I debated making this post for awhile because I normally just comment in replies to other things. But someone came across an old post and thought I should share directly, particularly given the influx of homeless discussion.
I'm a homeless person in the area. I lived on paid campgrounds in the region when the weather was nicer and now when I have the cash, I stay in motels. So I'm not someone on the lawn, chopping up bikes (I actually sold mine for $50 to pay for another room night) I'm a nobody and you've probably stood in line next to me and had no idea I was homeless because I do everything in my power to keep it together. But I cry a lot and the longer this goes on, the more difficult it is to climb out of because literally everything in society is working against you and I don't think many people realize the logistics of how difficult homelessness can be.
I lost my job literally the week after the NBA shut down. For what it's worth, my former boss got a six figure PPP loan (it was on ProPublica which is how I found out) and I haven't heard from them since. Other than when I had to fight some reporting stuff that they messed up. The shitty thing too is, the company made multiple millions of dollars. Still in business. Still operating btw. Anyway...
I was raised in foster care, so I don't have a family to run to when times get tough. All of my IRL friends live in Canada and I was actually in the IEC working visa pool and hoping to go over, get work experience, make connections, and eventually immigrate there permanently. My friends there are like my family, but there's nothing they can do to bring me over because we aren't blood related and they can send me some money but the exchange rate sucks and so do all the exchange fees. They really just don't know how this country just lets people struggle. But the pool suspended draws in March and at the end of last year, they fully closed it out. There hasn't been any announcement on if they'll ever bring it back and jesus christ I feel so fucked.
So, I want to explain how people end up in situations like mine. I was on a short term lease and it didn't get renewed. It was probably for the better anyway because my former roommate was talking about stabbing Jews like Soros to end the pandemic. (I'm Jewish.) Oh and she owns a business in town.
That was early on in the pandemic when I lost my previous place and I thought honestly this would be over by summer, my job would ask me back and it wouldn't be an issue, so I rented airbnbs even though they were pricey. I don't think many people thought this would all go on as long as it did either.
Then I had car issues (tires balded completely, brakes, rotors, and tired rods iirc? I needed a whole lot of shit done.) Then I got really sick too and medical bills were an arm and leg. I was applying to places to live and my credit was going to obviously get dinged with maxing out credit cards and having unpaid medical bills would just obviously make me a shitty candidate to rent to.
But through June I tried applying to places. But those are hard credit pulls and I did...a number of them over 2-3 months to try my damndest. However, I can't get approved for housing because I'm unemployed and have been unemployed for months. I don't make enough from sex work other than to cover some nights nor is that a viable "job" to most people. I don't have a WA cosigner, hell I don't have ANY cosigner that lives in America, so that takes me out of the running of the vast vast majority of places. And not only that, a number of landlords would only take me if I could pay something like $5k or pay the full amount of the lease upfront. One woman almost rented a room to me, but I have now no "recent" landlord for them to reference and call. When I explained to her I was living in a motel, she called me homeless scum looking for a place to do drugs. One of my friends tried to "act" as a former landlord, but they looked up property records and he wanted to arrest me for fraud. I was just desperate for a place to live (and I want to share this story too because a lot of people make VERY VERY VERY bad suggestions to homeless people.)
I don't even drink in this goddamn state full of craft breweries. I don't like NOT having my wits about me. So no, I'm not some tweaker that does drugs. I also cannot fucking stand the smell of marijuana. I'm a lame ass square. But it doesn't matter because every single stereotype is what you are when you are homeless.
You can't rent a room without having CURRENT employment THAT PAYS THE RENT. So a part time, 10 hour a week gig at $15 McD's won't qualify you for housing. I don't know what is so difficult about understanding that but people really seem to struggle with that. You need to make at least 3-4x to qualify for anything, including just a bedroom.
And? You can't rent without RECENT landlord to reference. It's one of the several sneaky requirements they throw in there in order to make it damn near impossible for someone who is homeless to get permanent housing.
Mentally, it's all a constant waking nightmare. I have to try to figure out the best prices on places to stay, I have to make lots of calls, I apply for aid, I have to stay warm, I have to try to sleep, I have to try to promote my sex work, I have to try to think if there's any future for me. It's exhausting.
"Now you're wondering why not go to the shelter?"
I did one night and I had to fight off assault. I know another girl who was raped and she attempted suicide and had to be committed. PLEASE stop thinking this shit doesn't happen in this town just because your homes cost half a million fucking dollars.
Most people may not also understand the restrictions or lack of dignity that occurs at a lot of shelters. Some shelters force you to change into scrubs they provide, so it feels like prison. You can't keep your stuff on you. It's very time restrictive, so if you are working later than the entry time, you're totally fucked. Or if you need to go to work, you can also be fucked for violating the rules. It's also just full of people who are screaming at night from the mental anguish this shit leaves you in. It's literally sleeping among nightmares.
A lot of aid in town and in general, America, is run by churches or "loosely affiliated religious organizations". I have been point blank asked to convert in order to get help. I'm ethnically Jewish and I dunno how they can't quite get that I can't exactly convert into a new ethnicity. The synagogue in this county has been closed and offers zero aid or help. Also LOTS of charities focus strictly on families and there is also one in town for young adults (under 24.) While I understand that's important, there isn't a lot of help for people like me in their mid-30s or who are single.
"Why not apply for affordable housing?"
Well, most people don't even know that the waiting lists are closed for 1 bedrooms. The list is 5-10+ y e a r s long. Many people have probably never visited it, despite constantly suggesting it to me: https://bellinghamhousing.org/home/applicants/open-waitlist/ go ahead and tell me what's open and what's closed. And that's the waiting list- that's not even you getting housing tomorrow.
"You must make a lot sex working!"
90% of OnlyFans accounts make under $50 a month. It's not the money maker you think it is, earning even $100 is hard work. Processors take huge chunks of earnings, then you have transfer fees, and yeah it's a lot to be desired. There's also the mental toll it can take. Also, I'm not a hot young college thing, I have a specific niche and it doesn't really pay.
So just a few other things, especially as it concerns food:

• Not every motel, especially the cheap ones, have rooms with microwaves or fridges. Or they don't work. If you're on a campground, you can't use perishables without ice, a freezer and that has to be constantly maintained.
• EBT doesn't cover warm or prepared food or "anything intended to be eaten in the store".
• I won't accept food handed to me where I didn't purchase it or it didn't come from a verified place. ESPECIALLY HOMEMADE FOOD. Please, PLEASE reconsider this (I know there is meal train and that might be different, but I'm talking just generally.) I'd actually avoid handing food directly to a homeless person. You have ZERO idea of their allergies or medical conditions. I have NO IDEA if you poisoned it. Now you might laugh, but given the way people who are supposed to be helping have treated me, I really, really can't afford to trust strangers.
• Also, I'm wary of the free pantries. Why? Again, because people tamper with food.
• YOU may be well-intentioned, but enough people aren't.
• I routinely have gotten rotten produce in my food bank box, I can send you fun pics. Point is, most of the stuff is on its last legs or has no legs at all. I have gotten fully molded loaves of bread and I honestly couldn't even eat after seeing it.
• PLEASE stop donating your expired goods to the food bank.
• PLEASE do not donate UNSEALED things to the food bank. Like your hot chocolate mix in a tin from 2014.
• Please donate jams, jellies, honey, and spices because 1) plain beans and rice sucks and 2) surviving on peanut butter sucks and every person struggling right now will tell you some jam would be nice.

People want to help and I get that. And you're like "goddammit what can I do?"
Just hand people money.
Just give people the dignity that they know how to prioritize their needs.
Research continually bares this out: https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/09/americas/direct-giving-homeless-people-vancouver-trnd/index.html
Don't give me coats, I have one. The one you gave me probably won't fit or if I'm allergic to wool, I will have no use for it. (I'm not allergic to wool, but people are!)
Don't give me things I haven't asked for in general. Someone send me a PM saying they have a twin bed I could have. Uh, I have a bed in storage, no thanks. They called me a cunt and told me to kill myself.
Don't hand me lotto tickets. Most scratch offs are loser tickets and then it looks like I'm wasting my money on gambling. You also have no idea who might have be struggling with or recovering from a gambling addiction.
Don't donate your trash and expect me to grateful. You gave me the work of throwing away your garbage and reminding me that's all I am to you and the community.
Don't bitch about homelessness and in the same breath fight Section 8 or assume shit about housing vouchers. If you're a landlord in this town, maybe you ought to accept vouchers and actually try to be a force for good. Or bitch about how minimum wage is too high. It ain't high enough.
Don't send me a PM saying you have a room for me to stay in or will "take me out on a date" to get me food. That's taking advantage of someone. That's also really fucking unsafe. If you do allow homeless and jobless people a place to stay, put that on your facebook or craigslist ad publicly or respond back when someone does explain their situation. (Note: and while I sex work, I'm not an in/outcall worker or an escort. I'm not going to have sex with you or put myself in an incredibly dangerous situation.)
Don't criticize people who are homeless who are trying to tell you what they actually need- you do not know their needs. Please stop assuming you do.
You can encourage groups to just give straight cash grants. If you absolutely are committed to give giftcards, do them for useful places like Target, Walmart, grocery stores, etc. where someone can buy toiletries, clothing, etc. Don't send me a $5 giftcard to like Cabela's. The closest one is a drive away and what can I do with that? I would spend more in gas to get to one. In the same vein, someone offered me a giftcard to like a steakhouse in Seattle. I hope you can understand how those aren't useful.
You can also hold your church, your preferred charity org, etc. ACCOUNTABLE. Actually look what they require of applicants for aid, ask them for how they advertise to the public and what their outreach is, ask how much is going to people, demand transparency.
"Okay, so I want to give to United Way--"
Wait. Stop. PLEASE understand that United Way is a passthrough organization. It's a middle man. They just help fund other charities and they obviously skim off the top as "operating expenses". Likewise, I saw here and on facebook lots of folks donating to Whatcom Community Foundation. They also do not provide any direct aid. It's also a middle man. Listen, I understand they fund a few scholarships and help promote nonprofits and I'm NOT saying it's bad or the worst idea ever, but if we are talking about the most direct, most efficient, and most bang for your buck, just hand your dollars to people struggling.
Hand me $5 and that can go towards my storage unit or cell phone bill or private mailbox or gas or insurance. It can go towards supplements, it can go towards getting a warm cup of soup, or it can go towards another night of a safe warm place to stay. Other sex workers, my friends in Canada, and a couple nice souls on reddit who have helped via paypal/cashapp/venmo? That's been THE reason I've stayed afloat, it's the been THE reason I can stand next to you in line at Target and I don't reek of piss because I was able to actually have a real shower. It has NOT been because of nonprofit organizations.
I think it's really important for people to understand that some bills, some bad luck, and some pandemic fuckery can easily spiral your life into daily struggling and homelessness. It's not easy to move and most of our safety net requires you to have a robust social network. I hope one day I can migrate to Canada, but now I need to resave thousands of dollars to qualify for any visa and to be brutal with you, my chances of achieving that dream and being able to have a real life again are very slim. I'll soon age out of IEC Working Holiday visa and I simply don't have tens of thousands of dollars to pay for graduate school as an alternate way in. It's a hard road ahead for me to get through until I can even get the vaccine.
My hope in sharing this lengthy long diatribe is that it causes you to think and critique the institutions we have. Please think about how you can truly help and what that looks like in action. Not everyone's struggles are the same, especially not everyone's homeless struggles, but thank you for reading mine.
Edit: Thank you again for reading this and really taking it to heart, I really appreciate the kindness and gratitude show. I honestly didn't think anyone would even read this. If anyone else is homeless or struggling or on the verge, I don't take any mind to you sharing your story too and please feel free to just send me a message that this sucks and I'm here to listen to bitching because lordy I get it. xo

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater… or a global health crisis.
I am doing a separate post for the insurrection and related events. I think it is important to make sure the news in this post doesn't get overlooked.
Housekeeping:

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Russia

A new report by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) found that Trump political appointees politicized intelligence around foreign election interference in 2020, resulting in significant errors. ODNI analytic ombudsman Barry Zulauf delivered the report to Congress on Thursday: “Analysis on foreign election interference was delayed, distorted or obstructed out of concern over policymaker reactions or for political reasons.” The biggest misrepresentation of intel involved diminishing the threat posed by Russia and overstating the risk of interference from China.

“Russia analysts assessed that there was clear and credible evidence of Russian election influence activities. They said IC management slowing down or not wanting to take their analysis to customers, claiming that it was not well received, frustrated them. Analysts saw this as suppression of intelligence, bordering on politicization of intelligence from above.”

• WaPo: Zulauf, a career official, also found an “egregious” example of attempted politicization of the Russian interference issue in March talking points on foreign election threats, prepared “presumably by ODNI staff” and “shaped by” then-Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell.

The Justice Department and the federal judiciary revealed that the Russian Solar Winds hack also compromised their computer systems. 3% of the DOJ’s Microsoft Office 365 were potentially affected; it does not appear that classified material was accessed. The impact on the judiciary seems much more significant, jeopardizing “highly sensitive confidential documents filed with the courts.”

The sealed court files, if indeed breached, could hold information about national security, trade secrets and wiretap transcripts, along with financial data from bankruptcy cases and the names of confidential informants in criminal cases...

Appointees

D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has accused U.S. Agency for Global Media Director Michael Pack of funneling $4 million in nonprofit funds to his own for-profit company. In a civil lawsuit filed last week, Racine states that for over 12 years, Pack used a nonprofit company he owned to direct money to his private documentary company, enabling “Pack to line his company’s coffers with a stream of tax-exempt dollars without...a competitive bidding process, public scrutiny, or accounting requirements regarding its spending.”
Employees at Voice of America have filed a whistleblower complaint accusing Pack of using the agency “to disseminate political propaganda in the waning days of the Trump administration. The staffers take issue with a planned speech by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to be broadcast from VOA headquarters. The event, to be attended by a live audience, “is a specific danger to public health and safety” in the middle of a pandemic. Finally, the whistleblowers say the event is “ a gross misuse of government resources,” costing at least $4,000 in taxpayer funds to date and using 18 employees who would otherwise be producing VOA content.
Acting Defense Secretary Chris Miller has announced his appointees to the panel set to rename confederate military bases and plan the removal of confederate symbols/monuments. Most controversially, Miller named White House liaison Joshua Whitehouse, who oversaw the purge of the Defense Policy Board and the Defense Business Board last month. The other three Miller-appointees are former acting Army general counsel Earl Matthews, acting assistant secretary of Defense Ann Johnston, and White House official Sean McLean. The remaining four members will be appointed by the Senate and House Armed Services Committees.

• The 10 Army posts named in honor of Confederate generals are Camp Beauregard and Fort Polk in Louisiana, Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia, Fort Bragg in North Carolina, Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia, Fort Rucker in Alabama, and Fort Hood in Texas.

Trump

The Trump Inaugural Committee, a nonprofit, improperly paid a $49,000 hotel bill that should have been picked up by Trump’s for-profit business. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine revealed the allegation in an existing lawsuit against the committee, which already accuses Trump’s hotel of illegally pocketing about $1 million of donors’ money. “The Trump Organization was liable for the invoiced charges...The [Committee’s] payment of the invoice was unfair, unreasonable and unjustified and ultimately conferred improper private benefit to the Trump Organization.”
The Professional Golfer’s Association voted last night to move the 2022 PGA Championship from Trump’s Bedminster course. Jim Richerson, PGA of America president, said in a statement that “it has become clear that conducting” the championship at Trump’s property would “be detrimental to the PGA of America brand” and put the organization's ability to function "at risk."
Amid speculation that Trump may spend inauguration day at his Scottish golf course, Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon warned him that even presidents can’t break the country’s pandemic restrictions. “We are not allowing people to come into Scotland now without an essential purpose, which would apply to him, just as it applies to everybody else. Coming to play golf is not what I would consider an essential purpose,” she said.
Trump is on a Presidential Medal of Freedom spree, giving out the award to sports figures and Republican allies. Last Monday, Trump awarded the medal to Rep. Devin Nunes for his work undermining the FBI’s investigation of Russia’s election interference. “Devin Nunes’ courageous actions helped thwart a plot to take down a sitting United States president,” the White House press release states. Likewise, Trump gave the medal to Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) for his “effort to confront the impeachment witch hunt” and “exposing the fraudulent origins of the Russia collusion lie.”

• The day after Trump supporters rampaged through the Capitol, Trump awarded the medal to retired professional golfers Annika Sorenstam and Gary Player. The president planned on giving New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick the medal on Thursday, but he declined the offer, saying that “the tragic events of last week occurred and the decision has been made not to move forward with the award.”

Courts

Dominion Voting Systems filed suit against pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for defamation. Powell falsely claimed that Dominion had rigged the election, that Dominion was created in Venezuela to rig elections for Hugo Chávez, and that Dominion bribed Georgia officials for a no-bid contract,” the lawsuit states. Citing millions spent on security for employees, damage control to its reputation, and future losses, Dominion requests damages of more than $1.3 billion.

• Dominion's lawyer told reporters last week the lawsuit against Powell “is just the first in a series of legal steps.” Ari Cohn, a free speech and defamation lawyer, told WaPo: “If I had to guess I would say that [Poulos] wants a very public vindication with a ruling establishing that Sidney Powell defamed them and that her statements were baseless...That's not something you generally get in a settlement agreement.”
  
• Just last week, Trump again said at a rally that Dominion machines allowed “fraudulent ballots” to be counted during the 2020 election (clip).
  

The Supreme Court declined to fast track eight Trump-related cases related to the 2020 election, ensuring they won’t be taken up before Biden’s inauguration. The cases include one brought by attorney Lin Wood against Georgia’s Secretary of State, the so-called “Kraken” cases, and three brought by Trump’s campaign. It is possible the lawsuits will be declared moot after Biden is sworn in.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear two cases alleging that the Treasury Dept. incorrectly distributed Coronavirus aid meant for tribal governments. The Lower 48 Tribes argue that Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs) are not eligible for CARES Act funding, while the Trump administration wants to divvy up the money between tribes and ANCs.

Immigration

A federal judge blocked the Trump administration’s final attempt to restrict U.S. asylum laws. District Judge James Donato (Obama appointee) ruled in favor of advocacy groups who argued that acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf lacked authority to impose the new rules, which would have resulted in the denial of most asylum applications.

“The government has recycled exactly the same legal and factual claims made in the prior cases, as if they had not been soundly rejected in well-reasoned opinions by several courts,” Donato wrote. “This is a troubling litigation strategy. In effect, the government keeps crashing the same car into a gate, hoping that someday it might break through.”

On Monday, acting Homeland Security secretary Chad Wolf submitted his resignation, citing the recent court ruling that he is not a valid appointee to the position. His resignation letter does not cite the Capitol riots or Trump’s language inciting the insurrection. FEMA Administrator Pete Gaynor will be the new acting secretary.

"Unfortunately, this action is warranted by recent events, including the ongoing and meritless court rulings regarding the validity of my authority as Acting Secretary. These events and concerns increasingly serve to divert attention and resources away from the important work of the Department in this critical time of a transition of power," Wolf added.

A new Immigration and Customs Enforcement policy will make it harder for immigrant minors to obtain asylum in the U.S. The change was made at the end of last month by then-acting agency leader Tony Pham, who served in the position for less than five months.

Beginning Dec. 29, ICE officers were told that they must review whether an immigrant child is still “unaccompanied” each time they encounter the minor… The memo indicates that the evaluation by ICE officers can come at any time, including when an officer is reviewing immigration court records of a child, and if it’s determined that an immigrant is no longer unaccompanied, they will move to change their status.
Such a change could lead to making some children ineligible to have their asylum claims initially heard and processed… “If implemented aggressively, this policy could significantly decrease the number of children who ultimately receive asylum in the United States,” said Sarah Pierce, an analyst at the Migration Policy Institute. “They are really putting the onus on ICE officers to do everything they can as frequently as they can to remove these designations.”

The Trump administration is still awarding border wall contracts, even in areas where private land has not yet been acquired. The move will make it more difficult for Biden to stop construction of the border wall.

Attempts to halt construction completely, as Biden promised, will prove difficult, particularly if contracts continue to be struck -- a challenge [acting Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Mark] Morgan acknowledged Tuesday. "They could terminate those contracts if they want to, but that's going to be a very lengthy, messy process," Morgan said.
"We're going to have to go into settlement agreements with each individual contractor," Morgan added, noting, that payments will have to be made for what they've already done, as well as for materials produced. He estimated the process could cost billions.

Trump is set to visit Alamo, Texas, today to celebrate the completion of more than 400 miles of the border wall. You can watch the event on YouTube at 3:00 pm eastern.

Miscellaneous

Stories that didn’t fit in the above categories...
The Trump administration auctioned off leases to drill oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge last week. Only two private companies bid, each winning large tracts of land. Knik Arm Services, from Alaska, paid $1.6 million for a 50,000-acre tract along the Arctic Ocean. A subsidiary of Australian company 88 Energy paid $800,000 to win the smallest tract.
One of the Health and Human Services Department’s final acts under Trump was finalizing the removal of Obama-era regulations barring discrimination among HHS grantees. The change will allow recipients of federal grant money - like adoption and foster agencies - to discriminate against LGBTQ people and those of a different religion.

Human Rights Campaign: “Statistics suggest that an estimated two million LGBTQ adults in the U.S. are interested in adoption… Further, research consistently shows that LGBTQ youth are overrepresented in the foster care system, as many have been rejected by their families of origin because of their LGBTQ status, and are especially vulnerable to discrimination and mistreatment while in foster care. This regulation would only exacerbate these challenges faced by LGBTQ young people.

There are very few opportunities like investing in Bitcoin in its early days, probably unique in human history. A simple plan to create a decentralized peer to peer currency that will allow anyone in the world to transact without intermediaries or borders. A small-time investment learning how it works would have turned into millions or billions of dollars, many of us did not learn things early enough.
A few years ago Bitcoin started to grow rapidly, people found they could send money anywhere in the world just like an email. Uncensorable, fast and cheap. Big companies like Microsoft and Steam accepted Bitcoin as payment for their services. The list of merchants started to grow. More users, and merchants, and a growing network effect resulted in an increase of the Bitcoin price. It was fast, cheap, frictionless. Then the blocks became full. Many including the initial Bitcoin developers proposed to remove what was a temporary cap in the block-size, only to be blocked out. Things started to change.
"Gavin is right. The time to increase the block size limit is before transaction processing shows congestion problems. Discuss now, do soon". Andreas Antonopolous. Bitcoin advocate.https://twitter.com/aantonop/status/595601619581964289 .
"WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet's nest, and the swarm is headed towards us."Satoshi Nakamoto writer of Bitcoin white paper titled "Bitcoin, peer to peer electronic Cash".
DEC 2013:
"Bitcoin days are numbered. It seems like just a matter of time before it suffers the same fate as online gambling" Michael Saylor. "Rocket scientist".https://twitter.com/michael_saylostatus/413478389329428480?lang=en"
DEC 2020:
"Bitcoin is a swarm of cyber hornets serving the goddess of wisdom, feeding on the fire of truth, exponentially growing ever smarter, faster, and stronger behind a wall of encrypted energy." Michael Saylor. "Rocket scientist".https://twitter.com/michael_saylostatus/1307029562321231873
The hornets understand politics, power, and persuasion. And so the Bitcoin Core value proposition was changed from Peer to Peer electronic cash for the world to "hodl, numbers go up". But do these "rocket scientists" understand basic Math? You see, Bitcoin Core's new model changed the basics of Bitcoin's value proposition. As the price goes up it requires more money to have a price increase. Further, the increase of friction and fees make it more difficult for people to join THEIR network, thus destroying its own network effect. Small blocks imposed by the hornets, turned into high transaction fees, resulting in fewer people joining and no businesses accepting it as payment.
Why would anyone invest in Bitcoin Core if they will have to pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars to get control of their private keys while its network effect diminishes? Hornets solution are custodial wallets also known as Paypal that do not let users have control of their private keys:
https://twitter.com/rogerkvestatus/1340799990013300736
​
We must remember why did Bitcoin have value in the first place. Why didn't Satoshi just sell all the Bitcoin instead of giving them away? NETWORK EFFECT. As the number of participants increases on the Network so does its usefulness, its value. More people own it, more businesses accept it. Is more useful, it is more valuable. But now with the new Bitcoin Core narrative of Bitcoin as digital gold instead of the original Peer to Peer electronic cash, As price increases for Bitcoin Core, so does its risk. A higher price turns into a diminishing Network Effect. Fewer people can be part of the network. And so the Network effect moves somewhere else. Creating an incentive for Bitcoin Core investors to also move their funds early for high returns at a lower risk. In other words, for Bitcoin Core higher price results in lower possible gains and higher risk.
Imagine a rocket to the moon, with a lot of weight (banks and corporations) and tiny block engines. The more corporations buy-in pricing out small buyers, the heavier the rocket gets. COMMON PEOPLE LIKE YOU AND ME ARE THE ENGINES OF A CRYPTOCURRENCY. Banks and corporations are worth nothing without us.
As an early Bitcoiner writes it: https://twitter.com/CobraBitcoin/status/1340688841909432325
For Bitcoin Core, there is always a risk of a run towards a more useful decentralized platform. The trigger will be people understanding how it works once the Bitcoin Core blocks are constantly full. A bull run as we have never seen before in history will happen, first slow then all sudden.
Even if is not Bitcoin Cash (I do believe it will be Bitcoin Cash), there is no stopping CryptoCurrencies from changing this world. Lightning Network Math is broken, and you can't "fix Math" with politics. The hornets kicked the can down the road a few years, and just like 10 years ago an even Bigger less risky investment is waiting for you to do the reading and collect your fortune.
"But the lightning network will solve everything in 18 months".- It does not, it was never about LN, if you still believe it you were bamboozled. You can hear it directly from its inventor: https://www.reddit.com/btc/comments/khkedq/creator_of_lightning_network_that_type_of/
The hornets are deceiving you, and play it nice with you because without you they can't win. They need you to obey and "hodl".
This is not investment advice, PLEASE read and understand the basic ideas behind Bitcoin. The best place to start is the original Bitcoin White paper by Satoshi Nakamoto.
AND ALWAYS REMEMBER, NOT YOUR KEYS, NOT YOUR COINS.
Would anyone care to draw a Red Fat rocket vs a Green SpaceX spaceship? Thank you.

How is Bitcoin a store of value when it moves around 15-20% per day, and often has very large multi-year swings in price?
It isn’t a store of value, and was never meant to be. This idea comes from the Cambridge theory of monetary economics, which is rooted in the belief that money rises from the utility of “collectible” and then later becomes a means of exchange. History is complicated on this front, because in some cases it is true, but in others, it is not. Keynes is arguably the most prominent economist who embraces this theory about money because he believed that a store of value was a good basis from which to derive inflationary fiat notes since the store of value became too difficult to use compared to the derivative notes made from it. In Bitcoin, this is expressed by calls to “just spend fiat” or “just use Visa” which is why most BTC accumulated over the last few years is held by custodians and in lending programs for people to derive spendability off of the asset without actually using the asset itself. BTC is a sort of digital “Rai Stone,” in that regard, but the concept of BTC being a pure “store of value” is an idea that came along with Silicon Valley money that arrived in 2014-15 that wanted to explore Bitcoin’s use as the basis for connecting proprietary, for-profit networks to it (like Lightning Network, Liquid, etc…)
It’s important to note that BTC was re-engineered to behave this way, though. Bitcoin was designed as an electronic cash system. Satoshi Nakamoto designed bitcoin for small casual payments in internet commerce. These can occur via tokens built upon bitcoin, or by using bitcoin as a frictionless digital commodity itself. Here’s what was said about it by its creator in the Bitcoin white paper.
Price fluctuations should be expected with a commodity, but “store of value” is a vague concept that doesn’t really apply to bitcoin without some shoe-horning and elbow grease.
How is Bitcoin a safe haven asset when it is tied to global liquidity and goes up and down with other risk assets?
Bitcoin was not designed to be a safe haven. It is a sound money which should increase in value over time relative to the sectors that it disrupts and replaces. Bitcoin was designed to disrupt remittance, settlement, banking, gambling, communications, databasing, ecommerce, and any other industry where extra value can be created through increasing the integrity of data. Usefulness in commerce should bring real liquidity into the network over time, but ultimately, its value should be counted not against its settlement liquidity, but in how often it is used to create economic value without needing to be settled for fiat currency.
Unfortunately, BTC has largely been deprecated of its usefulness in those sectors as its functionalities have been turned off by developers in exchange for focusing on the disruption of Swiss bank accounts and large, expensive, but unstoppable payments. Most of its liquidity is provided by a derivative of fiat currency called “tether” which also has its own problems with true settlement liquidity and trustworthiness in the marketplace. Tether (the business entity which issues the stable coin) is currently under investigation by the NY Attorney General’s office and other regulators under accusation of running a fractional reserve itself.
The change in Bitcoin’s focus over time caused splits in the Bitcoin economy with the chain splitting into three major chains. SHA256 hashing power secures BTC, BCH and BSV.

• BTC is the most limited technologically, and likely the chain for which you are asking questions.
• BCH has some more bandwidth, but is still limited.
• BSV is the only existing complete implementation of the bitcoin protocol – including the entire programming stack which allows for the creation of smart contracts, virtual computers and many useful applications of tokens and data-based commerce applications.

With this level of volatility, how can bitcoin be a means of payment? How is Bitcoin a medium of exchange?
Bitcoin can be spent and instantly re-spent. It can a lso be used to deploy tokenized assets like digital dollars, or smart contracts can be created which hold amounts in escrow until certain circumstances are met.
How is bitcoin a unit of account when governments collect taxes in fiat?
The government doesn’t set the standard by which things are accounted anywhere except in their own ledgers. Cost basis accounting works just fine for that sake, if you are participating in the government’s systems. Over time, the plan would be for increased use to create stability in relative purchasing power meaning that Bitcoin (rather than dollars) become the more stable measuring stick against other economic goods and services. In short, this is more of a goal, rather than an innate property in the external economy.
However, in the network itself, miners accept Bitcoin as their internal unit of account for acceptance of transactions and other things created on, in or with Bitcoin.
How can Bitcoin be used as a medium of exchange when it cannot process as many transactions per second as Mastercard, Visa and PayPal which can process many thousands of transactions per second?
The Bitcoin protocol is more efficient than centralized payment processors when it is implemented with the intent to handle those things. Amid the long Bitcoin Civil War, BTC was heavily rate limited on its journey to being re-engineered to being an exclusive investment asset. Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin without the arbitrary limits of BTC, and he bragged about it nearly 12 years ago before BTC got taken over by folks with narrow vision and goals.
BTC is only able to process about 5-7 transactions per second today, but BSV has had on chain activity up around 3000 transactions per second on the main net. The test net has shown that it also has the ability to process many tens of thousands of transactions per second using nothing but the bitcoin protocol. Next generation node implementations also show promise of achieving well over 50,000 transactions per second which is plenty to compete with even Black Friday level transaction throughput of Visa.
Will governments allow the world to get off fiat money and onto the Bitcoin standard? If yes, why?
Governments didn’t really let anyone get off the royalty standard or the feudalism standard or the chattel slavery standard or any other economic standard of the past. When ideas and systems become obsolete through innovation, they become impossible for the government to maintain. This is why it is so important for Bitcoin to disrupt as many industries as it can as fast as it can. This is another reason why bitcoiners split away from BTC with its limited usefulness. It may also be why we are seeing so much interest by banks and big financiers to focus on BTC rather than the more useful and widely disruptive versions of Bitcoin like BSV.
If Bitcoin replaces fiat, and its supply can’t be increased, how will banks create credit and how will households and companies take loans?
Bitcoin’s innate properties as a base layer upon which to create legal tokens which represent other value is a crucial point on this front. A bank can collateralize bitcoin holdings and use them to create spendable fiat, securities, bonds and other assets. It can also have programmable terms including automatic repayment and interest enforced at the base layer of the contract – all occurring automatically.
If Bitcoin replaces fiat and the supply can’t be increased, during future recessions and economic crises, how will central banks and governments provide stimulus? Great Depression example…
This is a feature, not a bug. Central banks were created to centrally manage the supply of money to mitigate the size of booms and busts. Since their creation, booms and busts have only gotten larger. A programmable, frictionless, sound money creates new economic efficiencies and new economic ideas which can hardly be predicted. The goal of Bitcoin, on this front, is to so fundamentally change the nature of macroeconomics that such questions become as obsolete as asking how the world will pick co tton if the slaves suddenly become freed.
If a currency doesn’t have some intrinsic value relative to real world assets/liabilities, or the full backing of the government, even if you can send it around the world within minutes, its value will swing wildly based on others’ willingness to take it off your hands – it won’t be a store of value. How will Bitcoin get around this issue?
Bitcoin has multiple levels of intrinsic value. First of all, hashing power secures all of the data on the ledger, which could be described as an account of all global economic activity, and is itself a commodity as much as it is a ledger or other global commodities (physical and digital.) Therefore, the data within Bitcoin should become (over time) the collective intrinsic value of everything in the world that can be stored and repurposed by a global record of everything connected to a distributed supercomputer. This is essentially the intrinsic value of the internet combined with the intrinsic value of the world’s collective financial instruments.
Bitcoin is a zero sum game. It doesn’t produce anything. At any point in time, the sum of all the cash put in by the losers is equal to the sum of all cash taken out by the winners. So if Bitcoin doesn’t produce anything and doesn’t have intrinsic value, are you suggesting that if everybody on the planet converts all their cash to bitcoin, each participant will become super wealthy?
Your criticisms do apply in many ways to BTC, but not to the Bitcoin protocol or to its complete implementation in Bitcoin SV (BSV). If the purpose of Bitcoin was to be traded on exchanges for fiat or derivative assets only, yes, it is a zero sum game. However, Bitcoin does produce economic opportunity like no other communications or fintech tool in the history of the world. Much the same as the existence of the internet creates completely new business models and revolutions most of the pre-existing ones, Bitcoin creates a reduction in payment friction across the entire internet (and therefore the global economy), and it increases the integrity and trustworthiness of data at the same time. As data has become one of the most valuable global commodities, valuing it instantly and securely while granting control to the owners of said data is something that only a high velocity proof of work network like Bitcoin can do. And whoever solves this problem at a global scale first will revolutionize the data economy of an entire new era of global commerce. This is not only NOT “zero sum.” Bitcoin liberates the value of data from centralized silos and allows it to be owned and leveraged by individuals in the new economy—creating economic value where it simply could not exist without Bitcoin.
Credit: Kurt Wucker and Peru Saxon.

Since I have a lot of free time these days, and given all the latest news, I thought I'd put together a (hopefully useful) guide on how to get started when it comes to buying Bitcoin (or any other cryptocurrency really) and crypto trading in general. This community and Reddit in general have been very helpful for me, and this is my attempt at contributing with useful content.
With that said, if you have any suggestion please let me know and I'll add it to the post.
Obligatory disclaimer before getting started: there is no magic formula when it comes to making money, my goal is to raise awareness about cryptocurrency and somehow extern my thoughts. Therefore, I am not responsible for any loss you may experience, whether it is related to information provided in this post or not. You are responsible of what you do with your capital and I encourage you to do your own research before risking any money. Also, always be very suspicious of people telling you that a certain investment will for sure be profitable. I added my referral links and want to be completely transparent about it. If you don't feel like using them, that's completely fine.
With that out of the way, let's get started.

Why this post?

Despite the huge cryptocurrency market cap and all the talking on the news, I feel like getting started with cryptocurrency is still not very intuitive for most people. Don't get me wrong, getting started is extremely easy but, despite the simplicity involved, the numerous alternatives available for this kind of investment may often be overwhelming. This guide wants to guide any newcomer step-by-step.

Isn't it too late to buy cryptocurrency?

No, it’s not too late to invest in cryptocurrency. I know, it would have been great if you (and I) bought some Bitcoin back in 2011. However, this doesn’t mean it’s not worth it to buy some now, especially considering the likely economic recession that will follow the COVID-19 pandemic (and that is already going on for that matter). Consider that, at the time of writing, the cryptocurrency market is worth about 530 billion dollars. New cryptocurrencies are constantly being introduced on the market, each one with its own peculiarities: from faster transactions to higher security, from coins focused on anonymity to coins that aim to solve real-world problems.

What is so special about cryptocurrencies anyway?

A complete description of the advantages connected to cryptocurrency is out of scope, and I am sure you would find your answers in this subreddit and on the internet in general. From lower transaction fees and insant payments to the impossibility to reverse a transaction, the list is long. What I want to focus on here, however, are the two main reasons why I personally think cryptocurrency has the potential to revolutionize the economic world: blockchain technology and absence of a man-in-the-middle.

Blockchain 101

Despite the different peculiarities of each cryptocurrency, all of them have one thing in common: some sort of blockchain. A blockchain, as the name suggests, is a growing chain of blocks that are linked to each other. Every new block that gets added to the chain (usually in the form of a transaction) is permanently stored in the blockchain, and cannot be altered in any way.
Cryptocurrencies are just a small part of this extremely innovative technology, and other products such as video games or smart contracts can be built on top of a blockchain.
Think about the potential applications of this technology. Anything we currently use registers or lists to keep track of could virtually rely on a blockchain, and that would guarantee permanent storage of any information. From property registers (think about houses) to food supply chains, there are thousands of areas that would benefit - and are currently benefiting - from this technology.
What does all of this have to do with cryptocurrency? Whenever someone makes a blockchain, they need to create an incentive to make the whole system work and a way to reward its users (and miners). This is where cryptocurrency comes into play: blockchain needs some sort of token exchange in order to work.
While many cryptocurrencies' only job is to back a blockchain system, some of them are created with the clear goal of bringing being a better cryptocurrency for the market. Some reasons may include better anonymity, faster transactions, higher energy efficiency, and so on.

Absence of a man-in-the-middle

The absence of a third-party entity is by itself a great step forward. Think about some of the most successful services that were born in the last few years. Airbnb allows you to immediately get in touch with the property owner, no mediator. Uber allows you to directly contact a driver. When you send money in the form of cryptocurrency, you are letting the network do the job, not a bank. Everything is transparent and every transaction is kept track of.

Can cryptocurrency be used for payments?

Of course.
Unfortunately there is still a big misconception about this aspect, and many people believe that cryptocurrency is useless since it can't be spent. Wrong. First of all, even if it couldn’t be spent, it wouldn’t imply that Bitcoin has no value: crazy gains have been made in the past trading gold, but I’ve never seen anyone pretending to pay with gold at the grocery store.
Second of all, many businesses are accepting Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies as a form of payment, and the list just keeps growing. A few examples? * Overstock * Expedia * Microsoft * Wikipedia * AT&T * NewEgg * Shopify
The list could be as long as you want (Subway, Twitch, Playboy, KFC, Namecheap, you name it), just try to do a quick Google search.
And Amazon? While they don’t accept cryptocurrency payments directly (but hey, they don’t accept PayPal either), you can buy anything they sell by using Purse!

What if I want to go back to cash?

Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies can be converted to cash at any time either at a Bitcoin ATM or through Bitcoin exchanges (I highly suggest Coinbase).

How to invest in Bitcoin and/or trade cryptocurrencies

Having covered the basics, let’s get down to business.
Please remember: you should only invest as much as you are willing to lose. Gains in the cryptocurrency world can be huge, but the opposite can hold as well if you don’t make informed decisions. You definitely don’t want to lose more than you can afford to.
I decided to split this part into three main points: 1. Education 2. Buying Bitcoin (or any other crypto you may want to buy) 3. Trading
Let's first take care of the most important step: education.

Educate yourself to make informed decisions

Make sure you educate yourself, you should learn the basics before starting to trade cryptocurrency. The good things about cryptocurrency is that you don’t need to start out with $10k in order to see some profits and anyone can get started with as little as a few hundred dollars. This, however, does not mean it’s a game, and you should never take cryptocurrency trading as a gambling session. Please, be prepared before trading your assets.

Best resources

There are many books and online resources out there covering trading, forex markets, technical analysis and more. The more you learn and the wider your knowledge of the subject is, the better. With that said, you don't have to read all the books I am suggesting. These are just some resources that I was impressed with and you can lookup if you want to.
Technical analysis: * Charting and Technical Analysis is a very good general book on technical analysis for beginners. * How to Day Trade for a Living is great if you are considering day trading, but you will likely find some useful tips even if you don’t intend to day trade. * How To Swing Trade is possibly one of my favorite books on the subject. If you are not going to day trade and prefer to keep your positions for days or weeks, this is the book for you. * School of Pipsology is a well-organized online course. Taking the whole course might take a while and be overwhelming, you most likely won’t need all of the information provided. * Advanced Techniques in Day Trading is a little more advanced but I found it very good. * Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets is a huge book and probably more academically-oriented, but very good and complete nonetheless.
Psychology (don't underestimate this aspect): * The Disciplined Trader * Trading in the Zone
These last two books don't need a description (just look at the reviews) and will take your trading game to another level. Trading is probably 90% psychology, do not underestimate this aspect if you want to be successful.
Whatever book/site/video you choose to rely upon for your education, the important thing is to get to a point where you can understand the basics of charting before you start dealing with money. At first, all the information may seem a little overwhelming but, after a while, you will get used to different types of candles, volume patterns, moving averages and even more.

Understand how you would like to invest

There are two main types of investors in the cryptocurrency world: * Those who buy a BTC (or ETH, or any cryptocurrency) and keep it, waiting for its value to grow over time. * Those who buy and sell crypto in order to boost their BTC holdings (this is what I suggest you look into if you can dedicate some time to crypto trading, but it's not for everyone).
In the first case, to keep everything simple, let’s say you are confident that BTC price will grow. So you buy 1 BTC at \$10,000 and sell it later for \$20,000: the price of BTC has doubled, you made a +100% profit. Easy as that.
In the second case let's say you buy the same BTC at \$10,000 and start trading BTC with other cryptocurrencies (Litecoin, Ripple, Stellar, there are thousands) that increase their value against BTC. After a while, having these altcoins increased in value against BTC, you don’t have 1 BTC anymore. In fact, you may end up having 1.5 BTC that you can still sell for \$20,000 each, for a total of \$30,000. You obviously made more money in this case.
The second strategy can be extremely profitable if you buy at the right time (partnerships announcements, technological advancements in the underlying technology, and so on), and spikes of 100% in a short time are not uncommon for smaller market cap cryptocurrencies. Of course, the opposite hold as well, so be extremely careful when buying and only trade if you think there is a underlying reason for doing so, not just because you feel like it. Again: education and discipline are key.

Focus on your BTC holdings, don’t reason in USD value

With reference to the example above, it should be clear how important it is to focus on how much Bitcoin you have, not how many USD it is currently worth. Focusing solely on USD is an error a lot of people make, but try to think about it this way. Just like above, you buy 1 BTC for \$10,000 and start investing in altcoins, you lose some of the BTC you had and end up having 0.8 BTC. Now you sell your BTC (again for $20,000 each) and get \$16,000. Obviously you made a \$6000 profit, which is still a nice 60% return, but you would have been better off just holding your initial 1 BTC.

Buying Bitcoin (or any other cryptocurrency)

In order to send and receive cryptocurrencies, you need a wallet. I strongly suggest you use Coinbase to buy, since it is the most used and the safest website when it comes to buying cryptocurrencies. If you buy through this referral link, you get \$10 more if you buy at least \$100 within 180 days of opening your online account.
Beside BTC, you can choose to buy some other cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum (ETH), Litecoin (LTC) or Bitcoin Cash (BCH). They accept all kinds of cards and you can also link your bank account if you wish to do so, this allows you to convert your cryptocurrency holdings back to USD (or EUR and many other currencies) and have it deposited in your bank account directly.
The buying process is straightforward and the instructions on the website are very clear. Once you have verified your account, you only need to choose how much BTC to buy and that’s it.
The general advice in the cryptocurrency community is to start by investing about \$200-\$300 in order to be able to see some gains right away, but of course it is up to you to choose how much you want to invest. You can invest thousands of dollars as well as $20 or lower, your call.
Keep in mind that, if you invest too little, you may end up not reaching the minimum trading amount needed to buy other cryptocurrencies.
Once again: never risk more than you are willing to lose.

How to trade cryptocurrencies

In order to trade different cryptocurrencies, you need to move your funds to an exchange. I highly suggest Binance, which now has the highest trading volume among the cryptocurrency exchanges. If you sign up using this link, you will get a 5% back on every commission on the website, which really adds up over time.
Once you have your cryptocurrency on Coinbase and have an exchange account, you can transfer your holdings from one site to the other.
On Binance (the process is similar for other exchanges as well) navigate to Wallet -> Spot Wallet and find the cryptocurrency you bought on Coinbase. If you bought BTC on Coinbase, look for BTC and click on Deposit, otherwise choose the appropriate coin. You will be presented a Deposit Address which you need to copy.
Now move to Coinbase and click on Send, you only have to paste the address which you want to send money to (the one you copied on Binance): be very careful to paste the right address, or you may lose your money.
Done! Don’t worry if the transaction takes a while. BTC normally takes 10-30 minutes, but sometimes a few hours are needed due to the large amount of transactions. ETH and LTC transactions are usually faster, and you may want to buy one of them instead of BTC if you want your money on Binance quickly (or if you want to save on fees). Grab a cup of coffee and wait until your funds become available on Binance.
Now what? You have your money on Binance and can trade whatever cryptocurrency you wish. Just click on Markets and you will be presented with a huge selection of coins, from this page you can buy or sell each of them. Under the price chart of every pair you can see the Limit, Market and Stop-Limit tabs: * Limit: place a buy/sell order at the price you prefer (looking at the panes on the left – current sell and buy orders – may be helpful) * Market: you automatically buy/sell at the current most convenient market price * Stop-Limit: allows you to place conditional buy/sell orders
Ideally, you are looking for a low market cap coin which is still undervalued and you believe will become more successful in the future.
I suggest you always do your own research before choosing a coin to invest in, avoid buying impulsively or you will lose money. Also, don’t buy a cryptocurrency just because you read it or heard it somewhere. You may not lose money the first time but, eventually you will regret it. Don’t randomly pick a coin because its value is increasing. Again, it may work the first or the second time, but sooner or later you will regret it.
Finally, make sure to always place a stop loss. That way, even if the most unlikely and unexpected market change happens, an order will be placed for you even if you are sleeping. There’s really no reason not to place a stop loss.

Stay informed to be profitable

The following are some of the websites I personally use when looking for potentially profitable investments: * Coinmarketcap (all the alts you can possibly buy are listed here, along with market cap, volume, price and many other indicators) * Reddit * Bitcointalk * Trading View * Telegram channels * Twitter and some other dedicated forums
Be aware of people who try to make you invest in a particular cryptocurrency just because it may be advantageous for them. I can’t stress this point enough, make sure you do your own research.
When I am looking for a new potential cryptocurrency to invest in, I also like to visit the official website and check if the website looks professional or if it is just trying to create hype. Some questions you should look for answers to are: * What is the real value of the coin (why is it better than the other ones)? * What is the team behind the cryptocurrency? * What real problems does coin solve? * Is the supply limited? * Is there a whitepaper? * What about this project's roadmap? * ...and so on.
If I am confident about my research, and only at that point, I proceed with the trade.

Final considerations

• Never risk more than you are willing to lose
• Don’t be scared of the high volatility. If you are aware of what you are doing, you can get unbelievable gains.
• Never buy solely based on the fact that the value of a cryptocurrency is going up.

I know I stressed these points way too many times, but you'd be surprised of how many people lose money in stupid ways.
This is my humble attempt at making cryptocurrency more accessible to everyone, hopefully someone will find it useful. Please let me know if I forgot anything, I'll be glad to credit your contribution.
Good luck and thanks for reading.

Welcome to Lost in the Sauce, keeping you caught up on political and legal news that often gets buried in distractions and theater… or a global health crisis.
Housekeeping:

• HOW TO SUPPORT: I know we are all facing unprecedented financial hardships right now. If you are in the position to support my work, I have a patreon, venmo, and a paypal set up. No pressure though, I will keep posting these pieces publicly no matter what - paywalls suck.
  
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Trump’s Russian laundromat

The Trump administration has been using conservative outlets like Fox News to launder unverified Russian intelligence intended to denigrate Democratic officials and candidates. In the latest instance last week, DNI John Ratcliffe declassified handwritten notes from 2016 by then-CIA Director John Brennan stating that he had briefed President Obama on Russian activities, including a reference to Hillary Clinton’s campaign attempting to “vilify Donald Trump.” Fox News was the first to publish the notes.
Brennan accused Ratcliffe of selectively declassifying documents in order to "advance the political interests" of Trump ahead of the election:

"These were my notes from the 2016 period when I briefed President Obama and the rest of the national security council team about what the Russians were up to and I was giving examples of the type of access that the US intelligence community had to Russian information and what the Russians were talking about and alleging," he added.

Ratcliffe has approved the release of even more information meant to assist Trump, including “a large binder full of documents” he gave to the Justice Department. "At my direction, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence has provided almost 1,000 pages of materials to the Department of Justice in response to Mr. Durham's document request,” Ratcliffe confirmed.
There is nothing illegal about the actions allegedly taken by the Clinton campaign, as detailed in the released documents. As Lawfare explains, the declassified memo originated from the CIA’s Counterintelligence Mission Center:

Importantly, it is not a crimes report. Rather, as the name suggests, the purpose of a CIOL is to pass operational leads to the FBI for counterintelligence purposes. In this case, the CIA had information indicating that a hostile foreign intelligence service may have spied on a U.S. presidential campaign. Even if the intelligence was questionable, it still presented a significant counterintelligence risk—which is why, as Ratcliffe’s letter says, it was reported to the FBI...

Meanwhile, Trump tweeted that he has authorized the release of every document related to the “Russian Hoax” and the “Hillary Clinton Email Scandal. Tweet. He then added:

All Russia Hoax Scandal information was Declassified by me long ago. Unfortunately for our Country, people have acted very slowly, especially since it is perhaps the biggest political crime in the history of our Country. Act!!!

• In an interview on Fox News a couple of days later, Trump expressed displeasure that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo had not yet released the emails deleted from Clinton's private server: "She said she had 33,000 e-mails...They're in the State Department, but Mike Pompeo has been unable to get them out, which is very sad actually. I'm -- I'm not happy about him for that, that reason. He was unable to get -- I don't know why. You're running the State Department and you get them out.” (clip)
  
• The very next day, Pompeo appeared on Fox News to assert: "We've got the emails, we're getting them out." Asked if they would be released before the election, he said, "I certainly think there'll be more to see before the election." (clip)
  

Buzzfeed News took Trump’s tweets to a judge to gain the release of the entire unredacted Mueller report before Election Day. US District Judge Reggie Walton directed the Justice Department to “confer with the White House” and report back to the court the “official position regarding the declassification and release to the public of information related to the Russia investigation.”

Durham probe

For the second straight week, the media is reporting the Durham investigation will not produce a report prior to the election. Last week, AG Bill Barr reportedly told top Republicans that they should not expect any further indictments or a comprehensive report before Nov. 3.
Trump publicly attacked Barr for what he sees as the slow progress of the Durham probe. “I think it’s a terrible thing. And I’ll say it to [Barr’s] face...See, this is what I mean with the Republicans. They don’t play the tough game,” Trump told Rush Limbaugh on Friday.

• Earlier in the week, Trump sent an all-caps tweet calling for the arrests of his political rivals: “DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS, THE BIGGEST OF ALL POLITICAL SCANDALS (IN HISTORY)!!! BIDEN, OBAMA AND CROOKED HILLARY LED THIS TREASONOUS PLOT!!! BIDEN SHOULDN’T BE ALLOWED TO RUN - GOT CAUGHT!!!” Trump tweeted.

Court cases

A three-judge Appellate Court panel ruled that Manhattan D.A. Vance can enforce a subpoena seeking President Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns. The panel was made up of two Clinton-appointees and an Obama-appointee. Trump’s attorneys are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court.

They concluded that the president did not show that Mr. Vance had been driven by politics. “None of the president’s allegations, taken together or separately, are sufficient to raise a plausible inference that the subpoena was issued out of malice or an intent to harass,” they wrote.

Prominent Trump and GOP fundraiser Elliott Broidy was charged with conspiring to violate the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Prosecutors say Broidy accepted $6 million from a foreign client to lobby administration officials to end a federal investigation related to the looting of the 1Malaysia Development Berhad fund, known as 1MDB. The court filing also accuses Mr. Broidy of seeking the extradition of a Chinese citizen from the United States.

• Note that Barr received a waiver to participate in the investigation of 1MDB despite his former law firm’s involvement in the case. Steve Bannon was arrested earlier this year on a yacht belonging to one of the individuals tied up in the case, as well.

Trump appeals order to continue Census count to the Supreme Court. A three-judge panel of the 9th Circuit upheld a lower court order allowing the 2020 count to continue through October. The administration has asked SCOTUS to put an immediate hold on the injunction while it appeals.
The Supreme Court punted a decision on access to abortion, keeping open the option of revisiting the case at a later date. The Trump administration asked the high court to require women seeking the drugs for medication abortions to visit a doctor’s office or clinic. The order was unsigned but Justices Alito and Thomas declared their approval of the administration’s request in a separate filing.

“While COVID-19 has provided the ground for restrictions on First Amendment rights, the District Court saw the pandemic as a ground for expanding the abortion right recognized in Roe v. Wade,” wrote Alito and Thomas.

Other court cases to note:

• Lawyers for E. Jean Carroll asked a judge to block the DOJ from intervening to represent Trump in her defamation lawsuit against the president. Her lawyers say the law in question, the Federal Tort Claims Act, does not apply to Trump — or to any other president. They also said that Trump, in any case, was not acting in his official role when he denied Carroll’s claims. Oral arguments in the case are scheduled for Oct. 21.
  
• The DOJ admitted to “inadvertently” producing altered versions of notes from former FBI officials McCabe and Strzok that were turned over to Michael Flynn’s defense team and filed to the court as potentially exculpatory evidence. As Marcy Wheeler explains, this explanation doesn’t match all the evidence.
  
• Court-appointed adviser John Gleeson, a retired judge, urged District Judge Emmet Sullivan to take the president’s comments about the case into account when making a decision about whether or not to grant the Flynn-DOJ joint effort to permanently end the prosecution. Gleeson notes that Trump’s tweets provide evidence of political pressure to drop the case against Flynn: Trump successfully pressured the DOJ to “create a new set of rules that only apply to Michael Flynn and will never apply to anyone else.”
  
• A federal judge in California has ordered that Twitter reveal the identity of an anonymous user who allegedly fabricated an FBI document to spread a conspiracy theory about the killing of Seth Rich, the Democratic National Committee staffer who died in 2016.
  

Administration

Voice of America: Five suspended officials at the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) are suing the agency, its new CEO and several of his most senior aides, alleging they are breaking the law — routinely — in pursuing a pro-Trump agenda for the Voice of America news service.

David Kligerman, who has been suspended from his position as general counsel of the agency by Pack, told NPR that the case was necessary to get the courts to enforce the firewall. (He is not a party to the case, though he is cited in it as a whistleblower harmed by Pack's actions.) Kligerman and the five plaintiffs jointly filed a whistleblower complaint late last month, alleging Pack sought to oust them under a pretext of "security concerns" because they challenged his intrusion into journalistic decision-making.

• Reminder: CEO Michael Pack, an ally of Steve Bannon, started his tenure by firing the heads of four organizations under USAGM. He then refused to renew the U.S. visas of more than 70 foreign journalists who work for VOA, vaguely accusing some of them of being spies. Pack tried to fire the board of the Open Technology Fund, an organization that supports Internet freedom initiatives, but a court blocked the terminations. Nevertheless, Pack succeeded in cutting off a large portion of its funding, forcing the non-profit to suspend over 80% of its projects. Finally, Pack ordered two political operatives he installed as his aides to investigate Steve Herman, the VOA White House bureau chief who reported on Pence’s disregard for masks, for anti-Trump bias.

Bureau of Land Management: William Perry Pendley, head of the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), is refusing to leave his position after a judge ruled he is illegally serving as chief. “I have the support of the president,” he told the Wyoming Powell Tribune. “I have the support of the secretary of the interior and my job is to get out and get things done to accomplish what the president wants to do.”
CIA appointment: Bert Mizusawa, a retired major general who served as an advisor to Trump’s 2016 campaign, was quietly installed in a senior advisory role at the CIA earlier this year. The move is spurring discussion among some former agency officials, who say the arrangement is highly unusual.

“An outsider with no internal sponsorship?” said one of the former officials. “That never happens.”
...Trump allies outside the administration have signaled frustration with Haspel in recent weeks, accusing the CIA chief of blocking the declassification of documents relevant to the investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia that they view as exculpatory.

Trump has appointed Justin Peterson to the Financial Oversight and Management Board for Puerto Rico, sparking conflict of interest allegations. Peterson previously represented hedge fund bondholders pushing the board to pay them billions of dollars. Rep. Nydia Valazquez (D-NY): “As a member of the Board, Peterson would have a critical say in how to restructure the Island’s debt, but his coziness with bondholders is a serious red flag and a clear conflict of interest.”
A hate group employee is now leading diversity & inclusion efforts in the Department of Education. Weeks ago, Sarah Parshall Perry was defending J.K. Rowling on the Family Research Council podcasts. Now, Betsy Devos has bought Perry aboard to oversee inclusivity within the DOE.

Trump money

NYT revealed that Trump “engineered a sudden windfall” in 2016, moving over $21 million from a Vegas hotel Trump owns with billionaire Phil Ruffin, through other Trump companies, to his campaign.

“If Trump took out a bank loan in the LLC’s name for the purpose of financing his election, then the Trump campaign violated its legal reporting requirements by failing to disclose the loan, and failing to disclose that Trump’s Vegas property was used as collateral.”
The Times also reported that the LLC in question–Trump Las Vegas Sales and Marketing–claimed a deduction on the payment made to Trump in 2016. If the $30 million loan was, in fact, used to finance the president’s then-money-starved campaign, the potential criminality would be amplified.

In an apparent quid pro quo, Ruffin asked Trump for a favor after his inauguration: revive the high speed train project to bring gamblers from California to the Vegas strip. The Obama administration considered but turned down a $5.5 billion loan for the train. This past March, the Trump administration approved the project.

Among the train’s chief beneficiaries will be Mr. Ruffin and the other grandees of gambling who became a vital font of political money for Mr. Trump when he needed it most. And, of course, Donald Trump himself.

Another NYT report showed that Trump “reinvented” the swamp after he took office, setting up an extensive quid pro quo network with private businesses and special interests. Over 200 companies, special-interest groups, and foreign governments patronized Trump’s properties while reaping benefits from him and his administration.

Just 60 customers with interests at stake before the administration brought the Trump Organization nearly $12 million during the first two years of Mr. Trump’s presidency, The Times found. Almost all saw their interests advanced, in some fashion, by the president or his government.
...During Mr. Trump’s campaign and the months leading up to his inauguration, the in-house magazine at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida announced nearly 100 new members, a number of whom had significant business interests in Washington. The tax records show that in 2016 alone, the club’s initiation fees delivered close to $6 million in revenue.
...More than 70 advocacy groups, businesses and foreign governments threw events at the properties that had previously been held elsewhere, or created new events that drove dollars into Mr. Trump’s business.
Donors also paid for the privilege of giving money to his campaign and super PAC. Mr. Trump attended 34 fund-raisers held at his hotels and resorts, events that brought them another $3 million in revenue. Sometimes, he lined up his donors to ask what they needed from the government.

Trump claimed a $21 million tax break for leaving the woodland surrounding his New York mansion undeveloped, a figure inflated by what appears to be a fraudulent appraisal. The value of the 212-acre estate was based on the premise that Trump could build and sell 24 manions on the land. However, building anything on that property was impossible, due largely to objections by neighbors. Trump was paid by the government not to build mansions that he never could have built, in other words.

In addition to the conservation easement tax break, Trump in 2014 also classified Seven Springs as an investment property, rather than a personal residence, and wrote off $2.2 million in property taxes as a business expense, the New York Times recently reported.
Trump’s family members have described the home as a family retreat in the past, and the Trump Organization’s website still characterizes Seven Springs that way. “Today, Seven Springs is used as a retreat for the Trump family,” the website says.

Trump’s adult children have brough at least $238,000 of taxpayer money into the Trump Organization by traveling to their family properties with Secret Service. “The president’s company billed the U.S. government hundreds, or thousands, of dollars for rooms agents used on each trip, as the agency sometimes booked multiple rooms or a multiroom rental cottage on the property,” WaPo reports.

The records also show about $29,000 in federal payments to Trump properties that related to travel by Donald Trump Jr. Trump Jr. stayed repeatedly at the Trump hotel in Washington — just blocks from his father’s residence at the White House...
In the records obtained by The Post, travel by Ivanka Trump and her family accounted for more than $42,000 in federal payments to Trump properties. Much of that total came this spring, after Ivanka Trump had urged other Americans not to travel.

US taxpayers picked up the tab for billionaire US ambassador's stay at Donald Trump’s Scottish resort. The billionaire US ambassador to the UK, Woody Johnson, ran up a bill to US taxpayers totalling more than £1,000 in a single day while staying at Donald Trump’s flagship Scottish hotel and golf resort.

American Oversight, a non-partisan, non-profit ethics watchdog: “That Donald Trump uses his office and American tax dollars to prop up his failing businesses is widely known and shameful. That the US ambassador to the UK would use taxpayer money to play golf is simply embarrassing.”

Immigration

Border wall: The Ninth Circuit on Friday ruled that President Donald Trump’s allocation of military funds for construction of his border wall was illegal. In a 2-1 ruling, the three-judge panel lifted a stay on a lower court order, thus putting an immediate stop to all border wall construction. The one dissenting judge was Daniel Collins, a Trump appointee.
Family separation 1.0: Former AG Jeff Sessions and Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein led the push to prosecute all undocumented immigrants even if it meant separating children from their parents.

[Rosenstein told] the five prosecutors that it did not matter how young the children were. He said that government lawyers should not have refused to prosecute two cases simply because the children were barely more than infants.

Family separation 2.0: Customs and Border Protection touted agents’ “rescue” of a Honduran woman who just gave birth. What border officials didn’t mention was that, hours after their purported rescue, they separated the Honduran immigrant from her newborn and detained her pending possible removal.

• “They told her she was going to be sent back to Mexico without her baby,” said Amy Maldonado, who is legally representing the mother.

Detention: Inside the US Marshals’ Secretive, Deadly Detention Empire: Due in large part to Trump’s aggressive immigration policies, the Marshals population is approaching historic highs. About two-thirds of all prosecutions between October 2018 and April 2019 were related to immigration crimes.
Deportation: ICE officials have started to implement a policy that allows officers to arrest and rapidly deport undocumented immigrants who have been in the US for less than two years - all without a hearing in front of a judge.

Further reading

Eric Trump has canceled a Michigan based campaign event scheduled to take place Tuesday at Huron Valley Guns in New Hudson after one of its former employees was linked to the domestic terror plot against the state's governor.
The Justice Department has suspended all diversity and inclusion training in every division, including for immigration judges that regularly hear cases of persecution based on religion, LGBT status, and gender.
Wisconsin Judge Upholds Statewide Mask Mandate
Michigan High Court Strikes Down Governor’s Covid Emergency Orders
A U.S. government watchdog agency is faulting the Trump administration’s handling of a COVID-19 relief effort that awarded energy companies breaks on payments for oil and gas extracted from public lands in Western states in more than 500 cases2
The California Secretary of State and Department of Justice have sent a cease and desist order to the California Republican Party to remove unofficial ballot drop boxes placed in at least three counties.
In a ruling issued late Monday night, a federal appeals court upheld Gov. Greg Abbott’s order that limited counties to one mail-in ballot drop-off location. All three judges on the 5th Circuit panel were appointed by Trump.

With lots of first-time travelers posting to this sub with questions, I thought I’d put together information about what you should know before you get started. This is based on my personal experience, so your experience may vary and this isn’t a definitive way things are in the travel world. I’ve been a traveler for six years, worked with many companies/recruiters, lived in (almost) every time zone, and have learned a lot through experience. I hope this helps someone.
The basics:
As a traveler, you’re expected to have a minimum of 1-2 years of experience, depending on your specialty, the company you chose to travel with requirements, and the hospital’s requirements. . This is the most common question new potential travelers have.
If you are a current student or a new grad nurse and you’re considering traveling in the future, you need to pick a specialty now. School likes to tell you that you need 1-2 years of med/surg experience to be an effective nurse. This isn’t true. Sorry, it just isn’t. If you know you want to work in the ER, ICU, CCU, OR, do it! Network with staff and managers in the departments you’re interested in while you’re in clinicals and see if they offer new grads employment opportunities. Once you’re in a specialty, you can’t typically change that as a traveler. Example: you work med/surg as a perm staffer, but want to work in the ER, you’ll need to get that experience first because you’re expected to be an “expert” in your field as a traveler.
I see a lot of questions about certain hospitals and people wanting other people’s opinions based on their experience there. A great resource is travelnursingcentral.com. There are rankings of travel companies and hospitals across the country! All are listed alphabetically and you can read about people’s experiences. Take it with a grain of salt though because sometimes people are just unhappy based on personal issues or personality conflicts while on the job. If a consistent complaint by multiple travelers is made about a specific department, chances are it’s a legitimate issue. Again, do with the information what you will, but it can sometimes be insightful. Now onto the good stuff...
Identification: It's normal for your recruiter or compliance officer to ask for your SS card and DL via email. They have to have it for tax purposes and to verify your identity. It is 100% okay to tell them you don't feel comfortable sending that over until you have a contract to sign and you'd prefer to send it via an encrypted email. Some companies have you upload it into a secure site. Depends on the company.
Contract timing: The furthest out you might see a traditional contract is approximately 4 weeks, if that. Things have quickly changed due to COVID, of course, but those crisis contracts being advertised are for immediate/rapid deployment. You have to take them as they post or you miss out and have to wait for the next ones. It's a crisis, meaning they need you now. If you want a traditional contract, yes, the non-crisis companies are still posting those, but you won't find a need any sooner than about a month out from when you want to start.
Housing

• Furnished finder: caters to traveling healthcare workers. You have either an entire place or room option to rent, just like on airbnb but without all the service fees. These landlords are very familiar with travelers and their needs so it’s a great option to explore.
• Airbnb: sometimes you can talk with the host and work out a paypal or venmo deal to save the service fees. They get more money in their pocket and you pay less in fees.
• VRBO: works for tropical places like Hawaii
• Extended Stay Hotels: sometimes have kitchenettes and offer discounted rates for nurses staying for longer than one month. Speak to someone in sales when you call the hotel to inquire.
• Craigslist Sublets: can be useful because they come furnished more often than not.. I’ve used this option and “rooms shared” often without issue.

Pay Packages:
Bottom line about pay packages: what is your take home weekly pay? Companies will break things down by stipend, taxable rate, non-taxable rate, meals and incidentals. As nice as it is to know the breakdown, what you should be concerned with is what should you expect to be the total dollar amount deposited into your bank account each week? That way, you can do tentative math to know the total take home for the month/length of your contract. You can decide on housing budgeting that way, too. Most companies know what the taxable dollar amount is, but most will not know the actual percentage of taxes you will pay. It can vary from 15% (super low end) to 25% for federal taxes. Always just do your math on the 25% rate for good measure and if it’s less than that, cool! Most companies also offer travel reimbursement between $500-$1000 depending on where the contract is.
If a recruiter tells you you’re making a low weekly rate because you are a first time traveler, find a different company. That isn’t a thing. That just means that the company doesn’t offer higher paying contracts because they’ve low-balled the hospital or accepted the hospital’s lowest offer of pay to the potential traveler. Hospitals have varying pay rates they’re willing to offer and the companies submitting travelers bid on the position(s). Example: hospital A says they need a traveler and are willing to pay between $30,000 - $50,000 for the contract. Company A says they’ll submit a traveler at the $30,000 billable rate in hopes of getting someone placed and collecting an easy commission. Company B may submit a traveler for the $40,000 rate, and Company C will submit a traveler for the $50,000 rate. Big companies like Aya, Travel Nurse Corps, Cross Country will usually bid the lower rate in hopes of placing a nurse. For the most part, bigger companies tend to pay less because they have a big applicant pool and hospitals will have to pay out less by staffing one of their travelers. Don’t sell yourself short is what I’m basically saying with that.
Companies:
There are a lot of companies out there. Let’s start with that statement. This can be overwhelming when trying to get started because you don’t know if the company you’ve chosen is going to work in your best interest or not. There is nothing wrong with recruiters, however, you need to look out for yourself. Think of a recruiter as a car salesman. I don’t mean that in a negative connotation, simply, they work off commission. You do what’s best for you. If a contract won’t work for you, don’t take it. Don’t feel pressured into going somewhere you aren’t comfortable with. The right contract will come along and sometimes you just have to be patient. I didn’t get my first contract until six months after I first inquired. As a new traveler, it was hard to get my foot in the door, so to speak, so I took what I could get and it worked out perfectly. Anyway, here are some good companies that I can confidently recommend from experience:

• Emerald Health Services: absolutely hands-down the best company I’ve worked with. They do compliance, minus the drug screen, upfront, then they start submitting for jobs. This is the right way to do things because it makes the process less stressful on the backside. Hospitals will always want/need something at the last minute...flu shot updated, TB skin test/t-spot, etc., but because you’ve done everything else on the forefront, these are minor things to have to complete. Feel free to DM me and I will be happy to refer you to a recruiter I can personally vouch for with Emerald.
• Republic Health Resources: they’re very good to their travelers and have never left me hanging or feeling like I was just a number to them. They love to send gifts, so if that’s a perk you’re interested in, they’re good for that. I can refer you to a recruiter with Republic if you’re interested in them.
• Trustaff: good balance between pay and cool locations. Not the best, but a good option to go with.
• Trusted: great company to go with after you’ve got some experience and know your way around things. They require a minimum of 2+ years of nursing experience before you can be considered for any open position. They DO NOT have recruiters. They have nurse advocates to support you when needed. You set up your profile and request your own interviews. They pay very well for standard contracts because the recruiter commission is eliminated. I don’t recommend them for first-timers, but do recommend them for travelers with a couple contracts under their belts. I can offer a referral code if you choose this route.

COVID/Crisis Response Companies:
For rapid deployments, it is best to fill out profiles with these companies listed below ASAP before you start looking for jobs with them. It makes the process quicker and is more likely to land you an offer because you’ve done the paperwork in advance. The best advice I can give you is to follow these companies on FB and IG and turn notifications on. These jobs don’t last and fill up very quickly, so you may miss out if you aren’t quick enough with submitting.

• Nuwest: AMAZING company! They contract with FEMA often for crisis relief related to COVID. If you get on a FEMA contract with them, be aware that they will tax you as a normal employee and not as a traveler, so you will have significantly more taxes taken out, however, you’re still making exceptional pay, so it isn’t all terrible. They do require rapid deployments though, so you must be willing and able to arrive at your destination within a few days-one week. However, their contract lengths are typically 4-8 weeks for crisis. They have cool locations, like Guam! So you can get some neat experience while adding COVID relief to your resume. I am happy to refer you to a great recruiter with Nuwest.
• Krucial: very very rapid deployments! Like one day notice to arrive at the location they send you to. You’re considered a “reservist” and as such contract lengths are approximately 2-4 weeks and you can either be put on standby (and not work one day of that) or end up working the entire contract length. Their contracts are to work 6x12s in a row with one day off. So, it’s a gamble with them in what you’ll get/be required to do. They will generally send you to a specific area with multiple hospital sites and assign you to one if you indeed have to work. They pay exceptionally well, but the 6x12s in a row for a couple weeks can be A LOT for most people. They also post a lot on IG on their stories with a number to call into to put your name in the bid to deploy. It can be difficult to get through because their lines get busy immediately with all the calls, but keep trying!
• Prolink Staffing: another great crisis company with exceptional pay packages. Most contracts are for 4-8 weeks. They’re focused on the hardest hit areas with major surges in COVID rates right now. They’re easy to work with and the compliance is straight forward. However, be aware that if they extend a verbal offer, you’re held accountable for signing the written offer and they will blacklist you for backing out. If you’re interested in working with them, I can refer you to a great recruiter.

Insurance:
Some companies, like Emerald, provide day one insurance coverage. Others do not, so you'll have to ask about that when you talk with the recruiter. Personally, we carry our own. We are members of Christian Health Ministries. It's a Healthcare sharing network, not insurance. You are considered a self-pay patient. They cover anything over $400. It does take a little bit of effort to fill out the itemized bill paperwork to submit to them, but it isn't bad to do and they pay your bill once you've negotiated for discounts with the hospital for being self-pay. You typically set up a payment plan (can be as low as $25/month, depending on the facility's rules) while CHM is reviewing your paperwork. My dad cut his arm nearly all the way off. His medical bills with the reattachment were almost $400,000. Got his bills reduced to $80,000. Submitted the paperwork with CHM. He set up a payment plan of $100/month and CHM paid off his bill within a few months of him submitting the paperwork. He paid a couple hundred dollars out of pocket on an $80,000 bill. They're amazing and beneficial for travelers as you can use it anywhere. We pay $150/month for unlimited coverage. We've had zero issues with them and it's far more cost effective than traditional insurance. Also, hospitals don't offer the kinds of discounts they do for being self-pay, FYI. So, if you have a $25,000 bill AFTER insurance has paid their part, you're on the hook for it. This isn't the case with CHM. If you're RELATIVELY HEALTHY and don't use a ton of medical services, it's definitely worth looking into. If you take medication, you can look at the goodrx app and see what your medications would cost out-of-pocket and do a cost analysis to determine if CHM and goodrx would be cheaper than monthly insurance offered by your company.
Transportation: Unless you're going somewhere that heavily relies on public transit, like NY or Chicago, you will need your car. Part of the fun of traveling is road tripping to your destination and getting to explore places along the way. If you don't like driving long distances alone, take a buddy and offer to fly them back. That would even be cheaper than shipping your car. Cross-country car shipping starts around $1200 one way. In almost seven years, I've driven across the country east-west and north-south over 14 times. It's been fun each time. You can always rent a car or speak with your recruiter to see if they have a rental car stipend or resources for getting discounts on rentals. Just know rental cars can be expensive over the course of 13 weeks and if you have a car payment to make on top of that, it can really wait into your bottom line.
What to bring to a contract:
This depends on where you’re going and what you think will be beneficial to have. My boyfriend (also a traveler) and I invested in heavy duty totes from lowe's with a big handle and big wheels. We each have two. They fit into the back of our cars perfectly. I tend to designate one tote to clothing, which I vacuum seal to save space and shoes. The other is dedicated to toiletries, meal prep containers, any small kitchen items not available where will be housed, a few cleaning supplies (just Lysol spray and wipes, swifer duster, etc.), google home mini, laptop, etc. My boyfriend uses his totes similarly, except he brings his toys, like the xbox and oculus (haha). Our general rule of thumb is, if it doesn’t fit in the tote, it doesn’t go with. We also pack according to season, so we have our vacuum seal bags with spring/summer clothes and another for fall/winter clothes. You’ll typically end up wearing the same few outfits, so you don’t necessarily need to bring a ton of clothes. Plus, if you want to go shopping, you’ll have room in your tote to bring stuff back on the return trip home. As a first-timer, you’ll likely end up bringing more than you need and then learn from what you use and what you don’t what you can leave out or include on the next contract. We also make our opposite season items easily available to our parents so they can mail them to us, should we choose to extend into another season. I learned this the hard way on one contract and ended up having to basically buy another wardrobe. So, to summarize, if you think you’ll need it or can’t live without it, bring it with you.
Dollar Tree will be your buddy. You can pick up household and kitchen items for cheap. We usually will get things like a hamper if there isn't one, slotted spoons, spatulas, pot holders, etc. if these things aren't provided by the landlord. Then, just leave them for the next guests. That way, you don't have to lug around common items and it helps the next people out.
Making friends and having an enjoyable experience:
You need to have a certain personality to be a successful traveler. You need to assimilate into the environment, be adaptable, and be friendly...aside from being knowledgeable in your specialty. Don’t make waves wherever you go. Think of yourself as a guest at the hospital who is there to help the permanent staff. Be helpful when you can. Don’t get involved in departmental politics. You aren’t there long enough to get caught up in any drama, so stay in your lane, do your job, and go home. Sometimes hospitals are traveler friendly, other times not. Most of my experiences have been positive. Regardless, do your best and be a nice human and you’ll be fine. You can’t control what people think or how they feel toward you, so don’t take anything personally. Just be yourself and you’ll be fine. Try to befriend other travelers. This is the best tip I can offer because y’all are in the same boat. You can work as a team and have instant friends that way because you can relate to one another.
Go explore your new home! Seriously, look up all the cool area-specific things to do/see. Then, when you’ve done all of that look at the surrounding areas/states. You’ll get the most out of your experience by getting out of the house and taking advantage of all there is offered out there. Stay active. I know with COVID a lot has changed, but you can still go for a hike or a short day trip, etc. Just make the most of it!
I hope this has shed some light on the travel world. I am always around to answer questions or be a resource if needed. Feel free to message me privately anytime. Good luck and happy travels!

It is very necessary to choose the best toto site builder when you want to launch a new website. This is for the reason that there are many food websites launched in the market everyday. Mention your business name as well as the products/services you are offering. You can ask help from friends to choose a perfect website design for you.
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As per several researches, a good and safe gambling website also enables a customer to make secure transactions. This is because the customer can perform different functions through your personal computer like betting, shopping cart and many others. If you opt for a toto site builder, you can certainly make your business secure. As far as the security is concerned, Toto is considered as one of the leading gambling safe platforms on major platforms. Therefore, if you want to remain safe when you are dealing with customers or money then Toto is considered to be one of the safest gambling sites on major platforms. 토토사이트
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Toto is considered to be a leading manufacturer of web design software. You can easily buy and download the toto site builder from Toto's official website and create a great online gambling site for yourself. Moreover, if you need any assistance regarding the functionality of the site or its designing, you can always get in touch with the technical support service of Toto. This will enable you to access a live customer support forum where you can interact with the company's experienced designers and other employees.
With Toto you don't need to worry about the cost as they offer a very reasonable and competitive price for their products. Furthermore, they offer the best one time fee plans as well as long-term operating periods. In fact, Toto offers the best and most affordable online gambling site designing services to its global clients. It is one of the leading manufacturers of web designing software and Toto is regarded to be one of the safest major playgrounds. According to various research and surveys conducted, Toto is considered to be one of the leading brands in the world of online gambling sites and services.
The main purpose of creating a Toto-branded website is to create and develop the main playground for the clients. This includes developing the graphics and the layout of the website, as well as the content. In order to enhance the business potential and to provide a platform where the clients can do business, Toto has designed a comprehensive web hosting package for its clients. The result of which is the creation of a Toto site that is secure, powerful and very easy to manage and operate.

I wanted to provide a definitive guide for those trying to find the quickest and cheapest way to get their winnings/initial deposit out of various poker sites through the means of cryptocurrency.
This guide does not recommend cryptocurrency trading and even if you follow all of these steps, there is still a risk for currency fluctuations. It took a lot for me to figure this out and I wanted to pay it forward and help those in the future learn this valuable information. I take no responsibility for the accuracy of this guide, but I will say this is the method I now use. Various state laws can make each step more difficult. However, this method is tailored to the strictest of laws that affect Cryptocurrency issued by New York state.
Ok, so you got some money and want to get it out of a poker or gambling site. Checks are offered, but who has time for that 4 week turnaround on what could be a bad check. So you have decided to get into Cryptocurrency. Here is how the money gets to your bank.
Poker site -> Wallet -> Exchange -> Bank.
1st Step - Getting the money out of your poker account. So you request a withdrawal in cryptocurrency. But which currency? There is Bitcoin (the original), Bitcoin Cash (the fork), Ethereum (New Cool Kid), Tether or Dai (stablecoin) Bitcoin SV, Litecoin, etc.... There are benefits to each currency. Bitcoin is the original and most well known. It is the most traded by far with a market cap (total value) more than all other cryptocurrencies combined. There is also a well established group of people holding bitcoin as an investment to the future. However, Bitcoin also has the most fees and slowest transaction times depending on the fee you pay. Personally I use Ether and Bitcoin Cash. They are based on new versions of blockchain, transfer quickest between wallets and exchanges, and have lower transfer fees. I have not used Dai and Tether, but I will go into stablecoin later.
Step 2 - The Wallet. The wallet is where your money from the pokersite will go. I want to make it very clear. You do not want your money to go from the pokersite to the exchange. The exchange can and will learn it is from a pokersite which can cause you a lot of problems later on. In particular, running a foul of U.S laws and regulations on gaming. So you want the money to go to your wallet. I recommend either Exodus or if you just want Bitcon, Blockstream Green. Exodus though is my go to. You can use it online or through your mobile device. It will automatically scan deposit and withdraw codes for you (this is extremely important so you don't mess up where your money goes). It also has a nice sleek interface and accepts most cryptocurrencies. One thing to point out, Exodus was designed for bitcoin miners at one point who wanted their money out quickly. So, when using bitcoin, it sends and receives your money out as quick as possible using higher fees. You may be concerned by this. However, now you got crypto, lets get it to your exchange.
Step 3 - The Exchange. So there are many exchanges, where you convert your crypto to other crypto or even cash. The three most popular in the US are Cash App, Coinbase, and Gemini. Cash App is easy, if you can set it up. If there is an issue with Cash App, good luck. Their customer support is non-existent (this actually led me to use Coinbase). Basically, you send the money from your wallet to CashApp and then sell the bitcoin in the app. About 20 minutes later the money is in the app and can be sent to your bank. There are various fees, I believe 1.5% to sell the coin, 1.5% to ACH to your account or 1.75% for instant credit to your bank account. I personally use Coinbase Pro. It costs me .5% to sell the crypto. I could then ACH it to my bank account which takes about 5 days. Instead I added another step.
You can link your Coinbase account to your Paypal account. So, when I have cashed out at the cheapest rate at Coinbase Pro, I instant transfer the money to Coinbase and then instant transfer it to paypal. There are no fees for this and there are no fees for Coinbase Pro. Coinbase Pro allows you to do things CashApp or regular Coinbase does not. For example, I held my Bitcoin Cash which came in at 219 and put an order to sell at 230. When Bitcoin Cash hit 230, it sold and I made a couple extra percent return on my money. It was a risk, but wanted to play with a limit order. When the money got to my Paypal account, I instant transferred it to my debit card for 1% fee. I could have ACHed it for free and had the money in a day or two, but I decided to take the quick cash.
Overall, the quickest I have seen cryptocurrency with withdrawals is under 24 hours with Pai Wang Luo Network (Bovada/Ignition) and 3 days for WPN. Once I have received my crypto, the quickest I have been able to hit my account is 1.5 hours.
Now here is the big risk from Cryptocurrency: Currency fluctuation. I have no idea why crypto goes down or up, or why some cryptos go one way while others will go another. General rule, if Bitcoin is up or down, the others are as well. Example: Past 24 Hours (7/5/2020 - 7/6/2020), Bitcoin up 3.1%, Ether 6%, Bitcoin Cash 8.36% Tether -.1%, Dai .68%. Dai and Tether were created to avoid currency fluctuations by tieing themselves to an asset. Tether is "tethered" to the USD. So try one of the those for less risk maybe. But please note, while you have crypto in your wallet and exchange, and it goes up or down, that's your money going up or down.
I hope this helps anyone trying to figure out how to use cryptocurrencies. GL

I have had an idea for an event I would like to run fowith the Minecraft Community here on Reddit. I have no idea if it is a feasable idea, whether it will work at all, but I have done my best to outline it all below. Please note none of it is set in stone. It can all be changed based on community feedback.
There is a link to provide feedback at the bottom of the post.
I present: Minecraft Prize Pool

• Around 50 players for the tournament
• Each player pays between £/$ 5 and £/$ 20 to enter. All (100% ) of the entry fee's will be added to a prize pool. Whoever wins the tournament gets the prize! This could be up to £/$1000!
• I am currently thinking a mix of PVE and PVP games, in heats/rounds. I have made a very rough and ready example here: https://i.imgur.com/PtSDgl8.png
• I would stream/host the event live on twitch (I am NOT a streamer, never done so before in my life but I think it would be something fun to try)
• I would 'recruit' a team of moderators who would assist me in running the games and supervising the competition to ensure fair play throughout. The moderators could also stream their POV aswell, to ensure 100% transparency.

I have this table here to demostrate potential prizes based on 50 players:

Entry Fee	Total Prize
£/$ 5	£/$ 250
£/$ 10	£/$ 500
£/$ 15	£/$ 750
£/$ 20	£/$ 1000
£/$ 25	£/$ 1250
£/$ 30	£/$ 1500

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As with all things, there are some issues/roadblocks:

• Collecting the money. I dont want people sending me entry fees on PayPal as A. Not everyone likes PayPal, but more importantely B. All the prize money should not be kept with an individual with 0 transparency/regulation. One potential sollution I have is Collection Pot as it allows everyone to see 100% of where the money is etc. However, you must specificy a recipient when creating the pot, and I am not sure if it can be ammended after the fact. I am sure it can be but it would need checking.
• What games to run. I was thinking hunger games or survival games for the first round, but then I know not everyone likes that and it isnt the most current game out there. I dont think this is the biggest issue as I am sure you guys can help with suggestions.

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If you have made it this far, firstly, thank you for reading my waffle. Secondly, we are nearly there!
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Some rules I have put in place but these can always be changed if needed:

• 16+. I thought long and hard about this but I think given the nature of a cash prize and cash entry fee's, the safest bet is to go 16+.
• JAVA EDITION ONLY. I dont know a thing about running realms frankly, so we are sticking with java edition only.
• Obviously there would be no mods/cracked clients allowed.
• I picture it happening with the event being planned (Subject to sign ups etc) and having a sign up cut off date a day or two before the event. After that date there would be no more entries allowed.
• Should this prove to be popular, there is no reason why we couldnt run this monthly or something
• If we go with 50 players then it will be the first 50 people to sign up are entered.
• Donations would be accepted to the prize pot.

I want to clarify I personally would make absolutely no money from this. That is not the point of this I just want to organise a fun event for the Minecraft Community.
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FEEDBACK: Please consider completing my survey

https://forms.gle/t8sSsB95na94if6QA
Thats it! Thats the end. Thank you for reading my ramble, I hope it has been clear. If you have any questions, please feel free to comment or PM me. If you have any suggestions you are welcome to post them to the sub reddit.
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Notes:
In regards to the legality of this competition, I am based in the UK so I am using UK laws. From the Gambling Commision's website, this would consitute a skilled competition. As such it is not regulated and does not need any specific licence to run.
I want to make this as transparent as possible. Hence the ideas for a public facing prize pool and having myself and moderators streaming the events so runners up can view progress and to ensure there is no shenanigans.