Inflation Revisited

 A problem good students have is that when they are discouraged from understanding something, they take the hint. I’m attempting to boil away some of the mystical malarkey around our everyday understanding of inflation. Don’t demand to understand or agree with every detail.

Inflation is a catchall for rising prices. I don’t have the prescription for rising prices. What I can do is categorize inflation first by currency and then by class.

Use of this generic term obscures the distinction between currency inflation, our currencies value against other currencies and domestic inflation when our prices increase but stay in range of other nations or the price of oil.

At this point there may be some free market(oxymoron) apologists who make their living prattling that currency inflation can be ignored:

-The market will adjust. Cheaper currency means greater competitiveness in the world markets. This will lead to innovation and growth in the cheaper country.

After which we all have a good laugh. Cheaper currency means that our assets, our capital goods, are also cheaper. Which means that foreign investors or speculators will swoop in and buy our factories, spouses, banks and take the earnings off to their own countries.

Foreign ownership doesn’t have to be bad, ask Jesse James. I remember a friend carrying on about Japanese investment in the US:

-They run their factories more efficiently. They pay benefits rather than salary.

-What’s the problem?

-You’ll never get into upper management.

Fear of foreign ownership and speculation is why we have central banks. The purpose of all these central banks is to maintain stability in the currency markets, or at least dampen gyration. The success of central banks can be measured by comparing world currency variation against the price of gold. If all currencies decline against gold in unison, we can still trade. The central banks do insider speculation to discourage outsider speculation.  At which point you may get some ingrates complaining that these banks exist only to support the status quo, bear in mind that status quo is also our employers.

Central banks have various official mechanisms for maintaining currency parity, or imbalance:

1.    Central banks have a discount window to loan money to registered banks ensuring that they won’t suffer temporary over drafts. Registered banks should take this rate to determine their risk of being overdrawn or defaulted on.

2.    Central banks insure deposits to their registered banks up to some amount.

3.    Central banks can audit their registered banks.

4.    Central banks can buy and sell their own, other currencies and gold.

5.    Central Banks can purchase both their own and foreign government debt.

These powers give central banks the implicit ability to participate in bail outs and take overs. This may all sound collegial and powerful to you until government treasuries hold auctions to sell securities supporting their debt.

While central banks and associated agencies can purchase these securities the debt of most countries reaches a point where individuals must participate or the debt sells below its asking price offering a greater yield. Rather than sell debt below its face value government treasuries raise the interest offered. In either case the central bank had best raise the discount rate charged its registered banks or those banks will be making free money, borrowing from the discount window to buy treasuries. Central banks are supposed to support themselves.

There may still be some among the economic apologists fulminating against government debt. Debt is central to capitalism. European expansion is a consequence of the Fuggers legalizing interest. The problem isn’t debt; it’s how the money is invested.

Call it capitalism or whatever you want, we need to plan, we need return on investment, we need to organize work and we must have a valuation of the consequence. Finance gives us a means of assessing risk reward. At some point it comes down to someone saying:

-You want to bet?

Within domestic inflation there is also a distinction between capital and wage inflation. If those terms annoy you substitute investment and consumer inflation. There are five US government agencies that restrict wage inflation:

1.    Department of Immigration and Naturalization identifies the undocumented that set the base rate for salaries.

2.    Taxation (IRS) favors investment over income.

3.    Department of Labor constrains union organizing.

4.    Department of Commerce (Trade) allows imports or encourages smuggling.

5.    When the central bank, the Federal Reserve for us, raises interest it curbs new investment which competes on wages.

These constraints on wage inflation increase capital inflation. Increasing interest reduces competition in general. The check on capital inflation is market disaster. Investors buying treasuries concern themselves with wage inflation. Capital inflation raises prices when it achieves monopoly. Investment can lower prices in a competitive environment. Sometimes investment can create a competitive environment, thwarting monopoly.

The Fed bouncing the interest rate caused the crash of 1929. Since then, the Fed is expected to behave in a measured and considerate way. It is hoped that the Fed will stay ahead of wage inflation. The fear is that the Fed will get caught in a game of chase, losing investor confidence.

Economists justify their existence by referring to the velocity of money. Take away the boilerplate and this is used to justify holding down wages. The velocity of money is defined as the putative total transactions in a country divided by the putative total amount of money. It makes sense that when people get paid more, they will indulge in more transactions benefitting more people. What is lost is that without investment the price of goods will increase.

Contrast the velocity of money from wage inflation with the multiplier from capital inflation. The multiplier is when financial instruments are themselves financed. If everyone must put down 20% borrowing from each other the multiplier on the original asset is 5. Usually, the down is less than 20%. I’ll put multiplier against velocity any day. At least until the original loan is paid off. If the loan is defaulted and the asset can be seized this could lead to further financial stratagems.

Which brings us to the question of national default. Never loan to kings. Our constitution was written to allow taxation of liquor which was used to pay for financing from the Dutch. Jefferson negotiated US debt forgiveness from Napolean who had nominal ownership. Jackson demanded payment to the US in gold crashing our markets. Grant kept US from paying our debt in silver, as did McKinley. Under Nixon the US went off gold and onto oil, which was an abrogation of our debt agreement.

Wage inflation has a direct upward impact on treasury interest. Capital inflation should lower treasury interest over time. As capital accumulates it competes for investment opportunity. In a stable environment this competition should lower the acceptable collective rate of return. As Piketty explains in such static times wealth is dynastic, compounding is paramount, marriage and inheritance rule.

Some of these investment opportunities are illusory:

1.    Governments guarantee a rate of return then undercut this rate by creating more currency. 

2.    Council of Institutional Investors gives a list of dual class publicly traded companies that cannot be taken over such as Meta. As of February 2026, there were 414 such stocks. Some of these quasi-public stocks are in indexes.

3.    Private Equity can refuse withdrawals. There is no requirement that private equity be equitable about who gets to withdraw.

4.    The petrodollar is based on oil. When oil declines, the dollar declines.

When a bubble pops, central banks and governments can ameliorate the crisis by giving money to the failing companies. This is accompanied by harsh words and strict admonitions against recurrence. If the disaster is extreme enough wage earners may receive subsidies from governments. The wage earner subsidies are usually criticized as inflationary. 

Consequences and Causes

 

I’m reluctant to attempt analysis of DJT’s war. It is easy to confuse consequences with causes. One obvious result is that US is now the principal supplier of liquid natural gas (LNG) to Europe. After Russia was forced out when their pipeline was blown up, Qatar was partners with US selling LNG to Europe. Now Qatar is struggling while Saudi Arabia is moving oil to China out its back door. Given the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Qatar this appears providential. You may be dismissive of this as a cause. How much revenue is received as against war expenditure? What you fail to grasp is the much larger financial value of the new relationships and contracts.

Again, who knows how those decisions were made. But US now supplies almost all LNG to Europe. 

I find President Grants struggle with his Great Financial Depression instructive. Grant recognized a presidential responsibility for the economy, advocated several innovative solutions and then, unpopular as it was, ended US paying silver and onto using just gold. Given that the British Empire ruled the world, wanted to be paid in gold, and had financed our civil war, this was a given. Nixon taking US off the gold standard was the second moment when we had a fiat currency after Washington and Hamilton’s Coinage Act. Nixon quickly realized the dollar had to be worth something and today the dollar is valued in oil, the petrodollar. You can still see the gold value of the dollar and it has declined dramatically.

Capital or investment is much larger than its associated revenue. Capital is also aspirational; we invest in hopes of future profit. Oil is declining as an opportunity. When Dumb Dumb Donald held his meeting with oil leaders proudly displaying his recent theft of Venezuela oil they stared in open mouthed astonishment. They were facing an oil glut. US has become the new OPEC. We are not the largest export state but US is the largest oil producing state. US fracking has turned our southwest into toxic sludge. China, after much criticism, has managed to reduce its oil consumption. The glut of oil had lowered the value of our dollar, which is shown by the price of gold.

The value of the dollar isn’t only determined by oil, or even liquid natural gas. One measure of dollar worth is wage inflation. When undocumented were successfully terrorized, wages rose. Responding to what looked like a structural change the Federal Reserve increased the discount rate that they charge banks. Poor Biden tried to meet the challenge with documented immigrants. Documented are more expensive than undocumented, so it takes more, and they are apparent. Bringing in more people may have ameliorated the wage increase but combined with the Covid shocks it wasn’t sufficient and interest rates rose.

When the Federal Reserve raises the discount rate, businesses must pay more interest when they borrow. This chokes off new and smaller companies that compete in the labor markets and that should, eventually lower salaries. Choking off new companies reduces competition and innovation, raising prices. Raising interest rates benefits lenders and hurts owners who borrow.

The Federal Reserve must raise the discount rate to meet treasury yield. When treasuries are auctioned at less than their offering price, yields rise. If banks can borrow money from the Fed at less than treasury yield, then buy the treasuries themselves, the Fed is losing money. One tactic the Federal Reserve can use to cushion interest rate rise is buy the treasuries on their own account. The hope is that the Fed can sell these treasuries when rates decline. It doesn’t look like rates are declining anytime soon and the new chairman has said the Fed will no longer accumulate treasuries.

Arbitrary tariffs also discourage faith in the dollar and US management. Free trade amendment anyone? It should be easier to indict judges. Destroying health care, research, social investment, intelligence services, diplomacy, courts, while prattling about AI doesn’t inspire confidence.  When you buy treasuries, you are expressing faith in US policy.

Why haven’t the other currencies risen against the dollar? In large part because those economies are dependent on oil. In the short term the Golden Goblins war has held the value of the dollar. It is also because the Federal Reserve is one of several institutions that maintain dollar value. Our trading partners either explicitly or through other means buy our debt and manage the dollar to promote trade and stability. At the same time our partners must watch a government where every pejorative directed against Iran is current US policy. That influences investment.

Even banker’s eyes glaze over when they hear “Federal Reserve”. The Fed also guarantees deposits (slow pay), audits banks (sort of), determines banks’ reserve requirements (not much), and uses these responsibilities to justify intervention (bailouts and mergers).  Maybe people don’t want to recognize how crude central banks market management mechanisms are or that they focus on wage inflation, only occasionally or may I say periodically pop the bubble on capital inflation. 

Please Jimmy Carter, don’t sanctimoniously rant about reducing debt. The one statesman who reduced the rate of debt expansion was Bush Sr. who lied and increased taxes. Clinton was smart enough to keep that policy. Tax cuts combined with destroying social investment, however privileged it may be, and deterring immigration is scavenging the train for fuel to keep it moving.

I don’t pretend to understand how Fat and Furious went to war. The initial consequence of closing the Strait of Hormuz has been to raise oil prices, stop the slide of the dollar and raise interest rates. Perhaps this will hold until the midterm elections. Longer term this should reduce oil consumption, increase exploration, the dollar should resume its slide and interest rates continue to rise. Even Saudi Arabia is buying gold and trading in Yuan. Algeria is planning to steal Libyan natural gas to sell to Europe. Capital is aspirational, the dollar’s future slide against other currencies discourages investors. 

Judging by the results, maintaining the dollar by supporting oil price appears to be the goal. The war has also solidified the Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps control of that country when it looked endangered. Destruction of competing Qatar’s natural gas trade has been achieved. This has been accomplished without losing the domestic support of the critical third of our country before the midterms. 

Financial Value Revisited

 In my book Conspiracy 101 I criticize Marx for not realizing until after his book Capital was written that capital is not only the means of production; producing earnings, but it also has the amazing quality of expanding financially. You can borrow on capital. Once financial instruments are created based on future values they multiply, they are traded and speculated on. When understanding events, this financial value is far more impactful than simple earnings.

Recent events have reminded me that capital can also collapse. The value of assets is aspirational. Even with earnings people can perceive that the future value will not justify the investment. Oil is an excellent current example. Even with oil earnings you can see that people aren’t anxious to invest. US is not building new refineries to process our light crude. Canada builds pipelines but again a refinery is too much. Venezuela bought US refineries but even with its huge reserves no one wants to invest in a new Venezuelan refinery. China is throttling its oil consumption. US has turned the southwest into a bursting toxic dump draining the shale. We have an oil glut. One of the reasons for the dollar’s fall is the drop in oil value.

In Conspiracy 101, I suggest that oil has taken the place of gold. That we could divide through by the price of oil as we would gold to get true value. Currently this assertion is wrong. The US policy to make the petrodollar a universal currency is failing. So far, gold is the measure of value. Perhaps one day there will be a gold glut.

Under the gold standard there were large financial gyrations. These were caused by financial speculation and competition for wages. Culminating with Franklin Roosevelt a grand bargain was struck:

Immigration became stricter. Before this, waves of immigrants entered the nation at will. Now there are two classes of immigrants: documented and undocumented. The undocumented set the base rate, they are our cheapest labor cushioning market forces replacing the slave labor we used to have. The documented are more expensive providing competition for higher priced labor.

Labor unions agreed to collective bargaining, gave up the wildcat strike and the boycott.

Just as Adam Smith described, managed trade assuaged the prerogatives of manufacturers.

The Federal Reserve in response to government bond auctions raises or lowers interest rates which controls small business formation which compete on wages.

 Social Security ameliorates workers fear of retirement.

Income Tax favors owners over employees.

These are controls on wage inflation; there is nothing restraining capital inflation. Diddling Doddering Doofus first term severely mismanaged wage inflation. Kids in cages pissed off the Mexican undocumented and they quit coming. Since the parents were often refugees, keeping the children created orphans when the parents were forced to return. Fruit rotted on the ground. Stores closed on Mondays. More citizens got hired. The various parking lot worker markets were empty. When the Covid shocks hit the undocumented weren’t around to provide their cushion.

In desperation, Biden let in a lot of documented. They were papered coming through the door. There was some dumb glitch with work permits. I don’t know how the inflation would have been if Biden hadn’t acted. Problem is that documented don’t set the base rate, so it took a lot more. The Federal Reserve still had to raise interest rates to sell T-Bills making our debt more expensive. Second term closed the border to documented refugees who may someday vote, and let the undocumented back: fruit is harvested, stores are open, there is more unemployment, the parking lot hiring has returned. Wage inflation will subside.

The inflation shock called dollar’s value into question. If US can’t even manage our labor market, why is anything else working? Just like unitary executive, managed trade gets a horse laugh. Without stability, what advantage is there to American Empire?

US has demonstrated our ability to control the frequent wage inflation cycles. What we lack is the mechanisms to control the severe capital inflation cycles. Holding wages in check makes capital more volatile. Thomas Piketty in Capital in the 21^st Century wants to tax capital as we tax real estate.  If the tax is fair, it won’t be effective. Capital exists as relative advantage. After tax, everyone will be in the same position as before.

Reagan got rid of the capital gains deduction as a reform. This should have been a step on removing the advantages owners have over employees. Instead, it was used to excuse tax cuts and then lost to a concerted lobbying effort by Bill Gates. 

As my brother says we shouldn’t have two classes of taxpayers. Currently we are taxed on our income. If companies were also taxed on income rather than earnings maybe that would be sweeping and radical enough that it could not be easily changed back. Initially this should lead to much lower tax rates. My fear is that inevitably the tax rates would creep up. This should be more than offset by removing the tax advantage of corporations. Rather than taxing the assessed capital asset we should remove the tax value of corporate assets.

US Stooges Who Had to Change Up

This is a list of leaders who were assisted by the US and were problematic:

1.Adolph Hitler

Avrill Harriman

2.Ho Chi Minh

Charles Fenn

3.Sadam Hussein

Kim Roosevelt

4.Osama Bin Laden

Michael G. Vickers

5.Manuel Noreiga

George HW Bush

6.Vladmir Putin

Madeleine Jana Korbel Albright

7.Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi

Kim Roosevelt

8.Ngo Dinh Diem

John F. Kennedy

9.Mobutu Sese Seko

Larry Devlin

10.Rafael Trujillo

Major James J. MacLean

11.Juan Bosch

Richard Naradof Goodwin

12.Gulbuddin Hekmatyar

Michael G. Vickers

13.Jalaluddin Haqqani

Michael G. Vickers

14.Boris Yeltsin

Warren Christopher

15.Jean-Bertrand Aristide

Ira Kurzban

16.Victoriano Huerta

Henry Lane Wilson

17.Syngman Rhee

Millard Preston Goodfellow

18.Husni al-Za'im

Kim Roosevelt

19.Gamal Abdel Nasser

Kim Roosevelt

20.Ferdinand Marcos

Lyndon Johnson

21.Napoleon Bonaparte

Thomas Jefferson

22.Pol Pot

Michael Eiland

23.Joseph Stalin

Avrill Harriman

24.Whitey Bulgur

John Connolly

25.Jeffrey Epstein

    William Barr

26.William O'Neal

Roy Martin Mitchell

 

 

Just a sampling, in no order. Notice the repeating patterns.

Kermit Roosevelt didn’t like his name. Hard to believe now that we support fundamentalists, but before Carter some, such as Roosevelt, thought Socialism the antidote to Communism. Unless they were nationalizing.

Stooge is a subset of chump. Some of them chumped their handlers, at least for a while.

Kennedy signed off on Diem as senator and then discarded him as president, another common pattern.

CIA has a wonderful apologia for supporting Ho Chi Minh at the end or WWII; it doesn’t mention that we were bombing Vietnam into starvation from our bases in China and aircraft carriers at the same time. As so often in effect if not explicitly, in support of the Vietnamese rebellion against the Japanese and French.

Another pattern is recruiting the loyal stooge to the charismatic leader.    

Personality vs Materialism

 

Historian’s emphasis on leadership and the decisions leaders make ignores the ordinary material facts surrounding those decisions. These histories of leadership over circumstance are favored by those in power and their subordinates. Material conditions are ignored in favor of personalities. This personification obscures the obvious. But there are moments in history where individuals made the difference. Here are some possibilities:

Another obscured area is who the decision makers are. The Hamilton musical based on Ron Chernow’s biography attempts to redress this by giving glory to a functionary. But ignores that Alexander Hamilton was working for Robert Morris. Hamilton was on Washington’s staff, representing Morris. Thank heavens he was there to summon Morris when Washington, scared of heading south, was about to attack New York rather than Yorktown. Morris paid to transport Washingtons army to Yorktown. Imagine how the French would have felt if we hadn’t supported them at Yorktown. Washington was the Virginia general in the north. Benjamin Lincoln was the Massachusetts general in the south and Lincoln got his butt handed to him by the English General Henry Clinton.

Washington had a penchant for losing battles. The Patriots victories were usually under other commands or despite Washington. Washington was the last American General who understood attrition. Having worked for the English, Washington was properly terrified that they would send over the thug who would arm slaves in the south and burn granaries in the north. Washington wanted to keep the English generals he had. The English learned from this colonial rebellion and were far more ruthless in later conflicts. If you doubt the English could have won the American Rebellion, I give you South Africa, India, China, Ireland, and the Napoleonic Wars.

There are financial reasons for the American Rebellion and eventual victory. But the reason the British were soaking their colonies was to pay for the Seven Years War that Washington started. The British feared that colonial greed would lead to slave insurrection, indigenous uprising, and further international conflicts.

Another example of leadership making the difference is the succession of Roosevelt by Truman. Wars are decided after the battles. The loss of Roosevelt changed history. Truman took responsibility for Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But Truman was a reluctant warrior compared to Roosevelt.  Why drop atomic bombs to just turn around and accept the surrender that Japan had been offering for months?

Japan wanted to keep its emperor and Parliament:

-screw our nation, emperor comes first.

Roosevelt wasn’t interested. Roosevelt wanted unconditional surrender. When Truman got disgusted and took the deal, he proclaimed it as unconditional, it wasn’t. Roosevelt would have dropped the third bomb that was on its way, used the nerve gas we had stockpiled, invited in the Russians, and then invaded. Roosevelt may have even provided the Russians with transport.

Just as in partitioned Europe, when the waves got going of Japanese choosing who they were surrendering to, our casualties would have been a lot smaller than currently estimated. Imagine the emperor deciding which way he was running.

A partitioned Japan may have distracted Russia from Korea. Or Roosevelt may have also turned over Korea. It is said that dropping the bombs was a warning to Russia. Americans were far more disgusted with England. Britain dragged us into two world wars and obviously couldn’t manage Europe. That was our fault as well, but it couldn’t be US, must be the British. Demonstrating the fate of an indomitable island fortress in modern warfare might convince England to pack that empire up.

Roosvelt would not have allowed the French back in Indochina. Using our offshore carriers and bases in China, USA had just bombed Vietnam into starvation in support of communist Ho Chi Minh. Ho wanted Vietnam to be the Yugoslavia of Indochina, an ally of Russia and the US, a bulwark against China. The influential Nationalists running Taiwan were not impressed.  Ho Chi Minh was another in a long line of American stooges who turned against us.

Eisenhower can be seen as a return to Roosevelt’s policies ending European empire. Eisenhower stopped Israel, France and England from seizing the Suez. Israel wouldn’t exist without Truman. Roosevelt would have seen Israel as a British puppet.  

Historians fail to understand how large financial value is, as against revenue, when considering material conditions. It is difficult to appreciate how vulnerable individuals are to influence. Usually, by the time of decision the choice is obvious. Yet there are moments when we surprise ourselves. 

We don’t seem to appreciate how serious a boob president is. We have had worse presidents. Many of them had intellectual or personality faults. But no president has such an overwhelming ignorance of propriety. It is difficult to find a particular affront that is outside our history.  But they are affronts, one after another.

US empire, as all empires before us, survives on sufferance. A sort of show me better. If you are a leader or an investor at some point you will be insulted and decisions will be made. I hate the neo-neos: neocons, neolibs defending our empire, but it would be nice to dismantle things politely, instead of bringing it crashing down.

Boycott

 Recently I have seen references in Denver museums to the United Farm Workers Union. I imagine the curators pleased that they tie together Denver labor history, Hispanics and immigration. The curators ignore the material conditions for this union’s relative success, boycott. When Cesar Chavez started the farm workers union Saul Alinsky, with his usual overbearing confidence, told him it was hopeless. The one advantage the new union had was that farm workers were not covered by labor law.

 

Current labor law is designed to suppress unions. The companies are fined and unions can go to jail. Corporate law exists to avoid responsibility. The process of collective bargaining and rules surrounding it explains why only 11% of American workers are union, with most of those in the public sector.

 

The three strongest union weapons, wildcat strikes, boycotts and new trade unions are illegal. Chavez brilliance was realizing that since the farm workers weren't covered by the law, they could boycott. The farm workers' victories, fleeting and difficult as they were, proves the power of boycott. Imagine what other unions could accomplish with boycotts. As well as wildcat strikes and trade unions.

 

Wildcat strikes, abrupt unannounced work stoppages, sometimes rolling across companies and industries caught employers unaware and made reprisals difficult when workers returned. It was then the owners who were impeding production.

 

There was an attempt in the sixties to organize a data entry trade union that was squelched as restraint of trade. Given constant automation, unions must be allowed greater opportunities. It is unfair to allow investment monopoly and forbid it to unions. Notice that “libertarians” never stand for union deregulation.

 

DOGE the Dept of Labor.

HFBD

Someday you’ll die

Someday you’ll die

No need to cry

All gonna die

 

One year more

Till the last

Never know

When it's past

 

Enjoy the day

Might as well

Laugh and play

Meet in hell

 

On your birthday

Have your fun

One more year

Till you’re done

 

Throw your body

In the lake

Put up a plaque

You know is fake

 

Throw your body

In the ground

Somewhere it

Can not be found

 

Throw your body

Incinerator

Lose the ashes

Sooner or later

 

No one remembers

Who you were

Why it mattered

What you wore

 

The past is taken

Without its sense

Memory lost

In present tense

 

Did it matter

Did it count

Just a little

Any amount?

 

How much harm

Did you do?

Would it help

If you knew?

 

Did you increase

Population?

Create more bodies for

Conflagration

 

Pulled it off

Took the fall

Ripped them off

Lost it all

 

Were you dull?

Did you amuse?

Why would we

Search for clues?

 

If you weren't

The world goes on

Happy birthday

Enjoy the song

 

Cha cha cha 

Betty Mooney MacDonald

 

I have wasted so much time on this goofy JFK assassination. If you are a serious person with a meaningful life, read no further. One obvious issue is the Warren Commission files. Almost every presidential candidate assures the public they will release the files. Once they are elected, they, or some person reviews the files and refuses. What could be so embarrassing, silly, or whatever that no one wants to reveal it decades later? Chances are if you or I reviewed the files we wouldn’t want it released either. Bad Babbling Babar is purported to have said this. Oswald, returned Russian defector, shot the president. Would nearly blowing up the world be sufficient embarrassment? Even with the latest vast dump, there are unreleased documents.

There was a Dallas comedian who talked about the Onassis love triangle. If you marry the guy, it is romance not pornography. It is always the spouse, but I don’t think Jackie was in on the assassination. She had good reason to debrief. Jackie might have felt guilt about that. When her second husband, got abusive, she might have got some help as payback. Would that do it? Whatever theory you come to; one criterion must be that it is intensely embarrassing.

Up till now I have confined these speculations behind a paywall, books: How to Replace a Kitchen Faucet and Conspiracy 101. I won’t drag you through all that. It is not proof of conspiracy but there are a lot of unidentified other guys:

·      Another guy with Oswald shooting at Walker.

·      Other guy with Oswald meetings with Cubans.

·      Other guy with Oswald at the gun range.

·      Two other guys with Oswald in Mexico City.

·      Maybe another guy at the depository.

·      Maybe a woman on the stair at the depository.

·      Shooter on top of the depository.

·      Possibility of the shooter in the other building across the way.

·      Two of the three hobos.

·      Maybe one or two other guys when Tippit is shot.

·      Maybe an Oswald lookalike at the cinema.

Why not release the list of everyone who bought that Carcano rifle from the mail order? How many could it be? I would be looking for a purchase of 5 or 10 after Hidell bought his. They were only twenty dollars each. Police would hate this because there is coincidence. Someone might be checking that it could reach, how consistent the bullet markings are, they could repack the rounds, use a better scope, fragmenting bullets, add a suppressor.

I have personally seen the grassy knoll. There is no way you can squeeze trainyard workers on the bridge, Zapruder and an unremarked sniper on that tiny grassy knoll. Fuck the grassy knoll.

-If it won’t fit, you must acquit.

Too bad, I had some dialogue for the shooters. If there was a fourth shot it was the Secret Service firing a tumbling AR15 from the following car, finishing off (or missing) Kennedy as courtesy, malice or accident. The Secret Service had some rough humor after the Reagan shooting.

I suppose you could put the three hoboes behind the wall, giving each other cover. One of them pops the rifle for a moment and shoots down on the motorcade while everyone is looking at Kennedy. Then a car comes by and gets the rifle. Would you plan like that? No witness has said there was anyone behind the wall. A more reasonable possibility is that all these people were intended as security, flooding the zone for Kennedy and embarrassed that it failed.

If there were other snipers you are going to have to squeeze them in somewhere else and they were shooting at each other with suppressors. Say they had tested the customized rifle but when it was fired the round didn’t make it out the barrel. Maybe they successfully shot the opposing assassin in the building across the way. Maybe they just tried to shoot him. That would have pissed him off. A CIA double cross? I must be mistaken. Maybe they shot the mobster on the roof of the depository. Maybe they tried to shoot Oswald. I really wanted Johnson to have Connally shot first.

The RFK mob prosecutions could have just been a mob layoff, a generational change. I had thought the mob was cleaning up and shot Oswald. I am attached to the idea that the mob shook down the Russians and LBJ for the cleanup. Since it looks like the mob, must be the FBI. Maybe Johnson didn’t trust the mob. Even if Oswald was on his own, Johnson might have wanted him killed to avoid him running his mouth. Jack Ruby was a night club owner and FBI informant. Imagine the mob and the government told you to do something. I hate all these theories that deny Oswald agency. Let Oswald shoot somebody.

They can’t even agree on how many bullets are in Kennedy’s head. I think Oswald shot Tippit because he was having trouble getting the diffident officer to arrest him and then realized that trying to convince Tippit gave himself away.

Dallas deserves more inquiry. Maybe if you could find the right person and ask the right question. As an example: I used to be a programmer at Wards Insurance, over the store on State in Chicago. An actuary had taken up programming for himself. His program had broken and he was carrying his abnormal end listing around asking for help. I was working and ignored him. After a day or so he came to me and described his debugging effort:

Me-Let me see the source listing.

A-There’s nothing wrong with the source.

He returned with the source.

Me-You didn’t code this parameter.

A-You don’t have to code that.

He came back later:

A-Why didn’t you tell me?

Me-You didn’t ask.

Dallas itself is sick of this. There’s a Lee Harvey bar, a Jack Ruby bar (no dancers), and Pegasus brewery offers 6^th floor beer. Is there someone in Dallas who would know or might they direct you to the right person if you were polite? It might be dangerous. Maybe because it’s embarrassing. There have been some events. Send Geraldo. If someone were to tell us, would we believe them?

If you are down In Dallas anyway look up the MacDonald lady, or whatever her name was. I defy you to find one documented fact about her. She doesn’t fit in anything. She smells operational. Why give an alibi for that poor schnook even if it is true? I’m guessing it has something to do with going overboard with the FBI clean up. A bookend to Marylin Monroe. If I must guess, and I guess I do, MacDonald might be another FBI informant. FBI got mad at her interfering with their operation. Since they knew her, they knew it was likely she would kill herself when she was locked up.

I think the JFK assassination started as a Kennedy stunt that got hijacked, would that be enough embarrassment? Everyone is considering the idea that the attempts on our Elephant Emperor were stunts to get more votes. Cutting his own ear could be a wrestlers move. Melania wanted to know why the police couldn’t do their job and get a child they had twice reported into a car. Police threw me and my friends in a car just fine. The Secret Service sniper team was premature and unexpected. They were supposed to be brought in after the nomination. Secret Service had a tip. Times have changed. Even if the Tufted Tyrants shootings were stunts, that didn’t change many votes. Even if I could have proven they were stunts it wouldn’t have changed many votes. 

It is hard to believe how we used to fear shame.

Conspiracy seems untenable without Kennedy involvement. With all the other guys around Oswald, at least one of them was a plant, which means there was a control. Hijacking the Kennedy stunt would be natural as well as the control collecting from South Vietnam through Nixon and Johnson through the CIA.

Sorry I dragged you into this. Hope I didn’t endanger anyone.

Condescending Saviors

 

I wrote this shortly after the Democratic Convention:

This recent convention solidified five deficiencies of the Democratic Party. Rather than addressing these well-known criticisms, the liberal elite, the party owned them with a nice helping of Jingo.

One is their use of the term middle class. Looking down from the upper I suppose what they see is the middle class. I wrote about class in my book, Another Data Processing Book. In US land we have nine classes, a tic tac toe board, upper, middle and lower both ways:

Upper upper	Middle upper	Lower upper
Upper middle	Middle middle	Lower middle
Upper lower	Middle lower	Lower lower

 

Most of us are middle-lower and lower-lower. There is a big bulb at the bottom with a long tail stretching out into the distance. Somewhere on that tail you can parse out a small segment that contains the population middle-middle. We aren’t in it, and we know that. I haven’t found the middle class all that amenable to my company and I’m okay with that. Democrats use the term middle class as aspiration. Perhaps they are squeamish, if there is a middle, then there must be an upper and lower, but those terms are too offensive. It is disorienting to use the word middle without lower and upper. The disposition of wealth does not fall into a bell curve and that should be an advantage to Democrats. The middle-class votes for Orange Jesus.

Second is the use of the term workers. When we think of workers, we think of unions. For most of us, unions mean we can’t get jobs. We aren’t in the 11%. To raise wages, you must reduce hiring. Occasionally we get sucked into organizing efforts that end disastrously. Boycotts, wildcats and new trade unions are illegal. Companies are fined and unions imprisoned. Again, Democrats aspire; we live here. Union people are often middle class.

Third is the argument that we should do it for mom. MAGA base hates its mom. I’m not saying they are wrong. Mom didn’t think much of them. When mom doesn’t make you special, you find other justification.

Fourth is the subsidies. I’m not talking about services but subsidies. If everyone got something, no one got it. Mortgage interest deduction is a good example. The deduction means banks charge homeowners more interest. As Adam Smith explained, if ministers get free tuition, there will be too many ministers for churches to hire. Subsidizing home buying makes housing more expensive. If tips were tax free, we would tip our lawyers. If everyone has a college degree, it is not a distinction. We all know this.

Fifth, we need to end our empire. It’s too great a sacrifice and too expensive. Take Gaza, please. US and Qatar interest in Gaza is preventing the development of Gaza Marine, Thirteen something trillion something cubic something times whatever. Qatar is now our junior partner selling natural gas to Europe and neither of us want a large gas field selling to our market. Texas is giving natural gas away and Europe is buying. That is why the US is recovering so well. That is why we blew up the pipeline.  US and Qatar favor any policy that delays development. Stooge is a subset of chump. It is cunning, it is also dumb. US produces the most oil, we won, we’re the OPEC. Why should it be US ruining the world to make a buck? All empires fall. Let’s go out with more style. If you don’t share, no one will play with you.

This doesn’t mean we should hire an idiot to run the country. The first time the babbling baboon ran they didn’t bother with a platform. Since there were no stated objectives and who would want to work for him, they just made a mess. The Project 2025 document begins by acknowledging the mess. This time Republicans created a ridiculous and defensive platform, they hate immigrants, trans and poor people. Republicans hire the undocumented. They put on a big show, but they hate the documented immigrants who will someday vote. Abortion is only illegal for poor people in stupid states. Republicans know that they are so hateful that people become trans to avoid being gay. Hateful and rich doesn’t make it legitimate. Republicans don’t understand they are giving away the game. You can’t govern without legitimacy.

Bobs court is an embarrassment. Each decision is worse, with no pretense of sense or justification. Cleaning up this mess will require constitutional amendments. Most idiotic in the history of courts is giving the president free reign. Mealy mouthed as it was, the court did not write an opinion to restrain the president. The decision provides a silly framework to justify any executive decision. In principle, our president could order Bobs killed. Bobs is corrupt, it’s in the national interest and it’s an official act.

There was a US citizen running around Yemen running his mouth. The president ordered him killed. Then we killed his sixteen-year-old son. The first two were killed with missiles. Then the next president ordered a ground operation to kill his five-year-old daughter and the family taking care of her. Presidents have little fear of prosecution. There is no reason to make that official.

Government is all in the wrist. It almost doesn’t matter what the policy is if it is executed well and conversely how good it is if executed poorly. Democrats mean well, or at least profess good intentions. A president must come in with about four thousand people or at least 400 who can each bring ten. Even if fat and furious made sense, he doesn’t have the people. Would you work for him? Look what happened to the ones that did. Six months doesn’t give much pension. Do you want Island of Misfit Toys on your resume?

Obama handled three epidemics. El Pompadour couldn’t get an appropriation for the vaccines. Instead, they drained the government research budget. Government research is where the future comes from. That set us back at least ten years.

Troll in chief privatized government intelligence. Our government intelligence is temps.

When someone announces they are an idiot, they are a one issue voter, or undecided they give away the argument and they can’t state their true reasons. Hope they are not registered. There is nothing wrong with being either liberal or elite if you deliver. If only more poor people voted. If only more poor people voted in the primaries. The harder it is to vote, the more it matters.

Voting for the gibbering gibbon won’t keep black people out of your neighborhood. You know that. Persecuting poor women in stupid states doesn’t stop abortion. This is a democracy. Eventually abortion will be unequivocally legal; we’re sick of your shit. Ending abortion doesn’t stop women working. No one wants to marry your stupid ugly kid. You know that too. You are not going to bring down the American empire. The American empire will end when it’s good and ready and it won’t be because of losers like you. All you have done is make another mess that everyone else will have to clean up, just like every time before.

Rock is dead.

Kind of fun. But then I wonder if I was telling you anything. Would this have any effect? Would it be positive?

It is yet another vestige of slavery that such a small plurality, less than 2,500,000 votes, produces so dramatic an advantage. There were only about 6 million registered voters that didn’t vote.

When training a police officer or prison guard someone has the responsibility of explaining to them that if they are taken hostage, it is possible that they will be the first target of the police sniper. This policy became obvious at the Attica Prison uprising. This minimizes casualties. Porky’s 47 cracks about Hannibal Lecter are a juvenile reference to the Isreal Hannibal directive that informed the Israeli people that they are all prison guards. Juvenile slyness targets a demographic.

Incels affect a depraved exploitative homosexuality. Orange Julius fellatio references was for their benefit.

There is no reasoning with MAGA. Biden cut bait in Afghanistan, not Don John. Big Greasy jailing children and sending their parents back to die insulted the Mexican undocumented and they quit coming. The fruit rotted, stores closed on Mondays and there are more jobs. That combined with Double O zero raising oil prices and Covid supply shocks without the undocumented to cushion them, brought inflation. Admittedly Mexico doesn’t seem to have street gutters, and they use adobe not brick, wait till they are arguing in front of the Supreme Court. It is wrong to let Cubans run Catholic charities. East Orthodox handled their federal money. We haven’t quite made it, but if we can survive the Irish, we can survive anything. Except for 9/11 Muslims are Irish lite.

MAGA likes undocumented. The undocumented work for MAGA. MAGA is not going to round up and deport its own undocumented. It is the people in the system, paying taxes, workmen’s comp, social security, that will someday vote who MAGA targets. Whatever rationalization MAGA offers, it ends with voting for His Hugeness.

MAGA doesn’t care about any of this. They don’t care about the price of eggs. They hate women, blacks, and themselves. Whatever talking point they throw, there is no way that Rumbo will deliver, except for keeping a woman out of the White House.

You can’t change people’s minds. What you can do is bring in new constituencies. My mom helped win an aldermanic by registering students in 1959. Big Cheeto’s success in 2016 was bringing his audience into the Republican party. Kind of like converting the King of the Khazars.  Jews quit proselytizing after that. Bidens victory was due to the Democratic snap back, more new Democrats registered than Republicans. Each election registered more voters. This election the Republicans found incels and enough women want their pussy grabbed. Besides running a woman, the Democratic mistake was concentrating all that resource on the existing voting base rather than registering more voters. Taylor Swift and Beyonce can’t overwhelm the incels by themselves. Someday we may run out of unregistered, but for now even Democrats should have found constituencies amongst the more than 80 million. Showing voter registration should be obligatory at concerts, events, demonstrations and family gatherings.

The Business School at University of Chicago just made the argument that we vote for Democrats when times are bad and Republicans when we feel prosperous. This is in line with Adam Smith’s view of the constant cycle between ruination and salvation in democracies. It was said that Democrats must be bought, and Republicans are already there. Everybody is bought. The difference is that Democrats seek consensus, and Republicans think they are right.

It is almost impossible to believe that “can you get me 11,000 votes” and electric Musk didn’t steal the election. There is the Adamowski argument. Adamowski was the Cook County States Attorney in 1959. Daley got Republicans to trade him away for Nixon votes. Since the States Attorney is supposed to police elections, if he can’t do his job he doesn’t get to keep it. If the election is stolen from incumbents, they are incompetent. Again, Democrat incumbents want an obvious plurality. Democrats are hurt that misogyny beats ability.

As to registered voters. I am going to state the obvious. During an election voters have power. The voters are deciding who to hire. We used to go door to door canvassing precincts to determine how people are going to vote. There is a quantum problem. Someone might say:

-I was going to vote for your candidate.

Canvassers should be short, elderly, and like your pet. One tactic is to ask people if they want to volunteer.  They don’t, but if they looked guilty, they were probably a plus. Once we contacted you and determined your preference, we did not contact you until election day. If you hadn’t voted we would helpfully remind you. If you were a minus or a zero, we didn’t want to remind you to vote. If you were a plus any further contact might change your mind.

Once we had experience in the precinct, we didn’t have to canvass everybody. There was the legendary Mrs. Isenberg of East Hyde Park who had five precincts. Voters knew when she was available to ask her how to vote if they weren’t sure. She may have occasionally canvassed if it was expected.

As I explained in an earlier post, I vote against anyone who robocalls me. Once you know I am voting for Harris and I am not donating money, any further contact may discourage me, even texts. The message Harris gave is that her campaign did not know who I am and has too much money. Just because I am voting for you doesn’t mean I should be pestered. Harris is the first candidate who wanted my donation more than my vote. Would you solicit money on a job interview? I would like to see a list of donors who did not vote.

The Democratic Party did fine out of this, everybody made money. Now they can stand back, and watch Republicans make another stinking mess. Grifter in Chief is already shaking the tariff money tree, looking for his taste, just as before with a wider scope. Please don’t ever say managed trade again. We need the free trade amendment. Put that on the list with ending the presidential pardon, abortion is legal amendment, dropping the second amendment, ERA, making federal election law an amendment, ending the Department of Labor, legalize drugs… The Democrats expect to come roaring back. After Big Bill Thompson Chicago is a Democratic city. Assuming there is another election. Mr. Microphone and the right wing Yippees denying legitimacy while owning the oil market invites a coup.

Franklin, Deane, and Washington

 

I was put off by the choppy narrative of Unlikely Allies by Joel Richard Paul. But it confirmed my view of conspiracy. A conspiracy is just a group of people who agree. Usually, it’s just someone alone in their motel, sucking on whatever, watching CNN saying:

-I guess that worked.

The book also highlighted how common it is to have infiltrators, provocateurs and opposition. Ben Franklin and Silas Deane understood and accepted that and still accomplished their objectives.

When Franklin finally arrived in Paris to support Deane he was wearing a fur hat. The narrative gives reasons but fails to mention that Franklin was also teasing the French about giving up Canada and its French citizens for Haiti after the Seven Years War. Franklin loved teasing and double entendre.  

In the book Arthur Lee is painted as the villain who falsely accused Dean. But where was Franklin? To have a case there should be a shortfall. Deane is unable to give account but Franklin had to know how much the French paid and how much the Patriots got. Why wasn’t Franklin screaming:

-How much was taken?

So there had to be a shortfall. The French were shy publicly saying what they sent. The Americans had to know what they spent their money on. Franklin’s silence damns Dean. Franklin had picked Deane as an envoy. But Deane shows no profit. He is penniless. Washington received the French funds. Washington was not penniless. Washington socked all his money into his plantation and land purchases. A common tactic when currency is suspect. His downfall was that the size and scope of Washington’s holdings made it difficult to collect rent. Washington was a Virginia Gentleman. Of course he was skimming. There is even a satirical picture, Washington Prays for His Troops. Washington is plump and prosperous while his troops starve. His horse stares at him from behind while Washington kneels.

The French Monarchy is portrayed as foolishly borrowing money to support the ideals of the American Revolution, seduced by their hatred of the English.  The promise of American trade, particularly tobacco, is ignored. It wasn’t realized that the Turks and Greeks would compete supplying tobacco to Europe. Everyone also failed to reckon with Thomas Jefferson. Jefferson was the next American Envoy. He and the trade minister, Lafayette, Jefferson’s best friend, failed to do the tobacco deal. Who would expect that Jefferson would act so diametrically against his own interests? Robert Morris came over to France to rescue the deal and Jefferson back stabbed him the whole way screaming:

-It’s not enough money.

Tobacco is addictive, you must establish your market. Jefferson may have been tipped by the Greeks, but it was also that from Jefferson’s position in the Virginia hierarchy, if everyone is busted then he is equal. Robert Morris thought he could have made it if he got the tobacco deal. The British captains begged Jefferson to do the deal, their ships were sitting at anchor.

Once everything caved in the Americans, in desperation, wrote the constitution to tax whiskey and give themselves enough revenue to borrow on. Washington owned a large distillery and favored the competitive advantage this gave him over the small farmers who brought whiskey over the mountains to trade. Washington had little scruple suppressing Shay’s rebellion of people who weren’t paying his rent and competed with his distillery.

Franklin must have realized that Washington was pocketing the French money. Franklin teases Washington about Washington’s lack of progeny. Franklin makes a big point of his happiness with his grandchildren and the gifting to Washington of his walking stick.

Even with the whiskey revenue, Washington was unable to get America another loan from the French. Washington had gone even handed on them earlier. So, Washington was told to grab his hat and not let the door hit him on the way out. His last act was bringing in John Adams to hold off Jefferson.