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[second-- need a laugh?...click here for video of last night's Co. Leg. full board mtg.-- where practically every GOP Co. Leg. followed GOP Elections Commissioner Erik Haight like lemmings off cliff re: his nonsensical proposal to have $54,455 added now to our county's Board of Elections budget for primary costs-- when we won't know for weeks exactly what primaries will, in fact, be happening, after petition challenges, etc.-- too ridiculous to describe; see: http://www.totalwebcasting.com/view/?id=dutchess -- re: res. #2011177-- http://www.co.dutchess.ny.us/CountyGov/Departments/Legislature/CLagenda.htm ;
see text http://www.dutchessny.gov/CountyGov/Departments/Legislature/ResolutionsPDF/2011177.pdf
(granted, most gratifying thing may have been how Dem Elections Commissioner Fran Knapp stood up to GOP attempts to bully and intimidate her (Knapp effortlessly put disrespectful Flesland in her place; now just 1 of you Vassar students/profs/community members needs to step up to challenge Flesland!)]
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[also-- re: http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/2011/July/12/DCL_inmate_board-12Jul11.html today; recall: http://dutchessdemocracy.blogspot.com/2011/07/re-jail-costs-bills-must-be-paid-but.htmlunt (and again, Flesland off-base; we still need cost-saving re-entry when housed-out inmates here again)!]
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[again-- re: below-- why aren't at least my Dem Co. Leg. colleagues letting me know they'll co-sign my letter to Obama and Congress to stop cuts to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid?...ball's in your court, folks-- if you care, email all 25 of us on this today-- at countylegislators@co.dutchess.ny.us-- fwd]
[...and don't forget-- GOP didn't curl up into ball w/Dems in power '08-'09; call Congress: 866-338-1015!]
From http://www.CitizenActionNY.org/AmericanPromise ...(thx to Elisa Sumner for email to us on this):
Statewide Caravan to Restore the American Promise
Right now in Congress, the American Promise is under attack. "Social safety net" programs, like Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security, that our families, friends, and neighbors have replied on for decades are being threatened by a radical anti-government, anti-people, agenda.
We're fighting back!
Concerned New Yorkers are taking our message to communities across the state. We can't just sit back and let the American Promise be destroyed. The statewide caravan to Restore the American Promise will be stopping near you! We must stand together to build a stronger America!
Caravan Stops:
Final Statewide Tour Stop: A Celebration of America's Promise: Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and America's Social Safety Net
July 21, 2011
4:00 PM - 6:00 PM
The Henry A. Wallace Center at the FDR Presidential Library and Home
4097 Albany Post Road, Hyde Park, NY 12538
Contact: Jessica Wisneski, 845.901.0264
Click here to RSVP-- http://action.citizenactionny.org/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=32671
Downstate Tour Day 2: July 21, 2011
Hudson Valley: 12:00 PM
Rep. Hayworth's Office, 268 Route 202, Somers, NY 10589
Contact: Nelini Stamp, 347.675.5014
Click here to RSVP-- http://action.citizenactionny.org/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=32681
Upstate Tour Day 2: July 21, 2011
Kinderhook: 1:00 PM
Rep. Gibson's Office, 2 Hudson St., Kinderhook, NY 12106
Contact: Beth Soto, 845.567.7760 x10
Click here to RSVP-- http://action.citizenactionny.org/p/salsa/event/common/public/?event_KEY=32687
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[finally: don't forget-- help Matt Rosenberg and I http://www.ReclaimtheDream.com this Sun. July 17th 5 pm at The Rhinecliff (Hotel)-- email matt@urbaneden.net for more; this in to us from Van Jones on this ("time for peace and prosperity," as Van says-- "not war and austerity"!...from: "Van Jones
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[recall-- from http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/07/09-3 -- Published on Saturday, July 9, 2011 by The Hill (Washington, DC)-- "Liberal Senators Warn Obama Over Social Security Cuts in Debt Deal; Bernie Sanders promises to filibuster if White House proposes 'piece of crap' by Erik Wasson"
[recall-- "overwhelmingly, multiple polls show that voters oppose deep cuts in or radical transformation of Medicare (78 percent opposed in a Washington Post poll); by large margins, voters support a surcharge income tax on millionaires and billionaires, which is similar to the higher rates Rep. Schakowsky proposes (81 percent in a March NBC/Wall Street Journal poll)-- and a majority favors military spending cuts as a first step in deficit reduction (56 percent in the Post poll)."
(from David Moberg's May 23rd piece: "What Americans Want: The People's Budget"/In These Times):
http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/7333/what_americans_want_the_peoples_budget ; Soc. Sec. facts:
http://www.cepr.net/index.php/blogs/cepr-blog/myths-and-facts-about-raising-the-retirement-age-for-social-security ]
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Ten more must-read's on all this...
1. "Don't You Dare: Obama Peddles Worst of GOP Thinking on Medicare: If Obama Hikes Medicare Eligbility Age, That'll Be a 12 Percent Benefit Cut" by John Nichols
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/12-10
2. "Manufacturing Deficit Fear: On Holding Economic Journalists to Account" by Dean Baker
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/11-13
3. "Address the Jobs Crisis, Build a Movement" by Robert Kuttner
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/11-5
4. "Corporate Tax Escapees and You" by Ralph Nader
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/11-14
5. Lead editorial in today's Times-- "Ideology Trumps Economics"
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/12/opinion/12tue1.html
6. "The Story of a New Economy" by David Korten of http://www.YesMagazine.org
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/12-12 ...
7. "The Power-- and Limits-- of Social Movements" by Robert Jensen
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/12-1
8. "Climate Regulations Job Killer? Quit Crying Wolf (U.S. Chamber of Commerce Wrong)" Don Cohen
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/12-11
9. "Climate Change Could Kill One in 10 Species by End of the Century" by Steve Conner
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/07/12-1
10, http://www.350.org [re: two just above-- join 6000 businesses standing up to U.S. Chamber(!!!)]
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/12-10 ...
Published on Tuesday, July 12, 2011 by The Nation
Don't You Dare: Obama Peddles Worst of GOP Thinking on Medicare
If Obama Hikes Medicare Eligbility Age, That'll Be a 12 Percent Benefit Cut
by John Nichols
The word in Washington is that President Obama has, in negotiations with congressional Republicans, offered to raise the Medicare eligibility age from 65 to 67.
A report in the Washington Post quoted "a Democratic official familiar with the discussions," while other media outlets quoted multiple unnamed sources with knowledge of the talks the president and congressional leaders have been engaged in with regard to raising the debt ceiling. All the reports suggest that Obama would trade the change in the eligibility age for a Republican agreement to accept some new taxes.
Obama essentially acknowledged as much Monday, when he said: "I'm prepared to take significant heat from my party to get something done."
And rightly so.
The president's proposal does not resemble a plan that mainstream Democrats would suggest, let alone support. In fact, it roughly resembles a plan advanced last month by Senators Tom Coburn, R-Oklahoma, and Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut.
That the White House appears to be peddling proposals that parallel those of conservative senators represents an exceptionally troubling development, as even considering a hike in the Medicare eligibility age represents the worst of Washington-insider thinking.
The problem with this play is four-fold:
1. Raising the eligibility age represents a huge benefit cut for older Americans.
The average life expectancy for an American who makes it to age 65 is in the range of 82 years.
That would give an American who reaches retirement age under the current system roughly 17 years of Medicare coverage.
That number would under Obama's proposal drop to 15 years.
That's a roughly 12 percent cut in benefits.
2. Raising the eligibility age would not save the money that proponents of the cut suggest.
Raising the eligibility age creates new pressures on a health-care system that is already dysfunctional for older workers who are laid-off or under-insured. Far from saving money, a spike in the eligibility age simply shifts the problem to other accounts. For instance, if the federal government is providing aid to the uninsured under the health-care reform plan, folks aged 65 to 67 will just have to seek that aid -- as opposed to tapping into the already functional and efficient Medicare program.
Worse yet, the aid would be for the buying of insurance from the private sector, which will charge its highest prices for insuring the older and more vulnerable uninsured. Thus, more cost to the taxpayers.
3. Raising the eligibility age harms the struggle with unemployment.
The smartest move for older workers who do not have access to Medicare until there are 67 will be to keep working.
That means that jobs will not come open for younger workers who are entering the labor market or have been laid off.
4. Raising the eligibility age undermines the argument that Democrats want to preserve Medicare and helps Republicans such as Paul Ryan to define the debate.
When a Democratic president joins Republicans in advancing the largest cut in Medicare benefits in modern history, that takes the steam out of the argument that Democrats want to preserve Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security while Republicans want to make cuts.
Democrats had their most significant victory in the past two years when Kathy Hochul won the special election in New York's 26th District. Hochul grabbed a traditionally Republican seat by campaigning as a stalwart and unyielding defender of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. She offered real alternatives for voters who were concerned about deficits and debts: arguing for fair taxation and a broad examination of waste, fraud and abuse in federal programs.
That was a powerful, winning argument. But it cannot be made by a president or a party that imposes deep and unnecessary cuts in Medicare. Accepting that so-called "entitlement" programs are the source of America's fiscal challenges effectively endorses House Budget Committee chairman Ryan's false premises.
The voters rejected those false premises in the New York special election, and they will continue to do so - unless Barack Obama hands the issue to Ryan and the Republicans on the silver platter of a proposal to raise the Medicare eligibility age.
© 2011 The Nation
John Nichols is Washington correspondent for The Nation and associate editor of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. His most recent book is The "S" Word: A Short History of an American Tradition. A co-founder of the media reform organization Free Press, Nichols is co-author with Robert W. McChesney of The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again and Tragedy & Farce: How the American Media Sell Wars, Spin Elections, and Destroy Democracy. Nichols' other books include: Dick: The Man Who is President and The Genius of Impeachment: The Founders' Cure for Royalism.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/11-13 ...
Published on Monday, July 11, 2011 by The Guardian/UK
Manufacturing Deficit Fear: On Holding Economic Journalists to Account
Pursuing a plan to kill social security, politicians are relying on a credulous public and compliant media to ramp up debt panic
by Dean Baker
The conventional wisdom among the current generation of school reformers is that bad teachers are to blame for the failure of many of our children to learn. Applying this logic to the current debates over the budget and the economy, we should be pointing a big finger of blame at the media.
As survey after survey shows, the vast majority of the public are incredibly ignorant of the most basic facts about the budget and the economy. If we treated their teachers in the media the way the educational reformers treat public school teachers, few economics and budget reporters would have jobs.
One needs only to pick up a newspaper or turn on the television to get examples of thoroughly awful reporting. When we hear pledges to reduce the projected deficits over the next 12 years by $2tn or $4tn, how many people have any clue how large these reductions - on which the current debt ceiling talks between President Obama and House speaker John Boehner turn - are, relative to projected spending or projected GDP over this period? (The $4tn figure is 8.7% of projected spending and 3.7% of GDP.)
How about that $14.3tn figure for the debt ceiling? That's a really big number, really scary. So is just about every number connected with the United States budget. We are a huge country with a huge economy. Competent reporters would focus on this being about 90% of US GDP.
Is that big? Well, the debt to GDP ratio was over 110% after the second world war. The United Kingdom had debt to GDP ratios of more than 100% for much of the 19th century, as it was establishing itself as the world's pre-eminent industrial power. Japan has a debt to GDP ratio of more than 220% of GDP and can still borrow in financial markets long-term at interest rates of less than 1.5%.
So, what's the problem? The politicians who want to cut social security and Medicare obviously want the public to believe that there is a huge problem and - due to the incompetence of the media - they have managed to instill fear throughout the nation about this massive non-problem.
If the media were doing their job, the public would be able to put these debt numbers in context. And the politicians who attempted to exploit fears based on ignorance would be subjected to ridicule. For example, when Senator John McCain was basing his 2008 president campaign on attacking the $1m spent on creating a Woodstock museum, competent reporters would have barraged him with questions as to whether McCain understood that this came to 0.00003% of federal spending.
They would ask him how much time he thinks that Congress should spend scrutinizing three hundred thousandths of 1% of the federal budget. If Congress spent one minute debating every McCain Woodstock museum-sized expenditure, it would take it 6.3 years to get through this year's budget, assuming that it was in session 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
In the same vein, when a politician asserts that social security is going bankrupt and that there will not be anything left for her children or grandchildren, serious reporters would ridicule her for being ignorant of the social security trustees projections. These projections show that even if nothing is ever done to change the programme, future beneficiaries will always be able to collect a higher benefit than current retirees. The "nothing there for our children" would be treated as a serious gaffe, sort of like then Senator Obama's comment before the Pennsylvania primary about working-class people being bitter and clinging to guns and religion. The difference is that the social security comment has direct relevance for policies that affect people's lives.
When a politician complains about President Obama's taxes strangling the economy, reporters should ask them whether they know that taxes are less of a burden on the economy now than at any point since the second world war. A politician who is concerned about tax burdens should be expected to know this.
If economic and political reporters applied the same sort of investigative zeal to economic and budget reporting as they did to Representative Anthony Weiner's twittered underwear picture, we would have a much better informed public. Not only would the news stories that we see and hear be much more informative, but politicians would be less likely to make things up to advance their political agenda.
If politicians knew that they would pay a political price for making things up about the budget and the economy, then they would be less likely to do it. But we aren't likely to get competent reporters until it is as easy to fire incompetent ones as it is to fire incompetent school teachers.
© 2011 Guardian News and Media Limited
Dean Baker is the co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR). He is the author of The Conservative Nanny State: How the Wealthy Use the Government to Stay Rich and Get Richer and the more recently published Plunder and Blunder: The Rise and Fall of The Bubble Economy. He also has a blog, "Beat the Press," where he discusses the media's coverage of economic issues.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/11-5 ...
Published on Monday, July 11, 2011 by Demos
Address the Jobs Crisis, Build a Movement
by Robert Kuttner
Does anyone care about the American middle class? The working middle class -- especially its younger members -- now faces a prolonged period of high unemployment, declining wages, and diminished public services.
Meanwhile, the cost of things that you need to enter the middle class, like college tuition and affordable health care, keep outstripping paychecks. The housing crisis is somehow stripping asset values from those who do own homes without offering many bargains to aspiring young homebuyers, because banks belatedly have tightened credit requirements.
As unemployment keeps rising and the economy faces a period of prolonged stagnation, political elites of both parties can only yammer about debts and deficits. But reducing the deficit before we get a recovery going will only worsen joblessness, cut back essential public services, and deny government the needed tools to produce an economic recovery.
What's needed is a mass movement to shake the dominance of the austerity lobby. Here's a start: the Change to Win labor federation has begun a 12-city organizing tour, working with the House Progressive Caucus, to throw a spotlight on continuing joblessness combined with the failure of government to clean up banking abuses.
While the US Chamber of Commerce prepares for another "Jobs Summit" this afternoon, featuring GE CEO Jeff Immelt, who heads President Obama's competitiveness initiative, and emphasizing tax and budget cutting and more deregulation, Change to Win is partnering with the AFL-CIO, Demos, and the Economic Policy Institute on a pre-emptive Monday morning summit on the jobs crisis and the future of the middle class. This counter-event, moderated by former New York Times columnist Bob Herbert, will try to break through the austerity storyline.
For the straight scoop, you can't do better than this three-minute video produced by Change to Win.
The leaders of the unions make three core points. The creation of the American postwar middle class didn't just happen. It was socially constructed during the postwar boom, built on public investment, low-interest rates combined with right regulation of finance, and a strong labor movement which assured that as productivity rose, wages would rise with it. The postwar middle class went to public universities, could buy affordable homes, enjoyed rising wages, and could afford to raise kids often on one income.
The June jobs report could not have come out at a worse time for those on the political right and center who are obsessing about the deficit and the debt. Every key indicator is down, and we face prolonged economic stagnation.
The Republican story is that cutting public spending, deregulating, and refusing to raise taxes on the wealthy are the keys to job creation. That did not work so well for George W. Bush. Indeed, if low taxes and light regulation were all that it took to create jobs and sustain prosperity, John McCain would be president.
The political center -- Obama, the Bowles-Simpson Commission, the Peter G. Peterson Foundation -- offers essentially the same austerity medicine, but wants tax hikes as well as spending cuts. So eager is Obama to make a deal that he is now willing to throw Social Security and Medicare, as well as trillions in other spending cuts, into the pyre. But that centrist austerity formula won't work any better than the right-wing version. It won't restore jobs or prosperity.
In the short run, Obama may be saved from himself by two factors -- the right and the left. With each passing day, the Republicans become more in thrall to the know-nothings of the Tea Party. The White House keeps offering them the family jewels, but they won't accept. Meanwhile, Democrats in both houses are growing more and more wary of the kind of deal Obama seems all too willing to make.
The budget of the Congressional Progressive Caucus produces a surplus within 10 years, but does so by increasing taxes on the rich, plowing the money into social investment, increasing jobs and social programs, cutting back spending on military adventures, and safeguarding social programs. This should be the White House budget.
Until we get a recovery going, austerity will only breed more austerity. With consumer demand flat, business hesitant to invest, and banks reluctant to lend, there is only one economic force that can jump-start a recovery and that is government investment.
We need a massive public investment program, of the kind that finally ended the Great Depression. That was called World War II. Imagine if we put all that money to peaceful public purposes like rebuilding our communities and converting to clean energy.
With Republicans increasingly intransigent on any budget bargain that raises revenues, a deal would depend heavily on Democratic votes. But the Democratic caucuses in both houses, which have been largely ignored by the White House in Obama's evidently futile courting of Republican House Speaker John Boehner, are now refusing to vote for cuts in Social Security or Medicare.
The Republican stance is such bad economics and so irresponsible as budget politics that a president with strong convictions and a feel for how you use the bully pulpit to move public opinion would be eating their lunch. But we have long since realized that this is not the president we have.
Even commentators who have been willing to give Obama the benefit of the doubt are now out of patience. "I've been stunned, both in the spring during the government shutdown negotiations and now, that Obama has hardly ever gone to the American people to insist firmly that there are some things he would never abide," writes my former colleague Michael Tomasky in Daily Beast/Newsweek. Though Republicans are practically inviting Obama to define a new progressive center, he just won't deliver.
There are two ways progressives can prevent this economic calamity from turning into a deeper political catastrophe -- an inside game and an outside game. Progressives in Congress can refuse to cave in. That part of the fight is going better than one might have feared. Democrats in the House and Senate are resisting the capitulation impulses of a Democratic president. The other way is to build a movement. Better yet, we need to do both, and it is encouraging to see the two labor federations coming together and working with the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
There are far worse fates for this Republic than to miss the nominal deadline of August 2 for raising the debt ceiling. One would be to capitulate to Republican blackmail and give away the fruits of 40 years of struggle. The other would be to fail to seize this moment to build a movement of our own.
© 2011 Robert Kuttner
Robert Kuttner is co-founder and co-editor of The American Prospect magazine, as well as a Distinguished Senior Fellow of the think tank Demos. He was a longtime columnist for Business Week, and continues to write columns in the Boston Globe and Huffington Post. He is the author of A Presidency in Peril: The Inside Story of Obama's Promise, Wall Street's Power, and the Struggle to Control our Economic Future, Obama's Challenge, and other books.
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From http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/07/11-14 ...
Published on Monday, July 11, 2011 by CommonDreams.org
Corporate Tax Escapees and You
by Ralph Nader
The all-consuming Washington, D.C. wrangling over debts and deficits, spending and taxing is excluding a large reality of how these financial problems can sensibly and fairly be addressed. These blinders in Congress and the White House come from fact-starved ideologies--mostly from the Republicans--and fear-fed meekness--mostly from the Democrats. Both are furiously dialing for commercial campaign cash.
Take the gigantic world of corporate tax avoidance. Ronald Reagan signed the Tax Reform Act of 1986 that was designed to increase corporate tax revenues by over 30 percent. Today, President Obama wants to diminish or delete some tax loopholes (technically called tax expenditures) for large corporations, but let most of the revenues be cancelled out by lowering the corporate tax rates. How the world changes.
Obama's mild approach is unacceptable to the big business lobbies and their Republican mascots in Congress.
They want more tax breaks so they can keep trillions of more dollars over the next decade.
Lost in this whirl of vast greed and political calculation are options, which if pursued with a sense of fairness for the people of the country, would go a long way in providing revenues for public works jobs--repairing America--which in turn would generate more consumer demand by these workers.
The ultra-accurate Citizens for Tax Justice (CTJ) publishes precise reports on the effective taxes paid by corporations that make an utter mockery of the 35 percent statutory tax rate for corporations (see CTJ.org).
On June 1, 2011, CTJ released a preview of its forthcoming study of Fortune 500 companies and "the taxes they paid--or failed to pay--over the 2008-2010 period." Judging by the preview, this report should silence those who say that the U.S. taxes corporations more than other industrialized nations.
What do you think the following profitable corporations paid in actual total federal income taxes in that period: American Electric Power, Boeing, Dupont, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, General Electric, Honeywell, International, IBM, United Technologies, Verizon Communications, Wells Fargo, and Yahoo? Nothing!
CTJ reports that "from 2008 through 2010, these 12 companies reported $171 billion in pretax U.S. profits. But as a group, their federal income taxes were negative: $2.5 billion."
CTJ documents that "not a single one of the companies paid anything close to the 35 percent statutory tax rate. In fact, the 'highest tax' company on our list, ExxonMobil, paid an effective three-year tax rate of only 14.2 percent...and over the past two years, Exxon Mobil's net tax on its $9.9 billion in U.S. pretax profits was a minuscule $39 million, an effective tax rate of 0.4 percent."
Next time you hear Republicans like Eric Cantor, John Boehner and Mitch McConnell repeat their statement that corporations are overtaxed and need a break, you can tell them that "had these 12 companies paid the full 35 percent corporate tax, their federal income taxes over the three years would have totaled $59.9 billion." CTJ director, Bob McIntyre noted that these 12 companies are "just the tip of an iceberg of widespread corporate tax avoidance."
Of course, most Americans suspect as much, even if they don't have the exact figures. A recent Gallup poll asked the public's opinion on where they stand on the tax cuts for the rich and the tax breaks for the corporations. By a 45% margin, they opposed tax cuts for the rich and by a 55% margin, they opposed tax cuts for corporations.
So what are Barack Obama and the Democrats waiting for? They have the undeniable facts and overwhelming public sentiment behind them. Why do they let Cantor, Boehner and McConnell continue to mouth falsehoods without rebuttals of the truth?
It's obvious. The Democrats want big time money from the executives and Political Action Committees of the Fortune 500. The Democrats are willing to let the Republicans fuzz the debate and dare to try and make Medicare and social security benefits absorb the sacrifices. Indeed last week, the Washington Post headlined Obama signaling to the Republicans that social security "is on the table."
Even the meek reporters should no longer fail to challenge the Republican's daily mantras.
Should you have any doubts that the corporate state is in firm control of your government, try this test: If you paid a single dollar in federal income tax in any of the years 2008, 2009 and 2010, you paid more than the giant General Electric (GE) company. In that period GE made $7.722 billion in U.S. profit, paid no taxes and received $4.737 billion from the IRS. As the New York Times reported on March 24, teams of GE tax lawyers and accountants are making sure they avoid taxes altogether, shifting the burden to you.
These big companies are laughing at us all the way to the taxpayer-bailed-out banks. They're even laughing at their own shareholder-owners. The non-financial companies are sitting on about $2 trillion. Inert dollars, producing nothing and earning minuscule interest are better deployed by enlarging the dividend payments to their shareholders. A mere 10% of that sum as dividend payments this year would pump $200 billion into an economy needing more consumer demand.
Reporters and columnists need to start addressing these topics at news conferences with members of Congress and White House staffers. The Washington press corps shouldn't behave like sheep!
Ralph Nader is a consumer advocate, lawyer, and author. His most recent book - and first novel - is, Only The Super-Rich Can Save Us. His most recent work of non-fiction is The Seventeen Traditions.
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