#federal stock act | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

Visit Blog

Explore Tumblr blogs with no restrictions, modern design and the best experience.

Fun Fact

In 2020, 27% of US Tumblr users had an annual household income of over $100,000.

dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 2 years

Text

• A new poll shows that 70% of voters still support banning members of Congress from trading stocks.

• One pro-democracy group says it's their "most popular campaign of the year," generating nearly 100,000 emails.

• But lawmakers are still working out the details for a potential ban, leading to frustration on Capitol Hill.

More than 7 in 10 likely voters believe members of Congress should not be allowed to buy or sell individual stocks while in office, according to new poll shared with Insider.

The Data for Progress poll indicates that 70% of respondents want new federal legislation to ban the practice, while 68% said such a ban should extend to lawmakers' spouses.

And 49% of respondents said they were more likely to support a candidate who backs a stock trading ban, including 50% of Republicans and 45% of Democrats.

"It's not just about level of support, but it's about an enthusiasm that people have for this issue," said Brett Edkins, the managing director for policy and political affairs at Stand Up America, a left-of-center governmental reform nonprofit that commissioned the poll. "Very little unifies the American public these days, but widespread national outrage at public corruption ... comes close."

Insider has found that 64 members of Congress have violated the Stop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act, which requires timely disclosure of stock transactions. Insider's "Conflicted Congress" project also shed light on a number of conflicts of interest that lawmakers face by virtue of their financial holdings.

When Insider asked Pelosi whether she supported banning the practice, she initially rejected the idea. That led to a wave of new legislation from lawmakers eager to tackle the issue. She has since offered muted support for legislative changes.

Stand Up America has helped rally grassroots support for a potential stock trading ban alongside the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, MoveOn, and Public Citizen, among other political groups and reform organizations.

"It's an issue of democracy and fairness, and whether our representatives are working for us, or for their bank accounts," Edkins said. "Stand Up America has been working on democracy issues for years now, and we consistently find that corruption resonates with people"

Since January, Edkins says Stand Up America has directly nearly 100,000 emails and more than 1,400 calls to members of Congress, as well as nearly 2,000 letters to the editor in local papers. That makes the group's campaign in support of a stock trading ban their "most popular campaign of the year," even surpassing other campaigns in support of voting rights and removing the Senate filibuster.

The new poll, while similar to results found from previous polling on both the left and right, underscores the enduring enthusiasm for the issue among the general public.

"I think a lot of those issues of structural democracy are more difficult to understand," said Edkins. "You know, the filibuster is very procedural. But this is a very cut-and-dry issue."

The poll, conducted from June 8 to 13, included 1,198 likely voters and had a margin of error of 3 percentage points.

Meanwhile, efforts to enact a stock trading ban on Capitol Hill remain stalled, leading to frustration among those most enthusiastic about a ban.

In the House, stock-ban proponents are waiting to see whether the Committee on House Administration will release a framework they consider strong enough to address the problem. A group of senators, meanwhile, continue to work among themselves to reach consensus on a bill that can garner the entire Democratic caucus's support.

45 notes · View notes

wex3crypto · 2 years

Text

Steven Bartlett And Other Business Heavyweights Advise How Startups Can Grow And Scale-Up

Steven Bartlett, the youngest ever dragon from the BBC series ‘Dragon’s Den’ and founder of the social media marketing agency Social Chain, told Euronews’ team in Dubai that social media is key for startups when scaling up.

“If you’re walking down the street and there are 20 people looking up at a building, you’re going to look up at the building,” said Bartlett. “The way you decide whether to go and watch a movie on Netflix, or whatever, is based on reputation. We use the opinion of the tribe to help us survive because we don’t always have the time to make those decisions for ourselves.”

What is scaling up and what other levers do startups need to pull in order to get there?

Full Article:

1 note · View note

qqueenofhades · 2 years

Text

So it looks like Sinema, having gotten her requisite pound of flesh for her billionaire hedge fund buddies (basically, they agreed to keep the carried-interest tax loophole and replace it with an excise tax on stock buybacks), has finally agreed to support the Inflation Reduction Act, otherwise known as the $740 billion "pretty much Build Back Better but we are calling it something different" bill that Manchin and Schumer came out with. If/when it passes, which could be as soon as this weekend, the Democrats will have achieved -- with a 50-50 Senate with two habitual Manchurian candidates, a four-seat House majority, a rampantly fascist opposing party, a Supreme Court openly bent on destroying democracy and personal liberty, and an active criminal investigation into the previous administration -- at least the following:

The American Rescue Plan, aka the first post-inauguration $1.9 trillion Covid relief package, which was the largest investment in the working class since the New Deal;

The bipartisan infrastructure bill, which is the first major structural and transportation modernization and systemic overhaul for the country since the 1970s;

The first significant gun safety legislation in 30 years and since at least the Clinton administration;

Multiple executive orders now signed on protecting abortion rights and access to reproductive care, including travel out of state if necessary;

A bill in the works to officially codify same-sex marriage and thus protect it from SCOTUS;

Reauthorization and improvement of the Violence Against Women Act, including strong new protections for LGBTQ+ and Native American victims of domestic abuse or sexual assault, including the ability for Native courts to prosecute non-Native offenders for sex crimes for the first time in history;

Finally (FINALLY) making lynching a federal hate crime;

The largest climate legislation ever passed in America (this bill), which also establishes a federal minimum 15% corporate tax rate and lowers healthcare costs, including for essential medications like insulin, by, like, a lot;

Passage of the PACT Act, aka expanding healthcare for disabled veterans exposed to burn pits, also the biggest expansion in this field for a generation despite Republicans briefly killing it in an outburst of pettiness;

Consistent big packages of support for Ukraine, rebuilding of foreign alliances, huge bipartisan support for including Sweden and Finland in NATO (hahahaha fuck you Josh Hawley);

The CHIPS act, which creates tech and manufacturing jobs in America and was made even sweeter by how thoroughly they fucked over McTurtle to do it (since oh boy does he deserve a taste of his own medicine);

Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman on SCOTUS, and not an awful white supremacist stand-in like Clarence Thomas, but a genuinely progressive and thoughtful jurist;

Cancellation of almost $6 billion in student loans for the poorest and most defrauded borrowers, such as those who attended scam for-profit "colleges";

And so on and so forth!!!

So like. Please tell me more about how the Democrats are incompetent, their leadership is bad, they are in Disarray TM, you are a terrible person if you support Biden or give them any credit at all, and you're just not excited to vote because they haven't done anything. Like yes! There is a lot more to do! Despite them suddenly deciding to play ball on this particular occasion, Manchin and Sinema still need to be made irrelevant as soon as possible! But as I said, this is happening with the thinnest of imaginable Congressional control, as the other party is literally trying to destroy democracy in real time before our faces. That is not irrelevant.

Also: ruby-red Kansas curb-stomped an attempt to outlaw abortion rights, and approximately 77% of the entire country supports this current bill. The generic Congressional ballots have all shown major movement toward Democrats, and frankly, I have a feeling that we have only just started to see the full impact of post-Roe fallout. So if you get off your asses, quit whining, and put the work in, we could actually win the midterms and then do EVEN MORE!

So yeah. Uh. Food for thought.

#hilary for ts #politics for ts #'but biden didn't give me a pony!!!'#'sTudEnT lOaNs!!!'#oh like the ones you have not paid a single penny on since he took office #the legislative agenda enacted thus far represents progress in every single left wing issue #and in utterly terrible circumstances #so yeah if you are still saying this #please stfu forever

3K notes · View notes

tomorrowusa · 1 month

Text

Four years ago today (March 13th), then President Donald Trump got around to declaring a national state of emergency for the COVID-19 pandemic. The administration had been downplaying the danger to the United States for 51 days since the first US infection was confirmed on January 22nd.

From an ABC News article dated 25 February 2020...

CDC warns Americans of 'significant disruption' from coronavirus

Until now, health officials said they'd hoped to prevent community spread in the United States. But following community transmissions in Italy, Iran and South Korea, health officials believe the virus may not be able to be contained at the border and that Americans should prepare for a "significant disruption." This comes in contrast to statements from the Trump administration. Acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said Tuesday the threat to the United States from coronavirus "remains low," despite the White House seeking $1.25 billion in emergency funding to combat the virus. Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, told CNBC’s Kelly Evans on “The Exchange” Tuesday evening, "We have contained the virus very well here in the U.S." [ ... ] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the request "long overdue and completely inadequate to the scale of this emergency." She also accused President Trump of leaving "critical positions in charge of managing pandemics at the National Security Council and the Department of Homeland Security vacant." "The president's most recent budget called for slashing funding for the Centers for Disease Control, which is on the front lines of this emergency. And now, he is compounding our vulnerabilities by seeking to ransack funds still needed to keep Ebola in check," Pelosi said in a statement Tuesday morning. "Our state and local governments need serious funding to be ready to respond effectively to any outbreak in the United States. The president should not be raiding money that Congress has appropriated for other life-or-death public health priorities." She added that lawmakers in the House of Representatives "will swiftly advance a strong, strategic funding package that fully addresses the scale and seriousness of this public health crisis." Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also called the Trump administration's request "too little too late." "That President Trump is trying to steal funds dedicated to fight Ebola -- which is still considered an epidemic in the Democratic Republic of the Congo -- is indicative of his towering incompetence and further proof that he and his administration aren't taking the coronavirus crisis as seriously as they need to be," Schumer said in a statement.

A reminder that Trump had been leaving many positions vacant – part of a Republican strategy to undermine the federal government.

Here's a picture from that ABC piece from a nearly empty restaurant in San Francisco's Chinatown. The screen displays a Trump tweet still downplaying COVID-19 with him seeming more concerned about the effect of the Dow Jones on his re-election bid.

People were not buying Trump's claims but they were buying PPE.

I took this picture at CVS on February 26th that year.

The stock market which Trump in his February tweet claimed looked "very good" was tanking on March 12th – the day before his state of emergency declaration.

Trump succeeded in sending the US economy into recession much faster than George W. Bush did at the end of his term – quite a feat!. (As an aside, every recession in the US since 1981 has been triggered by Republican presidents.)

Of course Trump never stopped trying to downplay the pandemic nor did he ever take responsibility for it. The US ended up with the highest per capita death rate of any technologically advanced country.

Precious time was lost while Trump dawdled. Orange on this map indicates COVID infections while red indicates COVID deaths. At the time Trump declared a state of emergency, the virus had already spread to 49 states.

The United States could have done far better and it had the tools to do so.

The Obama administration had limited the number of US cases of Ebola to under one dozen during that pandemic in the 2010s. Based on their success, they compiled a guide on how the federal government could limit future pandemics.

Obama team left pandemic playbook for Trump administration, officials confirm

Of course Trump ignored it.

Unlike those boxes of nuclear secrets in Trump's bathroom, the Obama pandemic limitation document is not classified. Anybody can read it – even if Trump didn't. This copy comes from the Stanford University Libraries.

TOWARDS EPIDEMIC PREDICTION: FEDERAL EFFORTS AND OPPORTUNITIES IN OUTBREAK MODELING

Feel free to share this post with anybody who still feels nostalgic about the Trump White House years!

#covid-19 #coronavirus #pandemic #public health #donald trump #trump's incompetent response to the pandemic #covid state of emergency #2020 #trump recession #51 days of trump pandemic dawdling #obama pandemic playbook #2010s ebola outbreak #nostalgia for trump administration #republicans #election 2024 #vote blue no matter who

108 notes · View notes

despazito · 3 months

Text

It is wild how much the concept of whiteness hinges on an us vs. them mentality and like how the Russian Babe is simultaneously an overrepresented ethnicity in white porn categories but also whenever the Russian Federation starts acting up again some of those same coomers will start churning out reddit diatribes on how the Russian race should be understood more as a barbaric horde from the Orient than a Civilized European Peoples.

And it's not just uniquely Russians. Slavic and eastern European women from impoverished regions in general are more vulnerable to being exploited and trafficked in the sex trade and get fetishized as "the last stock of submissive traditional white women" by weird trad Nazi men but you bet the second their corrupt government wages a pointless nationalist aggression against a Western Ally they too will become othered by some armchair phrenologist.

#it is all dumb and stupid

134 notes · View notes

kp777 · 3 months

Text

By Jake Johnson

Common Dreams

Jan. 6, 2024

"Billionaires attempting to influence politics from the shadows should not be rewarded with taxpayer subsidies," said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse.

Legislation introduced Tuesday by a pair of Democratic lawmakers would close a loophole that lets billionaires donate assets to dark money organizations without paying any taxes.

The U.S. tax code allows write-offs when appreciated assets such as shares of stock are donated to a charity, but the tax break doesn't apply when the assets are given to political groups.

However, donations to 501(c)(4) organizations—which are allowed to engage in some political activity as long as it's not their primary purpose—are exempt from capital gains taxes, a loophole that Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) and Rep. Judy Chu (D-Calif.) are looking to shutter with their End Tax Breaks for Dark Money Act.

Whitehouse, a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee who has focused extensively on the corrupting effects of dark money, said the need for the bill was made clear by what ProPublica and The Lever described as "the largest known donation to a political advocacy group in U.S. history."

The investigative outlets reported in 2022 that billionaire manufacturing magnate Barre Seid donated his 100% ownership stake in Tripp Lite, a maker of electrical equipment, to Marble Freedom Trust, a group controlled by Federalist Society co-chairman Leonard Leo.

The donation, completed in 2021, was worth $1.6 billion. According to ProPublica and The Lever, the structure of the gift allowed Seid to avoid up to $400 million in taxes.

"It's a clear sign of a broken tax code when a single donor can transfer assets worth $1.6 billion to a dark money political group without paying a penny in taxes," Whitehouse said in a statement Tuesday. "Billionaires attempting to influence politics from the shadows should not be rewarded with taxpayer subsidies."

"We cannot allow millionaires and billionaires to run roughshod over our democracy and then reward them for it with a tax break."

If passed, the End Tax Breaks for Dark Money Act would ensure that donations of appreciated assets to 501(c)(4) organizations are subjected to the same rules as gifts to political action committees (PACs) and parties.

"Thanks to the far-right Supreme Court, billionaires already have outsized influence to decide our nation's politics; through a loophole in the tax code, they can even secure massive public subsidies for lobbying and campaigning when they secretly donate their wealth to certain nonprofits instead of traditional political organizations," said Chu. "We can decrease the impact the wealthy have on our politics by applying capital gains taxes to donations of appreciated property to nonprofits that engage in lobbying and political activity—the same way they are already treated when made to traditional political organizations like PACs."

The new bill comes amid an election season that is already flooded with outside spending.

The watchdog OpenSecrets reported last month that super PACs and other groups "have already poured nearly $318 million into spending on presidential and congressional races as of January 14—more than six times as much as had been spent at this point in 2020."

Thanks to the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling, super PACs can raise and spend unlimited sums on federal elections—often without being fully transparent about their donors.

Morris Pearl, chairman of the Patriotic Millionaires, said Tuesday that "there is no justifiable reason why wealthy people like me should be allowed to dominate our political system by donating an entire $1.6 billion company to a dark money political group."

"But perhaps more egregious is the $400 million tax break that comes from doing so," said Pearl. "It's a perfect example of how this provision in the tax code is used by the ultrawealthy to manipulate the levers of government while simultaneously dodging their obligation to pay taxes. We cannot allow millionaires and billionaires to run roughshod over our democracy and then reward them for it with a tax break."

#dark money #super pac #citizens united #corruption #taxation #judy chu #sheldon whitehouse

117 notes · View notes

robertreich · 1 year

Video

youtube

The Truth About Corporate Subsidies

Why won't big American corporations do what's right for America unless the government practically bribes them?

And why is the government so reluctant to regulate them?

Prior to the 1980’s, the U.S. government demanded that corporations act in the public interest.

For example, the Clean Air Act of 1970 stopped companies from polluting our air by regulating them.

Fast forward to 2022, when the biggest piece of legislation aimed at combating the climate crisis allocates billions of dollars in subsidies to clean energy producers.

Notice the difference?

Both are important steps to combating climate change.

But they illustrate the nation’s shift away from regulating businesses to subsidizing them.

It’s a trend that’s characterized every recent administration.

The CHIPS Act –– another major initiative of the Biden administration –– shelled out $52 billion in subsidies to semiconductor firms.

Donald Trump’s “Operation Warp Speed” delivered over $10 billion in subsidies to COVID vaccine manufacturers.

Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act subsidized the health care and pharmaceutical industries.

George W. Bush and Obama bailed out Wall Street following the 2008 economic crash while providing about $80 billion in rescue funds for GM and Chrysler.

And the federal government has been subsidizing big oil and gas companies for decades, to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars.

Before the Reagan era, it was usually the case that America regulated rather than subsidized big business to ensure the wellbeing of the American public.

The Great Depression and FDR’s Administration created an alphabet soup of regulatory agencies — the SEC, FCC, FHA, and so on — that regulated businesses.

Corporations were required to produce public goods, or avoid public “bads” like a financial meltdown, as conditions for staying in business.

If this regulatory alternative seems far-fetched today, that’s because of how far we’ve come from a regulatory state to a subsidy state.

Today it’s politically difficult, if not impossible, for government to demand that corporations bear the costs of public goods. The government still regulates businesses, of course –– but one of the biggest things it does is subsidize them. Just look at the growth of government subsidies to business over the past half century.

The reason for this shift is corporations now have more political clout than ever before.

Industries that spend the most on lobbying and campaign contributions have often benefited greatly from this shift from regulation to subsidy.

Now, subsidies aren’t inherently bad. Important technological advances have been made because of government funding.

But subsidies are a problem when few, if any, conditions are attached — so there’s no guarantee that benefits reach the American people.

What good is subsidizing the healthcare industry when millions of Americans have medical debt and can’t afford insurance? What good are subsidies for oil companies when they price gouge at the pump and destroy the planet? What good are subsidies for profitable semiconductor manufacturers when they’re global companies with no allegiance to America?

We’re left with a system where costs are socialized, profits are privatized.

Now, fixing this might seem daunting — but we’re not powerless. Here’s what we can do to make sure our government actually works for the people, not just the powerful.

First, make all subsidies conditional, so that any company getting money from the government must clearly specify what it will be spent on – so we can ensure the funds actually help the public.

Second, ban stock buybacks so companies can’t use the subsidies to pump up their profits and stock prices.

Third, empower regulatory agencies to do the jobs they once did — forcing companies to act in the public interest.

Finally, we need campaign finance reform to get big corporate money out of politics.

Large American corporations shouldn’t need government subsidies to do what’s right for America.

It’s time for our leaders in Washington to get this message, and reverse this disturbing trend.

#youtube #videos #politics #government #money #government spending #video

274 notes · View notes

credince--writes · 1 year

Text

Deep In Those Woods.

Keegan P. Russ x Fem!Reader

Chapter 1 - Chapter 2 - Chapter 3

AO3

You find a strange man in the woods, no doubt running from the federation. He seems, well, in simple terms beat to shit. May your act of kindness not go unpunished.

...

Alr guys, I've tried my hand at writing x reader but it goes so much goddamn faster writing for vague characters versus 'yourself'. BUT IMA TRY IT AGAIN BITCH!

It wasn't no man's land, but it had seemed no man dared to step into these treacherous lands.

Of course, until they did.

The thick woods, large mountains, and the pure water of the creeks that ran through the lands were seemingly forgotten.

Of course, it was, all until it wasn't.

It started with limited activity, maybe a helicopter, maybe the sound of a plane buzzing past too high in the sky to really know who or what it exactly was.

That's around the time he went missing, your brother that is.

The presence of Federation soldiers was small but large enough to know that this wasn't a simple injury in the woods- a broken ankle, anything of the sort would've been called through the radio.

You'd trusted him enough, trusted his skills to not fall victim to a bear attack. You'd both been raised out here- knew how it worked. It would take more than the maternal rage of a bear protecting her cubs to take either of you down.

Your father was what you'd consider a prepper. Long paranoid and embodied with the 'True American Passion', which was then instilled into you both from a young age. The property was bought long ago and turned into an off-the-grid homestead far away from the nearest town. When the evacuations had begun the two of you had waited before looting.

It seemed wrong at first.

But it was for the best.

The broken windows of the old shopfronts a days travel one way you'd gazed through as a little girl. Ripping open the doors to cars to pump the diesel from their tanks. The cases of fuel stabilizers were put to good use after managing to hotwire an old truck.

There was resistance, but if your father had taught you anything it was to stay far, far away from organizations like that. The kind that would preach equality, to give to the poor and help the weak but would strip you of your resources if they only knew how well you were stocked.

It wasn't selfish, no.

This was survival.

But that was a long time ago.

Dad died of a heart attack a few years ago. He was buried under that apple tree he'd snap a branch from to beat either of you two if God forbid you stepped out of line.

Seemed like a fitting place.

Better than feeding him to the pigs.

Civilization had started to heal itself, the local farmers proving their worth after the large highway's bridges were blown up. She'd remember vaguely hearing it was the ranchers, banding together to protect their lands.

Either way, whoever had done it had done a good job. The landscape protected those who called it home, those who respected the danger of its beauty.

And the days would blend together- the crippling feeling of loneliness, the suffocating sound of silence filling the cabin. You prayed your brother was alright- you could feel, deep down, that he was, he had to be alright. But you couldn't go look for him-

You weren't naive.

You know what they'd do to you if they captured you.

Your knowledge wasn't useful to them, no something much more horrifying.

Your body.

The soft clucks of chickens could only do so much to fill the void- the carnal need for social interaction. Even the arguments over the smallest things with your brother scratched the necessary itch, but once all of the chores had been done, everything dusted, organized, canned, prepped, dinner made, herbs dried, pillows fluffed, clothes mended.

You'd sit in silence.

Waiting.

...

Keegan was tired.

Exhausted.

Running on the fumes of fumes.

And God, did everything hurt.

He'd been hurt worse before- he thinks. But he knew it was starting to get bad, really, really bad when he could no longer feel the piercing pain in his chest, the throb of his ribs, the searing pain in his thigh.

His attackers hadn't survived- he knew that much. But his radio had fallen victim, and as much as he hated to admit it, he was close to being a casualty as well.

But he was stubborn.

The kind of stubborn bred into his genes.

He kept moving, stumbling through the forest bouncing from one tree to the next, tripping over himself and sending himself tumbling over a ledge and into a creek.

The water was cold-

He could feel the water slowly trickling over his cheek, soaking into his clothes as the soothing song of the water meandered past lulled his sight into darkness.

...

You suppose you could fill part of today's void with laundry, maybe even dipping your feet into the creek would bring some kind of temporary relief. The song of the creek shooing away the silence while you'd crouch in its safety.

Pulling the basket down, making your way out and through the pathways feeling the morning sun kiss the back of your neck as you marched seemingly on autopilot through the trail and onward.

The songbirds in the morning, the light hazy sound that the bugs would make as they hid in their crevices.

The sound of your footsteps soft against the fallen leaves and moss, the occasional squelch of mud.

Making your way to the creek, finding the large rock you'd sit on, and waiting to procrastinate the inevitable chore you'd find yourself mindlessly toiling at until sunset.

But there was a boot.

Why was there a boot in the water?

Your eyes narrowed at it, fell to its side sunken, and caught against stones with its added water weight.

Fear crept up the back of your neck as the implications of another person nearby becoming much, much more material. It wasn't something that could simply drift along the creek-

someone was here.

And there was no way to know if they were friendly- if there even was such a thing as friendly anymore.

Hesitantly, pushing your hands onto the cold stone and stepping into the creek, leaning forward to peer up the stream for your eyes to land on what was seemingly a corpse-

missing a boot.

A rifle strewn to his side, a mask, a helmet- a thick vest with a seemingly endless number of things tacked and strapped onto it.

This was a soldier.

You stepped forward, against better judgment to further investigate, eyes falling on the deathly pale skin. Hand reaching hesitantly up to grip the hem of the mask, some kind of skull-like distortion painted into the worn fabric.

Their black grease paint smeared and mixed with blood, eyes shut-

Which is why you felt like you'd jumped out of your skin when his eyes opened in a flash- the moment you'd tugged the mask upward. A large hand splashing through the shallow water and gripping onto your wrist, grip deathly strong as you shrunk back trying to pull your wrist away.

"Ssm.. Away." He shouted, voice slurred and eyes staring off into nothing as if his cold and tense body was acting on nothing but instinct.

English?

Was he-

He just spoke English.

He was American-

His grip became weak, his hand falling to his side as his head lolled as he lost consciousness again. Your body sparks like a live wire as you lunged forward, hands gripping onto his vest and calling out to him, trying to have him open his eyes again to speak, to clarify a thousand questions racing through your mind at that moment.

Your head lifted, frantically searching your surroundings trying to see if anyone had been with him. Letting out a frustrated puff and standing, trying to grip onto a strap on his vest and dragging the accumulated sopping wet dead weight of the large, unconscious man onto the moist dirt shoreline of the small creek.

Struggling- thoroughly before getting his upper body onto the dirt looking around as if questioning your own sanity.

Was this a good idea?

How could it be a good, idea- this was a red-flag paradise.

But, he was American.

That didn't mean he had good intentions.

But he is a soldier-

You think.

You think he is a soldier.

Why would a soldier be all the way out here?

Mercenary maybe?

A theif?

Your eyes narrowed on the thin line of blood tricking through he exposed flesh of his mask, over his eye.

You exhaled, closing your eyes and bunching your hands at your side while you started running back for home.

Throwing a pot of water onto the wood stove to start boiling, scattering out a bag and gripping the handles of the wheelbarrow full of firewood, dumping its contents out onto the soft earth before yanking it back and charging forward on the path to the creek.

Loading the man's body into the wheelbarrow was easier said than done.

You weren't proud to say it, but you did drop him.

More than once.

A few times, actually. Finally opting to throw his upper body in first, lifting his legs with all the energy you could muster and finally tucking his arms in as if you hadn't just dropped him like a sack of shit seven times prior.

Pushing him towards your home.

Simply pushing the wheelbarrow into the open space of your living room, pushing the couch as far back against the wall, and dumping his body out onto the wooden plank flooring near the stove.

Shucking the vest, the gear, unstrapping the gun, and putting it far, far away. The knives kept coming, tucked into random spots, hidden and clipped and strapped under every layer.

The mask was finally removed from his face.

The pants went too.

You'd forgotten his other boot in the water- you'd have to get it later.

It was like finding a stray dog- a dirty, bloody, unconscious dog.

But it was a large, shirtless, stinky man on the floor of your cabin.

You'd leave those thoughts for later.

You tended to his wounds, cleaning the blood from his skin, disinfecting and pulling the gunk from his cuts, carefully stitching the long gash on his thigh back together.

Setting a pillow under his head as his breathing began to even out, the heat of the fire warming his skin and bringing color back to it.

The many scars that rippled across his flesh.

You sat back, exhausted, staring at the rise and fall of his bruised chest. Listening to the sound of his breathing, albeit faint.

But all you could think about wasn't the fear gripping onto your ankles like a vice.

It wasn't silent anymore.

#Call of Duty #Keegan P Russ x reader #Keegan Russ x Reader #Call of Duty Ghosts

294 notes · View notes

collapsedsquid · 1 year

Text

I’ll conclude by returning to a theme I brought up earlier: the shrunken time horizon of the US ruling class. The current motley crew looks nothing like the set who planned the post-World War II order. They emerged from—or recruits were assimilated to—an ethnically and socially homogenous WASP aristocracy who felt themselves above quotidian distractions and rank commercial temptations. Of course, it was all in the interest of long-term accumulation under US guidance, but it was all successfully planned and executed (at least until things started slipping some in the 1970s). Now with the US in a long process of imperial decline, our planning elite seems fragmented and lost. You have Republicans criticizing Biden for not having shot down the Chinese balloon quickly enough, and Democrats acting as if it was an act of heroism. Our rulers don’t act like they have any good idea about coping with the rise of China, except with bellicose and one hopes ineffectual gestures, because God knows, we don’t want bellicose gestures to lead to an actual war.

And we have a capitalist class that has apparently given up on the future—incapable of dealing with the climate crisis, a truly dire threat, but also consuming capital rather than investing it. Net investment—net, that is, of depreciation—by both business and government—has been falling relative to GDP for decades. The vast flow of free money and 0% interest rates from the Federal Reserve has been channeled into an impressive set of bubbles: the most extended valuations of stocks in US history, crypto, unicorns, housing. It used to be normal to have one particular asset lead the way in a speculative orgy, whether it was stocks in the late 1990s or housing in the following decade. Now we’ve got multiple and serial bubbles that have only been partly deflated by the Fed’s tightening moves of the last year. And Wall Street is dearly hoping the central bank will reverse those moves in a few months and resume the cheap money flow. The bond vigilantes of the 1980s and 1990s, always on the lookout for an inflation that needs to be crushed, have largely disappeared.

I’ll give the last word to Etienne Balibar, who has diagnosed the affliction precisely. “We realize now that our ruling class is no longer a bourgeoisie in the historical sense of the word. It does not have a project of intellectual hegemony nor an artistic point of honor. It needs (or so it thinks) only cost-benefit analyses, “cognitive” educational programs, and committees of experts. That is why, with the help of the pandemic and the internet revolution, the same ruling class is preparing the demise of the social sciences, humanities and even the theoretical sciences.” The bourgeoisie no longer has any civilizational project, national or otherwise. Live for today, and if the water rises, they can just move inland. Or to their underground bunkers.

post-nationalism

166 notes · View notes

dontmeantobepoliticalbut · 10 months

Text

On Wednesday, Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Chair Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) reintroduced a proposal to make higher education free at public schools for most Americans — and pay for it by taxing Wall Street.

The College for All Act of 2023 would massively change the higher education landscape in the U.S., taking a step toward Sanders’s long-standing goal of making public college free for all. It would make community college and public vocational schools tuition-free for all students, while making any public college and university free for students from single-parent households making less than $125,000 or couples making less than $250,000 — or, the vast majority of families in the U.S.

The bill would increase federal funding to make tuition free for most students at universities that serve non-white groups, such as Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). It would also double the maximum award to Pell Grant recipients at public or nonprofit private colleges from $7,395 to $14,790.

If passed, the lawmakers say their bill would be the biggest expansion of access to higher education since 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Higher Education Act, a bill that would massively increase access to college in the ensuing decades. The proposal would not only increase college access, but also help to tackle the student debt crisis.

“Today, this country tells young people to get the best education they can, and then saddles them for decades with crushing student loan debt. To my mind, that does not make any sense whatsoever,” Sanders said. “In the 21st century, a free public education system that goes from kindergarten through high school is no longer good enough. The time is long overdue to make public colleges and universities tuition-free and debt-free for working families.”

Debt activists expressed support for the bill. “This is the only real solution to the student debt crisis: eliminate tuition and debt by fully funding public colleges and universities,” the Debt Collective wrote on Wednesday. “It’s time for your member of Congress to put up or shut up. Solve the root cause and eliminate tuition and debt.”

These initiatives would be paid for by several new taxes on Wall Street, found in a separate bill reintroduced by Sanders and Rep. Barbara Lee (D-California) on Wednesday. The Tax on Wall Street Speculation would enact a 0.5% tax on stock trades, a 0.1% tax on bonds and a 0.005% tax on trades on derivatives and other types of assets.

The tax would primarily affect the most frequent, and often the wealthiest, traders and would be less than a typical fee for pension management for working class investors, the lawmakers say. It would raise up to $220 billion in the first year of enactment, and over $2.4 trillion over a decade. The proposal has the support of dozens of progressive organizations as well as a large swath of economists.

“Let us never forget: Back in 2008, middle class taxpayers bailed out Wall Street speculators whose greed, recklessness and illegal behavior caused millions of Americans to lose their jobs, homes, life savings, and ability to send their kids to college,” said Sanders. “Now that giant financial institutions are back to making record-breaking profits while millions of Americans struggle to pay rent and feed their families, it is Wall Street’s turn to rebuild the middle class by paying a modest financial transactions tax.”

466 notes · View notes

shewhoworshipscarlin · 2 months

Text

Alvin Childress

Alvin Childress (September 15, 1907 – April 19, 1986) was an American actor, who is best known for playing the cabdriver Amos Jones in the 1950s television comedy series Amos 'n' Andy.

Alvin Childress was born in Meridian, Mississippi. He was educated at Rust College, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in sociology. When he initially entered college, Childress intended to become a doctor, enrolling in typical pre-med courses. He had no thoughts of becoming involved in acting, but became involved in theater outside of classes. Childress and Rex Ingram in the Federal Theatre Project production of Haiti (1938)

Childress's first wife was the former Alice Herndon, who established herself as a successful writer and actress under the name of Alice Childress (1916–1994); the couple was married from 1934 to 1957 and had a daughter, Jean Rosa. From 1961 to 1973, Childress worked as an unemployment interviewer for the Los Angeles Department of Personnel and in the Civil Service Commission of Los Angeles County.

Childress moved to New York City and became an actor with Harlem's Lafayette Players, a troupe of stock players associated with the Lafayette Theatre. Soon, he was engaged as an actor in the Federal Theater Project, the American Negro Theater, and in all-black race film productions such as Keep Punching (1939). His greatest success on the stage was his performance as Noah in the popular drama, Anna Lucasta, which ran for 957 performances. He also worked at Teachers College of Columbia University. Childress also operated his own radio and record store in New York City. When he learned about casting for the Amos 'n' Andy television series, Childress decided to audition for a role. He was hired a year before the show went on the air.

In 1951, he was cast as the level-headed, hard-working and honest Amos Jones in the popular television series, The Amos 'n' Andy Show, which ran for two years on CBS. Childress originally tried out for the role of The Kingfish, but Charles Correll and Freeman Gosden cast him as Amos. Since he had been hired a year before the show began, Gosden and Correll turned the search for an actor to play "The Kingfish" over to Childress. In a 1979 interview, Childress shared information about some of the candidates. Cab Calloway was considered but found wanting by Gosden because of his straight hair. Childress said there were many famous men, with and without actual acting experience, who wanted to play the role. Eventually, old-time vaudeville comedian Tim Moore was cast as the Kingfish.

Shortly after the television show had ended, plans to turn it into a vaudeville act were announced in 1953, with Childress, Williams and Moore playing the same roles as they had in the television series. It is not known if there were any performances. In 1956, after the television show was no longer in production, Childress and some of his fellow cast members: Tim Moore, Spencer Williams, and Lillian Randolph along with her choir, began a tour of the US as "The TV Stars of Amos 'n' Andy". The tour was halted by CBS as the network considered this an infringement of their rights to the program and its cast of characters. Despite the threats which ended the 1956 tour, Childress, along with Moore, Williams and Johnny Lee were able to perform one night in 1957 in Windsor, Ontario, apparently without legal action. When he tried for work as an actor, Childress found none as he was typecast as Amos Jones. For a short time, Childress found himself parking cars for an upscale Beverly Hills restaurant.

Childress also appeared in roles on the television series Perry Mason, Sanford and Son, Good Times and The Jeffersons and in the films Thunderbolt and Lightfoot (1974) and The Day of the Locust (1975). When Childress appeared as a minister in a 1972 episode of Sanford and Son, he was reunited with two former cast members: Lillian Randolph of Amos 'n' Andy in the role of Aunt Hazel and Lance Taylor, Jr. of Anna Lucasta, with the role of Uncle Edgar.

Childress suffered from diabetes and other ailments. He died at age 78 on April 19, 1986, in Inglewood, California. He was buried at National Memorial Harmony Park in Landover, Maryland.

#historical #black history month #actor

21 notes · View notes

odinsblog · 2 months

Note

are you disappointed that bree newsome wants trump reclected?

Bree Newsome is a prolific tweeter and I’ve looked, but I haven’t seen anywhere where she said that she wants Trump to be re-elected. Please send me the link to the specific tweet if I’m wrong.

I understand and agree with much of what Bree has been saying on Twitter though. I mean, I dO get it. I think her major concern is that 1) in some important ways, the difference between Trump’s policies and some of Biden’s policies has not been all that great, and 2) if Biden should win (definitely not a guarantee) liberals will go right back to brunch and act as if the problem is gone and everything is “okay” again.

As far as the first point goes, you don’t need to look any further than Biden’s Title 42; or how the Biden administration literally sued to keep using Trump’s previous racist immigration policies. Not a good look. And now, you’ve got Democrats trying to out-Republican Republicans by showing how tough cruel they can be to refugees who are legally seeking asylum at the Southern border. Bottom line, the immigration policies are white supremacy-lite, and some of the changes Biden is proposing—like forcing asylum seekers to wait in another country while the government takes its sweet time with endless immigration red tape—these changes will fundamentally change America’s immigration system, for the worse.

And that’s without me even touching on how badly Biden is fucking up with Palestine.

And as for the second point, conservative Democrats have gone back to brunch once orange man gone. Remember how hard Democrats came down on the Trump administration for their poor Coronavirus response? Yet now we have the CDC basically telling people to stay their asses at work even if they’ve tested positive for COVID. WTF?? Did I mention that measles are making a comeback?? And Biden isn’t saying anything, and neither are his surrogates. And so it is perhaps this tendency towards inaction(?) that is the most significantly damaging and damning aspect that creates disaffected voters who should be motivated to get rid of Trump and Republicans writ large —in a lot of ways that matter, disaffected voters don’t see any significant differences. Sure, the stock market is doing great, but people are getting their asses kicked on a lot of day-to-day, kitchen table issues. Unemployment is down, but a lot of people still have to work multiple jobs to make ends meet.

So yeah, I won’t be dismissive or derisive about Bree Newsome. She’s making some really valid points for anyone who is willing to actually listen.

Now that all said, I think that there is something fundamentally wrong that people are missing when they say misguided things like, “We survived one Trump administration, and we can survive another one.” A lot of marginalized groups and oppressed people won’t survive a second Trump administration. They just won’t.

Because if you thought it was bad the last time, I promise you the next Trump administration won’t be anything like the last one. Last time Trump was unprepared and didn’t even expect to win, so they made rookie mistakes. That won’t happen next time. The next Trump administration will be stacked from top to bottom with diehard Trump loyalists who will ruthlessly execute his most racist policies, foreign and domestic. (See also: Project 2025).

And yes, Biden is 100% for shit on his policy of standing by Israel no matter what. People who agree with Bree think that we will, more or less, have the same kind of problems under Trump that we’re having under Biden now. Those people are what I like to call deadass wrong.

Literally EVERYTHING will become exponentially worse in a second Trump term. For everyone who isn’t a wealthy, cisgender heterosexual white male.

Just imagine America with a Republican controlled House and Senate. Goodbye Medicare and Social Security. Goodbye labor laws. So long minimum wages. See ya, state local and federal courts not totally stacked with Federalist Society judges. It was nice knowing you, “shithole” countries full of people who I love and care about.

Look, I finally figured out something that used to bother me when I first became politically aware: it bugged tf out of me whenever I heard someone say, “THIS is the most important election everrrr!! Because THIS time, democracy itself is on the line!” Pfft. I was like a lot of people I see now, saying “But that’s what you said about the last election.” The truth is, every election is pretty much life or death. Every single one. Because elections aren’t like something you do once, and then afterwards everything is all good forever and ever. Maybe it should be, but you got assholes like Mitch McConnell and Ron DeSantis and Trump and whoever comes after them, you got people who will always be trying their hardest to constantly make shit worse for everyone who isn’t wealthy and white. They aren’t going away. So we can’t go away either. Because the moment we checkout and go back to brunch, they get right back to working on their usual transphobic, homophobic, misogynistic, racist, bullshit culture wars.

So as long as Republicans, Libertarians and conservative “Democrats” keep punching in, we gotta punch in too.

I wanna be really clear about something here: Joe Biden has done some very good things (like capping the cost of insulin), but he has also been, in many ways (not all), a terrible “Democratic” president. Biden is far too enamored of “bipartisanship,” and reaching across the aisle (to people who do not want to compromise), and Biden is far far too enamored of the non-existent good old days™ when Republicans weren’t the evil pieces of shit that they are now, and he takes far too long to change his position on important issues. Like Palestine.

But yeah, (can’t believe I’M saying this) he’s definitely better than a second Trump term will be. And even if he’s slow to change positions, at least he can be persuaded. Trump can’t.

I’m not white and I’m not rich. I am terrified of a second Trump term. I’m basically a single issue voter now, and my issue is keeping Trump out of office and HOPEFULLY making him pay for every single law he’s broken.

#anon #ask #answered #politics #bree newsome

15 notes · View notes

racefortheironthrone · 9 months

Note

Re: housing, I agree with your ideas but I just read that NYCHA needs like $78 billion for repairs. From a national budget standpoint that is trivial but that's still a lot for the city budget, so my question is do you think it is possible to build public housing at a robust rate considering the costs and usual political opposition (see recent housing failure in NY state gov)? Also do you think there is a way to get costs down?

In public policy, the devil is always in the details.

So I read the same articles that you've read, which mention that NYCHA just reported that they need $78 billion to repair and renovate their buildings, and that figure is almost double the $45 billion estimate from 2017. And then I read the actual report, which explains that $78 billion is how much NYCHA will need to spend over the next twenty years.

$78 billion divided by 20 is $3.9 billion a year. Now I don't want to minimize the problem: NYCHA's operating budget, which is separate from the NYC municipal budget, is about $4 billion a year and its capital budget is about $8 billion a year, so these repairs represent a significant additional cost burden for NYCHA. However, the NYC municipal budget is $107 billion a year - financing these repairs is not beyond the fiscal capacity of the City of New York, especially if it can get some assistance from the State Budget and HUD.

Counter-intuitively, I actually think this issue is an example of the costs of not spending money when it comes to public housing. As I've said before, trying to build public housing as cheaply as possible is actually counter-productive, because cheap construction runs down faster and increases maintenance and repair costs. In part what we are seeing now is the long-term consequences of the Federal Housing Acts of 1937 and 1949 and New York's state and city level housing laws requiring public housing to be built as cheaply as possible, as well as budgeting decisions made by NYC and NYCHA since the 1970s that have downplayed building new housing to replace the older stock and sought to save money from maintenance and repair budgets.

If instead NYCHA housing had been built to and operated at the same standards as similarly sized private apartment complexes that house New York's middle class and affluent residents, the buildings would be looking much better for their age - and NYCHA's repair bill would be much, much lower.

But to answer your question: it is absolutely possible for New York to build large amounts of high quality public housing, if it's willing to spend the money to do so, and the governor doesn't massively alienate the same progressive legislators and labor groups whose support they'll need to overcome suburban resistance to affordable housing.

And in terms of bringing down costs, I'd recommend that the state directly construct the housing rather than going through the traditional private contractors. (Also, if the state wants to really save money and be sneaky, instead of negotiating set-asides that merely designate a percentage of units as (temporarily) "affordable" in return for tax and regulatory benefits, have those negotiate a percentage of units as publicly-owned. Scatter-site housing via inclusionary zoning!)

#public policy #housing #public housing #nycha #nyc #social housing

39 notes · View notes

uzurimisery · 3 months

Text

chapter 1: the night things went to shit. / choso kamo / nsfw

wc: approx. 6k

Warnings: MDNI, DEAD DOVE DO NOT EAT, zombies, dubcon, violence, gore, eventual smut, slow burn, dead bodies, cannibalism, reader uses guns, guns, torture scenes, graphic depictions of violence and injuries, warnings to be added and updated

Sometimes the green blinded you. The vibrant, verdant shades, spiralling up the sides of buildings, breathing life into the dead cityscape. Where once doors stood, vines dangled hanging like beaded curtains. Roots thicker than your arms weaved through the cracked pavement. New species, ones thought dead, ones birthed anew, living and breathing in the death of mankind. Plants everywhere and in everything, and tiny white flowers in broken ceramic.

In the distance a pack of wild dogs were barking, no doubt hunting down a bird or two for dinner, or whatever rodent they could find. It was always so quiet when you were out here on your own.

You still remember the before. When glass panes went high into the sky, the sun's light reflected off them and hurt your eyes. When your eyes were closed you could feel the heat from them, smell your mother's perfume as she pulled you by your sticky three-year-old hands to go in the building. Sometimes you could hear the wind whistle against the buildings as they swayed with it. The rumble of engines, horns, music, the sounds of traffic.

One day you’d wake up and forget that memory too. The dead were numerous and remembering them living hurt more than not. There were more important things to focus on than the dead, or you’d become one of them. Food, shelter, keeping your logs up-to-date, reporting to your commanding officer.

How it happened was blurry. A mess of fragmented images, grating against each other, clashing between what was real and what was imagined. One day things had been fine and the next 90% of the population had died. And some came back to life. Shambling corpses decaying and composted as walking plants. The schools said that it was humans' fault it happened. That we warmed the planet to the point where things that were dead came back to kill us. Things that once were no threat became one. Others, a sect of religious people called The Followers of the Prophet said it was the result of all our sins, the hatred of mankind made manifest. Whatever the case, the world ended minus the small encampments of people left in safe zones.

Some people still lived out in the wilds, apart from the remnants of civilisation. Some were small communities and some were lone wolfs. It was better to keep your distance from them regardless. The dead were dangerous, but humans were deadly.

Teton neighed under you as you led him out of the city limits, annoyed that you stopped petting him as you went. He was a funny horse, more personality than some people you knew. 17 hands tall, American Saddlebred, dark bay, and very opinionated. Breaking him had been a nightmare, no one else had ever gotten close to it, but one day the two of you reached an agreement and he’d been your mount since then. Even if he fought the bit from time to time. He was the only real perk of the job.

The stock of your Ruger 10/22 Carbine bumped against you awkwardly as you leaned forward to pet the needed horse. “Whiny boy today.”

You were one of the lucky few. Taken in by The Federation, fed, educated, trained. All because you had potential because you had a gift. There were a few people like you. They called you all blessed but it felt more like a curse. Certain people, not many, could sense the hordes. Some of the more gifted ones could even control one or two of the corpses. Influence them to act differently. You weren’t that talented, you just had enough sense that

allowed you to do scouting on your own just like you were now. There were moments, darkness pooling behind your eyes, where it felt like there was more but it’d disappear as soon as it got there. Right now you could feel that power pulling at you, telling you that there were dead nearby.

Another one of the dogs barked, pulling your attention back up. You squinted, turning behind you, one hand raised to shield your eyes. It was quiet today, more so than usual. It was easier to prefer the days which were chaotic and filled with events. When things were calm it felt like your nerves were on fire, primed and ready to burn. Waiting for a spark that never comes.

The rounds were simple today. The sun was still high in the sky, hitting your back and you did the east route. It was cleared out years ago, with traps and mines put in place to keep any of the dead or looters from getting close to the walls of the Federation. Something about the silence today felt like a living thing, like a bumble was put around you, pressing against your eardrumbs blocking sound. It crept under your skin till the only thing you could hear was Teton’s horseshoes hitting the pavement and your own breath.

Coming over the crest of Overpass 3E, the source of your anxiety came into view. A small pack of the dead, three of them, were rambling towards you. They were a mess, most of their flesh falling off in disgusting grey clumps, attached to the bone only by sinew. You could sense they were on the last stage of this life cycle, soon they wouldn't be able to move anymore. They would become one with the environment, wherever they fell to the ground. There they’d sit and wait for some poor soul to walk back that they could reach and drain the life out of them, dooming them to become just like it had.

The butt of your rifle slotted snuggly against the shoulder of your firing hand and you gave a low whistle, sharp and urgent, to Teton to stop moving and brace for a shot. Your cheek met the riser as you steadied the gun with your other hand. The chamber was loaded with six shots and you had reserve bullets on you if they ran out. Your Federation standard issue Glock 17 was holstered on your left hip in case things went south too quickly.

Lining up the first shot was always the hardest but once you had it, you had it. Your finger tightened on the trigger, the metal cold against your skin. Everything was right in your sights, no need to adjust for wind. It was grim, how practised and patient the hundreds of drills you ran growing up made this second nature to you. Switching the safety off was as easy as your ABCs.

Another dog barked. Teton snorted. And then, muffled by the suppressor, a bullet whizzed through the air landing in the centre of the foremost zombie’s skull, knocking it to the ground, the bullet casting falling, jingling when it landed.

Two more shots followed suit. One hitting its mark and the other a foot off. The zombie had jerked erratically, somehow dodging the bullet. You lined up a fourth shot, accounting for its movement, but this one only hit its shoulder. It seemed to move with your gun, knowing to dodge.

“Shit.” You muttered under your breath, adjusting to shoot again and you nudged Teton forward a few paces to make it easier. Finally, with the air filled with gunpowder, the fifth shot hit its mark.

There was something off about the last one. It was too agile and aware for the state of decay it was in. Removing the magazine to load it again, eyes peeled on the final corpse. Thirty seconds passed by before it moved again. This time it was faster, spurred on by some unknown force.

Your heart hammered against your ribs as the zombie screeched, lurching forward. Teton whinnied, ear flat against his head, starting to back the two of you up from the imminent danger. Your own fear echoed his, this wasn’t the normal lumbering dead you knew. This was different, something smarter, something angrier, something that wouldn’t die.

Training kicking in, you steadied yourself as Teton continued to back up slowly. He knew to keep his head lowered for you to have a clear sight while doing so. The silence only seemed to grow thicker, no birds or bugs were heard. Just the groans and screeches of the zombie in front of you.

You pulled the trigger, the bullet flying out and hitting the zombie’s throat. It gargled, coagulated black goo pouring out of the entry point but it didn’t stop moving forward. Another shot. This one hit the mark square in the forehead. The zombie paused for a moment but it kept moving forward.

One shot to the head killed them permanently. Two should make it so there’d be no chance of it being alive. But it was still moving. A third shot rang out, hitting the left eye socket. Finally, it dropped to the ground, twitching and moaning. It wretched and jerked around for nearly a minute before finally, with a haunting death rattle, it stilled.

You stared, watching it for a few more minutes, afraid it would move again. It was only after the birds started to chirp again that you felt secure that it was truly dead. Teton had lifted his head and shook out his mane. Digging your heels into his side, you spurred him forward, still having to complete your route.

As you got beside the zombie which gave you all the problems, you shot it again.

Teton neighed, annoyed that you were wasting his time, ready to move on and get home.

“Just making sure,” you spoke while adding more bullets to the magazine. Something was happening out in the wilds, and not knowing was making you anxious. But there had been a change out beyond the Federation’s walls. “Let’s get back before sundown yeah? Don’t want to be out here longer than I have to.”

───※ ·❆· ※───

You had returned before sundown but were kept at the barracks accounting for why your ammunition was spent. They didn’t believe you when you told them that it had taken so many shots to kill one zombie so you have a meal ticket docked from your pay. Stupid pricks. The food was never anything good anyway. Always tasteless and looked like sludge.

The streets of the inner city were full of people today. Restrictions had finally lifted after the last attacks from the Followers. Not that the restrictions had any impact on you. Being gifted meant that you would never be out of the military until you hit 50. If you hit 50. People like you were too valuable to let go, no matter how much you begged. The last person who had tried to run, they had shot him in the leg to make him limp. Now they carted him around in a convoy on trade runs.

You took a moment to swing onto Market Street. Teton deserved a treat for being so calm today. Making a horse get used to gunfire, zombies, and near-death situations was not an easy process, but he was. He was as much a weapon as your gun was.

You pushed through the crowds as you went, the events of today gnawing at you. Children ran past, screaming as they played tag. A pregnant woman was haggling with a vendor over a sack of potatoes. A few horseback patrol guards were moving down the centre of the street, maintaining order. Sunlight filtered through the ripped tarps strung 30 feet above street level. They were installed 15 years ago after a particularly rough winter left six feet of snow covering the stalls.

The normalcy of it all, the sheer mundane nature of life after the world had fallen apart, made you feel sick. No one was taking what you had reported earlier seriously. What if things were changing out there? Would all of this disappear?

There was no other option but to keep your guard up and move forward, the smell of fried dough hitting you. You stopped at the same stall you have been stopping at for the past four years, Dickson’s. An old man, who had been this old since the day you met him, wrinkled and worn down. His spine curled like a cat's, hands covered in scars and callouses.

“Well hello there soldier,” he rasped, his voice wheezy and dry like leaves in the wind. “How was afternoon patrol?”

You sighed. “Hey, Dickson. It was… fine.” He eyed you. He had practically raised you during the times when you were kicked out of the barracks for misbehaviour.

“Just fine?”

“You know I’m not allowed to talk about it further.”

“Oh I know,” he waved you off as he bent down slowly to retrieve a small satchel. Refined sugar. The one good thing about the Federation was the fact it had quickly spread itself into agricultural endeavours. Old Twin Falls was able to process the sugar beets that they grew. Granted the price was insanely high, but there was still sugar. “Teton’s been good?”

You nodded handing him five meal tickets for some of them. “As good as he can, ornery fucker.” You rocked on your feet and you recounted the afternoon. “He’s been real steady round the guns lately, finally- think he won’t bolt anymore.”

Dickson laughed. “Only you would be able to get any use out of him. Swear that horse can read minds.”

Suddenly, a little girl interrupted the two of you, her mother watching from a distance. Her hair was tied up in pigtails, looked to be about seven, her eyes wide with excitement.

“Excuse me, mister!” her voice chirped out. “Please can I get 500 grams of sugar please?”

Dickson chuckled again, pulling out a 500-gram bag, and weighing it to confirm the amount. “Of course young lady. That will be 25 tickets, please.”

The girl looked confused, she had been told the amount would be less than that. Quickly she composed herself, ready to haggle with Dickson. Her mother wanted her to practise it seemed and Dickson was willing to be her first practice. When she finally got her target amount she handed him the tickets and skipped off back to her mom.

Dickson watched as she left. “Sharp one. Reminds me of you at her age.”

“Oh please. I was hardly that nice.”

“Well now ain’t that the truth? You were a real shithead. Lucky you’re gifted or they would have kicked you out years ago. I damn near took you out myself one day.” Dickson winked before he leaned in. “Now tell me, what can you share without getting in trouble?”

The sun dipped lower, the patrol moving onto the next street. Your voice dropped to a whisper.

“The zombies, they’re…different. It took three bullets to the head for one to finally get down. It moved differently too. It only had a month or so before it became a sitting duck but it jerked around and moved with more speed than I’d ever seen before. Somethings happening out there Dickson.” A new patrol rounded the corner. “I’ve gotta get going, but you take care of yourself. I’ve got a bad taste in my mouth and my head won’t stop pounding.”

Dickson studied you. He knew you were telling the truth, your eyes darting between him and the patrol. He added more auger to your satchel as he spoke. “You stay safe out there.”

You nodded and then slipped back out onto the promenade, ready to get back to your place and shower. There had been a renovation project a year back you had helped out on. By reclaiming parts of the old city, they had the resources to create private accommodations for the specialist division. Only military personnel were allowed to live in them due to their location at the very edge of the wall, which was still unfinished due to the expansion. The real benefit was the stable they had in the back, which you could lodge Teton in. The shower worked as well. They were always cold, but they were something.

The motions of getting home, showering, dressing down out of uniform, and feeding yourself went by blurry, the exhaustion hitting you full force. You had danced with death many times, seen soldiers die as they were ripped apart by hordes like wild animals. Killing the zombies had been a near-everyday occurrence for you for nearly seven years now. In all that time you had never had something like today happen. All you could do was hope that it never happened again and it was just a fluke.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Today you were assigned to the western patrol night shift for four days. Command had deemed you ineligible to return to the eastern patrol until you had proven to them that you weren’t losing your grip. Bullshit. You hadn’t lost anything, you knew what you saw but no one believed you.

Night shift meant you had to sleep outside the walls as well at the outpost station. It was a half-bombed-out building the Federation had converted to watch over the trade route. The bunks there were cramped, pushed close together due to half the ceiling being gone, the stale with the scent of sweat and rations.

The twilight cast eerie shadows as you made your way on Teton, saddlebags packed full, the pit that had settled in your stomach four days ago when you were on the eastern patrol refused to leave. The one good thing about the Western Outpost is that you could sleep on top of the building if the weather was clear and stare at the stars. The death of mankind did allow for the galaxies to be seen again.

When you got there and settled the lieutenant handing out patrols gave you a joke of one. He had heard about what you had reported and thought you were stupid. The route you had never had anything going on. The last time a zombie had been seen on it was three months ago. They deemed you jittery and fearful now. But something deep in your bones, older than the Federation, knew that what you had seen was real. You had sensed the shift, the whispers in the winds, a chilling awareness chewing at the back of your skull. For a people so hellbent on keeping gifted in their ranks they sure didn’t take one seriously.

The patrol was just as uninteresting as you expected. The nothingness of it made it more nerve-wracking if anything. The whispers might have been faint four days ago but the volume was building.

The next two days passed without incident but the unease never left. Every night that the sun dipped below the horizon, the long shadows blending into each other, the whispers intensified. They became a tangible hum, pawing and pulling at you. You had tried speaking with the other gifted stationed at the outpost but they looked at you like you were crazy. No one else had felt or seen anything different.

Nightfall came again. Teton whinnied softly as you mounted him, ready to get the final patrol done, his ears swirling, listening out for any sudden noises. The route was now known by heart, each curve in the road familiar. Once you were done with this patrol hopefully you could go back to being on the western patrol.

Tonight felt worse. A sick, twisting feeling, circling you and settling into the ground. Your head felt like it was going to burst, eyes popping from their sockets from the pressure. Everything in you was screaming to run, to get far away from this place, to hide. The saddlebags had extra rations in them, your paranoia made you keep adding to them.

They said there was nothing like a bond between man and his horse, and Teton’s eyes reflected your fear. His usual temperament had shifted to being nervous, his ears pinned back, nostrils flaring. He felt it too, the unseen danger that was building around you.

Panic squeezed its cold hands around your throat, threatening to close your airways and leave you for dead. Your grip on the reins was tight, knuckles white, as Teton moved forward. The night was dark, the whispers deafening, but you were armed and ready.

The first hour of the route was calm. No surprises or action, just stillness. The feeling of being watched, someone peering over your shoulder as you went, was neverending. There was something out there, watching you, toying with you.

The second hour passed by with no reprieve, only a suffocating repetition of the calm, still night. You were unable to find any peace in doing the route, instead only spiralling further with your speculations. What was out there watching you? Each rustle of the leaves, the movement of animals, and the occasional gunshot made you jump, your skin crawling.

It was only halfway through the third hour, when the route led you back to having a view of the outpost and the walls of the city, that you saw it. The outpost was burning, the flames bright and high, a funeral pyre. From the distance, you could see people fighting, the gunshots now accounted for. You reeled, trying to dissect the scene, the whispers now screaming.

Was this it? Was this what you have picked up on? A desperate urge to turn and flee spread throughout you, but you knew you couldn’t. You were duty-bound to join the ranks and fight.

Teton whinnied, refusing to move forward as your heels dug into his flank.

“Teton c’mon, we have to go.”

He neighed, bucking up and he turned away from the outpost. “Teton no! We have to go back there.”

It was as you turned him back around, his winny frantic, a large deafening boom rang out. It came from the city walls, a section collapsing from the attack. Now it made sense. The outpost was a distraction, meant to draw the defences away from the walls so they could attack it. But the noise was what threw you off, zombies went towards the sound, so why would they bomb the wall?

Then, all at once, a horde screamed in the distance, thousands of undead moving towards the cause of the sound. Your blood ran cold, and the pressure in the back of your skull felt like your head was being pressed by hydraulic plates. You leaned off to the side of Teton and heaved, bile burning the back of your throat. You needed to leave, get as far away as you could. There was no helping anyone inside the walls now. The city was doomed.

The evacuation point was only 500 feet away from you. There was doubt any other soldier would be there now, and anyone who had escaped would be in danger. They needed help.

As you tightened your grip on the reins, urging Teton towards the evacuation point, the gravity of the situation began pressing down you you, threatening to crush you if not for the adrenaline course through your veins. The screams grew louder the more time passed and the longer the attack went on.

Teton’s hooves were heavy on the pavement, normally a gallop like this would have them ring out like thunder, but in the chaos of the night, they fell silent. The air was growing thick with the scent of smoke, burning wood and flesh.

The evacuation point was just ahead of you, around 30 people had made it there. It was empty of any fellow soldiers, no doubt everyone else had run towards the city.

Disregarding protocol, you yelled at the group of survivors, telling them to get further away from the city. That there was no hope there. As you did so, a scream came from behind you, so loud that you felt your eardrums burst and blood trickle out from them.

The people in front of you screamed, scrambling to run away from what they saw behind you as you spun Teton around, horror seeping into your bones from the noise.

It was a mutant. They were thought to be rare in this area, part of why the Federation had settled here. Its body was contorted and deformed, its limbs too long in comparison, twisted at unnatural angles. The skin it had left was peeling off, revealing a purple shiny oozy leaking out of it. It had no eyes, flesh had grown over it and fused it into a mask.

It reeked, the smell of death permeating as it screamed again.

You unholstered your handgun, training kicking in, and fired a shot at its chest. The bullet sunk into its skin, but the creature didn’t stop moving, it was like the bullet did nothing to it, it simply staggered for a moment, the oozy substance leaking out of the entry wound, reacted to the bullet. The wound closed up as the goo filled the hole and hardened.

It turned its head to face you, pinpointing your location from the gunshot, clicking its tongue repeatedly, interrupted by short screams. Ice ran through you, your hand clammy, goosebumps covering every inch of skin. There was a very real chance that your gun would do nothing to stop the mutant.

Frantic, you kicked at Teton’s side. He moved quickly, well aware of the danger you were in. A handgun didn’t do shit against it. There was 50 feet between it and you, and a crowd of people 50 feet behind you.

Desperate you led Teton away from the crowd, shooting the Glock in the air to keep the mutant's attention, to make it follow you. You could hear its joint snap as it spurred into action, chasing you down. It clicks and screams growing louder the closer it got.

The side streets were a maze, the terrain made rough by the decay over the years. Teton was managing the best he could, jumping over a car in the middle of the road at one point. Your heart sat in your throat, its beating making breathing hard. The pressure on your head felt so great that it was going to crack in two.

As you rounded a corner, sharp and fast trying to break its line of sight, the mutant rammed into a wall. It slowed but the chase continued until you hit a more open area. When you looked over your shoulder, the mutant wasn’t behind you.

Before you could question it, an impact hit you from the side, knocking you off of Teton and flat onto your back. The wind was knocked out of you as you hit the ground, rocks stabbing into your back. Gasping for breath you struggled to regain yourself as the pain shot through you. Your fingers dug into the pavement, cutting on the rough edges of the cracks, as you rolled over to your front, crawling forward. Blood trickled down your face and into your eyes. As you pushed yourself up you heard it. Click. Click. Click.

By instinct you reached for your handgun, only to find it was knocked away from you in the fall.

The ooze leaking out of the mutant glowed faintly in the moonlight as it charged at you. Teton rushed at the creature, rearing up and knocking the zombie down with his front hooves. It allowed you to pull your knife out of the sheath at your side, spring to your feet, and move to attack.

While the zombie was disoriented, its clicks gargled, you lunged at it. Your knife cut through the air before hitting its right shoulder. The ooze once again leaked out and harder around the wound. The only way you’d be able to kill this thing was through decapitating it.

The mutant retaliated, swiftly, its partially healed arm swinging out, trying to scratch you. You managed to dodge it, stepping back away from it, but as it attacked you the ooze splashed onto your face. It burned as it settled on your skin.

It swung again and you sidestepped it. The movement allowed you to strike it again, this time aiming for the neck. The attack connected, perforated blade sawing through part of the fresh, but stopping short of the vertebrae. The ooze sprayed out once again, some landing in your eyes.

Blinking rapidly you readied yourself again as, despite the injury, the mutant didn’t stop. You had to get a full cut before it was able to heal the wound.

With grim determination you swung again, this time aiming for the opposite side of the neck. The blow was strong enough that you felt the muscles in your shoulder tear slightly at the impact. But the creature still stood, clicking at you, the sounds muffled and gurgled by the liquid now spilling out of its mouth as it attempted to heal. The bone was still intact.

With a scream you kicked the zombie back, making it stumble over rubble and fall down. You were swift, placing one foot on its chest while you bent down and grabbed it by the head.

Its clawed fingers dug at your calves, digging into them and leaving wounds. The shimmering liquid escaping from its wounds and mouth smeared across your front as you fought to maintain control.

You gritted your teeth as you forced yourself to ignore the pain and to pull upwards with all your strength. The bones in its neck resisted the tension, the ooze running down the bone and hardening to try and keep it intact.

With a sickening crack, the vertebrae gaw way. You fell back as the head broke free in your hands, the mutant’s body convulsed in front of you, joints snapping at unnatural angles as it flailed. You threw the head to the side, the final clicks dying out at it lulled against the pavement, the shimmer from the ooze fading.

Teton snorted as he came up behind you, attempting to nudge you up and to move.

Every part of you hurt. The wounds on your calves burned, and blood started to coagulate already. It was far too soon for the wound to be doing that. The muscles in your shoulder felt like they were repairing themselves the longer you sat there. Your eyes burned, a mix of your own blood from a head wound you got from the initial fall, dirt, and the liquid from the zombie stinging them. Strangely, the pounding in your head felt lighter, less urgent. Like being in contact with that thing had helped.

You wanted to scream and cry, to throw yourself against the ground and cry. But you couldn’t. You had survived it, but there was so much more still happening in the city. You couldn’t go back there, you’d be no help to anyway in your current state. The best you could do was go help the survivors and make sure those at the evac point had gotten away safely.

You hauled yourself up, pulling against Teton’s saddle to do so, a goan tearing out from your throat. Teton lowered himself so you could mount him more easily. Things were never going to be the same after tonight.

───※ ·❆· ※───

Only 5 people had survived besides you. What they told you had happened was devastating. It had been the Followers again, this time with heavier ammunition than they had ever had before. They said that they had control over the horde as well. Could control them like puppets. Now they partied in the remnants of the city.

The survivors said they were going to go north, to Old Twin Falls, and warn them, begged for you to come with them. There were no military personnel besides you there to guide them. You didn’t know if it was pity or guilt but you did. First, you had to sneak into the outpost. They had left that for the city itself. There you stocked up on more ammo, rations, and a first aid kit. Luckily one of the group was a nurse trainee and able to bandage up the cuts and bruises people had. When she looked you over on the second day of the journey your wounds had mostly healed.

The saving grace had been the ammunition. It was still limited, but it was 75 rounds for the Glock 17 and 200 for the Ruger. The group would have to move quickly, and quietly. By some universally divine intervention, a paddock of horses had remained untouched as well, with a cart there. This allowed you to fit the two people too injured to walk in the cart. Perhaps you weren’t shit out of luck yet.

The road to Old Twin Falls was something you knew by heart, having run it eleven times in your life. You had never had to lead a group there, but you had been there. It wouldn’t be an easy journey, through the mountains and desert, but it could be done. It was fall so the weather was neither too hot nor too cold, the only worry being the nights. But with enough dry sagebrush and tumbleweeds, you made fires. The issue was that the route had suffered damage from a storm that had passed through the third day of your journey.

It took eleven days to go the 225 miles, stopping frequently for breaks. There had been a few encounters with zombies, mainly in the ruins of old cities, but they were small enough groups you were able to take them out or avoid them.

The days were long but the nights were longer. Finally seeing the walls of Old Twin Falls was like getting into bed after a long day, your joints achy and painful, the exhaustion seeping out of you and into the bedding. The relief of getting off your feet after standing for hours.

When you approached the gates, the guards had their weapons drawn, ready to fire. Their uniforms looked different from how you remembered them.

“Identify yourself or we will shoot!”

Your voice was hoarse, dry and sandy from the lack of water you had in the final stretch of the journey. “Capitol Lake Special Taskforce Private Y/N L/N reporting.”

“Capitol Lake?” The man in charge lowered his gun, the others following suit.

“Yes sir, Capitol Lake. Behind me is a group of survivors remaining after an attack by the Followers of the Prophet.”

There was a pause, minutes passing, turning into an entirety, as reports and information were exchanged up in the watch towers.

“Come inside Private, there is much to discuss.”

The relief washing over you almost made you collapse, its warm and heavy feeling blanketing over you with the promise of rest. The tension carried in your whole body, tight with having the ensure the survival of the people behind you, slipping away with every creak of the heavy gate opening. You ushered them forward, each one of their expressions haunted, changed by what had happened.

The guards, their initial hostility now gone, quickly organised proper transport for the injured, taking them to the medical centre. The familiar and comforting smell of smoke and metal hits you. In the distance, you could hear what you knew to be the market street. Thighs were normal here, calm, spared from the madness that had happened at Capitol Lake.

The officers had led you to the medical centre and told you that you’d need to speak with their commanding officer. There was a brief mention of how things had changed in Old Twin Falls in the past three months since the last trade run, but no one was clear with you on what had changed. But that would be tomorrow's task. For now, you let yourself get poked and prodded by the attending doctor before passing out after they injected you with morphine.

#uzuri writes #at the edge of the world #ateotw #choso kamo #choso imagine #choco kamo imagine #choco kamo x reader #choso x reader #choso kamo smut #jjk imagine #jjk imagine smut

15 notes · View notes

engineer-gunzelpunk · 10 months

Text

Locomotive Rights in Australia (Victoria): Part 1

(One of the patron saints of the Locomotive Rights movement in Victoria, VR S-Class Pacific S300 Matthew Flinders, who was scrapped before he could be saved. The scrapping of the S-classes spurred the IRL steam preservation movement in Victoria)

Here I am, riffing off @joezworld's posts about Locomotive Rights as they developed around the world. Here is my personal take on what happened in Australia in regards to this issue.

(Disclaimer: Needless to say this is all fictionalised and not to be taken as a comment on any historical personage or real life locomotive. No slander is intended, this is a headcanon extrapolating Locomotive Rights in the GunzelVerse, and the TTTE/RWS AUs I write about in them, "This Is Sodor: The Iron Age" and "Red And Black Steam on Southern Metals".)

(I use the term “Lokodammerung”, literally meaning “Twilight of the Locomotives” in regards to the mass scrapping of locomotives. The Great Scrapping seems too cold, while “Dammerung” has a sad and apocalyptic timbre, which I what I wish to convey.)

If I don’t cover WAGR(Western Australia), SAR (South Australia) or QR (Queensland) , its because they are not my special interest in locomotives and I don’t know all that much about them. My apologies for the exclusion and I will try to rectify it in the future with time and research.

The situation of the railway and locomotive rights in Australia is a very strange and complex one, coded in State’s rights, custom and ideology more than anything systematic. It would be best dealt with State by State.

In spite of the celebrity of NSWGR C-38 Pacific 3801, it didn’t translate into a proper acknowledgement of non-faceless vehicles as people in of themselves until the 60’s. And even then, it was not an even process. The push actually began in the States of Victoria and New South Wales separately and converged later.

Prehistory

Upon Federation, every single State had their own specific gauge, an expression of the fervent desire for independence of the colonies before they were brought together as one nation when Australia was made into a Federation in 1901. Attempts to bring the country to a single gauge failed as each state battled with open hostility to the idea.

In the specific case of the colony of Victoria, the Broad Gauge (known widely as the “Irish’ Gague at 5’3’’) had been decided upon but as BG rolling stock and locomotives were purchased, a change of leadership brought a change of decision as to what sort of railway gauges would be used. NSW decided upon Standard Gauge of 4 ft 8 ½ inches like what was used in Britain. Victoria in a fit of pique having already paid for their goods, refused to reconsider a change of gauge.

(The Victorian terrain also suited the BG quite well, the long, broad and steep inclines requiring a more stable kind of gauge provided by the BG).

Oz is also an enormous place compared to the UK. The State of Victoria alone is the size of Great Britain and around 2700 times the size of the Island of Sodor; the states themselves cover a lot of territory compared with states in the USA. Each is its own country virtually, which makes it difficult to organise, and with the difficulties in the per-internet age toward reliable communication between engines of different states (the old break-of-gauge problem!) , it was remarkable that a resistance movement got started… and started it did.

I will now speak mainly of the State of Victoria and it’s locomotives, as this is my tendency. Without rail, Victoria could have never have been the State power that it was.

***

It was said that by the late 19th century, a Victorian human was never more than 25 kilometers from a railway line, and this was thanks to lobbying by politicans promising lines to voters… and the locomotives that requested them. As the state and the railway companies were flush with Gold Rush money, they had plenty of cash to spend to do so. The famous “Octopus Act” allowed a virtual spiderweb of iron to embrace the State, creating a near total domination of goods and passenger traffic.

Thus the locomotive was able to range quite freely within Victoria wherever they pleased, and combined with strongly built depots the sizes of which eclipsed the fleets of the NWR (the North Melbourne Locomotive Depot alone shedded 120 locomotives, compared the the total number of locos at the NWR, which was around 80 at the same time before the Norf depot was demolished) developed a certain state of educated consciousness that meshed quite nicely with the tendency towards radicalism and trade unionism.

This was aided by the amalgamation of private lines post the Railway Mania era into the governments aegis, so branchlines remained open and ready until the local version of Beeching later on turned a lot of them into tramways.

Encased within their little Broad Gauge bubble imposed by the patriotic fervor of the colonies pre-Federation, locomotives could not be as easily replaced by out-of-state loaners. The early days tended towards foreign imports that were then used as templates to be built locally… and built locally they were as a matter of state pride. A lot of VR locomotives were built at Newport Works and at Phoenix Foundary, Ballarat.

The standardization plan brought forth under the reign of Chairman of Commissioners Richard Speight in the 1880's introduced five new classes of locos (A, D, E, the so called New R-class later renamed RY, and Y) that were built locally with the aid of Kitson and Co. of Leeds, England involved in the design phase, with the view that parts could be used interchangeably across classes.

This contributed to create a certain kind of mentality within the VR locomotives of a sense of separateness and self-sufficiency which cleaved with the ever present state rivalry with their Northern neighbor, New South Wales. The overall treatment of locomotives was one of a certain kind of affection, they were tools to be sure, but more than that. It was somewhat better than the British tendency to treat the locomotives as nothing more than iron pack mules, but this was not coded into law. Status of the locomotives was by custom rather than law, which was to have consequences later on.

For a time, things were very, very good for locomotives within Victoria. An American-railways inspired Railway Commissioner , Sir Harold Clapp (the Oz equivalent to a Director, as the VR was run by a board of Commissioners spoken for by a Chairman of Commissioners), the First Thin Commissioner, had been Vice President of the Southern Pacific railways in the US and brought heavy reforms to a VR seemingly stuck in the 19th century; amongst his ideas were the integration of American design principles to VR locomotives and rolling stock, creating a distinctly rugged look to the locos with their bar-frames and pilots as well as a general increase in size, to better fit the uneven terrain of Victoria with its regular inclines of 1-50, 1-44 and even 1-30.

The amiable K-class Consolidations and the sturdy, hard working Xs and N Mikado classes were introduced in this period.

This reached the peak of design with the creation of the mighty 3 cylinder S-class Pacifics of the "Spirit of Progress" fame and then Heavy Harry at Newport, who was meant to be the first of three other H-classes built for express passenger work across Victoria. The American inspiration can be seen in his rugged bar plate frame imported from the US, the specific use of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Railway's name for the 4-8-4 wheel configuration, "Pocono" for him and his very strong resemblance in appearance to fellow 4-8-4s the NYC Niagara and Union Pacific 844 Living Legend. (The other two H-classes were partially built, then scrapped during the war. So Harry had two stillborn brothers, a point of lingering grief for the big engine.)

(For more info on the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western 4-8-4 "Poconos"", see here)

Classes tended to be modified rather than outright replaced, like the A and D classes (each went through at least 2-3 waves of modifications and were marked with special names designating them as such, such as A1 , A2 and Dd ) as a cost-saving measure and often lasted a long time relative to their cousins in Britain, such as the 1915 built A2 -class 4-6-0 No 986 “Pluto”, who was only withdrawn in 1963, even though the R-class Hudsons were sent from Glasgow to replace them in 1951. In their naivety, they never thought the humans could ever turn against them.

Unfortunately, Victoria with a change of Commissioners was to echo Great Britain in the bizarre way that steam was phased out and reforms brought in. Wartime Austerity and the increasing costs of running the railways were used as excuses for local "mad choppery".

Country lines deemed unprofitable were cut, maintenance was reduced and fewer and fewer services were run, which tended to alienate people from the railways.

The VR also had some people within it that like their UK equivalents, had a deep suspicion of socialism and thus sought to break the back of the trade union of drivers and firemen by literally taking away their locomotives, and replacing them with easy to drive diesels and electrics with easy to train drivers, with the excuse that they were cheaper to run, cleaner and just overall better.

(The railwaymen’s strike in 1950 was supported wholeheartedly by the locomotives of the VR, who’s maintenance had been sorely neglected in the post war austerities; the strong presence of the unions and their relationship with the bitter, fallen prince of the fleet-turned-radical Heavy Harry and the fact that an entire depot was claimed by the Communist Party at the country town of Donald gave them more impetus to phase out steam power).

Others genuinely did believe that the time of steam was passing and the future needed to be embraced. They didn’t hate the locomotives personally, it was just that they were deemed obsolete. The steam locomotives were relics, and relics didn’t deserve a place at the main table in a rapidly changing world.

So they had to go.

With no real legal protections that other locomotives had in other countries like the USA, Europe and the Soviet Union, the Victorian locomotives were vulnerable to the encroaching end. Custom and public affection by itself cannot protect against sanctioned injustice.

14th of July 1952 was the beginning of the end for steam in Victoria. The first diesels, the pug-nosed B-class had arrived in Victoria, were built by Clyde Engineering in NSW (ironically, the same home Works that birthed the mighty NSWGR C-38 Pacifics) from an American design. The complacent VR locomotives were caught by surprise by the lean and hungry diesels who were now bedecked in the same blue and gold livery as the S-class Pacifics, who’s time was running out quickly.

The Lokodammerung had reached the Broad-Gauge southern fiefdom and showed no mercy.

The fact that this left a lot of people unemployed, destroyed a lot of side industries that made up the railway (workshops, suppliers, etc) and the costs of conversion left them unmoved. If they didn’t care about humans, they sure as hell weren’t going to care about locomotives, even if they talked and thought as humans.

As if to underline the point with extreme sadism, the mighty S-class locomotives were withdrawn and scrapped with not a hint of ceremony or acknowledgement of their hard work. That the diesels were painted in their old livery served to underline the viciousness of the insult to the VR steam locomotives.

It was an ideological point clearly made even to the humans. The enginemen seemed to read it correctly and the locomotives felt it deeply, shocked that their lieges were to be the ones sacrificed as an example to the hungry god of Modernisation.

(The R-Class was often blamed in railway enthusiast circles for giving the VR an excuse to introduce diesels, but this is backwards logic placing blame on a convenient foreign imported scapegoat. They were ordered and then the decision to bring in diesels was made and excuses were built around their seeming lack of performance when they were abused and poorly treated.

As locomotives, they did not get the chance to show their virtues… as they were deliberately worked into ruin on grain haulage jobs they were never suited for by the VR, so by the time the preservation movement got their act together, only two of their number were actually in operating condition and only 7 of 70 were saved. That the R-class clan thrived in restoration clearly indicates they have had the last laugh, they outlasted the VR!)

To Be Continued...

#ttte #rws #thomasallgrownup #victorian railways #GunzelVerse #GunzelVerse Headcanons #weird train rants #ttte extended universe headcanons #ttte alternate universe headcanons #Red And Black Steam On Southern Metals #This Is Sodor: The Iron Age #ttte headcanons #ttte headcanon #thomas the tank engine #ttte au

22 notes · View notes

Last Seen Blogs

nonmumblr

JustHere

amogusus

sus amnogus

quercuas

Quercus

cameoutofnothing

Which is not a blog

her-work

Nisa Aqila