you are dead.  And well even those on the Subway, again wondering how many hours those bodies were there shedding viruses or whatever caused them to die.  Remember if you are not tested POS for Covid and you die you die of that but still are likely counted as dead by Covid, maybe or maybe not. Who knows?  Does anyone care?  Well apparently law enforcement does.

I had read about arrests, chases and hunts of others in other less democratic countries who had escaped Covid treatment facilities; such as the woman in Chile, Russia, India , Africa and even Israel. 

When I read this article in the Tennessean about a homeless man who “escaped” the Covid facility from the fairgrounds (where I lived only about a mile away) and was set up exclusively for homeless it again made me wonder who was being treated at the varying satellite facilities in New York and New Jersey. Something tells me not the insured or the white but what do I know? Well nothing as they don’t tell you shit screaming HIPAA laws. Well wrong again.

Yes folks buried in the article was the policy regarding HIPAA and the ruling on public safety (of which there are many guidelines) .  Good times as this is what I had been looking for when I tried to explain to someone that HIPAA does not apply in the case of COVID as it is highly infectious and back in the day during the height of the AIDS crisis that debate raged as it was believed solely blood born and sexually transmitted.  Then came the Ryan White story and the affect on the blood supply and well game on and hence the law in New York that if you have had sex in the last 6 months you cannot donate blood despite that all blood regardless of donors sexual history is tested for any disease including AIDS.  That is called the work-around. And of course with Covid that is contagious via close contact,  the same way but without sex, meaning that coughing, sneezing, drooling, vomiting, diarrhea,  heavy sweat (as in a fever) makes this virus virulent and highly transmittable.  No it is not again in the air like measles, whooping cough or TB all by coming into contact via the air.  Covid is  flu like and that means close prolonged contact.  So keep moving and when out wash your hands immediately upon returning from those essential errands, then clean the surfaces that anything you brought in touched and dispose of those items, toss the gloves, the mask in the trash or in turn wash your mask after wearing and then finally clean your skin, such as a face or exposed areas again to eliminate any potential infection.  But no the virus is not floating in the air in the same way airborne diseases are unless again in a confined space.. you know the ones I keep mentioning.  But if you live in an apartment or home with others they have to follow the exact same protocol which means intense cleaning and agreement on that policy and good luck with that.  You might want to escape too.

I am all for my civil rights being ignored in a public health crisis and in a state of emergency, again 9/11 anyone. And that little office that housed ex-patriot Edward Snowden, is an example of what they did in the surveillance state. We have the capability and technology, Stingray’s anyone?  All available to monitor and track and trace people. So to have corporations such as Google and Apple come up with an App for that, I say no thanks.  Sorry but no. They are already underfire for either not providing or providing such information to law enforcement to use at their discretion and those cases of SWAT arriving at doors and taking down bad guys has worked out so well or not. What.ever. you decide.  And that is the problem, the lack of consistency, oversight, regulations and other issues that well ended up with stop and frisk, the drug wars and the new Jim Crow and the incarcerations of black men. It ends up with immigrants being detained for no actual crime and of course just innocent people getting caught in the crossfire.  So no thanks on that one.

I don’t take my phone anywhere.  I have a daily journal that I mark where I go and what I did that day and in turn most likely would provide that info if asked but most likely I would also tell the usual suspects whom I do contact regularly what my status is.  I also would do the testing at a private physician to speed up the results and also keep them private as unless I go to a hospital as it is a need to know basis and who needs to know?  I also know that as I am single, a woman and without an advocate I would be shoved onto a ventilator or put in some satellite facility as I don’t have health insurance.  So yes death panels do exist.   It is also why the journal along with all my directives, will and the like sits on my desk.  I have no ICE and there is no need as I am quite clear and there can be no confusion with it clearly marked and dated.  It is also notarized and updated annually.  So I have learned first hand how neglectful and abusive hospitals are.  Ask me about my experience at Harborview Medical Center in Seattle in 2012. They treated me like animal and I will never cheer medical personnel for as long as I live as a result.

Why this is so bad is  because right now no one is tracking, testing or tracing.  A woman here in Jersey City died from a heart attack brought on by an asthma attack; she originally was turned away from a hospital as she did not exhibit ALL of the symptoms(as if anyone does), got worse and by the time she returned to the same facility she was too ill and died.  Her death is listed as the result of a heart attack. Okay then, as she was never tested even in post mortem and yet since that time 9 others in her same building have all tested positive, a sort of mini hot zone if you will.  None of them knew about the other and there you go and the building was not cleaned or even touched to reduce the spread from day one.. at least in my building where we “know” of three units none of the staff knew until after and they are pissed, one quit.  So there you go. So much for public safety. Again the virus from symptoms to actual affects on the body varies and so if you are in at “at risk” group you should be tested immediately if one symptom is present, not because of a checklist, and in turn if you have other health issues immediately put on a 24-48 hour watch (many times it is week two when all hell breaks lose)  and that can be at a satellite facility with close contact upon release to ensure you are receiving appropriate, contactless care and in turn tested upon having no symptoms. That has not happened and again if it has what are the numbers for those cases and the results?

So why would you not escape as you aint’ getting shit. And neither are we.  And I would be happy to allow these facilities or organizations and hotels that are open of these kind of business to be available to treat all kinds of COVID patients and the like if they are just that, equipped, trained and able to do so.  Not so sure about that either as if you are short of PPE, etc then what do they have and are they able to do anything but handle the most minor of cases and if they do code then what?  So if this is about public safety and tax dollars we have the right to know and HIPAA has allowed us that much so cough it up… pun intended.

Tennessee, Nashville health officials provide names of those testing positive for coronavirus to police

Natalie Allison and Yihyun Jeong, Nashville
 Tennessean May 8, 2020

Gov. Bill Lee says the state’s release to police departments and sheriff’s offices the names and addresses of Tennesseans who have tested positive for the coronavirus is necessary to protect officers’ lives — information that is also being independently shared between city health officials and police in Nashville.

Lee told reporters at Second Harvest Food Bank in Nashville on Friday the details are only for those working “from a law enforcement standpoint” to know who has tested positive.

“We believe that that’s appropriate to protect the lives of law enforcement,” Lee said when asked why police need the information

The Tennessee Lookout, a new nonprofit news organization, first reported the agreement between local law enforcement agencies and the state Department of Health, which is releasing the information.

The agencies receiving lists from the state of individuals who have contracted the coronavirus include the Knoxville Police Department, the Nashville Airport Authority, the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office and dozens more.
Nashville health officials share coronavirus patient data with police, fire officials

Separately, in Nashville, the Metro Health Department confirmed to The Tennessean Friday that officials have been providing to the Metro Nashville Police Department the addresses of people who have tested positive or are quarantined for COVID-19.

The data is inputted into the police department’s computer system so that any officer who has contact with an individual who has tested positive for the virus can take additional precautions, Metro Health spokesperson Brian Todd said.

Metro police spokesman Don Aaron said in a similar statement the department uses the information so officers can “take additional precautions.”

The information is also put into the Department of Emergency Communications dispatch system so that fire and EMS workers responding to an address can take steps to use increased personal protective equipment and distancing protocols.

“At no time is this data shared with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office,” Todd said in a statement.

In a statement, Cooper spokesperson Chris Song reiterated Todd’s comments, and said the information is “safely kept” among Metro agencies.

“We are taking necessary precautions to protect both our first responders and our residents, including those who are part of Nashville’s diverse immigrant communities,” Song said, adding officials are communicating with community partners that the information will not be shared with federal immigration authorities.

“As Mayor Cooper has stated repeatedly, everyone deserves to feel safe in our community, including our front line personnel and the valued members of our immigrant communities,” he said in a statement.

Though the data isn’t not shared with the sheriff’s office, the health department said if a police officer arrests a person who has tested positive for COVID-19, they will inform sheriff’s personnel when releasing them into their custody.

All public safety personnel have been noticed that the information cannot be publicly released and is for “official use only,” Todd and Aaron said. Unauthorized use is a violation of Metro police policy.

The information is updated regularly, and once a person has recovered from COVID-19, they are removed from the list.

According to the Tennessee Department of Health, as of Friday 68 police chiefs and sheriffs have signed on to a memorandum of understanding that they will receive a running list of names and addresses of individuals in Tennessee “documented as having tested positive, or received treatment for COVID-19.”

The list is updated for law enforcement each day, the MOU states, and individuals’ names are removed from the list after 30 days.

Metro police and the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office have no plans to move into an agreement with the state, according to both Aaron and Todd.

Hedy Weinberg, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee, criticized the policy’s impact on privacy and said it’s more important for law enforcement “Protecting the health of first responders is certainly an important priority. However, as public health experts have noted, disclosing names and addresses of positive cases does not protect first responders, as many people have not been tested and many people who do carry the virus are asymptomatic,” Weinberg said in a statement.

“Disclosing the personal information of individuals who will never have contact with law enforcement raises fundamental concerns about privacy without yielding a significant public health benefit. It is incumbent that any government policy implemented during the pandemic be grounded in science and public health and be no more intrusive on civil liberties than absolutely necessary.”

The Tennessee Immigration and Refugee Rights Coalition has worked during the pandemic to reduce barriers preventing immigrants statewide from getting care and have formally partnered with Metro Nashville and other organizations to increase more community outreach.

In a statement posted on Twitter Friday, TIRRC said the state’s policy to share information with law enforcement should be “rescinded immediately.”

“This completely undermines all of the work organizations like ours are doing to encourage people to go get tested. This will exacerbate the public health crisis,” TIRRC said.

The group did not immediately respond to a request for comment about Nashville’s policy.

Lee said Friday the state was providing this information to law enforcement agencies in compliance with guidelines put forth by the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

A document published by DHHS’ Office for Civil Rights states the HIPAA Privacy Rule permits an entity like a health department to release protected health information to first responders “to prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to the health and safety of a person or the public.”

Shelley Walker, spokesperson fro the Tennessee Department of Health, said in a statement the department “believes these disclosures are necessary to avert a serious threat to health or safety.”

More than 14,000 people in Tennessee have tested positive for the virus.

Lee defended the information only being made available to law enforcement and not other front-line workers, such as grocery store employees who also must interact with possible coronavirus patients, by saying that officers are “required to come into contact with these people.

“We know that first responders are required to and law enforcement are required to come into contact with these people as part of their job,” Lee said. “That’s why Health and Human Services gave that guidance to states and that’s why we’re implementing that.” to focus on offering officers proper protective gear as a way to keep them safe.

“Protecting the health of first responders is certainly an important priority. However, as public health experts have noted, disclosing names and addresses of positive cases does not protect first responders, as many people have not been tested and many people who do carry the virus are asymptomatic,” Weinberg said in a statement.

“Disclosing the personal information of individuals who will never have contact with law enforcement raises fundamental concerns about privacy without yielding a significant public health benefit. It is incumbent that any government policy implemented during the pandemic be grounded in science and public health and be no more intrusive on civil liberties than absolutely necessary.”

Potty Training

Why that explains the issue surrounding toilet paper hoarding (there is a documentary on the subject so I am not going into detail about that) there is also an issue surrounding Marijuana and its definition of essential in places where it is legal.  Originally from Washington State and lived in Seattle through its evolution and recall when it was strictly medical in California and the times they are a changing and then again not so much.

Well one thing Covid did do is end passing the bong/the joint/the vape that much is certain.  For that I am good with again I have always had bodily fluid exchange issues and I would rather fuck with condoms than kiss anyone. I can shower and walk out of that but the whole tongue in the mouth, yuck. Again while I did not think I would be celibate for seven years it gave me an opportunity to inventory the sexual history and frankly fucking is about having a few minutes or longer if lucky to really have fun then its over, like a roller coaster.  It doesn’t mean you need to ride it every day and the thrill of it makes it exciting when you remember it and can look forward to it again.  I am good with memories and the thought of a man climbing on top of me and humping and pumping just makes me roller coaster nauseous so thankfully I have many options of self pleasure that I prefer. But enough about me!

This November Jersey is allowing the citizens to vote on legalizing Marijuana and I say hail yes. Frankly at this point we need businesses and the taxes that pot provides.  Medical Marijuana is tax exempt and hence when you purchase your weed there it is cheaper but the selections are fewer and that is almost strictly all cash and with hard restrictions about purchase.  The legal recreational shops are not tax exempt, have massive options and types of purchase, some do take cards and have lounges and the ability to sit and enjoy your purchase on site and even prepared for you by the Budtenders. Think Barista but with pot not coffee.  That said you are not allowed to buy a limited amount but nothing stopping you from going to shop to shop and loading up as they are not interconnected with that data and from what I could tell it is not reported to the State to monitor individuals and their purchasing history.  But it is like any competitive business and the type of weed, prices, etc matter and I can say from my last weed vacation in San Francisco it does matter.  I went to almost all the legal shops and tried it all and while it was great for a high holiday I can see that unless you have no budget and that it is a regular part of your lifestyle you need money.  And the black market still very much exists for that reason.

The reality is that many investment firms and venture capitalists decided that pot was the new frontier and when they get their grubby profit enhanced hands in there it turns into shit real fast, one only needs to look at the graveyards of restaurants and retail that will in the post pandemic world see a graveyard filled with their bones.   I have long said there is a bizarre marketplace when it comes to pot, from the bullshit idiots who diagnose you with some disorder to qualify for a med pot license, few if any are actual Doctors, shit Dr. Phil qualifies, and in turn you pay that price to get that card. Then there were wholesalers that found themselves in a myriad of complex legalities and confusing financials that led few outlets to open much like a floral marketplace in which vendors could sell and retailers could shop.  So that too is another complex variable to this polynomial.

I don’t need to again to get into the complex financial regulations and issues about how that affects the business but it is like the Mafia, Breaking Bad or Ozark only with less interesting characters.

The Washington Post examined the industry in California one of the early lockdown states that also allowed Pot businesses to remain open as essential.  And it like many others are finding it hard to stay open and remain profitable.

Weed is deemed ‘essential’ in California, but many pot businesses are on the brink of failure

The industry has been hammered by high taxes, local opposition to retail stores, the vaping crisis and more. The coronavirus creates a new opportunity and another potential crisis.

By  Reed Albergotti 
The Washington Post
April 14, 2020

SAN FRANCISCO — As the novel coronavirus rages on, few industries have experienced quite as many highs and lows as California’s cannabis industry.

Just a month ago, it looked like California’s weed trade was headed for a shutdown, which would have landed a devastating blow to many businesses that are already struggling. Then, state officials deemed pot “essential, and many stores reported the biggest days of sales since recreational marijuana became legal. Now, a more sobering reality is setting in: The marijuana industry is unable to tap into a federal stimulus package or bank loans.

“There’s no money that’s going to be coming into the sector,” says Nicholas Kovacevich, CEO of KushCo Holdings, a major distributor to marijuana dispensaries. “All of these companies, including us, need to get profitable really quickly or risk running out of money.”

For industries like California’s pot business that were already on the brink, the coronavirus crisis represents a make-or-break moment. Many retailers and restaurants have shut in the past month for the stay-at-home order, unsure whether they’ll reopen when it’s over. Like grocers, the marijuana industry’s ability to operate during the pandemic offers a much-needed source of revenue. But for the pot business, the lack of a safety net, access to banking or the ability to tap into federal stimulus dollars means the tiniest misstep could lead to bankruptcy.

“We saw the potential to lose everything and then have the state or federal government not have our backs at all. It was very scary,” said Dave Wingard, who owns Flora Terra, a marijuana cultivator and dispensary in Santa Rosa, Calif., with his wife, Alicia. They had finally gotten their business up and running last fall after a year and a half of cutting through red tape.

The designation by Bay Area governments was a major milestone for an industry that was ravaged by a war on drugs and survived years of turmoil since legalization. California was the first U.S. state to legalize medicinal marijuana in 1996, but the industry was marred by periodic crackdowns by federal law enforcement. In 2016, following Colorado and other states, voters approved recreational sales, prompting an investment boom. Many predicted that it would bring it out from the shadows, turning the once underground drug into an over-the-counter commodity.

The opposite happened. The state began heavily taxing the product, and local municipalities tacked on their own taxes and fees, which boosted prices. Many towns opted to block marijuana dispensaries from opening up nearby, choking the ability of legal operators to distribute their goods.

Tom Adler, owner of Wonder Extracts, which had been selling medicinal marijuana since the ’90s, says his business margins over the past two years were cut by 75 percent in part because of increased costs associated with regulation and high taxes — far from his “huge” expectations for the business when it was legalized four years ago.

With the drug legalized, underground dealers felt emboldened to expand their operations, setting up expansive delivery networks, undercutting the prices of legal pot and depriving the state of marijuana revenue. California initially expected about $1 billion in new tax revenue in 2018. It took in $342 million. Untaxed and unpoliced, black-market pot is estimated to be much larger than the legal trade in California.

Hampered by a morass of regulation, local opposition to stores and a thriving black market, many marijuana businesses have shuttered. The vaping crisis, which was linked to the marijuana business because the pens are a popular method for smoking pot, last fall scared away investors and sent pot stocks plummeting.

When the Bay Area designated dispensaries essential businesses and customers rushed to stock up, it created one of the few bright spots in the state’s economy.

The owner of Foggy Daze Delivery, who goes by the name Evrett, was so busy the day after the stay-at-home order that he became a delivery driver himself. He made 39 deliveries that day, driving all over San Francisco handing bags full of weed to grateful customers. “We genuinely believe we’re performing an essential service,” he said.

“The fact that they’re allowed to be open is huge,” said Fiona Ma, the California state treasurer who said she hopes marijuana will help buoy the state’s tax revenue, which is sure to be drastically down this year. “Obviously, it’s going to help,” she said. But she cautioned that the illicit marijuana business is likely also bustling, with even less enforcement because of stay-at-home orders.

Now, California’s cannabis workers have the undesirable distinction of being front-line workers during a pandemic operating on razor-thin margins and zero federal support.

Logistical hurdles such as setting up a drive-through operation — a public health requirement — and protecting employees from the virus have added costs. Meanwhile, business owners had to pay for extended sick leave for employees who aren’t working during the pandemic because of new requirements in the Families First Coronavirus Response Act.

Brandon Levine, owner of Mercy Wellness in Cotati, Calif., said when he received an alert on his mobile phone that cannabis stores will be limited to curbside delivery, he and his employees wasted no time getting to work designing a drive-through store in the parking lot. They stayed up until 1 a.m. setting it up.

“Our industry, the people in it are resilient and open-minded. We’re talking about cannabis here, so you have to be a little bit open-minded,” he said.

What counts as essential during a coronavirus lockdown: Fries in Belgium, wine in France

Last week, Rep. Ed Perlmutter of Colorado (D) said he is pushing to include marijuana businesses in the next federal stimulus package. Democratic Sens. Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, both of Oregon, are also supporting that change.

The industry has some unusual challenges when it comes to stopping germs. Unlike most businesses these days, the marijuana trade is heavily reliant on cash transactions because banks have largely shunned the sector.

Hard Car, a security company that caters to the marijuana business, performs a function that sounds arcane in the year 2020: In addition to distributing cannabis products, it transfers large sums of cash to the federal reserve for marijuana companies that can’t get a bank to serve them because of federal restrictions.

Todd Kleperis, the company’s co-founder, said he anticipated the coronavirus would be a problem and ordered 3,000 face masks and gloves for his workers early last month. Once Hard Car’s drivers are done with a delivery, drivers take off their masks and gloves and use hand sanitizer and clean the vehicles, some of which have air filters that can stop viruses. Drivers are told to regularly change their masks to avoid risking infection.

In Santa Rosa, the Wingards’ Flora Terra business saw an initial spike after the industry was deemed essential. Since then, they are seeing better revenue overall, but not enough.

That burden on small businesses is supposed to be compensated by the new federal stimulus bill that offers small businesses what is essentially free money to make up for added costs. But the Wingards won’t be eligible for that aid because the federal government deems their business illegal.

“I don’t know where it’s going to go,” Dave Wingard said. “It’s hard. It’s a tough business. … We’re going to try our best.”