I'm counting down to the publication of my 20th book, RACE THE SANDS, out 4/21, by sharing pics of each #booknecklace my husband gave me to celebrate each of my prior books...

Book 13 (picture book): ROAR AND SPARKLES GO TO SCHOOL is my first picture book, art by the amazing Ben Whitehouse. Roar the dragon is worried about his first day of school, but luckily he has his big sister Sparkles to help him through it. My #booknecklace is a little dragon!

My favorite part of writing this book was inventing the dragon school -- imagining a day in the life of a draconian kindergartner. I knew from the start he'd char his lunch with his breath, play hide-and-seek-the-princess in gym, and ride a dragon bus to school!

I'm counting down to the publication of my 20th book, RACE THE SANDS, out 4/21, by sharing pics of each #booknecklace my husband gave me to celebrate each of my prior books...

Book 14 (adult SFF): THE RELUCTANT QUEEN, Book 2 of The Queens of Renthia. Bloodthirsty nature spirits, a dying queen, and a middle-aged woman who wants nothing to do with the power she could wield. This book shares a #booknecklace with THE QUEEN OF BLOOD but we added blood-red earrings!

I actually wrote 90 pages of THE RELUCTANT QUEEN (book 2) before I wrote THE QUEEN OF BLOOD (book 1). My editor at Harper Voyager, the awesome David Pomerico, read the pages and said, "Can this be book two?" And now I can't imagine it being any different.

In THE RELUCTANT QUEEN, I wrote my first middle-aged heroine. She's definitely not the last! The protagonist of my upcoming RACE THE SANDS is a badass middle-aged single mom!

I'm counting down to the publication of my 20th book, RACE THE SANDS, out 4/21, by sharing pics of each #booknecklace my husband gave me to celebrate each of my prior books...

Book 15 (MG): THE STONE GIRL'S STORY is about a twelve-year-old girl made of stone who, when the carvings that brought her and her stone friends to life begin to fade, must go on a quest to save them all. So my husband gave me a #booknecklace made of stones!

THE STONE GIRL'S STORY is, at its heart, a story about stories. I believe that stories are as essential to life as food, water, and shelter. They're how we understand who we are. I wrote this book for everyone who wants to shape the story of their life and choose their own destiny.

It was surprisingly tricky to write about a character made of stone. She can't smell, taste, or sleep. Her stomach never drops, clenches, or feels butterflies. I couldn't use any of the common physical reactions to convey emotions, because stone. Made for a fun writing challenge!

I'm counting down to the publication of my 20th book, RACE THE SANDS, out 4/21, by sharing pics of each #booknecklace my husband gave me to celebrate each of my prior books...

Book 16 (adult SFF): THE QUEEN OF SORROW, Bk 3 of The Queens of Renthia, is the final battle between vicious spirits and three strong-willed queens. I loved writing these books so much that I cried when I finished. This book shares its #booknecklace with the first two in the series.

I loved writing an epic fantasy trilogy! It's something I've wanted to do ever since my mom introduced my eleven-year-old self to the SFF shelves in the Northboro Public Library and placed THE SWORD OF SHANNARA by Terry Brooks in my hands.

I'm counting down to the publication of my 20th book, RACE THE SANDS, out 4/21, by sharing pics of each #booknecklace my husband gave me to celebrate each of my prior books...

Book 17 (YA): FIRE AND HEIST is about a sixteen-year-old socialite from a family of master thieves... who can also breathe fire. Think Ocean's Eleven with were-dragons! My #booknecklace for this one is, quite appropriately, a flame!

While I was writing FIRE AND HEIST, I watched so many YouTube videos on how to pick locks, read so many articles on real-life heists, and researched the specs of so many secure vaults that I wanted to add a disclaimer to all my Google searches: "This is for a book! Really!"

I'm counting down to the publication of my 20th book, RACE THE SANDS, out 4/21, by sharing pics of each #booknecklace my husband gave me to celebrate each of my prior books...

Book 18 (adult SFF): THE DEEPEST BLUE is a standalone epic fantasy set in the same world as The Queens of Renthia (but you don't have to have read the trilogy first -- it's a true standalone). It features a LOT of sea monsters so my #booknecklace is a sea monster!

When I saw the cover for THE DEEPEST BLUE, I was thrilled to see that the artist (Larry Rostant) had depicted the sea monsters precisely as I'd imagined them. The sea dragon, the kraken, and the multi-headed snake -- those are my murder-babies!

I'm counting down to the publication of my 20th book, RACE THE SANDS, out 4/21, by sharing pics of each #booknecklace my husband gave me to celebrate each of my prior books...

Book 19 (MG): SPARK is my newest book for kids. It's about a girl and her lightning dragon (a storm beast), and how even the quietest voice can change the world. My #booknecklace is a lightning bolt, and I wore it so much that I broke the chain.

I wrote SPARK for all the quiet kids out there. But it's not about a quiet kid who learns to be loud. It's about a quiet kid who discovers that she's strong exactly as she is. She doesn't have to change herself to change the world.

I also wrote it because I not-so-secretly want my own lightning dragon.....

I'm counting down to the publication of my 20th book, RACE THE SANDS, out 4/21, by sharing pics of each #booknecklace my husband gave me to celebrate each of my prior books...

Book 20 (adult SFF): RACE THE SANDS. And this brings us to my newest book and newest #booknecklace! Tomorrow my 20th book comes out! It's a standalone epic fantasy about monster racing. The primary monster is a metal lion, and my husband found the most perfect necklace on Etsy!

My cat Gwen claims she's the inspiration for this book since she loves to run around the house at top speed. And it is true that I wrote most of the book with her sitting on me!


Funny thing is that my husband forgot he already gave me a #booknecklace for RACE THE SANDS -- a tiny hourglass with sand inside. But don't tell him, because I love both.


Thanks so much for joining me on my #booknecklace countdown to RACE THE SANDS pub day! It will be out in the world tomorrow!!! I hope all of you are safe, healthy, and happy. Sending so much love to everyone!

Today is the book birthday for my new epic fantasy novel for adults, RACE THE SANDS!!! My 20th book!!! It's about two kickass women vying to become monster racing champions. I loved writing this book, and I hope it will provide an escape to everyone who needs one. 

Tamra, the disgraced monster-racing trainer at the heart of RACE THE SANDS, is named after Tamora Pierce, author of the Tortall books and one of the most awesome and great-hearted people I know.  In writing this book, my goal was to write a character as kickass as she is.

I believe that fantasy is a literature of hope and empowerment. It can serve as a light in the darkness, a guide toward strength, and an escape from pain. I hope that someone will read about my monster-riding women in their sun-blasted land and find strength, escape, and hope.

If you're interested, there's more information on my website, including the first chapter: http://www.sarahbethdurst.com/RacetheSands.htm

Thank you to my awesome editor, David Pomerico; my incredible agent, Andrea Somberg; and all the wonderful people at Harper Voyager for bringing this book to life!

Happy book birthday, RACE THE SANDS!!!

Woohoo!!! SPARK made the Florida Sunshine State Young Readers Award 2020-21 list! Thanks so much, Florida librarians! You have absolutely made my day!

https://www.floridamediaed.org/ssyra.html 

 

A friend wrote to me today urging me to read Killing the Rising Sun as, by he said, Bill O’Reilly, since it made the case that the U.S. had to drop atomic bombs on Japan. My reply: You underestimate me, my friend; I’ve already read to Killing the Rising Sun. The key issue out of […]

In my new novel, The Oppenheimer Alternative — coming June 2, 2020, and available for pre-order now — the following exchange occurs between J. Robert Oppenheimer and his wife Kitty (with Kitty employing a racial slur that was regrettably all-too-common during the Second World War): “They … they’ve dropped a second bomb,” Oppie said, holding her. […]

I want to write this, but I don't want anyone to feel compelled to read it, so here, have some cut tags!

( Work stress )

( MtY stress )

( MtE stress )

( Mom stress )

I'm thinking of getting therapy just to have someone to talk to about all the stress. The good thing (honest, I see it as a good thing) is that most of the stress is basically external to me -- my days are generally easy and pleasant, and everyone who's not me may be melting down, but all my stress is in the way of a contact low, as it were. Other than being in a sandwich-generation holding pattern (when will the next phase of my life begin? no one knows), things are pretty good. I'm making more money than I ever have, I love my work, I get lots of downtime to read and hang out with James and mom, and my health is better than it's been in years. So yeah, if the universe could just leave my loved ones in peace, that'd be great.

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Some of us who are disabled and/or fat are worried we'll be denied access to scarce medical resources during the pandemic. This document describes our legal rights (in the US) and ways to maximize our likelihood of getting care.

#NoBodyIsDisposable Guide to Surviving COVID-19 Triage

Crips and fatties made this.
Please share with everyone who needs it.

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Calling all rebels -- only you can help StarWars.com and The Star Wars Show win!

Six young Jedi face their fears and themselves in an ancient rite of passage.

Starting on Star Wars Day, for one week you can enjoy artistic renditions of your favorite films and series.

Co-founder and designer Erik Haldi discusses the company's first Star Wars enamel pin: Luke Skywalker on his tauntaun.

Download the Padmé-starring novel at no charge from May 1 - 8.

The actor behind Luke Skywalker takes StarWars.com on a journey through filming the Star Wars sequel in time for the 40th anniversary of its release.

Plus, get a first look at the game’s key art -- revealed in celebration of Star Wars Day!

The award-winning title from ILMxLAB heads to PlayStation VR this summer.

Emmy Nominee Leslye Headland to write, produce, and serve as showrunner for new untitled Star Wars series for Disney+.

These lines are impressive. Most impressive.

Get behind-the-scenes peeks from the production of The Mandalorian with personal photos from Jon Favreau, Dave Filoni, and many more.

Luke Skywalker discovers a powerful lesson that can be valuable to your own younglings.

Hondo, you ol' pirate.

Given the reputation of Mindclash Games as a producer of well themed and sufficiently complex games, I was quite optimistic about getting Cerebria: The Card Game on the table. Designed by István Pócsi and Frigyes Schőberl, the game was released in 2018, and it was due to arrive on my doorstep in March.
Once the box arrived and I saw the cutesy artwork by Villő Farkas, Jamie Sichel, and Pedro A. Alberto, I prepared a little space in my heart for the love of the game that was already starting to develop. The illustrations are playful, family friendly, and reflect the theme very well.
 
In Cerebria: The Card Game, we are organizing and controlling our emotions while toying with the emotions of others. The theming overlaid on the gameplay here works well with regard to what we are doing with our actions, but there is no explanation of who we are or why we are in this situation we find ourselves. I would have liked to see a better developed contextual narrative for the game.
Thanks to busy spring work schedules, it took a bit of time to gather friends over to play. The first game came together at the last minute when my friend Aaron was in town visiting for the weekend and our regular gaming friends John and Meagan dropped by. The five of us crowded around our gaming table, my husband Christopher explained the rules, and then we went at it.
To play the game, cards are pulled out of the main deck to form three decks laid out in vertical columns and the card at the top of each deck is flipped over and available to draw. Every player is dealt four cards. Players take turns drawing from one of the face up cards to their hand, playing cards from their hand to their personal tableau and collecting emotion fragments (blue fragments for gloom and orange fragments for bliss) on those cards if possible (some cards don’t collect fragments but have other special abilities), or both (two actions are mandatory each turn).

During a turn, a player may also activate emotion abilities of eligible cards in their tableau. These abilities involve actions that directly benefit the player, take-that actions that hurt other players, or combo actions that manage to do both at once. Gameplay moves pretty quickly and is not subject to much analysis paralysis. A round ends when any of the three draw piles is empty. At that juncture, all the emotion fragments collected in each player’s tableau are squirreled away to their personal cache and any bonus fragments are awarded to players (emotion cards have vibe symbols on them and bonus fragments are awarded for tableaus that meet set collection goals such as three different vibes or four identical vibes). If any player has amassed either twelve of the same color emotion fragments or seven of each color, they win and the game ends. If not, the game resets with the discard of any existing face up cards, replenishment of the three vertical decks, and all players drawing back up to (or discarding down to) four cards. Then play resumes and unfolds as in the previous round.

None of us are really fond of “take that” games, so the more aggressive and vindictive emotion abilities our cards presented us with weren’t used as frequently as they might have been with a different group of players. But that didn’t stop anyone from winning the game as the game has a lot of room for creative strategies and there are multiple paths to victory.

Subsequent games I played with other groups were just as enjoyable. This week, for example, I played a 4 player game at a youth center with three teens and everyone had a good time. There was a bit more time required before the under 16 crowd really understood the rules and how everything fit together but overall it went well. There were definitely more take-that actions taken by the teens than any of the adults I played with.
 

Win Condition: Be the first player to amass 12 emotion fragments of either gloom or bliss, or 7 of each. Strategy Tip: Be careful about laying down a valuable set of emotions in your mindset (such as four of a kind) early in the game. Tip your hand too soon and you invite others to play aggressive take-that emotion abilities against you to keep you from scoring points. It’s better to lay down your final card, if possible, just before drawing the last card from a draw column, which will end the round and allow you to score immediately.

Components for Cerebria: The Card Game  include glossy cards and some plastic tokens representing emotional fragments. Everything should hold up to regular use and all components can be stored compactly in the well made, small box provided.
I really enjoyed the game and the interactions it provoked between players. If your group enjoys take-that games, you can really turn the screws to your opponents and if your group wants to steer clear of such tactics you can just as easily play and win the game without striking out against others. The theming here is unique. Other than Cerebria (also from this publisher), there aren’t any current games dealing with organizing and handling emotions. It’s a great way to remind ourselves that we can control our emotional mindset by choosing what we focus on, regardless of what emotions pass through our minds.
This easy to learn, quick playing, well-illustrated, clever game has earned a forever home in my collection.
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Publisher: Mindclash Games
Players: 2-5
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 45 minutes
Game type: set collection, take-that
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Deep Water Games provided me a review copy of Mystery of The Temples , an abstract area control game designed by Wei-Min Ling. It's one of three games in my collection from the Deep Water Games catalog that were originally published by EmperorS4 and feature artwork by Maisherly Chan (Shadows in Kyoto and Hanamikoji are the other two).

In Mystery of the Temples, players take on the role of adventurers on a quest to collect ancient runes protected by dark curses.  In order to break the curses, crystals must be collected and aligned. During game setup, five temple cards are arranged face up in a circle and two wilderness cards are placed in between each pair of temple cards (the picture below shows an alternative arrangement for a 2-player game). A stack of rune cards (4 cards per stack; these cards provide valuable crystal bonuses) are placed face down above each temple card and the top card in each stack is flipped face up. Temple objective cards are laid out; these cards provide additional victory points for breaking temple curses. Each player is given a grid to collect crystals on.

During the game, each player moves their curse breaker meeple clockwise across the temples and wilderness, obeying the detailed rules provided in the rule book. Ending a turn on a wildness card allows a player to collect crystals to carefully arrange on their grid.

Ending a turn on a temple card allows a player to turn in crystals (which must be connected on their grid sheet in the precise order specified on the temple card) to break a curse and earn victory points. There are multiple strategic decisions to be made during a turn as each wilderness card offers up different crystal gathering opportunities and each temple card provides victory points ranging from 3 to 8, depending on how many crystals a player is able to pattern match and discard. Each of the various crystal combinations on the temple cards can only be claimed once so a player must decide whether to amass the minimum amount of crystals to quickly fill in the lower victory point slots before their opponents can, or work at a slower pace, giving themselves time to collect and arrange longer chains of crystals on their grid sheets that will be worth more victory points.

The game ends at the conclusion of the first round in which a player has broken their fifth curse. Victory points are then tallied and the player with the highest victory point total wins the game. Once players are comfortable with the standard rules of play, they can experiment with the advanced rules, which provide for more complexity and variability in play and scoring. As with most area control games, scaling player counts can be an issue. The designer has addressed this in Mystery of the Temples by providing a 2-player variant that uses extra player markers (to block off temple curse claim spots), less wilderness cards, and an extra player meeple (to occupy random temple and wildness card spaces and block movement to those spaces; the meeple moves after each player’s turn). We found these adjustments allowed for the 2-player game to be just as compelling as with higher player counts.

Replayability is high due to the abstract nature of the game play in Mystery of the Temples. There are no narrative cards to tire of and the unique move combinations that can be sequenced to earn victory points are numerous as the temple and wilderness card layout vary each game. There is a moderate amount of analysis paralysis but it is manageable. Game play lasts around 45 minutes on average.

Game components include beautifully illustrated plastic coated cards (everything Maisherly Chan creates is visually appealing and the card and box cover art here are no exception), cardboard tokens, wooden player markers and meeples, and acrylic crystals. Everything should hold up well under regular use. The crystals are sparkly and fun; I absolutely love them.

While the other Deep Water Games titles didn’t work for me (too frustrating in the depth of analysis required), this one is a keeper. It’s the only one of the three games that hits the conceptual sweet spot for me of challenging but still fun. There is a nice flow to the game; the rhythm of moving my meeple each turn and collecting crystals is pleasant.  Mystery of the Temples provides plenty of intellectual challenge in a small box (this game is not easy by any means) with beautiful artwork and an affordable price point.

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Publisher: Deep Water Games
Players: 2-4
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 45 minutes per game
Game type: area control, abstract

Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Because I love a good story and groove on rich immersive themes, legacy games really appeal to me. The chance to be part of an unfolding narrative is wonderful. It provides a structure for friends to commit to an investment of their time together on a regular basis. It holds everyone's interest over time (when the story is well written and executed). Especially valuable for me is that it lessens the bitter taste of a loss; I get so interested in the plot that I don't care as much about winning. I'm trying to tamp down my competitiveness and narrative driven games help. Finally, I’m a huge fan of Inka and Markus Brand (we have a number of their games in our library already, including all of the Exit  games, Encore, and Raja of Ganges). For all of these reasons, I was really excited when Ravensburger sent me a copy of Inka and Markus’s newest legacy game, Rise of Queensdale, to review.

I actually received my review copy early in 2019, but our RoQ group consists of parents with busy schedules so we can only get together about once a month to play. We've made our way through 13 games so far, and with only 2 or 3 more to go before we finish the legacy series of games, I thought it was a good time to sit down and share my thoughts on the game (Especially in light of Christmas approaching).

Rise of Queensdale  is a legacy worker placement game set in Medieval times. Players take on the role of subjects to King Nepomuk II and Queen Margaret and are tasked with building a new city, Queensdale, on behalf of the royal family. Each player is given jurisdiction over one quarter of the city and is competing against the other players to build the best borough.

As the legacy series of games progresses, players continue to build different types of structures to earn favor with the royal family (fame points) in the midst of dealing with political drama, disease, and other Medieval happenings. Each game in the series sees players attempting to reach their next epoch goal (a target number of fame points). If they are successful, they will have a new, higher epoch goal during the subsequent game.  Note that multiple players can reach their epoch goals during the same game as gameplay continues through the end of the current round once one player reaches their goal. The winner of each game is the person who surpassed their epoch goal by the most points.

The artwork in the game is illustrated by Michael Menzel with graphic design provided by the Fiore GMBH studio in Germany. Michael is probably most familiar to the US based board game community as the illustrator for the Legends of Andor series of games. He brings the same fantasy style drawings he used in that game, with their romantic fonts and soft palettes of color to his work here and it’s lovely. There are a lot of components included in Rise of Queensdale   and Michael does a good job of tying them all to the theme as a cohesive set with the artwork.

Components include dozens of different types of wooden tokens (huts, meeples, player score markers, etc.); the city building board,  scoreboard (epoch tracker, fame counter, and more), action board, player boards, building tiles, and other pieces made out of cardboard; and wooden dice. Everything has held up wonderfully as the months and games have gone by. The rulebook is flipped through frequently and while it’s showing signs of wear, it’s still holding together, staples in place. The rulebook is straightforward and we haven’t had any issues understanding the nuances of the rules.

The narrative in Rise of Queensdale is well written.  It’s memorable and everything that happens makes sense in the framework of the fictional universe laid down by the designers. We’ve played a lot of narrative driven games (Pandemic Legacy, Betrayal Legacy, Middara, Aeon’s End Legacy, Legacy of Dragonholt, Charterstone,  and Seafall, just to name a few) and Rise of Queensdale ranks near the top for narrative driven games that do a good job of incorporating the game play into the storyline. Some legacy games feel more like a story was loosely slapped on top of the game mechanisms, but that isn’t the case here. At the same time, this isn’t an RPG with some board game elements thrown in. The mechanics of the board game have been adeptly planned and implemented; they’re challenging and provide a compelling experience. As the legacy series unfolds, more actions are added to the action board; no one gets complacent or bored because new options keep coming available. Our game group has agreed that there seems to be enough components and actions to allow for replayability as a standard board game even after we’ve reached the very end of our last game in the legacy series.

Rise of Queensdale is a great board game for bringing friends and family together. It’s competitive, so those who turn up their noses at cooperative games and like to win against others will find it enjoyable. Everyone is working toward their own epoch goal and multiple players can reach their goal during a game, so everyone can feel accomplished even when they don’t win. This also creates a brilliant built-in catch up mechanism as the player in last place has the nearest epoch goal to reach. The further a player gets ahead of others in the series of games, the farther their epoch goal becomes and the greater the chance that the players behind them will reach their goals before the leader does. In our games, no one has been able to run away with the scoreboard so far. That helps the game stay family friendly. The narrative turns the game into a shared adventure where everyone is an active participant. Better than going to a movie is feeling like you’re starring in one. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this review, because Rise of Queensdale  is a series of games,  right from the beginning, it fosters a commitment for players to spend time together on a regular basis. That’s the best gift to share with friends and family – our time – and anything like Rise of Queensdale that can make that happen is a wonderful Christmas present to place or find under the tree.

Strategy Tip: If the narrative provides a new shared goal, PAY ATTENTION and work toward it. There’s usually penalties for everyone if it doesn’t get done and rewards for the players who successfully complete it.

-------------------------------------------------
Publisher: Ravensburger
Players: 2-4 (We played with 4)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 1 hour per game
Game type: narrative driven, legacy, dice rolling, worker placement
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Let's take a moment to talk about the series Exit: The Game, which debuted in the United States in 2016.

Designed by Inka and Marcus Brand and published by Thames and Kosmos, the games are advertised as an Escape Room in a box. In an escape room, you and a group a friends are placed into a room (you may literally be locked in, depending on the fire code of the city where you book the room). Then,  a timer is set, a story is told to you to provide context and atmosphere for your puzzling adventure, and you attempt to solve a series of puzzles, the answers to which will eventually lead you to a key or combination to escape the room - hopefully before time runs out. These rooms typically book for $30+ per person, so the promise of replicating the escape room experience out of a tiny little box for a fraction of the cost is very appealing.

But does Exit: The Game live up to its promise? It does. It absolutely does, with one caveat - some of the games have you puzzling to solve a mystery within the time limit, but you aren't trying to escape anything.

Earlier titles in the series are fairly straightforward. A paper booklet of puzzles; a set each of riddle cards (pair with the booklet to solve the puzzles), answer cards (used to validate puzzle solutions and lead you to new riddle cards),  and help cards (hints for solving the puzzles); a decoder wheel (used to input codes derived from the puzzles); a simple rulebook; and various accessories (usually constructed of cardboard or paper) provide the core of the game experience. Players need to come equipped with scissors (destruction of components is required in nearly every game), pens/pencils, rulers, and a sharp wit to finish the game and calculate their score (measured in stars). The puzzle mechanisms vary, but they will be at least somewhat familiar to players who have done escape rooms or puzzle hunts before.  Depending on the title chosen, the puzzles also vary in difficulty. There is a difficulty rating printed on each box. We found that on average, we finish every Exit title in about 75 minutes; what varies for us across difficulty ratings is how many hint cards we lean on to solve the puzzles.

As the series has progressed in maturity, Inka and Marcus have been able to deliver titles with creative new puzzle mechanisms, changes in solving methodology (such as varying whether the puzzles in the paper booklet must be completed in sequential order or not), and meta puzzles. Meta puzzles are those which you cannot solve without getting a piece of the solution from some or all of the other puzzles included. For example, a puzzle that has you solve for a sentence comprised of words derived from other puzzle solutions is a meta puzzle. A good example of a title from the Exit: The Game series with a meta puzzle is Exit: The Game  - Dead Man on the Orient Express. It includes a meta puzzle that requires players to pay close attention to the passengers, their possessions, and locations throughout the game in order to solve it successfully. That game also introduced envelopes to open as the game progressed and it’s one of the titles that doesn’t see players escaping anything; instead they are trying to issue a code at the end to transmit the identity of a killer to authorities.

By the time the series release of Exit: The Game – The Catacombs of Horror  came around, I really thought the Brands couldn’t have any new tricks up their sleeve. I was wrong. With Catacombs of Horror, they have introduced the two part adventure, giving players a longer puzzling experience in one box. You can play straight through the entire game (allot yourself at least 2 hours) or play the first half and come back to the second half another time. There are also some fantastic new twists on the puzzling mechanisms (a candle is included and must be lit to solve one of the puzzles, for example), and the components got an upgrade (I’m holding onto the adorable little skulls indefinitely). Alongside the puzzle elements, the theming in the series has gotten better and better as new titles are released. Catacombs of Horror provides a well written narrative, albeit very very dark. As we solve puzzles, we find ourselves chasing down what happened to a friend of ours who disappeared into the Catacombs of Paris. It seems he may have met a dark end after having crossed paths with some demonic forces. This title is definitely not for the kiddos, which might be its only drawback. We have clever tweens who enjoy puzzle games, and this isn’t something we can share with them.

There have been at least three more titles released in the Exit: The Game series since Catacombs of Horror  was published in 2018 and more are on the way for 2020. If you’ve previously purchased any of the series, I’d strongly recommend adding Catacombs of Horror  to your must-play list. If this is the first you’ve heard of the series, do yourself a favor, and start with one of the easier titles, such as Exit: The Game – The Sunken Treasure. Then if you have a good time, move onto Exit: The Game – The Pharoh’s Tomb, before sinking your teeth into the most difficult titles like Exit: The Game  - Dead Man on the Orient Express or this one (Exit: The Game – The Catacombs of Horror ).

-------------------------------------------------
Publisher: Thames and Kosmos
Players: 1-4 (we always play with 2)
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): About 2 and a half hours
Game type: puzzle, cooperative
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

  We got Cities: Skylines – The Board Game  a couple of months ago and I really didn't know what to expect before my first play. Sometimes there is a game on the horizon that's all the buzz in my circles and I'm super excited to order it, get it home, and get it on the table. Other times, it's my husband who catches the fever for a game and brings it into our house. And every now and then, a publisher asks me to review a game I've never heard of and haven't built up any anticipatory excitement for yet. Such was the case with Cities: Skylines – The Board Game. The team at Kosmos sent this cooperative game my way and asked me to give it a try. It’s designed by Rustan Hakansson (other works of his I am familiar with include HexRoller and Tribes: Dawn of Humanity) and based on a video game of the same name that’s popular across multiple platforms (Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, & Nintendo Switch).

  I remember opening the box for the first time and setting everything up. The box cover art is nice but the rest of the artwork (provided by the German design studio Fiore) is easily described as adequate. We're not handing out any awards here for most beautiful game, is all I'm saying. I thumbed through the rulebook as we readied for our first game and at least that was a win - I found it to be concise and well-written. I especially liked that the rulebook author made a point to highlight that even though Cities: Skylines – The Board Game is a cooperative game where it's important to collaborate, it is up to the active player to make the decision on their turn. Way to nip that Alpha gaming in the bud!

Once my husband and I started playing the game, I quickly realized it’s very different from other games. It gives me the same feeling of zen as putting together a Stave wooden jigsaw puzzle. We’re not battling a monster or racing against the clock or trying to fend off a pandemic. We’re urban planners, carefully and thoughtfully placing building tiles into our city districts in an effort to score the most happiness (points) possible by the game’s end.  Very relaxing, yet still intellectually challenging.

The game begins with players selecting a set of game board tiles (4 unless you are playing the introductory game with just 3) and arranging them facedown. One of the tiles is flipped over (there is a $$ cost associated with flipping each tile, which is deducted from the starting city treasury funds) and development may begin. Each tile is divided up into districts, formed by the street borders, and all construction takes place within these districts. When new city game board tiles are flipped over (at checkpoints - called milestones - that may only be triggered once every district visible has a building constructed within it), land surfaces must face up against land surfaces and water must face water.

To build out the city, players they use construction cards (dealt in the beginning of the game and also drawn each turn) to put up residential, commercial, industrial, utility, service, and unique buildings.

Placing buildings can trigger increases or decreases in the city treasury; utilities (power, water, garbage); employment; happiness; and negative externalities (pollution, traffic, crime). If the placement would trigger a decrease beyond what the planners have in the treasury, the building cannot be constructed. You also cannot construct a building if it would cause any of your utilities to drop below -5, cause any of your negative externalities to increase beyond 5, or cause your employment to go out of the range of -5 to 5. And while there is no cap on happiness increases, any construction that lowers your happiness beyond -4 ends the game with a loss immediately. At the milestone checkpoints, utility shortages decrease happiness just before the happiness is transferred to the main score track and at the end of the game negative externalities do so as well. So our first consideration in construction must be how it will impact all of these measures.

Several buildings trigger effects based on having met prerequisites. For example, building a residential zone might trigger an increase in the city treasury if you already have a park constructed in the same district. Or a building a commercial zone might increase the city treasury and happiness if you have both a park and a medical clinic in the district and you can place the zone adjacent to both of them. In order to get the most benefit from these types of constructions, planners need to carefully think and rethink building placement before selecting a building site and so this is a second consideration in construction.  

When selecting residential, commercial, or industrial zones to build, there are a dozen or more tetris-like shaped tokens to choose from. Because buildings can only be placed in a district if they physically fit, and we want to maximize the number and type of buildings we can place into each district, a close examination of the shapes during selection is a third consideration in construction.

In addition to the game tiles, buildings, and construction cards, Cities: Skylines – The Board Game  includes role cards that grant special abilities to each planner, policy cards that provide a one time benefit when played, and news cards that add difficulty in the form of disadvantages. It’s recommended to leave these three card types out of your first game to keep things simple, but they definitely make the game more fun, so I’d recommend incorporating them into your subsequent games.

I want to make an important note regarding player count. The box notes that 1-4 can play Cities: Skylines – The Board Game but there’s no way I’d play this with more than 2 players total. We didn’t even attempt a 3 or 4 player game because it was easy to see it would be frustrating – just too many people to negotiate with on implementing a coordinated plan. I guess if you’re the type of person who would work on a jigsaw puzzle with 4 people at once, you might give it a try? But I’m definitely not that kind of person. As a 1 or 2 player game though, Cities: Skylines – The Board Game is great. We could all use more calm during this crazy COVID-19 pandemic and puzzle games like this one provide it.

-------------------------------------------------

Publisher: Thames and Kosmos
Players: 1-4
Actual Playing Time (vs the guideline on the box): 1 hr
Game type: cooperative, tile placement, hand management, puzzle games, solo games
Rating:

Jenni’s rating scale:
OUI: I would play this game again; this game is ok. I probably would not buy this game myself but I would play it with those who own it and if someone gave it to me I would keep it.
OUI OUI: I would play this game again; this game is good. I would buy this game.
OUI OUI OUI: I LOVE THIS GAME. I MUST HAVE THIS GAME.
NON: I would not play this game again. I would return this game or give it away if it was given to me.

Cities: Skylines - Cooperative City-Building Board Game from Kosmos | Based On The Hit Video Game | for 1-4 Players Ages 10+ | Develop & Manage Cities & Neighborhoods

Hello Everyone! I just want to quickly let you all know about a couple of improvements we've made to the Starfighter site. Starting last week, every comic page of Starfighter has had a link below it to its own comment section. We're using the Disqus comment system, which I imagine many of you are already familiar with. It's been working well so far and we hope you all like it! Even though it's only been up for short while, your response has been wonderful. Hamlet and I have both really enjoyed getting to hear all of your thoughts on the comic so far!

One other small change - you'll notice a new latest page link in the upper right hand corner of every page on the Starfigheter website. I wanted to make it easier for all of you Starfighter veterans to reach the new page each week. Hopefully you'll all find this more convenient!

Thank you all so much again for your enthusiasm in the new comments! Oh! And also, Hamlet's just finished the latest page. I'd say now would be a good time to give that new link a try! -Thisbe

Hi everyone!

There's a whole bunch of brand spanking new Starfighter swag at the Starfighter Shop just in time for the holidays! There are new prints, new buttons, a new T-Shirt, and more! Go check it out! -Thisbe

This is the big surprise project I've been working on! The Starfighter visual novel is going to be awesome-- but I need your help to make it happen!

Check out the Kickstarter page here! There's lots of rewards, new art, and a description of the important stuff: how the game will work, what it'll be about, MY HOPES AND DREAMS, etc! (You can even play a little mini demo to give you an idea of what it will be like!) There is even a really sweet video Thisbe made with slick logo animation and you can hear my tiny wraith voice!

It's going to be really rad and I'm so excited about this--!

LET'S MAKE IT HAPPEN TOGETHER- visit the Kickstarter here! -Hamlet

THE SHOP HAS RE-OPENED!

CHAPTER 3 IS NOW AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME!

We also have new prints and Chp 2 back in stock, if you have been meaning to pick it up!

I FEEL LIKE SANTA~

I hope you all enjoy!

-Hamlet

I just wanted to add; we've got a bunch of new merchandise in production, but a lot of it isn't quite ready yet, so keep your eyes peeled over the next couple of months, because we'll be adding a bunch of new exciting items to our inventory!

*cough* body pillows *cough* *cough*

-Thisbe

Ralph Waldo Emerson

  

 My kindle has arrived BRAND NEW!!! My old one was sent away... to the depths of despair, and I am pleasantly disappointed in the ending of my book.  I'm sitting here ready for the football game to start and I can smell the pizza my husband thought would be a "great idea" to make.  I haven't had the time to exercise in almost a week. Although my eating is still on key, I feel bloated... fatter if possible.  I've done the math, and in order for me to swim the five miles I plan on in October, I have to do the following ASAP.

Mondays - Swim minimum 80 laps
Tuesdays - Strength training , Swim 80 laps
Wednesdays - OFF
Thursdays - Strength training, swim 80 laps
Fridays - Swim 80 laps
Saturdays - OFF
Sundays - Strength training, swim 80 laps

WOE IS ME! In order for my school schedule to not co-inside with my work-out schedule I will have to plan in advance.  I am currently taking 4 classes this semester, all of which are history classes.  That can only mean one thing:  mass amounts of reading and papers at the same....time.....

Advancement toward my goal at this point in time is vital, I must use my young age to my advantage and endure no social life as well as sleep... who needs either anyways?

Crap.... haha...... keep me strong friends... I'm going to need it, as well as my gym membership I so am looking forward to getting by the end of this month.  I miss swimming.

xoxo

As promised, we've stopped the process that puts new data into the queue today. Data distribution will continue until the files shown on the status pages are done. We'll be accepting results and resending results that didn't validate for a while.

CEOs of the major Wall Street banks have been summoned to the White House to discuss the coronavirus...

The coronavirus outbreak has officially been labeled a pandemic by the World Health Organization, potentially grinding the global economy to a halt. Yet every step of the way, the Trump administration’s response has been to deny, blame, obfuscate, and generally cover up. 

Trump and his enablers are focused only on mitigating the economic consequences of the outbreak, especially before the election – mulling proposals like corporate tax cuts and bailouts for airlines and the hotel industry, but resisting the needs of average Americans and our broken healthcare system. 

The outbreak has also revealed the utter weakness of our social safety nets: workers may be forced to choose between a missed paycheck and risking their health because too many employers have no paid sick leave, schools are weighing whether or not to shut down because hundreds of thousands of poor children rely on them for hot meals, and our cruel for-profit healthcare system is preventing people from getting tested for the virus for fear of a hefty bill.

And, remember, 80 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Coupled with Trump’s incompetence and narcissism, it’s a recipe for total disaster.

Meanwhile, the Democratic electorate is in the midst of a primary to unseat this sociopath. After Tuesday, Biden has kept his delegate lead with wins in Idaho, Michigan, Missouri, and Mississippi. And while the race isn’t over yet, it’s wise to start making contingency plans.

Biden’s biggest weakness is his failure to attract progressives and young voters. In a CNN exit poll for Michigan, Bernie won a whopping 82 percent of voters age 18-29. Without these voters, if Biden is the nominee, Democrats will not be able to get the votes needed to defeat Trump.

So what are Biden’s options for getting out the vote of this crucial portion of the Party? He must select a true progressive for Vice President, like Elizabeth Warren or even Bernie Sanders, who can push bold progressive ideas like a wealth tax, Medicare for All, tuition-free college, cancelling student debt, and a Green New Deal.

These progressive policies are also winners with the electorate – a majority of voters even in Mississippi and other southern states supported replacing the current healthcare system with a single-payer system, and polling continues to reflect this appetite for transformative change. Even if Bernie isn’t getting the support he counted on, his ideas are.

And don’t count Bernie out just yet. A debate is coming up this weekend that could boost his campaign enough to help him secure wins in later key states like Ohio and Pennsylvania.

But if he fails to get traction, he needs to do whatever he can to help reunite the party, and most importantly, keep working to shift the party in a progressive direction. Behind the scenes he needs to negotiate with Biden a pathway to gain progressive support.

Meanwhile, Biden needs to take up the issues of concern to young people, who are the future of the party and who Democrats can’t win without. This might seem like a pipe dream, but Biden has no choice. This is not 2016. The nation cannot afford another 4 years of Trump. If you’re angry – and rightfully so – use that anger to keep pushing the movement.

What’s Missing From the Coronavirus Bill

The public health and economic crises we’re experiencing are closely related. They reveal in stark terms the dangerous mythology of trickle-down self-sufficiency and the need for policies that respond to the real needs of people who are or will soon be affected.

But Trump doesn’t seem to understand that. Before agreeing to an actual coronavirus relief bill, his administration was considering more corporate tax cuts, tax cuts targeted to the airlines and hospitality industries, and a temporary payroll tax cut. 

But tax cuts will be useless. They’ll be too slow to stimulate the economy, and won’t reach households and consumers who should be the real targets. And they’ll reward the rich, who don’t spend much of their additional dollars, without getting money into the hands of the poor and middle-class, who do.

Thankfully, Congress has moved forward on some of the most urgent priorities like free coronavirus testing, strengthening unemployment insurance and food security programs. But it doesn’t go far enough.

Instead, Congress must immediately provide an emergency $500 billion to help all Americans protect themselves and their families, and keep the economy going.

The money should be used for:

Coronavirus testing and treatment. Diagnostic tests should be mandatory and universal, and free. And everyone with the virus should have access to treatment and to any future vaccines, regardless of ability to pay.

Guaranteed paid sick leave for ALL employees. The current relief bill does cover paid sick leave for some but has huge carve-outs, exempting all companies with over 500 employees and some small businesses under 50 employees. That exclusion could affect up to 20 million Americans. Without guaranteed paid sick leave and family leave, workers who are sick will not remain home and will end up exposing others.

Extended unemployment insurance. Without it, large numbers of Americans will be furloughed or laid off without adequate income to support themselves and their families. As it is, unemployment insurance reaches a measly 27 percent of the unemployed. 

Extended Medicaid. No one should avoid seeing a doctor because of fears about out-of-control medical bills. Right now, 28 million Americans have no health insurance, and countless more are reluctant to see a doctor because of large deductions or co-payments. Especially in a health emergency, health care should be available to all regardless of ability to pay. 

Immediate one-time payments of $1,500 to every adult and $500 per child, renewable if necessary. Some consumers might spend the money right away to meet rent if they lose their regular paycheck. Others might have stronger balance sheets and spend the money at whatever uncertain date the virus is contained. 

Suspension of the Trump administration’s “public charge” rule that enables federal officials to deny green cards to immigrants who use social safety net programs. Programs like, Medicaid, Food Stamps, Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, and Women Infants and Children are more important than ever.

For the same reason, testing and treatment should be available to undocumented immigrants, without fear of deportation.

Trickle-down economics and trickle-down public health are deeply flawed. Corporate tax cuts won’t save us. The coronavirus doesn’t distinguish between rich and poor. We are in this imminent health and economic emergency together, and our own health and wellbeing are dependent on the health and wellbeing of everyone else. 

Each of us is only as healthy as the least-healthy among us.

Societies gripped by cataclysmic wars, depressions, or pandemics can become acutely sensitive to...

The System: Who Rigged It, How We Fix It 

The coronavirus has starkly revealed what most of us already knew: The concentration of wealth in America has created a a health care system in which the wealthy can buy care others can’t. 

It’s also created an education system in which the super-rich can buy admission to college for their children, a political system in which they can buy Congress and the presidency,  and a justice system in which they can buy their way out of jail. 

Almost everyone else has been hurled into a dystopia of bureaucratic arbitrariness, corporate indifference, and the legal and financial sinkholes that have become hallmarks of modern American life.

The system is rigged. But we can fix it.

Today, the great divide in American politics isn’t between right and left. The underlying contest is between a small minority who have gained power over the system, and the vast majority who have little or none. 

Forget politics as you’ve come to see it – as contests between Democrats and Republicans. The real divide is between democracy and oligarchy.

The market has been organized to serve the wealthy. Since 1980, the percentage of the nation’s wealth owned by the richest four hundred Americans has quadrupled (from less than 1 percent to 3.5 percent) while the share owned by the entire bottom half of America has dropped to 1.3 percent.

The three wealthiest Americans own as much as the entire bottom half of the population. Big corporations, CEOs, and a handful of extremely rich people have vastly more influence on public policy than the average American. Wealth and power have become one and the same.

As the oligarchs tighten their hold over our system, they have lambasted efforts to rein in their greed as “socialism”, which, to them, means getting something for doing nothing.

But “getting something for doing nothing” seems to better describe the handouts being given to large corporations and their CEOs. 

General Motors, for example, has received $600 million in federal contracts and $500 million in tax breaks since Donald Trump took office. Much of this “corporate welfare” has gone to executives, including CEO Mary Barra, who raked in almost $22 million in compensation in 2018 alone. GM employees, on the other hand, have faced over 14,000 layoffs and the closing of three assembly plants and two component factories.

And now, in the midst of a pandemic, big corporations are getting $500 billion from taxpayers. 

Our system, it turns out, does practice one form of socialism – socialism for the rich. Everyone else is subject to harsh capitalism.

Socialism for the rich means people at the top are not held accountable. Harsh capitalism for the many, means most Americans are at risk for events over which they have no control, and have no safety nets to catch them if they fall.

Among those who are particularly complicit in rigging the system are the CEOs of America’s corporate behemoths. 

Take Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan Chase, whose net worth is $1.4 billion. He comes as close as anyone to embodying the American system as it functions today.

Dimon describes himself as “a patriot before I’m the CEO of JPMorgan.”

He brags about the corporate philanthropy of his bank, but it’s a drop in the bucket compared to his company’s net income, which in 2018 was $30.7 billion – roughly one hundred times the size of his company’s investment program for America’s poor cities. 

Much of JP Morgan’s income gain in 2018 came from savings from the giant Republican tax cut enacted at the end of 2017 – a tax cut that Dimon intensively lobbied Congress for.

Dimon doesn’t acknowledge the inconsistencies between his self-image as “patriot first” and his role as CEO of America’s largest bank. He doesn’t understand how he has hijacked the system.

Perhaps he should read my new book.

To understand how the system has been hijacked, we must understand how it went from being accountable to all stakeholders – not just stockholders but also workers, consumers, and citizens in the communities where companies are headquartered and do business – to intensely shareholder-focused capitalism.

In the post-WWII era, American capitalism assumed that large corporations had responsibilities to all their stakeholders. CEOs of that era saw themselves as “corporate statesmen” responsible for the common good.

But by the 1980s, shareholder capitalism (which focuses on maximizing profits) replaced stakeholder capitalism. That was largely due to the corporate raiders – ultra-rich investors who hollowed-out once-thriving companies and left workers to fend for themselves.

Billionaire investor Carl Icahn, for example, targeted major companies like Texaco and Nabisco by acquiring enough shares of their stock to force major changes that increased their stock value – such as suppressing wages, fighting unions, laying off workers, abandoning communities for cheaper labor elsewhere, and taking on debt – and then selling his shares for a fat profit. In 1985, after winning control of Trans World Airlines, he loaded the airline with more than $500 million in debt, stripped it of its assets, and pocketed nearly $500 million in profits.

As a result of the hostile takeovers mounted by Icahn and other raiders, a wholly different understanding about the purpose of the corporation emerged.

Even the threat of hostile takeovers forced CEOs to fall in line by maximizing shareholder profits over all else. The corporate statesmen of previous decades became the corporate butchers of the 1980s and 1990s, whose nearly exclusive focus was to “cut out the fat” and make their companies “lean and mean.”

As power increased for the wealthy and large corporations at the top, it shifted in exactly the opposite direction for workers. In the mid-1950s, 35 percent of all private-sector workers in the United States were unionized. Today, 6.4 percent of them are.

The wave of hostile takeovers pushed employers to raise profits and share prices by cutting payroll costs and crushing unions, which led to a redistribution of income and wealth from workers to the richest 1 percent. Corporations have fired workers who try to organize and have mounted campaigns against union votes. All the while, corporations have been relocating to states with few labor protections and so-called “right-to-work” laws that weaken workers’ ability to join unions.

Power is a zero-sum game. People gain it only when others lose it. The connection between the economy and power is critical. As power has concentrated in the hands of a few, those few have grabbed nearly all the economic gains for themselves.

The oligarchy has triumphed because no one has paid attention to the system as a whole – to the shifts from stakeholder to shareholder capitalism, from strong unions to giant corporations with few labor protections, and from regulated to unchecked finance.

As power has shifted to large corporations, workers have been left to fend for themselves. Most Americans developed 3 key coping mechanisms to keep afloat.

The first mechanism was women entering the paid workforce. Starting in the late 1970s, women went into paid work in record numbers, in large part to prop up family incomes, as the wages of male workers stagnated or declined. 

Then, by the late 1990s, even two incomes wasn’t enough to keep many families above water, causing them to turn to the next coping mechanism: working longer hours. By the mid-2000s a growing number of people took on two or three jobs, often demanding 50 hours or more per week.

Once the second coping mechanism was exhausted, workers turned to their last option: drawing down savings and borrowing to the hilt. The only way Americans could keep consuming was to go deeper into debt. By 2007, household debt had exploded, with the typical American household owing 138 percent of its after-tax income. Home mortgage debt soared as housing values continued to rise. Consumers refinanced their homes with even larger mortgages and used their homes as collateral for additional loans.

This last coping mechanism came to an abrupt end in 2008 when the debt bubbles burst, causing the financial crisis. Only then did Americans begin to realize what had happened to them, and to the system as a whole. That’s when our politics began to turn ugly.  

So what do we do about it? The answer is found in politics and rooted in power.

The way to overcome oligarchy is for the rest of us to join together and form a multiracial, multiethnic coalition of working-class, poor and middle-class Americans fighting for democracy.

This agenda is neither “right” nor “left.” It is the bedrock for everything America must do.

The oligarchy understands that a “divide-and-conquer” strategy gives them more room to get what they want without opposition. Lucky for them, Trump is a pro at pitting native-born Americans against immigrants, the working class against the poor, white people against people of color. His goal is cynicism, disruption, and division. Trump and the oligarchy behind him have been able to rig the system and then whip around to complain loudly that the system is rigged.

But history shows that oligarchies cannot hold on to power forever. They are inherently unstable. When a vast majority of people come to view an oligarchy as illegitimate and an obstacle to their wellbeing, oligarchies become vulnerable.

As bad as it looks right now, the great strength of this country is our resilience. We bounce back. We have before. We will again.

In order for real change to occur – in order to reverse the vicious cycle in which we now find ourselves – the locus of power in the system will have to change.

The challenge we face is large and complex, but we are well suited for the fight ahead. Together, we will dismantle the oligarchy. Together, we will fix the system.

How to Prepare for the Trump Recession

The global coronavirus pandemic has put our economy in free-fall.

Even through Donald Trump’s reckless economic policies, like his pointless trade war with China or his deficit-busting tax cuts for his billionaire donors, the economy has somehow managed to keep chugging along — until now. 

All of the stock market gains from Trump’s time in office have been wiped out, and over the course of just over one week in March the Dow Jones Industrial Average experienced its five largest drops in history. 

Worse than a plummeting stock market, businesses and major industries have been forced to shutter their windows to help combat the rapid spread of the virus, putting hundreds of thousands of workers’ paychecks at risk. 

A recession is inevitable at this point. Here are 3 things we can do to prepare.  

Number one: We need to reform unemployment insurance so it reflects the needs of today’s economy. 

When it was first created in 1935, unemployment insurance was designed to help full-time workers weather downturns until they got their old jobs back. But there are fewer full-time jobs in today’s economy, and fewer people who are laid off get their old jobs back again. 

As a result, only 27% of unemployed workers receive benefits today, compared to 49% of workers in the 1950s. We need to expand unemployment coverage so that everyone is protected.

Number two: We need to strengthen Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, also known as  public assistance. 

Since its creation in 1996, the number of families receiving cash assistance has declined dramatically – and not because they’re doing well. Between 2006 and 2018, just 13% of families were lifted out of poverty, while the number of families receiving public assistance fell by 39%.

Already weak, the program didn’t hold up well during the Great Recession. Funding doesn’t automatically expand during economic downturns – meaning the more families are in need, the less money there is to help them. The program also has strict work requirements, which can’t be fulfilled in a deep recession. Worse yet, many individuals in need have already exhausted their five years of lifetime eligibility for assistance.

We need to reform the public assistance program so that more families in need are eligible. It should be easier to waive the strict work eligibility requirements during the economic downturn, and the lifetime five-year limit should be suspended.

Number three: We need to protect the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP or food stamps. 

Unlike public assistance, SNAP responded well during the Great Recession. Its requirements are designed to expand during economic downturns or recessions.

Waiving work requirements during the Great Recession made thousands of people in need eligible for the program who otherwise wouldn’t have been. Between December 2007 and December 2009, the number of SNAP participants rose by 45%. The program helped keep an estimated 3.8 million families out of poverty in 2009.

But that might not be an option this time around, as SNAP has come under attack from the Trump administration, which is trying to enact a draconian rule change that would kick an estimated 700,000 of our most vulnerable citizens off of the program. Luckily, a judge blocked the rule from going into effect, but the administration is still fighting to enforce it — even in the middle of a global pandemic. We need to make sure SNAP’s flexibility and ability to respond to economic downturns is protected before the next recession hits.

Stronger safety nets are not only good for individuals and families in need. They will also prevent the looming recession from becoming an even deeper and longer economic crisis. 

Trump’s Failed Coronavirus Response

The Trump administration’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been a deliberate disaster from the beginning. But don’t take my word for it – just look at the facts.

Here’s the timeline: 

In 2018, he let the pandemic-preparedness office in the National Security Council simply dissolve, and followed up with budget cuts to HHS and CDC this year. That team’s job was to follow a pandemic playbook written after global leaders fumbled their response to Ebola in 2014. Trump was briefed on the playbook’s existence in his first year - had he listened, the government would’ve started getting equipment to doctors two months ago.

The initial outbreak of the coronavirus began in Wuhan, China, in December, 2019.  

By mid-January, 2020, the White House had intelligence reports that warned of a likely pandemic.

On January 18th, HHS Secretary Azar spoke with Trump to emphasize the threat of the virus just as US Diplomats were being evacuated from Wuhan.

Two days later, the virus was confirmed in both the US and South Korea.

That week, South Korean officials immediately drafted medical companies to develop test kits for mass production. The WHO declared a global health emergency. But Trump … did nothing.

As Hubei Province went on lockdown, Trump, who loves any excuse to enact a racist travel ban, barred entry of any foreigners coming from China (it was hardly proactive) but took no additional steps to prepare for infection in the United States.

He said, “We pretty much shut it down, coming in from China,”

He didn’t ramp up production of test kits so we could begin isolating the virus.

By February, the US had 14 confirmed cases but the CDC test kits proved faulty; there weren’t enough of them, and they were restricted to only people showing symptoms. The US pandemic response was already failing.

Trump then began actively downplaying the crisis and baselessly predicting it would go away when the weather got warmer.

Trump decided there was nothing to see here, and on February 24th, took time out of his day to remind us that the stock markets were soaring.

A day later, CDC officials sounded the alarm that daily life could be severely disrupted. The window to get ahead of the virus by testing and containment was closing. 

Trump’s next move: He compared Coronavirus to the seasonal flu…and called the emerging crisis a hoax by the Democrats.

With 100 cases in the US, Trump declined to call for a national emergency.

Meanwhile, South Korea was now on its way to testing a quarter million people, while the US was testing 40 times slower.

When a cruise ship containing Americans with coronavirus floated toward San Francisco, Trump said he didn’t want people coming off the ship to be tested because they’d make the numbers look bad.

It wasn’t until the stock market reacted to the growing crisis and took a nosedive that Trump finally declared a national emergency.

By this time, South Korea had been using an app for over a month that pulled government data to track cases and alert users to stay away from infected areas.

Over the next weeks, as the virus began its exponential spread across the US, and Governors declared states of emergency, closing schools and workplaces and stopping the American economy in its tracks –  Trump passed on every opportunity to get ahead of this crisis.

Trump’s priority was never public health. It was about making the virus seem like less of a nuisance so that the “numbers” would “look good” for his reelection.

Only when the stock market crashed did Trump finally begin to pay attention…and mostly to bailing out corporations in the form of a massive $500 billion slush fund, rather than to helping people. And then, with much of America finally and belatedly in lockdown, he said at a Fox News town hall that he would “love” to have the country “opened up, and just raring to go” by Easter.

At every point, Trump has used this crisis to compliment himself.

This is not leadership. This is the exact opposite of leadership. 

Coronavirus and the Height of Corporate Welfare

With the coronavirus pandemic wreaking havoc on the global economy, here’s how massive corporations are shafting the rest of us in order to secure billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded bailouts.

The airline industry demanded a massive bailout of nearly $60 billion in taxpayer dollars, and ended up securing $50 billion – half in loans, half in direct grants that don’t need to be paid back. 

Airlines don’t deserve a cent. The five biggest U.S. airlines spent 96 percent of their free cash flow over the last decade buying back shares of their own stock to boost executive bonuses and please wealthy investors.

United was so determined to get its windfall of taxpayer money that it threatened to fire workers if it didn’t get its way. Before the Senate bill passed, CEO Oscar Munoz wrote that “if Congress doesn’t act on sufficient government support by the end of March, our company will begin to…reduce our payroll….”

Airlines could have renegotiated their debts with their lenders outside court, or file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. They’ve reorganized under bankruptcy many times before. Either way, they’d keep flying.

The hotel industry says it needs $150 billion. The industry says as many as 4 million workers could lose their jobs in the coming weeks if they don’t receive a bailout. Everyone from general managers to housekeepers will be affected. But don’t worry – the layoffs won’t reach the corporate level.

Hotel chains don’t need a bailout. For years, they’ve been making record profits while underpaying their workers. Marriott, the largest hotel chain in the world, repurchased $2.3 billion of its own stock last year, while raking in nearly $4 billion in profits. 

Thankfully, Trump’s hotels and businesses, as well as any of his family members’ businesses, are barred from receiving anything from the $500 billion corporate bailout money. But the bill is full of loopholes that Trump can exploit to benefit himself and his hotels.

Cruise ships also want to be bailed out, and Trump called them a “prime candidate” to receive a government handout. But they don’t deserve it either. The three cruise ship corporations controlling 75 percent of the entire global market are incorporated outside of the United States to avoid paying taxes.

They’re floating tax shelters, paying an average U.S. tax rate of just 0.8 percent. Democrats secured key provisions stipulating that companies are only eligible for bailout money if they are incorporated in the United States and have a majority of U.S. employees, so the cruise ship industry likely won’t see a dime of relief funding. However, Trump has made it clear he still wants to help them.

The justification I’ve heard about why all these corporations need to be bailed out is they’ll keep workers on their payrolls. But why should we believe big corporations will protect their workers right now? 

The $500 billion slush fund included in the Senate’s emergency relief package doesn’t require corporations to keep paying their workers and has dismally weak restrictions on stock buybacks and executive pay. 

Even if the bill did provide worker protections, what’s going to happen to these corporations’ subcontractors and gig workers? What about worker benefits, pensions and health care? How much of this bailout is going to end up in the pockets of executives and big investors?

The record of Big Business isn’t comforting. Amazon, one of the richest corporations in the world, which paid almost no taxes last year, is only offering unpaid time off for workers who are sick and just two weeks paid leave for workers who test positive for the virus. Meanwhile, it demands its employees put in mandatory overtime.

Oh, and these corporations made sure they and other companies with more than 500 employees were exempt from the requirement in the first House coronavirus bill that employers provide paid sick leave.

And now, less than a month into statewide shelter-in-place orders and social distancing restrictions, Wall Streeters and corporate America’s chief executives are calling for supposedly “low-risk” groups to be sent back to work to restart the economy. 

They’re so concerned about protecting their bottom line that they’re willing to let people die to preserve their stock portfolios, all while they continue working from the safety and security of their own homes. It’s the most repugnant class warfare you can imagine.

Here’s the bottom line: no mega-corporation deserves a cent of bailout money. For decades these companies and their billionaire executives have been dodging taxes, getting tax cuts, shafting workers, and bending the rules to enrich themselves. There’s no reason to trust them to do the right thing with billions of dollars in taxpayer money. 

Every penny we have needs to go to average Americans who desperately need income support and health care, and to hospitals that need life-saving equipment. It’s outrageous that the Senate bill gave corporations nearly four times as much money as hospitals on the front lines. 

Corporate welfare is bad enough in normal times. Now, in a national emergency, it’s morally repugnant. We must stop bailing out corporations. It’s time we bail out people.

The Solutions to the Climate Crisis No One is Talking About

Both our economy and the environment are in crisis. Wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few while the majority of Americans struggle to get by. The climate crisis is worsening inequality, as those who are most economically vulnerable bear the brunt of flooding, fires, and disruptions of supplies of food, water, and power.

At the same time, environmental degradation and climate change are themselves byproducts of widening inequality. The political power of wealthy fossil fuel corporations has stymied action on climate change for decades. Focused only on maximizing their short-term interests, those corporations are becoming even richer and more powerful — while sidelining workers, limiting green innovation, preventing sustainable development, and blocking direct action on our dire climate crisis.

Make no mistake: the simultaneous crisis of inequality and climate is no fluke. Both are the result of decades of deliberate choices made, and policies enacted, by ultra-wealthy and powerful corporations.

We can address both crises by doing four things:

First, create green jobs. Investing in renewable energy could create millions of family sustaining, union jobs and build the infrastructure we need for marginalized communities to access clean water and air. The transition to a renewable energy-powered economy can add 550,000 jobs each year while saving the US economy $78 billion through 2050. In other words, a Green New Deal could turn the climate crisis into an opportunity - one that both addresses the climate emergency and creates a fairer and more equitable society.

Second, stop dirty energy. A massive investment in renewable energy jobs isn’t enough to combat the climate crisis. If we are going to avoid the worst impacts of climate change, we must tackle the problem at its source: Stop digging up and burning more oil, gas, and coal.

The potential carbon emissions from these fossil fuels in the world’s currently developed fields and mines would take us well beyond the 1.5°C increased warming that Nobel Prize winning global scientists tell us the planet can afford. Given this, it’s absurd to allow fossil fuel corporations to start new dirty energy projects.

Even as fossil fuel companies claim to be pivoting toward clean energy, they are planning to invest trillions of dollars in new oil and gas projects that are inconsistent with global commitments to limit climate change. And over half of the industry’s expansion is projected to happen in the United States. Allowing these projects means locking ourselves into carbon emissions we can’t afford now, let alone in the decades to come.

Even if the U.S. were to transition to 100 percent renewable energy today, continuing to dig fossil fuels out of the ground will lead us further into climate crisis. If the U.S. doesn’t stop now, whatever we extract will simply be exported and burned overseas. We will all be affected, but the poorest and most vulnerable among us will bear the brunt of the devastating impacts of climate change.

Third, kick fossil fuel companies out of our politics. For decades, companies like Exxon, Chevron, Shell, and BP have been polluting our democracy by pouring billions of dollars into our politics and bankrolling elected officials to enact policies that protect their profits. The oil and gas industry spent over $103 million on the 2016 federal elections alone. And that’s just what they were required to report: that number doesn’t include the untold amounts of “dark money” they’ve been using to buy-off politicians and corrupt our democracy. The most conservative estimates still put their spending at 10 times that of environmental groups and the renewable energy industry.

As a result, American taxpayers are shelling out $20 billion a year to bankroll oil and gas projects – a huge transfer of wealth to the top. And that doesn’t even include hundreds of billions of dollars of indirect subsidies that cost every United States citizen roughly $2,000 a year. This has to stop.

And we’ve got to stop giving away public lands for oil and gas drilling. In 2018, under Trump, the Interior Department made $1.1 billion selling public land leases to oil and gas companies, an all-time record – triple the previous 2008 record, totaling more than 1.5 million acres for drilling alone, threatening multiple cultural sites and countless wildlife. As recently as last September, the Trump administration opened 1.56 million acres of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil drilling, threatening Indigenous cultural heritage and hundreds of species that call it home.

That’s not all. The ban on exporting crude oil should be reintroduced and extended to other fossil fuels. The ban, in place for 40 years, was lifted in 2015, just days after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement. After years of campaigning by oil executives, industry heads, and their army of lobbyists, the fossil fuel industry finally got its way.

We can’t wait for these changes to be introduced in 5 or 10 years time — we need them now.

Fourth, require the fossil fuel companies that have profited from environmental injustice compensate the communities they’ve harmed.

As if buying-off our democracy wasn’t enough, these corporations have also deliberately misled the public for years on the amount of damage their products have been causing. 

For instance, as early as 1977, Exxon’s own scientists were warning managers that fossil fuel use would warm the planet and cause irreparable damage. In the 1980s, Exxon shut down its internal climate research program and shifted to funding a network of advocacy groups, lobbying arms, and think tanks whose sole purpose was to cloud public discourse and block action on the climate crisis. The five largest oil companies now spend about $197 million a year on ad campaigns claiming they care about the climate — all the while massively increasing their spending on oil and gas extraction.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans, especially poor, Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, already have to fight to drink clean water and breathe clean air as their communities are devastated by climate-fueled hurricanes, floods, and fires. As of 2015, nearly 21 million people relied on community water systems that violated health-based quality standards. 

Going by population, that’s essentially 200 Flint, Michigans, happening all at once. If we continue on our current path, many more communities run the risk of becoming “sacrifice zones,” where citizens are left to survive the toxic aftermath of industrial activity with little, if any, help from the entities responsible for creating it.

Climate denial and rampant pollution are not victimless crimes. Fossil fuel corporations must be held accountable, and be forced to pay for the damage they’ve wrought.

If these solutions sound drastic to you, it’s because they are. They have to be if we have any hope of keeping our planet habitable. The climate crisis is not a far-off apocalyptic nightmare — it is our present day.

Australia’s bushfires wiped out a billion animals, California’s fire season wreaks more havoc every year, and record-setting storms are tearing through our communities like never before. 

Scientists tell us we have 10 years left to dramatically reduce emissions. We have no room for meek half-measures wrapped up inside giant handouts to the fossil fuel industry. 

We deserve a world without fossil fuels. A world in which workers and communities thrive and our shared climate comes before industry profits. Working together, I know we can make it happen. We have no time to waste.

The pandemic is putting America’s deepening class divide into stark relief. Four classes are...

Corporations Will Not Save Us: The Sham of Corporate Social Responsibility

Last August, the Business Roundtable – an association of CEOs of America’s biggest corporations – announced with great fanfare a “fundamental commitment to all of our stakeholders” and not just their shareholders. 

They said “investing in employees, delivering value to customers, and supporting outside communities“ is now at the forefront of their business goals — not maximizing profits.

Baloney. Corporate social responsibility is a sham.

One Business Roundtable director is Mary Barra, CEO of General Motors. Just weeks after making the Roundtable commitment, and despite GM’s hefty profits and large tax breaks, Barra rejected workers’ demands that GM raise their wages and stop outsourcing their jobs. Earlier in the year GM shut its giant assembly plant in Lordstown, Ohio.

Nearly 50,000 GM workers then staged the longest auto strike in 50 years. They won a few wage gains but didn’t save any jobs. Barra was paid $22 million last year. How’s that for corporate social responsibility?

Another prominent CEO who made the phony Business Roundtable commitment was AT&T’s Randall Stephenson, who promised to use the billions in savings from the Trump tax cut to invest in the company’s broadband network and create at least 7,000 new jobs. 

Instead, even before the coronavirus pandemic, AT&T cut more than 23,000 jobs and demanded that employees train lower-wage foreign workers to replace them.

Let’s not forget Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon and its Whole Foods subsidiary. Just weeks after Bezos made the Business Roundtable commitment, Whole Foods announced it would be cutting medical benefits for its entire part-time workforce.

The annual saving to Amazon from this cost-cutting move is roughly what Bezos – whose net worth is $117 billion – makes in a few hours. Bezos’ wealth grows so quickly, this number has gone up since you started watching this video.

GE’s CEO Larry Culp is also a member of the Business Roundtable. Two months after he made the commitment to all his stakeholders, General Electric froze the pensions of 20,000 workers in order to cut costs. So much for investing in employees.  

Dennis Muilenburg, the former CEO of Boeing, also committed to the phony Business Roundtable pledge. Shortly after making the commitment to “deliver value to customers,” Muilenburg was fired for failing to act to address the safety problems that caused the 737 Max crashes that killed 346 people.  After the crashes, he didn’t issue a meaningful apology or even express remorse to the victims’ families and downplayed the severity of the fallout to investors, regulators, airlines, and the public. He was rewarded with a $62 million farewell gift from Boeing on his way out.

Oh, and the chairman of the Business Roundtable is Jamie Dimon, CEO of Wall Street’s largest bank, JPMorgan Chase. Dimon lobbied Congress personally and intensively for the biggest corporate tax cut in history, and got the Business Roundtable to join him. JPMorgan raked in $3.7 billion from the tax cut. Dimon alone made $31 million in 2018.

That tax cut increased the federal debt by almost $2 trillion. This was before Congress spent almost $3 trillion fighting the pandemic – and delivering a hefty portion as bailouts to the biggest corporations, many of whom signed the Business Roundtable pledge. 

As usual, almost nothing has trickled down to America’s working class and poor. 

The truth is, American corporations are sacrificing workers and communities as never before in order to further boost runaway profits and unprecedented CEO pay. And not even a tragic pandemic is changing that. 

Americans know this. A record 76 percent of U.S. adults believe major corporations have too much power. 

The only way to make corporations socially responsible is through laws requiring them to be – for example, giving workers a bigger voice in corporate decision making, requiring that corporations pay severance to communities they abandon, raising corporate taxes, busting up monopolies, and preventing dangerous products (including faulty airplanes) from ever reaching the light of day.  

If the CEOs of the Business Roundtable and other corporations were truly socially responsible, they’d support such laws, not make phony promises they clearly have no intention of keeping. Don’t hold your breath.  

The only way to get such laws enacted is by reducing corporate power and getting big money out of our politics.

The first step is to see corporate social responsibility for the sham it is. The next step is to emerge from this pandemic and economic crisis more resolved than ever to rein in corporate power, and make the economy work for all.