Tuesday, June 4, 2019

Trump Got His Chaika!

Separated At Birth?

Trump, in Bill Barr, got his "Chaika"/Roy Cohn type of prosecutor general to replace the role of Attorney General. He wants this because it is who trump is. Anyone who knows him knows that Trump habitually abuses power using the law. He is famous for three things:

“First he flatters you;”
“then he bullies you;”
“then he sues you;” – Only now he can do what he really wants to do, he investigates you and tries to put you on trial!

Which is why he wanted his own Chaika

AND HE GOT HIM in William P. Barr!

Corruption at the Center fails

Anthony Kennedy “retired” under suspicious circumstances. He was replaced with Justice Brett Kavanaugh, despite credible “partisan” labeled opposition, that he had sexually assaulted women at least 2 women during his “youth” and had at least “83 ethics complaints” filed against him during his his time as lower court judge. The evidence suggests that "Bart" Kavanaugh was appointed, in part, due to his RW Catholic Conservatism, anti-abortion stances, but also due to his personal relationship with Anthony Kennedy! Like other so-called “moderates” Kennedy proved to not really care about stare decisis or noble principles of law as much as emoluments and social influence. This was underlined recently in an appearance the two gave jointly at a Seventh Circuit judicial conference in a question-and-answer format moderated by Chief Judge Diane Wood, reported on by "Above the Law." They report him saying:

“I see technology straining our traditional understandings of speech, of privacy and of war in a way that’s going to be a huge challenge for our system of separation of powers, and a huge challenge for all of us as judges and as citizens”["ATL"]

When Kavanaugh says that "modern technology" is at fault for an assault on “privacy” he seems to be thinking of the privacy with which privileged people can make decisions to rob workers or engage in unethical behavior with impunity. That is why Mystal says' he probably is not on the side of the issue that he implies he is.

Elie Mystal, reports that that “creeps him out.” It creeps me out too. The reason is that tyrants always blame some strawman for their decisions to exercise arbitrary power and censor critics and Kavanaugh was blaming modern technology for giving the President powers to “wage cyber war” online. If the Congress and Courts cede power to the executive, as RW conservative activists like Kavanaugh and Barr have done, then a ruthless and unethical President will use that power ruthlessly. He is right to be concerned about such power. Elie Mystal is right to be concerned about whether he is will be any check on a President who shares his corruption and ideological view.

Kennedy

Anthony Kennedy, on the other hand, is obtusely in denial about what is wrong. At the conference Judge Gary Feinerman, an Obama appointee who clerked for Justice Kennedy alongside Justice Kavanaugh. asked him:

“What do you see as the source of what’s currently plaguing our society” ["ATL"]

Kennedy is in denial because he specifically denied the role of money, access, emoluments, job offers and the improper access and influence they buy in his Citizens United Case. And he compounded that error in rejecting a 100 year body of evidence in the Montana Case:

So when Feinerman asked him:

“what do you see as the solution?” asked U.S. District Judge Gary Feinerman, ["ATL"]

That obtuse blindness reared its head. Kennedy has no solution. Because he already sabotaged one solution, reasonable restrictions on bribery and corruption.

When Kennedy talks about "civility" he is missing the point that civility requires a virtuous civil system that involves self moderation by officers of the law, officials and leaders of all kinds. Loss of civility is a symptom not an underlying issue. When people no longer believe that their civil servants serve them, they lose respect for the system. When someone uses his position to influence where his children work so they can become filthy rich, that is what damages "civility." People see that and are offended. People who would respect the courts, lose that respect. Raw power can't restore that respect. Only justice can.

“I don’t know, Gary,” Justice Kennedy said. ["ATL"]

Of course Justice Kennedy doesn't have an answer. His citizens United decision denied the problem and thus exacerbated it. If you can't diagnose the problem you focus on symptoms. Our democracy is in trouble due to the corrupt influence of money and power over resources and access to those resources. If you don't have a virtuous government, then raw power rules. When raw power rules elites manipulate mobs and republican democratic forms are replaced with their corrupt counterfeits. So he blames democracy:

“We’re still too overconfident that democracy can survive without conscious effort. But that’s not true.” ["ATL"]

Democracy won't survive with corrupt judges and concentrated raw power. It won't survive if officials aren't held accountable for their deeds and judges label bribes as free speech. Elie's article drips with a certain amount of justified contempt. He ends his post in a rant, which deflects from a valid central point. Those two are blind to the actual causality of what is going wrong. Looking to them for wisdom is a waste of time. At it's heart the problem is a three fingered thing, and the tyranny of courts and tyrants was defined by John Locke in his two treatises:

I'm looking at them for lessons to learn about what not to do, in order to give some ideas about what we can do.

Above the law:
https://abovethelaw.com/2019/05/brett-kavanaugh-anthony-kennedy-rehabilitation-insult/

Monday, June 3, 2019

Commitment

Today we committed my mom to the Columbarium at the Naval Academy. As the Chaplain said "she may not have served in the service directly, but as “wife of” she served her country. My mom now has her ashes box sitting on top of my Dad's ashes. A milestone in the lives of all her family, who are my family, has been reached. We had most of the various sub-clans of my family represented. My Sister Kathy, her son and her grandchildren & great grans. My sister Susan and her two daughters and also people she had helped. My Daughter, my Ex Wife and her husband. My Brother Carl and a representation of all his relatives. We are missing Andy, whose untimely death precipitated all this. We are missing her Sister Aunt Patty, Patricia Winters ne Carpenter. But we have my cousin Mike and his companion Robert. It was a bitter sweet moment. My Grandfather Truman E Carpenter is in the memorial to lost Naval Officers. He was class of 1932. He died in 1939 when my mom was 2. A part of my mom, my grandma, is connected to him and his loss at sea somewhere off the coast of California. My Dad was class of '55. My Mom married my Dad, today, in 1955.

Good bye Mom And Dad

For more see:
https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2019/03/sally-ann-holte-mom.html

Saturday, June 1, 2019

An Inquiry into Donald Trump

Dear Speaker Pelosi and the House:

You need a coordinated messaging strategy if you really want to hold Trump to Account. It is a fantasy that anything other than a well coordinated communications effort, will produce the desired results. There needs to be one message, per day, every day, that hammers out to the press the reality of this President.

Congress needs to put someone in charge of, in lieu of “impeachment,” a “Trump Accountability Inquiry,” preferably under Jerry Nadler, to make sure that every day this effort produces testimony, evidence and information that can show up on nightly news and be broadcast nationwide. All your committee chairs can contribute to this, but it needs to be coordinated. I think that is what the TV pundits really need.

When sufficient support is finally gained to have a formal Impeachment Inquiry that person can be chief clerk of the effort. I suggest it not be a member of congress but an intern under Representative Jerry Nadler's, yours, & maybe Clyburn's, supervision.

Also, it would be worthwhile to impeach, or at least reprimand, Trump's criminal cabinet members and officers like Jared Kushner, William Barr, Mnuchin, etc.... Also we need to be investigating Trump's Judicial appointees.

Details

The House needs to consolidate it's hearings into Donald Trump and his administration. I can understand why they don't want to call it an impeachment inquiry, but the reality is that unless they package their hearings and messaging that messaging won't reach the general public. The real bar to impeachment is not the Republicans, but Fox news, Sinclair and short attention spans.

Unless, the hearings can be productive, factual and easily understood, they will be less than fully effective. So, the suggestion? One person should keep a schedule, work with all the committees to arrange testimony and provide press releases and taped interviews/summaries, with the goal of a new summary message every day til January 2021 or Trump is impeached. Keep the messages to the facts.

Get someone, each day, to give a speech summarizing the days allegations. Periodically, weekly?, get a member of congress to give a speech on Trump's criminality placing those allegations into the overall framework. Make sure every member of congress (House and Senates) gets these summaries and that they are sent to constituents. Make it like a newsletter. There are a lot of bloggers and journalists who could submit material. Some might want to be paid, but that is up to you.

Just an idea.

Suggested titles:
Latest administration Impeachable Offenses ###
Trump's Abuses of Power this Week ###
Trump's latest Emoluments Crimes ###
Latest evidence of Trump's Abuse of Power ###
Russian Contacts, Business, Statements ###
Trump's latest Border Outrages ###
Trump's disregard for the law this week ###
Progress in investigating Trump's Money Laundering
Progress in Investigating Jered Kushner, Barr, others.

Capital Goods – Capital yield

Nearly everyone implicitly understands that money needs to be backed by something. Most Conservatives and cons feel that money should be backed by (or be) loot (tangible valuable portable goods). But in actual fact, due to a combination of factors, what they think of as "good money" is actually terribly poor quality money because of Gresham's law. [For more on this read my post: Gresham Law as a Tool of Regulation] People tend to hoard loot. The best money stimulates economic activity and supports economic exchange. But money has to be backed by something. It is credit. It is the credit of the entire country as a whole. Letting pirates privateer with that money is barbarous and piratical.

Don't tax Capital Goods, Gains and Labor compensation

More importantly, our tax system is backwards because the wealthy use sleight of hand language to confuse people and get laws passed that sound plausible but are harmful. Labor compensation is compensation for productive work. It is thus earned income and should not be taxed at all except perhaps to pay for general compensation (such as social security or Medicare/medicaid) that workers receive. Likewise actual capital goods and their yields should be deferred from taxation as long as they are in production.

Don't eat the Seeds, Do eat the Fruit.

Taxing labor compensation reduces people to poverty and can drive people out of the economy. Taxing capital goods and gains from them is like eating the seed corn just before planting time. Both taxes make everyone poorer. But taxing economic rent marginally makes everyone better off, including the rentiers as it stabilizes the economy and people's lives.

Do Tax Unearned Economic Rent

At the same time, economic rent derived from stocks, corporate ownership, land or privatized money, should be taxed progressively on marginal principles. In the case of money, taxing excessive unearned money income [usury or economic rent], is for the sake of regulating money.

That things are backwards reflects propaganda and sloppy language. With clear logic we'd see how to protect family farms, small business and reduce the power of monopolies and incipient oligarchs.

Saturday, May 18, 2019

How an Influence campaign will work

I expect massive amounts to be spent on this election. I already see outlines on how.

Friday Morning I woke up hearing a lecture on what is happening with the 2020 election, which continues what happened with the 2018 and 2016 elections. We know the Russians successfully hacked 2 Florida Counties. The FBI forced the Governor to sign a Non Disclosure Agreement. The FBI is saying that the Election officials in Florida were the victims, despite the obvious reality that it is the voters of those counties who are the real victims and the election officials involved are supposed to be proxies for we the Citizens. It seems that the FBI has absorbed Trumpian corruption. NDAs?? A Governor? [More on Florida]

The Russians are not our only enemy. Trump seems to be shutting down investigations into Russian penetration into our elections. I suspect that is because they are now subcontractors to the Republicans.

They will be playing on Fears

  • Dividing the electorate
  • Individual Feedback
  • Kompromat on both friends and enemies to paralyze enemies and ensure compliance of friends.
  • Bribes are not only a means to buy compliance and acquiescence but become material for extortion (Kompromat)
  • Defamation, propaganda doesn't need to be true to be effective. All it needs to do is to create doubt in the minds of allies and enemies alike. The goal is to get people to turn on each other. Like we did on Hillary.
  • False Flags, Wars, events, all used to distract from paying attention to what is important.
  • Controlled opposition, you can buy some opponents to attack common enemies. For example communists have regularly been used to take out Democrats for their ostensible enemies. When working through cutouts, your asset doesn't even have to know he's being used as one.

I heard a longer lecture as I was waking up, but this summarizes the material a little. We Democrats have to launch impeachment hearings, to get the word out. But expecting the Senate to impeach is a dream. We can't expect fair elections next year. We can't expect our coalition to hold together on its own. Our enemies aim to divide us. If that doesn't work, they are already cheating.

In Power

Once in power, influence acquires force of law. Expect Trump to prosecute democrats and critics and to use such prosecutions to defame and tarnish the credibility of critics.

  • Political Prosecutions
  • "leaks" of dirt, lies, deep fakes and misinformation about opponents.
  • Funding, instigating and encouraging refocusing of criticism onto leading opponents. [Now happening with Pelosi].

Most of this I heard in my head as I woke up as a kind of "lecture dream" [My subconscious talking to me] on 5/18/2019. I woke up hearing the rest today. 6/15/2019

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/is-russia-already-meddling-in-2020-election
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/02/is-russia-already-meddling-in-2020-election

Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Benjamin Franklin Defends Paper Money

Benjamin Franklin wrote about the value of paper money in the 1740s and defended paper money in Parliament against a Hostile Parliament during is mission to Parliament.

Benjamin Franklin vigorously defended the right of the colonies to issue their own script. He may never told Parliament the following in a letter, but this probably represents what he said during hearings. Maybe away from the halls.

"In the Colonies, we issue our own paper money. It is called Colonial Scrip. We issue it to pay the government's approved expenses and charities" [Possibly Apocryphal but true]

The quote is apocryphal according to Gary North, but it is a summary of things that Benjamin Franklin had actually said in Book form during his youthful days with the Philadelphia Junto. Gary North Alleges he didn't say it to Parliament and claims it can't be verified but what can be verified is that Benjamin Franklin literally, wrote a book on the subject that explained exactly how script money can be used to promote and regulate commerce.

See:
Franklin As Modern Money Advocate
Benjamin Franklin and Paper money

A Collaborative Money System

Benjamin Franklin setup printing presses in Post Offices, setup paper money systems for an number of colonies and printed paper money. So what he did say was that the reasons for rebellion owed:

"To a concurrence of causes: the restraints lately laid on their trade, by which the bringing of foreign gold and silver into the Colonies was prevented; the prohibition of making paper money among themselves, and then demanding a new and heavy tax by stamps; taking away, at the same time, trials by juries, and refusing to receive and hear their humble petitions." [bartleby]

Franklin did his greatest work before the revolution. By the time that the constitution was being written, he was old, tired and worn out. I believe both Hamilton and Franklin sought a collaborative system where the Feds should possess the money power and share it with the states. Had they followed Franklin's ideas they would have succeeded. Franklin's ideas were amazingly similar to those of Irving Fisher, and his Postal Banking could easily have been integrated into the Federal system Franklin had built. Paper money, according to the Fisher/Franklin system is a kind of script issued against coin and taxation obligations. Fisher's schema would have required it has to be circulated or lose value and it would get retired when paid for "public debts." Franklin had already noted that such script money, when issued locally, was quite effective.

Nationalizing/Socializing Private Debt

The Authors of the Constitution started with Franklin's schema but dumped it based on their admiration for the power of the British Central Bank. Hamilton openly admired and wanted to imitate this bank. His allies: Robert Morris, Gouvernier Morris and "monied men" of the country also admired the British System. They rejected Franklin's work, Overtly based on the successful counterfeiting of it by the British, and the resulting inflation. But covertly they admired the British System and wanted banking privatized, so they could make money from banking. Robert Morris was a privateer. A Privatized money system allows the laundering of money. He would speculate with investors on land, and lose his shirt when his system collapsed.

The Risks of Privateered Money

Franklin feared making his paper money a national currency due to issues with pushing private debt onto the general public. This fear has been realized with the federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has regularly nationalized (socialized) the private debt of irresponsible and even criminal bankers, transferring that risk to inflation or risk of economic collapse. The founders and early politicians fought between having a centralized single national bank monopoly or State banks holding State Debts. But both schemas were based on the risk of banking nominally backed by reserves of gold or silver. Both ignored Franklin's ideas. These schemes meant nationalizing private debt and the general economy assuming the risk, sometimes. Or grifting private banks where insiders would abscond as loot, with the reserves and the local bank would shut it's doors unable to pay back depositors. The result of ignoring Franklin (and moderns ignoring Fisher) was a cycle of private debt creation and economic collapse.

Franklin's original scheme was analogous to the scheme Irving Fisher would advance nearly 200 years later, see:

Irving Fisher and Stamp Script
Postal Banking Stamp Scripts and Fixing our Economic System

Even so but that early battle was used by privateers to erase that prospect and substitute land based notes with zero interest for private money and money lent into existence. The result was that the money power was privatized and put in the hands of privateers; i.e. bankers.

Then they used these early fights to strip the money power from the Federal Government. The result was so egregious that banks

Irving Fisher was a pioneer in modern money theorizing with his Stamp Script Ideas (See: Irving Fisher Post). He seems to have been the first to thoroughly do the math. Hamilton saw "bank paper" (paper money) as a necessary adjunct to coins and said:

"...it may be observed, that the inconvenience of transporting ... is sufficiently great to induce a preference of bank paper..." [Hamilton/Money]

However, if you want to find a classical writer who understood accounting money (debt based paper money) it was Benjamin Franklin. This post is a follow on to: Franklin As a Modern Money Advocate:

Hamilton and his compatriots, especially Governeur and Robert Morris, were enamored about the value of Central Banking British Style. Hamilton admired the Bank of England. Ostensibly because of the way it protected the British Economy and provided investment to the country. He valued Paper money as an expedient. He would monetize the State Debts in order to inflate the economy. This produced both a period of prosperity where the Country could balance its' books and a recession which sent Robert Morris to Debtor Prison and probably contributed to his death.

Even so, Hamilton had liked Franklin's idea at one time. Just Franklin and Hamilton were vetoed by the rest of the founders. But in 1781, Hamilton had said:

"By admitting landed security as a part of the bank stock, while we establish solid funds for the money emitted, we at the same time supply the defect of specie, and we give a strong inducement to moneyed men to advance their money" [Hamilton1781]

If they'd followed Hamilton's 1781 plan successfully (perhaps caught the British counterfeiters), things would have been very different, as one of the reasons for the crash of 1799 and the big war between State versus Federal Banking interests was him not applying Franklin's ideas in the 1790s when they actually implemented a National Bank. Like Irving Fisher the money would have been local, receivable for debts public and private, and harder to counterfeit if locally controlled.

A Stable Economy is a Matter of National Security

Franklin had warned that Parliament, by denying local sovereignty (the principle of subsidiarity) to the Colonists, were defeating their own interest in raising revenues. As Franklin said:

"The Stamp Act says we shall have no commerce, make no exchange of property with each other, neither purchase nor grant, nor recover debts; we shall neither marry nor make our wills, unless we pay such and such sums; and thus it is intended to extort our money from us or ruin us by the consequence of refusing to pay it." [bartleby]

Vacuuming Wealth

We are in an analogous situation between the States and the Federal Government in this day. Because we created the Federal Reserve and separated the public debt of the Several States united from them individually, the States have to borrow money at interest for infrastructure and other purposes. This means that much of the country is starved of wealth and forced to borrow at interest. The objection of the colonies to "taxation without representation" was also an opposition to one way flow of wealth and resources. While Quid Pro Quo relationships are rightly illegal when for Private Separate Advantage, they are necessary to exercise the principles of "commonwealth" and comity. A federation lives on mutual relationships. The fact that the Federal Reserve serves private banking is one reason behind this.

The current system vacuums wealth to central powers.

Federal principles of good government require that money not be vacuumed to a central power. The Tea Acts and Stamp acts were designed to vacuum wealth from the British Colonies. The Tea Act was designed to keep the East India Company solvent by giving it a monopoly on trade with East India (the source of Tea). The Stamp Act was designed to suck up any money the Colonies had, and was coupled with prohibitions on Paper money. If our country had not gotten sovereign power over its money supply we would look like India did after the East India Company was thru with Bengal; destroyed. Our current system isn't fair to anyone. The fact that that sovereign power is privatized to the Federal Reserve means that we are no longer sovereign over our credit money. We need to reassert control over it.

More on Franklin:
Franklin As Modern Money Advocate
http://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2015/09/benjamin-franklin-and-paper-money.html
[bartleby]
Related Posts:
https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/12/an-ideology-of-piratical-banking.html
https://holtesthoughts.blogspot.com/2017/07/greshams-law-as-tool-of-regulation.html

This continues a discussion I started a long time ago.