The army of bureaucrats continue to crank out unreadable laws every year. In 2017, there were 61,949 pages published. This is the lowest amount since 1990. Does anyone know what these 61,949 pages contain? No.
These bureaucracies take on a life of their own. They do not care who the president is. The president is powerless to stop this. The only thing these bureaucracies understand is cutting funding. This is not happening. These bureaucracies can generate a lot more regulations than can be destroyed by executive order. Ignore the noise.
Category: Politics
A Message From One Criminal to Another
You have committed hundreds of felonies this year. The book “Three Felonies a Day” and “Go Directly to Jail” detail this issue. The CFR is about 150,000 pages last time I checked (2013). Below is one of these laws reprinted to give you an idea of how it is written. (12CFR1.100-Indirect General Obligations).
“(a) Obligation issued by an obligor not possessing general powers of taxation. Pursuant to §1.2(b), an obligation issued by an obligor not possessing general powers of taxation qualifies as a general obligation of a State or political subdivision for the purposes of 12 U.S.C. 24 (Seventh), if a party possessing general powers of taxation unconditionally promises to make sufficient funds available for all required payments in connection with the obligation.”
From these little paragraphs in the CFR, come hundreds of pages of other regulatory guidelines on what this mean and how to follow it. Some of these laws have court cases which also interpret these laws. I have not even touched state and local laws. I have not even touched contradictions between state and federal laws. This is why it is impossible not to be a criminal in the eyes of the law. This is why when someone says, “it’s the law”, and you ask for specifics, you get a blank stare. No one bothers to read it. No one cares. No one can understand them.
The Federal Government goes after low hanging fruit. These are very wealthy individuals and corporations. Ninety-eight percent of the public is out of the view of the government. They do not have the time or resources to interpret the data they collect on individuals.
The Mueller probe proves that the federal government can put you in jail forever because you did not dot an “i” on some form you signed in 1995. This rarely happens though.
Jermone Corsi was put in the government cross-hairs. The first ten minutes of this video is worth watching on what the government can do to you.
Mistake 1: He handed over all his information willingly. Make the bureaucracy follow the rules exactly. Make them work for the information they need. Bureaucrats do not like extra work. The less you give them, the better.
Mistake 2: He cooperated. He sat down and spoke with them. Always plead the fifth.
I don’t know the lawyer he is getting advice from, but he should be fired.
I disagree with commentators who tell us the United States is turning into George Orwell’s 1984 dystopia. This is the story line of the right wing. The exact opposite is happening. If the Federal Government ever started to target common people on a grand scale, the internet would shed light on this. Individuals would post YouTube videos and share their story on Facebook. Bureaucrats hate negative publicity. Over the years, this has already happened. This is why police now wear body cams. This is why ACORN no longer exist. The Mueller probe has low approval ratings among the public. Jermone Corsi has the ability to post his video on YouTube for the public to see and decide for themselves. This was not possible 20 years ago. His story would have been filtered through the MSM and the message would have been lost. The Mueller probe is one indictment away from a public relation disaster. The all seeing eye works both ways. It is working in the way of freedom.
Democracy in Action
Voters in San Francisco went to the polls to vote on Proposition C, “Gross Tax for Homelessness service.” Voting yes meant you were in favor of raising taxes on certain businesses.
In the true spirit of democracy, it won by about a 60 to 40 margin. What do you expect when two wolves and a sheep have a vote on what’s for dinner? Tyranny of the majority.
I can summarize the philosophy of the western world in one statement:
“Don’t steal… except via the ballot box”
The Irrelevant Presidents
US presidents are irrelevant. Actual changes that affect peoples everyday life are marginal. The only big change is the rhetoric and the so called “national dialogue”. The national dialogue is the conversations you have among family, friends and the hot debates you have on Facebook with trolls.
I will make two points that prove the above statement.
First, imagine if I had the ability to block out who won election night. I somehow had the power to redact everything you read with regard to who won the presidency. If I was to ask you, based on your everyday life two years into the presidency, “who won”, you would not know.
Second, I am going to discuss the current national dialogue. This is the hot topic known as immigration, both legal and illegal. All of the information below is from the “Yearbook of Immigration Statistics 2017”. I am aware that people debate the absolute numbers. What is more important is the trends are consistent between all these different studies.
Illegal immigration peaked in 2006-2008 time frame. It has been on a steady decline since that time period.
Those talking about the “flood of illegal immigrants” are about a decade late to the conversation. The trends are changing. They show people are going home.
It wasn’t more than a few years ago we heard Obama was “flooding the US with refugee’s”. No one every defined what they meant by flood.
The above chart shows no flood.
What about deportations and aliens removed?
It shows a steady increase from the mid 90’s. This trend cuts right through the Clinton, Bush and Obama years. Obama was depicted as a softy on illegal aliens.
The US government is not some top down command center. These government departments take on a life of their own. Think about the drastic difference in rhetoric between Trump and Obama. Now reflect on the above charts. If Hilary would have won or Obama would have lost in previous elections, do you think these numbers would be different? Behind the scenes, these bureaucracies chug along, regardless of the presidents rhetoric and stated goals. The only way to inflict damage on these bureaucracies is to cut their funding. This is not happening. It rarely ever happens. Each year congress sends a massive spending bill to the president. It is usually over 2,000 pages. Politically, the president has little choice in signing it. The president has little power in cutting funding to any of these bureaucracies.
If Hilary would have won, we would all be discussing LGBT bathroom rights or climate change. The national dialogue would be drastically different. Newspaper headlines would be drastically different. But for the bureaucracies, it would be business as usual.
Opportunity in the Academic World
Three academics conducted an experiment. See video below.
They created a fictions author and a non-existent institution- The Portland Ungendering Research Initiative. They took the most absurd ideas and retrofit them into today’s politically correct dogmas. Here is a sample:
“Sometimes we just thought a nutty or inhumane idea up and ran with it. What if we write a paper saying we should train men like we do dogs—to prevent rape culture? Hence came the “Dog Park” paper. What if we write a paper claiming that when a guy privately masturbates while thinking about a woman (without her consent—in fact, without her ever finding out about it) that he’s committing sexual violence against her? That gave us the “Masturbation” paper. What if we argue that the reason superintelligent AI is potentially dangerous is because it is being programmed to be masculinist and imperialist using Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and Lacanian psychoanalysis? That’s our “Feminist AI” paper. What if we argued that “a fat body is a legitimately built body” as a foundation for introducing a category for fat bodybuilding into the sport of professional bodybuilding? You can read how that went in Fat Studies.
We used other methods too, like, “I wonder if that ‘progressive stack’ in the news could be written into a paper that says white males in college shouldn’t be allowed to speak in class (or have their emails answered by the instructor), and, for good measure, be asked to sit in the floor in chains so they can ‘experience reparations.’” That was our “Progressive Stack” paper. The answer seems to be yes, and feminist philosophy titan Hypatia has been surprisingly warm to it. Another tough one for us was, “I wonder if they’d publish a feminist rewrite of a chapter from Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.” The answer to that question also turns out to be “yes,” given that the feminist social work journal Affilia has just accepted it. As we progressed, we started to realize that just about anything can be made to work, so long as it falls within the moral orthodoxy and demonstrates understanding of the existing literature.”
These papers got peer reviewed and published. Even hailed. The dog park paper got special recognition from the journal “Geneder, Place,and Culture”. The data and empirical evidence they used to backup their claims was pure nonsense and made up. No one bothered to even look at the references or raw data they were using. No one even bothered to research their institution to see that it was fake.
The academic world is digging its own grave. I suspect over the next few decades these colleges will loose their audience. Consider this, it was less than 20 years ago the main stream media was the only outlet to get news. Due to the internet and the decentralization of information, they have lost credibility. Alternatives have popped up to replace their monopoly.
Some entrepreneur will become filthy rich doing two things. One, making a better college curriculum. Two, marketing it to parents and students. There are many curriculum’s online that are excellent. Some are 100% free. However, they have failed in marketing. Very few parents or would be college students take the idea of an alternative to mainstream college serious. You can quiz out of college by taking CLEP exams. Most students do not due this. They would rather go to one of these colleges. The parents have this mentality: “It is not that bad”. It is very bad. The marketing campaign should focus on how bad it is.
Kavanaugh has Been Confirmed
I file this event in the “I don’t care” bin. 50 percent of the country is very upset. Most people can not even name the last 10 cases the supreme court ruled on. Most people can not even name 10 cases the supreme court has ruled on going back to the founding of the country. The right is gloating. The left is whining. This is a battle for power. Since I want to destroy these power hubs, I have no fight. I am sidelined. The conversations is so far removed from what I want to talk about. Namely, why do these nine people have so much power to determine law for 320 million people? The country is divided on issues that have no meaning. On issues that matter, the country is united. The sacred cows, known as entitlements, are going to bankrupt the US federal government. No one wants to cut these programs. The public truly believes the US government debt is going to keep going exponential.
When a commentator talks about “how divided the country is”, just ignore them. They are clueless.
Net Interest- Inside the Doomsday Mechanism for the US Government
From the 2017 Financial Report of the United States Government:
“Eventually, however, spending on net interest is projected to become the largest category of spending in both the Statement of Long-Term Fiscal Projections and GAO’s simulations.”
First, a snapshot of where the US government is with regard to spending and revenues is given below.
The projected chart below shows the future as a percentage of GDP.
I am not a fan of these projections. I think comparisons related to the GDP are dubious. Linear projections into the future are mostly always wrong. No one knows what interest rates will be in 2 years let alone in 2050. Additionally, there will be plenty of recessions between now and 2090 that will impact government revenue. Having said all of that, the chart above will give you a sense of the trouble ahead.
The debt will continue to grow. The interest expense on the debt will become unsustainable. Net interest will consume a large portion of the government revenue. As long as interest rates remain low, the game will go on.
The side show happening in D.C. is just that- a side show. As the crisis unfolds, the rhetoric in D.C. will reach critical mass. You should not pay attention to any of it. It might last another 10 years. The chances of it lasting another 30 years seem unlikely. I am optimistic about the future. When a governments goes bust it is an opportunity. An opportunity to explain to people what happened.
A Divided Country?
A poll shows that 70% of people want medicare for all. The article is here. On small issues, the country is divided. On the items that matter, everyone wants their handouts. The handouts will continue until the government goes bust.
Harassing Uber and Lyft
NYC council passed a regulation on the ride sharing apps, capping the number of vehicles on the road.
If you were to look closely at supply and demand curves, you will see that when you restrict supply, prices will rise (All other things being equal of course). Mayor Bill de Blasio had this to say:
“Our city is directly confronting a crisis that is driving working New Yorkers into poverty and our streets into gridlock. The unchecked growth of app-based for-hire vehicle companies has demanded action – and now we have it.”
As a native New Yorker, I can be the first to attest that NYC had a traffic problem long before Uber was ever even thought of.
The problem with Uber and Lyft in the mind of government officials is this:
It threatens their legitimacy.
Remember their is a lie by governments. That is, all of these laws passed by them are supposed to keep us safe. The government must licensee people! This will keep you safe!
If any of this was true, Uber would have been very dangerous when it first hit the market. I can also attest that yellow cabs in NYC are far more dangerous than Ubers. When Uber came out, there was no regulations on it. You could travel around NYC for cheap. Over the years NYC has passed more and more laws on these ride sharing apps. The results have been steady increases in prices.
Someone should show Mayor Bill de Blasio and the NYC council a supply and demand curve.
Putin vs the Empire
Western world journalist are a combination of dimwits and shills of the intelligence agencies. They are no match for Putin.