Over the course of 34 days in the spring of 2018, three unsettling crimes played out in the city of Bakersfield, California. The families of the three victims realized their children all knew each other and ran in the same circles, and they began to suspect that all three crimes were connected. But what began as a crusade for justice among grieving parents took a shocking turn when investigators discovered that the so-called Bakersfield 3 were embroiled in a criminal underworld of black-market weapons smuggling, the Hells Angels, unspecified ties to drug cartels, torture and kidnapping, and a convicted felon nicknamed “The Boogeyman of Bakersfield.”
This is a genuinely bizarre case, and while I’ve never written up a case for this sub before, I’ve been following this story closely for the past couple years. The last time it was mentioned on here over a year ago, but there have been some huge recent developments in the last year that I thought deserved as comprehensive a telling as possible. And despite all that, it's nowhere near resolved. So without further ado...
Part 1: Missing
On March 23,2018, Micah Holsonbake, 34, went missing in East Bakersfield near the intersection of Flower Street and Mount Vernon Avenue. Micah was a clean-cut dad who worked in finance, a former high school debater who loved karaoke despite not being any good at it. He was presumed endangered missing until August 22, 2018, when teenagers swimming near a local park found an arm in the Kern River that was identified as his. The rest of his body has never been found.
On April 18, 2018, James Kulstad, 38, was murdered on a quiet block in Southwest Bakersfield. A father of two daughters, James was a serial entrepreneur described as the type of man who “could sell a dollar bill on the side of the road for a million dollars if he could just get 5 minutes with you.” His brother Ryan heard the gunshots from the next street over, but didn’t see the shooter, and he claims he held James as he died in his arms.
On April 25, 2018, Baylee Parrent-Despot, 20, disappeared from Rosedale, the upper-middle-class neighborhood in Northwest Bakersfield where she’d grown up. Baylee described herself as a “flower child” who had been born in the wrong generation. After facing a number of serious challenges, she was struggling to get her life back on track, and was said to be pregnant and trying to leave her boyfriend when she went missing. She has never been heard from again.
Local media christened Micah, James, and Baylee the “Bakersfield 3” after the victims’ families discovered that all three victims knew one another. In the wake of the links between all three disappearances coming to light, Micah’s father told a local news reporter, “Just to be blunt, something happened to Micah… and a month later something happened to Baylee, and I think it’s because she knew what happened to Micah.” And in between them, there was James Kulstad, who ran in the same drug-fueled circles as Baylee and had helped Micah move just weeks before they both were killed. Bakersfield is a city of half a million people, but on a social level, it can feel as insular as any small town — you’re rarely more than one or two degrees removed from anyone you meet — and even in a city where everyone seems to know everyone, it’s hard to buy three friends all going missing within the space of a month by sheer coincidence. But as time went on with few official developments in the investigation, it seemed like people largely lost interest in the case by late 2019.
Then, in 2020, the Kern County District Attorney’s office charged three people with a total of 34 different charges, ranging from first degree murder, torture, kidnapping, assault with a firearm, and illegal manufacturing of assault weapons. Two of the defendants were already in custody — and the third may not even be alive.
Part 2: Some Local Context
By every metric, Bakersfield is just a flat-out terrible place to live. It’s my hometown, I left for a reason, and the reason is that it sucks. Kern County suffers from a slew of serious socioeconomic and public health problems, the largest of which is probably related to economic and income inequality. A fifth of the population is under the poverty line, and crime rates are sky-high, especially drug-related ones. Opioid abuse is rampant, though it still falls second to methamphetamine, the most widespread drug in the area. There’s a significant issue with white supremacist gang violence. When I was 16, my 70-year-old next-door neighbor got stabbed in a biker gang fight at a tattoo parlor by a Hells Angel called “Delano Mike.” A high school chemistry teacher was literally arrested for trying to make meth in his classroom three months before Breaking Bad even premiered. This is a region with a lot of serious problems that go deeper than any one symptom, but suffice it to say, there’s a reason I moved away as soon as I tuned 18.
The other thing you need to know is that despite being one of the most conservative cities in California, there’s a widespread distrust of law enforcement outside of the police and courts themselves — and, frankly, for good reason. Corruption in the justice system is widespread, and basically a local tradition dating back to the tenure of longtime district attorney Ed Jagels, perhaps best known for ramming through 36 false convictions of ritual child abuse at the height of the satanic panic. (34 were eventually overtured, and the other two people convicted died in prison and never saw justice.) Jagels’ history of prosecutorial misconduct is also the subject of Mean Justice, a 600-page doorstopper by Pulitzer-winning author Edward Humes about the wrongful conviction of Pat Dunn, who is currently serving a life sentence for the murder of his wife despite a wealth of evidence that would suggest his innocence. In 2002, Jagels’ protege, an assistant district attorney named Steve Tauzer, was murdered by a former Bakersfield police deputy, Chris Hillis, after Hillis allegedly learned that Tauzer had a sexual relationship with Hillis’ 22-year-old son, an addict in recovery; facing first-degree murder charges, he pled out to manslaughter and received a 12-year prison sentence.
In 2015, The Guardian published an in-depth exposé about how widespread corruption within the local law enforcement community led to Kern County having the highest rate of police killings in the country: the deadliest cops per capita. And over the past several years, the Kern County law enforcement community has been mired in a police corruption scandal in which members of the BPD abused asset forfeiture laws to illegally seize guns, drugs, and money from suspects, which they in turn trafficked for personal gain. All this is to say that Bakersfield cops and prosecutors have not engendered much public trust outside of their own communities. In a city with high rates of violent crime, law enforcement has consistently put its own interests above public safety, justice, or victims’ rights. That's just something to keep in mind while reading.
Part 3: Down the Rabbit Hole
Micah
In the weeks and months prior to Micah Holsonbake’s disappearance, his family could tell that something was troubling him. Lance and Cheryl Holsonbake both recalled their son behaving erratically in the days before he vanished. But none of it seemed to make any sense coming from someone like Micah, whose family described him as intelligent and hard-working. He had a comfortable upbringing in Rosedale and worked his way into a lucrative career as a financial advisor despite only one year of college. In the photo his family circulated following his disappearance, he wore the suit and tie and placid smile of someone posing for a corporate headshot. But Micah was going through a dark time following a rocky separation from his wife and family, and had been struggling with a painkiller addiction for the past two years. The year before, he’d been laid off from his job after going on disability leave due to depression.
According to court documents, Micah owed drug-related debts to members of the Hells Angels as well as “the cartel.” One friend of Micah’s told police his life seemed to be headed in a downward spiral after he lost the ability to see his son, and often got in fights with others at bars. In one witness statement, an unidentified woman told police of a prior incident when she and Holsonbake were kidnapped at gunpoint and driven to an orchard in west Bakersfield. Holsonbake bolted from the vehicle as it was moving, she told police. That account was corroborated by a friend of Holsonbake's who told police that he said he had been kidnapped at gunpoint. He told his parents that he feared for his life, frequently thought he was being followed in his car, and rambled about various people he believed were out to get him, but they mostly wrote it off.
James
Micah had been hanging around with James Kulstad for some time before he disappeared. It’s not clear when they first met, but it appears they become friendly through the drug scene. Like Micah, James first became addicted to prescription painkillers after being hit by a car, before progressing to fentanyl patches and eventually heroin. He’d been a single father to his daughters Camryn and August. His obituary characterized him as a free-wheeling surfer who held a patent for an action sports product and earned the nickname “Joe Vegas” for his love of gambling and table games. Camryn, now 19, says she and James had an especially close relationship after her mother died when Camryn was an infant, and James often warned her against getting involved with drugs and partying in a clear-headed way, which made it even harder to watch him spiral downward in the years before his death. “I felt like I lost him before I even lost him, but I worked so hard,” she told a reporter. “I was working so hard on everything I could do to make him get better… I was hanging onto hope and whoever killed him took that away from me. I don’t have that anymore, I don’t have hope.”
In the wake of her father’s death, Camryn says that a number of stories and rumors about his life surfaced, further complicating her grief. “Some of the stories I’ve heard is that he was a really bad person these last 3 years,” she said in 2019. On the night of his murder, James reportedly drove to an acquaintance’s home in Southwest Bakersfield where his brother Ryan Kulstad was hanging out. Ryan claims that the homeowner allegedly owed money to James and told Ryan that if James came over to his house, he’d “call his boys and they’d come over there strapped,” which Ryan says he didn’t interpret as a serious threat. Ryan and James reportedly argued about this on the phone, and James showed up at the house a couple hours later. Ryan says he had just returned from driving someone else home and noticed a driver in a silver sedan behaving suspiciously as he returned to the house. Moments later, Ryan and his unidentified male passenger heard gunshots on the next block: an unknown gunman opened fire on James from another car, causing him to crash into a parked trailer. The same silver sedan was seen speeding away from the scene.
The owner of the home where this all took place was Dr. Sukhjeet Bajwa, who at the time was a chiropractor with a local practice. Bajwa lived in a quiet subdivision in Southwest Bakersfield. It was an unlikely setting for a drive-by, and according to initial news reports, police were at a loss for the motive behind the killing, or what James was even doing in the neighborhood at all. Then things began to unravel: Bajwa, it turned out, had been arrested twice in 2016 and 2017 after driving while impaired, and in addition to liquid heroin, Xanax, and hydrocodone, police also found two unregistered, loaded guns in his car, an AR-15 and a .22LR semi-automatic rifle with a fake silencer attached. All of this was detailed in a disciplinary complaint filed by the California Board of Chiropractic Examiners, and after Bajwa’s name began repeatedly surfacing in connection with the shooting, a rumor began to circulate about a black-market gun and drug trafficking ring in which Bajwa was supposedly a central figure.
It was the type of conspiracy theory most people instinctively write off as too bizarre to be credible. But it must have rung a bell to Lance Holsonbake. Before Micah’s disappearance, he told his father that he was “putting together guns for people,” according to a 2019 interview. Lance said he reacted in disbelief to this confession, because the idea that Micah would risk his career by getting involved in illegal gun manufacturing just didn’t make sense. “If you’re this afraid, just stop,” Lance recalls telling him. “And he’d say, ‘I can’t do that I can’t do that.’ He was afraid he did that they would hurt his family.” He wrote it off as paranoia exaggerated by his son’s drug use, and didn’t know how much of it was real and how much was in Micah’s mind. According to Lance, Bakersfield police initially suggested that Micah had left town of his own volition after getting mixed up in criminal activity and, from what I can tell, didn’t make much of an effort to investigate. Though the family says he was last seen on March 23, 2018, Bakersfield police claimed he wasn’t reported missing until April 4, and it appears they waited until April 13, when he’d been missing for almost a month, before BPD made its first public statement regarding his disappearance. After James was murdered a few days later, the Holsonbake and Kulstad families grew increasingly frustrated with the apparent lack of interest in investigating either case, and told the media later that as they began digging into the circumstances surrounding both cases, one name kept coming up with everyone they talked to: Baylee Despot. And within a week, Baylee Despot had also gone missing in Bakersfield.
Baylee
Baylee Parrent-Despot was 20 years old when she was reported missing in April 2018, and the families say that it was her disappearance that finally motivated the police and local news to start investigating the links between all three cases, for reasons that seem obvious to anyone who has ever seen the media react to a pretty white 20-year-old going missing. Her sister, Katelyn Parrent, describes her as “a girl that’s grown up in a good neighborhood, raised by good parents, had a good childhood, could’ve had everything she ever wanted,” much like James and Micah. And beneath the surface, she was as troubled as either of the men: after graduating high school, she’d run off to Vegas to marry her boyfriend, but their rocky relationship turned into an abusive marriage that ended just a year later in 2017. In the aftermath, she wrecked her car, lost her job, and in her mother’s words, “Her life just spiraled out of control.”
In July 2017, Baylee was arrested for disorderly conduct in front of her friend Micah Holsonbake’s house. This came as a surprise to her sister, who had at one point been friendly with Micah herself — she didn’t realize he and Baylee even knew each other. But even though he was 14 years Baylee’s senior, Katelyn remembered him as a clean-cut guy who worked at a bank, and their mother, Jane Parrent, says Micah helped her get a restraining order against an abusive ex-boyfriend. They didn’t see any cause for concern. Still, Baylee’s life continued to spiral out of control. The following month, she was drugged and gang-raped at an acquaintance’s apartment complex. She disappeared for days at a time and resurfaced with “horrible stories” or pleading phone calls begging to be picked up. On one occasion, Katelyn remembers, “She had none of her belongings, no shoes… A couple nights after that there were two vehicles that came to pick her up and we could tell by the look on her face that she didn’t want to go, but if she didn’t go, we didn’t know what would happen.”
Matthew
Not long after that incident, Baylee had a new boyfriend. Matthew Queen was 43 years old, a convicted felon, and an all-around bad dude. Not much is known about his background, with one major exception: in the early 2000s, he plead guilty to one count of making a false statement to a federal firearms dealer after he used a false address, but his real name, to purchase $11,000 in guns from dealers in Indiana. Many of those guns were later recovered at crime scenes in Detroit and Chicago. If you want an idea of what type of criminal mastermind we’re dealing with here, I recommend reading just the final ruling on that case from the 7th Circuit court of appeals:

“We reject Queen's argument that gun buyers may lie about a street address so long as they live within the state where the gun is sold . . . Queen in fact had once lived in an apartment at 2072 Egret Court, but he did not live at this address when he completed the forms and bought the guns because he was evicted on December 18, 2000, for nonpayment of rent."

Great. Sounds like a great guy.
Lest you assume Matthew Queen might have hypothetically seen the error of his ways and cleaned up his act after this early foray into gunrunning, he absolutely did not. In December 2017, just a couple weeks into Matthew and Baylee’s relationship, they were arrested after police found four unmarked, unregistered, loaded assault rifles in Matthew’s car during a traffic stop. Neither he or Baylee said a word to the police, but while Matthew (who, as a convicted felon, was prohibited from carrying any guns or ammunition at all) was charged with several felonies, while Baylee pled no contest to a lesser misdemeanor and received three years probation. Later that month, she moved in with Matthew, his mother, and his estranged wife. Baylee’s family saw and heard even less from her. And in April, a month after Micah’s disappearance and just one day after she and Matthew attended a court date for the weapons charges, Baylee went missing. Her mother believed she was pregnant with Matthew’s child and was trying to leave him at the time. Matthew told police that she had connections through her father's side of the family with a Mexican drug cartel and believed they had something to do with her disappearance.
Local interest in the case reached an even greater frenzy after Micah’s severed arm was found in the Kern River in Hart Park on the east side of town, not far from from where he was last seen. It was positively identified in late December 2018. By this point, the family of the Bakersfield 3's investigation had amassed around 10,000 followers on Facebook and another 5,000 in a private group, and the story was a fixture on local news. Another curveball came around this time too, when a former friend of Baylee’s named Sara Wedemeyer, 21, filed a restraining order against Baylee’s mother, Jane Parrent. As it was reported, Sara had moved in with Matthew mere weeks after Baylee disappeared, and she was four months pregnant with his child when she attempted to take out legal action against Mrs. Parrent, whom she claimed was harassing her and her “fiancé” by hanging up missing person fliers in their neighborhood. The restraining order wasn't granted, but Queen allegedly began making disturbing social media posts about Baylee, Micah, and the Parrent family, with Mrs. Parrent as the primary target. And in mid-2019, the investigation seemed to grind to a halt.
Part 4: New Developments
On May 27, 2020, roughly two years after the first developments in the Bakersfield 3 case, the Kern County District Attorney held at a press conference to announce they believe Baylee Despot and Matthew Queen “deliberately and with premeditation" murdered Micah Holsonbake. Despot and Queen, along with a third man, Matthew Vandecasteele, were charged with the alleged kidnapping, torture, and first degree murder, as well as unlawful manufacturing of assault weapons, conspiracy relating to the murder and torture plot, and a slew of other assault and gun charges (34 in total). Queen and Vandacasteele were both in custody at the time the charges against them were filed, but even though Baylee still has not been seen or heard from since 2018, the DA’s office issued a warrant for her arrest, leading some to speculate she may still be alive.
According to court records, Matthew Queen allegedly believed that Micah Holsonbake had stolen a .44-caliber revolver from him. He and Baylee Despot kidnapped Micah, zip-tied him to a chair in Matthew Vandecasteele’s garage, and attempted to torture him in order to extract information from him. A blood stain in the garage matched Holsonbake’s DNA. Vandecasteele told police that he didn’t see or hear Micah on the night he was killed, but knew that the other two had brought him there to question him. After several hours, Baylee allegedly returned to the apartment seeming “flustered” and changed her clothes in a back bedroom. Before they left, “Queen told Vandecasteele that he had cleaned everything up and it was OK to go inside the garage.” The next day, Queen returned to Vandecasteele’s apartment and said he “needed help disposing of something” in a large black storage container in the trunk of his car. Vandecasteele claims he refused to help with disposing of the body, but according police reports, his Google history during that period of time included searches for “lye chemical formula,” “lye for sale” and “how long does it take to dissolve a human body,” as well as browsing for lye on the Home Depot and Lowe’s websites.
Queen, Despot, and Vandacasteele allegedly manufactured and sold AR-15s from gun build kits. Other witness testimony released by the courts described various kidnappings that witnesses allege Queen, known as “the boogeyman of Bakersfield,” committed. In one incident, Queen allegedly handcuffed one victim to a chair and put an electric dog collar around his neck because he believed the man had stolen a gun part from him. Another witness said that Queen and Vandacasteele showed up armed at his hotel room after the witness told Baylee where he was staying, and that he believed they intended to kill him because he’d been arrested “with a large quantity of narcotics that he was fronted or given without paying for them and the people who had gave him the narcotics could have been upset.” (According to the police report, surveillance footage from the hotel corroborates this account.)
It’s also believed that he made anonymous calls to the police tip line to misdirect the investigation away from himself: one such caller referred to Baylee as a “sugar momma,” a phrase which Queen reportedly used to describe her when he spoke to investigators in August 2019, and he also used the same pseudonym on the tip line that he did on social media. When police questioned him around this time, he denied being part of a criminal enterprise and claimed he could barely pay his bills. Then, while out on bail for unrelated gun charges in January 2019, Queen allegedly kidnapped another man at gunpoint and forced him to walk into the Kern River while Queen accused him of snitching to the cops. He’s been in custody since July of 2019 due to this kidnapping.
Part 5: No Body, No Crime
So where is Baylee Despot?
According to official statements from law enforcement, no one knows. After the warrant was issued for her arrest, a wave of speculation followed that she had faked her own death or fled to Mexico with the help of unspecified “cartel connections.” That story seems less and less likely as more details have emerged from court documents. Vandecasteele told the police that Despot was “falling apart mentally” after murdering Micah. He and Queen both suspected that she was cooperating with police on an investigation relating to the illegal weapons charges, called her a “snitch” in one interview, and told investigators he believed Queen “made her disappear.” In one interview, a female witness said Queen kidnapped her at gunpoint, took her to an orchard, and held an AR-15 to her head while he questioned her about whether Baylee was faithful to him.
When police questioned him about Baylee’s disappearance in July 2019, he said was depressed and off her medications, and she had said she wanted to die. When the investigator told Queen there had been allegations of domestic violence involving him and Baylee, some of which resulted in bruises, Queen said he never laid a hand on anyone. He told the detective she was clumsy. Despite all of this, Jane Parrent says that police have told her that they don’t consider Matthew Queen a person of interest in Baylee’s disappearance, and that there is "no known physical evidence that definitively confirms her possible death." She is now offering her own personally-funded $1000 reward for information about her daughter’s location.
The rest of Micah Holsonbake’s body has not been recovered, though according to court documents, investigators believe Queen may have buried him in the hills near Taft, a rural area about 45 minutes west of Bakersfield.
There have been no developments in the investigation of James Kulstad’s murder since 2018. Anyone with information is urged to contact the Bakersfield Police Department at (661) 327-7111, or the Kern Secret Witness program at (661) 322-4040. A reward of up to $10,000 is being offered for information leading to an arrest in this case.
Ultimately, what really frustrates me about this case is that even after this avalanche of charges, so many questions remain unresolved, and not just what happened and who did it, but why. If the investigation concluded that James Kulstad’s death was unrelated to the disappearances of Baylee and Micah, who ordered his murder, and what was the reason? To what extent was the chiropractor involved with Queen and Vandecasteele’s trafficking racket? Was Sara Wedemeyer involved with Baylee’s disappearance, and if not, how’d she end up living with Matthew and expecting his child just two months after her “friend” went missing? Why did Sara and Matthew harass Baylee’s mother for months after the disappearance?
More than anything, I’m still lost as to Baylee Despot’s motivation for any of this. Did she just find herself in too deep with no way out? Did she actively make the choice to become a gunrunner? Did Matthew, looking to settle a grudge against Micah, seek out a relationship with Baylee with the intention of using her to get to him? Did he kill her because she was cooperating with the cops, because she attempted to leave him, or because he was just a sociopath who felt she was no longer useful?
Or is there a chance that law enforcement knows more than they’ve let on? When investigators told Mrs. Parrent that Matthew isn’t a suspect in her disappearance, was that an indication that she may, in fact, be alive?
Probably not. But at this point, anything is possible.
Sources:

1. Baylee’s page on The Charley Project: https://charleyproject.org/case/baylee-cheyanne-despot
2. First news story about Micah Holsonbake’s disappearance, 4/13/20: https://www.bakersfield.com/news/breaking/man-reported-missing-april-has-medical-condition-family-says/article_8af62936-3f73-11e8-a82e-4b2ef30f031f.html
3. “Baylee Parrent-Despot reported missing for more than a month,” 6/8/18: https://www.turnto23.com/news/local-news/baylee-parrent-despot-reported-missing-for-more-than-a-month
4. “The Bakersfield 3: Reward offered in Baylee Despot case,” 9/18/18: https://www.kget.com/news/the-bakersfield-3-reward-offered-in-baylee-despot-case/
5. “Bakersfield 3 mothers recall their last contact with children,” news article dated 10/24/18 https://www.bakersfield.com/news/momma-loves-you-bakersfield-mothers-recall-their-last-contact-with/article_418f70a8-d7e0-11e8-ac3c-67a7fc8df3d1.html
6. “BPD: Missing man in Bakersfield 3 believed to have been killed, and his death shares similarities with disappearance of missing woman,” 10/20/18: https://www.bakersfield.com/news/breaking/bpd-missing-man-in-bakersfield-believed-to-have-been-killed/article_fbeb8eb4-04b8-11e9-bb07-17e07813288b.html
7. “Mother of missing woman fights harassment claims stemming from her daughter’s disappearance,” 12/18/18: https://www.kget.com/news/mother-of-missing-woman-fights-harassment-claims-stemming-from-her-daughters-disappearance/
8. “Micah Holsonbake dead; DNA test confirms arm found in river his,” 12/20/18: https://bakersfieldnow.com/news/local/bpd-believes-a-man-missing-since-march-was-murdered
9. “Stories behind the Bakersfield 3,” 12/20/18: https://www.kget.com/news/homicide-news/stories-behind-the-bakersfield-3/1669785945/
10. Ryan Kulstad appearance on Dr. Phil, 1/14/19: https://www.drphil.com/videos/a-young-man-describes-what-led-up-to-him-holding-his-older-brother-in-his-arms-as-he-died/
11. “A closer look at the Bakersfield 3: Where is Baylee Despot?,” 3/5/19: https://www.kget.com/news/local-news/domestic-violence/a-closer-look-at-the-bakersfield-3-where-is-baylee-despot/
12. “A closer look at the Bakersfield 3: Who killed James Kulstad?” 3/6/19: https://www.kget.com/news/a-closer-look-at-the-bakersfield-3-who-killed-james-kulstad/
13. “A closer look at the Bakersfield 3: What happened to Micah Holsonbake?” 3/7/19: https://www.kget.com/news/a-closer-look-at-the-bakersfield-3-what-happened-to-micah-holsonbake/
14. “One year later, mothers of Bakersfield 3 continue their search for answers,” 3/23/19: https://www.bakersfield.com/news/one-year-later-mothers-of-bakersfield-3-continue-their-search-for-answers/article_528a7650-4cfc-11e9-886c-23d55ec3c32d.html
15. “One year since death of James Kulstad, one of the 'Bakersfield 3’,” 4/8/19: https://www.turnto23.com/news/local-news/one-year-since-death-of-james-kulstad-one-of-the-bakersfield-3
16. “Mother of missing Baylee Despot speaks out on arrest of kidnapping suspect Matthew Queen,” 7/15/19: https://www.kget.com/news/local-news/mother-of-missing-baylee-despot-speaks-out-on-arrest-of-kidnapping-suspect-matthew-queen/
17. “Investigating the mysteries of what happened to the Bakersfield 3,” 11/3/19: https://www.turnto23.com/news/crime/investigating-the-mysteries-of-what-happened-to-the-bakersfield-3
18. “Defendant in alleged kidnapping waives right to preliminary hearing,” 11/9/19: https://www.bakersfield.com/news/defendant-in-alleged-kidnapping-waives-right-to-preliminary-hearing/article_b5a3274c-00c4-11ea-a1e9-635cd4a35c9e.html
19. “More charges filed against accused kidnapper Matthew Queen,” 1/1/20: https://www.kget.com/news/crime-watch/more-charges-filed-against-kidnapping-suspect-matthew-queen/
20. Press release announcing charges filed against Queen, Despot, and Vandacasteele: https://www.kerncounty.com/home/showpublisheddocument?id=4595
21. “Matthew Queen makes a court appearance in connection to 'Bakersfield 3' case,” 6/12/20: https://www.turnto23.com/news/crime/matthew-queen-make-a-court-appearance-in-connection-to-bakersfield-3-case
22. “‘Bakersfield 3’ member Micah Holsonbake believed killed by Matthew Queen over alleged stolen gun, defendant says in court documents,” 6/18/20: https://www.kget.com/news/crime-watch/bakersfield-3-member-micah-holsonbake-was-killed-by-matthew-queen-over-alleged-stolen-gun-defendant-says-in-court-documents/
23. “Documents suggest Micah Holsonbake was afraid of suspect Matthew Queen; suggest Queen attempted to mislead investigation,” 6/17/20: https://www.turnto23.com/news/crime/documents-suggest-micah-holsonbake-was-afraid-of-suspect-matthew-queen-suggest-queen-attempted-to-mislead-investigation
24. “Documents detail depth of investigation into suspected murder of Bakersfield 3 member,” 6/19/20: https://www.bakersfield.com/news/documents-detail-depth-of-investigation-into-suspected-murder-of-bakersfield-3-membearticle_ac1fb9a4-b278-11ea-962b-6b8ee0b03647.html
25. “Bakersfield 3 update: Matthew Queen appears in court, pleas not guilty to all charges,” 6/11/20: https://bakersfieldnow.com/news/local/bakersfield-3-update-matthew-queen-appears-in-court-pleas-not-guilty-to-all-charges
26. “‘Bakersfield 3’ member Micah Holsonbake was afraid of murder suspect Matthew Queen, became increasingly paranoid before he disappeared, documents say,” 6/17/20
27. Appellate court decision against Matthew Queen: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F3/408/337/509670/
28. Obituary of James Kulstad: https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/bakersfield/obituary.aspx?n=james-john-kulstad&pid=188771330&fhid=6140

The cannabis market right now is so similar to the start of the green energy market.. its nowhere near done being bullish. Save for some small dips, there will very likely be a huge bullish trend for 2021. EVEN NASDAQ AGREES. I’ve posted my positions a few times, and I’ll continue to do so. But this is my reasoning for investing in cannabis stocks in general for 2021.

• I've been a bull on cannabis since the democrats had a strong pro-cannabis platform. But what made me go balls deep into the market was that the UN changed its classification of cannabis. Countries follow the UN closely for guidance on their own classification of controlled substances. Congress has repeatedly cited the UN’s classification as one of the reasons for not changing it. Several countries immediately changed their stance on cannabis in response to this, including Israel, which In November 2020, announced that it was moving forward with a plan to legalize recreational cannabis nationally. “The country is aiming to implement recreational legalization within nine months, and even if there are delays, that means mid-to-late 2021.” (This is my reason for investing in Canadian cannabis companies, because they are already poised to expand internationally since its legal there nationwide)

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• THE SENATE IS NOW BLUE! The Georgia runoffs were won by Democrats, and they can now swing the vote left with VP Harris. She promised it as part of her platform, so we know it will be prioritized. CHUCK SHUMER SPONSORED THE MORE ACT. HE WILL BE SENATE MAJORITY LEADER. IT WILL 100% BE PRIORITIZED BETWEEN HIM AND VP HARRIS.

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• EVERYONE predicted beforehand that the republicans would win Georgia... everyone talked down decriminalization passing the house because of they believed it would NEVER pass the republican majority senate. But the left spent more than any senate race in history to encourage voters to go out and vote. Only once the race started did it become clear that the left had a chance. Then some gains from the surprise that they won. However the gains from 1/5 onwards definitely hasn’t been priced in for all the future legislation, because some of it will be completely new legislation that wasn’t possible to consider before without a blue senate. THIS HASN'T BEEN PRICED INTO THE MARKET YET.

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• The SAFE BANKING ACT has bipartisan support, and is likely to pass BEFORE decriminalization because it is tied into some stimulus bills.

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• The government is broke post-COVID. There is a terrible image of the police. They don’t want to waste more resources on cannabis related crimes that would be fixed under decriminalization. And the tax revenue from decriminalization would be significant. Decriminalization (THE MORE ACT) opens up the borders to interstate-commerce and international import/export. This would all trickle down into Uncle Sam’s empty pockets.

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• New York Governor Cuomo announced on Jan 6 his plan to legalize marijuana for adult use (right after New Jersey vote, as I anticipated in my last post) as part of his State of the State agenda. The next step is a ripple out on the North East. NY didn’t want to miss out on tax revenue, neither will any of the other states in the northeast within driving distance of NJ and NY. This is Cuomo’s third attempt in three years to legalize adult-use cannabis in the state; last year, Cuomo included a legalization proposal in his state budget, but the plan was ultimately cut in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Other ongoing state legislature:

• Rhode Island: Regulators have received 45 applications for six new medical cannabis dispensary licenses in the state. If all applicants meet the requirements for a license, six will randomly be selected in a lottery to operate retail locations in different regions across the state. Read more
• Missouri: Rep. Shamed Dogan has filed legislation that would place an adult-use cannabis legalization measure on the state’s 2022 ballot. Meanwhile, Missourians for a New Approach has announced plans for a separate 2022 ballot initiative after an unsuccessful signature campaign to get the issue before voters in 2020. Read more
• Alabama: Sen. Tim Melson plans to reintroduce a medical cannabis legalization bill this year. Medical cannabis legislation passed the Alabama Senate during the 2020 session, but failed to clear the House. Read more
• Illinois: Illinois lawmakers have proposed the creation of 75 new cannabis retail licenses to give disadvantaged and minority applicants a second chance at licensing following the controversial licensing lottery to issue an initial 75 dispensary licenses. A work group made up of lawmakers and members of Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s administration met this week to finalize details of the bill, which will be introduced in a lame-duck session that starts Jan. 8, before new lawmakers are sworn in Jan. 13. Read more
• Minnesota: House Majority Leader Ryan Winkler is again renewing his push to legalize adult-use cannabis in the state, announcing plans to reintroduce a legalization bill this year. Winkler told WCCO that he sees “Senate leadership as being the number one obstacle,” but said that if lawmakers agreed to place an adult-use legalization initiative on Minnesota’s 2022 ballot, “it would pass overwhelmingly.” Read more
• Virginia: Del. Steve Heretick has reintroduced a bill to legalize adult-use cannabis. Heretick has proposed legislation related to decriminalization and legalization in the past, and this year’s bill would legalize the cultivation, sale and consumption of cannabis in the state. Read more
• Connecticut: Gov. Ned Lamont renewed his push for adult-use legalization during his State of the State address Jan. 6, announcing that it is a priority for the new legislative session. Connecticut’s 2021 legislative session opened Jan. 6, and Lamont, a Democrat, kicks off the session with increased majorities in the House and Senate, which could increase his chances of passing an adult-use legalization bill. Read more

Now that you understand why I’m going green, here’s my reasoning for my positions.
TLRY (Tilray)

• largest cannabis company in the world by revenue post merger. Will run out of Seattle and New York City. New York Legalization on top of senate turning blue is a big catalyst for TLRY.
• Merger hasn’t completed yet, and the merger happened before the senate went blue.. that was the gamble APHA was making, and they won. The sky is the limit now. When they merge, they will reduce expenses and be much more likely to post profitable quarters. (This is why mergers have so much hype; the sum is > than their parts because they can reduce operating expenses while maintaining revenue from the two companies)
• Tilray CEO Brendan Kennedy: “I think medical cannabis will be legal at the federal level, which means medical cannabis can cross state lines and be imported into the U.S., like we export cannabis from Canada and Portugal to about 15 countries now,” Kennedy said. “Anyone who thinks there’s a state-specific medical market is wrong.” As for the recreational market, Kennedy says the state-specific markets, with interstate trade banned, “are not going to last long.” Kennedy believes that cannabis will be distributed like alcohol and tobacco within two years’ time. That would require significant overhaul of US federal drug laws—and would significantly disrupt all US cannabis companies’ existing business models. Brendan Kennedy, the cannabis billionaire will step down as Tilray's chairman and CEO. Irwin D. Simon, Aphria's current chairman and CEO will take Kennedy's place.
• [On December 18, 2020, just three days after the U.S. Senate adopted the Cannabidiol and Marihuana Research Expansion Act (CMREA or the Act) (more on this below), the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA or the Administration) published in the Federal Register a final rule, “Controls To Enhance the Cultivation of Marihuana for Research in the United States” (Rule), which finally paves the way for DEA to issue additional licenses to grow “marihuana” (i.e., cannabis) for research purposes.](https://www.jdsupra.com/legalnews/on-heels-of-senate-s-adoption-of-36129/)

GNLN (Greenlane Holdings)

• One of the largest global sellers of premium cannabis accessories. Pax/JUUL/Volcano products. I’ve had Pax products, and although I prefer Arizer because of the affordability, I can’t deny Pax has quality products and is like the “iPhone” of vaporizers. I like their products, I like their branding. There’s lots of hype and loyalty, especially with their Volcano desktop vaporizer.
• Strong US brands.
• The main reason they did poorly was bad timing. They IPO’d during the year that JUULs started being banned. They’re actually at all those levels again. Theres a ton of upside potential.
• Market cap is ridiculously low for some really renown brands all because of the JUUL flavor pod ban. Everyone knows Pax, Volcano, and JUUL. But no one knows Greenlane because of the bad timing of their IPO and the subsequent JUUL flavor ban. It’s crazy. They’ve already broke all time high for the year. But I’m holding until they break 1B market cap.
• Recently became the exclusive distributor for the world's first gravity powered contactless water hookah.
• Overall i think too many people count it out just because of their IPO and subsequent decline in JUUL sales from the JUUL flavored pods ban. They definitely have the potential because of their strong branding and quality products. I’m betting on them having more high quality products in the future with equally loyal customers.

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SNDL (Sundial Growers)

• SNDL must close above $1 per share for 10 consecutive sessions by June 26, 2021 or it will be delisted from NASDAQ. People see this as a fear factor, I see this as “they will do anything necessary to reach $1 for a week so they won’t be delisted”.. IMHO reverse splitter probably isn’t on the table since they could have done that in 2020, but instead applied for a 6 month extension after announcing “alternative strategic investments”. We can already see this by their predatory loan SPAC spinoff.
• Rumors of a merger with CGC; SNDL also purchased a SPAC recently and entered an agreement with Zenabis, immediately claiming they defaulted. Turning that SPAC into predatory loan/debt repurchasing company. Imo if they want to complete a merger, it would be easy to sell ownership through that SPAC to the buyer.
• THEY RECENTLY WENT DEBT FREE by selling off unprofitable assets in the business. This means we are much more likely to see earnings in future quarters, and they are much more attractive for mergers.
• Because they are indoor growers, they are more likely to be bought up by a company in the consolidating Canadian cannabis market than fail all together. The amount of space licensed to grow cannabis in Canada is now heavily skewed toward outdoor cultivation instead of indoor for the first time, according to new data from Health Canada. A growing population of licenses for outdoor growers means that there aren’t as many indoor licenses being given out... If a company ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD wants to quickly expand into indoor growing OR into the west, they would have to purchase an existing company that has the license to quickly do so. This is WAY faster, and a guaranteed way to obtain a license rather than applying for one and waiting x amount of months and be rejected for some requirement that wasn’t met.
• From my own experience, outdoor cannabis is subpar quality to indoor grown cannabis. So a growing market for outdoor cannabis doesn’t necessarily mean its better... it is likely just cheaper. I would imagine a high quality “craft cannabis” company would want to purchase SNDL, or an existing outdoor growing company that wants to quickly expand to indoor grown cannabis. With this being a Canadian company, there’s a chance a company in another country like Israel would be interested in purchasing it in the near future.

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PLNHF (Planet 13 Holdings)

• Biggest tourist trap in Las Vegas if you’re a stoner, casual smoker, or just wanting to try it. From my own experience, I think they will continue to be successful. If I went around the US trying other brands I’d probably be more confident in putting 5-10% of my portfolio into those picks or choosing to not include them lol. Like for example, I used to have Curaleaf. But there's tons of bad feedback on Curaleaf, a friend has tried it said the nug is really subpar quality and if I tried their nug I’d probably confirm that I wouldn’t want to invest in them. With PLNHF, i’ve seen the ambience and tried the product myself. It’s definitely a lot of hype price wise, but still quality. This is my own bias showing, but I still think they’ve got solid fundamentals and excellent location/strong US branding.

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I’m well aware of other good stocks like GTBIF, CRLBF, SSPK, TCNNF, GRWG.. but these stocks haven’t been swinging as hard in response to pro-cannabis news. E.g. TLRY, SNDL, GNLN swung more than 20% some days from pro-cannabis news...I will likely reduce my current positions shortly after inauguration, after some news about the timeline for cannabis legislation, and diversify my positions more between these other good picks.
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2021 is the year of cannabis boys

UPDATE: We opened and maxed out a Roth IRA and we're buying a property to rent out/move into when we're ready!
My husband and I made $76,436 last year (after taxes) and I got a $5,000 raise (pre taxes) at the end of the year! We keep the bulk of our money in a joint savings account, but we each have a checking account which we keep some money in for bills and other expenses. I am only reporting on my daily expenses, since I have no idea what he spends day-to-day (although, I think it’s less than I do)!
Assets and Debt
Retirement Balance: $9,468 (my employer and I each put 6% into my 403b)
Savings Account Balance: $82,585 (we really need to do something with this money)
Checking Account Balance: $7,230
Debt: None! I am very proud of this because I graduated from college with a lot of debt. I put everything I earned toward my loans for a long time and my husband helped, too.
Other Investments: We have some cryptocurrency. In my husband’s defense, this was before we were married, but… yeah, this wasn’t my idea. I hope the market bounces back so I don’t have to die mad about it. Lol
Savings Contribution: We each contribute $500 per month into our savings account and occasionally dump extra money into that account, too. We tend to put any and all “extra” money (tax return, mileage and expense reimbursement, gambling winnings, etc.) into our savings account. We also contribute to this account every time we accumulate “too much” in our individual checking accounts.
Income
I make $55,000 per year plus a $5000 bonus pre-tax. I am underpaid for my experience and position, but I’ve been pushing for a raise every year to fix this. My husband isn’t salaried, but he makes roughly $35,000 per year before taxes. He was furloughed for a few months due to COVID, but we’re still projected to make more this year than we did last year.
Paycheck: I bring home $1,655 every other week. My husband’s paycheck is less consistent.
Expenses
Cellphone: We pay for my mama and our bill is $190/month. I pay this one!
Subscriptions: We have the usual stuff — Amazon Prime ($99/year), Netflix ($8.99), Hulu ($11.99), and Spotify (9.99/mo.). We also belong to a fish CSA, which costs us a couple hundred dollars a year depending on which plan we’re on at any given moment. It’s the bomb. I pay these bills, too. We sometimes pay way too much ($60.99) for Hulu Live TV. Mostly during football season.
Pet Expenses: We spend a lot of money on hay. The rabbit costs us ~$40 per month or so.
Charitable Giving: As a nonprofit director, supporting our local nonprofits is hugely important to me. My husband keeps my giving in check and we give about $1,000 per year.
We are incredibly lucky to have minimal expenses. Our apartment is free thanks to a part time job managing the building we live in! We are also unlucky in that I have an expensive medical condition, so maybe it all evens out? Speaking of, my employer covers my health insurance and my husband is uninsured.
My husband and I split the bills (we each pay out of our separate accounts) and he handles our car insurance. I pay more of the bills, but he picks up the tab more often when we grab food out.
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Day One: Sunday
9:30 AM I wake up late, but get to spend a little time with my husband before he goes to work. I drink a cup of decaf coffee and pet our rabbit.
10:00 AM My husband rushes off to work. I switch to ice water and log a couple hours of work. I’ve been working on Sundays this summer since time seems like a pre-covid concept anyway.
12:00 PM I pop down to a local smoothie place and grab a beet smoothie for lunch. This is unusual for me. While my husband thinks smoothies are an adequate meal, I do not. But today, I was feeling a beet smoothie and it is nice to walk downtown for a bit. $8.05
12:30 PM I hop into my car and drive over to my office to grab the mail! I am going for a hike today and my office is on the way! I grab the mail and head to the mountains! The drive is long, but absolutely gorgeous. While hiking I snack on some almonds and cashews that are always in my pack.
6:30 PM I am about halfway home after an amazing hike and stopping to grab gas! I’m still working from home, so I am driving less, but with all this hiking it feels like a lot and my car has an itty bitty gas tank so it feels like I am buying gas constantly. $17.16
7:30 PM I am home and I am hungry! I whip up some spaghetti and “meatballs”. We choose to eat pescatarian most of the time, so I use frozen vegetarian “meatballs” and load it up with nutritional yeast in lieu of cheese. (All the beef jerky we’re going to eat while hiking is uncharacteristic, I swear!) I settle in to watch some Married at First Sight while I eat. I am a total sucker for weird love stories.
8:30 PM I give the rabbit her salad, play with her a bit, and do the dishes. More television and phone scrolling before bed.
Daily Total: $25.21
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Day Two: Monday
8:00 AM I am up and drinking a cup of decaf and petting the rabbit (petting her is the bulk of my morning and night routine). I feel bad when I need to stop and get to work! My work has always been flexible with a decent amount of remote work, but it definitely feels different during the pandemic. I have a couple phone calls and virtual meetings this morning.
12:00 PM I peer into the refrigerator and see my husband left behind his Thai food and I scored a free lunch! While I eat, I put some thought into what I’ll need for dinner tonight. Earlier this year we signed up for a fish CSA, so every Friday we pick up a pound of surprise fish! This is probably the most expensive and most awesome thing I’ve ever done for our diet. It has also been a total blast for me as a cook. I had haddock in the freezer and I want to make fish tacos for dinner.
12:30 PM I have a doctor’s appointment this afternoon, so I head over. I pay my copay over the phone when I check in. $15.00
1:30 PM Doctor’s appointment went well. I need to get my good cholesterol up a bit, but the fish and hiking should help! I need to get something notarized, so I head over to my bank before hitting the grocery store to grab everything I need for fish tacos. We hit the grocery store at least once per day. Our closest grocery store is a two-minute walk and so, for now, shopping this way works for us. We’re also low on leafy greens for the rabbit, so I grab some things for her. $18.86
3:00 PM When I get home, I whip up the marinade for the fish and let it marinade in the refrigerator until dinner time. Back to work for a while!
6:30 PM I am done with work, my husband is home, and I am ready to throw dinner together. I throw the fish in the oven, whip up the spicy slaw, and heat the tortillas. We’ve been gravitating toward recipes that call for hot peppers because we grew an abundance of jalapenos and habaneros this year! We split a beer with dinner.
7:30 PM We finish our beer outside while we chat and we head out to take a walk downtown. On the way home, we hit the grocery store (again) for fruit. I like something sweet after dinner and lately it’s been fruit. We grab some strawberries, grapes, nectarines, and a ripe pluot. My husband pays. When we get home, we eat some fruit, play with the rabbit, and do some laundry before settling in in front of the television.
Daily total: $33.86
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Day Three: Tuesday
9:00 AM I am working late tonight, so I am in no rush to get started. I pet the rabbit for a while as I sip on my decaf coffee, scroll my phone, and chat with my husband.
10:00 AM I switch over to iced coffee and settle down in front of my laptop and get some work done.
12:00 PM I pop over to the grocery store to grab lunch and some snacks for the hikes we have planned for the week. We try to keep it simple and pack beef jerky, apples, and goldfish. I grab myself some grocery store sushi for lunch — our grocery store has an awesome sushi chef on site! I also grab a bag of coffee because we’re getting low. $38.70
12:30 PM Time to get back to work! I have a pile of papers on my kitchen table I am finally going to sort…
3:00 PM I take a quick break to make a 100 calorie bag of popcorn (this is my favorite snack and I keep them around all the time) and get distracted long enough to buy a hiking guidebook. $28.94
7:30 PM I’m finally done with work for the day! I have leftover fish tacos for dinner. I clean up the kitchen, pack for hiking, and settle in for some unwind time before bed.
Daily total: $67.64
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Day Four: Wednesday
9:00 AM I am up and petting the rabbit while sipping on a cup of decaf coffee and scrolling my phone/talking with my husband. We’re going hiking today and I am excited! My office is closed on Fridays during the summer, but I opt to work on Fridays and use my comp time on a day my husband is also off, hence a Wednesday hike!
10:00 AM We’re off and we stop for bagels and cream cheese (my favorite pre-hike breakfast) and an iced decaf coffee. My husband pays.
5:30 PM We’re home just in time to head to our volleyball game. Yes, it is weird that our volleyball league is running despite the pandemic.
7:30 PM I pop into the grocery store to grab tofu and cabbage for a late dinner. I also snag a pack of dish gloves while I am there and pop into the drugstore next door to grab a glass tupperware. We have a plastic tupperware nearing retirement and I’ve been replacing them with glass along the way. I do find $0.51 on the sidewalk, so that counts toward my Money Diary, right? I am big on picking up change for the change jar! We’re big cash users (or we were pre-COVID) and we love cashing out our change jar when it's full. $30.34
8:00 PM We’re home. I make dinner while my husband does the dishes. We take turns taking showers while dinner is cooking. I roast the cabbage and the tofu and make a quick garlicky, spicy sauce to go with it. Finally, we settle in for some television and more petting the rabbit (which is starting to sound like a euphemism at this point).
Daily total: $30.34
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Day Five: Thursday
9:30 AM I sleep late again and I wonder if this isn't late, but rather my new normal. It’s been a weird pandemic. Coffee, rabbit, phone, chat with husband.
10:30 AM I have to work late tonight again, so I am in no rush to get started but I grab my laptop and start checking things off my to-do list.
1:00 PM I am hungry so I pause to eat a frozen Amy’s burrito. I love these burritos because, while they aren’t the healthiest part of my diet (hello, sodium), they keep me full forever so they’re perfect for those days when I’m not sure when dinner will be.
4:00 PM I’m off to a work event. The event is outside and everyone will be wearing masks, but I’m still a little anxious. This is the first time I’ve gathered with other humans for proper networking since early March.
6:30 PM I am home and done with work! I had some cheese, crackers, and fruit at the event, so I’m not very hungry, but I want some vegetables for dinner. Luckily I found green beans in the freezer! I eat and unwind. Insert normal nighttime routine here.
Daily total $0
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Day Six: Friday
7:45 AM I have a meeting this morning, so I am awake. Usual morning routine commences: rabbit gets pets and a salad, I get decaf coffee.
8:30 AM My morning meeting starts. I follow up my meeting with more work.
11:00 AM A friend comes over because my husband and I are helping her with a creative project — this is a super fun break from work.
12:30 PM I am starving, so we head downtown to grab sandwiches for lunch. My treat. $17.85
1:30 PM Back to work! I have one more meeting before I can call it the weekend. I am exhausted and my capacity to focus is definitely reduced by all this working from home.
5:30 PM Calling it a day! I had a couple important things I needed to wrap up and I am psyched to be done. I am starving and exhausted and I don’t know whether to eat or nap first… I decided to snack on a mini bag of popcorn while I decide what I want for dinner. My husband is at work and I’m feeling something fancy, so I land on sweet potato gnocchi with mushrooms and kale. Sweet potatoes, mushrooms, and kale may be my favorite vegetables — they are certainly the ones I cook with the most! I head to the grocery store and grab everything I’ll need for dinner. While I’m there, I also grab fruit since I am out, frozen burritos and meatless meatballs for the freezer, and snacks for tomorrow’s hike. $36.53
8:00 PM Dinner is done, the kitchen is a mess, and I am ready to unwind. I have a plum for dessert, which prompts the rabbit to hop onto the couch and see if she can’t steal a bit of fruit. I cave because she’s cute.
Daily total $54.38
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Day Seven: Saturday
8:45 AM I am up and it’s the usual: pet the rabbit, drink coffee, scroll phone until I am awake enough to get ready for today’s hike! My husband works really late on Friday nights, so I always let him sleep as late as he wants on Saturdays.
10:30 AM He slept really late today. While he is sleeping, I pick out a closer mountain.
11:30 AM We’re off! We stop for gas and food. He grabs bagels and cream cheese (my favorite pre-hike eats) and I fill up the gas tank. $18.09
7:00 PM We hiked for far longer than we had planned, but we had a blast. On the way home, we stop at the grocery store to grab cauliflower and some rice for dinner. Yesterday we picked up our weekly fish order, so we’re having fish for dinner tonight! $5.08
7:30 PM We’re home! We take turns showering, eat dinner, pet the rabbit, and I fall asleep super early.
Daily total $23.17
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Weekly Total and Breakdown
Weekly total: $234.60
Food: $155.41
Fuel: $35.25
Other (hiking guidebook and doctor’s appointment): $43.94
Reflections
This was a pretty typical week. Since COVID, anyway. I’ve spent a lot less money since the pandemic began. Before the pandemic, we went out to eat a lot more and I was so busy at work I had lunch on-the-go constantly. I also haven’t bought any clothes since the pandemic. I don’t really see the point since I don’t really get dressed anymore.
I struggled with money for a long time and it wasn’t until I was 28 that I started to feel like I was getting my stuff together, but I am ready to level up and do something with our savings. Our (ehem, his) lack of retirement savings is definitely my biggest source of worry. And since I know someone will say it, we get how lucky we are for our living situation. Median rent in my area is over $1,500, so managing the building in exchange for our housing is a well paying part time job.

As the title says, the reason I made this post it's because I got in low priority 2 times in a row having conduct summary update with 0<3 reports. First I will tell you the story of how it happened and after that I wanna show you real facts about few glitches I found in this current system.

• It all happened after I got in low priority because I got 6 reports. Fair enough, I deserved that one. After I got out of low priority in around 9 single draft games, I started to play ranked again. After 6 games I got the conduct summary update again with 0-3 reports and for some reason I got in low priority again.
• So I removed my low priority penalty in 11 SD games this time. I started queuing for ranked again and I felt something was wrong since my first queue time was around 30 minutes. I played 2 ranked games after that, in both my teammates were flaming each other from the first minute but that didn't stopped me to focus and win both games and while getting 4 commends. After that I decided to play turbo to raise my behavior score without having any impact on my MMR.
  
• So there I am queuing in turbo for 30 mins. After I found a game with obviously very low rank and mad people which were flaming each other for their previous game, I ended up playing pos5 Ancient Apparition. As soon as my divine 5 carry died for the first time, I started to get mass pinged and I didn't knew why. I told him to calm down because it's only a turbo game and after his second death he started pinging me again and there I realized I have to stop chatting at all for the rest of the game. After I finished the game I got commended 3 times so I guess the carry reported me for whatever reason. I took a break after that game and when I came to the PC, a new surprise was waiting for me. Another summary update with 0<3 reports and this time not only that I got into low priority and drastically behavior score loss but also 7 days ban.
  
• I was so frustrated I didn't know what's happening so I started to look for the reason I got low priority again and I checked my report history using this site ( @CLICK HERE )
  And what I saw made complete non sense for me because I am pretty familiar with this stats and I knew instantly that something is not right.
  

Let me start by explaining for everyone how the conduct summary and overall report system works.

• Conduct Summary updates every 15 games. It also updates for 2 other reasons that are called "Excessive Reports" or

"Excessive Abandons". Usually the minimum reports in order to get low priority is 6 match reports. Well the problem with this comes from SINGLE DRAFT games which have weird interactions with the summary update. They trigger the Conduct summary update, they look like they count for it , but in those games you can't get either commended or reported and also they don't increase your behavior. Because of a bug, they also "hide" your real stats for your last 15 games window.**

Based on this site, I wanna tell you something about the main categories that impact your behavior score the most.

Those numbers are pretty accurate, I spent a lot of time looking at my stats over the past 2 years on multiple accounts and I think I finally understand them pretty well.

• Excessive Reports: 6 or more
• Excessive Abandons: 2 ore more
• Positive Matches: Matches where you don't get reported which slightly increase your behavior.
• Reported Matches: Matches where you get reported which drastically decrease your behavior.
• Reports: Overall reports in last 15 games.
• Commends: Commends in last 15 games.
• Behavior Score: From 0 to 10.000.

 

So, after I analyzed a lot of summary updates, I can finally assume that:

• 1 Positive Match = +50 Behavior score
• 1 Reported Match = -200 Behavior score

 

I don't have an exact amount for reports and commends but for sure their impact are way lower then the other two.
There is the photo ( @CLICK HERE ) with my last conduct summary updates. (Look first for those from 4631 behavior score to 5389) because after the red line it's actually the glitch happening because of those single draft games. Let's make quick math's based on the numbers I shared.

• from 4631 to 5389.(+758). 15PM - 0RM = +750 Behavior score
• from 5389 to 5959.(+570). 4PM - 1RM = 700 - 200 = +500 Behavior score
• from 5959 to 5389 (-570). 10PM - 5RM = 500 - 1000 = -500 Behavior score

 

As you can see, using those values, the result is pretty close to the real one, usually +/- 100 from the actual result.

(the small difference between results will be made by reports and commends.)
 

Everyone that have lower then 10k behavior and played only solo ranked games can calculate their summaries using those numbers. The exception is when you have "Excessive reports" and you are going to play penalty games, because those will actually bug your next conduct summary.

For the numbers after the red line you can see there is complete nonsense. I'm losing almost 1k behavior score with 2 Match Reports and also there are missing games from my Match Count total.

• from 5389 to 5259 13PM - 1RM -1unknown = (-130 -1unknown)
• from 5259 to 4809 12PM - 2RM -1unknown = (-450 -1unknown)
• from 4809 to 3919 11PM -2RM -2unknown = (-890 -2unknown)

 

Because those single draft games actually ruining those 3 updates I will work using this photo ( CLICK HERE ) photo of my recent games. Between those SD games I have 10 ranked games that I can work with.
From those 10 games it looks like I got reported in 5 so that means rest of them are Positive Matches. Also I will assume that those 4 UNKNOWN GAMES are Reported Matches taken from behind (From the matches that already updated when I got first time into low priority).

• from 5389 to 3919 (-1470) 5PM - 5RP -4UNKNOWN = -750 - 4U = -1550 Behavior score

 

Because those single draft games don't work properly with summary updates, the system can't work with them, so it have to take the matches that already were counted before. Basically what happened here is that I lost extra behavior score from the previous reported matches that already dropped my behavior once. So instead of losing 750 behavior I lost 800 more.
I wanna give you guys an example to make you understand better. So this is my account right now where I got low priority due to excessive reports. Let's say my all 5 reports where in my last 5 games in a row.

Match Count	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	Last 15
Reported M											:(	:(	:(	:(	:(	<5 RM

 

It will take me around 11 SD games to remove low priority. Usually after I get out from low priority I'm very careful in my next few games until my summary updates again.
Due to my low behavior score I will play pos5 so I will not upset anyone by taking their roles. After 4 ranked games my summary will update again and will show me that I have 0<3 reports. And that will make me think my last 15 games look like that:

Match Count	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15
Reported M

 

Because of my last Summary update I might first pick in order to get my desired role, which might be the reason for my next report if I lose the game. This single report will give me again low priority and ban and also the summary update will lie in my face again and show me that I have 0<3 reports, but this is how the summary really look like:

Match Count	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	Last 15
Reported M							:(	:(	:(	:(	:(				:(	<6 RM

 

Not only I will get again low priority + banned, also my behavior score will drop more then it should.

I wanna add that I might be wrong there and there with system itself, but what i'm sure of is that sd games should count like normal games even if they don't increase your behavior. If not, they shouldn't look like they doing it. Also losing more behavior score for the same reports that already dropped my behavior once isn't right either.

 

• P.S my conduct summary updated 3 times while I was playing a lot of single draft games and few rankeds showing me that I was doing fine, I am not getting reported etc., when the real truth was those updates were fake.
  
• So I don't think it's right, considering how hard it actually is to raise your behavior in low bracket. It's not fair to get tricked by those updates and that make me be more vocal in my games thinking nothing can happen because my summary was updated with the little green "happyface".
  

 

• In this moment that account is dead for me. No matter what I do now, after I remove my low priority, next game I will play ranked or turbo is pretty much a gamble if I will get banned or not. So there I am, making this reddit post and hoping Valve is going to do something about it.

 
Also you can ( CLICK HERE ) to see my conversation between me and the guy that actually motivated me to make this reddit post. He is high rank player with 10k behavior that have a smurf that dropped through time at 4k. If I ever doubted myself if I actually deserve this or not, after I talked with this guy I know for sure the system is not right.
 

• I am sure that for high behavior score people what am I saying is shit, I am sure they don't care and I am sure they will also hate me because I'm a low behavior player. So for people that are here to blame or make fun of this situation I wanna tell you that I don't have any interest to interact with you guys, do whatever you wanna do. The only reason I made this post is for people that did experienced same things as me and also to expose those real problems in actual system.

Well that would be all. The rest of this post is for Valve, my thoughts about this actual behavior score system.

• It's so hard and almost impossible to get out of this bracket. I spent more then 6 months trying to climb behavior instead of raising my actual MMR or focusing into playing better Dota. I tried almost everything to raise my behavior score, and the worst one so is muting all incoming chat which Valve implemented few time ago. It took me -1k behavior and low priority to realize how bad that decision was.
  
• So maintaining your current behavior is pretty simple but actually raising it in this low range is almost impossible. In order to raise your behavior with maximum of 750 score you need to have 0 reports. There was one time where I got no reports and for me that day was a miracle. The fact that in low behavior games telling to people normal things like "You should have TP'd here", "You shouldn't fight without me", "You should buy this item" and many others normal things like that actually makes people mad and they most probably will report you if you end up losing that game.
  
• Everyone is mad and unstable in this bracket. Why? Well there are many reasons. One of them might be because of high queue time. Try to imagine after waiting half an hour for a game, you will get unfair matches rank wise, your role stolen from a guy with much lower rank then you, people flaming, feeding, destroying items, tilting each other etc. Even if you are the most positive guy in that day, after games like that you might end ruining other people games just like others ruined you.
  

 

Since I got banned I made a little experiment.

• I borrowed a 5k MMR account from a friend with 10k behavior and in exactly 30 games I got 7k MMR because of the smurf detection system. So in those 30 games my summary updated 2 times and I was shocked when I saw that I got no reports. I don't think it's worth to say that I was 10 times more toxic then I was in my last 2 years. Yet I didn't got reported once because those people don't really care if someone is trashtalking or flaming, they will just mute that person and play the game, unless you destroy items or grief the game.
  
• There's a lot of players that are being toxic in high behavior bracket for so long now, most of them are pro's. If they were actually in low behavior games they wouldn't ever get out if they will behave like that.
  
• So my point is, in order to get out from this "hell" you actually have to behave way more better then the other people and also this will not grant you free "pass" since playing bad is also another big reason you're getting reported in this low behavior score bracket.
  

In the end I wanna say that Valve should really do something about this low behavior score bracket, I know you are trying to protect the rest of the community from the "bad guys" but at least you should make a fair system for the people that can actually change. Few ideas might can be:

1. Getting reported by low behavior people count less then getting reported by high behavior players"(Those that in theory shouldn't be emotionally unstable). And also many things like my example that can help the system a lot.
   
2. Also I don't understand why we are not able to see how much behavior we earn after any game just like mmr or who and when report us, I don't know why is everything so hidden because for me makes no sense.
   

 

Well that would be all, I tried to make this post as short as possible, I kept editing it for the past 7 days. I have opted for gathering data that can backup the reason behind my post, so hopefully if you're interested in this, you will understand this post.

Thanks!
EDITED:

• First of all I wanna thank you all for your comments. I read literally every single comment and I wanna say that I didn't expect so many people actually being on the same page with me and also I'm really sorry for everyone that have or had same problems as me. I received a lot of PM's from you guys and I am really sorry for those I couldn't help.

 

• One guy made me really emotional because he just got banned for 6 months and I really understand and I also feel bad for him. What I wanna add before I will share his PM with you is that I received a lot of messages from people saying their behavior dropped over time because other things then actual ruining or being toxic, which for me is unacceptable. ( CLICK HERE FOR PM )

 

• There is no way you guys should lose behavior score because you under perform.I know few of you might say that they bought account or got boosted but, believe it or not even I got called an account buyer few times in 5k bracket because of another smurfs that smashed me in mid and made me look like an acc buyer.

 

The 5k mmr bracket is actually the worst for you guys. This is by far the most unbalanced bracket for few reasons:

1.When you actually make new account you will calibrated at maximum 5k mmr. (Even if your 10k mmr player)
2.It's the perfect average for boosters. (Usually it's easiest to boost till 5k mmr with high winrate.)
3.It's the perfect average for account buyers. (Those 5k mmr are the cheapest "high rank accounts" for very low mmr people)
4.There's also biggest discrepancy between actual skill level. (The same way there are few top rank players that spammed 1-2 heroes until a point they play good with them but being very bad with the other heroes or at dota in general. Only that in 5k bracket there are many more players like that).

Also I don't think they should get reported if they play bad but I'm sure they sadly are.

There are for sure many other reasons which I can't think of right now.

So after that being sad I just realized that this 5k mmr bracket it's the most affected one by this behavior score system.

 

• Because many of you asked me in PM if I can give you more detailed data about behavior score report system I took some time to analyze again some data of my previous summaries and post it here giving you guys more detailed information.
  
• I wanna add few things for this new data I'm showing you. I tried to give you "cleanest" summary updates and the most relevant ones. (From 15PM and 0RM to 12 and 3RM) *5 for each.
  

1.I couldn't tell before if commends actually giving you extra behavior score, now i'm sure they do.I don't have the exact numbers but I think they work just as Positive Matches. I call them "Commended Matches" but because I don't have clear data to know in how many games from 15 you got commended I can only assume that the numbers are very small around "5-10 per commended game" and less per stacked commends.
2.This also applies to reports but those are even harder to tell because there you can have many types of reports like "Reporting parties", "Communication abuse reports" etc.
3.Few good or bad summaries in a row might also contribute with more or less behavior score in your next update.(Those are called "Periodic" on the site i'm using.
4.Other game modes like turbo might actually count different in your next update.
5.If you actually play 2-3-4-5 man party it also matters when your behavior score updates. (I've read some of you said the only way to raise behavior score is by playing party). Also I don't have clear data but I can say that full party stack gives you less behavior score per update.

Keep that in mind guys if you ever think you got banned for no reason with 0<3 reports after you played a lot of single draft games, in order to stop getting false updates and getting wrongly banned you must play 15 games as 5 man stack party.

 

So, I keep my numbers for both Positive Matches and Match Report, +50 and respectively -200.

 

• 15PM - 0 RM = 750 - 0 = 750 (CLICK HERE)

4629 to 5454 = +825 (13 commends) 6349 to 7119 = +770 (4 commends) 3404 to 4174 = +770 (12 commends) 4812 to 5637 = +825 (6 commends) 4832 to 5547 = +715 (7 commends)

• 14PM - 1RM = 700 - 200 = 500 (CLICK HERE)

5577 to 6147 = +570 (10 commends) 4601 to 5156 = +555 (20 commends) 4262 to 4762 = +500 (19 commends) 5577 to 6147 = +570 (10 commends) 6632 to 7122 = +490 (9 commends)

• 13PM and 2RM = 650 - 400 = 250 (CLICK HERE)

3134 to 3329 = +195 (13 commends) 5056 to 5371 = +315 (13 commends) 5156 to 5416 = +260 (18 commends) 4206 to 4466 = +260 (17 commends) 6147 to 6462 = +315 (16 commends)

• 12PM and 3RM = 600 - 600 = 0 (CLICK HERE)

4762 to 4797 = +35 (6 commends) 3090 to 2965 = -125 (2 commends) 4101 to 3976 = -125 (11 commends, 2 extra reports) 4600 to 4505 = -95 (17 commends, 1 extra report) 3855 to 3827 = -28 (18 commends)

I forgot to say that in those photo's the summary updates are all random. I selected and edited them so they look like consecutive numbers but they're not.

• Well, thanks again guys to everyone. I wanna say that you don't have to feel sad for me, i'm also sorry I couldn't respond to all PM's or even help you with your problems. The thing that this behavior system lost me so much time back then where I even had 0 information about it made me even more toxic and angry in my everyday life because after all I'm trying to get into pro scene, and the thing that I was struggling for so long with bad pubs, bad games, bad mood and I had to invest time playing low priority or turbo games to increase my behavior instead of actually practicing to get better at dota.
• I don't wanna victimize myself, this is the past for me because now I have the knowledge and also the skill to never go back into this low behavior bracket. But for those that are playing this game 4fun or who knows that might wanna try to get better at game, if you went down on this shadow pool road it will be very hard to get out, you need also the necessary skill and in the same time you need very strong mental.

Hopefully this post will actually change something and if not, I really hope you guys will use every information is gathered in this post, also in many comments and try to change yourself, be better, work hard and don't give up.
Thanks again to everyone!

Hi, so my story is very similar if not worse than most of the people who post on this sub. I wanted to share because I want to be able to tell others, that you're not alone, youre not unworthy, you need to be more forgiving of yourself and the steps I personally took to get to a better place in my life.
So here it goes:
I was an occasional gambler, played with maybe 100 dollars a month on the blackjack table and didnt think I had a problem until one day I decided to play with a bigger bank roll.
Went in with 1000 and by the end of 2 days, I was up 15K.
But I wouldn't be here if I had a happy ending.
Saw that I could turn 1000 into 15K so easily, why not turning 15K into 150k? It's pretty much the same thing!
WRONG. TOTALLY WRONG.
Started making bigger bets, putting down 1K on BJ hands, doubling down and splitting it like it was nothing. Turns out, the Casino always wins.
I lost that 15K and to make it worse, I thought I could go back in with another 1K, maybe make 5K and call it. I wanted it back. BADLY. So I started playing big hands as if I still had that 15K.
Lost that 1K in a span of 10 minutes.
Went back in with the attitude, I won't be dumb and play like that again. Played it small, 50 dollar hands at most.
Guess what? WRONG AGAIN. Lost another 1K in 6 hours.
I was so pissed and so determined that I could win it back again because I've done it before. It was not a question of if, it was a question of when.
And lo and behold, I actually managed to get to 10K. But the devil never rests. I wanted more. So I played more. And even after been given a lifeline, I STILL BLEW IT.
I lost ANOTHER 10K.
I was shell shocked but my go to attitude was that I was not going to lose. That risk taking part you love about yourself? Where you throw all caution to the wind? It spoke so loudly in my body, I drained all my savings of 5K to win that money back.
And guess what? I lost that too AND IT STILL DIDNT COMPUTE.
But it doesn't end there.
I did the one thing I said I wouldn't never do and started pulling money out of my credit card. 10K limit.
You can already see how this one goes.
Lost that 10K. And to be honest, I can't even recall how long it took but when I tried to make another deposit and the screen told me I had been declined, I finally looked at my bank statement and realized I had literally maxed out my 0 debt credit card at the casino. Plus money advance.
In a span of a few days, I spent 3 years of saving to pay down my debt and have some actual cash on hand all because of one decision fueled by greed and illogical emotion.
I hated myself. I couldn't sleep. I couldn't eat. I even thought about killing myself because I couldnt even look at myself in the mirror and see that the person in the mirror could be THAT stupid.
I remember going into work thinking, "I could have quit this job, I don't have to work 60 hours a week anymore" but now, it was "I'm gonna have to find 3 jobs and work 80 hours a week, fuck that, I will go off myself; that's way easier than this torture". I was living paycheque to paycheque, could barely afford rent, barely afford food, stopped paying the minimum on my credit card and wallowed in despair.
I can speak about it in hindsight with less heaviness but at the time, it was without a doubt the most serious I had ever been about really hurting myself.
Luckily, I had enough. I knew that wasnt the answer. But I still didn't know how to handle how I felt and how to deal with all my negative emotions and thoughts.
So I reached out.
I reached out to my kid brother and told him everything. I was ashamed. My kid brother doesn't look up to me but between him and I, I am the one who is responsible, sensible, doesn't put my problems on others. My kid brother was the one who dropped out of high school, did some unsavory things for money, got tattoos and rebelled against our parents. But he was the only one I could speak to earnestly to and I'm lucky I could, because without him, I wouldn't be here.
I told him, and tho I recommend finding someone who would cast no judgement, my brother is the exception. After some choice words, he laughed, said I was stupid and told me something I will never forget.
"It's just money, whats done is done"
And that was it. It's just money and I can't relive the past and change it. He gave me an answer so succinct and without question that I felt this relief. It wasn't the end of the world. But life moves on and all you can do is push forward instead of looking back.
And I know maybe I shouldn't speak about money so causally but the reality was that money comes and goes. Sometimes you have alot and sometimes you have a little.
But the most important thing is that you're alive and well. As long as you have that, money problems aren't impossible problems because there are real solutions. And it may feel impossible but the key word, is MAY. It is possible and I am here to help you see that.
There is hope. It's always there. You just have to believe in it and reach for it.
After telling my brother, I had a better sense of where I was and what I needed to tackle next. Which was the financial consequences of my actions.
Living paycheque to paycheque with this 10K (and climbing) credit card with an interest rate with a minimum payment that was going to outpace my earnings no matter what was daunting. I could already see that either I find a bag of drug money behind my apartment to pay it off or I was gonna go bankrupt within a few months.
The first thing I did was EXCLUDE MYSELF FROM EVERY SINGLE GAMBLING WEBSITE AND CASINO. YOU CAN ALSO CALL YOUR BANK TO BAN YOUR CARDS FROM BEING ABLE TO DEPOSIT INTO THESE PLACES.
The solution was work more hours, finding another job, sell my kidney or start robbing people. (I know you might think of this as a joke, but I do vividly remember seeing someone walking past me on the sidewalk with a TV and thought, what if I stole that, sold it, and it could help pay my debt. I was never serious but its already an issue when you would consider actually doing it, even if you thinking you're "joking").
I stopped going out to eat, I started cooking more at home (tho I am still eating as if I was in university again eating rice, ramen and noodles to survive but that was the price of gambling) and picked up more shifts at work while still maintaining a healthier balance (you still need to sleep).
But I needed to deal with the credit card right away.
And I found one.
Another credit card.
Now, it sounds crazy and it sounds really reckless, but this solution hinges on the fact that you are NOT GOING TO GAMBLE AGAIN.
There were promotional credit cards that offered very LOW INTEREST RATES for a few months if you BALANCE TRANSFER.
I was lucky and when I applied, I had good enough credit score to qualify (most of them were 0 income credit cards) and I received in total, 15K Credit limit with 0% APR (Annual Interest for 1 Year) to balance transfer for a balance transfer fee.
So I transferred over 10K onto 2 cards, paid the balance fees (which is normally 3-5% of the balance being transferred, which amounted to 1 (240 dollar) minimum balance payment) to receive 0 interest for one year.
And the moment I did it, that drowning feeling went away and I finally had time to breath.
Because of that decision, it gave me more time to focus on finding more work or another job and not always be awake at night, counting my pennies to see if I had enough food for the week. That alone was worth the application. I could budget, save money and start lowering the principle amounts so when the promotional APR ended, I could actually manage the minimum payments.
Currently, I put down roughly 35-40% of my monthly earnings into my credit card debt and live off of the rest. At this rate, I am on track to pay off that 10K debt by the end of the next year. And if you are wondering, my take home is just under 2500 a month 40hours a week excluding any extra shifts or overtime that I may be able to work (which is put 100% into my debt).
Now I don't know if any of you guys are in the same position where you could apply for a credit card, get a good balance and stick to the plan but without it, I wouldn't be able to live my life not feeling enslaved to this 16 digit square in my wallet.
And to be honest, I am going to continually apply to more credit cards that offer a promotional balance transfer interest because again, its just money and without leveraging this opportunity, I would not be able to actually pay off the principle and be forced to only make interest payments while the banks keeps laughing.
If you've made it this far, you read this post because you felt a kindred spirit with me. That you're in the same position as me but don't know where to start. And thats ok. You aren't alone. You're still here and you're only human. We all make mistakes and live with the consequences of our actions. But without forgiving yourself, you will never be able to move on and you will be trapped in the purgatory of reliving this whirlpool of negativity.
I wanted to share how I dealt with my emotional and financial problem because anything helps. This post may not speak to some of you but if it reaches only one of you, this was well worth the time.
If you ever need to speak to someone with no judgement (unlike my brother) please feel free to PM me and I will give you my ear.
TLDR: Forgive yourself for the mistakes you've made. Reach out to a loved one to unburden yourself. Come up with a solid solution to your financial problem (BALANCE TRANSFERS) and you will give yourself hope that there is an end to this madness. And there is. It just takes time.

San Francisco 49ers
NFC Champions
13-3 (First in NFC West)
SB runner up
Intro
Hello, this is my first time writing one of these. I wasn't raised as a 49ers fan but my late grandfather was a diehard fan. I still follow the team pretty closely and I felt like I could contribute to the series. I tried to cover everything in a concise manner since I know you guys have shit to do today. I wanted to include a video companion but didn't have enough time to edit it the way I wanted to. So with all that said, on to the review. The 49ers are coming off of an amazing Super Bowl run that saw them fall short against a loaded Chiefs team. I still hurt watching that lead shrink away into nothing. Can't win them all but damn were we close. The 49ers made a few key roster moves to solidify their depth through free agency and the draft which positions them nicely to make another deep postseason run. Shanahan and Lynch look to be on the same page about the roster and scheme they hope to execute, drafting and signing players that fit the mold. Credit to u/Handsack135 for assisting me on this project. Sorry if my formatting is poor, had to do this all on mobile.
Coaching Changes
departing
Joe Woods, former defensive Backs coach for San Francisco, accepts the defensive coordinator role within the Cleveland Browns organization. He will replace Steve Wilks in that role. Woods arrives in Cleveland with roughly 15 years of experience coaching at the NFL level.
Chris Kiffin is a defensive line coach that operated as the pass rush specialist for San Francisco last season. He will be assuming the same role within the Cleveland Browns organization. Kiffin arrives in Cleveland with 2 years of experience coaching at the NFL level.
arriving
Aaron Whitecotton arrives from the Bills where he served as assistant defensive line coach, more specifically a pass rush specialist. He will assume the same role within the San Francisco organization, replacing Chris Kiffin in the process. The Buffalo Bills lead the league in TFL during the 2019-20 season and were 9th in sack percentage. Whitecotton arrives with 6 years of experience coaching at the professional level, including a stint with the Jaguars that saw him work alongside current 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh.
Tony Oden takes over the defensive backs coach role after serving the same role within the Miami Dolphins organization in 2019. The Dolphins’ secondary was a garbage fire last season (7th most passing touchdowns allowed and 6th most passing yards allowed) in the wake of Minkah Fitzpatrick’s departure so it will be interesting to see what Oden does with the defensive backs in San Francisco. Oden also has previous experience working with Robert Saleh from his stint with the Houston Texans.
Free Agency/Trades
players lost/cut
Emmanuel Sanders WR Saints
Matt Breida RB Dolphins
DeForest Buckner DL Colts
Sheldon Day DL Colts
Elijah Lee LB Lions
Levine Toilolo TE Giants
Anthony Zettel DL Vikings
Joe Staley LT Retired
Joe Staley would be a huge loss but he's been replaced with perennial pro bowler Trent Williams fresh off a stint with The Washington Football Team (what a shit name, lul). Hopefully he's just a plug and play personnel upgrade that requires little time to settle into his new role.
Emmanuel Sanders turned out to be an important receiver for the Super Bowl run, complementing Deebo and Kittle nicely as a reliable third option for Garoppolo. It's a tough business, but sometimes the risk of a midseason free agent acquisition is worth it. San Francisco hopes to replace his production with the newly drafted Brandon Aiyuk out of Arizona State University.
Matt Breida, the former undrafted running back out of Georgia Southern was acquired on draft day by the Miami Dolphins for a 5th round pick. Quite a steal in my opinion for a starting running back of his caliber. His departure leaves a hole in the 49ers backfield that must be filled by some combination of Raheem Mostert, Tevin Coleman, and Jerrick Mckinnon. The Shanahan running back by committee plan resumes.
DeForest Buckner was traded to the Colts for a first round pick. This pick was used to select DT Javon Kinlaw as Buckner's hopeful replacement. With a decision to be made between extending him or DE Arik Armistead, the 49ers chose to extend the player whose position would be harder to replace. Seeing Kinlaw available at 14, the 49ers decided to take a chance on him and gamble that Armstead should get an extension since there was no high caliber player available to replace him.
Re-signed/Incoming
Salary courtesy of Spotrac.com
Arik Armstead DL 49ers 5yrs $85,000,000
George Kittle TE 49ers 5yrs $75,000,000
Trent Williams LT Football Team 1yr $12,500,000
Raheem Mostert RB 49ers 2yrs $6,250,000
Jimmie Ward DB 49ers 3yrs $28,500,000
Kendrick Bourne WR 49ers 1 yr $3,259,000
Tom Compton OL Jets 1 yr $2,750,000
Ronald Blair III DL 49ers 1 yr $2,297,500
Kerry Hyder DL Cowboys 1yr $1,500,000
Travis Benjamin WR Chargers 1yr $1,050,000
Jason Verrett DB 49ers 1 yr $1,047,500
Shon Coleman T 49ers 1yr $962,500
Dontae Johnson CB 49ers 1 yr $910,000 Joe Walker LB Cardinals 1yr $900,000
Ben Garland OL/C 49ers 1yr $805,000
Ross Dwelley TE 49ers 1yr $750,000
Nick Mullens QB 49ers 1yr $750,000
Jeff Wilson Jr. RB 49ers 1yr $750,000
Daniel Brunskill OL 49ers 1 yr $675,000
Dion Jordan DE Raiders (salary unavailable)
Jordan Reed TE Football Team (salary unavailable)
Arik Armstead was granted a huge contract extension at the expense of losing fellow stud defensive lineman DeForest Buckner. Their numbers last season were very similar and I see no real reason to choose one over the other since their ages are only separated by one year at 26 and 25 respectively. The decision was a tough one but the 49ers were probably high on Kinlaw and felt since he and Buckner were the same position it was smarter to pay Armstead and let Buckner go.
George Kittle is the best TE in the NFC and I believe we have yet to see the best of him. He is a monster blocker and runs through the open field like a gazelle. Defensive coordinators struggle to contain him on a weekly basis and he has proven he is worth every cent of his contract extension.
Trent Williams was acquired from the Washington Football Team in exchange for a 2020 5th round pick and a 2021 third round selection. He will be filling in for the retired Joe Staley during the 2020 season. A daunting task but one for which he is well suited being a perennial Pro-Bowler himself.
Jimmie Ward produced a solid season at free safety combining open field coverage skills with masterful tackling ability to place fourth on the team in passes deflected (8) and third in total tackles (65) on the number one passing defense in the NFL
Kendrick Bourne showed promise as a possible WR3 behind Aiyuk and Samuel with his consistent contributions to the passing game last season. This earned him a new contract to prove that he can be a reliable threat to the secondary and draw some pressure off of Samuel and Kittle.
Draft Grades
Round 1, Pick No. 14: Javon Kinlaw, DT, South Carolina. Fletcher Cox similarities, bigger and stronger. Will make a splash as a true DT option on an already loaded DL. Picked up to fill in for DeForest Buckner at a lower price in the wake of Armstead's huge contract.
Round 1, Pick No. 25: Brandon Aiyuk, WR, Arizona State. Picked by Shanahan specifically to fit into the scheme. Good speed and run after catch ability. Limited catch radius, excellent route running. Should see playing time early into his career with the loss of Marquise Goodwin and Emmanuel Sanders.
Round 6, Pick No. 190: Charlie Woerner, TE, Georgia. Pure blocking tight end out of UGA, most likely brought in to replace Levine toilolo. Won't see much playing time over Dwelley and Kittle but adds depth at the position.
Round 7, Pick No. 217: Jauan Jennings, WR, Tennessee. Big body receiver out of Tennessee that can catch contested passes consistently. Knocked for his forty yard dash speed at the combine (4.72) and route running sloppiness on tape.
Off-season Storylines
Players opting out due to Covid-19
Travis Benjamin
Projected Starting Lineup
QB: Jimmy Garoppolo
RB: Raheem Mostert, Tevin Coleman, and Jerrick McKinnon
FB: Kyle Juszczyk
TE:George Kittle
WRs: Deebo Samuel, Brandon Aiyuk, Kendrick Bourne and Dante Pettis/Jalen Hurd
LT: Trent Williams
LG: Laken Tomlinson
C: Weston Richburg
RG: Daniel Brunskill
RT: Mike Mcglinchey
DL: Dee Ford, Nick Bosa, Arik Armstead, Solomon Thomas, Javon Kinlaw
LB: Kwon Alexander, Fred Warner, Dre Greenlaw
CB: Richard Sherman, Ahkello Witherspoon, Emmanuel Moseley
S: Jaquiski Tartt, Jimmie Ward
K: Robbie Gould
P: Mitch Wishnowsky
KPR: Brandon Aiyuk
Position Group Strengths and Weaknesses
Position groups:
QB: Jimmy Garoppolo is a solid starting option for the 49ers that led them to a super bowl appearance by knowing his role within the Shanahan offense and never doing too much. Heroic when he needed to be and reserved when he didn’t, I see continued success for Garoppolo if he can continue to play smart and take what defenses give him. Grade: B
Backfield: Kyle shanahan uses a running back by committee approach that works masterfully when combined with the blocking talent of Kittle and Juszcyk. McKinnon, Mostert and Coleman are going to be tasked with shouldering the bulk of the carries this season with the majority going to Mostert if I had to guess. Grade: A+ OL: With the addition of Trent Williams and a solid core of starter level blockers, I see this offensive line as middle of the pack at worst and possibly top ten if they can improve from last year. They were excellent in run blocking last season which allowed them to rise to 2nd place in the NFL in rushing yards per game. They were more wishy washy when it came to pass protection, falling into the bottom half of the league (18th) in sack percentage allowed. Grade B-
Pass catchers: With Kittle serving as a legitimate threat to any NFL secondary the pass catching capability possessed by the 49ers is immense. Couple that with the emergence of Deebo Samuel and the potential of the remaining 49ers receivers that will get significant snaps (Aiyuk, Hurd, Bourne, Pettis) and you’d begin to consider this receiving core as a solid complement to their dominant rushing attack. My only concern is the health of their young receivers and their ability to recognize their untapped potential. I would like to see at least one receiver (Kittle doesn’t count) reach the 1000 yard threshold before I would grade this receiving core as above average. Grade: C+
DL: With the departure of Deforest Buckner the 49ers defensive line will have their work cut out for them in the 2019-20 season. He was a great player but this unit is so stacked I believe their statistical production will remain largely unchanged this season. They were 5th in the league in total sacks last year and 2nd in pressure percentage which shows just how dominant they were both individually and as a unit. Grade: A+
LB: Last season showed us that the next generation of linebackers has arrived for the 49ers and they are solid. Dre Greenlaw and Fred Warner have proven that they are a strong second line of defense behind the elite defensive line in front of them placing first and second on the team in tackles. This was combined with 11 pass deflections and 2 interceptions (one for a TD) between them which demonstrates their willingness and ability to defend not only the run but the pass as well. If they can continue this high level of play in 2020 I see no reason they won’t continue to do damage to offenses both in the tackle box and the secondary. Grade: A Secondary: The secondary may seem like world beaters based only on their gaudy stats that found them allowing the least amount of passing yards per game last season. This was due in part to solid play from the secondary, but the driving force behind this was the defensive line’s ability to produce so much pressure on the opposing quarterbacks they faced. This is no knock on the 49ers defensive backs either, they were just another cog in a very strong defense but they did their job well and the entire team was in sync which led to continued success throughout the regular season and playoffs.
Schedule Predictions
The 49ers have a relatively weak schedule to begin the season and should expect to achieve a 4-1 or even a 5-0 record out of the gate. This would be a repeat of the hot start they came in with last season that saw them begin the year 8-0 before falling to the Seahawks in OT.
Week 1 vs Arizona W
Kyler Murray is a certified stud and coupled with Hopkins and Fitz I see this game giving the secondary an early test. Generating pressure on the young quarterback will be key to getting a victory in this game, but more importantly we must keep him in the pocket and make him beat us with his arm not his legs.
Week 2 @Jets W
Sam Darnold has one of the poorest offensive lines in the league and Gase has done little to improve it while also stripping his receiving core of weapons. This one might get ugly.
Week 3 @Giants W
The 49ers will get to face the NFC East this season which was the worst division in football last season. The Giants are coming off of a disappointing season last year and hoping to rebound. With a young group of talented skill players, that includes a top 5 running back in Saquon Barkley, it will definitely be our first potential trap game of the season.
Week 4 vs Philadelphia L
Philadelphia is coming off of a rollercoaster season that saw them sneak into the wild card against the buzz saw that is the Seattle Seahawks and still manage to come within one score of OT. Wentz has something to prove this season after seeing his front office pick up a QB in the draft. Beating the reigning NFC champions would go a long way in proving that he’s not to be replaced anytime soon.
Week 5 vs Miami W
I certainly hope Tua isn’t in by this point in the season, I’d hate to see our defensive line ruin him that early on in his career. Miami had the worst secondary in the league last season and I haven’t seen much to signal any improvements in that department. They also gave up the 6th most rushing yards of any team in the NFL which doesn’t bode well for their chances against Shanahan’s patented outside zone running scheme.
Week 6 vs Rams W
After missing the playoffs only one year removed from a Super Bowl berth the Rams are looking to bounce back in 2020 under the tutelage of coaching mastermind Sean Mcvay. Our last meeting with this team saw us narrowly avoid defeat by pulling out a 34-31 victory over our fellow division rival. I predict two closely contested chess matches this season between two of the best play callers in the league.
Week 7 at New England W
When you have to enter Foxborough it’s gonna be one hell of a game no matter how good you are. No Tom Brady, no problem it seems with the addition of former MVP Cam Newton. Couple this addition with the mind of Bill Bellichick and the number one defense in the league and you can see that the 49ers clearly have their work cut out for them in this one. I predict this going one of two ways which are as follows, either Jimmy G has a revenge game or BB sees straight through him and he lays an egg. The run game will never be more important than in this game.
Week 8 at Seattle L
Going into CenturyLink Field is gonna be tough and coming off what should be a dogfight against the Patriots I just don’t see us pulling off two big road wins in a row.
Week 9 at Green Bay W
I believe Shanahan has his brother’s ,and by extension Lafleur’s, number in this one. We saw this game play out twice last season and both had a similar theme. Dominance by San Francisco that i predict will continue into the 2020 season.
Week 10 at New Orleans L
Last season’s matchup saw the 49ers narrowly escape a shootout in the dome and I find it hard to believe we can return there and pull it off again. I see this game as another shootout and honestly believe it can go either way
Week 11 Bye
Week 12 @ Rams L
I predict the 49ers come out of the bye week sluggish and still reeling from what should be a captivating game vs the saints. Not how you want to show up against a divisional opponent with a chip on their shoulder.
Week 13 vs Buffalo W
Buffalo has a strong defense and picked up an elite receiver in Stefon Diggs this offseason. I believe our key to victory in this game is getting Josh Allen out of rhythm early and establishing the run in order to give him limited time of possession. This will hopefully lead to him forcing passes and making mistakes in what I predict will be a low scoring affair.
Week 14 vs Washington W
We shut the Football Teamout last season in what can only be described as a deluge of rain that didn’t let up all game. Poor conditions led to what can only be described as a war of attrition between two teams that couldn’t find their rhythm all day. I predict a close game in this one due to the addition of Ron Rivera and his newly instilled team culture. This will be a late season contest so I would think the Football Team will have worked out their kinks by then.
Week 15 @ Dallas W
Cowboys suck, Jerry World is lame (try not to catch Covid-19 in there) . Okay seriously though this will be a tough game versus a strong opponent that has the potential to defeat us if we don’t come correct. Limiting Cooper’s production is essential in this one as well as trying to find a way to keep zeke from a monster game.
Week 16 @ Arizona W
I can see this one going to the Cardinals depending on our record and how hungry the Cardinals are late in the season. Road games are tougher no matter what and I don’t see us locking down Hopkins twice in one season. Kyler will need to have a big game for them to upset us but I don’t put it out of the realm of possibility
Week 17 vs Seattle W
After a tough loss earlier in the year to Seattle I see the 49ers coming out very motivated to avenge the loss and more importantly they will be looking to solidify a second straight NFC West Divisional title. This one will be a key game if both teams play up to their expectations. I see implications for not only the NFC West champion outcome but also the NFC home field advantage outcome as well.
Training Camp Battles
WR4: I don’t know who will step up to be the final complementary receiver for Deebo, Aiyuk, and Bourne but it could be Pettis or Hurd depending on their health and how training camp goes. If I had to wager I’d put my money on Pettis since he is the most proven of the remaining receivers.
Schemes
Shanahan runs a zone run oriented offense that predicates itself on domination in the run which is used to set up an elaborate variety of play action passes. Shanahan utilizes many motions in his scheme in order to identify the coverage and weaknesses within the defensive formation that he then attacks with unparalleled precision. By constantly forcing the defense to adapt to his offense’s pre-snap movement he is able to diagnose what sort of defense will be used against him and check the team into favorable formations that allow them to exploit the defense.
Saleh runs a Wide 9 scheme that is a combination of base 4-3 and nickel coverage which utilizes both safeties interchangeably depending on the strength of the offensive formation and which allows for more flexibility in coverage. This was an adaptation necessary in today’s NFL that is seeing fewer teams use two running back sets and instead often opting to run 3 receiver sets with the tight end possibly flexed out into an upright position. The 49ers had the best passing defense in the league last season so it’s safe to say this system is effective at limiting the other team from spreading the defense out and abusing linebackers in the secondary with slot receivers and tight ends.

Previous editions:
(All strawpoll results counted as of the next post made)
Part 1, Adams v Jefferson in 1796 - Adams wins with 68% of the vote
Part 2, Adams v Jefferson in 1800 - Jefferson wins with 58% of the vote
Part 3, Jefferson v Pinckney in 1804 - Jefferson wins with 57% of the vote
Part 4, Madison v Pinckney (with George Clinton protest) in 1808 - Pinckney wins with 45% of the vote
Part 5, Madison v (DeWitt) Clinton in 1812 - Clinton wins with 80% of the vote
Part 6, Monroe v King in 1816 - Monroe wins with 51% of the vote
Part 7, Monroe and an Era of Meta Feelings in 1820 - Monroe wins with 100% of the vote
Part 8, Democratic-Republican Thunderdome in 1824 - Adams wins with 55% of the vote
Part 9, Adams v Jackson in 1828 - Adams wins with 94% of the vote
Part 10, Jackson v Clay (v Wirt) in 1832 - Clay wins with 53% of the vote
Part 11, Van Buren v The Whigs in 1836 - Whigs win with 87% of the vote, Webster elected
Part 12, Van Buren v Harrison in 1840 - Harrison wins with 90% of the vote
Part 13, Polk v Clay in 1844 - Polk wins with 59% of the vote
Part 14, Taylor v Cass in 1848 - Taylor wins with 44% of the vote (see special rules)
Part 15, Pierce v Scott in 1852 - Scott wins with 78% of the vote
Part 16, Buchanan v Frémont v Fillmore in 1856 - Frémont wins with 95% of the vote
Part 17, Peculiar Thunderdome in 1860 - Lincoln wins with 90% of the vote.
Part 18, Lincoln v McClellan in 1864 - Lincoln wins with 97% of the vote.
Part 19, Grant v Seymour in 1868 - Grant wins with 97% of the vote.
Part 20, Grant v Greeley in 1872 - Grant wins with 96% of the vote.
Part 21, Hayes v Tilden in 1876 - Hayes wins with 87% of the vote.
Part 22, Garfield v Hancock in 1880 - Garfield wins with 67% of the vote.
Part 23, Cleveland v Blaine in 1884 - Cleveland wins with 53% of the vote.
Part 24, Cleveland v Harrison in 1888 - Harrison wins with 64% of the vote.
Part 25, Cleveland v Harrison v Weaver in 1892 - Harrison wins with 57% of the vote
Part 26, McKinley v Bryan in 1896 - McKinley wins with 71% of the vote
Part 27, McKinley v Bryan in 1900 - Bryan wins with 55% of the vote
Part 28, Roosevelt v Parker in 1904 - Roosevelt wins with 71% of the vote
Part 29, Taft v Bryan in 1908 - Taft wins with 64% of the vote
Part 30, Taft v Wilson v Roosevelt in 1912 - Roosevelt wins with 81% of the vote
Part 31, Wilson v Hughes in 1916 - Hughes wins with 62% of the vote
Part 32, Harding v Cox in 1920 - Cox wins with 68% of the vote
Part 33, Coolidge v Davis v La Follette in 1924 - Davis wins with 47% of the vote
Part 34, Hoover v Smith in 1928 - Hoover wins with 50.2% of the vote
Part 35, Hoover v Roosevelt in 1932 - Roosevelt wins with 85% of the vote
Part 36, Landon v Roosevelt in 1936 - Roosevelt wins with 75% of the vote
Part 37, Willkie v Roosevelt in 1940 - Roosevelt wins with 56% of the vote
Part 38, Dewey v Roosevelt in 1944 - Dewey wins with 50.2% of the vote
Part 39, Dewey v Truman in 1948 - Truman wins with 65% of the vote
Part 40, Eisenhower v Stevenson in 1952 - Eisenhower wins with 69% of the vote
Part 41, Eisenhower v Stevenson in 1956 - Eisenhower wins with 60% of the vote
Welcome back to the forty-second edition of /neoliberal elects the American presidents!
This will be a fairly consistent weekly thing - every week, a new election, until we run out.
I highly encourage you - at least in terms of the vote you cast - to try to think from the perspective of the year the election was held, without knowing the future or how the next administration would go. I'm not going to be trying to enforce that, but feel free to remind fellow commenters of this distinction.
If you're really feeling hardcore, feel free to even speak in the present tense as if the election is truly upcoming!
Whether third and fourth candidates are considered "major" enough to include in the strawpoll will be largely at my discretion and depend on things like whether they were actually intending to run for President, and whether they wound up actually pulling in a meaningful amount of the popular vote and even electoral votes. I may also invoke special rules in how the results will be interpreted in certain elections to better approximate historical reality.
While I will always give some brief background info to spur the discussion, please don't hesitate to bring your own research and knowledge into the mix! There's no way I'll cover everything!
John Kennedy v Richard Nixon, 1960
Profiles

• Richard Nixon is the 47-year-old Republican candidate and the current Vice President. His running mate is US Ambassador to the UN and former US Senator from Massachusetts Henry Cabot Lodge.
  
• John Kennedy is the 43-year-old Democratic candidate and a US Senator from Massachusetts. His running mate is US Senator from Texas Lyndon Johnson.
  

Issues

• The scope and tensions of the "cold war" between the United States and the post-Stalin Soviet Union continue to fluctuate. Both candidates speak in dramatic terms of ideological conflict the world finds itself in, and both candidates argue that they are in a better position to guide the US through this conflict. Kennedy has argued that the United States has fallen behind during the Eisenhower Administration, while Nixon has defended the administration's foreign policy. Neither candidate can be unambiguously framed as "more" or "less" aggressive towards the Soviet Union, as evidenced by three campaign flashpoints on foreign policy:
  
  • In May, the Soviet Union shot down a US spy plane. This incident largely appears to have led to the collapse of the Four Power Paris Summit talks. The disagreement between Kennedy and Nixon on this topic is whether an expression of regret or apology by the US may have been appropriate.
    Kennedy has said:
    

    The U-2 flights were proper from the point of view of protecting our security, but they were not in accordance with international law, and I said that I felt that rather than tell the lie which we told, rather than indicate that the flights would continue ... that it would have been far better that if we had expressed regrets, if that would have saved the summit and if the summit is useful and I believe it is.
    

    Nixon has said:
    

    We cannot afford an intelligence gap and I just want to make my position absolutely clear with regard to getting intelligence information. I don't intend to see to it that the United States is ever in a position where, while we're negotiating with the Soviet Union, that we discontinue our intelligence effort. And I don't intend ever to express regrets to Mr. Khrushchev or anybody else if I'm doing something that has the support of the Congress and that is right for the purpose of protecting the security of the United States.
    

  • At the very end of 1958, an armed revolt led by Fidel Castro succeeded in ousting the current Cuban government and replacing it with a socialist state. Kennedy and Nixon have disagreed on the extent to which it would be appropriate to intervene in Cuba. Just within the last month, Kennedy has made a point of sharply criticizing the Eisenhower Administration's policies and "failures" on Cuba, and even went so far as to issue a statement saying:
    

    We must attempt to strengthen the non-Batista democratic anti-Castro forces in exile and in Cuba itself, who offer eventual hope of overthrowing Castro. Thus far these fighters for freedom have had virtually no support from our government.
    

    Nixon sharply criticized this proposal in the final debate, saying:
    

    I think that Senator Kennedy’s policies and recommendations for the handling of the Castro regime are probably the most dangerously irresponsible recommendations that he’s made during the course of this campaign ... We have five treaties with Latin America, including the one setting up the Organization of American States in Bogota in 1948, in which we have agreed not to intervene in the internal affairs of any other American country – and they as well have agreed to do likewise. The charter of the United Nations – its Preamble, Article I and Article II – also provide that there shall be no intervention by one nation in the internal affairs of another. Now I don’t know what Senator Kennedy suggests when he says that we should help those who oppose the Castro regime, both in Cuba and without. But I do know this: that if we were to follow that recommendation, that we would lose all of our friends in Latin America, we would probably be condemned in the United Nations, and we would not accomplish our objective.
    

  • A repeated topic in the debates has been the two small islands of Quemoy and Matsu. The islands are currently controlled by Chiang Kai-shek and the Republic of China. The islands are only 8 miles away from mainland China. The policy question for the United States is whether the United States should be prepared to defend the ROC's territorial claims to the island in the event of Communist China attempting to take them by force.
    Nixon has said (OOC: Formosa = Taiwan):
    

    Now I think as far as Quemoy and Matsu are concerned, that the question is not these two little pieces of real estate, they are unimportant. It isn't the few people who live on them, they are not too important. It's the principle involved. These two islands are in the area of freedom. The Nationalists have these two islands. We should not force our Nationalist allies to get off of them and give them to the Communists. If we do that, we start a chain reaction, because the Communists aren't after Quemoy and Matsu, they're after Formosa.
    

    Kennedy has said:
    

    Well, the United States has on occasion attempted, mostly in the middle '50s to persuade Chiang Kai-shek to pull his troops back to Formosa. I believe strongly in the defense of Formosa. These islands are a few miles, five or six miles off the coast of Red China within a general harbor area, and more than a hundred miles from Formosa. We have never said flatly that we will defend Quemoy and Matsu if it is attacked. We say we will defend it if it's part of a general attack on Formosa, but it is extremely difficult to make that judgment.
    I think that we should protect our commitments. I believe strongly we should do so in Berlin. I believe strongly we should do so in Formosa and I believe we should meet our commitments to every country whose security we've guaranteed. But I do not believe that that line, in case of a war, should be drawn on those islands, but instead on the island of Formosa.
    

• Both candidates have made a number of statements in support of civil rights and have at times emphasized the issue's importance. Still, arguments and differences have sometimes emerged.
  
  • While there is dispute about whether or not Lodge made a "promise," Nixon's running mate nonetheless made headlines when he said that "I will make this prediction ... if Richard Nixon is elected, there will be a qualified negro in the cabinet." It is unclear whether this statement was made with Nixon's approval, and more recently Nixon has stated that the best men must come to the top "regardless" of race, creed, or party background. Still, both Nixon and Lodge have floated the name of Ralph Bunche. Kennedy has responded by saying he will make no such promise, that to do so would be "racism in reverse and at its worst."
  • Both candidates generally have a pro-civil-rights record. As Vice President, Nixon met and discussed policy and rhetoric with civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., has helped push through civil rights legislation, and he has also headed a committee on government contracts that has attempted to push employers, especially those who do business with the government, to reduce or eliminate discriminatory practices. They have been successful in some cases - a case example would be convincing some refineries to stop having separate promotion lists for white and black employees. Still, critics have pointed out that the committee has not used the full weight of its power - since its creation in 1953, it has never asked a federal agency to cancel a government contract. As Senator, Kennedy has fairly consistently voted in favor of civil rights legislation and pro-civil-rights amendments to legislation.
  • Just in the last month, civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was arrested after leading a sit-in protest in Atlanta. As has now been reported publicly, Senator Kennedy called Dr. King's wife with sympathy and a desire to help. While the details are unclear, the civil rights leader, now released, is of the understanding that Senator Kennedy may have done some work behind the scenes to help secure his release. Nixon appears to have been largely silent on King's arrest. On the question of an endorsement, King said:
    

    I have been asked from many quarters whether it is my intention to endorse one of the presidential candidates. The organization of which I am president, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, from its inception and in its constitution has been non-partisan. Accordingly, as its titular head, I am unable to endorse a political party or its candidate.
    But for fear of being considered an ingrate, I want to make it palpably clear that I am deeply grateful to Senator Kennedy for the genuine concern he expressed in my arrest. When reactionary forces sought to crush our movement for desegregation by methods so unjust and unwise that millions were inflamed with indignation, Senator Kennedy exhibited moral courage of a high order. He voluntarily expresses his position effectively and took an active and articulate stand for a just resolution.
    

• Nixon has faced debate questions and an attack ad from the Kennedy campaign related to comments by President Eisenhower in an August press conference. Pressed on what "big decisions" Vice President Nixon had participated in, Eisenhower said:
  

  I don’t see why people can’t understand this: no one can make a decision except me if it is in the national executive area. I have all sorts of advisers, and one of the principal ones is Mr. Nixon.
  

  Pressed further on the question of any major ideas Nixon had suggested that Eisenhower had implemented, Eisenhower delivered the line that has caused Nixon problems on the campaign trail:
  

  If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don’t remember.
  

• As with Al Smith decades ago, Kennedy's Catholic faith has at points been a campaign issue. In an attempt to tackle the issue head-on, Kennedy gave a speech to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association and said:
  

  For contrary to common newspaper usage, I am not the Catholic candidate for President.
  I am the Democratic Party's candidate for President who happens also to be a Catholic.
  I do not speak for my church on public matters; and the church does not speak for me. Whatever issue may come before me as President, if I should be elected, on birth control, divorce, censorship, gambling or any other subject, I will make my decision in accordance with these views -- in accordance with what my conscience tells me to be in the national interest, and without regard to outside religious pressure or dictates. And no power or threat of punishment could cause me to decide otherwise.
  

Platforms
Read the full 1960 Republican platform here. 10 Excerpts:

1. "The Republican Party asserts that the sovereign purpose of our foreign policy is to secure the free institutions of our nation against every peril, to hearten and fortify the love of freedom everywhere in the world, and to achieve a just peace for all of anxious humanity"
   
2. "The Republican Party reaffirms its determination to use every peaceful means to help the captive nations toward their independence, and thus their freedom to live and worship according to conscience"
   
3. Support for "broadly-based tax reform to foster job-making and growth-making investment for modernization and expansion, including realistic incentive depreciation schedules" and "spurring the economy by advancing the successful Eisenhower-Nixon program fostering new and small business, by continued active enforcement of the anti-trust laws, by protecting consumers and investors against the hazard and economic waste of fraudulent and criminal practices in the market place, and by keeping the federal government from unjustly competing with private enterprise upon which Americans mainly depend for their livelihood"
   
4. "Except in times of war or economic adversity, expenditures should be covered by revenues"
   
5. "We must resist assaults upon the independence of the Federal Reserve System; we must strengthen, not weaken, the ability of the Federal Reserve System and the Treasury Department to exercise effective control over money and credit in order better to combat both deflation and inflation that [slow] economic growth and shrink people's savings and earnings"
   
6. "We support the right of the Puerto Rican people to achieve statehood, whenever they freely so determine ... We support the right of the people of the Virgin Islands to an elected Governor, national representation and suffrage, looking toward eventual statehood, when qualified"
   
7. "Primary responsibility for education must remain with the local community and state ... The federal government should assist selectively in strengthening education without interfering with full local control of schools ... One objective of such federal assistance should be to help equalize educational opportunities
   
8. "The Republican Party is proud of the civil rights record of the Eisenhower Administration ... More progress has been made during the past eight years than in the preceding 80 years ... We acted promptly to end discrimination in our nation's capital ... Vigorous executive action was taken to complete swiftly the desegregation of the armed forces, veterans' hospitals, navy yards, and other federal establishments"
   
9. Pledge that "The Department of Justice will continue its vigorous support of court orders for school desegregation ... We will propose legislation to authorize the Attorney General to bring actions for school desegregation in the name of the United States in appropriate cases, as when economic coercion or threat of physical harm is used to deter persons from going to court to establish their rights"
   
10. "Immigration has been reduced to the point where it does not provide the stimulus to growth that it should, nor are we fulfilling our obligation as a haven for the oppressed ... Republican conscience and Republican policy require that ... The annual number of immigrants we accept be at least doubled"
    

Read the full 1960 Democratic platform here. 10 Excerpts:

1. "We shall continue to adhere to our treaty obligations, including the commitment of the UN Charter to resist aggression ... But we shall also seek to shift the emphasis of our cooperation from military aid to economic development, wherever this is possible"
   
2. "A primary task is to develop responsible proposals that will help break the deadlock on arms control ... Such proposals should include means for ending nuclear tests under workable safeguards, cutting back nuclear weapons, reducing conventional forces, preserving outer space for peaceful purposes, preventing surprise attack, and limiting the risk of accidental war"
   
3. "In the tradition of Cordell Hull, we shall expand world trade in every responsible way ... Since all Americans share the benefits of this policy, its costs should not be the burden of a few ... We shall support practical measures to case the necessary adjustments of industries and communities which may be unavoidably hurt by increases in imports"
   
4. "The national-origins quota system of limiting immigration contradicts the rounding principles of this nation ... It is inconsistent with our belief in the rights of man ... This system was instituted after World War I as a policy of deliberate discrimination by a Republican Administration and Congress"
   
5. "We Democrats believe that our economy can and must grow at an average rate of 5% annually, almost twice as fast as our average annual rate since 1953. We pledge ourselves to policies that will achieve this goal without inflation ... As the first step in speeding economic growth, a Democratic president will put an end to the present high-interest, tight-money policy"
   
6. "We pledge to raise the minimum wage to $1.25 an hour and to extend coverage to several million workers not now protected"
   
7. "We shall take positive action to raise farm income to full parity levels and to preserve family farming as a way of life ... We shall put behind us once and for all the timidity with which our Government has viewed our abundance of food and fiber"
   
8. "We believe that America can meet its educational obligations only with generous Federal financial support, within the traditional framework of local control ...The assistance will take the form of Federal grants to states for educational purposes they deem most pressing, including classroom construction and teachers' salaries"
   
9. "We believe, moreover, that except in periods of recession or national emergency, these needs can be met with a balanced budget, with no increase in present tax rates, and with some surplus for the gradual reduction of our national debt"
   
10. "The time has come to assure equal access for all Americans to all areas of community life, including voting booths, schoolrooms, jobs, housing, and public facilities ... The Democratic Administration which takes office next January will therefore use the full powers provided in the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960 to secure for all Americans the right to vote"
    

Video Clips
Debates:
"I may actually watch one of the hour-long debates in full, which one should I watch?"

• The first debate is only on domestic policy, and over 1/5th of the debate is taken up by lengthy opening and closing statements. Everyone is clearly adjusting to this "debate" thing. On the other hand, this was naturally the debate with the most viewers.
  
• The second debate has no opening/closing statements, and no restrictions on questions.
  
• The third debate has no opening/closing statements, and no restrictions on questions. Nixon and Kennedy spoke from two different studios, but the debate is presented without any lag in responses.
  
• The fourth debate has opening and closing statements, and is limited to foreign policy.
  

Kennedy/Nixon First Debate (full)

• Nixon is asked about the Eisenhower "give me a week" quote (clip)
  
• Kennedy is asked the "how will you pay for it" question (clip)
  

Kennedy/Nixon Second Debate (full)

• Kennedy and Nixon debate civil rights (clip)
  
• Kennedy and Nixon debate how well the US is doing in the Cold War (clip)
  
• Kennedy and Nixon debate economic policy (clip)
  
• Kennedy and Nixon debate Quemoy and Matsu (clip)
  
• Kennedy and Nixon debate the importance of party labels (clip)
  

Kennedy/Nixon Third Debate (full)

• Nixon and Kennedy are asked (indirectly) about former President Truman's remarks that Nixon voters should "go to hell" (clip)
  
• Nixon on whether he has taken a more aggressive stance on communism than President Eisenhower (clip)
  
• Kennedy is asked about campaign surrogates attempting to link Nixon with the KKK (clip)
  
• Kennedy and Nixon debate unions (clip)
  

Kennedy/Nixon Fourth Debate (full)

• Kennedy and Nixon debate Cuba policy (clip)
  
• Kennedy and Nixon debate conditions for a summit conference (clip)
  

Speeches:
Nixon nomination acceptance speech
Kennedy nomination acceptance speech
Ads:
Kennedy musical campaign ad
Kennedy Eisenhower quote ad
Nixon campaign ad on civil rights
Nixon campaign ad on foreign policy
Other:
Former President Truman criticizes Kennedy in advance of the Democratic convention
Kennedy responds to President Truman's criticisms
Strawpoll
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