Grant, Sound Money And Human Suffering

Learning Lessons from the Past

In my previous post on General Grant (general-grant-and-mark-twain-greenbacks.html), I was referring to a biography of Grant I had just read. There are a lot of lessons to learn from the Civil War era, and the Grant administration about what to do and what not to do to nurture and sustain an economy.

What Grant Did Right and What he did wrong

These posts are not an attack on Grant. Both I and the author of the book are sympathetic to grant. But on the issue of how to regulate and control our money supply and prevent or deal with depressions, Grant was in the wrong. The author concedes that Grant himself, in 1873, felt regret even as he took actions that were inimical to dealing with the suffering caused by the panic of 1873. In Grant's defense, the leading men of his time were "hard money" men who would have preferred that the only money available to the general public would be coins. And they were offering him advice. These men rightly distrusted private bank notes, but they also generalized that distrust to greenbacks and fiscal or monetary measures to deal with the business cycle.

GOP & Russians worked together to defeat Democracy

British Spies First to Spot Trump Team Links to Russian Agents.

This is a follow up to the report on the arrest of Pyotr Levashov, in Spain the other day, and it's relationship to Project Alamo. I'm writing about this because there are multiple journalists pursuing multiple threads and I need a central place to keep the info and links. Also I expect Donald Trump to lash out at some country, probably North Korea, to divert attention from his treason.

Now we have a Guardian report which shows how Right Wing and Left Wing were being influenced by disinformation, stolen and massaged information and info-wars/psy-ops during or before 2015. The report details how Russian "Active Agents" directed by Russian Intelligence Disinformation experts working with Trump Campaign officials and members were picked up by allied intelligence doing their dirty work. It was those allies who relayed word on what the russians were doing back to, First CIA director Brennan and then, eventually, to James Comey.

"Britain’s spy agencies played a crucial role in alerting their counterparts in Washington to contacts between members of Donald Trump’s campaign team and Russian intelligence operatives, the Guardian has been told." [Guardian]

What Electronic Democracy Means

Local Democracy Necessary for Democratic Republics

Key principles:

For our system to be more democratic we need 5 mandatory things at all levels of public deliberation:

1. Trouble Reporting and tracking of issues, complaints and commentary with follow up at periodic milestones
2. Officer vetting Before Selection/Election
3. Accounting for Performance at End of Term
4. Top down, bottom up systematic deliberation
5. Appropriate power with necessary resources in each part of Government

This post focuses on the electronic portions of these ideas.

Levashov and Project Alamo: Spamming Democracy

Trumpenführer Goes to War

Wag the Dog or Insane Wannabe Dictator, or both?

Is this whole Syrian Affair "Wag the Dog" or is it a show meant to distract people from seeing that Putin owns Trump and Trump works for him, without actually bringing him down.

Sources:

http://linkis.com/washingtonpost.com/vHFnP

Randi Rhodes discusses it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIUsnxd9H-0

Olbermann: http://video.gq.com/watch/the-closer-with-keith-olbermann-the-media-fell-for-trump-s-syria-stunt

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/ap-fact-check-trump-lawmakers-saying-syria-jobs-supreme-court/

General Grant and Mark Twain, Greenbacks versus "Solid Money"

Accounting Money and Credit Money

The General purpose of money is to enable trade by creating a currency as a common unit of account that allows agreed on measures of value so that people can more easily exchange goods and services. Where it gets tricky hinges on the question how do you regulate the value of that currency so that it measures the value of commodity and services in a stable manner. Whether a currency is based on "commodity money" (Gold, silver by weight and purity), "fiat money", or accounting money (credits and debits/ mostly debt money); this presents an issues of sovereignty. Without sovereign money, currencies fall into the hands of bankers and speculators, grifters and frauds. When sovereignty over currency is in the hands of a Privateering Central Bank; The same. The People of the world need sovereignty over their currenies in actually sound hands. When money is available in an unsound manner, it;

.... falls into the hands of privateers:

• Money loses it's value as an accurate measure of transactions and relative value.
• It loses connection to the commodities that are supposed to back that value.
• Those with control over that currency speculate with their possessions.
• When they do some get very rich, in money terms, and...
• Suddenly part or all of the currency loses its collateral
• And everyone else gets very poor.

Tricky Politicians Privateers and Land Value

Picture captured from Wikipedia Article

We like to think of our current governmental dysfunction as something new. But it's not. What is going on now is actually the continuation of issues and troubles that have plagued this country since it's beginning. This post refers to Henry George Junior's biography of his father [https://www.questia.com/library/338293/the-life-of-henry-george], which I was able to put a PDF version on my nook, my computer and even my cell phone, so I can read it at my leisure. The book is excellent. Henry George's son was a good son. What he writes about the electoral politics of the 1870's and 1880's could be said about today.

When I first ran into Henry George I found him captivating. But most of what was quoted from him turned out to be from highly edited derivative works, except progress and poverty which makes perfect sense.