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A good night of sleep is key to a productive day ahead.
Aside from hampering productivity, sleep deprivation has been linked to conditions such as diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, and more.
Getting in those 8 hours is not always so simple, though. The rigorous demands of modern-day life result in a myriad of sleep problems, such as insomnia.
In fact, insomnia has been shown to affect more than 10% of the population across Europe, making it one of the most prevalent sleeping disorders.
Although insomnia can be tough to cure, maintaining good sleep hygiene can help set you up for a better night ahead.
Table of Contents
What is sleep hygiene?
According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, sleep hygiene refers to the lifestyle behaviours and environmental conditions that facilitate sleep and improve sleep quality.
Originally developed as an intervention for insomnia, practicing good sleep hygiene can help set your body up for a better night of rest.
Key tenets of good sleep hygiene
Establishing a routine
Our body works in cycles; most bodily processes are synchronised to a 24-hour physiological clock. The circadian rhythm, a natural process which determines when you wake up and fall asleep, is one of them.
Thankfully, altering your circadian rhythm isn’t difficult. Sleeping at the same time every day (yes, even on weekends!) can ‘train’ your body to feel sleepy. In fact, structured sleep cycles were shown to improve sleep and sleep times in those with irregular sleep.
Creating a conducive sleep environment
Continuous exposure to blue light can make it harder to fall asleep by tricking your brain into thinking that it is daytime. Depending on lifestyle and biological factors, certain people may also be more prone to the effects of blue light.
Make your sleeping area as dark as possible. Bright lights, such as fluorescent and LED lights, also contain blue light and are a no-no when it comes to bedtime. Use room-darkening shades or blackout curtains that prevent light leaks.
If that’s not an option, wearing an eye mask like the OSIM uMask Eye Massager to sleep can help block out any light. It even comes with a contoured nose bridge to fit the curves of your nose and prevent any light from infiltrating.
The OSIM uMask also comes with a gentle vibration massage that soothes and relaxes your eye muscles, as well as improves circulation around the eyes, reducing fatigue and strain.
Keeping your work area and your rest area separate
Since the beginning of time, the bed has always been associated with the act of going to sleep.
However, doing work from your bed weakens this mental association and may instead stimulate wakefulness, making it much harder to fall asleep.
Besides that, it’s also a nightmare for your back.
Opt for a proper workstation, with an ergonomic chair like the OSIM uThrone Gaming Massage Chair that’ll keep your back health in check. Besides being a dream to work from, the OSIM uThrone comes with a suite of massage programs that’ll simply lull you into total relaxation.
Saying no to naps (or limiting them!)
While short daytime naps are encouraged and can be a great pick-me-up in the midst of a long day, it can work against those who struggle with insomnia or poor sleep quality.
If you really must take a nap, keep it no longer than 20-minutes. This allows you to take a little rest, without entering the deeper phases of sleep.
Alternatives methods to help you fall asleep
If you’ve tried all the usual methods but are still struggling to get some shut eye, give these suggestions a go.
Give light therapy a go to help realign and improve your sleeping patterns.
Sleep and relaxation is made easier with the revolutionary OSIM uGalaxy Eye Massager. Besides a variety of relaxing massage features, it is also the world’s first eye massager with mood lights.
In fact, it's backed by leading physicist and mood light specialist, Anadi A. Martel.
Use its cool mood light function to calm your senses and to feel at peace while also pampering your eyes with a relaxing massage to release tension.
Bad night of sleep got you down? Use the cool and warm mood light combination to awaken your senses, or the warm mood light to invigorate your mind.
In-built speakers deliver three unique music pieces, specially composed and curated to revitalise your mind and take relaxation further. With it's handy auto-timer function, we won’t be surprised if you fall asleep with it on.
Stress can affect your body in many ways and make it harder to fall asleep, but a quick massage may bolster this. In fact, massage as a form of therapy was shown to be an effective intervention for those with insomnia as well as inducing sleep and improving sleep quality in ICU patients.
Of course, we don’t expect you to pop by a massage parlour every day, so why not get yourself an OSIM massager? You’ll be able to enjoy the benefits of a massage from the comfort of your own home.
The OSIM uCozy 3D Neck & Shoulder Massager has eight ergonomically designed massage nodes to dig deep into those knots and release tension from within. It can even be used on various body parts such as your back, thighs, and calves.
Humidify your environment
Do you find yourself coughing through the night due to dry and stale air?
Utilising ultrasonic technology, the OSIM uMist Dream Ultrasonic Humidifier creates an optimal sleeping environment for rest. It creates a fine, soft, and most importantly, extremely quiet mist to enhance your sleeping comfort.
With up to eight hours of protection, it keeps your nasal passages and throats moist and allows you to sleep uninterruptedly through the night.
Achieve better rest with OSIM
The best of wellness and relief awaits at intl.osim.com. Experience better sleep quality today.
Featuring OSIM's signature V-Hand and Lumbar Massage Technology, the OSIM uThrone emulates the skilful techniques and flexibility of a masseuse's hands for an effective muscle pain relief making it your ultimate weapon for personalized comfort and prolonged gaming.
With ergonomically designed 3D massage nodes and firm dual-directional kneading action, the OSIM uCozy 3D provides deep tissue relief for body aches.
A world first; the OSIM uGalaxy is a new generation eye massager using scientifically proven mood light, music, warmth, airbag and vibration massage to relieve headaches, insomnia, bags and everyday eye fatigue.
Featuring Ultrasonic technology, the OSIM uMist Dream creates the ideal humidity level in the air to provide a hydrated, comfortable and healthier indoor environment for a good night's sleep.

domain: health


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The UK will spend $667,000 to train staffers at the top finance regulator to identify crypto terrorist financing
- The UK's top financial watchdog is looking for a contractor to train staff on spotting the use of crypto in financing terrorism.
- The Financial Conduct Authority has a £500,000 ($667,0000) contract to hire the services of a third-party specialist.
The UK's financial regulator is looking to hire a contractor that will train its staff to spot risks of money laundering and financing of terrorism through crypto assets.
The Financial Conduct Authority will pay a third-party firm for its services under a £500,000 contract ($667,000), according to a public notification, with the call for a contractor to remain open until December 16.
The contractor should "provide access to a platform that can support the robust and efficient analysis of cryptoasset blockchain data and provide training and ongoing support in the use of this platform," the agency said.
The notification was posted last week as was a statement by the US Department of Justice saying the UK and the US will work more closely together to combat terrorism and cybercrime.
"Both the Deputy Attorney General and the Home Secretary committed and agreed to heighten the focus on illicit use of cryptocurrency and ransomware, as well as to continue the dialogue about emerging threats to national security," said the US Department of Justice, referring to US Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco and UK Home Secretary Priti Patel.
In one case related to cryptocurrency risks in terrorism, a 28-year-old sales consultant in Britain was reportedly sentenced to 12 years in prison in September after being convicted of using bitcoin to fund the Islamic State terror group in Syria.
The FCA earlier this year said a significantly large number of cryptocurrency firms weren't not meeting required anti-money laundering standards, leaving them to fall short in protecting against crime.
- India's GDP growth surges to 8.4% in Q3, 2023-24 growth rate pegged at robust 7.6%
- Fiscal deficit at Jan-end touches 63.6% of full year target: Govt data
- Cabinet approves 3 semiconductor fab units, to generate 80,000 jobs
- RIL shares climb nearly 1% after announcing mega merger
- Key infra sectors' growth slows to 15-month low of 3.6% in January

domain: law


Bali: Underworld don Chhota Rajan was today deported to India and is expected to reach Delhi early morning tomorrow, 27 years after he had fled the country in the face of numerous cases of murder, extortion and drug smuggling against him.
The special aircraft taking 55-year-old Rajan, who was arrested here upon arrival from Australia on October 25, took off from the Ngurah Rai International at around 10.15 pm local time (1945 hours IST), an official said.
Ahead of his arrival in India, Maharashtra government made a surprise announcement of handing over all the cases related to the underworld don to the CBI as the agency had expertise in handling such cases.
Rajan, after his arrest, had expressed reservation over plans to lodge him in a Mumbai jail, fearing that his archrival and India’s most wanted terrorist Dawood Ibrahim may target him there.
His deportation was deferred by a day as the international airport in Bali was shut down due to spewing of volcanic ash from a nearby mountain. .


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The epidemiological features of the newly emerged carbapenem-resistant hypervirulent Klebsiella pneumoniae (CR-HvKP) and its potential threat to human health are currently unknown. In this study, a total of 784 blaKPC-2-bearing CRKP strains collected from three hospitals located at different geographical locales in China during 2014-2017 were subjected to molecular typing, screening of virulence plasmid, string test and WGS (367/784 strains). The proportion of CRKP among all clinical K. pneumoniae strains increased sharply in China during 2014-2017. A large proportion (58%) of these CRKP strains were found to harbour a virulence-encoding plasmid, while only 13% of such strains exhibited a hypervirulent phenotype by string test and neutrophil assay. The lack of hypervirulent phenotype in virulent plasmid-bearing CRKP strains was found to be due to the mutation's presence on rmpA and rmpA2 genes, which rendered them non-functional, while some strains carrying wild type rmpA did not exhibit hypervirulent phenotype either suggesting that other factors might also contribute to the hypervirulence of CRKP. Phylogenetic and SNP analysis indicated that the transmission of these CRKP strains in China likely involved several major clones of ST11. Carriage of IncFII pSWU01-like, blaKPC-2-bearing plasmid was found to be the major mechanism of carbapenem resistance in these CRKP strains. In conclusion, our data indicated that the prevalence of CRKP strains carrying the virulence plasmid has rapidly increased in China, while genetic markers were not correlated well with the hypervirulent phenotypes, which call for a better definition and screening for these truly hypervirulent CR-HvKP strains in clinical settings.
Keywords: CR-HvKP; Klebsiella pneumoniae; epidemiology; prevalence; virulence plasmid.

domain: medical


New and used Ford Everest price in Ghana
The Ford Everest, also known as the Ford Endeavour in the Indian market, is a mid-size SUV produced by the Ford Motor Company since 2003. It has primarily been a strong presence in markets like Australia, New Zealand, India, and parts of Southeast Asia. Designed and developed by Ford’s ASEAN team in Thailand, the Everest has its roots in the highly durable and versatile Ford Ranger pickup.
|Model Year||Price in Cedis Ghana (GHC)|
|Ford Everest 2017||580,000|
- First Generation (2003-2006): The first-generation Ford Everest was introduced in March 2003. It was based on the Ford Ranger’s platform of the time and was designed as a rugged, off-road-capable SUV with the comforts of an on-road passenger vehicle.
- Second Generation (2006-2015): The second iteration launched in 2006 and featured several refinements in terms of styling, features, and safety. This version maintained the body-on-frame construction for off-road durability.
- Third Generation (2015-present): Unveiled in 2014 and available from 2015, the third-generation Everest moved upmarket with more premium design cues, enhanced technology, safety features, and improved on-road dynamics, all while retaining its off-road prowess.
- First Generation: The initial design was straightforward, with a focus on utility and off-road capability. It had a boxy shape, which was typical for SUVs of that era.
- Second Generation: This generation saw a more refined exterior with improved interior materials and updated technology. The exterior became more modern, but still robust.
- Third Generation: The latest Everest features a design in line with Ford’s global design language, with a prominent trapezoidal grille, sleek LED headlamps, and a more aerodynamic body shape. The interior is significantly more upscale, with high-quality materials, a touchscreen infotainment system, and advanced features.
Over the years, the Everest has been equipped with various diesel engines, including four-cylinder and inline-five options. The latest generation typically comes with a choice of a 2.0-liter four-cylinder turbo diesel or a 3.2-liter five-cylinder diesel, mated to either a six-speed or ten-speed automatic transmission, depending on the market and model year.
The vehicle also features advanced terrain management systems for optimal off-road capability, along with modern safety and convenience features such as Ford’s Sync 3 infotainment system, autonomous emergency braking, lane-keeping assistance, and adaptive cruise control, among others.
3. Available models and their released dates:
- First Generation: 2003 – 2006
- Second Generation: 2006 – 2015
- Third Generation: 2015 – present
The Ford Everest continues to be lauded for its blend of on-road manners and off-road capabilities, spacious interior, and advanced features, making it a popular choice for families and adventurers alike.


Marking Dia de Los Muertos
Grupo Folklorico del Pueblo, a dance group that focuses on folk dance, music and history from Mexico and the Southwest, celebrated Día de Los Muertos (Day of the Dead) with a rousing and festive dance recital at Memorial Hall.
Day of the Dead is a Mexican holiday that focuses on gatherings of family and friends to pray for and remember friends and family members who have died. The celebration takes place on Oct. 31, Nov. 1 and 2, in connection with the Christian triduum of Hallowmas: All Hallows’ Eve, All Saints’ Day and All Souls’ Day. More on Grupo Folklorico and Day of the Dead on Page 10.
- Blue-hued men extend Pueblo stay
- ’Fargo’ gets 2nd season on FX with new cast, crime
- Harrison tree killed by beetles
- ’Simpsons’ marathon, digital Simpsons World coming
- Kadoya Gallery’s first photo exhibit focuses on industry
- Fans start lining up as Comic-Con floor opens
- Pueblo blessed with entertainment venues — but booking acts can be complex
- Marvel unveils black Captain America
- Troubled teen suffers from post-nuke angst
- Front Row: Best Bets and more
- Ticket Alert: Judas Priest and more
- Blues legend Johnny Winter dies at 70
- Elite boarder happy to have skate park


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Video: .MP4, 1280x720 | Audio: AAC, 48 kHz, 2ch | Duration: 54m
Genre: eLearning | Language: English | Size: 0,99 GB
Do you love paper, fabric and thread? Join surface pattern designer and mixed media artist, Lucie Duclos in her Collage and Stitch class, and learn how to incorporate fabric and thread to add interest and dimension to your paper collages.
This is a follow-up to her popular Collage and Go class on skillshare which focused more on gathering and creating textures on found paper and how to bring them into a collage. The new Collage and Stitch class expands on composition and how to play with negative space. You will make our own little library of shapes and you will create a stitch sampler that you can use for reference in your class project. You will learn how to turn any fabric into collage material, and how to use stitching as mark making elements to add dimension and interest. You will experience the whole creative process, from beginning to end.
Feel free to post your Collage and Stitch Mixing Paper, Fabric and Thread Free Download, torrent, subtitles, free download, quality, NFO, Dangerous Collage and Stitch Mixing Paper, Fabric and Thread Torrent Download, free premium downloads movie, game, mp3 download, crack, serial, keygen.

domain: artistic


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Published: Sun, 30 Apr 2017 00:00:00 -0400
Last Build Date: Sun, 30 Apr 2017 11:03:20 -0400
Sat, 29 Apr 2017 11:30:00 -0400Of the 13 metropolitan areas in the United States currently hosting teams in each of the four major professional sports leagues, none have been waiting longer to celebrate a championship than the Twin Cities. One possible reason why? Minnesota's high personal income tax rate. "You get a lot of complaining about professional sports in Minnesota, because this problem is especially acute there," Dr. Erik Hembre, told The Washington Post this week. "People complain about, 'Oh, we can't get good free agents. It really hurts us.'" Hembre, an economist at the University of Illinois at Chicago, claims to have found a direct relationship between state tax rates and the success of professional teams based in those states. His research shows that, since the mid-1990s, a ten percentage point increase in income taxes correlates with a 2-3 percentage point decline in team's winning percentage. The effect is greatest in the National Basketball Association (where signing one major free agent arguably has a greater impact on a team's success than in any other major sport) and smallest in Major League Baseball, according to Hembre. Minnesota's high tax rate, Hembre says, costs the Minnesota Timberwolves a total of 4.5 victories per season when compared to pro basketball teams in low-tax states like Florida or Texas. Minnesota's state income tax is one of the highest in the country. The top marginal rate of 9.85 percent applies to anyone making more than $157,000 annually (or married couples making more than $262,000). That high rate might force teams in Minnesota to pay higher rate for the same talent, or might give highly-sought-after free agents a reason to play somewhere else. The Twin Cities last celebrated a major sports championship in 1991, when the Twins claimed the World Series with a dramatic extra inning victory in the seventh and final game. Since then, not a single Minnesota-based team has reached the final round of their respective league playoffs. Bad luck may be part of the answer. The Vikings of the National Football League reached the final round before the Super Bowl in 1998, 2000, and again in 2009, only to lose all three times (twice in overtime). The Minnesota Twins made regular playoff appearances during the 2000s, but only advanced past the first round on one occasion, which might say more about the comparatively random nature of Major League Baseball's playoff system than anything else. The Twin Cities' professional basketball and hockey teams have been occasionally competitive but never considered strong championship contenders since joining the National Basketball Association and the National Hockey League in 1989 and 2000, respectively. (It should be noted that the Minnesota Lynx are something of a dynasty in women's professional basketball, having won WNBA championships in 2011, 2013, and 2015.) Other metropolitan areas with all four major professional sports have higher taxes than Minnesota does—the Los Angeles area and the San Francisco Bay Area in California, for example—but professional athletes might be willing to pay a premium, in the form of higher taxes, to live in places like that. As great as the Twin Cities can be (full disclosure: I lived there for three years and loved it), they have a hard time competing with South Beach and Hollywood for celebrity culture. "Professional athletes are paid very well and therefore they have large incentives to consider the tax implications of the teams they choose to play for," Hembre told the Post. Well-paid professional athletes are a particularly mobile sector of the workforce, and can more easily make decisions about where to live and work than most of us who can't slam dunk a basketball or throw a baseball at 90 MPH. Still, technology is making it possible for ever-larger segments of the workforce to have the kind of flexibility that once was possible only for those people with such specialized, and highly valued, skills. That's something that states should keep in mind when trying to attract talented workers, whether on the football field or in the office[...]
Fri, 28 Apr 2017 15:10:00 -0400Have you seen the viral "libertarian tip"? Someone in Missouri left a cash tip with a note explaining it was actually a personal gift and so not subject to state and federal income taxes, and wrote "taxation is theft" in the tip line on the check. Who knows if the note is authentic? "Taxation is theft," an old libertarian bromide, has in the last year or so become a fairly popular internet meme. By some accounts, the meme wars were an important aspect of the 2016 election and its outcome—and you can expect the trend of political memes to grow. Maybe the "libertarian tip" was staged by someone who wants to promote libertarianism or encourage others to leave libertarian tips, or even just someone who wanted to play with the "taxation is theft" meme. Nevertheless, I went out to lunch today to replicate the meme so I could give you an authentic photo of an authentic non-tip left as an untaxable personal gift. Here it is: Some tips for you: the original photo looked like a note, not an envelope. I thought putting the money in an envelope would more clearly separate it from a tip. A note is better to show off how much you've tipped—I put the money in the envelope after snapping the photo. You should probably make sure to have the change you need to give the tip you want. Asking for change from the wait staff might strengthen the case your untaxable non-tip is actually a taxable tip. Afterward, I asked my waitress if my ploy would work. She seemed as if she wanted to tell me it would, even though she knew it didn't, because, as she explained, tips count as sales. She said that the tips that bring her wage up to the minimum wage (waiters and waitresses are generally exempt from minimum wage laws under the assumption tips get them to at least the minimum wage) get taxe like income, and that "40 to 50 percent" of tips beyond that get declared. The intersection of libertarianism and wait staff is not new. During the 2012 election, then Rep. Ron Paul (R-Tex.), a Republican presidential candidate, became an "unlikely hero" (the New York Post's words) to wait staff for his efforts to pass the Tax Free Tips Act. In 2013, The New Yorker appeared to discover and bemoan that wait staff were hiding tips from the taxman. The horror. Meanwhile, wait staff are also among workers most negatively impacted by higher minimum wages—they are often asked to do more work as restaurants look to mitigate the costs of a higher minimum wage in an already low-margin business. Just last month, Eric Boehm reported that San Diego had lost 4,000 restaurant jobs in the year-plus since they raised their minimum wage at an even faster pace than the state, which has so far only seen a slowdown in the growth of restaurant jobs. And while we're so directly on the "taxation is theft" topic, here's one of my favorite chyrons ever on FreedomWatch with Judge Napolitano, a show I produced for. Thanks go to Media Matters for preserving the screen cap: [...]
Wed, 26 Apr 2017 19:24:00 -0400In the run-up to today's big White House tax-reform announcement, the question among many analysts was: Would President Donald Trump's ideas look more like Ronald Reagan in 1981 (when he and a bipartisan congressional majority cut rates) or 1986, when they simplified the code? While Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, flanked by National Economic Director Gary Cohn, bragged that the administration's plan was both "the biggest tax cut" and the "largest tax reform" in U.S. history—1981 and 1986 at the same time, only more!—the more apt and less comforting historical precedent might be the guy who Trump never tires of bashing: George W. Bush. The second President Bush pushed through tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, each of which passed with fewer than the 60 Senate votes required by an amendment to the 1974 Congressional Budget Act that demanding a supermajority for any piece of legislation seen as worsening the federal deficit 10-plus years down the road. How did the Bush cuts pass with only 58 and 51 votes, respectively? By including sunset provisions right at that 10-year mark. You can't be accused of affecting the year-11 deficit if you die at age 10! In word and deed, President Trump appears poised to follow down Bush's path of temporary tax reform through budget reconciliation; i.e., passing it on a party-line, simple-majority vote. "I hope [Democrats] don't stand in the way," Mnuchin said at the press conference. "And I hope we see many Democrats who cross the aisle and support this. Having said that, if they don't, we are prepared to look at the reconciliation process." House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) echoed the sentiment: "We want to look at every avenue, but we think reconciliation is the preferred process, we think that's the most logical process to bring tax reform through," Ryan told reporters Wednesday. There are exactly two ways you can sidestep the 60-vote rule. The first is to make sure the tax changes project to being deficit-neutral a decade from now. Given that Trump's campaign tax-reform framework, upon which today's announcement was largely based, had previously produced revenue estimates from conservative outfits showing a decrease of around $3.5 trillion over 10 years, it's damn near impossible to imagine the Congressional Budget Office or the Joint Committee on Taxation (Congress' go-to economic projection shops) torturing those 13-figure numbers out of existence, no matter how "dynamic" their scoring. Worsening those prospects—though arguably making the policy world a better place—the Mnuchin/Cohn duo swatted away one of the main proposed revenue-generators of 2017 tax reform: Paul Ryan's treasured and troublesome "border adjustment tax," a tariff by any other name that the speaker was counting on to offset the revenue hits by $1 trillion. Americans for Tax Reform President Grover Norquist, no fan of either taxes or tariffs, told me last week that he was in favor of the Border Adjustment Tax as the price for getting a $2.5 trillion tax cut. Without it? "There are two options to that," Norquist said. "You could have a smaller tax cut, not get rid of the death tax, not take the individual rates down or the corporate rates down as much. But you have to find a trillion dollars in less tax-cutting. Or you could have a tax that replaced it, some tax somewhere else. I'm not sure there's one that's an improvement." Well, Mnuchin and Cohn did include a big revenue generator in today's press conference, in the form of eliminating the federal tax deductions that Americans can take on their state and local taxes, a change that the Washington Post says "could save more than $1 trillion over 10 years." This idea, which makes intuitive sense, would nonetheless be heavily disruptive to those of us who live in high-tax states. And not just in those Democratic-bubble strongholds like New York, California, and Illinois—according to this WalletHub analysis, vying for worst American state/local tax burden are the deep red states of Nebraska and Iowa (ranked 50[...]
Wed, 26 Apr 2017 15:45:00 -0400
(image) Under President Donald Trump's proposed tax reforms, individuals and corporations would see lower tax rates, and the number of tax brackets would be reduced, but the reforms would also eliminate most other deductions beyond the standard deduction, charitable contributions, and deductions for mortgage interest.
The standard deduction would be doubled, corporate income taxes would drop to 15 percent, and Trump wants to repeal the alternative minimum tax and the estate tax (a.k.a. death tax). The information available right now is basic. So basic, in fact, that I can toss up an image of the one-page release handed out to journalists who attended the White House rollout, courtesy of Lachlan Markay of The Daily Beast:
There will be plenty to analyze, so stay tuned. One potential point of contention: It would eliminate deductions people claim for paying state and local income taxes, which could impact people who live in states like California and New York. Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin said it wasn't the federal government's job to "subsidize" these states.
Veronique de Rugy, Reason columnist and senior research fellow at the Mercatus Center of George Mason University, had a quick initial response:
I am glad to see that the president seems committed to his campaign promise of lowering the corporate income tax rate to 15 percent. He is correct to want to do without being constraint by the fake concept of revenue neutrality. First, deficit neutrality should be achieved through spending cuts rather than revenue increases. Second, experiences around the world have shown that a reduction of the corporate rate pays for itself. Canada and England have dramatically cut their rates and their revenue to GDP have stayed the same. Also, we know that the payoff in term of economic growth will be huge.
I am not too crazy about the president's plan to increase the standard deduction. While it will indeed simplify filing one's taxes for many, I think it is a problem to exclude more people from the tax rolls.
Cutting the capital gain tax rate is good and so is his proposal to end many deductions. Plus ending the death tax and the AMT is excellent. I like the individual tax reform based on what I have seen but where are the spending cuts?
"Where are the spending cuts?" is going to likely be a refrain we'll be hearing a lot from both libertarian and small government conservatives who otherwise have positive feelings about these changes.
As to whether these reforms have a chance to get anywhere, reporters asked Mnuchin whether Trump was going to release his tax returns. Mnuchin's response: he has "no intention." While there shouldn't be a relationship between tax reform and Trump's lack of transparency, it seems clear that his opponents will attempt to use his secrecy as a way of trying to block these changes.
Wed, 26 Apr 2017 12:00:00 -0400Virginia Lt. Gov. Ralph Northam is losing most of the celebrity endorsements to his Democratic rival in the governor's race, Tom Perriello—who can count Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in his corner. Northam isn't going to be able to top that. He also can't out-crazy other candidates in the race, like Republican contender Corey Stewart, who tweeted Monday morning that the removal of Confederate monuments in New Orleans was proof "ISIS has won." Not that Northam would want to try. He is a centrist sans brio or bombast, which is what you want in a pediatric neurologist but not necessarily what you want to get out the vote on Election Day. So while he has the backing of Virginia's Democratic establishment, he might need something to elevate his profile in the public mind. The other day he proposed cutting the state's food tax for the poor, according to a story by Travis Fain of The Daily Press. This is an excellent idea. Virginia's food tax is only 1.5 percent, compared with 4.3 percent for other goods. But that is still too much given that the state budget, now $107 billion, has roughly doubled in real terms over the past two decades. Northam's proposal also has the virtue of brevity. "No Food Tax" is just one letter longer than the "No Car Tax!" proposal on which Jim Gilmore rode into the Executive Mansion in 1997—and would fill the same space on a placard if you tweak the font size a hair. Gilmore's car-tax cut turned out to be a complicated affair: It gradually reduced the local property tax on the first $20,000 of a vehicle's worth, and used state dollars to compensate localities for the loss of revenue. This turned the tax cut into a state budget appropriation. It quickly grew beyond projections (imagine that)—until state lawmakers decided to cap the amount at $950 million. Lawmakers had their own plans for the money, and letting taxpayers have it back was getting in the way. Northam's people say they want to avoid similar complexities, but they haven't yet spelled out exactly how the food-tax cut would work. Northam's likely opponent—assuming he beats Perriello in the primary—is Ed Gillespie. He also has rolled out a tax-cut proposal that would give the state's individual income tax rates a haircut. This has led to the usual knee-jerk objections. The Washington Post tagged Gillespie "Mr. Free Lunch" and demanded to know which programs would be "slashed" to "pay for" the tax cut. Perriello blasted him for "unfunded" tax cuts that "largely benefit the rich." Those complaints look rather feeble when Gov. Terry McAuliffe (D) is issuing press releases boasting that "January 2017 General Fund Revenue Collections Up 7.4 Percent From the Previous Year" and that "February 2017 General Fund Revenue Collections are Up 3.6% From the Previous Year" and that "March 2017 General Fund Revenue Collections Up 5.7 Percent From the Previous Year" and so on. As the Gillespie campaign points out, his tax plan would simply reduce the growth of state revenue from a projected $3.4 billion to $2 billion over five years. Apparently some folks feel it's not enough for tax revenues to rise; they must rise at an ever-accelerating rate, and anything less calls for a "The End Is Near" sandwich board. Similar considerations apply to Northam's proposal. A 2014 legislative subcommittee report on the food tax noted that the state forgoes $526.7 million a year in revenue by not taxing food at the same rate as other goods. People earning $30,000 or less reap 15 percent of that benefit, or about $80 million. That is a rounding error in the overall scheme of the state budget. Critics of Gillespie's plan also knocked it, somewhat incongruously, for not being generous enough. "Average families in Lynchburg would only save $277 dollars (a year) under Gillespie's tax plan," said the Virginia Democratic Party before a GOP candidates' debate there. A former Democratic candidate for the General Assembly said average Lynchburg families would [...]
Mon, 24 Apr 2017 12:00:00 -0400You probably couldn't get New York Mayor Bill de Blasio and President Trump to agree on the time of day. But on the question of prices they are of one mind. Both of them think they know better than others what stuff should cost. De Blasio recently boasted he will raise (apparently by decree) the price of a pack of cigarettes to $13—"the highest price in the country." The New York Times said his goal "is to persuade or coerce 160,000 of the 900,000 New York City residents who smoke to stop doing so by 2020." De Blasio clearly understands the law of supply and demand: When you raise prices, demand falls. But he evidently hasn't applied that lesson to labor; he supports raising the minimum wage to $15 (which, incidentally, would help the poor afford cigarettes again). Advocates of minimum wage hikes like to claim raising the price of labor doesn't affect the demand for it. They're about as convincing as skeptics of climate change. Trump also wants to raise the price of many things—particularly those things imported from China, for which he has proposed steep tariffs. The trouble with Chinese goods, as he sees it, is that they cost too little, so Americans like buying them, and that hurts domestic producers. To protect producers, it's important to deny the American consumer what she wants. And the simplest way to do that is to raise prices. On the other hand, Trump thinks prescription drugs cost too much. He says the prices must come down "immediately," and he summoned drug company leaders to the White House for a lecture on the topic. Certain drugs do cost a great deal. One stellar example is Sovaldi, a hepatitis cure that costs $75,000. But the price for Sovaldi actually has plunged from a decade ago, when it was essentially infinite because the compound didn't yet exist. Prices for certain goods—a gigabyte of computer storage or a megawatt of solar-generated electricity, for instance—have plunged in recent years. And in historic terms, the relative prices of most consumer goods has fallen sharply too. As the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas noted 20 years ago, "If modern Americans had to work as hard as their forebears did for everyday products, they'd be in a continual state of sticker shock—$67 scissors, $913 baby carriages, $2,222 bicycles, $1,202 telephones." Prices for some goods do keep going up, however. Two obvious examples are college tuition and health care. By a remarkable coincidence, those also happen to be two areas of the economy in which the government is most heavily involved. Federal and state politicians keep increasing subsidies for college attendance, which encourages colleges and universities to raise prices. Two years ago the Federal Reserve Bank of New York issued a study showing that every dollar of federal student aid hikes tuition by 50 to 65 cents. Health care has suffered from a similar phenomenon. Exempting employer-sponsored health insurance from income taxation while treating it as income for collective-bargaining purposes encouraged employers to substitute overly generous health plans for salary and wages, leading to medical inflation and wage stagnation. All of this price-fixing produces a raft of unintended consequences, not least among them the gunking up of market efficiency. Too many politicians fail to understand that prices are not just charges, they are also signals. Among other things, they signal the need for conservation. When the price of batteries spikes after a hurricane knocks out the power, that tells consumers at least two things: (a) They should not waste batteries on frivolous purposes and (b) they should not buy more than they truly need, so that shortages will be mitigated. It also tells suppliers that they should ship more batteries to the affected area, even if it means extra work, because they will make a lot more money if they do. That's what makes anti-price-gouging laws so foolish: They short-circuit those important mark[...]
Tue, 18 Apr 2017 10:20:00 -0400
(image) Undocumented immigrants pay state taxes—a lot of taxes, as it turns out. So says the Oregon Center for Public Policy (OCPP), a left-leaning think tank. In a policy analysis released Monday, the OCPP found that the estimated 116,000-strong population of undocumented Oregonians paid a rough $81 million into state coffers.
Most of what the undocumented pay, says the OCPP report, was from property and income taxes which make up about $66 of the overall $81 million. The other $15 million comes from excise taxes paid on gasoline and alcohol (hopefully not purchased at the same time).
These numbers fit closely with much of the research done on the national level about the effect of undocumented workers on state and local budgets.
A March 2017 study released by the Institute on Taxation & Economic Policy (on whose numbers the OCPP study is largely derived) estimated that of the 11 million undocumented workers in the United States pay an average of 8 percent of their income to their state and local governments, for a grand national total of $11.74 billion a year.
The effective tax rate between states varies considerably however. The OCPP finds that Oregon's unauthorized workers pay a more modest 5.5 percent of their income in state and local taxes, likely thanks in part to that state's lack of a sales tax. The state of Illinois in contrast eats up about over 10 percent of income produced by undocumented residents.
These numbers clash with much of the rhetoric about illegal immigrants emanating from President Trump, who has long complained about the supposed free ride undocumented immigrants are getting in America.
As far back as October 2015, Trump had suggested that only 5 to 10 percent of illegal immigrants paid taxes, while costing the United State economy an alleged $300 billion a year.
Trump has since ridden that message all the way to the White House, repeatedly promising both on the campaign trail and in office to save Americans' tax dollars by deporting those who entered the country illegally.
In his January joint address to Congress, he promised "billions and billions of dollars" would be saved by stricter enforcement of immigration laws.
The numbers coming from the OCPP report and others suggest that the opposite approach might actually be more of a budget winner.
"When previously undocumented workers become authorized, they tend to earn and spend more," writes OCPP policy analyst Janet Bauer. This she says would in turn boost tax revenue, saying that " a path to citizenship would result in about a 48 percent increase in the tax contributions of Oregonians who are currently undocumented."
Whether the possibility of bilking aspiring Americans of more of their hard-earned income will get many immigration skeptics to come around to the idea of reform is certainly an open question. On whether undocumented immigrants do indeed pay into state coffers however, the research leaves little doubt.
Mon, 17 Apr 2017 19:46:00 -0400
(image) I'll be on Fox Business's Kennedy show tonight, talking about tax deadlines, the possibility of systemic reform, and what the function of taxes should be. Hint: I argue that taxes should be less about gulling people into certain types of behavior (such as buying homes or insurance) and more about paying for the government services that we agree should be provided.
By failing to account for the full cost of government, I suggest that people are willing to buy more government. If the government is borrowing 20 or 25 or even 30 cents on each dollar of what it spends, it makes government seem less expensive than it really is (even as it grows the national debt which will eventually need to be paid or inflated away).
The show starts at 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time and will be rerun later in the evening. Check your local cable listings for more information.
Mon, 17 Apr 2017 19:30:00 -0400
The best way to solve the problem of too many people on an airplane is to "offer a price to get people to voluntarily give up a seat," says Reason Senior Editor Brian Doherty. "But it only works really well if they keep raising the price until they get the volunteer."
On today's podcast, Doherty joins Nick Gillespie and Katherine Mangu-Ward to talk about why busting heads and not overbooking was to blame for last week's United Airlines crisis, the libertarian case for free trade and immigration, how to convince non-libertarians that one person's gain isn't necessarily another person's loss, Arkansas' legal fight to execute eight men, filing taxes, and the virtues of recreational testosterone.
Subscribe, rate, and review the Reason Podcast at iTunes. Listen at SoundCloud below:
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Mon, 17 Apr 2017 13:25:00 -0400
Just in time for the filing deadline, here are a few tips and facts you may not know about America's Rube Goldberg hellscape of a tax code.
Written by Austin Bragg, Meredith Bragg, and Andrew Heaton. Produced by Austin Bragg.
Fri, 07 Apr 2017 00:01:00 -0400Gov. Jerry Brown and Democratic legislators have caused a stir with their plan, which passed the legislature on Thursday, to increase taxes to pay for the state's unquestionably decrepit infrastructure of roads and bridges. Instead of thinking of this as a new transportation tax, however, Californians should see it as a pension tax, given the extra money plugs a hole caused by growing retirement payments to public employees. Consider this sobering news from the CalMatters' Judy Lin in January: "New projections show the state's annual bill for retirement obligations is expected to reach $11 billion by the time Brown leaves office in January 2019—nearly double what it was eight years earlier." That's the state's "annual bill," i.e., the direct costs taken from the general-fund budget. That number doesn't even include those "unfunded" pension liabilities that according to some estimates top $1 trillion. That's more than double the $5.2 billion a year the Brown administration hopes to raise from a plan that would boost gas taxes by 12 cents a gallon, raise the vehicle-license fee by $25 to $175 a year (depending on the value of the vehicle), impose a $100 annual fee on electric cars because they don't currently pay gas taxes and include a large hike on diesel fuel. Money is fungible, so if the state overspends on pensions, it has to make it up somewhere else. The story refers to the Public Employees' Pension Reform Act of 2013, which was the governor's only attempt in his administration to rein in pension costs. Because that reform applies to new state hires, it won't produce noticeable savings for years, the article explains. As I've often noted, it also was unnecessarily modest and exceedingly cynical. The governor's original plan included some serious reform ideas, including a proposed hybrid system that nudged public employees away from the debt-laden "defined-benefit" plans they now enjoy toward a mixed plan that included some elements of a 401/k program. But he didn't push for it. Instead, he caved in to his union allies. Here's where cynicism comes in: The transparent goal was not to fix the broken pension system, but to woo voter support for Proposition 30, the laughably titled "Temporary Taxes to Fund Education" initiative. The measure raised sales and income taxes. The "temporary" moniker is laughable because Prop. 30 backers asked voters to extend the income-tax portion of the taxes by a dozen years in 2016, and they obliged. (It's a safe guess those taxes won't just expire in 2030—at least not without another union-backed attempt to extend them.) At the time, the state budget crisis was in the news, as were soaring public-pension liabilities. Polling looked dismal for Brown's pet tax increase, which was the linchpin of his effort to bring the state out of its deficit. He had to convince voters that the state was serious about reforming itself. And, voilà, the PEPRA legislation was born. Voters obliged by OK'ing the tax hike, and then legislators and the governor quickly moved past the pension issue. Fast forward five years and the state has another big problem. Its general-fund budgets have remained balanced. But Democrats and Republicans alike have been complaining about the estimated $130-billion backlog in infrastructure of all types, especially after the crumbling emergency spillway at Oroville Dam caused the evacuation of 188,000 people in the Sacramento Valley this year. And once again the governor turns to a tax-increase plan. Polling shows the public dubious of the tax plan. Californians oppose the myriad tax-hike proposals, but overwhelmingly agree (61 percent) with Republicans that instead of raising taxes, the California Department of Transportation,Caltrans, should "make better use of revenue." Instead of seeking voter approval[...]
Fri, 31 Mar 2017 00:01:00 -0400Economists sometimes talk about a fictional $1 million tax on, say, beagles to illustrate the perverse effects of a poorly designed tax code. In theory, the tax could bring in $20 billion, given there are about 20,000 registered members of the breed. But in reality, the tax would yield little, because few people would claim to own such dogs, suddenly "discovering" that their beagles were really something else, maybe mixed breeds or schmeagles. That idea is useful when discussing what's benignly referred to as the "estate tax." Critics refer to it by the ominous-sounding "death tax," given that it imposes a 40 percent hit on accumulated wealth after its owner heads to that great estate in the sky. It's really the "Tax on Your Dead Neighbor's Family," given it's all about grabbing others' inheritance. In the United States, the tax is imposed on estates valued at $5.5 million or more, which sounds like a lot of money until one starts thinking about the value of businesses. A nice house in Newport Beach can be worth millions of dollars, and the value of land in a bustling Central Valley nut farm can be worth many times that amount. It can be tough enough to keep a business going after the owner dies without giving Uncle Sam a big share of the operation. Just because a business operation has great value doesn't mean that it is operating on huge margins. It's therefore common for longtime family-owned businesses to be put to auction after the founder's death. Supporters argue that few estates pay very much for reasons that go back to our tariff on beagles. Wealthy folks spend an enormous amount of money on accountants and tax lawyers to shield their assets from the tax man. But obviously, some people cough up the money, or else officials wouldn't be so eager to maintain the tax. Liberals love the tax for ideological reasons. They are egalitarian, so they bristle at inherited wealth. "Our nation cannot survive morally or economically when so few have so much while so many have so little," said Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), expressing the view of the class-warrior left. He and Hillary Clinton had both proposed dramatically increasing tax rates on people's estates. But conservatives find the tax particularly unproductive and unfair. It's unproductive to be forced to spend so much time and money sheltering assets. And it's unfair to tax something multiple times. It also quashes business development, since killing businesses has a perverse effect on working-class jobs. Fortunately, the Trump administration understands the problem. "No family will have to pay the death tax," Trump said on the campaign trail. "It's just plain wrong and most people agree with that. We will repeal it." It's an area where the new president has spoken with unusual clarity, and Republican members of Congress are moving bills that would do just that. California's Legislature, however, remains a hotbed of progressivism. Sen. Scott Wiener, a San Francisco Democrat who ironically has a reputation as being pro-business, has introduced Senate Bill 726. If approved by the legislature and then voters, it would impose a California estate tax that's identical to the federal one, but only if the federal tax is repealed. His goal, according to a statement, is "recapturing the lost funds and investing them here at home in our schools, our health-care system, and our roads and public-transportation systems." It's the latest example of Trump-spite in the state Capitol, but it sends a clear message that California isn't in any danger of becoming a business-friendly state any time soon. And I chuckle at the idea of "investing" in the state's governmental operations. Pick any government agency or project and the waste is rampant. Infrastructure is[...]
Thu, 30 Mar 2017 00:01:00 -0400William Safire said that as a speechwriter for Richard Nixon, he would sometimes urge the president, "Take the easy way!" Nixon could then give a speech saying he had rejected advice from his aides to take the easy way, preferring to do what was right. Politicians may pretend to make hard choices, but they rarely do. Those in office now won't be inspired to heroic deeds by the failure to repeal Obamacare. Just the opposite. The lesson of this episode is that it's hard to reach agreement on taking things away from the voters. The corollary is that it's easy to reach agreement on giving things to the voters. The obvious next step is a fiscal binge that serves the selfish interests of everyone except posterity. Here's how it may play out: Congressional Republicans pass tax cuts. Democrats join them on a big infrastructure bill. President Donald Trump's proposed spending cuts come to little or nothing. The deficit balloons, and not many people in Washington care. Robert Bixby, executive director of The Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan budget watchdog, tells me, "There's a political logic to it: 'You get what you want. We get what we want. And the future will pay for it.'" Marc Goldwein, senior policy director of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, agrees: "The risk of irresponsibility is high." Having lost on overhauling health care, Trump indicated he is ready to move on to tax reform. This choice evoked chortles from skeptics, who say a major revision of the Internal Revenue Code will be an even harder challenge. But why assume Republicans will balk at anything short of a comprehensive overhaul? If they can't get that—and there is no reason to think they can—they will almost certainly settle for tax cuts, even if it means bigger budget deficits. That's been their default option for decades. Trump couldn't care less about the deficit. So GOP members will meet no particular resistance from him if they want to cut rates, scrap the estate tax or the alternative minimum tax, or increase the standard deduction. House Speaker Paul Ryan has in mind a border adjustment tax, which would bring in enough revenue to make up all or most of what the other changes would lose. But neither Trump nor congressional Republicans are likely to approve a measure that would raise consumer prices and be hard to explain. The path of least resistance involves dropping the proposal and not bothering to pay for the tax cuts. Paying for them holds little allure because it would mean either killing tax breaks cherished by millions of people or curtailing outlays. Trump has proposed some $54 billion in spending reductions, taken from agencies ranging from the Environmental Protection Agency to the National Endowment for the Arts, but those couldn't be used to offset tax cuts. The money saved is supposed to go for Trump's military buildup. But rest assured, it won't be saved in the first place. "Some of Trump's closest allies said his budget has virtually no chance in Congress," reported The Washington Post. "Even those fiscal conservatives who do want to cut spending don't necessarily think slashing major domestic programs is the answer." The only other place where spending could be cut much is in the biggest entitlements—Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. But Trump the candidate promised not to go after Social Security and Medicare. Leaving Obamacare alone means Medicaid escaped the ax. The president should have more luck boosting outlays. He envisions a $1 trillion program aimed at "revitalizing our country's ruined roads, crumbling bridges and outdated airports," Press Secretary Sean Spicer explained. Trump told The New York Times he intends to "prime the pump to some extent. In other words: Spend money to m[...]
Fri, 24 Mar 2017 00:01:00 -0400This year's California legislative session has been thus far dominated by two persistent themes: the desire to stand up to the Trump administration and the pursuit of new tax dollars to fund infrastructure and other spending programs. Democrats have supermajorities in both houses of the Legislature, so Republicans have been able to do little more than complain. A recent proposal by a new state senator from San Francisco captures both of these concepts in one measure. In late February, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, introduced S.B. 726, a direct response to a proposal by President Donald Trump. (Ironically, Wiener has been viewed as a "pro-business" Democrat, at least by Bay Area standards.) The president wants to eliminate the federal estate tax, which imposes a 40 percent tax on estates valued at $5.5 million or more. A couple of Republican-backed bills to repeal the tax are currently making their way through Congress. Wiener's measure would institute a California estate tax that's identical to the federal estate tax. Under Wiener's bill, the tax would only go into effect if Congress does away with the federal version. Such estate taxes, often referred to as "death" taxes, don't apply to a huge number of estates, given the large exemption, but they have earned the wrath of the president and many Republicans. Trump called the tax "just plain wrong." President Barack Obama had proposed eliminating an estate-tax "loophole." And Hillary Clinton had proposed raising the estate tax to an unprecedented 65 percent, according to a Forbes analysis. Republicans dislike such taxes on grounds of "fairness," since many of these estates often are taxed twice and even three times. Such taxes can have a negative effect on small businesses, especially farms, which often struggle to stay afloat after the passing of the owner. Democrats see the tax as a way to find government revenue. They also make social-justice arguments for taxing larger shares of inherited wealth, which they view as exacerbating inequality. "If Donald Trump and congressional Republicans are hell-bent on cutting taxes for our wealthiest residents, we should counterbalance those tax cuts by recapturing the lost funds and investing them here at home in our schools, our health-care system, and our roads and public-transportation systems," Wiener said in a statement. Even if his bill passes both houses of the Legislature and is signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown, it still faces a large hurdle; it would need to be approved by voters on a statewide ballot. That's because voters in 1982 approved two slightly different statewide ballot initiatives (Propositions 5 and 6) that repealed the state's then-existing inheritance and gift taxes and prohibited state or local governments from imposing them in the future. If Congress repeals the estate tax and Californians impose a new estate tax at the ballot box, then the "death" taxes currently flowing to Washington, D.C., would head to Sacramento instead—to the tune of around $4.5 billion annually. Californians pay 26 percent of the nation's total estate and inheritance taxes, according to Wiener's statements. "Considering that California is generally a donor state to the federal government, that would mean significantly more money would remain in California for critical investments," his office explained. "A foolish, unnecessary tax," said Jon Coupal, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association. "At least they have to go to the voters to do this and I suspect citizens will be skeptical." Wiener's approach, Republicans say, would leave California, which already has among the highest income-tax rates in the nation, at an even greater competitive disadvantage. California [...]
Thu, 23 Mar 2017 00:01:00 -0400The deadline for filing federal income tax returns is approaching fast. While this is understandably a frustrating time for many, it's also the one time during which many taxpayers are confronted with just how much of their earnings are captured by the government. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Bernie Sanders (I-VT), think that is one time too many. They want the Internal Revenue Service to prepare tax returns on behalf of taxpayers instead of leaving it as an individual responsibility. This idea is pitched as a "simplification." And, to be fair, the complexity of our tax code is undeniable. It results in tax-compliance costs that can reach nearly $1 trillion annually, according to my colleague Jason Fichtner. However, the solution to this complexity isn't to add to the opacity of the system and make the cost of government even less visible to those picking up the tab. There's already too much of that. First, automatic tax withholding has gone a long way to hide the amount of taxes we pay annually. Also hidden is the fact that the burden of any tax falls on—and is paid by—people, whether they be consumers, investors or workers. Different types of taxes—individual, corporate, capital gains, dividends, estate, gift, etc.—are all borne by people but not necessarily by the person who cuts the check to the IRS. It results in a fiscal death by a thousand cuts without taxpayers noticing. For example, consider payroll taxes, which are withheld from paychecks. Few people realize that this is likely the biggest tax they pay. It's also sold as something other than an income tax by taxing only qualified wages. Yet, because it's withheld from wages, the same ones that are used as part of the individual income tax base when filing your taxes in April, it's just a clever way to double-tax you without you even knowing. Furthermore, its full burden is hidden by pretending that half of the burden is carried by employers (employers pay 7.65 percent; workers pay 7.65 percent; and the self-employed pay the full 15.3 percent), when in reality, the burden of the employee share is shifted to workers in the form of lower salaries. As a result, without putting serious time and effort into figuring it out, it's all but impossible to tally how much is truly coming out of your pocket. The solution to this cost, however, is not to let the IRS prepare our tax returns and require nothing but a signature of approval from the taxpayer. For one thing, the government's incentive is to maximize tax collection, whereas individuals generally prefer to pay the lowest amount legally possible. And second, the IRS isn't particularly good at understanding its own rules, yet taxpayers would still be held responsible for the errors. Considering the tremendous and one-sided power held by the IRS, many would be scared to question the accuracy of an IRS-created return even if it's warranted. Automatic withholding was first proposed in the midst of World War II. It was considered an emergency wartime measure to fund a greater percentage of war costs with current taxes than was done during World War I, in hopes of avoiding the same degree of inflation seen during the prior war. Free market economist Milton Friedman was a young Treasury Department employee at the time, and he even helped develop the program. Friedman would later lament, "It never occurred to me at the time that I was helping to develop machinery that would make possible a government that I would come to criticize severely as too large, too intrusive, too destructive of freedom." He did it by accident, as he never wanted the program to exist during peacetime. Sens. Warren and Sanders seek to do the same today but delibe[...]

domain: finance


The International Olympic Committee issues a death sentence for wrestling, an honourable and ancient sport as old as the Games themselves. After international outcry, the IOC shuffles and mumbles about procedure and hints at a chance for a reprieve when wrestling’s future comes to a vote in seven months.
Listen up, IOC. If you want to kill a sport once and for all, take a lesson from the Ontario government. What our elected assassins have done to horse racing is the new template for sport execution.
The latest evidence — and it’s neither the beginning nor the end of the cruel damage — is Woodbine’s announcement this week that 109 more people have lost their jobs. Their crime? Working in an industry against which the government needlessly and stupidly declared war about a year ago, when it chose to end the slots-at-racetrack partnership in favour of expanding profits for the (private) owners of casinos and bingo halls.
No one knows the animal toll yet, but know that hundreds of horses — surely thousands, eventually — have either paid the ultimate price or been shipped out of the province. (In Ohio and Pennsylvania and New York, they’re grateful for the stupidity north of the border.) The Woodbine firings are the latest human toll; almost 25 per cent of the organization’s “salaried” workforce is out, with most of the “hourly” workforce certain to see their jobs reshaped and shrunk to fit the new, downsizing game. (All good for the economy, eh?)
Woodbine’s staff cuts raise headlines, as well they should. Some talented and committed individuals departed; standardbred VP Bruce Murray and PR chief Glenn Crouter come to mind as large losses among many for the company. No one is saying there wasn’t some excess that could have been trimmed here and there, as it could in any industry, but the axings went way past that point. Across Ontario, it continues the trend.
Three tracks have already closed and more surely will. Race days have been slashed. Lucrative stakes programs, one of the reasons Ontario’s racing was so strong, have been cut. The breeding industry has been devastated, with top stallions and mares already long gone to the U.S. That will reduce the quality of horses here and, five years from now, that void will further hasten racing’s spin around the drain — if the game even lasts five years.
Woodbine and every other track went begging to the government for money to replace the slots revenue, which province-wide totalled $345 million per year (against the government’s no-risk share of $1.1 billion). Knowing any possible revenues from a Toronto casino won’t be available for at least two years, the government gave Woodbine a secret amount of cash for 2013 and 2014, but not enough to keep operating at full speed, hence these staff and purse cuts. Other tracks continue to negotiate their deals, while industry sentiments arise to throw the damned slots out into the parking lot snow. (Except that’s exactly what bingo owners want, to get their mitts on the slots themselves.)
Former agriculture minister Ted McMeekin summoned the courage to admit the government botched the call here. His reward was to be named community and social services minister under Kathleen Wynne.
Meanwhile, two main players who loaded this gun — premier Dalton McGuinty and former finance minister Dwight Duncan — have already fled the crime scene. Both surely will land softly in the business world, as opposed to real people with mortgages and families to support who got the bad news this week at Woodbine. Those two have washed their hands of the fact that once all 35,000 people are out of work, plus another 20,000 who grow the feed and shoe the horses and sell the vans and such, the cost to the province will be in the billions. To say nothing of thousands of ruined lives.


text: Stilwell Financial sv shares are up 3.5 percent to $14.43 after the company said it'll adopt the Janus brand name. Janus will be led by Mark Whiston, who will become chief executive officer on Dec. 31. Whiston currently serves as president of retail and institutional services. "Our holding company structure will no longer be necessary, and we will be able to eliminate redundant expenses," explained Landon H. Rowland, president, CEO and chairman of Stilwell Financial. Rowland will serve as the non-executive chairman of the board of directors until Jan. 1, 2004 and will continue as a director for one year thereafter. It is expected that Whiston will be appointed chairman on Jan. 1, 2004.

domain: economics


text:
5 Simple Statements About Auburn CA Termite Control Explained
1813 Mary GURLEY; brother to Brooks and Pleasant; Thomas was born in Buncombe county, North Carolina;a family members Tale states that on his engagement to Mary Gurley she planted some cotton, picked it, spun it and knitted socks for her bride groom that he wore at his wedding day and later on, sons, Pleasurable and John both equally wore them at their weddings; some years afterwards these socks were being positioned in the Oregon Historic Culture museum; in 1828 the family moved to Tennessee in which they remained for approximately five years in advance of relocating to Arkansas in 1833; in 1842 they removed to Missouri exactly where they started preparations for his or her emigration to Oregon; following arrving in Oregon the spouse and children settled in Marion County; Thomas was elected on the legislature in 1844 and served until 1846 and on the other hand in 1851-fifty two; his wife died in 1853 and Thomas did not remarry; the Keizer family members with daughters and sons owned about 2400 acres in what is now Keizer, Marion County, OR
Margaret MALONE (c1842- ): m'd 1857 Jackson T. SNELLING; d/o Madison and Virginia Malone; enumerated while in the 1860 WA census but by 1870 her only living child, a daughter, Edith, resides with a Snelling uncle with no listing for her moms and dads identified. It is actually assumed they are deceased by this position.
The school provides a blend of liberal arts and Specialist packages, and is split into four individual educational facilities: arts and sciences, company, nursing and well being sciences, and training. Students can choose from 70 courses, like thirteen graduate levels.
The a hundred and forty four-acre campus is located on Sarasota’s north bay entrance, just some miles from town Heart. The campus hosts an amiable, eclectic combine of new buildings and historical properties.
): s/o Thomas and Mary (Gurley) Keizur; settled in Marion county where site here he lived intermittently with his father and brothers; no sign he ever married
There exists also a Particular humanities system, in addition to several interdisciplinary plans and dual-degree alternatives.
Acclaim Further Herbicide is usually a h2o emulsion formulation containing 0.fifty seven pound of Energetic component for every gallon. Acclaim Excess Herbicide is used for postemergence control of annual grass weeds and suppression of some perennial grass weeds in set up turfgrass and ornamental species. Acclaim Added Herbicide won't control wide-leaf weeds or sedges.
Alanson HUSTED (1808- ): m'd 1848 Mary (MONTGOMERY) Saunders; Mary was the widow of Luke Saunders who was killed in the Whitman Massacre. Mary and her little ones had been brought to Oregon Town once the massacre and that's wherever she fulfilled and married Alanson Husted; Alonson was listed for a stonemason in the 1850 Clackamas Co Census, although numerous mentions of him inside the newspapers of some time exhibit that he was involved in numerous land transactions; by 1851 he experienced remaining for CA, abandoning his wife and her young children in Clackamas Co and leaving them with out aid; Mary filed for divorce in 1854; Alanson wasn't present in the 1860 census
The campuses are joined by the non-public Speedy Transit process, which was designed for the only real reason of eradicating university student targeted visitors on regional highways.
Pinkerton and Whilst his moms and dads have been residents of New Hampshire, they were viewing in England at time of his beginning.
suitable duplicate from the Discover of Commencement to generally be served by first-class mail, postage prepaid, to the nominees (the "Nominees")2 Keeping the Debtors' publicly traded securities (the "Securities") in "Road name" for your advantageous owners of explained Securities. GCG also presented Just about every Nominee having a letter (the "Instructional Letter") with Guidance to distribute the Observe of Commencement towards the effective holders from the read Securities.
Goshen hosts 13 intercollegiate athletics groups, together with various intramural teams and scholar corporations. With some exceptions, all complete-time pupils at Goshen Higher education ought to continue to exist campus. a hundred% of scholars receive some kind of monetary help.
Went again to his Business office after viewing the house with Funds to try and do an agreement of sale. Acquired there and was told we are able to’t do an arrangement of sale since This is certainly an Auction— BS!
Spring Hill School has become the oldest Roman Catholic universities within the southeastern U.S. Established from the Jesuit get, this modest liberal arts faculty was proven my site in 1830, which makes it the fifth-oldest Catholic college or university during the country.

domain: history


text:
A pooled analysis of data published in BMJ has discovered that meditation of consciousness can help relieve chronic pain
The analysis, published online in the magazine Mental health based on evidence, indicates that the practice could reduce the severity and impact on the daily life of chronic pain, as well as the anxiety that accompanies.
This is important, say the researchers, because the psychological technique most used to treat chronic pain is cognitive behavioral therapy (TCC), but not all those who live with chronic pain, which affects one or five adults, find the TCC useful .
The researchers examined the research databases for relevant clinical trials that examined the effectiveness of TCC or the reduction of consciousness-based stress for the treatment of chronic pain, defined as for a minimum period of three months.
When practicing the meditation of consciousness, the patients concentrate at the moment and at the time awareness of thoughts, feelings, bodily sensations and the immediate environment. The stress reduction element is intended to help those affected to develop ways to more effectively deal with the pain.
Of the first 184 appropriate clinical trials, 21 were selected, with about 2,000 people, and the results were grouped.
Most study participants were women and were between 35 and 65 years old. The conditions that caused pain were, to a large extent, musculoskeletal. In almost four out of 10 studies, participants had sustained their pain for more than a decade.
The review combines direct and indirect evidence of the potential impact of TCC health compared to usual care or not; Consciousness compared to usual care or not; and awareness in comparison to TCC.
The analysis showed that there were no significant differences between either of the two techniques. Both significantly improved their physical functioning and decreased the severity of pain and associated depression, compared to normal or unattended care.
However, the researchers warn that only one of the 21 trials directly compared TCC with consciousness, and only 12 trials were considered to be of reasonable quality or of good quality.
Although the analysis produced comparable results for both techniques, the statistical error margin was broad, which means that it is too early to know which of the TCC or the awareness could be best for people with Different types of pain and psychological symptoms, they point out. More research is needed to connect this gap, they say.
"While TCC is considered as the preferred psychological intervention of [chronic pain], not all patients with [it] They experience a significant clinical response to treatment, "they conclude.
"Although they have proposed several recommendations to improve TCC for patients with chronic pain, an additional solution can be to offer a reduction in stress based on the patient's awareness, as it shows promise to improve the severity of pain and reduce pain interference and psychological anguish ".

domain: literature


Get ready for the DADDY of all family comedies! When it comes to raising their kids, Dusty (Mark Wahlberg) and Brad (Will Ferrell) finally have this co-parenting thing down. That is, until Dusty’s macho dad (Mel Gibson) and Brad’s sweet-natured father (John Lithgow) come to town, throwing the whole family into complete chaos. As old rivalries create new problems, Dusty and Brad’s partnership is put to the ultimate test in this hilarious and heartwarming comedy that gives new meaning to the term ‘blended family’.
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Mar 15, 2012
Even if you can't catch a leprechaun this March 17th, you can still make one.Materials
For this crafty little decoration, first trace around the end of a toilet paper tube onto a piece of green craft foam.
Once the paint has dried, use a permanent marker
to draw on facial and clothing details, then use tacky glue to stick on
3 coiled brown pipe cleaners: 2 in the back for hair and 1 around the
face for a beard. For feet, fold another pipe cleaner in half, then
tightly coil and pinch the ends, as shown.
Place the folded pipe cleaner inside the tube
and glue the feet to the edge. Glue on the hat top and brim and a 5 1/2-
by 1/2-inch strip of craft foam for arms.
Finally, glue a decorative button to the hat brim.

domain: design


French cast iron balance scale early 1900's
Stanley Yankee Phillips Screwdriver Adapter No. 31A , 131A
Have a North Brothers, or Stanley Yankee Spiral Ratchet Screwdriver? Need a Philips head bit for it? This adapter is for standard 1/4" Hex drive bits, giv...
19th century Miniature pharmaceutical Brass Mortar
19th century Miniature Brass Mortar. High; 2 ½ inches.
Bay State Taps Boxed Tap Set 1/4-20
Offering this quality set of good clean sharp useable taps in their original wood box with wood dividers and sliding top. The box top is clearly marked "BA...
Farm Implement Combination Wrench
This is a nice clean farm implement combination wrench with 3 nut openings. On the end with the cut out sizes are 11/16" closed, 3/4" opened end. The ...
Iron Pincers 14" End Nipper
This is a nice clean pincer, very sturdy with a good tight joint. There is no maker's name on this one. No rust, little wear, a slight bend on one of the handle...
Stanley No. 1 Try & Mitre Square Type 2
This is a nice clean very old combination try & Mitre square. It is the 8" model and it's marked Stanley on the handle. Refered to as the Winterbottom'...
Snell 1.25" Boring Machine Auger Bit
This is a hard to find boring machine auger bit (1.255 dia. x 12" long) (end shaft diameter is .495") marked "SNELL MFG. COMPANY". It's also...
Walden Spitite Vintage 5/8" Nut Driver
This is a nice wood handle nut driver, marked by the maker "Spintite Walden 5/8". (MAKER: WALDEN WORCESTER WORCESTER MASS. U.S.A.).
This is a used d...
C. S. Osborne Leather Working Chisel Tool 1/4"
This is a nice clean vintage special curved end form carving gouge chisel, marked "C.S. OSBORNE & CO. NEWARK N.J. 1/8" on the steel. It measure 1/...
W. Butcher Tanged Firmer Chisel 1.75" wide
This is a nice old heavy duty tanged firmer chisel in good sharp ready to use condition. It's marked "W. BUTCHER CAST STEEL" with a very clear stamp o...
Sargent 2" Socket Firmer Chisel
This is a rarely seen socket firmer chisel marked "SARGENT V-B-M" on the steel. It's in good used condition, sharp and ready to use. It's not rusty, t...
Channellock Pliers Two Types Slip Joint - Long Nose
This is a nice clean set of two types of pliers both marked Channellock. The long nose pliers are marked 3017 1/2, they are 8" long and have the ornate des...
Mongin 4" Wide Scraper or Cutter
This is a very nice 19th century heavy duty scraper or cutter for a special purpose I'm sure. marked with a maker's name "MON MOGIN AINE PARIS ED MOGIN SR....
Merrill & Co. 1/2" Heavy Mortise Chisel Jennings & Griffin
This is a nice clean, 19th century heavy duty mortise chisel. It's 1/2" wide x 11" long steel & overall is 15.5" long. It's in very nice cond...
Wood plane with a steel blade made of wood wood working tool
One large wood plane 23" long by 3" wide by 2.75" thick, from top of handle to bottom of plane it is 5.75" tall, It is all wood excep...
Lufkin No. 8 Catalog
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American Caliper Co. Center Gage
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Stanley No. 203 Block Plane
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P. S. & W. 12" Monkey Wrench
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Home > Revolution Motor > Revolution Eyemo
Revolution Motor for the Eyemo.
Single-frame + Time Lapse Intervalometer + Sync
The Eyemo/Filmo motor plugs into the camera via the motor mount socket (on the back of the camera) and the motor drive port (towards the front).
The sync version of the motor will shoot sync on the Filmo 16mm as well as the Eyemo 35mm. However, it will not shoot singe-frame or time-lapse on the Filmo. Just the Eyemo.
Scoll down for exciting videos!
Two Models available
- Single-frame/Time Lapse motor only (BH35-TL100..$1495)
- Single-frame/Time Lapse + Sync (BH35-S100.... $1995)
See the ordering page for
prices. There's two-styles of the motor. The version pictured below is for Eyemos without the mounting bracket at the back.
Here's the Revolution Eyemo Owner's Manual.
On our Eyemo Page, we have
a manual for the Eyemo.
On our Manuals Page, we have some manuals for the Filmo.
- control box can be removed from motor unit and connected via a 6' cable
- digital direct drive motor - no brushes to wear out, no gears to break down!
- Film at Sync speeds from 1 to 36fps*, in 1-fps increments.
- Video Speeds of 23.976 and 29.970 built-in!
- accelerates smoothly to sync speed, decelerates smoothly to stop. Automatic shutter parking.
- If desired, preset the number of seconds of film you want your shot to be and filming will stop automatically.
- will drive Filmo 16mm at Sync and video speeds.
Steel Yard Construction / Eyemo TL
Time Lapse features
- Intervals from 1 second to 9 hours can be set precisely on the digital thumbwheels.
- Shutter speeds of 1/8, 1/4, 3/8, 1/2 sec and long exposures up to 4 minutes.
- Change the shutter speed or interval while running! That's right, if the sun is going down, and you want a longer exposure, you can change it without stopping and re-starting filming.
- Presets! Store filming settings in permanent memory.
- Delay before filming mode, up to 24 hours.
- Power input: Standard 4-pin XLR jack
- Voltage: 12V for Single-frame, 24V for Sync
- Weight, motor unit: 2.25 lbs
- Weight, control box: 8 oz
*Note that maximum sync-speed is somewhat dependant on the conditon of your Eyemo. A smooth-running Eyemo will be able to reach 30+fps speeds. A smooth-running Filmo will go up to about 40-42fps


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Organized by the National Park Service, students of Tuscarora High School in Frederick County Maryland and students of CheongShim International Academy in the Republic of Korea interviewed Korean War veterans in their respective countries. The students shared these interviews with each other through the internet. Based on a more informed and personal understanding, the students wrote thank-you letters to the veterans of the Korean War. Although these are offered to the veterans, we think they will forgive the rest of us, who share these feelings of gratitude, if we read their mail.
Dear Korean War Veterans,
Several years ago, at my grandmother's funeral, my oldest aunt opened her mouth with tears dropping from her eyes.
"I hated my mother for so long," she said. "I hated her so much for what she had did…" Everyone looked at her. She was the oldest daughter who received the most love from grandmother.
"Mother was twenty one when the Korean War broke out. I was three and my younger sister was one. She lived with her husband's parents, and when she heard that the North Koreans and Chinese soldiers were heading for the city, she had to flee to a relative's house," my aunt's story went on. "But the problem was that she had so many people and things to take with her. She had to take care of the elders as well as her children. One has to be sacrificed. She…she thought that because she was young she could again have another baby, she decided to leave her second daughter behind. So she put some food and her baby daughter in a small room. She locked the door… Inside, her baby will starve to death slowly." No one spoke.
"But the war was over after a week. It wasn't the total end, but the North Koreans and Chinese went back to their country," oldest aunt further went on, and her eyes were blood-shot. "When the war ended she walked about 200 km without rest. She thought that she killed her daughter with her own hands. The most rational creature on Earth has turned into a beast; this was war. She came back to Daejeon. She went into the room. Hot air passed her face with a smell of a fermented human waste. The baby wasn't dead!"
This is a story of an old women and the war. The soldiers who came from far away to help South Korea saved our family and saved my life. All the happiness and love I now enjoy came from the blood of the sacrificed and the tears of the terrified.
Thank you. My life was dependent on you. Your bravery, your courage should never be forgotten. Yes, it is true that people dub the Korean War as the "Forgotten War". It is, however, not forgotten. It is just hidden deep inside our lives that we could not reach it. Just a little realization will be enough to bring out the hidden Korean War and the sacrifices of so many people.
You are not forgotten. You are not in solitude. I am here to thank you. You live inside me and my family. You do not deserve misery and loneliness when others who owe to you live in comfort and happiness. You deserve to greatest honor and gratitude.
A Thank You Letter From Korea
The blizzard found me stunned. Raindrops changed from spring drizzle to downpours of rainy spell and is preparing to turn into snow; but until now, I cannot pull the shard of memory out of my heart. Whenever I recall that one hour of my life, I find myself drifting inside a pile of entangled emotion.
It was March of 2012. Listening to the stories of poverty and cruelty the veterans suffered made my heart ache. But before ruminating over again the piece of history they shared with me, I was no more than stunned. Just stunned. They told me that they wished to have been younger so they could shoot down pro-North's including Daejung Kim, the last president of Korea. They told me that South Korea should strengthen national wealth to completely eradicate the socialist government of North.
I respect the hardships they've gone through in the 1950s. I thank them for devoting their golden ages, and preventing farther destruction. However, I cannot agree with them. I was, in fact, even better assured by their words: War destroys everything. That's the everlasting, unconditional truth. I now know that their scar was too deep to see through the truth. What I really hope now is to amend their hearts. So they can overcome their distorted hatred. I hope yours is too, prepared to pump again blood to every aortas and arteries of the world. Bringing it warmth and life.
Thank you. Thank you for have lessened heavy burdens for us. And thank you, for sharing your PEACE.
Dear veteran soldiers who participated in the Korean War
My grandmother still fears the cracks of thunder or raging sounds of airplanes passing by. Although she did not participate in the war, she could clearly hear bombs exploding everywhere and distorted corpse lying around the streets. She was soon traumatized by the shells. It was a difficult -no, it was more than difficult- a horrible time.
Nevertheless, she survived. And we all know how many soldiers had to sacrifice themselves in order to save the lives of innocent citizens like my grandmother. I am writing this letter to inform you that as a member of Korean citizen, a lot of students in our school are actually commemorating the Korean War, and are trying our best to make the public acknowledge this forgotten war. Also, I would like to express how thankful we are about your courage to endure all the painful moments to defend this country from destruction.
After finishing the interview with the veteran soldiers, I could not help myself from drawing the picture of the war, all the unreasonable behaviors turning into a norm. You told me that when you hesitate to shoot a person in the war, then your life is at risk, so there is no time to feel guilty about the dead. I was first shocked to hear that, but after undergoing deep contemplation, I could understand the situation that forced you to make such miserable decision. Then I felt compassion, as well as unlimited gratitude for your endeavor to safe the country.
Especially, I was shocked to hear about the lives of the soldiers during the wartime. You have told me that since there was no proper food to eat, the soldiers had to sustain their lives with 3 lumps of rice and salt every day. Worse, the "special" meal for women and children was the soup made from half-spoiled ham and canned beans thrown away by American soldiers. In other words, what was garbage to US soldiers was gracious food to Korean civilians suffering from hunger. But they were all thankful that there was still some food to keep them from starvation.
People are slowly forgetting about the war, because though youths today do learn about it, but only by textbook and not by heart. The relationship with North Korea is still in question. Nevertheless, your sacrifice would never be forgotten no matter what. We are so proud to hear that although everybody wanted to surrender and terminate the moments of torture, they could not because they had something more valuable to save, such as their family, nation, or faith. The miracle we see today is all yours.
Thank you for all the soldiers, including the Americans, who sacrificed themselves in the war.
To read more thank-you letters go to: https://www.nps.gov/kowa/learn/historyculture/index.htm
Photos courtesy of Rare Historical Photos. https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/korean-war-rare-pictures-1951-1953/
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Libya: 'Stalemate' remains despite Nato strikes
Nato aircraft have hit eight warships in the Libyan ports of Tripoli, Al Khums and Sirte, but despite the help from Nato the rebels' progress remains slow.
The BBC's Andrew Harding joined rebels near Misrata as they regained ground previously held by Gaddafi's forces.
20 May 2011
- From the section Africa


text:
About two years ago, I decided to change my life: moving from London to Lisbon and focusing on more on creating a different life all together, from leaving the “rat race” behind to spending more time listening to my inner self. One of the things I kept constant though was the environment in which I live: a fairly big, capital city.
Since being a teenager, I had tacitly accepted the idea that, as a gay man, living your life freely was only possible in a big city. I’m not sure I ever gave this postulate much though, I just accepted it as truth and let it guide some crucial decisions I made: For example, when choosing a place at university, I decided against an offer I had from a really nice university in Wales, and instead opted to study in London. Not so much because I liked the university in London more, or was more into the subject, but simply because I assumed happiness and fulfillment as a gay man was definitely to be found somewhere where the lights of the city sparkled.
Of course, that was then and now is now. And over the last year or so, I have increasingly looked into setting up a place where LGBTQ+ folks can connect on many different levels. Of course, my first intuition was to look for a space somewhere in a big city. Again, the assumption being that, in a big city where queer folk are more numerous, there would be more space to build such a community.
Eventually, however, I looked beyond the gay community and found that alternative living and social communities are not confined to the big cities. Instead, many seem to thrive away from the city, in the very places I would have expected to “outcast them”. On the contrary, with only a few exceptions, many spaces that try and create community beyond commercial interests, seem to struggle in urban environments. Not because there is a scarcity of attempts to create them, but often simple economic realities, such as sky high property prices, make such attempts not viable.
On the other side, even with many places, apps, clubs and other offerings to connect, especially for gay guys, gay loneliness is a big part of reality. Especially, among gay men living in urban environments. Discussing the many reasons for this phenomenon would probably fill more than a couple of books, but in short, it seems having 200 gay guys in a 500m radius around you looking at their smartphone, twenty gay bars to choose from or even the possibility to attend several “social” groups. Ironically, all this choice seems to make us lonelier.
This thinking let me to develop the idea of the Quinta Project (‘quinta’ is Portuguese for farm). In short, a sort of rural, residential “community centre”. A place I envisage to be inclusive for all queer folk, where the focus is on creating real, social connections – away from the city. The Quinta Project website contains some more information about it, but I will also come back to some of the thinking behind the project in later posts here.
Of course, this means actually moving to a farm, transforming the farm into a place where the project events can take place… but also, and importantly, running the farm around the project. In other words, my future plan doesn’t just involve me setting up and running the “community centre”, but also looking after over a thousand olive trees, reviving several currently unused fields, caring for a mature fruit orchard and creating a vegetable “garden” that can supply produce for the Quinta. In short, transiting from the “urban gay” man, with no idea of how to prune a fruit tree, to becoming a “gay farmer”.
How will it all work? Or indeed, will it work at all? I have no idea. At the moment I have more sleepless nights thinking about what it will be like. And other moments, where I just can’t wait to wake up every morning and hear bird, rather than buses. Will it be great? I don’t know. But I know it will definitely be an exciting journey! And I’m really glad that I can share this adventure with you!

domain: sociology