One of the more fascinating and horrible details in Reuters’ thoroughly fascinating and horrible long-form report
on Trump’s cruel border policies is this nugget: ICE hacked the
risk-assessment tool it used to decide whom to imprison so that it
recommended that everyone should be detained.
This gave ICE a kind of empirical facewash for its racist and inhumane
policies: they could claim that the computer forced them to imprison
people by identifying them as high-risk. The policy let ICE triple its
detention rate, imprisoning 43,000 people.
To conform to Trump’s policies, Reuters has learned, ICE modified a tool officers have been using since 2013 when deciding whether an immigrant should be detained or released on bond. The computer-based Risk Classification Assessment uses statistics to determine an immigrant’s flight risk and danger to society.
Previously, the tool automatically recommended either “detain” or “release.” Last year, ICE spokesman Bourke said, the agency removed the “release” recommendation, but he noted that ICE personnel can override it.
Of course, said ICE personnel would have to a) know that the option has been removed entirely, not just that the software isn’t recommending it in that particular case, and b) actually be a decent enough of a human being to give a shit and override it.
I’ve been a victim of medical neglect from years. About a year ago I went to the dentist for the first time since I was 6, I’m 22
I found out that I have 15 cavities, one bad enough that I had to have a tooth pulled. To save my other 14 teeth I need money for fillings and a root canal, which will cost a total of $3000
I ran a funding campaign a few months back but only managed to raise $10 so this is my second attempt
As I wrote, here, for Ace Pride Day, one reason it took me so long to realize I was ace is that I fully imagined myself having a relationship like my parents’, someday… not knowing that they were both (probably) on different parts of the Ace Spectrum, themselves.
So here’s a list of different kinds of intimacy that I saw modeled in their 29-year marriage (of which I was around for 27 years), beyond (or besides) sexual intimacy:
1. Task / Project
The ability to work together on a large project, complimenting each other’s skills, without getting in each other’s way, whether that’s hosting a Halloween party for me and my friends, or growing a vegetable garden and raising chickens together.
2. Emotional
The ability to trust one another with difficult emotions, and to allow each other to be emotionally vulnerable without (too much) fear of getting hurt.
3. Intellectual
Showing an interest in each other’s intellectual pursuits, and enjoying discussing them in detail, without being patronizing toward each other.
4. Creative / Aesthetic
Appreciating and supporting each other’s tastes in music and art, and supporting each other’s creative expression.
5. (Non-Sexual) Physical Intimacy
Trusting each other with their physical safety, especially when vulnerable or sick (as I noted in that earlier post, my mother commented that the best part of being married is having someone to check you for ticks after a hike in the woods).
A key part of recognizing my own asexual orientation was when I realized that I felt no emotion one way or the other over the idea of never having a sexual partner,* but the idea of living my life without any of the kinds of intimacy listed above leaves me with a chilling dread. And, growing up, I’d always imagined myself in a heterosexual relationship, because that’s what I had seen modeled by my parents [or at least, they modeled a M/F relationship.– the culture at large modeled the “sexual” part, and I just filled in the blanks]
But thinking through it now, I’m realizing that the gender of any hypothetical partner doesn’t really matter, if the partnership itself provides the kinds of intimacy I value.
*And when I try to seriously imagine actually having sex, all I can think of is how pokey elbows are, and how scratchy toenails are, and it just seems more bother than it’s worth.
(Also, I offer this up for writing advice, if you want to write different sorts of intimacies between characters, even if you don’t headcanon .them as Ace, and/or they’re shipped with other characters in your story)
If you’re adopted internationally into the United States, BY adoption LAWS you’re legally a citizen, but you still have to apply for documentation and if it’s not done by the age of 18 you have to pay over $500 and get a judge to reopen your adoption case.
Even More Fun Fact: No one actually tells adoptive families, this so many find out after they’re 18 when their kid needs to get a passport, wants to apply for financial aid, get certain jobs, vote or some other shit that requires proof of citizenship and now it’s too late because they’re 18 or over.
AND EVEN MORE FUN FACT! You can sometimes even be deported because you can be considered foreign-born, non-citizens!
Oh and they won’t accept adoption papers or a birth certificate as proof.
Do it now! Seriously. Even if you think you are safe. Do it.
Many people are finding that even a birth certificate is not valid proof anymore. Texas birth certificates are notorious. So notorious that I have 3 friends who can’t use them to get passports! Don’t think everything is hunky dory. You must nail down your citizenship.
Plus the cost for your citizenship certificate is almost doubling this fall.
SIGNAL BOOST.
Some Naturalization/Citizenship Certificate tips from me, the person who front-end processes these forms for half the country: the passport people are absolute garbage at sending your Naturalization Certificate back to you. Unfortunately, they also require it for you to get a passport. If you don’t get it back, whine at them about it and they will probably cover the cost of the replacement.
Also! It takes up to 12 months to get a replacement certificate. If you urgently need your Natz Cert to visit your dying relative in another country, the word you want to use is ‘Expedite’. Not ‘ASAP’. Not ‘rush’. Expedite. Write a letter explaining why you need it expedited, if you do. Otherwise the USCIS data-entry grunts (me!) aren’t allowed to throw it into the expedite line and it gets relegated to the Backlog Crypts.
Also! You need to get a new Naturalization Certificate if your name and/or gender legally changes, because a lot of places want your proof of citizenship for things like Social Security and student loans and Medicaid/EBT/welfare benefits and drivers’ licenses.
ALSO ALSO both the N600 ($600) that you use to apply for your Naturalization Certificate in the first place and N565 ($345) that you use to apply for a replacement certificate are eligible for FEE WAIVERS. It’s called an I912. Learn it, love it, use it.
Please for your sake make sure you are using the current version of the form. The most common reason I have to reject an N565 is because someone sent me something that expired in 2013. The current one is seven pages long. Please send the government all seven of them.
From a macroeconomics standpoint, Bridges is completely accurate.
The problem with most Tories (and many Republicans in the US) is that they either have big business interests at heart or have bought the lie that government is like a business. Government is not a business! Microeconomic principles, even ones that apply to entire industries, don’t apply to governments!
Here’s the fundamental macroecomic model of an economy:
(image from tutor2u)
Notice that the system is circular. The model shows that the economy inherently needs to be balanced. If some households are making hundreds of times the income of other households, they will put the vast majority of that money into savings and investment.
This is bad for the economy.
Some savings and investment is necessary. But too much means the little green arrows are siphoning off vast portions of the peach demand arrow (”purchases of goods and services”). This means that companies are fighting over a smaller and smaller pie. Even if you heavily fund those companies, many will collapse due to lack of demand for their products, unless they become monopolies and the sole practical source of their product. Monopolies are technically illegal in the US, but we have them anyway because of this problem (and a lack of enforcement).
The other way you can damage the demand arrow is by shifting the proportions of the purple income arrow. Most people make money from wages, so if you significantly decrease those relative to dividends, interest, profits, and rent, you’ll harm the majority of households. In turn, this again decreases the peach arrow because many households only need a set amount of a given product in a year. The fewer households that can afford the products, the lower overall demand, because the remaining households won’t buy up the difference.
Households with average levels of income spend far more money than they save, of necessity, and they do so at a relatively steady rate. This is good for the economy.
Households with incredibly high levels of income – millionaires, etc. – save far more than they spend. They tend to make their money off of dividends, interest, profits, and rents – not wages. Therefore, to improve the economy, including increasing tax revenues for the government, two basic steps are urged by almost all macroeconomists:
1. Increase wages, especially at the lowest end. This expands the tax base and drives up demand for basic goods and services, stabilizing the industries necessary to a decent quality of life: agriculture and food production, clothing, housing, education, transportation, etc.
2. Use progressive taxes, in which those who make the most money, particularly off of dividends, interest, profits, and rents, pay a higher percentage of their income as taxes. This allows that money to be spent directly on goods and services or to be redistributed to poor households, who will in turn spend it on goods and services. In both cases, money that would have gone into savings and investment instead goes into demand. This makes businesses more successful and a large number of households more prosperous. Society as a whole benefits from decreased crime, lower health problems, and improved public goods like education, roads, emergency response, infrastructure, etc.
Macroeconomics is the opposite of an individual business. Individual businesses study how to take the most pie for themselves and keep it. Macroeconomists – and governments – study how to make the pie bigger and distribute it in such a way that society as a whole benefits from the growth.
Conservatives: doing economics wrong for the past several decades by deliberately pretending that knowing how to run a business is anything like knowing how to run a government. Being fiscally cautious and being uneducated do not have to go hand in hand. (I’m both, for example.) But the rhetoric for slashing budgets has been laden with errors and ideology since at least the 1930s, and I’m tired of it.
ONE MORE TIME FOR THE MORONS AT THE BACK IN OUR GOVERNMENTS
Or as Paul Wellstone used to say, “We all do better when we all do better.”
Ta dah.
Thank you.
I wish the part about aunts on facebook wasn’t true.
Boozhoo (hello), my name is Ken, I am a disabled Ojibwe artist from northern Wisconsin. I am writing this post because I am having a hard time making ends meet and any donations I could possibly receive at this time would be greatly appreciated. Recent events have left my bank account depleted and my cupboards bare, I have some food but it will not last and I still do not know how I will cover all the utility bills.
I do have PayPal, that is really the best way to donate at this time, the email I use for that is: baapimakwa@gmail.com, or you can click here.
Okay semi-emergency, I have nothing in case of emergency, all the household “essentials” are tapped out, I had to duct tape and napkin a wound, and while thats handy it’s not good when I’m prone to infections, I keep putting it off because other things are a priority like lights and food but I also need bandages and cleaning supplies.
Still low on some supplies, really need to go food shopping, any help is greatly appreciated, miigwech (thank you).
Urocyon's Jaunts 2.0 
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