#dana is student body president

[desert-bluffs-and-me]

WTNV quick rundown - 50 - Capital Campaign

This episode was co-written with Ashley Lierman. Does that make it canon? Not canon? Dubiously canon? Who makes the rules? Am I just rambling so these openings seem less frosty and uninviting? Yes.

Home is where the heart is. We found it one day in the sink. It hums things late at night, but they are not songs. Welcome to Night Vale.

The capital campaign is an initiative being run by the NV community college (NVCC) to fund a new science centre for the students. (Oh gee, I wonder why Cecil is very invested this this?). They do eventually meet their undisclosed goal after dealing with an Incident.

The Incident is several donations of a huge amount of angora rabbits from one Mrs Silvia Wickersham, a previous NVCC student who has always been very passionate about education and who hasn't been seen in almost a decade.

The rabbits overrun the school, eating all foliage on campus, ransacking several of the botany programmes greenhouses, refusing to wait in line before orderings snacks in the cafeteria, taking way more napkins than they need, using dedicated landlines to make personal calls, uttering insensitive remarks about the body types of students/staff and tilting vending machines.

This is apparently normal for the breed, according to Simone Rigadeau, the transient who lives in the Earth Sciences building.

Since all attempts to relocate them or stop the donations fail, the SSP attempt to confront Ms Wickersham about her donations. They find she has become a lizard, which is apparently one of the rewards for being an especially high level donor to the NVCC. Other unusual awards include the ability to invade your neighbours dreams and having all your belongings taken from your home (which Ms Wickersham also did).

Since she is now a lizard, control of the situation is left to her next of kin, which is her right-wing dry cleaner Ben Burnham who thinks colleges are just 'socialist factories' and retracts all of her donations. The rabbits are then donated to the NV petting zoo to feed the poor emaciated wolves there (the only animal there at all).

Weather: "Ghost Story" by Charming Disaster charmingdisaster.bandcamp.com

The college president is called Sarah Sultan, who is a smooth fist-sized river rock who communicates via telepathy. She thinks it is important for students to pursue the sciences, except astronomy which 'nobody cares about'.

NVCC apparently has a graduation rate higher than the national average.

Carlos is still in the otherworld, but Cecil assures us he is fine and still a hero. He's very proud of his boyfriend though clearly misses him and sadly remarks about trying to get a 'reservation for one' at Tourniquet.

Speaking of Tourniquet, it's becoming very popular thanks to the culinary prowess of executive chef LeSean Mason. It has been reviewed very well by Gia Samuels of the NVDJ who mentioned that Earl Harlan is the Sous Chef there.

This surprises Cecil as he saw Earl, his childhood friend, dragged off by a hoard of mute children at the last boy scout ceremony and usually nobody comes back from that. He's happy that Earl is back and hopes he's doing well and will return to his voluntary duties as scout master.

Cecil keeps ending up on the AppleBees website instead of the Tourniquet one, somehow.

Spinal columns are a valid form of payment in NV.

Dana will be sworn in 'this Friday'. The ceremony includes a swearing-in ceremony that takes place behind a thick velvet curtain, raised a few inches so you can only see a few shuffling feet and hear loud high-pitched shouts. This is also the only time in which citizens are allowed to publicly voice any and all forbidden beliefs they have without repercussion. The event will take place in an undisclosed location 200 miles from downtown Night Vale, and will be exactly 2 minutes long. 

The FOW and Hiram McDaniels are still very upset by this result and attempting to complain to a canyon wall they think might be Hidden Gorge, though nobody actually knows where it is.

Stay tuned next for a reality that cannot possibly match expectation. And as always, good night Night Vale. Good night.

Proverb: Most people think pit bulls are dangerous dogs, but biologically speaking, most pit bulls are just three shih zhus wearing a trench coat.

#wtnv #welcome to night vale #wtnv quick rundown #wtnv ep 50

[bulkhummus]

Carlos and Cecil — but make it college ! A scene I drew from a story I’ve been writing during down time. Cecil has just entered an apartment party to find a drunk Carlos, who normally doesn‘t party, let alone get drunk. Amused but vaguely worried, Cecil takes him home.

Cecil, a 23 year old journalism major who has no regard for his wellbeing and Carlos, a 26 year old workaholic grad student who discovers a new species in Night Vale.

A story of lobsters, learning and love ✨

#wtnv #the legs are Long tonight boys forgive me #wtnv podcast #cecilos #cecil/carlos #cecil palmer #carlos the scientist #wtnv college au #wtnv au #Wtnv fanart #welcome to night vale #Original art #art tag #Carlos has ADD in this #and cecil is anxious and depressed #Old Woman Josie is Cecil’s therapist #dana is student body president #Carlos is clearly into cecil but won’t let himself date bc of his work and knowing how he is with maintaining relationships #Cecil is clearly into carlos but will not make big moves in fear of losing a carefully cultivated friendship #Cecil is an intern at the radio station and does his campus show three nights a week #Cecil helps carlos record things and carlos is impressed by his ability to use according equipment #i have so many THOUGHTS #someone ask me questions im gonna explode #also like my boys are switches #but cecil is a bottom in my heart so #hes too dramatic and too much of a brat to not be a bottom #Especially in this story #And carlos just Deals with him with awe and exasperation bc hes stupidly in love and so curious about everything cecil does #and that curiosity and desire for exploration becomes very Top Energy even if Carlos doesn’t mean for it to he just wants to know and see #ALL of cecil

[elsewhereuniversity]

rescue mission

It’s been five weeks and two days since Fake Dana was kil- disappeared and Real Dana came back. I didn’t know exactly what would happen to me should I complain about it to anyone but the dean, so I was laying low, but… the recent discovery of my roommate’s skin being a bright shade of green changed some of my plans.

When I told him - Threeox - about Real Dana murdering Fake Dana, and now living invisibly on the campus (I’d never seen her again), he sighed, locked the door and windows, before making me sit on the floor between our beds and getting out a small wooden key out of a seemingly lidless box made of shimmery dark brown wood. The box was amazingly carved, so much so that looking at it too long made me dizzy, and I had to close my eyes not to faint as the patterns on the lid started to sway as to a sharp breeze.

“Threeox, what’s that about ?” I asked, a little confused - and a whole lot scared.

That was probably not my smartest move - Threeox doesn’t talk per se, he just… gets his point across in a remarkable way that I had yet to pin down. A series of drawings of a cat with five eyes and a full ten minutes of interpretative dancing later, I kind of gathered that Fake Dana was trapped in the mirrors in the North Dorm, and couldn’t get out because of all the iron.

Naturally, I tried to organise a rescue mission, but gathering partners proved difficult. Real Dana apparently gained quite a reputation among the Student Witches, and everyone kept looking at me weirdly when I asked where Fake Dana was and if we could, like, rescue her maybe ? No one wanted to talk to me for more than two minutes, fidgeting uncomfortably and asking me if I’d packed my suitcase yet. I wasn’t going anywhere without Fake Dana, but hey, who am I to contradict the masses ? I’d just have to lay low a little longer.

It started on rocky grounds but I did gather for this mission a few seniors, all knights that had a history of being kind(er) to the Changelings, even though I’d never heard of them before. Their names were Toll, Bell and Eulogy, which - okay, some of us have weird names, but… It’s not that hard to pick a happy one. I couldn’t quite remember what mine was now but people had no trouble remembering me when I talked to them, so I assumed that was fine.

Add to the knights a freshman, EXO. Freshmen are probably a bit too young and frightened for that, but the fearless EXO wasn’t, uh, exactly a freshman ? Freshperson ? They were at least two metres tall and they had that look in their eyes that told you not to mess with them or they’d do unspeakable things that I, well, couldn’t speak of. Just know they were good for stuff like this. Or so I assumed, since they were the one who brought the knights to my bi-weekly “Where is Fake Dana” search.

We got some supplies: the baseball bat Fake Dana hid under my bed that one night the dean decided to do a room check, a good couple teaspoons of charcoal, some rags, a freaking battleaxe that Toll swooshed around like it weighed nothing, and that one river rock the archivist kindly lent us, and we departed for the wild wild north. Midnight seemed an appropriate time.

The dorm looked fancy, not gonna lie, the iron structure glimmered and almost rippled under the moonlight. I felt EXO shiver as we entered, their eyes losing any life that they might have had, their skin getting that weird greenish hue it didn’t have just moments before. The knights also shivered, but that might have been the cold.

The entrance was deserted, no sign of life save for a calico cat who meowed at us and tried to eat my shoelaces. She promptly departed when I told her they were a gift from the president, though I didn’t specify which president. It was the president of the cross-stitching club I was in in middle school, and she, uh, suffered from a slight eye issue after she looked through my hagstone. I mean, I did warn her about seeing the Nethers through the hole, but she didn’t listen.

Anyways, enough of that. Toll started to hack at the nearest door with his axe, waking up the poor unsuspecting students living there. “Where the fuck is she ?”, I asked, peeking around Toll’s shoulders. The two girls looked at each other, at Toll’s axe, at each other again, and one of them ended up spitting out “Basement. Third door to the left. Hope you die a slow, painful death, girl, you deserve it.”

Eulogy, true to her name, sang a few verses in Tamil, and we all collected our spirits before walking towards the basement. The iron in the walls seemed to sing to the beat of our steps, the doors creaking to the rhythm of our breaths. EXO seemed paler and paler under the dimmed overhead lights, until Eulogy sprayed us all with what I can only assume is water from that Wishing Well we’re not exactly supposed to talk about. That seemed to calm us down a little. I squeezed EXO’s hand when they looked at me questioningly, my smile thin and eyes dulled by fatigue. I couldn’t sleep that well since Fake Dana was gone, so I just wanted this to be over with already. 

The third door was cracked open, but no sounds emanated from behind the heavy iron and the weird, Tolkien-inspired words of advice in elvish. I could recognise “The way is shut, and the Dead keep it”, which wasn’t even the full correct quote. The door swayed to an invisible breeze and it opened way too silently for something made of rusty metal. As we went down the stairs, we could hear the stone crackle with contained electricity, so much so that Toll, Bell and Eulogy decided to stay up to guard our backs. EXO grit their teeth but didn’t stop, grabbing Toll’s axe on the way.

“Good luck, bro, and good riddance, you girl,” Eulogy waved, and the three knights were gone as if they were never here. I wondered what she meant by that, but I couldn’t ask in time. EXO gestured to the stairs, mouth shut tight. I was kind of getting tired of everyone telling me I should leave, so I hoped at least Fake Dana would help with that. Hadn’t I been working so hard to rescue her ?

At the bottom of the narrow stairs were two doors, also made out of metal, and what Threeox told me about - the mirror.

Ten feet tall, circled with iron chains, the metal behind the glass pane was reminiscent of clouds, though it was most likely silver. I could see a prostrate silhouette in the bottom right corner, faint tremors running through her whole body, sobs muffled, whimpers of pain spread between fits of coughing.

I yelled something I couldn’t really understand, a guttural sound that made her raise her head, and I saw Fake Dana’s eyes grow wide as she recognised me.

“Missed me ?” She smiled, teeth sharp.

My throat went tight as she started to slam her fists against the glass. “It’ll be okay soon. I promise,” I said, examining the lock keeping the iron chains together.

“Hey, move, I’ll take care of it,” a voice I pinned on EXO whispered in my ear. “Tell her to stand back.”

I did so, and Fake Dana retreated to the far side of the mirrorspace. With three swipes of his axe, EXO managed to hack away most of the chains, and the rest I hastily discarded, fists pounding on the glass as Fake Dana pounded back. 

“The key. The lock.”

“Fuck.” I started rummaging through my satchel, finally finding the small piece of wood that has slithered into the bag of crackers I keep for the crows. “Where is that fucking lock ?”

EXO gestured to the back of the mirror and helped me turn it around, their skin starting to sea as they kept pushing the metal. They eventually managed to shift it enough that I could wrestle my arm in and fit the key into an oddly shaped keyhole. 

The back of the mirror started glowing a pale green before cracking open, revealing a room barely large enough to fit Fake Dana. Tears welling up in my eyes, I did my best to extract her without causing her too much damage until she finally made it out to the other side.

“Friend,” I said. “I didn’t think I’d ever find you ! Thankfully Threeox helped, and there’s - look,” I continued, turning back to face my rescue team, forgetting it was only me and EXO now.

They were smiling, too, and they gestured at the stairs. I understood what they meant - out.

I turned to Fake Dana again, still somewhat relieved to see her dry her tears and gracefully get up without giving me the time to offer help. She smiled like nothing was wrong. I followed her up the stairs and into the hall, her naked feet sizzling and leaving angry red marks on the floor, probably due to the iron dust covering every inch of the place. EXO swung the the front door open, touching the iron pane with a quickly blistering hand, and as I looked at them more closely, I couldn’t help but mouth “Threeox”. 

“Oh shit, right, come here !” Fake Dana grabbed my face with both her hands, her palms wet with leftover tears and blood, the feel of them sending shivers down my spine. She spat in my eyes like she’d done before, and suddenly the night became less bright, her skin less pale, EXO’s features morphing into the face of my roommate, skin going from that red I’d been kinda surprised about, to the vibrant green that the cat warned me about. 

Toll, Bell and Eulogy were nowhere to be seen. I started wondering if I’d dreamed about them, if they were ever here at all. Their names had stuck in my mind and once again I wondered what mine was. I know Sizzle, my roommate, was quite upset before shoving me out of the room - which room was that again ? 17 ? 23 ? I forgot.

Fake Dana interrupted my thoughts with a light shove on my arm. “You can leave, now, you’ll remember who you are soon. It’s okay, it’s done.”

“What’s done ?” I tried to ask, but my eyelids suddenly became so heavy I had trouble keeping them open.

The last thing I heard were guttural sounds, so unlike Fake Dana’s voice, and a wet caress on my back.

I woke up on this train a few moments ago. I don’t know where it’s going, except from “Far away” and “Not where I came from”. My suitcase is filled with all my belongings, except the iron jewellery I acquired during my two years as Elsewhere U. And as I look at the landscape we are zapping by, I do not recognise the streets nor the trees.

The only thing keeping me from falling asleep again is the sticky red liquid pouring out of my nose, making me curse out loud as I scramble for a handkerchief. The blood stops flowing after a while, and I catch my reflection in the window across me.

I have several streaks of white hair, the contrast sharp with my otherwise dark brown ponytail. My eyes are bloodshot and I have blood caked on my face in the shape of hands. My skin is pale, my eyes gleam a quickly fading red.

I remember it now. My name is Dana.

x

#hazblogs #rescue mission #stories #long post #dana #exo #threeox #fake dana #mirrors #submission

[laf-outloud]

I just noticed that misha posted 2 posts right after the Cas one, and surprise surprise it's about his book and his podcast! Like come on I don't know how his fans don't see how he uses Cas and spn to promote his stuff. He literally only mentions spn or Cas or dean or Jensen when he wants to make money or to promote something.

It's true, because he knows that's the only place his fans recognize him from. Look, I'm okay with the fact that he needs to earn money. Everybody does. It's the way he goes about it that's despicable.

He preys on the simple-minded, immature and insecure fans. These are people who see him as their ally, it's them against the big, bad corporate CW. He's the nerd who was picked on by the popular kids, Jensen and Jared (of course, they can't include Jensen in that because he's part of Destiel so they focus all their hate on the "prom king", the "student body president", the most successful of the three, Jared).

His fans see themselves in him and he plays it up, he pretends to be what they want him to be. He gives them hints, and clues, that Castiel (Misha for those who can't differentiate) is lonely, he's to be pitied, he didn't get what he wanted, thereby, in turn, Misha didn't get what he wanted.

All that being said, he may pretend to be their ally, but I can all but guarantee he goes home (wherever that is) at the end of the day and thinks, "oh, Dana was triggered today, I hope she's doing better," or "Shay was picked on by a bunch of Twitter bullies. I should keep her in my thoughts." He just doesn't care about who they are, or their feelings, no matter how much he may act like he does in front of them or online (and it is an act, because, guess what, he's an actor and he's currently playing his greatest role.) They don't see it and I doubt they ever will because they are immature, insecure, simple-minded people. I only hope that those growing up can see him for who and what he is, a conman through and through.

#anti misha #anti destiel #anti destihellers #anti minions #conman misha

[reading-writing-revolution]

This Just In: 71 members of the House of Delegates and 13 members of the Maryland Senate have signed a letter condemning Rep. Andy Harris and calling on him to resign for the part he played in “undermining a free and fair election and stoking violence.”

--

Representative Harris,

The foundational principle of our nation is democracy. The right of Americans to select their leaders is and should be inviolate. It is a right that all of us who serve in public office are sworn to uphold and protect in our oaths of office.

That oath is a sacred commitment to all Marylanders, and all Americans. It is an oath that requires us to support the democratic process in both words and actions. It is an oath that requires that we always put loyalty to our Constitution and our country above loyalty to any political party, candidate, or elected official.

Representative Harris, we believe that you have violated that oath. You have for months joined in cynical, politically motivated attempts to undermine the legitimate, free, and fair election that selected Joe Biden as the next President of the United States. You have joined with those who have trafficked in lies and conspiracy theories, who have incited division and hate, in the furtherance of a political agenda.

Our nation watched in horror on January 6th as a seditious mob, riled up and fueled by Donald Trump and his loyalists, assaulted the very seat of American democracy. As they tore into the marble halls that have been worn by the steps of our greatest leaders, the walls that have borne witness to our most profound national debates. As one of America’s most sacred spaces was desecrated, and as a member of the United States Capitol Police who was defending it was murdered.

These insurrectionists were motivated by the very rhetoric and disinformation that you and far too many of your colleagues have been trafficking in for months. Any student of the history of the United States knows that words have the power to move nations and citizens. Words like, “We the people.” Words also like, “Stand back, and stand by.”

Rather than recognizing that your words and behavior in office have damaged our democracy, have threatened our Constitution, and have undermined the nation you are sworn to, your response to the attack on our Capitol was to continue to use the same words and behavior. To vote with too many of your colleagues to undermine a free and fair election. To give comfort to the enemies of democracy within our borders and around the world.

We, the undersigned members of the Maryland General Assembly, believe that you have disgraced yourself, your state, and your country. We have heard from constituents who would like us to pass a resolution of censure against you. As our censure process is reserved for members of our body, we are not able to do so. But we add our voices to the chorus of your constituents who have called for you to resign.

You have done enough harm to our country and our state, Representative. It is time for you to go, and for a person who will serve Marylanders with honor to take your place.

Sincerely,

Delegate Carol Krimm Delegate Karen Lewis Young Delegate Ken Kerr

Delegate Carl Jackson Delegate Harry Bhandari Delegate Benjamin Brooks Senator Delores Kelley Delegate Jon Cardin

Delegate Lisa Belcastro Delegate Dana Stein

Senator Shelly Hettleman Delegate Jessica Feldmark Delegate Eric Ebersole Delegate Terri Hill

Senator Clarence Lam Delegate Shane Pendergrass Delegate Jen Terrasa

Delegate Vanessa Atterbeary Delegate Eric Luedtke Delegate Pamela Queen Delegate Anne Kaiser Delegate Kathleen Dumais Delegate David Fraser-Hidalgo Delegate Lily Qi

Senator Brian Feldman Delegate Marc Korman Delegate Sara Love

Delegate Ariana Kelly Delegate Julie Palakovich-Carr Delegate Jim Gilchrist Delegate Emily Shetty Delegate Al Carr

Delegate Jared Solomon Senator Jeff Waldstreicher

Delegate Bonnie Cullison Senator Benjamin Kramer Delegate Vaughn Stewart Delegate Charlotte Crutchfield Delegate Jheanelle Wilkins Delegate Lorig Charkoudian Delegate David Moon

Senator Will Smith

Delegate Ben Barnes

Delegate Joseline Pena-Melnyk Delegate Mary Lehman Delegate Alonzo Washington Delegate Nicole Williams Senator Paul Pinsky

Delegate Marvin Holmes Delegate Andrea Harrison Delegate Jazz Lewis

Delegate Kriselda Valderrama Delegate Michael Jackson Delegate Edith Patterson Delegate Debra Davis

Delegate Brian Crosby Delegate Shaneka Henson Delegate Dana Jones

Senator Sarah Elfreth

Delegate Mark Chang

Delegate Mike Rogers Delegate Sandy Bartlett

Senator Pamela Beidle Delegate Heather Bagnall Delegate Kirill Reznik Delegate Gabriel Acevero Delegate Lesley Lopez Delegate Melissa Wells Delegate Marlon Amprey Delegate Michele Guyton Delegate Regina T. Boyce Delegate Maggie Mcintosh Senator Mary Washington Delegate Pat Young Delegate Sheila Ruth Senator Charles Sydnor Delegate Stephanie Smith Senator Cory McCray Delegate Luke Clippinger Delegate Brooke Lierman Delegate Robbyn Lewis Delegate Diana Fennell Delegate Julian Ivey Delegate Wanika Fisher

[dwellordream]

Now I get why you had to create Nell for the goth purposes of the story. The Manderlys are either preps or kpopers, the Reeds are punks (super valid but not quite what the story needed), and the Karstarks are nerds. Both Alys and Harry but especially Harry, I bet Nell has to fight off the urge to shove him in a locker every time she sees him.

Wynafryd is pretty preppy in a throwback 90s way and Wylla is a rabid kpop fan with like 3 stan twitters.  The Reeds dress like extras from the set of Lost Boys and are home-schooled by their anarchist parents. Alys is incredibly nerdy but also plays women’s field hockey so no one fucks with her. She’s running for student body president. Harry is in all the advanced classes and likes to go off on little snide tangents in class about how immature everyone is behaving, and he was really fun to push into lockers until he hit his growth spurt and finally tried out for ice hockey with his brothers. Now he’s a Big Man on Campus and Nell is seething. Jory does cross country and soccer and walks everyone’s dogs for extra cash and sometimes hangs around Dana’s skater crew. She’s modding a car with her boyfriend in her free time.

#haunt/hunt #ask #anon

[sandersbayhq]

[Eleanor Humphrey] ✖ [29] ✖ [bisexual] ✖ [the over-thinker]

dob: august 11 occupation: pediatrician face claim: emmy rossum pronouns: sher/her

Eleanor was born in Sander’s Bay and was the middle child to Dana and Roderick. She always loved both of her siblings and had a perfectly happy childhood.

As a child, Eleanor never listened to authority. She’d simply do whatever she wanted. However, when she was seven, she continuously fussed a dog that both the owner and her parents told her to leave alone. The dog went on to attack her, and she had to be taken to hospital to receive stitches on her face. It left her with scarring on her face that was blatantly noticeable up until high school. You can still notice a small scar on her cheek if you examine her features closely enough. The attack turned Eleanor from a troublesome child to a stickler for the rules.

Naturally, she has a phobia of dogs. She is also an overly cautious person in general.

In High School, Eleanor was your typical goody-two shoes. She was an outstanding student and her best subject was biology.

Eleanor has a huge heart and has always tried to make a difference in her community. Because of this, she partook in the student council. In her senior year, she was even voted student body president. She was truly passionate about making the school a better place.

Eleanor realized that she had feelings for her vice president, Alice Denisov. She opted to suppress those feelings and didn’t accept her bisexuality until she went to college.

Instead, Eleanor dated this shitty guy that none of her friends liked. He was a self-righteous narcissist who only seemed to be interested in having sex with Eleanor. Romance was the only thing that could make Eleanor foolishly blind. She had always been so insecure about her appearance that she used it as some form of validation. Eleanor lost her virginity to this boy, only for her to realize a few months later that he was an awful person, so she dumped him.

Eleanor soon realized that she had feelings for her high school best friend; Dean Humphrey. However, she realized it far too late. Eleanor was accepted into Yale and Dean was staying in Sander’s Bay. They went to prom together and shared a blissful summer romance, but went their separate ways when the new term started.

At Yale, Eleanor majored in biomedical engineering and then went on to get her medical practitioner licence at Yale, too. Eleanor decided that she wanted to go into pediatric care.  

Eleanor decided to do her residency training program in Boston. There, she discovered that Dean was teaching there and still single. Eleanor had a few relationships with both men and women at Yale, but none of them seemed to stick. It had to be a sign, right? The two started exploring a romantic relationship.

A few months into this endeavor, Eleanor found out she was pregnant. Both Eleanor and Dean wanted a family, so they decided to elope. Eleanor moved in with Dean and gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Julia, on September 13th 2017.  

[death tw] It seemed that Eleanor and Dean had the perfect life, but it soon came crashing down after Eleanor finished her residency program. Dean died suddenly died in a car accident, leaving Eleanor widowed with a two year old.

Eleanor couldn’t bare to stay in Durham. Everything reminded her of Dean. She decided to take Julia and move to Sander’s Bay, since her cousin lived there.

Despite everything that she has been through, Eleanor still believes in love and hopes to find it again some day. Maybe it comes from the side of her that’s obsessed with rom-coms. She has always been a huge romantic.

Eleanor has a secret talent: opera singing. She dabbled with performing in school, but was never serious about it. She wanted to be a doctor since her Freshman year of High School.

#takenc #takenf #meeks family #eleanor humphrey

[rydiin]

Some assnut told Joaquin Oliver's father to "keep making art of your dead kid and leave my guns alone idiot"

Okay straight up, I absolutely am NOT okay with this comment!!!!. It’s so damn insensitive and rude. I hate when a$$holes say this to Manuel. Such punks. People think they’re sooo brave on social media, it’s pathetic. I also hate when a$$holes tell Andrew Pollack that Meadow deserved to die since her family supports our president. Comments like these are disgusting and shouldn’t be stated.

That being said, in case you think this comment comes out of nowhere, I’ll take the time you let you know that gun owners are extremely offended and pissed about what Manuel, Fred, and some of the other families stand for. They demonize law abiding gun owners and try to get our civil right to bear arms taken away. I love these families and I truly admire their passion, but the way they go about spreading their message is outright hateful 😣 and always has been. They’ve tried to convince society that our president and other conservative politicians and gun owners are complicit in the m*rder of their children, just because we cling to our civil rights. Manuel has literally presented art that shows our president and Dana Loesch holding the gun NC used during his shooting, with guac in the middle with a target around his body!!! Portraying this sick and twisted idea that it was gun owners and our president who K*LLED these students! Like wtffff. They’ve told people that the blood of their dead children is on *OUR* hands because we support 2nd amendment rights. It’s so disturbing and obviously ramps up the hatred, division, and tension in this country.

Again, I’m never okay with hateful language but I just wanted to take this opportunity to let you know WHY gun owners are so pissed at these families. I love Manuel and his art. but him and the others treat us like criminals just because we want to preserve and protect lives. It’s so frustrating that I often have to just ignore their posts.

The stupid idiot who made this comment to Manuel should apologize. Manuel and his family have gone through SO much suffering and for someone to just belittle his child’s death like that is evil. And in the future, maybe Manuel will apologize for demonizing just less than half of the American population 😞 it sucks to even say this because we’ve collectively adopted the view that we cannot disagree with public figures who have gone through immense suffering, but it feels wrong that they can make attacks on us and we just have to sit here silently. They don’t deserve hateful comments. And neither do law-abiding gun owners. The fact that the anti-gun side cannot argue their point without attacking our character and identity shows that they have no logical argument to stand on. Conservatives tend to attack views and ideas. Leftists tend to attack people and character. If we could all just go back to attacking ideas rather than people, that’d be great.

#vent over #asks

[thedepthsremember]

ILITW Week Day 4: “Anxiety”

It Lives In The Woods appreciation week continues! 

Pairing: Lucas x MC (Dana). Partially inspired by a prompt by @breaumonts​, which I finally finished! 

Tags: @choicesaholic @nuttatulipa @teamtomsato @imissmaxwell @fullbeaumonty @breaumonts @littlecrookedheart​

--------

Lucas’s car isn’t in his spot.

Dana frowns as she scans the parking lot. Okay, so it’s not technically his spot. Student council president doesn’t get a reserved space or anything, but Lucas being Lucas is in the habit of arriving way too early, which does grant him his choice of prime parking. 

So it’s after school, and Lucas wasn’t outside her classroom, at the office, or in the auditorium -- and his car is not where it always is. 

Luckily, by now most of the cars have sped off to enjoy the gorgeous spring day, and Dana’s finally able to spy her boyfriend’s ride at the very back of the lot. Irritation and confusion swirl in her, trying their best to cover up the worry. Her steps speed up as she gets close enough to see it’s occupied, and she jogs the last few feet.

“Hey! Hey, what the heck, why didn't you… wait for me…" She trails off, realizing his head is bowed between his arms as he clutches the steering wheel, unmoving. Her heart freezes.

“Lucas?” She quickly moves around to the passenger side door--mercifully unlocked--and slides in, backpack dropping to the floor. “Lucas, Lucas hey,” she babbles, shaking his arm.

“Hi,” he whispers.

She feels her entire body unclench at the sound of his voice. “Jesus, you scared me.” She doesn’t know what she expected. Mr--Ja--Noah is back and murdering them in their cars?

No. She knows what this is.

“Sorry,” he whispers. 

“No, it's ok. Hey, breathe, okay? That's it. There you go.” She rubs his back slowly, feeling his inhales and exhales follow the trail of her fingers up and down his back, pulling him out of his head and back to her. 

Finally, he lifts his head up to look at her. “Thank you, I'm okay now. Sorry," he adds again, and she immediately shakes her head, insides twisting as she wishes, again, that she could do more to stop this from happening. Not many people get to see behind the facade of Lucas Thomas, the guy who can do everything.

“You wanna talk about it?” 

He shoots her a small grateful smile. “It’s just… You know, tonight I don’t have any committee meetings, so I was going to catch up on a bunch of things, and--” he nods his head towards her with a small smile-- “maybe spend time with you, and then Flores came up to me after class and asked if I can come early tomorrow to help set up for the assembly, which would be fine, but she also wants me to start things off with a speech, and...” 

“Ah.”

“Yeah, so I have to figure that out tonight and give it first period tomorrow… and... I just, I'd already had tonight all mapped out, and... and I just…” he trails off.

“Yeah. That’s a lot.” Her eyes go to his hands, clenched together to stop them from shaking. She takes one in her own, rubbing it gently with her thumb. “But, hey, I can help out, and... Lucas, you remember you can say ‘no’ to things, especially when they’re so last-minute. Flores can introduce her own damn assemblies.”

He looks briefly surprised.

“Oh my god,” she realizes. “You did forget.”

“I mean, in the moment, I--”

“Lucas!” She laughs, lightly shoving his shoulder. “Alright, how about this? I’ll help you practice.”

He grins, a little less wide than normal, but at least the color has returned to his face. “What are you thinking now?”

She drops his hand and straightens up in her seat, clearing her throat. “Lucas, give me $20.”

“No,” he replies, catching on instantly. 

She almost smiles before she can help it, but covers it up with a hurt look, staying in character. “Lucas, please give me $20? It’s really important.”

He’s smiling, confident now. “I’m sorry Dana, but… No.”

Time for the big guns. She puts on her best puppy eyes, leaning towards him and taking his hands in hers. “Pleeeease? I promise I’ll pay you back as soon as I can...” 

He stares at her for several seconds, gaze softening as his eyes trail across her face. Is he giving in--?

He kisses her.

She melts into it automatically -- before she catches herself and pulls back. “Mmm--Hey! Cheater! ” He’s laughing. She mock-glares at him. “Well, joke’s on you, I fully expect to see you using that technique on Flores next time.”

He winces with clear regret. “Aughhh.”

“I mean, some guys are into older women--”

“Please stop talking.”

“I could see it! She’s got--”

He tries to put his hand over her mouth but she leans away, cackling with victory. “I will do anything for you to stop,” he begs, but it’s undercut by his laughter. “Right now.” 

Her chuckles subside as she puts her hands up in surrender. He lowers his own hands, and the truce settles between them.

“Alright Mr. Thomas, well done. Points for creativity.” It’s a silly line, but she notices his shoulders relax minutely at the praise anyway. Success.

She leans over to settle against his side and he wraps an arm around her. The armrest digs into her side a little, but she ignores it. He feels warm and solid, holding her there. It’s nice, and what she’s been waiting for all day, but part of her wishes, as always, that she could do more to help him. She wishes--

He lets out a sigh. “Hey. Thank you.” 

“Of course.” Idly, she plays with a fastening on one of his ever-present button downs. “Feeling better?”

He nods, kissing the top of her head. “I’m sorry you had to see that again.”

She shakes her head. “Hey, I told you. I’ve got your back.”

He rubs her shoulder. “What did I ever do to deserve you?”

“I meeean. To be fair,” she offers hesitantly. “We both went through a lot.”

He grunts in agreement, and she feels him tense.

She hurries to intercept the mood. “So! I’d say I deserve a tall overachiever with Superman shoulders.” 

He snorts, but she’s pleased when he turns his head away. She can’t see his face, she knows he’s blushing and his smile has turned shy as it always does when she compliments him.

“And you definitely deserve--” she flourishes her arm to indicate herself-- “this hot mess with the awesome hair and bomb-ass short girl legs.”

He laughs, sliding a hand down to her hip and giving it a squeeze. “They are pretty nice,” he admits.

“Hell yeah,” she grins.

“And you’re not a mess.”

She feels him shift and tilts her head back to see him looking down at her. “Neither are you,” she responds quietly.

He leans down and she up, meeting each other halfway. Everything settles together, and for a while she just floats. 

Finally, before she gets the class president in trouble for public indecency, she pulls back. “So…”

“Mmm?”

She trails her hand gently along his chest. “Can I drive your car?”

“Absolutely not,” he replies without hesitation.

“Aw, man!” She lets her head fall back. “You got good at this ‘No’ thing way too fast. Freaking ace student.”

He laughs. She loves the sound of it, rich and deep. And it means he’s shaken off the traces of his earlier mood, which automatically makes it the best of sounds.

There's a jingling. She looks down and realizes he’s fiddling with his keys. He quickly palms them once he realizes she'd noticed.

“You wanna come over?” she offers.

Relief washes over his face. “You sure?”

“Yeah! My parents won’t be home for another hour, and we can--”

The look on his face goes from uncertain to amused.

“--work on your speech!” she laughs, shoving him.

“Yes, that’s exactly where I thought you were going with that.” He replies, smirking.

“Why, Mr. Thomas, I’m sure I don’t know what you are implying!”

He raises his hands innocently. “Absolutely nothing.” 

“Though…” She strokes the hair at the nape of his neck. “If we get a little distracted,” she leans in, pressing one more kiss to his lips. “Who could blame us?”

He kisses her back deeply, breathing her in. “This is very cliché.”

She grins against his lips. "You love it."

He chuckles, pulling back to look at her face. Her breath catches at the tenderness there. "I do."

Her heart thumps.

#ilitw appreciation week #ilitw #it lives in the woods #lucas thomas #v writes things #y'all ever just write something to make yourself feel better

[schraubd]

The Media is Not Part of the Liberal Family

Max Weber has a quote (Yair Rosenberg just promoted it), regarding the proper role of a teacher:

"The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize ‘inconvenient’ facts--I mean facts that are inconvenient for their party opinions. And for every party opinion there are facts that are extremely inconvenient, for my own opinion no less than for others."

It's a good quote, and it's good advice -- not only for teachers. What it suggests is that among our mist difficult deliberative obligations -- with respect to facts and also to opinions -- is to consider alternatives and counters and problems with our position. It does no good to harp on what we already know and what confirms our ideological priors. We must stretch wide to think those thoughts which are hard for us and ours. However. There's a certain strand of malign media behavior which I think is in some ways attributable to this quote and needs to be addressed. It stems from a distorted understanding by media figures of who the relevant "parties" are and what facts actually are "inconvenient". It seems to me that quite a few major stories -- about growing right-wing authoritarianism, racism, prejudice, and Islamophobia -- are going undercovered because, in the view of many journalists, they're not "inconvenient" stories. It's not that they don't recognize that this sort of behavior is wrong. It's that they think that their wrongfulness is so obvious that there's nothing interesting to talk about. Consider the recent debates about "civility" in the public square. It's come up primarily with reference to the ethics of a private restaurant owner (quite politely, by all accounts) asking Sarah Huckabee Sanders to leave her establishment (oddly enough, that seemed to get more negative attention than protesters quite loudly haranguing Kirstjen Nielsen at a Mexican restaurant). And because it's come up in that context, liberals have been quite annoyed that it's come up in that context, as opposed to, say, the fact that Congress contains a man who was criminally convicted for body-slamming a reporter, or another man who's happily retweeting Nazis. Or, you know, everything the President of the United States ever says ever. Under any objective metric, these are far more serious breaches of "civility" than Maxine Waters urging people to confront Trump administration officials in public settings. One can think -- quite abstractly -- that the question of whether restaurant owners should refuse to serve Sarah Huckabee Sanders is ponderable while acknowledging the obvious truth that it doesn't rank in the top 200 highest priority moral questions that the media should be placing on the public agenda -- even confined to the "civility" subcategory. Given that fact, there's something facially outrageous about devoting any non-trivial amount of journalistic attention to Sarah Huckabee Sanders' dining options over and above other, obviously higher-priority stories. To that point, though, I think many media members would issue the following retort: Yes, body-slamming a reporter or being a bit of Nazi fanboy is obviously wrong. But that's the point: it's obviously wrong. It's not interesting -- who even disagrees? By contrast, the reporters probably know a ton of people who laud Maxine Waters or the Red Hen. That issue, consequently, has stakes -- it's interesting in a way that talking about physically assaulting reporters isn't. A similar motivation probably explains the New York Times' infamous "Most Americans Want Legal Status for 'Dreamers.' These People Don't" profile. From the vantage of the journalist, sympathy for Dreamers is the obvious position -- it scarcely needs explanation. Wanting to see them deported? That's novel. That's interesting. That's a truly alternate point of view. Hence, the reason these -- objectively low-priority -- liberal (alleged) breaches of civility (or what have you) get the media attention that they do is, in a sense, precisely because they aren't viewed as self-evidently terrible. By contrast, the argument goes, nobody needs to be told that Dana Loesch is a thug or that Mitch McConnell utterly lacks any sort of principles beyond partisan hackery. And let's be clear: within the liberal "family", that sort of introspective consideration is valuable. We should be considering the thoughts that are hard or inconvenient for us, we should be forcing ourselves to contemplate arguments or positions that challenge our own (conservatives should do the same). And the journalists, whom (I strongly suspect) are generally left-of-center in their private commitments, think that's what they're doing. They're not going to waste time confirming what's already known -- that there are some psychopaths in the Republican caucus who are pretty much avowed White Supremacists, or that there is a growing right-wing endorsement of explicitly authoritarian language towards the media as "enemies of the American people", or that undocumented immigrants remain human beings and do not deserve to be caged up and torn from their families. That's easy. What's hard is the act of forcing other members of the "family" to deal with truly inconvenient, facts and perspectives, ones that don't come naturally. But here's the thing: journalists are not part of the liberal family. Not professionally, anyway. In their professional capacity, their job isn't to uncover the facts and narratives that are inconvenient for themselves or their tribe. Or more aptly, their "tribe", so long as they're acting as journalists, is the entirety of the United States. Which means that, for much of their audience, it is quite "inconvenient" that Republican Congressman Steve King is a White Supremacist, and it's quite "inconvenient" that Republican Congressman Greg Gianforte physically assaulted a reporter, and it's quite "inconvenient" that the Trump administration's Muslim ban was explicitly based on racism and the Supreme Court has now decided that's okay. That these facts may seem too obvious, too much like conventional wisdom, to the journalist, or even to all the journalist's friends, is utterly immaterial. Because as it happens, they're apparently not obvious for large swaths of the country. Ironically, conservative media critics are right about one thing: journalists need to stop thinking of themselves as part of the liberal family. It's that self-identification that creates a paradoxical problem of conservative media bias. It emerges when private liberal political beliefs conjoin with the professional understanding that it's the journalist's job to unsettle received wisdom and disturb pat answers. The result of that cocktail is that journalists persistently undercover the "obvious" conservative wrongdoings (what are they really "disturbing"?) and overreport on relatively trivial liberal ones (it may be small fries, but it least it's a challenge). This same dynamic is also why the charge of a conservative bias is so baffling and easily dismissed by journalists. Of course, part of it is because they're private liberals themselves, so how could they be biased against liberals. But part of it is because the locus of the critique feels like a complaint about journalists doing their job right -- tackling the hard issues, forcing people to think the hard thoughts. And the thing is, that is the right way to be a journalist -- they're not wrong about that. The problem is that they're not actually successful at forcing people to grapple with the inconvenient thoughts -- they only think that they are because their sense of what counts as a hard issue and a hard thought is distorted by the false belief that they're just liberals talking to other liberals. They're not. They're journalists talking to the country. And for this country, right now, the things that seem so "obviously" wrong are deemed by many to be entirely right. A good journalist should think about how to unsettle that wisdom. via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/2KvyTZS

#Journalism #Liberals #Media

[readingtrotskyisfunandfree]

Why I don’t tell people to “unionize”

On Wednesday afternoon, President Joe Biden gave a Labor Day speech that presented a fairy tale version of the role of the contemporary trade unions.

The trade unions, Biden said, are the principal defenders of the rights of working people today. They have secured “healthcare, a pension, higher wages with a safer workplace that protects us from discrimination and harassment…the eight-hour day, a weekend, time-and-a-half overtime, safety standards, sick days, victories for us all.”

Biden, who has spent his entire adult life cutting social programs and advancing the interests of the banks and Delaware credit card companies, gave his remarks before a White House gathering of executives from the UAW, USW, SEIU, AFT and many other leading trade unions. These officials, who have annual salaries of $200,000 to $500,000, all agree that life within a union is fantastic. “Workers who join unions gain power…In a simple word, a union means there is democracy,” Biden told his captive audience. “You gave workers a voice, you honor the dignity of the American worker.”

As the president concluded his fairy tale and mingled with the assorted bureaucrats, the UAW “honored the dignity” of 3,500 Dana workers by ordering them to continue working after the workers rejected a sweatshop contract by a nine-to-one margin last week. The “no” vote was a courageous rejection of the UAW and USW, which spent the last two weeks showing workers what “union democracy” looks like by threatening them, lying to them, and in one case even allegedly assaulting a worker in an attempt to force the contract through.

The two-sentence “get back to work” order expresses the contempt that the unions have for the workers they suppress. After telling workers nothing about the contract and negotiations for weeks, the UAW notice reads, in its entirety, “The Tentative Agreement (TA) was rejected and we’re continuing to work under a day-to-day extension. We are starting to meet with the locals to identify issues.” The company simultaneously ordered workers to work mandated overtime this weekend in order to stockpile parts in case of a strike.

As Biden praised the trade unions from the commanding heights of economic and political power, Dana workers angrily denounced the UAW and USW for conspiring with the company against them. These workers view the announcement as a slap in the face. They view the UAW and USW not as liberators, but as oppressors. As for the claim these organizations protect the eight-hour-day and 40-hour-week: at Dana, the UAW and USW actively oppose these demands.

The UAW and USW force workers to labor under conditions worse than the 19th century. Many work for 12 hours a day, or 84-hours a week, for weeks or even months on end without an unpaid day off. Constant speed-ups are demanded to make driveshafts, axles and other critical parts for corporations like Ford, General Motors, Stellantis, and John Deere, as well as the US military. Many plants are dirty, hot, and dangerous. Injuries are common, and the company sends workers to company doctors who tell them they are fit to work. Workers describe Dana alternatively as “hell,” “a prison,” or “a slave ship.”

The plants are petri dishes for the coronavirus and the UAW and USW have kept workers on the job throughout the entire pandemic while corporate profits soar. There are 63 active cases at Dana’s plant in Dry Ridge, Kentucky, a fact which places the population of the town and entire region at risk.

Some plants worked skeleton crews even in spring of 2020 when the Big Three plants were shut down. It was the UAW that ordered workers back to work after wildcat strikes shut down production in March and April 2020, making it possible for the corporations to end restrictions and restart production. Dana workers now fear their children are being sent back to school as more and more evidence emerges that the Delta variant is deadly for children. The main teachers unions, the American Federation of Teachers and National Educators Association, are forcing teachers back to school with deadly consequences. Dozens of teachers and young children have died as a result and millions more are getting sick.

The same is true of the trade unions in every industry and in every country. In Germany, the head of the main union federation is denouncing striking train drivers who have been forced to bear the brunt of the pandemic. In Brazil, the trade unions call off strikes and hold the industrial working class back as the country’s fascist president, Jair Bolsonaro, threatens to establish a dictatorship. In countries like India that are too poor to have mass access to the vaccine, the unions force hundreds of millions to work as the pandemic devastates the working class. The unions rely on violence, deception, and isolation to force through the diktats of the governments and the corporations.

The problem is not poor leadership and the solution is not internal reforms and new officials. Rather, the trade unions have transformed from workers’ organizations into pro-corporate organizations of the capitalist state, inseparably integrated into the capitalist parties and imperialist armed forces. They engage in outright naked criminal activity against the workers. This week, two former UAW presidents, Dennis Williams and Gary Jones, began serving sentences at “club fed” minimum-security prisons for accepting corporate bribes in exchange for selling out workers. Many Dana workers noted their prison sentences are much shorter than the five-year prison sentence they confront in the proposed Tentative Agreement.

The trade unions are not pursuing a mistaken policy. They are pursuing the class interests of the affluent social layer that comprises the trade union bureaucracy. These are not so much “unions” as they are corporatist Labor Fronts, state organizations aimed explicitly at controlling the workforce and suppressing the class struggle.

The trade unions as a whole employ thousands and thousands of affluent people who occupy key positions in the Democratic Party, the corporate media, government bodies and academia. They control immense fortunes, acquired through decades of workers’ dues money. The United Auto Workers (UAW) has over $1.1 billion in assets and employs 450 people who make over $100,000. The United Steelworkers (USW) has assets over $1.5 billion, a 600 percent increase since 2000, a period over which USW membership has drastically decreased.

This layer of the richest top 10 percent benefits from the heightened exploitation of the working class, from cheap labor, from reopening factories and schools in the pandemic. The union VEBA slush funds and their own personal stock portfolios depend on increasing profit margins at the expense of the mass of working people worldwide. These people have as little in common with the workers they “represent” as the workers do with the CEOs themselves.

The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) could not muster even 15 percent of Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama to support a union drive. That is not because the workers in the area are backwards: in recent days, high school students in Bessemer walked out demanding COVID-19 safety, and nurses in neighboring Birmingham went on strike over pay and COVID-19 health protocols. It is because workers view the trade unions increasingly as obstacles, and not vehicles, for social progress.

The growing militancy in the working class makes the ruling class and the affluent upper middle class extremely nervous. IMF reports warn of the growth of strikes and the economy is on a knife’s edge, pumped up with free money from the central banks. In Biden’s Labor Day speech, the president warned that if there was a strike movement, “we’d be in real trouble.” He added to the gathered union executives: “You guys sometimes underestimate the incredible value you bring to the safety, security and growth of the economy.”

The pseudo-left plays a critical role in this operation, propping up the trade unions and blacklisting out or denouncing workers who take independent action. Groups like the Democratic Socialists of America and Socialist Alternative, as well as publications like Jacobin and Left Voice, present the trade unions in glowing terms. These organizations have prioritized the PRO Act, which will facilitate AFL-CIO union drives, and they support Biden’s demand that “the government should encourage unions.”

None of these organizations or publications has mentioned the struggle of Dana workers because it cuts across their anti-socialist and anti-working class political agenda. These groups speak for the same affluent social layer that runs the trade unions. They support the trade unions not despite their never-ending attacks on the working class, but because of them.

Nevertheless, in their emerging struggles against the global corporations and the policy of “social murder” carried out by all capitalist governments in response to the pandemic, the working class is coming into a head-on clash with the trade unions and their nationalist perspective. To confront global corporations, workers need to unite internationally. From Paris, Tennessee to Paris, France and Lima, Ohio to Lima, Peru, new organizations—rank-and-file committees—will emerge to link workers across the lines of race, nationality, industry and continent in a common, unified struggle against social inequality.

#unionize #union #socialism #communism

[patriotsnet]

Which Republicans Voted Against The Tax Reform Bill

New Post has been published on https://www.patriotsnet.com/which-republicans-voted-against-the-tax-reform-bill/

Which Republicans Voted Against The Tax Reform Bill

An Affinity For Small Business

Petitioners ask Upton to vote against GOP tax reform bill

Passing a law that helped fuel increases in stock prices wasnt the only way Republicans enriched themselves. The new law also contained a 20 percent deduction for income from so-called pass-through businesses, a provision called the crown jewel of the act by the National Federation of Independent Businesses, a lobbying group.

Pass-throughs are single-owner businesses, partnerships, limited liability companies and special corporations called S-corps. Most real estate companies are organized as LLCs. Trump owns hundreds of them, and Public Integritys analysis found that 22 of the 47 members of the House and Senate tax-writing committees in 2017 were invested in them.

Pass-throughs can be found in any industry. They pay no corporate taxes and steer their profits as income to business owners or investors, who are taxed only once at their individual rates. Despite their favored treatment as a business vehicle, the 2017 tax act did them another favor: It allowed 20 percent to be deducted off the top of the pass-through income for tax purposes.

Our investigations. Your inbox.

Sign up for the Center for Public Integritys weekly Watchdog newsletter.

No doubt. Johnson, with his wife, held interests that year in four real estate or manufacturing LLCs worth between $6.2 million and $30.5 million, from which they received income that year between $250,000 and $2.1 million, according to his financial disclosure form.

Democrats Attack Republicans For Lack Of Transparency

At the Senate floor and on social media, Democrats criticized their Republican colleagues for lack of transparency. They pointed out that there wasnt enough time for them to read 479-page legislation with unreadable handwritten amendments.

Sen. Claire McCaskill of Missouri tweeted, This is so bad. We have just gotten list of amendments to be included in bill NOT from our R colleagues, but from lobbyists downtown. None of us have seen this list, but lobbyists have it. Need I say more? Disgusting. And we probably will not even be given time to read them.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois also tweeted, Trying to review the #GOPTaxScam but they are making hand-written changes to brand new text as we speak can anyone else read this?

TAGS

What’s Wrong With The Status Quo

People on both sides of the political spectrum agree that the tax code should be simpler. Since 1986, the last time a major tax overhaul became law, the body of federal tax lawbroadly definedhas swollen from 26,000 to 70,000 pages, according to the House GOP’s 2016 reform proposal. American households and firms spent $409 billion and 8.9 billion hours completing their taxes in 2016, the Tax Foundation;estimates. Nearly three-quarters of respondents told Pew;four years ago, that they were bothered “some” or “a lot” by the complexity of the tax system.

The Pew Research Center reported in early April 2019 that there is a growing partisan divide over the perceived fairness of the tax system in America.

An even greater proportion;was;troubled by the feeling that some corporations and some wealthy people pay too little: 82% said so about corporations, while 79% said so about the wealthy. While the new tax law cuts a number of itemized deductions, most of the loopholes and giveaways;that were slated for repeal in earlier bills have been retained in some form.

The individual tax rate schedule, which Trump would have cut to three brackets, remains at seven. In other words, this legislation may do relatively little to simplify the tax code. The other issues that the Pew survey indicates that bother people the mosttaxes for wealthy individuals;and corporationsare likely to be exacerbated by the law.;

Don’t Miss: Who Is Better Republicans Or Democrats

Rep Elise Stefanik Of New York

She joined her New York GOP colleagues in opposing the bill due to the;changes made to the SALT deduction. The second-term congresswoman is head of recruitment for the;National Republican Congressional Committee. She is also a DCCC target. Trump;carried her upstate New York district by 14 points in 2016, and she was re-elected by 35 points. Inside Elections rates her race Solid Republican.;

Paul Ryan: ‘don’t Forget This Is A Big Tax Cut For Families As Well’

A day earlier, speaking on the House floor moments before the vote, Ryan said the legislation will “help hard-working Americans who have been left behind for too long.”

“Today, we are giving the people their money back,” he said, adding that a typical family would get a $2,059 tax cut next year.

Democrats opposed bill as a boon to the wealthy while offering little for the middle class, with House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., calling it “the worst bill to ever come to the floor of the House.”

There were a number of protesters in Congress on Tuesday, on both the House and Senate sides. Protesters interrupted the Senate’s final late night vote numerous times, at one point shouting, “Kill the bill. Don’t kill us.” One protester interrupted Ryan in the House when he was speaking.

The GOP bill lowers individual tax rates, including the top bracket to 37 percent from 39.6, while doubling the standard deduction and replacing personal exemptions with a $2,000 partly refundable child tax credit. It eliminates various deductions while limiting others on state and local taxes and mortgage interest. It also exempts larger inheritances from the estate tax, doubling the thresholds to $11 million for individuals and $22 million for married couples.

Congratulations to Paul Ryan, Kevin McCarthy, Kevin Brady, Steve Scalise, Cathy McMorris Rodgers and all great House Republicans who voted in favor of cutting your taxes!

Donald J. Trump

Benjy Sarlin is policy editor for NBC News.

Don’t Miss: How Many Republicans Are In The House And Senate

Rep Frank A Lobiondo Of New Jersey

A member of;the;moderate Tuesday Group, LoBiondo opposed the tax bill because of the;changes to the SALT deduction and said in a statement it would be detrimental to New Jersey residents. LoBiondo, who also opposed the GOP health care bill, recently announced he is not running for re-election, making his seat more vulnerable to a Democratic takeover. Trump;carried his 2nd District by nearly 7 points in 2016. The race is rated Leans Republican.

Rep Peter T King Of New York

King also voted no due to the SALT deduction changes, and he warned that passing the tax bill would cause Republicans to lose House seats next year. The 13-term congressman is a new DCCC target though Trump;carried his;2nd District by 9 points. One of the Democrats hoping to take on King, Tim Gomes, has loaned his campaign $1 million. Inside Elections rates the race Solid Republican.

Don’t Miss: What Republicans Are Voting Against Trump

House Passes Massive Gop Tax Cuts

Its a victory for Trump and Ryan, though getting a bill through the Senate wont be easy.

House Republicans passed a $5.5 trillion tax bill Thursday, in a major step toward rewriting the nations tax code and providing a sorely needed legislative victory for President Donald Trump.

The bill passed 227-205, with 13 Republicans breaking with leadership to vote against the legislation. Not a single Democrat backed the bill, highlighting the sharp partisan split as the tax fight moves to the narrowly-divided Senate.

“This is about giving hardworking taxpayers bigger paychecks, more take-home pay… It’s about getting this economy to grow faster, so we get bigger wages, more jobs, and we put America in the driver’s seat in the global economy one again,” said Speaker Paul Ryan.

The legislation would slash the corporate tax rate to 20 percent starting next year, down from 35 percent. It sets the top small business rate at 25 percent for pass-through entities and also includes a far lower rate of 9 percent for some types of small businesses on the first $75,000 of profits.

For individuals, it axes a number of popular deductions, including the state and local tax deduction, medical expenses deduction and student loan deductions but would double the standard deduction and condense the seven tax brackets into four.

By KAITLYN BURTON

That’s why California Republicans Darrell Issa, Tom McClintock and Dana Rohrabacher all voted against the bill.

Student Loans And Tuition

Marco Rubio to vote against GOP tax reform bill

The House bill would have repealed;the deduction for student loan interest expenses and the exclusion from gross income and wages of qualified tuition reductions. The new law;left these breaks intact and allowed 529 plans to be used to fund K to 12 private school tuitionup to $10,000 per year, per child. Under the SECURE Act of 2019, the benefits of 529 plans were expanded, allowing plan holders to also withdraw a maximum lifetime amount of $10,000 per beneficiary penalty-free to pay down qualified student debt.

Recommended Reading: How Many Electoral Votes Do Republicans Have

Republican Tax Bill Moves Closer To Passage As Key Holdouts Come On Board

Bob Corker and Marco Rubio say they will vote in favor of $1.5tn bill

Donald Trump wants sign controversial legislation before Christmas

The GOPs $1.5tn tax reform bill is heading toward a final vote and possible victory before Christmas with support from key Republican holdouts who had raised concerns about the deficit and a child tax credit.

Bob Corker of Tennessee, a frequent critic of Donald Trump and the only Republican senator who voted against the legislation in the Senate, announced Friday that he would back a final version of the bill despite his concerns about the deficit. Corker said: I believe that this once-in-a-generation opportunity to make US businesses domestically more productive and internationally more competitive is one we should not miss.

Senator Marco Rubio, of Florida, also said he would back the bill, a day after he threatened to vote against it if lawmakers did not expand access to a child tax credit for lower-income families. He tweeted that the legislation would allow a higher percent of a child tax credit to be refundable, calling it a solid step toward broader reforms which are both Pro-Growth and Pro-Worker.

For far too long, Washington has ignored and left behind the American working class. Increasing the refundability of the Child Tax Credit from 55% to 70% is a solid step toward broader reforms which are both Pro-Growth and Pro-Worker.

Marco Rubio

Gop Members Most From High

House Republican leaders cheered passage of their sweeping tax overhaul Thursday, but;13;GOP lawmakers;bucked;their party and voted against the bill.;

All but one of them hailed from New York, New Jersey and California each a high-tax state. These lawmakers largely opposed the legislation because it;curtailed the state and local tax deduction,;also known as SALT. The measure caps the;deduction for property taxes at;$10,000 while eliminating the tax break for state and local income or sales taxes.;

Six of the lawmakers are in competitive races in 2018 based on ratings by Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales.; Eleven of the 13 Republicans are being targeted by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.

Here are the Republicans who voted against the tax bill:;

Also Check: What Caused Republicans To Gain Power In Congress In 1938

Rep Dana Rohrabacher Of California

Rohrabacher told Roll Call before the vote that his vote would be determined by how his constituents would fare if the bill became law. He is one of the most vulnerable House members in 2018, in part because of his ties to Russia. He is a top DCCC target. Clinton;carried his 48th District by;2 points in 2016 while Rohrabacher won re-election to a 15th term by 17 points. Inside Elections rates the race Tilts Republican.

Sen Corker Is The Only Republican Who Voted Against The Tax Reform Bill

In the early hour on Saturday, the Senate voted 51-49 on the GOP tax reform bill. The only Republican who did not support the legislation was Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee.

On Tuesday, Sen. Corker voted yes on the tax plan, thereby passed the Senate Budget Committee. He supported it after reaching an agreement with the Senate leadership on a trigger mechanism to ensure fiscal responsibility.

However, during the final approval on the Senate floor, Sen. Corker remained concern about the deficit. He found out that the trigger he demanded would not pass Senates rules and would not be included in the legislation. He eventually voted against it.

In a statement, he explained, This is yet another tough vote. I am disappointed. I wanted to get to yes. But at the end of the day, I am not able to cast aside my fiscal concerns and vote for legislation that I believe, based on the information I currently have, could deepen the debt burden on future generations.

Sen. Corker fought to keep the tax legislation from worsening the countrys rapidly increasing $20 trillion debt.

Last month, the House of Representatives pass their version of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act.; The two chambers will have a conference to reconcile bot legislation.

Also Check: What Is The Principle Of Republicanism

Republicans Sprinting Toward Tax Cuts Deficits Be Damned

WASHINGTON House Republicans are moving closer to adopting the Senate budget this week, a significant step toward the GOPs ultimate goal of cutting taxes. But Republicans still havent settled many of the details in their tax proposal, even as they vote to increase the debt by $1.5 trillion.

The House is tentatively scheduled to vote Thursday on the Senates budget proposal, which is needed as a legislative vehicle to carry out tax reform by reconciliation a process that allows the Senate to pass a bill by a simple majority.

Yet the tax proposal remains in a paradoxical state: simultaneously written and unwritten. Republicans have a framework, they apparently have legislative text, but theyve left some major decisions undecided.

Weve been writing for the past year on this, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady told HuffPost on Tuesday, while noting that Republicans are still making adjustments.

The tax bill clearly has some momentum right now, after the Senate approved its budget and House conservatives agreed to simply take the Senate language instead of trying to conference differences between the House and Senate.

One conservative lawmaker told HuffPost that members of the Freedom Caucus cut a deal with leadership, exchanging their votes on the budget to speed up the tax bills release by at least two weeks, possibly three weeks;so it will have a better chance.

Claims Made By The Administration

The Administration and its Council of Economic Advisors have made several claims in advocating the Act during 2017, including:

Reduction in corporate tax rates from 35 to 20%. Also, immediate full expensing of non-structure investments will increase GDP growth rates by 3 to 5 percentage points over the current baseline projections of around 2%. This could begin as early as 35 years from the tax cuts or further out in time. This projection excludes other tax cuts in the Act, such as those for individuals and pass-through entities, which may have additional GDP impact.

The mechanism for this increased growth is at higher business investment levels due to the additional after-tax income available.

Further, this GDP growth would represent an average $4,000 annual increase in wage and salary income for households.

President Trump and Treasury Secretary Mnuchin have stated the tax cuts would pay for themselves.

Trump economic advisor Gary Cohn stated that “The wealthy are not getting a tax cut under our plan” and that the plan would cut taxes for low- and middle-income households. Further, Trump stated that the tax plan “…was not good for .”

Don’t Miss: Are Democrats Red And Republicans Blue

State And Local Tax Deduction

The new law caps the deduction for state and local taxes at $10,000 through 2025. A number of Republican members of Congress representing high-tax states opposed;attempts to eliminate the deduction, as the Senate bill would have done.

The Senate bill was amended on Dec. 1, 2017, apparently to win Susan Collins’ support:

The Senate tax bill will include my SALT amendment to allow taxpayers to deduct up to $10,000 for state and local property taxes. Sen. Susan Collins Dec. 1, 2017

Gop Real Estate Owners Make Out Big

2 California Republicans vote no on tax reform bill | ABC7

Besides the laws benefits to real estate pass-throughs, real estate in general was hugely favored by the tax law, allowing property exchanges to avoid taxation, the deduction of new capital expenses in just one year versus longer depreciation schedules, and an exemption from limits on interest deductions.;

If you are a real estate developer, you never pay tax, said Ed Kleinbard, a former head of Congresss Joint Committee on Taxation.;

Members of Congress own a lot of real estate. Public Integritys review of financial disclosures found that 29 of the 47 GOP members of the committees responsible for the tax bill hold interests in real estate, including small rental businesses, LLCs, and massive real estate investment trusts , which pay dividends to investors. The tax bill allows REIT investors to deduct 20 percent from their dividends for tax purposes.;

Who We Are

The Center for Public Integrity is an independent, investigative newsroom that exposes betrayals of the public trust by powerful interests.

Don’t Miss: Do Any House Republicans Support Impeachment

A Major Step Forward For The Republican Tax Bill

The House on Thursday approved its legislation in a surprisingly drama-free vote. But hurdles await in the Senate.

House Republicans on Thursday approved legislation overhauling the U.S. tax code, slashing rates for corporations while more modestly cutting taxes for individuals, and scaling back a host of popular deductions and exemptions.

And they did it without so much as a hint of drama.

The party-line, 227-205 vote is a victory for President Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan, who took a major step toward enacting their top domestic priority and salvaging what has been a lackluster first year of unified Republican power in Washington.

What was most surprising about Thursdays result, however, was how easy it was.

There was no last-minute arm-twisting or back-room buy offs, no desperate calls from the president to wavering lawmakers, no 11th-hour amendments. The vote occurred on schedule, and when Trump trekked to Capitol Hill for a final pep talk with GOP lawmakers on Thursday, his visit seemed oddly perfunctory. Just 13 Republicans voted against the measure, leaving a comfortable buffer for the party leadership even without a single vote from Democrats.