There are death squads roaming America’s streets today.

What happens when Republicans widen their definition of “the worst of the worst”?

More here…

https://entoraliten.pages.dev/impeachment-conviction-removal

Swarms, Jul 9, 2026
https://entoraliten.pages.dev/swarms

Chill, Jul 8, 2026
https://entoraliten.pages.dev/chill

On the Slaughter Case - After the Auction, Jul 7, 2026
https://entoraliten.pages.dev/on-the-slaughter-case-after-the-auction

How About Them Apples?, Jul 7, 2026
https://entoraliten.pages.dev/how-about-them-apples

Take Care, Jul 6, 2026
https://entoraliten.pages.dev/take-care

Please share, like and subscribe!

Plus, it’s just contemptuous.

In every sense if you listen to Platner, he’s sounds like a Left-Trump. In sum, everything is “rigged.”

And, that’s what the Democrats have learned from the last decade.

They’ve decided to go forward with it as their strategy https://www.wsj.com/opinion/meet-the-political-bosses-who-brought-you-graham-platner-4413bfb0

Not a lot of policy there.

But, by God, you have some MAD fulminations!

Not merely “oligarchy.”

No - a whole atmosphere of left-populist suspicion: the system is screwing you, a few people are hoarding unimaginable power, establishment politicians serve them, and ordinary people already know this “in their bones.”

That’s not MAGA, but it’s recognizably Trumpian: a rigged world, a hidden order, and the promise that only a plain-speaking outsider will say what everyone secretly knows.

In the end, though, if you don’t have policies to persuade with, it’s unlikely enough people will pull the lever for Platner.

All he has is a sort of ventriloquist’s Trumpism.

It’s disappointing.

How about:

• Record corporate profit - demands higher wages.

• Immigration, TELLS us his fix: civil charges for the non-citizen AND his boss, where the boss becomes a sponsor, and ordered by the court to make a video explaining why. No criminal infractions for 15 more years, becomes a citizen via the boss sponsorship. Both pay a 2% tax for the 15 years of salary. After 10 years, funds can ONLY be used to buy a home. Nationwide fund.
  Non-Citizens can join as well. (See? We got home ownership in there, too. :D)

• Health Care - proposes 25% military budget cut to re-open all the hospitals Trump is closing Like these THIRTEEN in one state. https://virginiamercury.com/2026/06/10/state-report-finds-13-rural-hospitals-vulnerable-to-closure/

• Commitment to Renewable Energy.

• Asset tax for the richest Americans.

Not campaigning on the antagonism propelling the latest era, but on SOLUTIONS.

So far, none of that from Platner.

And, all of us now just along for the ride. In a must-win state. Night after night of his rending of garments, and Pentecostal shouts of, “Redemption!” (It hasn’t occurred to him that we aren’t redeemed by others, but by acts and contrition. Seems that will have to wait until he’s got the armored car and driver.)

But, the democratic party is a coalition. If you run on just “the hidden power elite” - even if you win, then you have to come to the table. Friend - you’ll be there for 6 months nose to nose with your coalition partners, and pilloried in the press for being ineffectual.

If we aren’t campaigning on solutions, we’re fooling ourselves, and risking the whole shot we have.

Every GD talking head, un-moored from the certainties of the last 80 years that have been sundered since 2016, now cast about for something they can “share with the sincerest certainty.”

Today, to a person, the one they have landed upon is - “The democrats want a fighter.

No they don’t.

Democrats want POLICY SOLUTIONS.

You know who wants a fighter. The TV networks.

So, they can fill countless hours with simple moral theater.

Journalism that don’t deal with the issues working people face isn’t journalism at all. In actual point of fact today in EVERY city in this country there are people tonight who are deciding, “Can we buy groceries, or drive to work?”

Probably not you if you’re reading this. Same for you, surely about health care.

But, not for those who depend on the 13 out of Virginia’s 36 rural hospitals that face closure.

Cost of health care - or even CHOICE of it is an H of a lot harder if…there’s no hospital for 100 miles around.

Trump and the republicans have externalized most of the cost of their escapades to target the slim band of benefits the lowest 25% of the people get.

They don’t need - WE don’t need fighters.

We need PROBLEM SOLVERS.

TV needs fighters.

More on these issues to come.

The keenest insight on Platner today comes from from two of America’s amazing political masterminds. One of whom, of the Planer revelations says “And I think he is lying.”

That’s all right here in our latest article: https://entoraliten.netlify.app/on-platners-9-lives-8-down-1-to-go

More Entoraliten: https://entoraliten.netlify.app

It’s always a great listen!

The Warning with Steve Schmidt

Explains what is happening, and why in our turbulent era. Delivers 1 WRITTEN and 1-2 videos PER DAY, 365 DAYS/YEAR.

Steve Schmidt’s Sunday show is a MUST listen! Seems to be almost always with Mr. Nance and a visiting guest.

The Warning with Steve Schmidt

Just a "love tap"

Thank you Caroline Henry, Cat: Poli-Psych, Brian Cano, Amy Kell, Angie T, and many others for tuning into The Save America Movement weekend Iran war update with Ken of The Ken Harbaugh Show and Black Man Spy - Malcolm Nance…

Listen now

2 months ago · 649 likes · 41 comments · Steve Schmidt

Burn couplets.

Delivered one after the other.

But, be honest, though. Gripping the lectern there like an angry school headmaster and gravely reading out those two-parters, and - clearly - they are read, what he has hit on is almost a kind of an Inverse Trump rally.

“He deifies and enriches himself, as he adorns the White House in gold and raises a massive force of masked federal police.”

“The President who once tried to overturn his own defeat now tries to jail elected leaders of the opposition, prosecute Americans who defy or criticize him, and seize control of elections nationwide.”

“As he indulges in careless militarism around the world, he plans a monument to himself so tall it will disrupt air traffic into our nation’s capital.”

Go ahead. Change the voice. See?

That’s not enough.

Just evoking ire and shouting, “Corruption!” is not policy.

I read the transcript for the 4/18 Augusta rally.

I didn’t see where Ossoff said, “Raise wages for working people.”

Not once.

“And this corruption is why insurance companies get away with denying your claim for a procedure you needed to save your life.”

“This corruption is why Big Tech’s still allowed to spy on us and track our every move and sell our private lives to the highest bidder.”

“This corruption is why the ultra rich get tax cuts while you pay more for everything.”

“All of this, the corruption, the callous neglect, and needless suffering signal not just a political crisis, but a moral one.”

“Across Georgia, more and more of every background and belief reject this chaos and corruption.”

Stop talking in generalities. Start talking SPECIFICS.

• Raise wages.

• A G.Z. Bill for Gen Z - to buy starter homes.

• And a fair, lawful, and rewarding resolution to immigration, faithful to the American tradition.

The right media machine is relentless. They plan to parody the next democrat into oblivion.

It’s what they did to Kamala Harris.

See? Look at how, in the space of an hour, every right account took their marching orders on the WHCD shooting, “This means we need the ballroom…”

It’s organized.

Whoever wants to lead Democrats forward, you need to be organized, too.

Policy. Explained to the dollar level. Here’s one,

“And, instead of capturing families, the new ICE will be TEACHING ENGLISH! Not in warehouses! But in classrooms newly constructed on existing schools and colleges across across this country…”

See? Hope! FUTURE! CHANGE!

Finally, to those in the “studios” - I’m lookin’ at you Mr. Axelrod - PLEASE stop saying, “political athlete.” It’s not a goddamn game. It’s about POLICY that creates an ever-functioning upward spiral. Talk SPECIFICS that solve people’s problems. We don’t need color commentary - we need solutions, and those who can explain, advocate and convince people of their value.

Now, β is often /b/ in Ancient Greek and /v/ in Modern Greek. While ь has no independent sound but modifies or softens the previous consonant in Cyrillic languages. ч is usually like “ch” in “church.” And, daleth is historically something like /d/. Together - beached. Take THAT, DOJ. :D!

And, then - finally. For reals? Unless we are talking about higher wages for working men and women, we’re not doing journalism at all. Just dancing to the piper’s tune.

More on that, later. And, Norah O’Donnell’s epic fail.

UPDATE:

The Blanche Subpoena is the very real crisis for us all, in some way. In the laugh and cry of all this, while the above may be the “laugh,” the “cry” here is the serious point.

For all intents and purposes, Trump is using the monopoly the state has on force to simply upend Mr. Comey’s life.

Mr. Comey will be spending his retirement - after a lifetime of public service - back in the musty conference rooms of law offices fighting for…his freedom.

As far-fetched as that sounds, CONVICTION would have consequences.

Consequences Mr. Comey has to keep in the back of his mind.

And, ones his family will have in the front of their minds. Constantly.

Short of BEING disappeared, the effect is one a disappeared person’s family would know well - the constant anxiety, “What will the state do to my husband, father, son?”

Colleague.

Not to mention the cost.

Easily $1,000 / hr white shoe Washington lawyer.

We can assume it’s pro bono, but can we? And, it is SCORES of hours.

Retirement? Forget it.

And, HERE is where we become like Odysseus, resisting in this case the VIRTUOUS call to RAGE against this outrage, but to realize that in doing so, it is very likely the case that we are doing Trump’s media work for him.

The indictment will fill B-roll tonight and going forward on every right wing outlet.

And, Harry, even look at your own framing - the image of the two facing off, right?

In some sense I wish we could just start a 100% liquidity GoFundMe for Comey, so we can know he’ll be comfortable during this interregnum of authoritarianism.

I’ll tell you - NO LOVE LOST here toward Mr. Comey. Surely you can infer his actions were dispositive in getting Trump elected the FIRST time.

But, in a republic such as ours dedicated to the rule of law, what’s happening to him is WRONG.

But, we - as Odysseus again - it AINT about the election(s).

And, that’s ALL that matters now (as long as we can protect Mr. Comey.) More about that here:

https://x.com/AegeanNotebooks

https://bsky.app/profile/entoraliten.bsky.social

https://www.reddit.com/user/entoraliten_/

https://www.threads.com/@entoraliten

This work is a piece of political allegory written in a hybrid form - part essay, part stage play, part speculative narrative. Imagined scenes, reconstructed dialogues, and symbolic figures are employed as literary devices to explore questions of power, incentive, and governance. No dramatized passage is presented as a literal account of private historical events; where public records, court findings, and documented facts are cited, they are quoted directly and serve as the factual foundation for interpretive analysis. The interpretive and theatrical elements that follow are offered as argument rendered in narrative form.

How did we arrive here? And where does it lead?

THE WEALTHY ACT FIRST - SEEKING SOMEONE WITH A SPECIFIC SKILL SET

The rich are rich, but never as rich as the state. And, this disturbs them.

Ever wonder why Elon Musk went into rockets?

Sort of a Willy Sutton move, right?

Vast pools of public money.

That’s what the government’s got. Neatly stacked and electronically deliverable.

And, vast.

Vast.

By some estimates as much as 3.6 trillion a year among federally-paid social services.

3.6 trillion dollars is more money than even the most enterprising American businessperson could hope to make in a year.

Barely more, for some. But, more - just the same.

Sitting there. In the hands of the state. Each year.

And, each year, given away.

To many among the wealthy, somehow…that don’t seem right.

Given?! To whom? That’s easy - the poor.

And, heretofore, inviolate.

Say it with me now: “Children’s Health Insurance Program; Continuum of Care Program; Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program; Medicare; Social Security; Supplemental Security Income; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.”

And, even “Affordable Health Care Tax Credits.”

Shockingly to the wealthy, Affordable Health Care support is given to people even they might not see as undeserving.

But, it’s also a BIG pool of money.

Given away.

And….pools of money like that deserve to be earned, or…given to those who know what to do with lots of money.

Redirected. Into the accounts of people better able to manage it, naturally. By blood, almost you could say? Great genes.

THIRD RAIL? NO LONGER.

The Children’s Health Insurance Program; Continuum of Care Program; Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program; Medicare; Social Security; Supplemental Security Income; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Even the Affordable Health Care Tax Credits.

Formerly third rails all.

Vast sums of money collected through taxation (OK! I hear you barking, big dog - and “Borrowing!”).

Used to fund whatever modest guardrails the American people see fit to have in place.

Not anymore.

You see, that money for the poor - on food, energy, the elderly, healthcare, housing - is being wasted.

Because, to the wealthy, the poor are not the poor. They are the “Undeserving” Poor.

And, THAT’S where this political project picks up.

TAX CUTS

Taxes fund these big pools, right? So, how about:

H.R. 1, (119th Cong., June 2025)

Medicaid covers roughly 80+ million people, including tens of millions of children, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates the bill’s Medicaid provisions would increase the number of uninsured by millions over the next decade. (CBO: https://www.cbo.gov/publication/61510 ; KFF: https://www.kff.org/medicaid/the-impact-of-h-r-1-on-two-medicaid-eligibility-rules/)
SNAP feeds more than 40 million Americans in a typical month, including many millions of children, and CBO estimates the bill’s SNAP provisions would reduce spending by about $300 billion over ten years. (CBO: https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-06/61505-SNAP.pdf ; CBPP: https://www.cbpp.org/research/food-assistance/house-reconciliation-bill-proposes-deepest-snap-cut-in-history-would-take)

Third rails? The hell with that. This money needs to go to us. As tax cuts.

On average, according to CBO distributional analysis, this amounts to roughly $12,000 per year for each family in the top 10%.

Basically H.R. 1, (119th Cong., June 2025) - it’s like delivering to a family of means enough money to buy a jet ski while at the same time imposing a year’s worth of cuts in food assistance and health coverage on the poorest families in America, the lowest 10%.

https://www.cbo.gov/system/files/2025-06/61387-Distributional-Effects.pdf

TAX CUTS! HIGH FIVE!!

Imagine the operative entering.

Now in office. Leading the “change.”

To get us “pool” access.

“So, you were OK with that - the Tax Cuts?”

“Seems reasonable.”

“My wife says it ought to be illegal. My girlfriend says the same thing, too.”

“Well, I’ve got a background in acting illegally.”

“?!!”

DID ANYONE CHECK HIS REFERENCES?

Cast your eyes back with me for a moment….

Backward in time with me, if you will…

Imagine seeing one small bore New York builder and his son.

This is conjecture, not record.

In between the ritual humiliations, of him - and others, where he’d ride along and witness as student - the rakish mustachioed government builder, who by the end of his life had amassed half a billion dollars’ worth of government-supported building projects would, while balancing his books he would - despite the ample numbers - suddenly SHOUT, in a fit of pique! SHOUT!! To the heavens!!! As he’d done so many times before:

If you wanted to be the richest SOB in the world, just become president! You could hand out government contracts like candy!! Take a cut on every one. Never lift a finger again.

ADJUDICATIONS AND CONVICTION

I. People v. Trump Entrepreneur Initiative LLC (Trump University) (2014; appeal decided 2016)

Court: Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County (trial court); Appellate Division, First Department (appeal)

Index Number: 451463/2013

Trial-Court Decision (Education Law): October 8, 2014 - 2014 NY Slip Op 32685(U)

Holding: The court granted summary determination that Trump Entrepreneur Initiative (Trump University) operated in New York without the required license after May 31, 2010, in violation of New York Education Law, and held Donald J. Trump and Michael Sexton individually liable on that Education Law violation.

Appeal (fraud claim reinstated): March 1, 2016 - 2016 NY Slip Op 01430 (1st Dep’t)

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASMain

https://ag.ny.gov

II. Carroll v. Trump (2023–2024)

Court: U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y.

Carroll II (22-cv-10016)

Verdict (May 9, 2023): Jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation (2022 statements).

Carroll I (20-cv-07311)

Verdict (Jan. 26, 2024): Jury awarded $83.3 million in additional damages for defamation (2019 statements).

https://www.nysd.uscourts.gov

https://pacer.uscourts.gov

III. People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump (2024)

Court: Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County

Index Number: 452564/2022

Decision Date: February 16, 2024

Statute: N.Y. Executive Law § 63(12)

Found by the New York Supreme Court to have engaged in persistent fraud under N.Y. Executive Law § 63(12).

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASMain

https://ag.ny.gov

IV. People v. Donald J. Trump – Criminal Conviction (2024)

Court: Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County

Indictment Number: 71543-23

Verdict Date: May 30, 2024

Statute: N.Y. Penal Law § 175.10

Found guilty by a New York jury on 34 felony counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree.

https://ww2.nycourts.gov/people-v-donald-j-trump-criminal-37026

https://www.nycourts.gov

IMAGINED INTERVIEW CONTINUES

“So, FOUR cases - one CRIMINAL conviction!?”

“You said you wanted the money, right?”

“It was always about the money. This is a country of 340 million people. Divert 100 bucks from each one…”

“34 billion.”

“Repeat it 30 times…”

“A trillion. Cash.”

“But…acting illegally?”

“There’s no downside. I promise.”

AGENCIES

“Alright. We can trust you?”

“Of course.”

“OK. Tax cuts, done! Good work.

‘Jet skis for the rich!’ There’s a slogan I can get behind.

What could be better?

More importantly, next now - the programs AROUND that money.

You understand there are agencies which serve ALL the people? We need you to ‘right-size’ those.”

“‘Right-size’ meaning…generosity for patrons, austerity for citizens…”

ADGRAB: The unreviewable capture of administrative agencies with budgets of eight to nine figures.

ADGRAB: Grab the administrative agencies. How the “right-sizing” occurs, if the theory has purchase.

Alright now.

I hear you!

“UNREVIEWABLE capture?! No way! The biggest federal agencies each have an aggressive Inspector General - sometimes more than one.”

You’re right - to achieve unreviewability, we’d need to see the firing of the Inspector General, even InspectorS General, surely.

And, if the ADGRAB theory has purchase, we’ll see it done so in such a way as to strike fear into the hearts of every employee - gross, dramatic. Fired without cause and as spectacle.

Friday Night Massacre: Trump Ousts Federal Watchdogs in Sudden Late-Night Sweep

Within the 1^st week of his 2^nd administration Trump fired 17 inspectors general across 17 federal agencies - substantially reducing independent oversight from agencies responsible for roughly $3.0–$3.7 trillion in annual federal outlays. About ~40%–50% of total U.S. taxpayer-funded spending. Occurring while many agencies were operating under interim leadership, pending nominations and confirmations.

https://abcnews.com/US/inspector-general-vacancies-after-trump-firings-draw-questions/story?id=118507727

In almost every case of the agencies noted above, the assistant IG immediately took over as acting.

As of publication many of the actual roles remain vacant.

There is no statutory date for successors to be named.

Fear

Since each actual IG at each agency got fired on the same Friday evening as 17 other Inspectors General across the government (an episode a more civic-minded press corps would once have called a “massacre”), the logical inference of the still-surviving, once-assistant, now-acting IG is…the firing was for the crime of…inspecting.

Therefore, if you want to survive in your post…. Well? Stop inspecting.

This same message is inferred by all staff.

In ADGRAB, you keep the agency framework, intimidate, reshuffle, and disrupt leadership and staff.

People either comply, exit, or stop pushing back, while the institution continues functioning in a degraded, frightened form.

Crisis

ENVIRONMENTAL REQUIREMENT? CRISIS: APPOINT AGENCY HEAD WHO CLAIMS CRISIS AND DECLARES REVOLUTION AGAINST HIS OWN AGENCY

The environmental requirement for ADGRAB is declaration of crisis by agency head in the absence of IG.

Each newly created leader in the pretend crisis calls for the destruction and rebuilding the agency.

Since the ministry is being captured, but still has to run…the only means of simultaneously destroying it, running it AND “rebuilding” it is…with existing administrators.

These all would be at least nominally loyal to the pre-existing mission.

But, these now would be so compromised with fear after the firings as to be willing to speak the named mission of the agency…while ALSO architecting its destruction.

Many will quit on the basis of integrity, leaving countless senior-level vacancies.

And, in their wake the pattern that often arises is relatives and friends of the agency head arrive to fill the highest-paid now vacant senior roles.

And, the same behind these to undertake “the contracts” required to “correctly” rebuild the agency with a nine-figure budget.

This is the Gravy Train. The pallets of cash.

Put another way - in ADGRAB you remove independent inspectors general and declare a revolution at the policy spending level.

Enforce loyalty by spectacle firings.

Many - those with integrity AND independent means - quit.

Fill the highest-paid newly opened positions with family and friends. And, lower-level roles with partisans of any background.

Then, ‘rebuilding’ becomes the pretext for channelling contracts to insiders - family, friends, loyal firms, despite these policies not having any support from accepted academic evidence, or even the actual mission of the agency.

And the opportunity doesn’t stop at the top; it spreads outward, reaching the friends and relatives of in-agency supporters.

Think of it like Financial Lysenkoism - opening the state coffers at every level to mere assertions of fact only because they reward those in your circle.

Put another way, graft - wearing a 3-piece suit and spouting madness.

Invoices paid on demand by the full faith and credit of the US government.

Sort of an amazing pirouette, you’d have to say.

Not state capture of industry, but individual capture of state agencies by politically indebted unsupervised amateurs with check writing authority.

Agency capture by politically indebted unsupervised amateurs with check writing authority.

ADGRAB

It sounds impressive, but is it even DOABLE?

Doable? From this writer’s perspective, the structures are all in place.

RETURN NOW TO THE GREEN ON THE BLUFF AT THE POINT. CLAPBOARD STRUCTURE. SEPARATE FROM THE CLUB. GLASS AND GABLING, WINDOWS ALL AROUND, NEW ENGLAND COAST IN THE SUMMER

The surf pounds the breakers. In earshot of all, barely. Softly. Calming.

The coolest zero-humidity air you’ve ever felt blows across the point.

To the cliff, carpeted with the greenest wide-blade grass you’ll ever find. Green to nearly the point of rebellion, lit under a sun unreachably high.

Yet never even hot, there at the point.

Your eye’s bluest skies falling to cobalt seas. White tops cresting, rolling in, still crashing on the rocks below.

A FILM PROJECTOR IS BROUGHT IN, SHADES ARE DRAWN

The two metal reels shudder independently of each other, rattling - and start to spin. The light inside the device flickers rapidly. A slow clatter begins to sound.

HHS

Inspectors general fired in mass firing on 1/24/2025.

Senate Confirmation Hearings with Mr. Kennedy, 1/29~1/30/2025.

Confirmation 2/13/2025

10,000 fired at CDC

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/trump-administration-begins-mass-layoffs-health-agencies-sources-say-2025-04-01/

U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. fired all 17 members of a CDC panel of vaccine experts and is replacing them with new advisers.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/all-members-vaccine-advisory-panel-will-be-retired-us-health-secretary-kennedy-2025-06-09/

The department is running.

It appears scientific evidence is no longer governing.

ADGRAB

ADGRAB AT HHS?!

Illustration - Measles.

On December 31, 2024, as Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s nomination to lead the Department of Health and Human Services was moving toward confirmation, the United States closed the year with around 290 confirmed measles cases nationwide, concentrated largely in a small number of under‑vaccinated communities and still treated by public health authorities as contained outbreaks rather than sustained national spread.

By spring 2025, after Kennedy’s confirmation and the beginning of his rebuild of the federal public‑health establishment, measles transmission had accelerated sharply. By mid-April 2025, cases had reached about 800 across multiple jurisdictions, surpassing the total for all of 2024 in a matter of weeks and signaling loss of containment rather than sporadic importation.

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/measles-cases-25-us-jurisdictions-rise-800-2025-cdc-says-2025-04-18/

By summer 2025, the increase was no longer incremental but explosive. By early July 2025, confirmed cases were already above 1,200 - Reuters reported 1,288 as of July 9, with simultaneous outbreaks documented across the Midwest, the South, and parts of the Northeast. At that point, epidemiologists and public health officials were warning that the country was moving beyond isolated flare-ups toward sustained epidemic spread; one expert quoted by Reuters described the outbreak bluntly as “a massive measles epidemic.”

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-measles-battle-hindered-by-confusion-over-health-secretary-response-2025-04-09/

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-measles-cases-reach-highest-level-six-years-1288-cdc-says-2025-07-09/

By the end of 2025, the CDC’s confirmed total was 2,267 cases across over forty jurisdictions, the highest annual measles burden in decades and incompatible with any claim of effective control. Transmission chains persisted across seasons, demonstrating that the virus was circulating continuously rather than being extinguished.

https://www.cdc.gov/measles/data-research/index.html

As 2026 began, measles did not reset. Hundreds of additional cases were recorded within the first weeks of the year, driven by the same outbreak networks established in 2025, confirming that the surge was structural and ongoing rather than a one‑time spike.

CDC data now show more than 2,000 confirmed measles cases across 43 states in a single year-the highest total in more than three decades-with fifty documented outbreaks nationwide and roughly 93% of cases occurring among people who are unvaccinated or whose vaccination status is unknown, underscoring sustained multi-state transmission alongside declining immunization coverage.

https://abcnews.com/Health/us-measles-cases-surpass-2000-highest-30-years/story?id=128747603

Whether this acceleration was directly caused by leadership changes, or merely coincided with them, is a matter of interpretation. But the structural weakening of public health credibility cannot be disentangled from the timing.

NOT THE CHICKEN POX

Measles is not a mild childhood nuisance like chickenpox but one of the most contagious viruses on earth, capable of causing pneumonia, brain swelling, permanent disability and death - and it directly endangers roughly 3.5 million U.S. infants under 12 months old who are too young to receive their first measles vaccine.

In most real-world settings, out of every 1,000 children who catch measles, about 3 die.

Of the remaining children, up to 300 spend days to weeks suffering in the hospital.

Within that hospitalized group, up to 100 will develop measles pneumonia, the complication that causes most of the deaths.

One will commonly suffer brain inflammation, often leaving permanent brain damage.

Dozens more will leave with lifelong injuries-hearing loss, seizures, developmental impairment.

And most of the survivors will have their immune protection literally consumed by the pathogens, forcing children to relearn immunity the hard way - by getting sick again in their teens and adulthood.

On February 26, 2025 Robert F. Kennedy Jr. described the current spread of measles as “…not unusual. We have measles outbreaks every year.”

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/measles/kennedy-minimizes-measles-outbreak-wake-texas-death

From February forward, what followed through 2025 appears to be nearly a case study of ADGRAB, with leadership changes critics argue displaced evidence-governed prevention with personal belief. The epidemic curve illustrates the stakes of that transfer of authority.

ADGRAB

AGENCY CAPTURE?! COME ON!! JOBBING OUT THE WHOLE OF HHS TO DESTROY IT? IT COULDN’T BE DONE.

The movie reels are changed, and a low controversy breaks out.

Sure! I hear you.

You’re saying a House audit would catch something that blatant, that someone would show up and count the microscopes.

But nothing like what could arise is going to be…blatant.

The lights dim.

Here’s how that would work:

SOMEWHERE IN BATHESDA

The outfit exists on paper long before the grant does: an LLC filed in Maryland, a mailbox, a rented desk in Bethesda, a three-page website with a stock photo of pipettes.

When the notice posts, it would be written so narrowly it might as well name them - Homeopathic Approaches to Vertigo. A corner of medicine so small almost no one bothers.

The window is short. The wording strange and specific. The only people ready are the ones who…already knew it was coming.

One proposal goes in. Under ADGRAB we can assume that an old classmate inside the now trimmed-down awards office answers a quiet question, nudges a form, shortens the distance.

By default, they’re the only bidder.

The award email arrives without ceremony, just another bureaucratic message, like a parking ticket.

And, the revolutionary mood that accompanies ADGRAB fires the furnaces of change, electrifying every new expenditure with almost romantic idealism.

In an HHS so enthralled, we can expect everything to be described as natural, holistic, promising, revolutionary.

To see dozens like it every week.

SMALL bets. NEW directions.

Bethesda here, framed as “only ten percent of cancer research, given its potential,” would sound modest enough not to trouble anyone.

Which, in our little exercise, works out to around…$774,000,000.

Inside a $1.8 trillion department it barely shows up at all, just another line in a long list, another paragraph on the website no one reads twice.

After that, it’s just a few keystrokes. Mr. Bethesda Desk asks an AI for a year of research outcomes-tables, error bars, regression plots-and gets them in less than a minute.

Twelve progress emails are drafted in advance and scheduled to send themselves on the first of each month: data attached, trends encouraging, next phase underway.

The accountant is told, “When the reimbursement hits, move my salary - $125,000 - same day.”

Every month the portal shows the same small confirmation, draw funds approved, expense category: personnel.

No one checks the lab, because there is no lab.

They check the paperwork, and the paperwork is perfect. The science runs on autopilot; the salary runs on schedule.

Mr. Bethesda desk has been living in an ocean-front Bimini condo since February.

HOLD UP, CREATIVE WRITING TEAM! IT DON’T EVER WORK LIKE THAT!

No?

How about NASA?

It starts with NASA and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. After that morning, ownership itself began to look like liability. Congress stopped funding government-built replacements and started steering the agency toward purchasing services instead.

The Commercial Space Act of 1998 favored commercial launch. The Vision for Space Exploration set Shuttle’s retirement.

Commercial Orbital Transportation Services program, COTS, opened in 2006 to pay outside providers. Space Shuttle rolled to a stop in 2011. The workshops thinned out. The contracts stacked up. The rockets left the premises.

By the mid-2000s the large aerospace / military houses - Boeing and Lockheed Martin - had little interest in routine human launch.

The risk was high, the margins ordinary, the political exposure constant. They stayed where returns were steadier.

The field narrowed on its own. NASA still needed cargo flights and crew access, but fewer companies were willing to provide them.

Into that gap walked SpaceX, set up on paper in 2002 by Elon Musk.

Three launches, three failures.

But, by 2006, the first checks arrived under COTS - about $278 million to develop Dragon - followed by roughly $1.6 billion in cargo contracts and $2.6 billion (later around $4.9 billion) in crew transports, because the program paid whoever would put hardware on the pad. Then crew seats. Year by year, the only firm that kept flying became the only firm NASA could buy from.

That is how legalized capture settles in - not through drama, but through absence. The public agency keeps the mission and the budget, the contractor keeps the rockets and the schedule.

Once, once the state becomes a customer, the calendar will answer to the supplier.

If the supplier is majority controlled by one person, much of the country’s space agenda depends heavily on…the priorities and public statements of a single controlling owner.

Oddly, the media loves the mogul angle - the babies, the drama. If citizens want orbital energy or climate tools, they wait on someone else’s manifest; if the owner prefers Mars, Mars gets booked.

NASA?

A proof of concept.

A precursor to ADGRAB.

But, with an unaccountable “head.”

An illustration of how future contractors can move right in - and will.

Some, like SpaceX legitimate, if dictatorial.

Some not, homeopathic-style.

The empty reel spins freely now, the fully wound back reel turns, too, with the last bit of ribbon flickering out from the reel as it spins.

The new reels are brought in. Perfectly round, shiny metallic cases.

DHS

Kristi Noem confirmation hearing, 1/17/2025.

Inspectors general fired in mass firing on 1/24/2025.

Confirmation, 1/25/2025.

Within weeks, DHS authorized roughly $220 million away from operational enforcement and into a national “public messaging” campaign - border ads, deterrence ads, narrative ads - authorized under emergency powers normally reserved for disasters, without normal competitive contracting.

This approaches a quarter of a billion dollars.

The Department of Homeland Security launched a sweeping advertising campaign warning migrants to stay out of the United States, using emergency authorities to bypass the normal contracting process.
https://www.propublica.org/article/kristi-noem-dhs-ad-campaign-strategy-group

The scale was extraordinary: the campaign involved hundreds of millions of dollars.

Then came the tell.

The scrutiny centered not only on the size of the expenditure, but on how the contracts were structured and who ultimately benefited from the work.

Rather than proceeding solely through routine competitive pathways, the advertising campaign was issued under emergency border authorities, and reporting later revealed that a politically connected consulting firm was involved in producing the ads.

That firm had longstanding personal and political ties to DHS leadership, including a connection to the spouse of Noem’s chief spokesperson, and its role was not prominently reflected in public contracting records - prompting lawmakers to question transparency, potential conflicts of interest, and favoritism.

Emergency authority invoked. Limited transparency. Hundreds of millions in Treasury-backed taxpayer dollars committed to an advertising campaign produced by a firm tied to Noem’s political circle.

Once confirmed, under Department of Homeland Security leadership following Noem’s ascension, contracts authorizing up to roughly $220 million in pay-on-demand, full-faith-and-credit U.S. Treasury dollars were executed within ten days - emergency border powers, rapid approval, and a politically connected firm producing the ads.

And, again, the ADGRAB sequence.

• DHS’s inspector general was removed in the opening days of the administration.

• Leadership unsettled.

• Crisis declared.

• Emergency powers invoked.

The department continued to function - agents deployed, grants administered - but a parallel “mission” emerged: narrative enforcement, outsourced to a firm critics note is connected by marriage to executive staff.

No theft alleged. Just authority directing staggering sums along a path that ends at a politically connected firm.

DoD

Confirmation hearing was Tuesday, January 14, 2025.

Inspectors general fired in mass firing on Friday, January 24, 2025.

Secretary confirmation: Pete Hegseth, Friday, January 24, 2025.

Hegseth has pushed weapons programs into fast-track channels that move money earlier and higher up the chain, shrinking the number of desks a proposal must clear before it gets funded and reducing the traditional layers that question cost, feasibility, and duplication. At the same time, critics point to the administration’s mass firing of inspectors general and internal reshuffling of oversight roles as part of a broader pattern: fewer independent watchdogs, fewer institutional brakes, and more agenda-setting power concentrated near the Secretary. Supporters call it speed and decisiveness; skeptics see a steady narrowing of scrutiny that shifts enormous defense decisions into fewer hands with fewer guardrails.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_dismissals_of_U.S._inspectors_general

https://www.reuters.com/world/assault-oversight-hegseth-overhaul-military-watchdogs-spurs-concern-2025-10-02/

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/latest-purge-hegseth-removes-head-pentagon-intelligence-agency-other-senior-2025-08-22/

Critics warn that when approval authority is centralized in this way, programs may proceed primarily because the Secretary and senior advisers approve them, vendors can gain advantage if they are positioned closest to that authority, and career officials risk losing the power and protection needed to stop costly or duplicative commitments before contracts are executed. At Pentagon scale, they argue, concentrating approval power in a single office can predictably increase the risk that discretion turns into favoritism, with projects advancing because they align with the Secretary’s preferences or relationships rather than because they survive independent challenge, creating conditions that resemble a spoils-style flow of contracts.

https://www.defenseone.com/policy/2025/11/experts-see-promise-risk-pentagons-proposed-acquisition-reforms/409335/

https://federalnewsnetwork.com/defense-news/2025/11/hegseth-unveils-transformation-of-dod-acquisition-system/

The concern is structural and concrete: Pete Hegseth has concentrated effective control over enormous spending decisions in his own office, reducing the number of people and procedures whose institutional role was to say no before money moved. When a single secretary and a small circle of advisers can approve programs, select vendors, and obligate funds with diminished internal challenge, the result may not be faster efficiency but increased exposure to preference, loyalty, and access shaping how public money is steered.

The spoils system is precisely what the modern procurement rules were built to prevent.

Anyone who doubts the structural risk need only recall:

• Operation Ill Wind (1980s): senior Pentagon procurement officials steered contracts to favored firms, resulting in dozens of convictions and sweeping acquisition reform.

• The A-12 Avenger II collapse (1991): leadership-driven approvals continued despite mounting feasibility failures, ending in cancellation after billions spent, lawsuits, and resignations.

• Iraq War reconstruction contracting (2003–2007): emergency authorities enabled no-bid awards and politically connected contracting, leading to massive waste, criminal prosecutions, and the creation of new oversight regimes.

Once those brakes are weakened, illegality need not be assumed transaction by transaction for risk to rise; the system itself can become less capable of reliably distinguishing merit from favoritism.

So the opening promise returns with force: if this is what an “unrelenting onslaught” looks like in practice, then the question is not how fast the Pentagon fights, but who is empowered to decide how nearly a trillion dollars is spent - and for whose benefit.

In the wide triangle of light from the projector dust float like amoeba.

RFK, NOEM & HEGSETH - REVOLUTIONARIES ALL!

And, others, too!

Look:

EDUCATION

EPA

Here, by stating that EPA is only “authorized,” Zeldin appears to signal that the agency can legally choose not to regulate greenhouse gases.

Seeming to frame non-regulation as a policy option for protecting the environment.

And, so enacted by winter:

https://apnews.com/article/trump-climate-change-epa-clean-air-act-c149d5ea6ec71c862e6c4b578adf92cd

OVERSIGHT, EASY ON THE “OVER” PART

With Republican control of the House - narrowly - no one will notice an ADGRAB assault on the agencies, though it would have to proceed with pace and force.

But, bullets bounce right of the marble-faced agencies of Washington, right?

It’s not just, “You can’t fight city hall.” The question is, “Who the hell would want to dismantle the Gold Standard agencies that have formed the pillars of the Pax Americana?”

The aggressive rich - that’s who.

Remember - they are leading ADGRAB, and they choose their operative.

The annual budget of HHS is 1.8 trillion dollars.

1.8 Trillion, every YEAR.

Not to dismantle it, but to leave it in place - and effectively take it over.

However, through the House - Oversight.

The purse strings!

Yet, the Republicans control the house.

The wealthy control the Republicans.

So, if the theory holds, as ADGRAB proceeds, it won’t be Oversight the Republicans deliver.

It will be Undersight.

SOMEONE SPEAKS UP

“Suppose someone speaks up?

Say, a republican still committed to ‘public service.’

Real Oversight?”

“They won’t speak up.”

“They might?”

“They won’t.”

THE SHIV

CONSENT TO CRUELTY MADE POLITICALLY VIABLE

This is conjecture, not record.

Beyond the imagined corrupt fatherly cries to the heavens…

If you wanted to be the richest SOB in the world, just become president. You could hand out government contracts like candy!! Take a cut on every one. Never lift a finger again.

…in our analysis the curious journeyman has one other odd skill.

Some saw it as insult comic-ry.

Others, as just good TV.

But, this sadly wounded soul seems to have honed only one thrill growing up - the public humiliation.

Having been placed atop a vast portfolio of New York real estate assets, he found himself surrounded by those who elevated him.

Elevated - seemingly for no apparent reason he could discern…other than the bankbook.

Because, he knew.

Always presented before people expecting competence - taken out of his cell like some odd changeling - but, rotten already.

It’s really part of the hate.

The term, “spoiled;” spoiled kids know they are already so. It’s part of the malevolence, born of bitterness that won’t be forgiven. Our family has everything - but they have no time for me.

Neither music, nor foreign languages, nor academics. Zip. Zero.

Sass, alone.

And, speaking.

From having stared at the TV by himself.

Alone…for hours.

Seemingly self-aware of having flopped childhood.

Yet, brought out of the cell just the same.

Still, though, blinking there in the dim light of the parlor, it became obvious that people perceived him as competent, successful. Even gilded.

Armed with this perception, and the wealth, he learned long ago how much harder it hurt for wealthy him to deny the dignity of others.

(And, how protective hurting others could be when he was being judged against others. Others manifestly more skilled than he.)

This talent - the public humiliation-domination leading to submission.

Learned, no doubt at the derisive blunt end of a father’s withering comments.

The boy staggering through childhood - failing.

No music. No foreign languages. No academics. And, all the money in the world.

But now…with all the money in the world - and knowing what money means to most people - the pattern we discern in this analysis suggests he had grown to love to wither others.

To look dead into the camera and say,

That pierce, the glint in the eye and shiv going in, it’s actually the moment he savors; he understands it’s not just HIM saying it: it’s him, and his billions of dollars. Which puts half the audience - and most of the men on his side, by default.

So, they drone it, too.

And, it’s this consciousness of EACH one of those on his side - THAT’S the sneer.

Audience coopted - a condensed, compressed, crushing condescension.

Widescreen.

Degrading the earned achievement of the person, in public VIA the public.

To look dead into the camera and say,

And, to know a million others sheepishly huzzahed along with him.

The humiliation-domination event.

And, the slouched submissions of each of those on the debate stage so-targeted.

It appears to be his sick private ecstasy.

Such perversion makes a person unpleasant, but not that threatening.

Unless you had something to fear.

PROSCRIPTION - ROME’S ANCIENT LIST, MADE MODERN

In 43 BC, Octavian, Antony, and Lepidus - as those who would impose imperium and sought to close four and a half centuries of republic - they did not dissolve the Senate.

They did something quieter.

They posted names.

Among them: Marcus Tullius Cicero - consul, orator, the Republic’s voice.

So listed, he was hunted.

Killed by soldiers, his head and hands nailed to the rostra where he had once spoken.

All civil and legal standing denied. One wet brush of black paint.

A Roman citizen could become a target by publication alone.

The lists did not last forever. But the proof did.

This new form of rule demonstrated to all that protections of citizenship could be withdrawn at will. That law could yield to designation. That protection could hinge on favor.

From that moment forward, no Roman could entirely forget.

PRIMARY TOOL: ONLINE THREATS OF VIOLENCE, DEATH THREATS

This part was by chance.

It seized upon that perversion of public humiliation, the self-involved urgency that accompanies a background of acting illegally and added to these an actual threat valence.

To see it in sharper focus imagine this: a trust-fund mediocrity running a political campaign centered on humiliation in any earlier era.

In any other age - alas! we would hope our own, too - but, in any other era a movement so motivated would never have gotten off the ground.

Why? Because, before, listening to a person be an a**hole on the radio on TV would have meant being with your family at the same time. “What a jerk!”

People would walk away.

Uniquely, to our great detriment, the isolation of our current era means consuming media alone - and yields a parasocial relationship.

Our podcaster is talking to us - specifically - we feel.

As, is our leader.

So the extremist feels.

He hears, “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!”

https://apnews.com/article/trump-military-traitors-sedition-illegal-orders-c5fc3c5bd2fbc6b1204550e4203c24b2

And, in that atmosphere, the threats of violence, the death threats…they arrive.

ONLINE THREATS OF VIOLENCE, DEATH THREATS

1. Adam Schiff

2. Gretchen Whitmer

3. Nancy Pelosi

4. Brad Raffensperger

5. Jocelyn Benson

6. Ruby Freeman

7. Shaye Moss

8. Rusty Bowers

9. Letitia James

10. Alvin Bragg

11. General Mark Milley

12. Senator Mark Kelly

13. Senator Elissa Slotkin

14. Representative Jason Crow

15. Representative Chrissy Houlahan

16. Representative Chris Deluzio

17. Representative Maggie Goodlander

18. Judges in every corner of this nation.

All online.

Cost-free.

No stake out. No mailed letters. Not even any assumed identities writing screeds in to the Sun Times.

Threaten violence.

Death threats.

Cell phone-sent between subway stops.

Your threats of violence and death threats - anonymous, digital and free.

The same modern media delivery that has so isolated us has removed the costs which heretofore accompanied making threats of violence and death threats.

Cost free to MAKE, but, sadly, not cost free to ignore.

Mitt Romney, according to McKay Coppins, was spending $5,000 a DAY on security.

Five thousand dollars.

Every.

Day.

THE SWATTING

And, to the great good luck of those delighted to cast a pall of online terror - Roman Proscription - across the American continent - comes the SWATTING. Russian-like in method.

Wait! A Russian-style op? “Yeah, right. Tin foil hat time!”

Really? Well, look at it.

The Putin mission: amplify division, radicalize discourse.

Then, look at the targets. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Nicole Wallace? Seems pretty diligent, don’t it?

With the swatters almost never getting caught, plus it being so precisely syncopated to the news cycle, that suggests something different from domestic drunk-guy / teenage prank chaos and more toward a professionalized, compartmentalized operation - offshore, where discipline and anonymity are easier to maintain.

PRIMARY TOOL

THROUGH THREATS OF VIOLENCE, THROUGH DEATH THREATS, FOR THE WIN - PARTY CONTROL

Thus, how can we describe what we see today?

PROSCRIPTION, for the modern age.

Cicero. Head and hands.

Threats of Violence.

Death Threats.

Swatting.

Messages. Lists.

Posted. Emailed.

Calls from fellow citizens.

Swatting attacks (overseas malevolent actors).

The guns have swung in your direction.

Primary Fight?

Or, capitulate?

Resign?

POLITICIANS

1. 2017 – Sen. Jeff Sessions, AL (left Senate to become Attorney General; later failed in 2020 Senate comeback attempt)
US$2–4M – Attorney and public service career; investments.

2. 2019 – Sen. Jeff Flake, AZ (broke with Trump over character and rule of law; attacked by Trump and faced a hostile primary; retired rather than run)
US$1–5M – Career politician and author; book royalties and speaking fees.

3. 2019 – Sen. Bob Corker, TN (criticized Trump’s competence and stability; mocked and targeted by Trump; chose retirement rather than continue intraparty conflict)
US$40–50M – Commercial real-estate developer; long-term property holdings.

4. 2019 – Sen. Orrin Hatch, UT (institutional conservative; stepped aside as party realigned around Trump)
US$4–8M – Attorney background; Senate career; consulting and book income.

5. 2019 – Speaker Paul Ryan, WI (clashed with Trump over governance and deficits; influence eroded; left leadership and retired)
US$6–10M – Marriage into oil/energy family wealth; corporate boards and finance roles.

6. 2019 – Rep. Mark Sanford, SC (sustained Trump critic; publicly challenged Trump; lost Trump-backed primary in 2018 and left Congress at end of term)
US$2–4M – Real estate investments and consulting income.

7. 2021 – Rep. Justin Amash, MI (supported impeachment; left GOP under pressure; did not seek reelection; left Congress at term end)
US$0.5–1.5M – Small business family background; limited assets.

8. 2021 – Sen. Lamar Alexander, TN (frequent institutional breaks with Trump; opted to retire rather than align)
US$5–10M – Education business founder; investments; pension.

9. 2021 – Sen. Pat Roberts, KS (traditional Republican displaced by Trump alignment; retired)
US$1–3M – Career public servant; farmland and retirement savings.

10. 2023 – Sen. Pat Toomey, PA (rejected 2020 election overturn effort and backed conviction; retired rather than continue)
US$2–4M – Investment banking and private finance background.

11. 2023 – Sen. Richard Burr, NC (voted to convict; censured by state party; retired)
US$2–4M – Consulting and investments.

12. 2023 – Sen. Rob Portman, OH (criticized post-election pressure campaign; retired rather than continue inside Trump-aligned caucus)
US$8–15M – Family real-estate and construction wealth; investments.

13. 2023 – Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, OH (voted to impeach; faced intense MAGA backlash and primary threat; retired)
US$5–10M – Former NFL earnings and investments.

14. 2023 – Rep. Adam Kinzinger, IL (voted to impeach and served on the Jan. 6 committee; censured and threatened; retired)
US$0.5–1.5M – Air National Guard officer; congressional salary.

15. 2023 – Rep. Liz Cheney, WY (led Jan. 6 investigation; stripped of leadership; defeated in Trump-backed primary; left Congress at term end)
US$10–20M – Family wealth; legal, consulting, and speaking income.

16. 2023 – Rep. Peter Meijer, MI (voted to impeach; lost Trump-backed primary; left Congress at term end)
US$50–100M – Heir to Meijer grocery chain fortune.

17. 2023 – Rep. Fred Upton, MI (voted to impeach; faced certain primary defeat; retired)
US$15–25M – Whirlpool family inheritance and investments.

18. 2023 – Rep. John Katko, NY (first GOP impeachment vote; backlash; retired)
US$1–3M – Former prosecutor and attorney; savings and home equity.

19. 2023 – Sen. Ben Sasse, NE (consistent Trump critic; resigned mid-term in Jan 2023)
US$1–3M – Academic and administrative career; investments.

20. 2025 – Sen. Mitt Romney, UT (voted to convict Trump twice; retired after one term)
US$250–350M – Bain Capital co-founder; private equity fortune; diversified investments.

ACTIVISTS, THOUGHT LEADERS

1. 2012 – Charlie Crist, FL (left GOP; became Democrat)
US$1–3M – Attorney and public service career.

2. 2016 – George Will (left Republican Party after Trump nomination; publicly urged defeat of Trumpism)
US$5–10M – Longtime syndicated columnist, books, speaking, academic posts.

3. 2018 – Steve Schmidt (senior GOP strategist; broke with Trumpism)
US$3–5M – National campaign consulting and media roles.

4. 2018 – David Jolly, FL (left GOP; later Democratic candidate)
US$1–3M – Attorney, media, and consulting career.

5. 2018–2019 – Tim Miller (left GOP media ecosystem; later senior Lincoln Project operative)
US$1–3M – Consulting, media, and writing income.

6. 2019 – Rick Wilson (Republican media consultant; co-founded the Lincoln Project)
US$2–4M – Political consulting, books, and media contracts.

7. 2019 – Stuart Stevens (chief strategist for Romney 2012; Lincoln Project co-founder)
US$2–4M – Campaign consulting and publishing income.

8. 2020 – Joe Walsh, IL (launched anti-Trump primary challenge; left GOP politics)
US$0.5–1.5M – Media and speaking income.

And so, capture the party.

Captured through the PRIMARY TOOL - reminding party members that a primary opponent is always waiting in the wings, suggested amid an online climate of threats and swatting attacks.

A seeming willingness to ride violence.

It takes a particular kind of political actor to operate in this environment - one with a background in acting illegally.

Defy him, and you’ll be forced to fight him and his entire online operation, in the primaries - and going forward, lifetime. PROSCRIPTION.

Cassius Dio, writing around 200 AD described the proscription lists as,

Capitulate, or resign.

ADGRAB & VIOLENCE: THE SICKTAX

Before we begin, a review of the paradigm we propose is emerging:

• America’s richest realize the greatest untapped wealth is held by the state, earmarked for agencies.

• They seek, identify, and elevate a leader willing to pass a Tax Cut targeting these pools of “untapped” wealth, and then to arrange for the seeming sustained agency-level misallocation of these monies going forward: ADGRAB.

• They appear to overlook or misinterpret the negative significance of one part of the resume of that actor: a background in acting illegally.

a. Threats of Violence, Death Threats: PROSCRIPTION - these are in accord with illegality.

i. Threats of Violence, Death Threats paralyze representative self-government.

1. To politicians: do what I tell you, or I’ll go online and call for opponents “to primary you.”

a. Everyone knows what that means.

2. To thought leaders: do what I tell you, or I’ll go online and destroy your ability to work in Republican politics.

a. Or, even to live peacefully in your community.

AGENCY HEADS IN ADGRAB, WHY WOULD THEY DO IT?

RFK -HHS?

Noem - DHS?

Hegseth - DoD?

McMahon - Education?

Zeldin - EPA?

If the ADGRAB model is correct, why participate?

Removing oversight, firing experts, moving in your cronies, destroying the agency mission while preaching the agency mission?

We can easily infer why someone with a background in acting illegally would aspire to the presidency, and a world so-corrupted.

Remembering the childhood tale shouted at the heavens of conveyor belt wealth,

Never lift a finger again.

And, realizing, by chance, that online TYRANNICAL INSINUATIONS, “SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR, punishable by DEATH!” unleashed immediate threats of violence.

Malignancies like these warm those debased.

But, as to the others, the agency heads - “Why?”

Hollow out the American experiment now, when it’s been so good to us all?

How does it benefit them - or, indeed, any of us - to destroy the agencies that, in many cases, made their own humble hamlets of origin possible?

IN PRAISE OF THE DAMNED, IN PRAISE OF US ALL

Household tranquility today can only be expected when holding Multiple Investment Property-sized Wealth.

Therefore, our society is one where civil servants will be inclined to orchestrate state-sized graft.

It is the lesson of James Van Der Beek. Thirty years of steady, insured employment - and hope still depends on donations.

Household tranquility today can only be expected when holding Multiple Investment Property-sized Wealth.

Thus, with agency heads, as with the agency staff - it’s not the DEATH THREATS or VIOLENCE but…the threat of death - the SICKTAX - that urges them to destroy the collected expertise of the American state.

SICKTAX

In a society where the costs of illness, aging, and death exceed what ordinary work can secure, peace at home becomes conditional.

Hospital interventions are insured. Long-term custodial care often is not.

Assistance arrives only after private savings have been largely spent down.

Dementia, disability, and extended frailty routinely generate annual charges in the six figures. The duration of those charges cannot be predicted in advance.

The immediate effect is that families today realize they must plan not for recovery but for a dignified end, and for how long they can delay complete financial liquidation to achieve it.

As this reality becomes sinks in, behavior changes in predictable ways. Individuals who hope to remain solvent begin to calculate not what is sufficient, but what might survive a prolonged decline.

Assets are evaluated by durability rather than return. The question becomes how to withstand an open-ended drain.

When it becomes clear that ordinary accumulation cannot meet this requirement, restraints that once governed conduct weaken.

Actions are judged less by propriety than by whether they move the needed resources closer to the required number: Multiple Investment Property-holding Wealth.

SICKTAX

The condition affects all citizens.

Agency STAFF as well.

AGENCY STAFF

Why would the STAFF of the now ADGRAB-ed agencies stay on - for even a single moment?

• HHS SENIOR SCIENTIST - “Vitamin A, for measles? I’ve got a f*cking Ph. D. in microbiology and a Lasker medal for Clinical Medical Research.”

• DHS SENIOR MANAGER - “Allocate half a BILLION on advertising, but diddly on TRAINING?! I worked McKinsey before this and have an MBA from Columbia.”

• DoD PROCUREMENT SPECIALIST - “Sell to who? But - FFS, we didn’t get any movement on human rights.”

• JUSTICE PRINCETON GRAD - “I clerk for Scalia; graduate FIRST in my class at law school, now this? James Comey (John Bolton, Leticia James, Tim Walz, Adam Frey, Don Lemon, Georgia Fort, You, dear reader) hasn’t committed a crime.”

“I’ve not got Multiple Investment Property Wealth, yet.

I know how it all ends otherwise.”

“I can’t afford quit. I’ll stay onboard.”

SICKTAX - it keeps you in place. Not naked, but afraid.

COME ON! WHAT ABOUT INTEGRITY?

I hear you.

Who would stay? Be used as tools of your own agency’s destruction or inversion?

If a madman came in and told you,

“At Justice, now we prosecute political speech the executive doesn’t like.”

Who would stay?

How about…close to 75%?

We can use DOJ as an example.

There HAS been a mass exodus.

We could see this as people leaving on the basis of integrity.

Reuters reports 2,526 lawyers voluntarily leaving.

https://www.reuters.com/legal/government/lawyers-leaving-us-government-drive-workforce-shift-2026-01-29/

The Washington Post puts the total number of attorneys at justice overall at around 10,000.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/10/justice-department-hiring-stalled/

Meaning?

75% stay.

AT JUSTICE!!

SICKTAX

“I’ve not got Multiple Investment Property Wealth, yet.”

AMONG AGENCY HEADS

We can easily imagine how that will occur once confirmed.

The relevant moment is brief and contained. The door closes. The office, quiet.

There is a seal on the wall, and, on the desk…a budget that dwarfs anything previously handled.

Scale.

A huge scale.

Reaching trillions. ANNUALLY.

In that silence, the arithmetic becomes unavoidable.

Whatever the secretary’s aging family and assets, something akin to insurance seemed to await him in the office that frosty January morning.

Authority here in this office can move sums large enough…to end vulnerability permanently.

The recognition is not dramatic. It is practical. A pause. A look across the room.

Then the only question that matters presents itself without ceremony, “Who will help me do this?”

The task now almost mundane. A number appears in the mind. Several million - perhaps more? There are assets to acquire, which means there are contracts to steer, exemptions to grant, timelines to accelerate.

Contracts.

All legal.

The secretary reaches for a second phone from inside his valise - not the phone on the desk.

A familiar number. Clipped instruction. “Create an LLC. Today. Delaware.”

What proceeds in the agency does so without further reflection. Decisions are issued. Paperwork conforms. Money moves.

Public authority remains intact - in form, and in deed. Yet - reaching for every legal lever exposed by being positioned at this altitude, each day begins with a single purpose: legally converting access offered by holding high office into permanent insulation from the fate imposed on everyone else.

STATE-SIZED GRAFT

Kristi Noem is photographed in front of a cell crowded with unjustly imprisoned men, standing in their underwear, denied due process. Heads shaved.

For an American to go to such a place to be photographed, becoming little more than a modern-day Philippe Pétain - it boggles the mind.

She is wearing a fifty thousand dollar gold watch.

She plans to die in a 5-star private room, all health options exhausted. Estate intact. Gold.

With her property equally divided among her remaining family favorites, she’ll sign the documents laid in front of her.

They’ll cue the Stevi Nicks to play her out.

She reached her number. Where other people don’t matter. Her fingers fumble for the watch.

ON THE SICKTAX

In AMERICA? Really?

An illustration.

Lisa had done everything correctly. Forty years of careful saving had left her and her husband with just over half a million dollars cash and a paid-off house, a modest fortress against uncertainty.

When his dementia began, before it was too hard to reach him, they conferred. Institutional care was off the table. He would stay at home to protect the nest egg. She told herself it was going to be manageable.

The condition advanced first slowly, then rapidly. She absorbed the wandering, the repetition, the incontinence, the sleeplessness, months of improvised caregiving that professionals would have handled in shifts.

The care was loving but threadbare because exhaustion erodes standards. The children pitched in as they could - but they had their own families now.

In her weakest moments she caught herself wishing for release, an impulse psychologists describe as caregiver burnout compounded by anticipatory grief, and the remorse that followed felt like a moral wound.

Inspired by reporting in the Dying Broke investigation by KFF Health News and The New York Times. https://kffhealthnews.org/dying-broke/ and https://kffhealthnews.org/news/article/dying-broke-facing-financial-ruin-as-costs-soar-for-elder-care/, Lisa’s story turns not on cruelty but arithmetic.

His wandering became dangerous, the falls too frequent, and she finally signed the papers for a facility she once swore she would never use.

Three years at roughly six figures annually consumed the savings she had guarded for decades.

When he died, the account was a shadow of itself.

She sold the house to stay liquid and became a renter with a modest windfall that felt less like security than a countdown.

Each night she calculates how long two hundred thousand a year for a private room would last for her.

Each cough, each misstep on the walk to see her grandchildren, feels like the start of the final drawdown. She considers ways to hide what remains, then stops and asks, “What for?” She was meant to enjoy old age.

Now she measures risk in sidewalks and stairwells, knowing that once the balance reaches zero she is either in her children’s spare room or in a state-funded bed, and that the turn from independence to institution can arrive in a single fall.

THAT’S A PRETTY SAD STORY PAL, BUT I’VE GOT A GOVERNMENT TO LOOT

There at the point. Swept by ocean winds in the atrium on the green, the blinds go up.

The projector clatters to a stop.

Waves wash over rocks on the beach far below.

Looking at each other, their minds move forward.

Yet…there’s a question.

What keeps the executive onside here? Onside of even his own agency heads.

What’s left in the government for him?

In this model as we have it outlined, the only goals he’s been handed from his wealthy enablers are:

• TAX CUTS - Done!

• ADGRAB - proceeding apace.

There’s no policy program.

But, there IS…a program.

Having been installed to hand over the agencies to the aggressively wealthy, the government is being sold to contractors under the banner of revolutionary agency heads.

Little for this grotesquery to do now.

By blind chance alone he has leveraged up a TYRANNICAL INSINUATION network with his online minions, added to the independent actions of a seemingly foreign state-directed international swatting squads.

PROSCRIPTION for the Modern Age.

But, that’s largely preventative in his mind.

“Cross me - slow my roll on Adgrab, and I’ll swing the online guns in your direction.”

Call it his “Primary Tool.” Or, “Consultancy Collapse Weapon.”

Especially retired military - job prospects detonate.

And, the press - pushed, eventually, into Substack Stardom, or…Baristaville.

Little does he or do they realize the cost. The compression of silence and fear.

Abusing the DOJ, too, is a secret passion, since indictments carry humiliation, domination and, if done perfectly - submission.

OK, deep Ivy League grad - you’re no longer “Former CIA Director” do-gooder now, are you?!

Henceforth and

FOR.

EV.

AH!

you will be called, ‘Indicted Former CIA Director!’

N’ I told the FNU to say, ‘Indicted Former CIA Director’ now EVERY time your name is mentioned! As will I, too!

Schwing!

Always the sick perversion.

Put you in prison for a day with a groundless “Lemon Arrest.”

But, after all this work for the wealthy…what’s in it for HIM?

COMSKIM - A Potential Means to Personally and Legally Monetize Overseas Federal Contracts and Access to American Markets

If the model is valid, then a structured means to legally monetize every national transaction involving overseas contracts or access to United States markets would surely emerge.

COMSKIM - Skim Commerce.

“…the most corrupt expedients…”

(4^th wall - crash! Forgive me, Dear Reader. Looking at that line - this story almost writes itself sometimes, don’t it?)

COMSKIM - Skim Commerce.

Here is one way it could work, if the thesis is correct:

The executive officer holds a private crypto platform where his adult children work.

Then any actor could seek to enrich the executive with little realistic risk of exposure.

A message would be passed along to one of the executive’s sons.

Such messages could read along these lines:

Just to let you know that the US$20,000,000 meme coin purchase yesterday by user lexlargito052167 was from the King of ______. He’s hoping for a favorable consideration in the sorghum negotiations and would extend generous terms on any future ventures. Please give the King’s best to your father.

His three sons, son-in-law and their closest friends next would set out together to secure development of the upcoming ongoing entity.

The family reward would never be explained to the office holder.

By the time it reached his desk, it will have already been translated into policy. Kingdom of _______. Sorghum. National interest.

By executive order, then, the ship of state would tilt ever-so-slightly in the kingdom’s favor.

This year.

To the tune of millions of dollars.

Or, even hundreds of millions.

The dimwitted offspring would be set for life from the resulting enterprises - thus more willing to endure the humiliations.

Whatever on-going concerns established peripherally in the wake of such government recalibration could offer state-sourced and state-sized contracts to the businesses so-set up.

State-sized contracts.

Vastly dwarfing the individual commercial prowess of any of the sub-par white-collar imbeciles born to the executive or the friends of said executive.

These transnational resource firms and entities would offer wealth-for-life at astonishing levels, think Rhodes or DeBeers, which the idiot sons of the executive pay back as homage and “love”.

COMSKIM

Too neat, right?

Then, look at what followed.

ILLUSTRATED

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/02/trump-uae-crypto-deal

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/spy-sheikh-secret-stake-trump-crypto-tahnoon-ea4d97e8

A foreign sovereign wants something. Not a ribbon cutting. Not a speech.

AI chips.

Half a million of them.

Restricted under the prior administration over national security concerns tied to China.

Enter transition week. Four days before inauguration.

A company backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan agrees to purchase 49% of World Liberty Financial - the Trump family’s fledgling crypto venture.

$500 million.

$250 million up front. $187 million directed to Trump family entities.

This was not publicly known at the time.

World Liberty had no finished products. It had sold tokens. It had promise. It now had a foreign sovereign investor.

Board seats followed. Executives from Tahnoon’s G42 joined World Liberty’s five-person board.

At the same time: G42 was lobbying for AI chips.

The same G42 that had triggered prior U.S. intelligence concerns.

The same G42 tied to Chinese technology partnerships.

Under Biden: restricted.

Under Trump: reopened.

March.

White House dinner. Cabinet present. Sheikh Tahnoon seated at the table. Public language: friendship; technology partnership; investment flows.

May.

MGX - Tahnoon’s investment firm - uses World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin to facilitate a $2 billion investment into Binance.

USD1 rockets up the rankings of global stablecoins.

World Liberty earns interest on reserve holdings.

Two weeks later.

Administration commits to granting the UAE access to advanced AI chips - hundreds of thousands per year under a framework agreement.

National security concerns did not prevail.

Public explanation: strategic alignment; investment in the United States; future cooperation.

What was not publicly disclosed at the time:

• The equity deal was signed during transition week.

• Nine figures were wired before inauguration.

• $187 million directed to Trump family entities.

• Executives tied to the chip-seeking firm joined the board.

This is not a smoking gun.

It is sequencing:

• Investment.

• Access.

• Policy shift.

• Platform expansion.

• Revenue.

COMSKIM, if the thesis is correct, does not require an envelope under the table.

It requires proximity between private capital and public decision.

Foreign money enters a presidential family platform.
Export policy shifts in that sovereign’s favor.
National security objections do not control the result.

The agencies continue.
The department runs.
The chips move.

The question is not: “Can you prove bribery?”

The question is whether public power is being exercised for public ends.

COMSKIM. Skim Commerce.

The state exists to defend the people.

Intelligence warnings exist to defend the people.

Export controls exist to defend the people.

When those restraints are overridden, and the immediate financial beneficiary is a foreign actor intertwined with the president’s private enterprise, the problem is not technical criminality.

It is displacement.

Public judgment is displaced by private interest.

National security risk is weighed.

Private gain is present.

Policy follows.

That is not governance malfunction.

It is governance redirected.

And that redirection is how republican self-government is quietly turned inside out.

STROLLING THE FINE GREEN LAWNS AT THE POINT

“So, in sum, you’re not interested in the agencies, and their eight and nine figure budgets.”

“Would you be, if you were me?”

“Hmmm… I suppose not.”

It’s simple enough. In the system, as we discern it, the executive still needs a simulacrum of government to persist while his own COMSKIM-style operations are busily active.

Furthermore, ICE stormtroopers are paid out of agency budgets.

And, critically, the executive has no interest in governing.

IN ADGRAB-COMSKIM, enforced by Roman PROSCRIPTION, with the agencies effectively handed over to his revolutionaries, the executive will busy himself with crypto deals, letting others squabble over the spoils of contracts.

THE AFTERNOON WEARS ON

“So, you’ve delivered Tax Cuts.

And you’ve… You’ve… What did you call it, Jerry?

Un-nationalized?

Jerry? Is that right?”

“Yes, right: ‘un-nationalized.’

The agencies will be contractor-directed now. Like NASA.

These days NASA is dependent on its one only real contractor.

And, you can’t FOIA SpaceX. Ha!”

“That’s quite a turn. So, NASA just writes checks. Oversight is…”

“In the hands of the contractor.”

“Right. Ok, but back to our friend here, now. You, sir…

This ADGRAB. That’s what’s going on with HHS, EPA, FCC, the lot of them, right?”

“Pretty much.”

“I see.”

“But, that’s what you wanted, right? You and your homies can go in and hoover up all the contracts.”

“That’s IT!”

And, I don’t know if you’ve appreciated this part - not only are they all mostly “emergency,” or no-bid contracts…it’s all TOTALLY legal!!

You can destroy state agencies while RUNNING them!!”

“I follow.

In sum, only the poor will suffer. Not us. Not you. Not me.”

“Yeah, well, tbh, friend…I think the poor are poor because they deserve to BE poor.”

“Seems like you may have taken the wrong lessons from Aristotle.”

“No, really. I believe that. I do. They just don’t want to work hard enough.

So, screw ‘em. 1.8 TRILLION to HHS. Sorry, no. That’s got to go to me. Right, Jerry?”

“Right. If we want clean water, we’ll just pay to get it tested. Isn’t that right, friend. That’s what will happen now?”

“With Republican control, no one in the house will look under the hood.

No one represents the poor.

If some moral reformer steps forward, I send out the kibosh via social media. No one wants to get posted on the list.”

“Perfect!

On the water testing, I do that already. Like I was ever going to trust any EPA nerd.

Ok. So, anyhow - what DO you want? I don’t see you racing around to get the armor plating contract from DoD.”

“Right. Not my thing. I’m more of a by-fiat sort. In the executive.

Like I said, it’s all about the money, right? Always has been, for me.

But, I’m not really an administrator like you boys.”

“How can you earn like we will, then? What are you thinking?

There’s not REALLY a red envelope big enough to make it worthwhile.

Even MAGA TV would spot people coming into the Oval Office with wheelbarrows full of cash.”

“Crypto.

Then send my idiot sons and moron golf buddies out to make a deal - directly or otherwise.

I can get up to nine figures on some - state to state.

Every day.

And, in every country.

Real property. Like I’m going to do sorghum.

They know what to ask for.”

COMSKIM

UNREVIEWABILITY

As mentioned, the requirement to maintain ADGRAB and COMSKIM is unreviewability. Unreviewability.

And, unreviewability turns on congressional control.

Which gets us…to Minnesota.

Then, to Maine.

And, finally to the Army.

GETTING THERE

Important note - it didn’t have to be this way. It was never a given they would win.

We cannot ascribe their position at the head of state now to quality.

Biden COULD have won. Easily. The democrats simply collapsed in the last election.

THE RACISM. THE NATIVISM. IT’S AN ACT

The racism and the nativism - it’s an act.

It gets them across the finish line with their core voters. But, it’s not a belief.

JD Vance is married to Usha, born in San Diego to academic immigrants from India.

Same with the machismo (which functions oddly a flourish of the nativism.) Scott Bessent is married to a man.

Not Pete Hegseth, admittedly, but, just the same.

The same with the anti-elitism: it’s easy to imagine that - to a person - their kids are at the finest schools, taking riding and piano lessons. Learning French.

Some are likely even artists.

Albeit they themselves are not that racist, in every society, there are 25 to 30% of the people who simply do not believe in republican values.

Not liberty. Not egalitarianism. Nor, equality before the law. And, to them, that resolves to race.

ACHIEVEMENT

Our society is one of achievement.

It’s one of the greatest things about America - you can be whatever you want.

De Tocqueville, writing before the Civil War and well before we began to honestly deal with race or Native Americans - he said one of the things that was unique about America was that there were no monuments.

He meant no blood-soaked history of past vendettas that rang through the heads of even the lowliest French or German villager - memories of long past national affronts, standing in town squares or along well-travelled roads.

In America, too, De Tocqueville noted a sort of a special mania for…buying land.

In some sense, he found each American his own tidy burgher - making a way forward. A way forward from wherever he started.

Free from carrying the weight of centuries of aggressions past, everything one direction - forward, in America. The future.

Indeed, and, isn’t that how we all see ourselves?

So, it’s THIS inheritance of the American which Mr. Trump taps into - just as cruelly as he tapped into his own inheritance - every time he opens his mouth.

LANDED WEALTH

See? It’s that.

He has, quite literally, what MOST Americans HOPE they will have - recall the SICKTAX, too - wealth in land.

Generational wealth.

Wealth tied to investment property and so…100% SICKTAX immune.

THE RACISM, AND YOU

In sum, the media covers Trump and, quavering, says:

Here he is!

Brioni-suited!

Told us that he’s

Ivy-leagued.

Well, now

he’s a

U.S.

archetype

and he just said…

“WTF?”

He just said something openly racist.

ON THE MEDIA

How do you GET anywhere in media?

Largely by being decent, and cooperative. And supportive.

More importantly - how do you get anywhere in business? In LIFE, FFS?!

Working as each of us are to get land that even De Tocqueville noted?

We all know the hallmarks of the people at the top.

And, among the titans of business success, we admire them.

The archetype again - ratifying all our freedoms through their sprawling DuPont estate-like wealth.

Think of the Field family of Chicago.

Even John Ringling.

They MUST be the best of America.

Unless they were just dropped there at the top.

And, Trump (dropped) was speaking, from the top…

Racism.

So, right away, in every sense of the word, the ACTUAL Trump story the media covers is the most endlessly fascinating one:

“Imagine if YOU were a billionaire, would you EVER say…”

This is the true gravamen of every Trump insult story. It’s about you.

And, it misses the point every time.

Further, the ACTUAL reaction of we poor scribes to all this is something akin to this,

“He did say it! But no one can say that! Yet, he just said it! So, I have to tell you he said it! But, people don’t say that! You can’t say that. I won’t say it. Because it’s wrong. I know it’s wrong. And, he said it. And, you heard it. Because I told you. And, I knew it’s wrong! But, I still had to tell you.”

This in a voice which is, literally, in a sort of a Munch-like scream.

Much of whatever stories written follow the scream.

Hands trembling - looking into the camera - the reporter stammers, “…said that speaking this morning at the U.N. Back to you, Charlotte.”

DECIDE

And, so, the ACTUAL story the media chooses to report on Trump is always clear.

The journal you’re reading isn’t asking you if the facts of the case are right.

Nor, if the policy of the issues at hand are worth supporting in a self-governing society.

The ONLY rational response when reading,

In a Tirade, Trump Calls Somalis ‘Garbage’ as ICE Prepares a Crackdown

The operation targeting Somali immigrants comes as President Trump has been using increasingly inflammatory language to attack Somalis.

NYTimes, Dec. 2^nd Online Front Page, Above the Fold Top Left Corner

Becomes…what would YOU do?

See?

Because, Trump’s party identity is, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

THE POWER OF OVERSIMPLIFICATION

Or, put another way,

“Making money is most people’s top priority. I’m good at business (lie). Business to me is so easy (lie). It must be easier than governing, since I say so. I’m a success. You believe me.

So, anyone could do it.

(And, you think that, too.

Since, you also kinda feel the same way sometimes about government.)

And so, send me to Washington, and I’ll prove that you’re right.”

The Trump political project - for both his supporters and detractors is one of the power of oversimplification.

“Any fool could run the USA.”

Therefore, every story activates that filter.

And, it settles out this way:

Cue:

RICH GUY SENT TO WASHINGTON PROVE A POINT JUST SAID A RACIST UGLY THING

Responses:

My prospects in life are pretty good, so far.

I believe in a sort of ecumenical America. Follow the rules, work hard. Get ahead. Everyone’s welcome.

He’s a businessman. But, he’s wrong. If I were that rich I’d never say such a thing. I’m right. He’s wrong.

I’m not where I want to be in my life so far. It’s because the game is rigged.

One BIG part of the rig must be, no doubt, the unfair breaks minorities get.

He’s a businessman, and he believes that. He’s right to say those things, since the system is crooked. If I were rich like that, I’d like to say the same. He’s right. I’m right, too.

My prospects in life aren’t what I hoped for, so far.

I believe in a sort of ecumenical America. Follow the rules, work hard. Get ahead. Everyone’s welcome.

He’s a businessman. But, he’s wrong. If I were that rich I’d never say such a thing. I’m right. He’s wrong.

I’ve kind of made it here in the good ol’ USA! But, I still believe the game is rigged.

One BIG part of the rig must be, no doubt, the unfair breaks minorities get.

He’s a businessman, and he believes that. He’s right to say those things, since the system is crooked. If I were rich like that, I’d like to say the same. He’s right. I’m right, too.

Where is the policy? Nowhere to be found.

But, you got a chance to decide, again - about you.

And, in making the hardest choice ever - “I’m right,” you’ve wedded yourself to the ugliness of the assertions.

And, not the mechanics of any policy no matter WHICH way you choose, see?

You’re implicated, even invested since you jumped right in to choose.

All the while - Trump is laughing his ass off.

Early on in his slow asphyxiation of both the Republican party and the media, his sons used to say, “He’s a blue-collar billionaire.” It reveals everything.

THAT is the political project. Wealth in America is earned.

But, it often seems to depend on uncontrollable variables. To those unfavored - and we are all unfavored at some level - it’s “rigged.”

Lunch pail cynicism. “We’re working for the man.” “It’s the golden rule - he who has the gold…”

This is why we are willing to hear the insanity of Trump’s political lightning bolts - “Tariffs!” “Mass Deportation!” “Coal!” “Steam powered ships!” “Butter on everything!” and to see them covered AS lightning bolts.

Because, in every sense of the word his curious ascendancy is both a rebuke and an affirmation of our system. We’re all invested in seeing how it comes out. “I’m a businessman. HE’S a businessman - will he MAKE IT?”

CODEPENDENCY

And on and on it goes. Even the Old Grey Lady - repeating Trump’s calumnies. And, you decide.

LAUGHING HIS ASS OFF?

We decide NOT on the pertinence of the policy to the improved execution of republican self-government. But, instead on how I would handle it.

Trump NAMES each scandal. You’ve MADE your conclusion based on the, “If I WAS EVER a billionaire and sent to Washington…” tumbler. The decision ‘Billionaire YOU’ would make.

“I would never do that.”
“I heard we’re being ripped off, so I’d probably do that.”

“Steam sounds so 19^th century. I would never say that.”
“Steam sounds so manly. I would probably do that.”

“Saving 1,000% on drugs. I would decree that, too.”
“Saving 1,000% on drugs. I’d be so ashamed to say that.”

“Scream and yell at Zelinsky. He’s ungrateful. I would probably do that.”
“Scream and yell at Zelinsky. The Russians bomb apartment blocks. I would never do that.”

And, each time, with name of the scandal mentioned…your OWN ACT of decision is reinvoked.

1. Crooked Hillary

2. Fake News

3. Enemy of the People

4. Travel Ban

5. Russia, Russia, Russia

6. Witch Hunt

7. No Collusion

8. Spygate

9. Criminal Illegal Aliens

10. Caravan

11. Shithole Countries

12. Windmills

13. Climate Hoax

14. Green New Scam

15. Deep State

16. Perfect Call

17. Impeachment Hoax

18. China Virus

19. Kung Flu

20. Radical Left Democrats

21. Defund the Police

22. Stop the Steal

23. Election Fraud Hoax

24. January 6 Hoax

25. Mar-a-Lago Raid

26. Weaponization of Justice

27. Manhattan DA Witch Hunt

28. Deranged Jack Smith

29. Fani Willis Hoax

30. Lawfare

31. Election Interference

32. Biden Crime Family

33. One Big Beautiful Bill

34. Affordability

NONE of it about policy.

ALL of it about you. And HIM.

It’s not politics. It’s not self-governance.

Call it SELFCAST.

The politics of the United States today has become a sustained reticulation of self-judgement: “I would never do that.” “I heard we’re being ripped off, so I’d probably do that.” “Steam sounds so 19^th century. I would never say that.” “Steam sounds so manly. I would probably do that.” “Saving 1,000% on drugs. I would decree that, too.” “Saving 1,000% on drugs. I’d be so ashamed to say that.” “Scream and yell at Zelinsky. He’s ungrateful. I would probably do that.” “Scream and yell at Zelinsky. The Russians bomb apartment blocks. I would never do that.”

It’s a simplified drama - told again and again on every issue.

BACK TO THE RACISM

So, why racism?

Again, Mr. Trump has realized that he can get you to decide.

And, then, you’re his dance partner.

But, he’s not sure all the time how people will decide.

Except on one thing - race.

Recall the solid 25 -30%. They are there.

Aware of that constituent loyalty, and our VISCERAL reaction, races is the bruise he’ll punch every chance he gets.

His favorite wrapper.

Since, deciding WITH him always helps.

As, too - remember, does…deciding AGAINST him!

It’s a sad, but easy bet to pay returns and act without regard to public policy.

Invoke race.

Watch the press repeat the names and the outrages, and never ask the policy questions.

The oversimplification presented, we decide.

SAID JUST ONE WEEK AGO

35. - Atlanta

“ATLANTA” (Notice he AVOIDS the term Nationalize, since it’s a name that doesn’t carry the valence he needs.)

TOM LLAMAS: Okay, let’s talk about the midterms. You’ve recently suggested nationalizing elections. What what do you mean by that?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: When - and I didn’t say national - I said there are some areas in our country that are extremely corrupt. They have very corrupt elections. Take a look at Detroit. Take a look at Philadelphia. Take a look at Atlanta. There are some areas that are unbelievably corrupt. I could give you plenty -

TOM LLAMAS: Yeah.

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/trump-interview-nbc-news-extend-transcript-tom-llamas-super-bowl-2026-rcna257410

CANNIBALIZE THE MIND - IS THERE ANY HOPE?

Instructively, Michael Wolff has said that he once asked Donald Trump, or heard him asked, I’m unsure - “Why do you want to run for President?” And, Trump responded with something like, ‘To become the most famous person in the world.’

In some sense he’s done that.

Not forever, thank God!

But, for now - yes.

How? By making US play on the field with him - every time.

SELFCAST

Even the New York Times.

If you went through that list of 35 topics you’ve decided on, to an item you’d see them similarly supported with great “I’m right! Coverage” by the press.

At one remove you could say it’s fear?

Thinking, “If I don’t call it the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill,’ when I ask him my question, he’ll send out tweets against me!”

From another remove - it’s greed. The Malevolence of Les Moonves.

However, as the section on “Solutions” will show - the odd Huey Long-like grip Trump has had on the last half generation of our era could have been inoculated against, isolated, quarantined and died in the lab - by the press.

We’ll find it in Solutions - Competence Threshold Journalism - CTJ.

The failing was one of the mind, again. But, it’s not one we’re fated to.

ABOVE THE FOLD

So, what’s the REAL story?

It’s not:

In a Tirade, Trump Calls Somalis ‘Garbage’ as ICE Prepares a Crackdown

The operation targeting Somali immigrants comes as President Trump has been using increasingly inflammatory language to attack Somalis.

It’s

Minnesota Leaders Warn of Major Federal Escalation as ICE Targets Immigrants; President Opposes the Humanity of Somalis.

See?

Right? This is a story about YOUR government. About the very republic. THAT’S where the “story” actually lies.

Note this - Gov. Walz, at the height of the recent Minnesota crisis, called it a Fort Sumter moment.

But, you hear nothing about Fort Sumter in the Times’ coverage of Minnesota on Dec. 2^nd, 2025.

Nor, even after Walz himself said it.

The Times has a story on Dec. 2nd. And, guess what? It’s all about…you.

When, in actual point of fact what was happening in Minnesota…it is QUITE LITERALLY a Fort Sumter moment.

Watch marble pillars of Republic collapse like columns of cigarette ash as armed masked federal agents invade a sovereign US state.

With a vice-presidential grant of “Absolute Immunity.”

https://newsroom.ap.org/editorial-photos-videos/detail?itemid=5109e1f2c2504fc5b3249196cc6ba014&mediatype=video

THE METHOD STUMBLED UPON & ELECTIONS

MATHEMATICALLY SMALL POPULATIONS & CRISIS HATE

They exist, always and everywhere.

Today it is immigrants. Transgender.

Tomorrow, atheists. At some date not too far off, anarchists?

Preferably, “illegal.” But, that can be engineered.

And, so, the Racism, the Nativism they deliver 5-minutes of crisis hate.

Wealthy-“businessman” endorsed.

Via the hates, the Fox News Universe, FNU, is able to compound its latest dosage of Hippies versus the Hardhats.

Fresh fist-shaking hits of outrage every day.

Many hates squalling into the universe as meteors from the fringes.

Some burn up, some land.

We make our decisions. We lock in votes on each event. Remember the names.

Yet, all of it - the racism, the nativism, the crises, the hates - all these function, finally as GOTV alone for that 30%.

And, these televised FNU Reichstag Fires, delivered daily - hourly even - they largely work - securing slim but reliable Republican house control by means of constant crisis programming.

The paralysis of reasoning. Simple. Ancient.

1. Crooked Hillary - He’s right. I’m right.

2. Fake News - He’s right. I’m right.

3. Enemy of the People - He’s wrong. I’m right.

4. Travel Ban - He’s right. I’m right.

5. Russia, Russia, Russia - He’s right. I’m right.

6. Witch Hunt - He’s right. I’m right.

7. No Collusion - He’s right. I’m right.

8. Spygate - He’s right. I’m right.

9. Criminal Illegal Aliens - He’s right. I’m right.

10. Caravan - He’s right. I’m right.

11. Shithole Countries - He’s wrong. I’m right.

12. Windmills - He’s right. I’m right.

13. Climate Hoax - He’s wrong. I’m right.

14. Green New Scam - He’s right. I’m right.

15. Deep State - He’s right. I’m right.

16. Perfect Call - He’s right. I’m right.

17. Impeachment Hoax - He’s right. I’m right.

18. China Virus - He’s wrong. I’m right.

19. Kung Flu - He’s wrong. I’m right.

20. Radical Left Democrats - He’s right. I’m right.

21. Defund the Police - He’s right. I’m right.

22. Stop the Steal - He’s right. I’m right.

23. Election Fraud Hoax - He’s right. I’m right.

24. January 6 Hoax - He’s wrong. I’m right.

25. Mar-a-Lago Raid - He’s right. I’m right.

26. Weaponization of Justice - He’s right. I’m right.

27. Manhattan DA Witch Hunt - He’s right. I’m right.

28. Deranged Jack Smith - He’s right. I’m right.

29. Fani Willis Hoax - He’s right. I’m right.

30. Lawfare - He’s right. I’m right.

31. Election Interference - He’s right. I’m right.

32. Biden Crime Family - He’s right. I’m right.

33. One Big Beautiful Bill - He’s right. I’m right.

34. Affordability - He’s right. I’m right.

35. Atlanta

See?

As soon as he and his television allies start naming each episode on the partisan channels, what occurs?

Naturally, you recall, “Oh, yeah. I agreed with him on that.”

The supporters at a much higher rate than you.

Thus, there’s not even any policy to explain.

Each note of the same tune, played again and again, an almost Pavlovian response:

Enthymeme for the early 21^st century.

FORT SUMTER, OR - JUST THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES?

However, the racism and the nativism - neither in ages before nor in this peculiar age of glass menagerie, with the nose of the clown figurine in the big chair a perfectly round bright orange glass dot; the racism and nativism were never before seen a means of...capturing the house seats of other states.

Which came as a surprise.

As a surprise to most.

But, such would easily occur to a person with a background in acting illegally.

Here’s the mechanism, if the analysis holds up:

The system requires a LACK of congressional oversight - UNDERSIGHT - so that ADGRAB & COMSKIM can proceed unimpeded.

But, voters still get a say.

Someone would speak up. Explain that as president you can declare a state in Insurrection.

People exchange grave glances.

An alternate view would be advanced immediately.

Most citizens, much less government employees, upon even HEARING the word “insurrection” would consider the well-being of other citizens.

Or, feel shame, since, what does it say about your own administration if during your residency states go into insurrection?

Not to those with a background in acting illegally. There, the focus can become: “What valuable thing do they have that I can take?”

Such choices harden into character.

Insurrection enables deprivation.

Deprive Minnesota its house seats.

ICE, DHS - MINNESOTA

Send ICE and DHS into Minnesota.

Send them in in droves.

Humiliate the people of Minnesota through repeated acts of federal domination.

HUMILIATION-DOMINATION, SUBMISSION

A sick private ecstasy.

MINNESOTA?

Scan the waterfront.

Twenty-four states, D. governors.

Why Minnesota? Walz?

Because he saw an accomplished person with one weak spot, see?

Not his profile as a “hero,” like John McCain - the tenderest spot. Imagine, hung from his wrists for hours, mock THAT?

Walz, accomplished, yet vulnerable - with a single word, “retarded.”

Walz’ son has developmental disabilities.

https://www.ms.now/opinion/trump-slur-tim-walz-rhetoric

“The seriously retarded Governor of Minnesota, Tim Walz, does nothing, either through fear, incompetence, or both…”

https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/115625429081411360

A sick private ecstasy.

The sequence appears to repeat.

First - humiliation - overrun the state.

Insult the governor.

Unrequited, as always. Thus? Domination.

Hope it ends in submission.

Failing that, get someone in Minnesota to fight back.

Maybe, even an enraged governor.

If state officials fight back, that’s Interposition.

With Interposition, you have Insurrection.

History tells us what’s next.

In Insurrection, send in the Army.

Army in the streets during elections?

Suspend elections.

No elections?

Eight house seats…empty.

A year?

Longer?

The litigation just spools out in front of you.

Maybe…the Supreme Court finds that presidents are empowered to impose replacements?

Or, even to prorogue the legislative session owing to “national emergency.”

(The Supreme Court is really likely to choose this only because it would let them use the word “prorogue”, and more firmly state their “history and tradition” doctrine.

You see, kings prorogue parliaments. And, in the history of America we once had a king. So, that’s the logical end here, traditionally.)

PROOF

How can we tell this is all about elections?

Not about immigration?

Not about nativism?

Not even about murder?

Tragically simple: in the wake of the killing of Alex Pretti - LITERALLY. ON. THE. SAME. DAY. - the attorney general of the United States sent a letter demanding “…access to voter rolls to confirm that Minnesota’s voter registration practices comply with federal law…” while federal ICE and DHS operations were ongoing in the state.

https://www.sos.mn.gov/about-the-office/news-room/statement-from-secretary-simon/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/26/pam-bondi-minnesota-voter-rolls-ice-surge

The mask is off.

ELECTIONS

With the voter rolls in hand, it’s just another Leticia James, Adam Schiff mortgage-fraud accusation case. They find some irregularity, and then…

No elections, and entire state’s worth of blue seats are out for… a year? Longer?

No elections. No blue representatives.

Republican control.

No oversight.

UNDERSIGHT.

Two more years.

ON ELECTIONS IN AMERICA NO MATTER WHAT - AND SELF-DEFEAT

Principle settled during the Civil War.

If elections could be suspended in national emergency, the republic would already be lost.

There is nothing to interpret: in a republic, elections are the test of character under threat.

CONCLUSION

The brutal attacks in Minnesota revealed a systemic crisis facing republican self-government.

In sum, there are pools of money - big ones.

But, they are set aside for evidence-based outcomes.

Still, these sums - by some estimates as high as 3.6 trillion in social services - are endlessly eyed by those with as much money as anyone in the country.

Why?

The funds come in directly and sit in the accounts of agencies - signed, sealed and delivered.

Waiting to be spent.

In some sense it confounds them.

“Christ! I’m a billionaire (multi-millionaire, millionaire; wealthy contractor).

And, I’ve made LOTS of money already - but not STATE-sized money!”

“And, all that money is COLLECTED in an agency budget. FFS! It is actually already PAID! If I could only, somehow, seize that agency…”

Seize?

Enter the person with a background in acting illegally.

He’ll appoint ANYONE to head those agencies. ADGRAB.

Enter the terrified - Violence, Death Threats, and they stay quiet. PROSCRIPTION, VIOLENCE.

Enter the terrified - Threat of Death, and staff stay onboard. SICKTAX.

Hand on the helm of state, the ship is quietly steered toward greener waters - COMSKIM.

Enter ourselves - unable to hear policy. Only to endlessly delight judging our own billionaire morality. SELFCAST.

DIALOGUE

As heard among the aggressive rich.

RGuy: “Jesus - he’s so gauche. Of course I’ve known him for years. I’m rich!

OK - I’ll suck up to him.”

RGirl: “You CAN get it. Shit - he gave HHS to RFK, and Education to the wrestling lady!”

RGuy: “He’s gonna want a cut.”

RGirl: “Absolutely not. He’s a moron. He has no interest in running an agency, or doling out contracts, even for billions of dollars.”

RGuy: “What’ll keep him motivated, or even onside then?”

RGirl : “He’s the head of state and the head of the executive branch. He tilts US policy in your favor, your country lands the limestone exporting contract with the Navy.

A line of tinhorn strongmen groveling at his feet, asking for his crypto ID! It reaches his perversion so profoundly he might even televise the calls.”

RGuy: “I see, but all this presumes no congressional…”

RGirl: “Oversight!” (They actually say this in unison.)

And, don’t forget, Biff - crypto is by design a black box. Oversight is actually pointless, in some sense. ”

RGuy: “Jesus - he could even do competitive bidding!”

RGirl: “Right - and then he just continues putting his giant dumb ass signature on those restaurant menu sheets he’s got such a boner for.

Leering into the camera.

Authorizing American participation in one thing or another. Recognizing a major player in some far-off country.”

RGuy: “Boom! Crypto would have arrived the day before.”

RGirl: “Then, his idiot sons go off to whatever country and set up a subsidiary, or buy property. He literally has nothing to do all day but…wait for his f*cking phone to ping.”

RGuy: “And, I’ll get an agency, since he has no use for them. My pharmaceutical firm gets my scientists there at the head of it - NIH! Budget of a trillion +. We sign a contract for…”

RGirl: “For WHATEVER you can get, amigo.”

RGuy: “What about the…”

RGirl: “Public interest?

RGuy: “Right.”

RGirl: “We don’t really rely on public spaces now Biff, do we?”

RGuy: “I guess you’re right. Just on markets and labor - but…with the right people in the agencies…”

RGirl: “It would be YEARS before it’s found out. And, on paper it’s legal.”

RGuy: “Plus, we’ve got Fox so…”

See? And on and on it goes.

THE CAPER

In COMSKIM, if the thesis is actually valid, it would be LITERALLY, any malefactor’s best caper:

No envelopes.

Crypto platforms.

Family couriers, laundering foreign preference into “national interest.”

Executive discretion, quietly so-guided.

If the model holds, a conveyor belt emerges: money arriving in the morning, policy by afternoon.

Lawful in form.

Corrupting in effect.

SELFCAST

Phone in hand.

Outrage!

He is rich.

Therefore “successful.”

Therefore “reformer.”

Therefore, right?

And a part of you wants to believe it, wants to walk those marble halls, bully fate, prove you could run it too.

Your focus collapses.

Named; a recurring shortcut.

And, size it up fast: “I would never,” or “I see why it works.”

Now you’re busy deciding about you.

The policy goes dark.

You scroll.

Two paragraphs down: the mechanism.

Authority. Money. Cuts. Beneficiaries.

The part that decides whether the system feeds, heals, houses, or breaks.

Unread.

And, oddly - you’re still held there.

Turning over the scandal name.

And, they know it.

END ELECTIONS

To sustain the system.

The UNDERSIGHT.

JOURNALISTIC FAILURE

“Jesus, this is hard!!

I GET insurrection, but INTERPOSITION, along some new axis? In Little Rock interposition was BAD, right? Now it’s the RIGHT thing to do. Sigh!

Pal I went into journalism to spout ‘Iron Rule’ platitudes all day long. Not to THINK!”

“Oh! ME, TOO!

He’s SO MEAN. I told all my relatives I’m on network TV!

FFS - I’m HOT! I was HOMECOMING QUEEN! And, now EVERYONE from my town just saw him INSULT me ON TV! I can’t TAKE it!”

“Look at the tweet, my lasses and laddies!

Don’t worry about policy.

It’s the ugliest thing anyone has ever said in American political life.

Write THAT!”

— The Moonves Rule.

THE RICHEST SOB IN THE WORLD

If you wanted to be the richest SOB in the world, just become president! You could hand out government contracts like candy!! Take a cut on every one. Never lift a finger again.

SOBs

SOBs

Plural.

Whoever leads such a system.

His circle.

Their heirs.

Insulated.

Never lift a finger.

EPILOGUE

It’s a lot of money. And, in some ways that’s seemingly ironic.

340 million people? That’s a big number.

But, you know, there are larger countries.

Bigger populations.

Yet, none - up until ours - was founded (imperfectly) on Liberty and Equality.

And then, the prosperity…

Mankind, “free” and…the airplane, the radio, split the atom, cure polio, go to the moon, the PC, the Internet…

Then! Our universities and our sciences - not to mention our arts and culture - the envy of the world.

And! Our alliances - Fortress NATO. Security and trade. By any rational metric - lives not lost, wealth created - just to mention two! Vastly to OUR benefit.

And! The PEACE! See?

It was a bargain.

America came out on top.

And, the rest of the world, ripped to shreds as each place seemed to be in one way or another at the end of WWII, they said, in sum, “How the hell did you guys do that?”

And, that was the deal: we’ll TELL you how we did it. It’s a story of PRINCIPLE. Arrived at imperfectly, but principles, just the same. Freedom and Equality. (Surely not realized at the dawn of the UN.)

And, thus, the UN.

Our principles wrapped around a non-aggression pact.

After that, cooperation: Bretton Woods.

Then, let her rip!

You want that Shining City on the Hill? THAT was the Shining City on the Hill. The moment when, for just one brief shining second, all of humanity was poised, and looking toward a single light. Torch of Liberty.

These dimwits talk about spheres of influence? The American experiment in popular sovereignty and self-governance influenced, and CONTINUES to influence…the globe.

The WHOLE sphere.

Bono said it best, “America is not just a country, it’s an idea.5”

Pools of money? You bet.

And, agencies to ADMINISTER that money to the great and good effect that you see before us today.

Not anymore.

“…the reality is clear: what we’ve been doing isn’t working…”

“…this is such a broken agency that needs so much improvement…”

“…an unrelenting onslaught to change the way we do business…”

In their capture - such issues as clean water, or safe testing of medicines…? Well, we’re “rebuilding.” Returning, heroically, to our “core mission.”

When Elon Musk, he of rocket contract money, wants to build a new ranch out on some pristine green mountain prairie - when Elon Musk wants to find out if the water is safe where he’ll be living, you know what he’s going to do, right?

Right. Hire his OWN slate of Ph.D. scientists to run the tests.

It would be a hell of an advantage for the rest of us to have the same kind of protection.

And, we did. Once.

It was called government.

Pools. Pools of dollars. Each governed by some sort of evidence-test vault door.

Glimmering, shimmering…those pools - and no-bid contracts written on the new “core mission” ideas that could drain them - the pools. There they stand.

A target.

Guarded by oversight.

But, oversight has been terrorized into silence.

And, only oversight, via congressional wins in 2026, brings it to an end.

Unless…ADGRAB & COMSKIM. Unless ADGRAB & COMSKIM are in effect.

Then, the next move would be…to capture the machinery of blue-state elections.

And, what do we see?

Pam Bondi’s first offer, made even before Alex Pretti’s body had been claimed from the morgue - give us your voter data.

https://www.sos.mn.gov/about-the-office/news-room/statement-from-secretary-simon/

It would be the last strike against the way the State seeks to protect itself.

CATO THE ELDER

The Roman statesman Cato the Elder (Marcus Porcius Cato) is known for ending his speeches-regardless of topic-with the declaration: “Carthago delenda est” - “Carthage must be destroyed.”

Allow me to adopt something similar.

ADJUDICATIONS CONVICTIONS

No office holder with a background in acting illegally.

UNDO THE BUDGET CUTS

No stealing from the working as we build a government only to fund the wealthy in their lifestyle pursuits. H.R. 1, 119 - Trump’s budget proposal - is, too, simply a crime.

RE-REGULATE AND RESTRUCTURE ICE

Denying life, liberty or property without the right to try the evidence against the accused is Unamerican, and unacceptable. A Church Committee for ICE.

REGISTER TO VOTE

Vote early, by mail if you can.

And, today - NOW, ask for Tuesday, November 3, 2026 off.

ENCOURAGE BUSINESSES TO CLOSE MONDAY NOVEMBER 2ND & TUESDAY NOVEMBER 3RD

Tell all the places you patronize, you expect them to be closed Monday November 2^nd and Tuesday November 3^rd.

CANDIDATE QUALITY

Trump didn’t WIN the election, Kamala Harris LOST it: Democrats cast around 7 million fewer votes in 2024 than in 2020. No Candidate that doesn’t motivate; no candidate who can be easily caricatured.

CODA

Each new administration gets a window of time to reappoint guardians of state wealth.

Today, the venality of the aggressive rich cannot abide the existence of those government dollars.

Such wealth as a free people alone could create.

Still, one thinks of all the previous patricians and brahmins who came to government - Kennedys, Roosevelts, Wilson, even Lincoln himself - railroad lawyer.

But, and this needs study (ongoing! - Hiya, Joe!) so forgive my phrasing - but each of them could see something much more valuable than just all that money.

To be chosen leader of a free people.

To MOST of our political leadership - it is this almost uniquely American endorsement which held the greatest return.

Had he lived, one thinks of the pride JFK might have felt seeing “The Kennedy Space Center.”

Even the words, “Cape Canaveral” still widen the eyes.

Americans, all of us, shoulders to the wheel. In a mission of Liberty and Equality.

In homage to the same.

Liftoff!

Today’s Republicans - actually the wealthy - they chose instead someone with a background in acting Illegally.

Unable to see the death threats.

The impact of violence on self-govenment.

Thinking that they would, finally, vanquish the poor, they with their peculiar lock on state money.

And, sure that their five-star funds will see them through the end.

Willing to humiliate while the threats do the rest. In order to tap treasury vaults.

Tap treasury vaults? But, who would participate?

SICKTAX, and…you know.

The last stand will be the upcoming elections.

SOLUTIONS

VIOLENCE

The Man, On Crime

This one is categorical.

We begin with Aristotle on choice.

Because choice is character, no man who repeatedly chooses deceit can safely be trusted to govern others.

This man repeatedly chose deceit.

Therefore this man cannot safely be trusted to govern others.

Bush - no business success.

Deceitfully held out by his campaign to be one.

Neither disputed nor contested by the candidate.

Deceit perpetrated repeatedly.

Easily revealed, under Competency Threshold Journalism - CTJ.

An entire world, saved.7

No man who repeatedly chooses deceit can safely be trusted to govern others.

And,

No unjust man may rule a free people.

All men with a background of acting illegally are unjust.

Therefore no man with a background of acting illegally may rule a free people.

646,000 lives saved.9

No unjust man may rule a free people.

No deceit.

None unjust.

As Americans we will forthwith hold them to be disqualifying.

Not by constitutional amendment, but simply political reality.

Competence Threshold Journalism - CTJ to deliver it, real time.

Deceit? Dragged into the light.

Acting illegally? You may say, “Everyone makes mistakes.”

Acting illegally as an adult isn’t an accident. It’s choice.

TYRANNICAL INSINUATION, PROSCRIPTIONS, VIOLENCE…these close when the just helm the ship.

ADGRAB stops, because firing Inspectors General is what the unjust would do.

COMSKIM stops because, the MOST VALUABLE asset to citizens of a nation of FREE men is to be CHOSEN to lead by the free. To see that the laws are faithfully executed.

The unjust steal.

The unjust lie.

We want boy scouts, girl scouts leading the country - the best of the country.

The just.

Not reticulated changelings loping around, gorging themselves on the nation’s riches.

Imagine Jimmy Carter as president on the day Ruby Freeman starts getting threatened.

My sense of the case is this: on the DAY he hears she is being threatened, he moves his White House to her Fulton County home, stays there for a month and has the full weight of federal protection turn the wires inside out finding who is threatening her. Rusty Bowers. Brad Raffensperger the same.

Goddamn it, acting illegally as an adult isn’t an accident. It’s choice.

We require someone filled with awe entering the White House. Not eyeing it for demolition.

Sitting in a classroom today right now is the next John Glenn. THAT. IS. WHO. WE. WANT. Him, or her - ONLY.

Categorical exclusion. A principle of republican governance.

A Swiss Army Knife for Republican Outposts

And, it IS an outpost. Our fair America. De Tocqueville’s marvelling; the Federalist Papers warnings - an experiment ALWAYS under threat.

A republic. Popular self-government. Representative self-government - such a form always opposes concentrations of power.

Anti-republicans - those who seek concentration - fail to see the GREATER value: representative self-government ENCOURAGES the SHARING of power.

Power to all? Success, opportunity to all.

This steady state.

Reserve currency. NIH. Bretton Woods. We could hardly go wrong.

Secure in your rights, you’ve got nothing better to do then get up off you ass and get a job.

The ironic story of the most regular American. A gas station attendant. Dies a millionaire. Nobody knew. How so? How could you not, right?

But, representative self-government requires leaders.

In this paper I’ve argued here that over the last 26 years we’ve gotten as leaders, two idiot sons. Occupying so far…13 of the 26 years.

With three more years to go.

Jesus.

What did they believe - their political programs?

Easy enough. They believed - “I should rule you.”

The first of them, for simple lifestyle consistency.

From age six until 43 - except for four years in the mid-1960s - the younger Bush lived with either his father’s father or his father at or the summit of American political power, in the very heart of the Pax Americana era.

It is almost possible now to see the elevation of the lesser Bush to the presidency as a kind of oblige we had to the nobles.

8 years of that misrule.

The second idiot son…now appears to be little more than a vessel for a process seen in nature: when bright-winged butterflies wriggle free from their chrysalis, the shiny crystalline hull left behind is called, naturally, the exuvia.

Trump delivers an exuviation of state assets.

RFKjr, Noem and Hegseth each writhing away as they consume everything inside.

Left behind - the buildings, the plaques, the brass letters - some even edited.

Shiny crystal, hulls.

Why?

It appears to be a legal means through which the state’s assets can be tapped - redirected away from investment in evidence-based results to simply investments, with returns to those newly heading things up, and those close to them. ADGRAB, if the theory holds up.

Yet, soon this miasma will clear.

And, the punishing returns will be a national balm.

Not show trials - but rather trials that show. Surely.

Important historical notes for our commercial and media titans delivering gold tributes right now to the Oval Office - on France:

• Louis Renault (founder and chairman of Renault), arrested for collaboration and died in prison before trial in 1944

• Eugène Schueller (founder of L’Oréal), investigated after the liberation for wartime political associations and cleared in 1948

• Marcel Boussac (textile magnate), accused of economic collaboration and cleared during the post-war purges by 1947

• François Lehideux (Renault executive and Vichy minister of industrial production), tried for collaboration and acquitted in 1949.

To many in France after Liberation, Louis Renault’s name was inseparable from the accusation of collaboration.

Spat out more pithily at the mere mention of their names, “Collabo!”

It seems clear to many that the actions of ICE are nothing short of crimes.

To the extent that you, your staff or your services are complicit, you should expect to be held legally responsible.

To wit - in Watergate prosecutions, 69 people were charged with federal crimes, 48 were convicted, and 19 Nixon officials served time in federal prison, receiving sentences ranging from about one month to four and a half years.

So, again, fair readers REMEMBER, soon this fog will lift.

Moreover, the ensuing electoral returns will be encouraging truly. As noted here, and here.

Those who once made careers of delivering evidence-based results will return as well, I feel. Duty to country in this case, as deeply felt as do our nation’s courageous sons and daughters who sign up to serve. In protection of republican self-government.

A new Church Commission will be commissioned. Crimes will be punished.

But, one further duty will remain.

To choose. To choose. We’ll be asked to choose again.

Who will stand? Who will run? Just distant horse-rider silhouettes on the horizon right now.

But, once this miasma lifts, we’ll be asked yet again to choose.

And, we’ve all got frickin’ JOBS to do, right?

It’s not like we have the time nor are we able to TELL WHO among this lot are…

No, check that.

Bush - the smirk of irrelevancy.

Here was a candidate you could almost dismiss out of hand just on the basis of the faces he would make on camera.

Still, somehow, he was elected. There was no hard and fast rule, “Sarcastic smart-ass grin when on camera? Don’t vote for that guy.”

And, then - the second idiot son.

In some sense, is it both our own industry and leisure to blame; how we let two such complete incompetents slip into power?

I suppose it is heartening to recall that it was the Supreme Court that put Bush, the Lesser, into office. Not voters.

In a post-election review of the Florida ballots conduted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago suggested that, had a single uniform statewide standard been applied, then Al Gore would have won Florida. But the Supreme Court stopped the state’s own effort to determine the accurate count of its own ballots. And, in doing so, denied the voters of Florida - and the country - the effect of that result.10

So, that’s at least one cross we need not bear

But, other burdens we still have.

To these, republicans, let us rise.

Rise.

Rise and find a way. We need a better tool to assess these malcontents ourselves.

We’ll hope that the Competency Threshold Journalism - CTJ, and TIDEWATER journalists (outlined below) will do their part.

But, we’re not going to need to rely on CTJ and TIDEWATER alone.

We’ve got some special tools at hand. And, we’re gonna use them.

ON JUDGEMENT, ON CHOOSING

Bad beliefs? We don’t really argue that much anymore in America. In a society as diverse as ours, how COULD we?

It calls to mind JFK’s famous quote on the Court striking down prayer in schools,

Constitutionally defined rights. Republican self-government. You can have as your beliefs wherever the hell you want - even tax free. (See you on Sunday!)

So, ARE there bad beliefs? BAD? Sure, I’ll give you that. Some.

But, again, it hardly matters, given the latitude the constitution offers.

So, our concern today is bad intentions.

Since, to choose. To choose. Candidates - on the horizon, on horseback. Elections heading this way.

Each rider silhouetted there far off in the distance now.

Gelling their hair styles.

Veneering their smiles.

Ready to offer us some new take; a new theory of the case - or an old one.

Bad intentions. Maybe even a new set of actors just as willing to occupy, exuviate and leave our state assets mere crystal lattice?

There in form. But, lifeless.

Bad intentions. Yet? How do we find them? A tool.

A type of federalist heat shield, against those who find us now, aggregated; assigned a tax number and mostly all putting in 8 a day (or more.)

You see, among the candidates riding forward will again be some whose idea of “governance” means to tilt their lances again in the direction of the state itself.

To them, your one-man-one-vote concept don’t look so rewarding.

But, our sturdy accounting of we citizens: free and self-governing. The allure.

And, the manifest economic dynamism flows from such flourishing - that gets their attention. ADGRAB. COMSKIM. Round 3?

It seems unlikely it could even make it through.

We’ve argued in this paper that it’s the state structures, the agencies with 8 or 9-figure budgets, and the steady hum of the American people which delivers receipts to them - these are the things people with bad intent have their eye on.

Living among us, they are a particular kind of republican rot.

And, they send their assailants. Candidates.

In this paper we’ve noted that, today, these appear to be the aggressive rich - they seem to have arranged Trump to send forth squadrons against the state.

Cause for alarm, yes. But, in taking up arms against oppression 250 years ago, we were warned that, attained, the foes of republican self-governance always arise, and in a multitude of forms.

Hamilton, Federalist No. 68,

Some, in single famed families, like the Bushes.

Wealthy and cossetted beyond all possible conception of the word - their assaults (are they not always producing some next heir-apparent) - their assaults seem as much to preserve the trappings of office as it is any actual dollar-for-dollar returns.

Others, like Trump - dealt with amply already.

Yet, as well are there those whose hymns are sung in the key of…Woody Guthrie.

Some rider there on the horizon right now with the blunt realism of a Bernie Sanders and the joyful young sheen of a midwestern-Mamdani.

Or, a maybe a Miami-born AOC, crusading - always.

From Florida, she, whoever shi is, she would be fairly glinting, adding the polish of poetry to the brass buttons of a midnight blue regimental jacket.

But, no! The left?

The left. The left! We’ll WELCOME them.

Open arms. Huzzah, and at last! SALVATION!

“See the dust rising, far off there? Those riders there? At LAST, on MY side! No threat!”

Lances couched. Visors lowered, at last…for us.

“No threat from the left,” you say?

Cabin our alarm to the Bushes and Trumps and Pats Buchanan?

Can do!

But, my friend - our warning needs to be good for ALL the threats.

And, in as much as we’ve agreed there’s 25 to 30% of people on the right who’d just as easily sign up tomorrow for “Iron Rule Right Dictatorship,” there’s an equal number of folks on the left who’d…jump on the bandwagon of, “Cross of Gold Crusader Left Fiat-ism.”

Oddly, too…left reformers seem to engender the same SELFCAST response as their rightist brethren.

So, beware what you wish for, see?

“Left reformers, in the wrong?!” you ask.

“By god, it can’t be so.

Why, it’s hardly been tried, at least here!” you might add.

Not from the left, my Lads and Lassies?

Alas, you see, our threats are ecumenical and ever present.

Remember again,

Under a left, or even center government, we could just as easily discern the same asset-capture state-exuviating intentions.

Husk. Just the husk. Crystal lattice. Name still attached.

“No! Not the left!!” you say?

Those horsemen bannering a Left Revolution there on the horizon?

We’re good?

Maybe?

But, let’s look into the past, and try to find left-riding horseman who have hovered at and even dominated the horizon, and nearer, in their own ages.

Huey “Share Our Wealth, Every Man a King” Long, for example.

Long came into Louisiana politics as a reformer.

Railed against concentrated power.

Said government had been taken from the people, and that he would give it back.

But he built a system in Louisiana that placed the levers of state singularly in his hands - nearly every department, board, and commission.

ADGRAB

Then, with his infamous “deduct-box”, he found his best skim: 5% to 10% of every government worker’s salary “donated” back to his political operation - or be fired.

COMSKIM

Political power, unreviewable. Liquid cash, unregulated.

With total control of state agencies and an annual “contributions” windfall from “grateful” state workers’ deduct-box, Huey Long, in practical terms, became the richest and the most powerful man in Louisiana. Ever.

In Long’s Louisiana, every man was a king - so long as that man was Huey Long.

“An outlier!”

“An outlier!” you say?

OK. Roll the clock back a few years, and meet Charles F. Murray - he of more urban remove, New York City.

Charles Francis Murphy (1858–1924) rose out of the hard blocks downtown, left school early, worked with his hands and learned the language of need in the city’s swimming sea of striving immigrants.

Learned what their loyalty was worth as well. Political loyalty.

Through his long rule (1902–1924), though born in the tenements, and always some part of him remembered that world, Murphy found that he excelled at delivering blocks of votes. Found his aptitude at the same time New York City politicians excelled at doling out high-margin no-bid contracts to those who could help them secure votes. In blocs. As Murphy could.

Murphy transformed. Still organizing. Still crying out for the poor.

Yet living Gatsby-like in Manhattan on the royalties their loyalty had brought him.

Far from the old streets. Now in a chauffeured car.

He dined nightly at Delmonico’s. Earning at one point as much as $5,000 a day from government contracts, while the men whose cause he said he “spoke for” could count on taking home $3, maybe $4.

So?

From the left, they promise reform - and we believe.

Long and Murphy.

Had they ever met, we could imagine them getting along swimmingly. There at Murphy’s regular table, each in a cream-colored tailored summer linen suit.

Left leaders.

Steaks.

“Bush! Trump! Long! Murphy! For God’s SAKE, aint there NO ONE I can trust?”

Yep, yep! I feel the same way - for sure. That’s why we’re here now. In this section called “Solutions.”

“Yeah?! Well, so, in that case it’d sure be nice to be getting some SOLVE, in this section called ‘Solutions.’ then!

Where’s that Heat Shield? That Swiss Army Knife we heard about?”

Yes. Can do. Here is that.

The Solve

The ancient Greeks had names for several recurring civic defects, and those names are still useful now.

We’ve seen Deceit and the Unjust.

These almost free-standing. And, the Greeks got us there, too.

To build the tool, we’ll not need the whole philosophy. We need only a handful of sharp terms for the kinds of acts which define men who should never be trusted with public office.

For present purposes, they are enough.

So, we’ll take just a few more facts from the Greeks.

Facts?

Yes, since, it appears, for representatives in a republic to NOT abuse office - whether centrist, right reformers or left - it appears there are a few BASIC tests we can apply that will keep us safe from the Bush-Trump types, and the Long- Murphy types as well. Centrists, too.

For our purposes, the process is straightforward and simple.

A tool for the working man and woman who is interested in WORKING, and letting their reps do the GOVERNING, sans the graft - thanks very much. Minus the obvious flaws that gave us Bush and Trump, but who were themselves, nonetheless, voted RIGHT in.

Grafter, grifters, ADGRABBERS and COMSKIMMERS should bounce right out.

NOTE, too - no reporters, newspapers or editors required.

We can HOPE they read this essay’s sections on Competency Threshold Journalism - CTJ and TIDEWATER.

But, until they do - at least we can protect ourselves.

Five traits. Or, rather, five kinds of act that lead you to easily exclude any such men from office.

Think of what follows as a Swiss Army Knife for Republican Self-Governance.

An easy way for WE THE PEOPLE to see among irresistible people who is fit to govern, and who isn’t.

JOHN EDWARDS, PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE

1. Reckless lack of self-command (Akrasia - ἀκρασία)

While running for president, John Edwards - a husband and father of three with his wife was dying of cancer in their family home - had an affair with his campaign videographer and fathered a child out of wedlock. This shows reckless lack of self-command.

No man who shows reckless lack of self-command is suitable to govern a free people.

John Edwards showed reckless lack of self-command.

So, John Edwards is not suitable to govern a free people.

And, there we have it. Buh bye.

No man who shows reckless lack of self-command is suitable to govern a free people.

• Good looking rascal.

• Excellent attorney.

• Morally deformed.

From the wages of these acts flow only misery for a nation of people who after voting must turn away and get back to work while leaving this lot to lead.

Given that that’s the case, we need a simple way to weed out those who are ethically unfit.

Not ethically unfit to be citizens, or even your neighbors. But, we need the BEST as our leaders.

Among our right-leaning readers, note: we BEGAN with a liberal poster boy, John Edwards.

Fallen? Sure. And, there it should have ended.

WHO NEEDED the goddamn debate?

I’ll tell you who did - HE DID. But WE surely didn’t.

This country has to many things TO DO! And, we citizens of the republic are TOO BUSY.

In every sense of the word John Edwards was unpatriotic. After the story broke Oct. 10th, 2007, Edwards spent…SIXTEEN WEEKS still running.

He would later be charged with federal crimes related to payments arranged to go to his mistress using money from a campaign donor.

The media, beguiled…had a field day.

We citizens? Little more than advertising roadkill.

No longer. So armed, republicans

Heat shield:

No man who shows reckless lack of self-command is suitable to govern a free people.

Press “Go.”

Let’s see how well our method holds up.

WILLIAM MULHOLLAND

How about THIS attractive rake?

Imagine you saw the ad on TV:

Bright California imagery: coastline, sailboats, orange groves, palm-lined boulevards, neighborhoods, evening lights over Los Angeles.)

Narrator:

“What made modern Los Angeles possible?

• The green neighborhoods.

• The orange groves.

• Endless suburban homes and thriving businesses.

• The prosperity millions now enjoy.

Behind it all stands one name.

William Mulholland.

A self-made engineer who helped turn Southern California into one of the most prosperous and beautiful places on earth.

Look around the city.

• Mulholland Drive.

• Mulholland Dam.

• Schools and civic works bearing his name.

Los Angeles has already decided.

Now California can do the same.

William Mulholland for Governor.

The builder who helped make California great.”

You’re in, right?

I’m in!

We’re ALL in!!

This danger candidate even has an baritone Irish brogue. He’ll slay at the polls, and on TV.

Flaws?

He does have one.

And, it’s indicative.

He designed and oversaw the construction of a massive Los Angeles area dam. And, it collapsed 22 months after going into service. Described as the worst American civil engineering disaster of the 20th century.

But, imagine him in 2026…100 years later, standing for governor.

We can be sure we’d hear instead a long list of civic triumphs.

• Less about the $134,000,000 today’s dollars in damages.

• The homes torn from their foundations at midnight.

• Twelve billion gallons of water bringing tons of debris down on people, drowning them sleeping in their beds?

• A wall of water 140 feet high?

Let’s see if our process holds up.

Imagine him having avoided the controversy. Boosted by hundreds of millions in Crypto. As shiny as a stiff-collared Beach Boy.

The flood?

FNU-ed into oblivion.

WILLIAM MULHOLLAND, IMAGINED CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR

2. Close-minded / unable to face reality presented by new facts (Amathia - ἀμαθία)*

Mulholland built the St. Francis Dam, a 205-foot-high, 700-foot-wide concrete wall for Los Angeles’s water system, and began filling it on March 1, 1926.

From the first month, then onward for the 10 months of 1926; and then through the whole of 1927; and then on into spring of 1928 the structure showed: seepage, cracks, leaks, and then a final muddy leak.

He normalized every stage of that evidence and, after personally inspecting again on the morning of March 12, 1928, pronounced the dam safe.

At 11:57 p.m. that night it collapsed.

A catastrophic flood - 12.4 billion gallons of water - tore through sleeping communities, raced more than 50 miles to the sea. Lifting homes from their foundations, drowning sleeping residents under tons of debris. At least 431 people died. Damages in the hundreds of millions of today’s dollars. Widely considered the worst civil engineering accident of the 20th century.

711 days of evidence. Ignored. This shows inability to face the reality presented by new facts.

No man unable to face the reality presented by new facts is suitable to govern a free people.

William Mulholland was unable to face the reality presented by new facts.

So, William Mulholland is not suitable to govern a free people.

Easily excluded, the tool works in this case.

No man unable to face the reality presented by new facts is suitable to govern a free people.

HUEY LONG, GOVERNOR OF LOUISIANA

3. Taking more than one earned or was due (Pleonexia - πλεονεξία)

Louisiana state employees were required to give 5 to 10% of their salaries to Huey Long’s political organization. This shows a person taking more than he earned.

No person who takes more than he earned is suitable to govern a free people.

Huey Long took more than he earned.

So, Huey Long is not suitable to govern a free people.

No person who takes more than he earned or was due is suitable to govern a free people.

RICHARD NIXON, CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE

4. Indifferent Personalism*

In his first run for federal office in 1946, Richard Nixon, 33, campaigned against five-term California congressman Jerry Voorhis, 45, from Nixon’s own home district.

Nixon took the focus off jobs, housing, prices, and labor unrest. He replaced these with claims unsupported by positive evidence, and forced voters to engage his claims as public business.

The truth of the claims made no difference to him. They opened the road to Washington. And, landed him there, Cheshire cat grin, prepared to fix a problem that never existed.

This is Indifferent Personalism.

No Indifferent Personalist is suitable to govern a free people.

Richard Nixon is an Indifferent Personalist.

So, Richard Nixon is not suitable to govern a free people.

The tool works again. Eliminates Nixon, rogue political actor - in 1946.

* INDIFFERENT PERSONALISM - willingness to falsify terms of public debate for one’s own ascent, while showing indifference to the fellow citizens asked to choose among the unsubstantiated claims and indifference to the relevance the falsified claims have to the actual issues facing fellow citizens.

RIOT ACT CARD TO READ WHEN IT RECURS

“You’re abandoning the real issues of this district. You’re replacing them with claims unsupported by positive evidence, and making voters sort through those claims - as though this district had nothing better to do.

What does any of it do for jobs? For housing? For prices? For labor unrest? Nothing.

Those are the real issues. Those are the issues you wont touch.

Instead you stage absurd little dramas out of your own ambition and ask the public to clap along. That is not representation. You may want the office for the title, the prestige, the climb. But office is not a title to wear. It is work to do.

You are showing, in plain view, that you are not interested in the work at all.

You are not interested in serving the public. You are interested in self service alone.”

That is Indifferent Personalism.

No Indifferent Personalist is suitable to govern a free people.

JOE McCARTHY, SENATE CANDIDATE

5. False claim of fitness / pretentiousness (Alazoneia - ἀλαζονεία)

In his 1946 senate race, McCarthy sold himself as “Tail-Gunner Joe,” claiming the combat distinction of a gunner he had never been. This shows a false claim of fitness.

No person who falsely claims a fitness he does not possess is suitable to represent a free people in a republic.

Joe McCarthy falsely claims a fitness he does not possess.

So, Joe McCarthy is not suitable to represent a free people in a republic.

A republic-wide trauma, sidestepped in a snap.

No person who falsely claims a fitness he does not possess is suitable to represent a free people in a republic.

THE SPECIAL CASE OF TARREN VELSK

2. Close-mindedness / refusal of reality presented by new facts (Amathia - ἀμαθία)

Tarren Velsk, house rep, married father of four. He started an affair with one of his junior staffers, used campaign money for luxury purchases, blamed his staffer girlfriend when caught, was convicted, served time, was pardoned, and now seeks to engineer a return by filling his district with false alarms about fraud and corruption through his wildly successful daily podcast.

The pattern is plain enough.

In orchestrating his comeback, Velsk on his podcast shows a willingness to falsify terms of public debate for his own ascent. He shows indifference to his fellow citizens asked to choose among the unsubstantiated claims, and indifference to the relevance the falsified claims have to the actual issues facing citizens of his district.

That is Indifferent Personalism.

Plus, CONVICTED of taking campaign money: 3. Taking more than one earned or was due (Pleonexia - πλεονεξία)

Velsk fails going away.

But, Velsk is gaining steam.

However, Velsk is only…the apparent subject here.

You see, in a republic, men like Velsk always arise, and many return, from disgrace.

So, why Velsk?

Why the special case?

Why do we raise him?

Because the special case here, then…is us. The voter. The represented.

Presented with a record like Velsk’s, sufficient to exclude, what is our choice?

The same tests must be applied.

Are we, 2. Close-minded / unable to face reality presented by new facts (Amathia - ἀμαθία)?

No man unable to face the reality presented by new facts is fit to choose who governs.

I am not able to face the reality presented by new Velsk facts.

I am not fit to choose who governs.

VIOLENCE

Before, The Man. Now, The Means.

VIOLENCE. DEATH THREATS. TYRANNICAL INSINUATION.

Amplified from podiums. Interpreted and acted upon.

Here’s the list - online now.

Rome’s PROSCRIPTION.

Cicero.

Heads delivered, as one by one good people quit, handing their own heads in, or losing them.

Violence vitiates republican politics.

Self-government turns on the ability to speak out - any time and at all times, without threat.

THAT is a FREE COUNTRY.

Beat.

The solution exists already - pre-negotiated.

An active working model. Nearly two and a half generations already in place.

To illustrate, begin with opportunity.

For years, Democrats have correctly argued that evidence does not support claims of widespread voter fraud.

Audits, court rulings, bipartisan certifications, and even specially commissions - remember Kris Kobach - have failed to produce proof of millions of illegal ballots. The empirical case is thin.11

The rhetoric is not.

The claim has been repeated with such intensity that it has reshaped perception, regardless of evidence.

That repetition has done political work. It has justified policy demands. It has altered the terrain.

So instead of continuing to refute it, we use it.

Voter ID for all.

Now, consider what that gives us.

Over the past several years, anonymous digital speech has carried threats from screens to front doors.

Ruby Freeman’s door pounded in the middle of the night by strangers convinced by online narratives. Brad Raffensperger received death threats. Rusty Bowers and his family were harassed and intimidated. These are not metaphors. They are consequences.

When speech is instantaneous and untraceable, the consequences of issuing a threat approaches zero.

The consequences of receiving one does not.

Security expenses rise. Families absorb fear. Public officials weigh resignation.

Not because votes are miscounted. Because voices go quiet.

Imagine standing in a public square. You feel eight fingers shove hard at your sternum. The police rush in. They see you stumble. They do not see who touched you. The crowd closes. The hands are never visible. And, yet, you know, whoever it was, he - they? - are still nearby.

That is our digital square.

Send a threat from a screen name. Post a person’s address. Suggest “a visit.” And when the knock comes at midnight, the poster is nowhere in sight, in city, in country - anywhere.

We would never build a courthouse that way.

We have built our politics that way.

Now, return to voter ID.

For years, Democrats have argued - correctly - that the evidence for widespread fraud does not exist. Audits. Courts. Bipartisan certifications. Even special commissions. The proof never materialized. The dramatic arc always did.

Fine.

If we are to require identification to cast a ballot, then let us apply the same principle to the place where political life now actually unfolds.

To post political online, identity should be added by default.

Not broadcast to the public. Not displayed beside the comment. But known to the platform - attached, traceable, real.

Anonymous posting would remain available. But it would be chosen, not automatic.

When chosen, posts would be LLM-screened for direct threats and targeted intimidation.

Lawful criticism passes.

Advocacy passes.

Anger passes.

The hard shove at the sternum does not.

No one loses the right to speak.

They lose only the right to menace and vanish.

We have done this before.

When caller ID was introduced, people predicted disaster.

They warned of exposure.

Of chilled speech.

Of danger to vulnerable callers.

The compromise was simple: your number appears by default; you may block it if you wish. Anonymous calls still exist. But they are deliberate.

Telephones survived.

Conversation survived.

What disappeared was…effortless menace.

Online political speech now occupies the same ground telephones once did. At present, invisibility is automatic. That is the flaw.

Plato told the story through Glaucon of a ring that made its wearer invisible.13

The shepherd who found it did not begin as a tyrant. He became one when he discovered he could act without being seen. He tested it. Then he used it. Then he ruled through it.

The lesson is not metaphysical. It is human. When people cannot be identified, restraint weakens.

Digital life has distributed that ring widely.

Most wear it responsibly. Some do not. And those few can send others to pound on doors in the dark while they remain untouchable.

If identity is necessary to protect the ballot, it is sufficient to protect the citizen.

Anonymity can remain.

But invisibility should not be the starting point.

Proscription. Cicero. Violence. Ends.

Nomen Pro Merito - Leds Zeppelin, Made to Fall

Our great national nightmare did not begin in a New York City hotel atrium with a crowd of hired supporters cheering in freshly made t-shirts. Though the calamity does glow brightly from there.

Not from a hotel atrium, instead, it started with…

George Bush, the younger.

Idiot son.

It surely CONTINUED with Donald Trump, equally scion - equally idiot, albeit son from another family.

Name in Place of Merit

Nomen Pro Merito

Idiot sons. History is full of them.

For some reason this republic at the young age of 250 seems oddly susceptible? Our own beleaguered age now having been visited by TWO!

Why the appeal?

It may be a sort of reflexive patriarchalism. One would wish it weren’t so.

That we would be visited first by the one.

Then, in the wake of Idiot Son 1 - George Bush the Younger, we would shelter in the cool balm of the cerebral yet politically under-achieving Obama.

Only to have into our lives pour the false veneer - “Hello, Mark Burnett!” - into our lives pours the false veneer of Idiot Son 2, Donald Trump.

This Guy is an Idiot Son!

As mentioned earlier, for BOTH of them the inoculation was -

Now! As mentioned, for BOTH Idiot Sons 1 and 2, we could have easily been inoculated against.

Then, such hideous political pathogens would have been isolated and quarantined - preserved only for laboratory study.

Susceptible, both require from citizens a kind of special media emergency response. We’ll call it Competence Threshold Journalism - A Media Emergency

Idiot Son 1, Bush - the Legend

Competence Threshold Journalism - CTJ, identifies the hallmark of Idiot Son. A smart suit, a presumed reputation of inherited competence and…nothing else smart. It then pushes these into the brightest sunlight of day, unsheltered.

To wit:

George W. Bush started Arbusto Energy, an oil company, with an investment from his mother. With money from other relatives. And, taking money from his education trust fund.

Arbusto lost money.

It lost money and had to merge because it could not survive on its own.

When the failing Arbusto was folded into Spectrum 7, Bush was made…chairman and CEO of the combined company.

Despite having no record of having built a profitable oil firm. A “Certain Kind” of son stumbles forward.

Spectrum 7 also lost money, and was eventually itself sold.

The oil businesses Bush created and led lost money.

Curiously, during this same period, Bush was chosen to serve on the board of a Midland bank.

Eventually elevated to director.

So that, by the mid-1980s although his oil ventures had failed…Bush held executive titles, and a bank directorship.

When Spectrum 7 was acquired by Harken Energy, Bush was then further elevated to a seat on Harken’s board.

Despite a demonstrable record of failures.

Reporting later quoted insiders acknowledging that it was clear what Harken knew what it was doing - the Bush name itself had value.

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0%2C33009%2C991286-7%2C00.html

George Bush, son of George Bush…Vice President of the United States of America.

Bush’s professional ascent cannot be explained by creation of profitable businesses. There were none to point to.

And yet, he found himself seated at the executive table.

When the Texas Rangers ownership group was being organized in 1989, Bush did not have enough liquidity to buy the stake he wanted.

So, he went back to the Midland bank where he had served as a board director and requested a half-million-dollar loan.

The loan went through. He used his Harken stock as collateral and was able to buy…1.8% of the team.

And, with just a 1.8% share - added to his zero experience in Major League Baseball - the younger Bush was…made Managing General Partner of the Texas Rangers.

With the Rangers sale completed and with the value of the team and, thus, the value of Bush’s share, steadily rising, Bush the younger entered statewide and then national politics with the glinting finish of “wealthy businessman.”

But, the underlying facts had not changed.

Bush’s own oil ventures had lost money.

His advancement in both Harken and the Texas Rangers was tied to the value of his family name rather than to a record of operational mastery as a businessman.

The “executive” image that travelled with him into the governor’s office and then to the White House rested on branding that outpaced demonstrated performance.

And, so-created, Bush reached the White House - a failure foisted upon America.

He quickly faced crises that could not be handled by inherited access, Texas charm, or back-home reputation.

• The decision to go to war in Iraq required disciplined intelligence judgment.

• The occupation demanded rigorous planning.

• Hurricane Katrina required rapid logistical coordination and executive command.

• The detention program required careful legal and moral scrutiny.

In each of these arenas, visibility and family name offered no practical advantage.

These were tests of executive competence,

• evaluating evidence

• challenging assumptions

• coordinating institutions

• making sound decisions under pressure

The failures were not new.

Only the stakes were.

COSTS OF A CANDIDATE ON IMAGE

IRAQ

[And, he was warned: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/unnecessary-war]

Approximately four thousand five hundred American service members were killed in Iraq. Roughly thirty‑two thousand were wounded in action. Each number is presented here as an approximation based on official reporting. Coalition fatalities exceed the American total when allied forces are included.

https://dcas.dmdc.osd.mil/dcas/app/conflictCasualties/oif/deathsAll

Beyond coalition forces stood the Iraqi Security Forces, whose deaths are generally estimated above seventeen thousand, with tens of thousands more wounded.

And beyond them - civilians.

Documented violent civilian deaths are commonly reported in the range of roughly one hundred eighty thousand to two hundred ten thousand.

Survey-based analyses, including public-health mortality studies, that include indirect war effects - infrastructure collapse, displacement, degraded health systems - produce estimates in the several hundreds of thousands.

Different methods. Different assumptions. Same war.

https://www.iraqbodycount.org/database/

It was expensive. Not in the way budgets are expensive. Expensive in the way history is expensive.

Measured once in appropriations, then again in obligations, then again in the quiet compounding of interest and medical care and disability payments that trail a modern war like a fiscal contrail across decades.

The total United States cost of the Iraq War, expressed here as approximations drawn from academic and policy accounting, stands at roughly three trillion dollars when direct war spending, long‑term veterans’ care, and interest on borrowed funds are aggregated into a single lifecycle measure. That figure does not describe a year. It describes an era.

https://costsofwar.watson.brown.edu

KATRINA - “We are fully prepared…”

Approximately 1,800 people died in the disaster and its aftermath. Total economic damage reached about $125 billion in 2005 dollars (roughly $190–200 billion today), and Congress appropriated more than $120 billion in federal relief and recovery spending. Audits by the U.S. Government Accountability Office later identified several billion dollars in improper payments, waste, and poorly managed contracts in the execution of that relief effort. Lives were lost in the gap between authority and action, and billions more were spent cleaning up mistakes layered on top of catastrophe.

Sources:

National Hurricane Center Tropical Cyclone Report - https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL122005_Katrina.pdf

NOAA Damage Estimates - https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/katrina-at-ncei-20-years-ago

GAO Federal Spending Analysis - https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-20-633r.pdf

GAO Katrina Audit Report - https://www.gao.gov/assets/a257655.html

[And, FEMA was warned on the basis of their own model, which predicted levee breaks and tens of thousands of deaths. https://biotech.law.lsu.edu/blaw/FEMA/CHRG-109shrg26749.pdf In a video released days before levees broke, Bush was seen to ask no questions about the levees, nor any questions at all. Brown volunteered no warnings. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2006-mar-02-na-katrina2-story.html]

INOCULATION? The Special Case of Prosecuting Idiot Sons (1): Competence Threshold Journalism - A Media Emergency CTJ

IDIOT SON 1 SWAGGERS TO THE PODIUM - REPORTERS MUST PROSECUTE THE CASE - HOW IT’S DONE

IMAGINED CANDIDATE QUESTIONS

ARBUSTO

R: Your father was Vice President while you were raising capital - correct?

B: Yes.

R: You’re asking this audience to believe that fact had no effect on investor confidence?

B: They invested in the idea.

R: I’ll ask you directly: did your father’s office make it easier for you to raise money - yes or no?

B: I can’t speculate.

R: You can’t speculate about whether being the son of the Vice President helped you raise capital?

B: They believed in the company.

R: Very well. The investors believed in you. Were they rewarded with sustained profit - yes or no?

JUMP TO PRESIDENCY

R: Before becoming Governor, you had never held elected office - correct?

B: Correct.

R: So, Governor of Texas was your first elected position - yes?

B: Yes.

R: In Texas, executive power is divided among independently elected officials - correct?

B: Yes.

R: The lieutenant governor controls the legislative agenda in the Senate - correct?

B: Yes.

R: The legislature meets in regular session roughly five months every two years - correct?

B: Yes.

R: The governor cannot introduce a bill in the legislature - correct?

B: Correct.

R: The governor does not personally draft statutes - correct?

B: Correct.

R: So before seeking the presidency, your only elected experience was serving in an office where you did not control the legislature, did not introduce bills, did not draft statutes, and shared executive authority - correct?

B: SILENCE

R: The presidency is a single, unified executive with veto power, commander-in-chief authority, and national agenda-setting power - correct?

B: Yes.

R: You are asking voters to conclude that experience in the first office prepares you for the second - correct?

B: SILENCE

LEGISLATIVE SKILLS

R: Can you describe one instance where you personally negotiated bill language line-by-line between opposing factions?

B: I brought people together.

R: I’m asking about text, not meetings. What specific provision was in dispute?

B: We focused on outcomes.

R: Which clause did you alter to secure votes?

B: Compromise is part of leadership.

R: What words changed because you intervened?

B: We achieved consensus.

R: Name the sentence you rewrote.

Silence.

FULL-TIME OR PART-TIME

R: The Texas Legislature meets for a limited session every two years - correct?

B: Yes.

R: That session lasts roughly five months?

B: Yes.

R: So for most of your governorship, there was no active legislative session?

B: Leadership doesn’t stop when the chamber gavels out.

R: I’m asking about legislative bargaining. Outside of session, were you negotiating live bill language with legislators - yes or no?

B: I was constantly building relationships, setting priorities, preparing reforms.

R: That’s preparation. I’m asking about negotiation over statutory text.

B: Governors lead year-round.

R: So the only time you were engaged in actual legislative bargaining was during that limited session window?

Beat.

R: Five months out of twenty-four. That’s the full extent of your direct exposure to legislative negotiation - correct?

Silence.

SELF-MADE MAN

R: If your surname were not Bush - no presidential father, no national donor network - what specific accomplishment on your résumé independently qualifies you for the presidency?

B: I’ve shown leadership.

R: Leadership of what, that existed because of you?

B: I built coalitions.

R: Name one coalition that would have formed without your family name.

B: People came together around ideas.

R: Which idea originated with you?

B: I led the effort.

R: Identify one policy initiative that began with you, not your office, not your party, not your family network - you.

B: Leadership isn’t about ego.

R: I’m not asking about ego. I’m asking about origin. What began with you?

Silence.

STAND UP at 11

Tonight, the issue isn’t lineage; it’s lift.

An oil company that cannot be shown to have produced sustained profit.

Capital raised while his father occupied the vice presidency, yet no direct acknowledgment that the family name may have greased the wheels.

A swift climb from zero elected office to governor, and then a bid for the presidency, without a single statute he can point to and say, “I authored that,” or a negotiation he can recount clause by clause as his own handiwork.

When pressed for specifics, the answers retreat to abstractions: leadership, collaboration, results.

Inheritance is not a sin. But when a name opens doors, performance must close the case.

Did the enterprise make money? What policy began with him? What language in the law bears his imprint? These are not trick questions; they are the minimum evidence that the talent implied by a famous bloodline actually was actually part of the inheritance.

Tonight, those receipts were not produced.

In the end, voters are left with a stark choice. Either the record reflects independent accomplishment that simply hasn’t been articulated, or the name carried more weight than the work.

In a job where the consequences are national and the margin for error is thin, symbolism is not substance. The presidency is not inherited property, and it is not an internship for the well-connected. If the office exceeds the man, the country pays the difference.

INJUNCTION TO THE PRESS: Dismantle Idiot Son I (Bush) at Every Whistlestop With Relentless Evidence of Insufficiency

HOW TO RELENTLESSLY PRESS THE CASE

Competence Threshold Journalism - CTJ

IMAGINED CANDIDATE QUESTIONS

ARBUSTO

1 - There is no evidence you can build or sustain a profitable enterprise on your own.

Shouted question at every location, “How much money did Arbusto make?”

JUMP TO PRESIDENCY

2 - Your only elected experience was in a structurally limited office; that is not preparation for the presidency.

Shouted question at every location, “Shared power prepares you for command?”

LEGISLATIVE SKILLS

3 - You have no demonstrated record of drafting or altering the text of law.

Shouted question at every location, “Name the clause!”

FULL-TIME EXPERIENCE

4 - Since your exposure to real legislative bargaining was episodic and time-limited, you lack the tested endurance required for continuous national-level negotiation.

Shouted question at every location, “Five out of twenty-four?”

SELF-MADE MAN

5 - Since no major accomplishment stands apart from family advantage, you are not a self-made man.

Shouted question at every location, “Without the name - what’s left?”

INOCULATION? The Special Case of Prosecuting Idiot Sons (2): Competence Threshold Journalism - A Media Emergency CTJ

IDIOT SON 2 SWAGGERS TO THE PODIUM - REPORTERS PROSECUTE THE CASE - HOW IT’S DONE

CENTRAL PARK 5

IMAGINED CANDIDATE QUESTIONS

R: In 1989, you financed full-page newspaper ads calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty in connection with the Central Park case - correct?

T: That was a horrible situation, the worst crime you’ve ever seen, and I stood with the victim.

R: You paid for full-page ads advocating capital punishment - correct?

T: Those ads were about law and order, which the city needed badly.

R: The individuals convicted in that case later had their convictions vacated after exculpatory evidence emerged - correct?

T: That’s the system, it’s unfair, it lets criminals go free - it’s a disgrace.

R: After those convictions were vacated, did you issue a public retraction of your position regarding those specific defendants - yes or no?

T: You’re asking a dishonest question - I’ve always supported victims and justice.

R: So even after new evidence showed they weren’t guilty, you declined to say you were wrong?

T: The court got it wrong; you don’t understand the law, you don’t understand crime.

R: If a leader advocates maximum punishment and then refuses to revise that stance even after exoneration, that reflects on how they update their views when presented with new facts - yes or no?

Silence.

PLAZA HOTEL

R: You purchased the Plaza Hotel at what was then a record price - correct?

T: It was an iconic property. Everybody knew it. Tremendous asset.

R: The acquisition was heavily debt-financed - correct?

T: That’s how real estate works. Very smart financing.

R: Within a short period, the property required restructuring and you lost majority control - correct?

T: That was the banks. The market was terrible. Not my fault.

R: At the time of purchase, multiple analysts described the price as exceeding the hotel’s earnings capacity. Were they wrong?

T: These are the same people who’ve been wrong about everything. Total losers.

R: Did the hotel’s operating income support the price you paid - yes or no?

T: It was about owning something special. You don’t understand branding.

R: So the purchase was driven by brand value rather than cash flow fundamentals?

T: It was a great deal for the city. People loved it.

R: If the asset could not service its debt and required surrendering control, was that a financially sound acquisition - yes or no?

Beat.

R: When you pursue an asset at a record price, against earnings warnings, and ultimately lose control of it - is that a model of disciplined capital allocation?

Silence.

TRUMP SHUTTLE

R: In 1989, you acquired the Eastern Air Shuttle servicing the Boston–New York–Washington corridor - correct?

T: It was a fantastic route. Very important route.

R: The acquisition was heavily leveraged - correct?

T: That’s how major deals are done.

R: Commercial aviation is a capital-intensive, low-margin industry - you understood that at the time?

T: I understood branding. I understood service. People loved it.

R: Did your brand materially improve the airline’s operating margins - yes or no?

T: The recession hit. The timing was terrible.

R: Within roughly three years, you defaulted on the loans and returned the airline to the creditors - correct?

T: The banks took it. That’s restructuring. Very common.

R: So you entered a low-margin, capital-intensive industry without structural cost advantage, financed it with significant leverage, and ultimately surrendered it to creditors - correct?

T: You’re making it sound bad. It wasn’t bad.

R: Did the enterprise produce durable profit under your ownership - yes or no?

Beat.

R: If brand strength alone cannot overcome thin industry economics, what was the operational edge that justified the leverage?

Silence.

Contractor Non-Payment

R: Across the 1980s through the 2000s, multiple contractors and subcontractors filed lawsuits or liens alleging partial or delayed payment from your companies - correct?

T: When you build big projects, you get lawsuits. That’s business.

R: These were often smaller contractors, not multinational firms - correct?

T: Some were small, some weren’t. Many did great with me.

R: In a number of those cases, payment disputes were resolved through litigation or settlement rather than immediate payment - correct?

T: We settled when it made sense. You don’t just hand out money.

R: So when a contractor claimed full payment, your companies’ response was sometimes to withhold funds and litigate?

T: If the work wasn’t right, we fought. That’s called protecting your company.

R: For a small contractor operating on thin margins, extended litigation can be financially crippling - you understand that?

T: That’s not my problem if the work isn’t good.

R: When a pattern emerges in which smaller counterparties allege delayed or partial payment and the disputes end in settlement after legal pressure, is that an example of relational partnership - or leverage?

Beat.

R: Is your model of negotiation to pay in full when agreed - or to litigate until the other side concedes?

Silence.

Trump University

R: You licensed your name to a real-estate education venture marketed as ‘Trump University’ - correct?

T: It was a very successful program. People loved it.

R: The marketing materials suggested close personal involvement from you - correct?

T: My brand stands for success.

R: Did you personally design the curriculum - yes or no?

T: I had great people. Very talented people.

R: Did you personally teach courses - yes or no?

T: I can’t be everywhere.

R: So your name and likeness were used to market the program, but you did not design or teach the coursework?

T: It was a licensing deal. Totally standard.

R: There were substantial consumer complaints alleging deceptive sales tactics - correct?

T: Frivolous lawsuits. Happens all the time.

R: And the matter was ultimately resolved through settlement?

T: We settled to move on.

R: If consumers believed they were buying direct access to your expertise, and you were neither designing nor delivering the instruction, was the brand representation materially aligned with the product - yes or no?

Beat.

R: When personal authority is monetized at scale, what safeguards ensure that marketing does not exceed substance?

Silence.

UNDOCUMENTED CONSTRUCTION WORKERS

R: During the demolition phase of Trump Tower, contractors employed undocumented Polish laborers - that allegation was the subject of federal litigation, correct?

T: Totally false. Witch hunt. Old story.

R: The litigation proceeded for years and ultimately ended in settlement - correct?

T: We settled to avoid nuisance.

R: You were the developer of record on the project?

T: Yes.

R: You controlled the project budget?

T: Of course.

R: Lower labor costs reduce demolition expenses - correct?

T: I don’t get into every invoice.

R: If undocumented labor was used, it would have reduced cost relative to fully compliant union labor - correct?

T: I hire contractors. They handle that.

R: So you’re saying you neither knew who was on your site nor how they were being compensated?

T: That’s what contractors are for.

R: But you benefited from the cost structure that resulted - correct?

T: I benefited from a successful project.

Beat.

R: If a developer controls the budget, approves the contracts, and profits from the savings, where does responsibility reside - with the laborers, the subcontractor, or the developer?

Silence.

EPSTEIN

R: In a 2002 interview, you described Jeffrey Epstein as a ‘terrific guy’ who liked ‘beautiful women… on the younger side’ - those were your words, correct?

T: People said lots of things back then. Nobody knew anything.

R: You publicly characterized him as a ‘terrific guy’ - correct?

T: At the time, yes.

R: You were aware, even then, that he associated with significantly younger women?

T: That’s what people said. Social circles.

R: And you chose to praise him publicly?

T: He was a fixture in New York. Lots of people knew him.

R: Later, after criminal exposure and conviction, you stated the relationship had ended earlier - correct?

T: I had a falling out. Long before.

R: So your position is that he was ‘terrific’ until you distanced yourself?

T: I didn’t know about any crimes.

R: When someone is known for pursuing ‘younger’ women, and you publicly endorse him, what due diligence does responsible leadership require before offering that endorsement?

Beat.

R: Is your standard for judgment proximity to indictment - or independent moral assessment?

Silence.

ATLANTIC CITY

R: Between 1990 and 2009, multiple Atlantic City casino entities bearing your name entered Chapter 11 restructuring - that’s correct, isn’t it?

T: That’s called smart business. Very common in that industry.

R: The Taj Mahal in 1991, the Castle and Plaza in 1992, then later corporate restructurings in 2004 and 2009 - those occurred?

T: The market was brutal. Atlantic City collapsed.

R: In those restructurings, bondholders and investors incurred substantial losses - correct?

T: That’s how bankruptcy works. They knew the risks.

R: During several of those restructurings, you retained compensation or an equity position - correct?

T: I negotiated good deals. That’s what you want in a leader.

R: So creditors absorbed losses, while you preserved salary or stake?

T: I protected my interests. Totally legal.

R: I’m not asking about legality. I’m asking about structure. Is it accurate that your downside was limited while investor downside was not?

T: They invested voluntarily.

Beat.

R: When a strategy repeatedly employs high leverage, ends in Chapter 11, and transfers losses to creditors while preserving your position - is that operational success, or financial insulation?

Silence.

INJUNCTION TO THE PRESS: Dismantle Idiot Son 2 (Trump) at Every Whistlestop With Relentless Evidence of Insufficiency

HOW TO RELENTLESSLY PRESS THE CASE

Competence Threshold Journalism - CTJ

IMAGINED CANDIDATE QUESTIONS

CENTRAL PARK FIVE

1 - When evidence changed, you did not. That is not the temperament required for executive judgment.

Shouted question at every location, “Who is councilman Yusef Salaam?”

PLAZA HOTEL

2 - You misjudge debt capacity at the hotel level. There is no reason to assume you can manage debt at the national level.

You paid a record price for a hotel because it was famous and flashy. The hotel couldn’t make enough money to cover its bills, and you lost control of it. That’s not how you manage the country’s money.

Shouted question at every location, “Who is Prince Alwaleed bin Talal?”

DC SHUTTLE

3 - A business has to earn enough to pay its bills. You bought an airline that didn’t earn enough and borrowed big to do it. When the bills came due, the bank took it back. That’s not how you handle something as big as the United States.

Shouted question at every location, “How long did you own the Shuttle before the bank took it back?”

CONRACTORS

4 - Your way of doing business is to make the smaller guy lawyer up to get paid, that’s not toughness - that’s imbalance. The country is not a deal where you win because the other side runs out of money.

When smaller contractors said they were owed money, you made them fight for it. You had the leverage. They had the bills. That is not partnership. That is using size to squeeze the little guy. That is not the character required to represent everyone.

Shouted question at every location, “How many small contractors had to sue you to get paid?”

TRUMP UNIVERSITY

5 - People paid thousands thinking they were getting real training and real access to you, and they didn’t. That’s selling the promise, not the product. That is not the kind of straightforward honesty a leader should have.

Shouted question at every location, “Did you ever teach a single class?”

EPSTEIN

6 - Your standard is “no indictment, no problem,” that’s not moral leadership. Leaders are expected to see smoke before the fire trucks arrive.

Shouted question at every location, “Why did you call him “terrific”?”

ATLANTIC CITY

7 - The casinos went under. The people who put up the money lost, but you kept getting paid. When it fell apart, they took the hit and you didn’t. The country can’t work that way.

Shouted question at every location, “How many times did your casinos go bankrupt?”

STAND UP AT 11

Tonight’s question isn’t about one lawsuit or one bankruptcy. It’s about a pattern of walking into complicated businesses as if they were simple, and acting shocked when they weren’t.

The Plaza Hotel was bought at a record price despite warnings that its income couldn’t support the debt.

The airline was a thin-margin, high-cost industry where even seasoned operators struggle - yet it was taken on with heavy borrowing and confidence that branding would carry the day.

The casinos were stacked with leverage in a market already under pressure.

In each case, the math was public. The risks were knowable. The response was the same: it’ll work because I say it will.

When the numbers didn’t cooperate, the story shifted. Banks restructured. Bondholders took losses. Contractors fought for payment. Investors were diluted.

Meanwhile, leadership often retained compensation, equity, or naming rights. That’s not a one-off miscalculation; that’s a repeated cycle - bold promises, borrowed money, missed projections, restructuring.

The throughline is not careful study of margins or sober respect for downside. It’s the child-like belief that instinct beats expertise and that scale alone guarantees success.

Running a country is not simpler than running a hotel, an airline, or a casino. It’s more complex, with less room for do-overs and no bankruptcy court to absorb the fallout.

The concern raised tonight isn’t personality or politics. It’s judgment. If the record shows a habit of underestimating difficulty, brushing aside specialists, and leaving others to absorb the losses when projections fail, voters are left with a basic question: when the stakes are national and the consequences can’t be refinanced, who pays then?

COSTS II - OF A CANDIDATE ON IMAGE

“646,970 lives. This is the number of Americans who would be alive today if the United States had the same per capita death rate from COVID-19 as our northern neighbor, Canada.”

- Time Magazine

The U.S. Failed Miserably on COVID-19. Canada Shows It Didn’t Have to Be That Way

May 24, 2022

https://time.com/6180309/covid-19-us-canada-differences/

For every COVID death neighboring Canada recorded in 2020, the United States recorded more than twenty - despite having only about nine times the population.

Nine times the population. More than twenty times the deaths.

WHAT BRAND OF FAITHFUL EXECUTION OF THE LAW MADNESS IS THIS?

Public Encouragement of Anti-Lockdown Protests, April 17, 2020

On April 17, 2020, while multiple states were under stay-at-home orders, President Trump tweeted:

“LIBERATE MICHIGAN!”
“LIBERATE MINNESOTA!”
“LIBERATE VIRGINIA!”

These were sitting-state executive mitigation orders during active viral spread.

Governors and public health experts said this undercut compliance with state-level public health measures.

COVERAGE

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-governors.html

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52330531

Hospital Data Removed from CDC, July 2020

In July 2020, the administration ordered hospitals to stop sending COVID hospitalization data directly to the CDC and instead route it to a new HHS-managed system (HHS Protect via TeleTracking).

This was not rhetorical. It was an operational change in the middle of a surge.

Critics - including epidemiologists and former CDC officials - said removing CDC from direct control of hospitalization data reduced transparency and placed politically appointed officials between scientists and the public record.

Source documenting the change:
https://www.bmj.com/content/370/bmj.m2855

Additional reporting:
https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/white-house-hospitals-bypass-cdc-report-covid-19-data-directly-hhs

Scientific American coverage:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trump-administrations-sudden-shift-on-covid-19-data-leaves-states-in-the-lurch/

Political Pressure on CDC School Guidance, July 2020

The CDC issued cautious school reopening guidance in July 2020. It warned about transmission risk. It laid out mitigation steps.

The White House attacked it as too restrictive.

Then came the edits.

Internal emails later showed political appointees pushing CDC officials to soften language about spread, about children transmitting the virus, about what reopening would require. Not commentary. Not spin. The document itself was revised.

Critics concluded the science was bent to fit the policy - not the policy adjusted to fit the science.
https://docs.house.gov/meetings/VC/VC00/20230613/116091/HHRG-118-VC00-20230613-SD004.pdf

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/08/us/politics/trump-schools-reopening.html

In 2005, Michael T. Osterholm wrote plainly: a respiratory pandemic would come, vaccine capacity was inadequate, hospitals would surge past capacity, supply chains would fracture, and delay would multiply deaths. The federal government wrote it down too - the National Strategy for Pandemic Influenza spelled out stockpiles, distancing, school closures, surveillance triggers, federal-state coordination - and, in doing so, quietly conceded that surge depth and production scale were thin. The threat was documented; the mitigation tools were named; the vulnerability was structural.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/20034418

https://www.cdc.gov/pandemic-flu/media/pandemic-influenza-strategy-2005.pdf

https://www.cdc.gov/pandemic-flu/media/hhspandemicinfluenzaplan.pdf

ON COVID, SPAKE THE IDIOT SON

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/02/28/trump-reckoning-has-come/

Roughly 337,000 Americans would die after that statement by the end of 2020 - about 33,000 a month, 1,100 a day.

On average, every 80 seconds another person would die.

https://covidtracking.com/data/national/deaths

To The Press, Journalists - Rattle and Hum: Competence Threshold Journalism - CTJ

When a candidate wants the nation’s trust, and cannot answer a straight question straight, that is not a media problem. That is a character problem.

If you ask, “Did the company make money?” and the answer is a speech about vision, that’s not complexity. It is evasion.

If you ask, “Did you revise your judgment when facts changed?” and the answer is, “You’re dishonest,” this isn’t strength. It is shame - disguised. Howling.

If you ask, “What law did you personally write?” and the answer is silence, that is not nuance. That is absence.

The outrage has to no longer be that the question is asked on television.

The outrage must become that a person asking for control of armies and intelligence agencies will not answer plainly when his own record is placed on the table.

And the press - the press - is the place where that reckoning is supposed to occur.

Not because journalists are priests. But, because you are the only ones in the room with microphones while the rest of us are frickin’ WORKING!

This is not about vaunting “the interview” as some sacred ritual.

It is about republican self-government.

• A candidate asks for public trust.

• The public demands proof.

• The candidate is so obligated.

THIS is the republican transaction.

Government by an elected representative - accountable to the represented.

If proof is dodged, and the dodger is not forced back to the question, that is a screening failure.

Not an ideological one.

PROCESS - CRAFT, NOW - for the 3^rd Millennium.

You ask a contractor to build your glass storefront; he shows you three recent jobs where the doors do not close right.

You won’t debate philosophy.

You’ll ask him why the other doors do not close right.

If he starts talking about location and branding, and you sign anyway, that’s on you.

But if the town inspector watches him dodge every question and says nothing, that’s on the inspector.

That is the press.

As citizens, we are right in our demands.

Running Texas baseball is not running a war.

Owning a Manhattan tower is not managing an epidemiological firestorm.

Branding a casino is not coordinating a multinational military coalition.

These are not metaphors.

They are different orders of difficulty.

Bluff works in small rooms.

It does not work in hurricane response.

It does not work when intelligence briefings contradict your prior assumptions.

It does not work when a virus spreads exponentially.

Scale does not reward swagger.

Scale punishes shortcuts.

And yes - the presumption of regularity used to do some of this work.

There was a time when the cultural expectation was that a man asking for office would feel compelled to answer cleanly or withdraw. Made horrific to lie to fellow republicans.

That presumption weakened.

So the press, the role, must carry more - to deliver.

Not to sneer.

Not to posture.

To require demonstration.

Edward R. Murrow did not accuse by volume.

He placed record next to statement and let the contradiction sit there, undeniable.

That is not aggression.

That is proportion.

The problem is not that the artisan we rely on here - the journalist - is gullible.

The problem is that the craft has somehow, amid academics and boardrooms, narrowed. To something self-referential.

• Game framing.

• Metacoverage.

• Official-source indexing.

• Hallinian sphere management.

Meanwhile, less ethical citizens saw the opening: dodges, pivots, bluffs, televised…were going unchallenged. The narrowed craft would take bluff and treat it as performance, rather than warning.

When catastrophic authority is at stake, deception is evidence.

It is not theater.

And when journalism schools teach that visible adjudication threatens “standing” - that pressing too hard risks “access” then they are calibrating optics instead of consequences.

When the stakes are, say, fewer rental units, you can elide a cracked facade. Leave it off the glossy photo.

When the stakes are war, public health, intelligence, and the lives of millions, cannot ever again elevate a man who cannot face a straight question without first reaching for deceit.

That is the charge. Journalists - LISTEN TO THIS.

Not anger.

Proportion.

Correctly-scaled responses; crucible tests of character and policy - before over-scaled power.

This is the charge.

So that the next time a well-named failure slouches toward Washington, smiling and abstract, the press must rigorously, unflinchingly demand receipts - assembling the record and testing it in acid and sunlight before authority is granted - so that the country will never again be held to pay for weaknesses that were discoverable but never brought fully into view.

Competence Threshold Journalism: the practice of verifying demonstrated ability before catastrophic authority is granted - CTJ.

TIDEWATER JOURNALISM - THE SELFCAST SOLUTION

TIDEWATER. Begins where life is: at the kitchen counter, looking at a paycheck. Rent. Groceries. Gas. The dentist. The car making that sound again. And somewhere in the middle of all that, the quiet hope Americans everywhere keep. If you do everything right for long enough, you might get far enough ahead to reach Downpayment Land.

Not a “strategy.” Not a “portfolio.” Simply an account. Adding each week as much as you can - it lets you know you’re building something, not merely enduring.

And then life makes a call. Two years running the account gets quietly wiped out: braces - because you can still hear the old hallway laughter, still feel that hot shame of being singled out for one crooked thing you couldn’t fix. So you decide your son won’t carry it. Worth it.

Then the car dies, and you replace it because you have to get to work. Worth it.

You check the account again. Keep going. Keep showing up.

That’s the story. That is what policy in any government is for.

But too often today journalism shows up like a street magician: snap - look here. A quote. A nickname. A tirade. A named “issue” that travels. The newspaper demands a quick moral rendering, and the citizen obliges: SELFCAST.

Said in one line: keep the citizen busy deciding about himself, and policy stays dark.

TIDEWATER journalism refuses that bargain. It treats working men and working women as the first fact of the republic, and it leads with policy until consequences are visible.

Not “values.” Not “messaging.” Not “the controversy.” The policy.

The numbers. The evidence. If you can’t show what changes in wages, rent, school, health, childcare, the cost of aging, the ability to save, the ability to simply get a chance to exhale - then you haven’t reported the story. You’ve performed around it.

And yes: ask like you mean it. Loud enough to ruin the set. Repeated enough that no one can wriggle away into slogans. Shouted questions. At every stop.

“Fifty-three percent of the people in Guilford County are renters - how does this policy advance responsible home ownership?”

“Forty-one percent of schools in Lancaster Parish are deemed underfunded. Gliburklo opened a 200,000-square-foot plant last year, and three more are on the drawing board. What are you doing about it?”

“How is it possible that this proposal is more important than the $31,000 deductible families in Carston are facing?”

“Why has there been no bill to advance low-interest loans to families employed by the city’s newest business?”

That is the craft: stop letting politics become a simplified take-out menu, a carousel of issues named by the next Chauncey Gardiner in power, with SELFCAST doing the rest - evil in office, made manifest each day. Citizens are left only judging the indecency of others - and sometimes themselves.

Amid all that noise, the questions of governance quietly disappear. And Journalism’s delinquency is complete: it calls this informing the public.

Your readers… - no. Your fellow citizens. Don’t you see? We are in the project of self-government together. Your fellow citizens don’t need another shouted stage direction. We need you to run policy through the collider until it either earns faith or is shown to be made of the wrong stuff - and representatives we elected are pushed further to find what works.

President Kennedy set the stakes in the language of purpose, not punditry:

So to the press: report the governing.

Name the policy.

Show the evidence.

Demand daylit proof.

For the people at the counter, on night shift, in loading bays, at stand-up desks, facing forward, calloused hands, calloused feet - until the tide rises for the whole country.

TIDEWATER - because in a country this wealthy, journalism that won’t relentlessly test the working-life bargain isn’t neutral; it’s missing in action.

TIDEWATER journalism reinvests in its readers. It treats their time and future as trust.

TIDEWATER - It demands policies that raise hopes and drive real returns for working men and working women trying to get ahead.

It keeps demanding it - until the tide rises for us all.

TIDEWATER RECEIPTS

Now comes the part the newsroom actually understands: numbers. Not morals. Not vibes. Numbers.

When a story begins with the shocking quote - a line meant to make people gasp - or with government officials fighting each other in public, the decision has already been made. The spectacle comes first, and the reader is pulled into the drama instead of being shown what the government is actually doing.

So, we answer with the only signal newsrooms reliably measure: a week of zero.

No clicks.

No shares.

No “engagement.”

Seven days.

Every time.

And, send a receipt. Not a debate. Not a fight. A receipt.

Find the reporter the same way you would find anyone online: search the name.

Use: https://google.com/search?q=site:bsky.app+firstname+lastname

Find their BlueSky. Send one line and then move on:

“Stick to policy. I’m not reading anything you write for a week.”

If you want a second line, make the request clear:

“Start with what the proposal does to rent, wages, healthcare, school, and the cost of living.”

This is not punishment. It is the ordinary discipline of a self-governing people. As James Madison warned:

When reporting replaces explanation with spectacle - the obscene quote, the feud - the public is left without the information required for self-government. The citizen’s answer, then, is simple: withdraw attention until the work is done properly.

The standard is straightforward. Tell us what the government plans to do. Tell us who pays. Tell us who benefits. Write it out in a way that explains what changes in people’s lived lives.

That’s because TIDEWATER isn’t about tone. It is about the information a self-governing people requires.

Start with the policy. Show who pays. Show who benefits. Lived lives - rent, wages, healthcare, schools, Downpayment Land, the cost of living. Those are the gauges that tell us whether the tide is rising or falling. The facts citizens use to judge the conduct of their government.

After the above quoted line it is important to note Madison immediately continued:

Journalists - you are the ONLY profession NAMED in the constitution.

Revere the voices of the past.

Hold fast the injunctions of history.

Today…the new school is TIDEWATER.

SICKTAX SOLUTION

To this writer, the entire negativity of the last generation - and even further, back to the hardening ugliness of the Gingrich “Revolution?” So many caustic revolutionaries at the right now. All of it resolves to wealth.

But, not even wealth - security.

Dignity.

Each of us surrounded by our meager purchases - and the way they wear out. Wear out - just like we shall all.

And this, then, our accumulating fear.

SICKTAX, Real Property.

Jack Kornfield has a famous anecdote about death. Overheard.

“How much did he leave?”

“Why, everything, of course.”

The story of Lisa - who did everything right, in her rented room, measuring out the last spoonfuls of her wealth.

Kristy Noem’s $50,000-dollar watch.

Why?

All of it to soften the landing.

I believe the fear of the SICKTAX has awakened a kind of a reflexive ugliness in America - each of us no longer striving, but in some sense RACING headlong against time itself, to earn JUST enough for it all to end right.

Not like Lisa.

More like what Noem expects - she of the 220-million-dollar advertising budget, and 50-thousand-dollar watch.

An idea that seems to leave us all snarling.

FROM THE AEGEAN

Surely the blue most brilliant.

Of sky and ocean. Redolent olive oil.

3 million years of human life.

And, then here - in an ACTUAL Golden Age, they stop to suffer the issue - “…the savageness of man…”

See it online.

Videos of people falling down - perhaps? First?

Then, quickly the rage engagement?

Savage.

Candace Owens - 9 years, ($5M). Steve Bannon - 31 years, ($30M). Alex Jones - 33 years, ($100M). Tucker Carlson - 31 years, ($40M). Glenn Beck - 24 years, ($200M). All wealth figures approximations.

Savage.

Savage every day.

But, also for these?

Nannies? Piano Teachers? Painting classes? Riding Lessons? Family trips to…

Area 51?

Or, the Aegean?

What’s your guess?

https://google.com/search?q=Candace+Owens+2025+wealth+estimate https://google.com/search?q=Steve+Bannon+2025+wealth+estimate https://google.com/search?q=Alex+Jones+2025+wealth+estimate https://google.com/search?q=Tucker+Carlson+2025+wealth+estimate https://google.com/search?q=Glenn+Beck+2025+wealth+estimate

ON RAGE, AND REPOSE

I’ve lived abroad now for many years. In a society with generous, but not absurdly so, retirement benefits. And, wholly nationalized health care. And, I see them every day. In the parks. Waiting.

Grandparents.

Waiting blissfully for grand kids to get out of school.

In repose.

Unfearful.

Even unhurried.

The same I see them on the subway, (subsidized fare), greying with their brides.

Hands held.

In repose.

Unfearful.

Even unhurried. Delighted how it all turned out.

Back home?

The rage.

Candace Owens - 9 years, ($5M). Steve Bannon - 31 years, ($30M). Alex Jones - 33 years, ($100M). Tucker Carlson - 31 years, ($40M). Glenn Beck - 24 years, ($200M). All wealth figures approximations.

Why do WE listen?

We are WE raging in?

Each of us - one health crisis from bankruptcy.

Each of us hurtling toward asset liquidation - until we find ourselves in a state home.

And, so - the snarl.

Dignity?

Who among us won’t fall sick?

Dickens himself could draw no clearer penury.

And, then - Lisa: 500K gone.

House gone.

The awful sidewalk from the rented apartment to her daughter’s house mocks with every step. “Careful!” “Careful!!”

Snarl.

Rage.

Let me tune in.

The Digital Dividend for America

The Digital Dividend for America

By raw net income in the most recent full year, the largest technology platforms earn tens to hundreds of billions of dollars annually-often exceeding the profits of major oil companies.

Firms such as Alphabet Inc., Apple Inc., Microsoft Corporation, Meta Platforms, and Amazon.com, Inc. routinely generate profits that rival or surpass traditional energy giants like ExxonMobil and Chevron Corporation.

In some years, one technology company has earned more than multiple oil majors combined.

Think of ordinary life as taking place on a stage that the public already paid to build. Families raise children. Teachers educate them. Cities pave the roads they travel. Hospitals keep them healthy. Courts keep order. Utilities keep the lights on. All of it financed by taxes and years of shared effort.

By adulthood, you are not a blank slate; you are a fully formed person - skilled, socialized, mobile, connected. In a very real sense, we ourselves are the most valuable platform in the entire system, and society has already covered the bill.

America already understands how to price access to shared resources. Oil companies pay royalties to drill on public lands. Telecommunications giants such as AT&T and Verizon Communications have paid tens of billions for spectrum licenses because the airwaves belong to the public. No one calls that radical; it is how mature markets operate.

The same logic applies here. The richest national resource is not underground or in the sky - it is the living, breathing population that gives the market itself meaning.

It is parents raising children, teachers opening classroom doors at 6:45 a.m. - five days a week, police walking the beat, nurses delivering babies, workers clocking into ordinary jobs that keep the republic functioning. We animate the data. We give it meaning. As Adam Smith recognized, wealth flows from human effort and cooperation; markets thrive because society exists first.

The tech company then arrives and builds its digital layer on top of that world. It does not create the selfies of family dinners, the commutes, the friendships, the shopping trips, or the late-night searches; it simply records them, analyzes them, and sells predictions about them.

Every click and movement only has value because a whole civilization paid to make that life possible in the first place. The servers are impressive, but they are secondary; the true engineers of this incredibly valuable everyday unfolding human story is us - on a stage the public constructed.

So when a platform captures and monetizes the panorama of our lives, it is not a revolutionary idea to call that what it already resembles: a license to draw economic value from a national resource.

The people built the stage, the state maintains it, and the company profits from organizing what happens there. In oil, timber, spectrum, airport gates - we price access through royalties, leases, and franchise fees. Extending that familiar structure to the digital economy is not upheaval; it is overdue modernization.

A Digital Civic License of $5 per active U.S. user per month would align the digital economy with long-standing American resource policy. At current scale - roughly one billion aggregate active U.S. accounts across the largest platforms - that level generates approximately $50–$60 billion annually, building toward $250–$300 billion over five years before investment growth.

These figures sit comfortably alongside companies that routinely generate $50–$100+ billion in annual operating income. The contribution represents a predictable civic royalty tied directly to scale - not a penalty on innovation, but a licensing fee consistent with how the United States has always priced access to shared national assets.

This is not confiscation, nor hostility toward innovation. It follows a long American pattern: when private enterprise derives extraordinary value from organizing access to a shared national resource, it pays a structured and predictable license in return. The Digital Civic License simply applies that settled principle to the digital era, placing platform-scale prosperity inside the same framework that governs oil leases, spectrum rights, and other forms of publicly rooted value.

That revenue does not vanish into a general fund. It creates the Digital Dividend for America - Care Guarantee: up to three years of covered nursing facility care for any American who becomes medically dependent. During that time, families are not forced to drain retirement savings, dismantle a lifetime of planning, or lose the family home simply to secure basic care. The guarantee replaces panic and liquidation with stability and time.

The three-year window reflects how long care actually lasts for most people. Many nursing home stays end within a year, and most conclude within three. By matching the benefit to real patterns of frailty, the program protects the majority of families while remaining financially sound. Annual inflows exceed expected costs, allowing reserves to build and strengthen the system over time.

For the smaller number of people whose illness extends beyond three years, the program does not turn away. A catastrophic extension tier, guided by clear medical standards and funded from accumulated reserves, ensures that the longest and hardest cases remain covered without exposing the system to open-ended risk.

In a Tocquevillian sense, this is a republican bargain - an alignment between private success and civic continuity, between enterprise that scales and a society that endures. The platforms rise because a free people live ordinary lives in relative safety: they work, trade, speak, learn, raise families, start businesses, and trust that the future can be planned for. That is not “data” in the narrow sense; it is the daily practice of opportunity and self-government, multiplied across a nation.

DDA-CG returns that continuity to the place where it most often breaks. Today, too many families are driven into a grim patient’s dilemma: pay whatever is demanded as fast as the clock allows, hope the money lasts longer than the need, or hold back and gamble with safety and care. The choices are not wicked; they are coerced by a missing pillar in the social pantheon - this, while at the same time our tech success stories are found in oceans of marble - and the outcome is too often the same: years of work and careful saving erased at the one point no family can calmly carry, except by surrendering nearly everything for the people they love the most.

This framework does not ask anyone to forgo ambition, innovation, or growth. It asks only that success at national scale carry a stable civic contribution, so that citizens who pursued the American Dream in ordinary ways are not forced into ruinous end-stage bargains when dependency arrives. In return, the country keeps faith with its people: the promise of work, saving, home, and inheritance holds steady, rather than dissolving into desperation at the end.

Tocqueville’s point was that a healthy republic does not depend on saintliness; it depends on institutions that align private advantage with the public good - “self-interest rightly understood,” reinforced by the American habit of voluntary association. The Federalist makes the same structural claim in a harder key: the aim is to secure the common good by building arrangements that keep power and interest tethered to public trust. In that light, the platforms are not the authors of the American digital world so much as its loom: the pattern comes from citizens themselves - millions of lives lived in freedom, choice, movement, enterprise, and speech - threading the national tapestry that the platforms organize, display, and monetize. DDA-CG simply returns a portion of that value to the place where the tapestry most often tears, so that the freedoms that made the pattern possible carry through into old age, with its wisdom - and with the care that wisdom deserves.

Elevator Pitch: A Licensing Fee

Every great technology company understands licensing.

You don’t own the airwaves - you license spectrum.

You don’t own oil under public land - you pay royalties to extract it.

You don’t own airport gates - you lease access.

The digital economy operates on the largest national asset of all: the living dataset generated by hundreds of millions of Americans in the course of daily life. That dataset exists because the public built the schools, courts, infrastructure, and institutions that make society possible. Platforms organize it, analyze it, and monetize it at extraordinary scale.

The Digital Dividend for America is a digital mineral right.

A $5 per active U.S. user per month licensing across five dominant platforms generates roughly $60 billion annually. That revenue funds up to three years of guaranteed nursing facility care when Americans become medically dependent.

· No forced liquidation of retirement savings.

· No requirement to impoverish yourself before help begins.

· No state claim against the family home for covered years.

Most nursing home stays end at a year. Some as long as 3. Thus, expected costs remain well below inflows. Surpluses accumulate and compound. Within two decades, the fund becomes a sovereign-scale reserve capable of sustaining the benefit largely through investment income.

This is not redistribution.

It is a licensing framework - a modern extension of how America prices access to shared national assets.

Tech continues to build.

Innovation continues to scale.

Prosperity carries a predictable civic royalty - as it always has.

And in return, the United States finally insures the one risk it never covered: dependency at the end of life.

A Digital Civic License of $5 per active U.S. user per month would align the digital economy with long-standing American resource policy. At that level, each major platform contributes roughly $12 billion per year.

These figures sit comfortably alongside companies that routinely generate $50–$100+ billion in annual operating income. The contribution represents a predictable civic royalty tied directly to scale - not a penalty on innovation, but a licensing fee consistent with how the United States has always priced access to shared national assets.

This is not confiscation, nor hostility toward innovation. It is the same structure America has used for generations: when private enterprise prospers by organizing or drawing value from a shared national asset, it pays a predictable license for the privilege. Calling it a Digital Civic License or an American Data Royalty places it exactly where it belongs-inside the long American tradition that prosperity carries obligation.

DOES IT EVEN ADD UP?

Take a tech giant at Google’s scale. Alphabet’s most recent full-year results show roughly $403B in revenue and about $129B in operating income - meaning the company brings in hundreds of billions, and still has well over a hundred billion left after paying the costs of running the operation. [1] Now drop in an DDA-CG style payment of $12B per year. Against revenue, that’s about 3% ($12B out of around $403B). Against operating income, it’s about 9–10% ($12B out of around $129B) - closer to one-tenth than anything like one-third. [1] The accountant’s point is that companies of this size regularly manage multi-billion swings in spending and charges - legal matters, compensation, infrastructure build, and investment cycles - without the underlying business collapsing, because the revenue base is so large and the cost structure is actively managed. [2] A fixed, rules-based civic license also has a capital-markets advantage: predictability is easier to price than open-ended regulatory risk, so a known annual obligation can end up less damaging to long-run valuation than continuing uncertainty.

[1] https://s206.q4cdn.com/479360582/files/doc_financials/2025/q4/2025q4-alphabet-earnings-release.pdf
[2] https://s206.q4cdn.com/479360582/files/doc_financials/2025/q4/GOOG-10-K-2025.pdf

FROM THE AEGEAN

I. People v. Trump Entrepreneur Initiative LLC (Trump University) (2014; appeal decided 2016)

Court: Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County (trial court); Appellate Division, First Department (appeal)

Index Number: 451463/2013

Trial-Court Decision (Education Law): October 8, 2014 - 2014 NY Slip Op 32685(U)

Holding: The court granted summary determination that Trump Entrepreneur Initiative (Trump University) operated in New York without the required license after May 31, 2010, in violation of New York Education Law, and held Donald J. Trump and Michael Sexton individually liable on that Education Law violation.

Appeal (fraud claim reinstated): March 1, 2016 - 2016 NY Slip Op 01430 (1st Dep’t)

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASMain

https://ag.ny.gov

II. Carroll v. Trump (2023–2024)

Court: U.S. District Court, S.D.N.Y.

Carroll II (22-cv-10016)

Verdict (May 9, 2023): Jury found Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation (2022 statements).

Carroll I (20-cv-07311)

Verdict (Jan. 26, 2024): Jury awarded $83.3 million in additional damages for defamation (2019 statements).

https://www.nysd.uscourts.gov

https://pacer.uscourts.gov

III. People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump (2024)

Court: Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County

Index Number: 452564/2022

Decision Date: February 16, 2024

Statute: N.Y. Executive Law § 63(12)

Found by the New York Supreme Court to have engaged in persistent fraud under N.Y. Executive Law § 63(12).

https://iapps.courts.state.ny.us/webcivil/FCASMain

https://ag.ny.gov

IV. People v. Donald J. Trump – Criminal Conviction (2024)

Court: Supreme Court of the State of New York, New York County

Indictment Number: 71543-23

Verdict Date: May 30, 2024

Statute: N.Y. Penal Law § 175.10

Found guilty by a New York jury on 34 felony counts of Falsifying Business Records in the First Degree.

https://ww2.nycourts.gov/people-v-donald-j-trump-criminal-37026

https://www.nycourts.gov

The police in this Minnesota city arrive already knowing what they are going to see. Not surprised, not outraged, yet, just tired in a particular way. Another body on the pavement, another masked man kneeling with no badge, no name, no number, no local accountability.

The city officers step out of their cars with that bitter taste already in their mouths because they have been here before and they know the script. They work for a city that still pretends society is a shared project, that if order is kept and people are protected, everyone can build a life.

They still believe - dimly, stubbornly - in pensions, in healthcare, in the idea that public service buys a kind of mutual security. They do not yet think about how thin that promise really is. The nausea they feel is not moral outrage. It is recognition.

The agent on the man’s back is Rex Ledger. High school only. Nights on the flat-top at a breakfast place off the interstate, eggs and grease and the smell that never leaves your hands. Until he heard about ICE. He took the job when the signing bonus hit fifty thousand.

Fifty thousand is a lot of money when you grew up watching your father waste away in public - missing teeth, wet pants, sleeping where the streetlights go dim.

Rex knows exactly what the money buys. It buys distance. It buys a clean apartment, a car that starts reliably, a doctor who answers the phone. It buys a future where he does not die where he learned to stand. The man on the pavement says he is a citizen. Rex does not answer. He tightens the ties. That won’t happen to him. Not to him.

The city officers step closer. They ask for a warrant because that is still how legitimacy sounds to them. They ask for identification because force, to them, still needs a face. Rex does not move. He hears the witnesses ringing him, the breathing, the crying. He has learned not to look up. Numbers matter. Throughput matters. The rest is noise.

Across town, in a room with sealed windows and sound-dampened corridors, Martin Vance watches the feed. Mid-tier. GS pay, travel per diem - the sense of being almost there. He knows the size of the machine now, the way money moves through it in quantities that no longer feel civic.

It reminds him of Iraq, of the day he watched a sergeant load a pallet1 of cash into a truck and drive away. He remembers thinking how easy it must be to be brazen when the sums are obscene.

He tells himself he is not brazen. He is careful. His mind slides, as it always does, to his mother. An accountant who did everything right. She sold the grand piano first, then the furniture, then the car, then the house. Chemo. Specialists. Travel. He remembers the ledger on the kitchen table, how the columns narrowed until there was nothing left but choice. He watched a television star - someone he grew up with - set up a GoFundMe to pay for cancer care and realized the lesson was public now. Justice? Legality? Those were words for people who could afford them.

He is at a hundred grand now, and with each arrest - no one says it aloud - there is a way the numbers climb. It will not happen to him. The solution is clear: process the injustice.

In a car with dark glass, the attorney general, Helena Fairclough, rehearses the words she will say.

She grew up on the redneck riviera, learned the mottos early, learned how to smile while saying them. She thinks of her grandfather as she always does at moments like this: first the photograph, black and white, aviators catching the light, linen shirt, teeth bright, jaw set.

Then the end. He died on a couch, yellowing, freezing, speaking nonsense. No insurance. “We’ll make do,” they said, because they were not doctors.

She remembers the smell. The way he sank into the cushions, the way dignity leaked out of him day by day. She looks nothing like that memory now. Hair dyed blonde. Camera-ready. Strong, hot, decisive. Television likes her.

She knows what the fees will be. Books. Panels. Consulting. She adds it up without meaning to. Millions, easily.

Lies? Of course they are lies. But she has cast the die. There is no way she is going to put her girls through what she went through, and that takes money - real money, end-of-life money.

The name of her department makes her both laugh and retch. Justice. She grips the door handle as the car stops. Worth it. The indignity engineered into the system leaves no other rational choice.

INSURRECTION

Everyone in Minnesota already carried the image with them: the old man dragged into the snow in his underwear, hands cuffed, teeth chattering, shirtless under a plaid child’s blanket. People had watched it in kitchens, on buses, at work. It had settled into the state like a bruise you keep pressing to see if it still hurts.

So, when it happened again, the crowd gathered fast, but not surprised.

Two ICE agents had a shirtless man pinned against a storefront just off Lake Street. He was shouting that he was a citizen. Someone in the crowd shouted it too. City cruisers arrived. Two officers stepped out - large, intimidating men. Careful. Already sickened by scenes like this.

One of the officers looked closely at the man’s face, now twisted in pain. He froze in his steps for half a second too long.

He did not know him by chance. He knew him because they had known each other forever. In a university-provided kindergarden 20 years ago their mothers had met and never separated, amazed that their two sons shared the same birthday. Those boys grew up together by default - same carpools, same scraped knees, same lunch tables - through middle school, until the one family returned to Guatemala where the father’s academic work was rewarded with a role in the state bank. A family of citizens. Strivers. Legal in the most American way possible.

He, the bigger of the two officers, asked for a warrant.

Rex Ledger did not answer. He heard the word citizen and felt the narrowing begin. Numbers. Throughput. Keep it moving.

The officer asked again.

Rex stepped forward and said the phrase that had been drilled into him as an ending.

“Federal supremacy.”

The taller cop did not raise his voice. He did not argue. He moved. His partner moved with him. There was no violence, only speed and mass and certainty. Hands went on wrists. Steel clicked. The crowd tightened, phones up, breath held.

Someone shouted, “Justice!” and the word spread - not as a chant, but as a fact being named.

The agents were walked - not dragged, walked - into squad cars. The crowd cheered. Then it went quiet, as if everyone realized at once what had just happened.

Rex thought fifty thousand had bought him distance once. He had not thought about what it would buy him back into.

Across town, Martin Vance watched the feed and felt the click he had been waiting for. This was not chaos. This was posture. This was interposition, clean and public. He sent the message he had not sent before.

By midnight, the courtroom was full. Network cameras lined the walls. The judge leaned forward and began to speak the way judges used to speak to kings.

“Isn’t it true,” he said, “that a warrant is required to enter a home?”

“Isn’t it true that citizenship is not dissolved by assertion?”

The government lawyer began answers and lost them. Each question stacked another fact.

Unreasonable searches.

Seizure.

Due process.

Habeas.

The cadence was old. Deliberate. Familiar to anyone who had ever read why revolutions start.

Near dawn, the sound reached the room. Helicopters. Not one. Several.

The judge paused. His head turned slightly.

Martin felt the decision land before the alert vibrated on his phone there in his command center. Rex felt it as the air changed in the holding room. Helena Fairclough, inside the cavernous kitchen of her Kalorama home, read it on her screen and closed her eyes for a long time.

Washington had what it wanted.

Interposition.

Insurrection.

And this is where the mistake is usually made.

Insurrection did not mean tanks at the courthouse or soldiers replacing judges. It meant something colder. It meant that federal action could now proceed without obstruction, because any obstruction - any pause, any question, any state resistance - was itself evidence of insurrection. Federal rule backed by the Army. It did not arrive as spectacle. It arrived as inevitability.

The pressure that had been provocation became flow.

Raids resumed, now shielded. And, in the absence of oversight, rules began to shift. Warrants became optional. Detentions lengthened. Courts delayed themselves into irrelevance. The presence of the military did not govern; it guaranteed that no one else could.

Helena Fairclough signed statements that said nothing and authorized everything. She told herself what she had always told herself. She remembered the couch. The smell. Her grandfather yellowing, freezing, speaking nonsense while her family said, “We’ll make do,” because they were not doctors. She had promised herself her daughters would never learn that arithmetic. Speaking fees, books, panels, consulting - she had already priced it all in. Justice was for people who could afford to die slowly.

In “Free Minnesota,” as the president now derisively called it, Martin Vance coordinated under this new set of imperatives and did not raise his voice. Each new assault blurred into the last. And the bonuses stacked up.

He remembered Iraq again, the day he watched that sergeant. Before he drove away, the sergeant gave a nod toward the other truck loaded with a pallet of cash.

Right there. Tens of millions, maybe more. A dignified ending bought outright. No selling the house. No ledger narrowing to zero. No community clinic, her hand shaking, holding an absurd paper triangle cup. He had been given the nod…but had done nothing. He wouldn’t make the same mistake again.

To hell with constitutional rights.

Federal power now moved on the ground, backed by the Army, and nothing stood between him and a number where other people stopped mattering.

Rex went back to work. He stopped hearing the shouting. He stopped seeing faces. He remembered his father dying in public, teeth gone, reeking, a body nobody bothered to shield. Fifty thousand had bought him escape. The next numbers would buy permanence. Whatever it took.

With that, the mechanics of an insurrectionary state simply kicked in.

Arrests without charge. Doors kicked in before dawn. People marched half-dressed into the snow. Detainees held standing until they urinated on themselves. Lawyers delayed until filings expired. Cameras blocked. Records sealed. Rights thinned into exceptions, then footnotes, then jokes.

Six states were placed under insurrection orders. Midterm elections were “suspended temporarily.” Control was declared necessary for stability. Forty-five House seats were filled by appointment. Three Senate seats followed. Seventy percent majorities in both houses.

The Supreme Court was quickly expanded to thirteen, and confirmations of the four new justices - each forty-year-old professors from “the right” law schools - followed.

The president died three months later.

The insurrection orders did not.

CODA

Martin Vance’s calculation that day was the coup de grâce, though few named it at the time. Getting enough money so that other people didn’t matter.

Enough so you could spend it out as you expired, and still die wearing your shirt.

By engineering a lien against every household - by making dignity at the end contingent on vast private wealth - mid-twentieth century America had forged the perfect instrument of corruption in a free society.

Leadership of a free people was no longer priceless.

Being lauded as a public figure meant nothing.

Being fêted as a public servant no longer had any value.

Because real freedom had a dollar figure.

And, at the scale of three hundred forty million souls, the state itself was the easiest way to secure your date with indignity. The biggest payday. The pallet.

Once the criminals realized this, and found a political valence - simple nativism - they needed accomplices.

The Helenas, Martins, and Rexes all lined up to exchange the millstone around their necks for the manacles around the necks of others.

In a free society.

With an unlimited line of minorities in America, there was a hundred years’ worth of targets against which the guns could be turned. Should these ever run out, ghosts alone would serve.

The founders believed that, by freeing men, there is a result: ambition unleashed. Your horizons? Limited only by your ambition.

Each participant, winners and losers alike, savoring their chances - it was obvious, loyalty to the system would become the highest nobility. Names on bridges. Peaceful quiet deaths at home.

Service to a system that raised up the dignity of all citizens. Admiration that outlived money.

That was two hundred and fifty years ago.

Now the calculation was simpler. Clean sheets. Familiar food. A quiet room at the end - maybe even your own - eased painlessly off stage with dignity and repose. Surrounded by family and friends.

Given the actual cost of that, many decided now that no other citizen needed to matter.

So the clubs swung. The lies to camera came easily - spoken beneath a ten-gallon hat. “Jobs are up. Prices are down. Crime is low. Pay your taxes.”

Read Part 1 in the series - When Your State is Being Invaded by ICE and DHS

Read Part 2 in the series - On Interposition: The Minneapolis Call 911 Gamble

Many of us thinkers out there would say his eloquence is equally founded in the “I’ve Been to the Mountaintop” speech. It’s audible thunder, validating the message – a message both prophetic for the future and tragically portentous for that now.

It is fitting, too that Dr. King’s statue has him seemingly carving himself out of stone, towering before us, actively hewn forward out of granite like a force of nature.

Fitting, too, because that’s what he did with language.

This line is, I think, as famous for the beauty of its promise as for the malevolence of evil it describes—

“I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.”

And, for most non-constitutional scholars, it brought us face to face for the first time with the term Interposition.

Interposition. Knowing what happened to the Little Rock Nine and to James Meredith, the term – interposition - bristling as it does with such state power, once in the hands of Dr. King - who added poetry and the tenor of his voice - it was easy to understand:

The federal government had rules we all agree to abide by. The transcendencies of the constitution.

Some states sought to interpose themselves between these and the people.

In Little Rock and for James Meredith, the federal government protected the people and made sure the rules were enforced.

We who lived in the shadow of WWII seemed to think it would be ever thus: virtuous governments seeking to add their state populations onto the roles of the future.

Crushing interposition left and right.

But, today, we must come to grips with a different understanding - that interposition can be a positive force, when it is Washington that brings injustice.

And, it all comes together, as you knew it would in…the Insurrection Act.

The Insurrection Act. The problem is with the word itself. Insurrection. Since it brings to mind civilians against the government.

“To-the-barricades!” Fists in the air.

Any state would be within its rights, right? Governments crush insurrection. Civilians so arrayed are simply shot in the streets. One and done.

Civilians arrayed in the streets? Fists in the air? Well, says Washington, “Today, that’s Minnesota.”

It MUST be an insurrection!

Let it brew. Let it brew. All the headlines will be mine.

(As an aside - that’s the Trump ideology: what can I say today to get the newspapers to write, “Trump said this: ‘Outrage inducing comment based on denial.’” “John McCain! He’s not a war HERO.” “Chuck Schumer! He’s not a JEW.” “George Clooney! He’s not an ACTOR.” “Greenland! It’s not a COUNTRY! “Ohhhh… this is SO easy. Watch the papers SCREAM! Here come the headlines. J.D. – learn how I do this, OK?!”)

But, you know, it’s funny about Insurrections, and the Insurrection Act. We’ve got it all wrong.

It’s not ABOUT what the PEOPLE are doing, you see? In the streets, or anywhere so arrayed.

It’s about what the states do. When STATES ignore federal orders…THAT’S insurrection.

Back to Little Rock, 1957 to get the example down pat:

Federal courts, applying the Equal Protection Clause as decided in Brown v. Board of Education, ordered the desegregation of Little Rock Central High School because racial segregation denied Black people equal constitutional status.

Governor Orval Faubus sought to interpose his authority over public order, the state education system, and the Arkansas National Guard and ordered armed Arkansas National Guardsmen to block the parents of nine Black students from enrolling their children, claiming gubernatorial power to preserve segregation against the Constitution’s command.

The federal government dissolved that interposition by federalizing the Guard and deploying U.S. Army troops so equal protection would reach those families in fact, not merely in principle.

And so, the roles are clear for Interposition’s most infamous 20th-century appearance:

• A good federal government asserts the validity of a national right.

• A state interposes its own evil, overriding federal authority.

• The federal government declares an insurrection is underway.

• Troops arrive. The interposition is defeated, and rights flow.

Easy, right? The federal government declares a right. A state interposes its own opposite decisions. An Insurrection is declared, and the Army arrives to defeat state recalcitrance.

Put another way,

A positive federal action; state interposition rejects; insurrection; army resolution.

And, ever we thought it to be thus.

But, there’s a trap door here. In sum, you see, this formulation relies on one thing - good faith. And, the trap door opens:

• Bad actors in the federal government.

This is where we are today, with the Minneapolis Call 911 gamble.

You see, today, the roles are reversed. Step one is still the same with the federal government.

A federal action. But, the formula is quite different.

• ·A negative federal action…

See? Bad actors in the federal government. Seeking to deny guaranteed rights. Arresting, deporting and even killing people for not resembling a specific racial stereotype closely enough; for free speech, for assembly; for immigration violations – for anything.

Again. Bad actors in the federal government. Literally reversing the situation in Little Rock. Where we had:

A positive federal action; a state interposition rejects; insurrection; army resolution. vs.

A negative federal action; a state interposition rejects;

And this brings us to the heart of what Minneapolis is now doing, through its police leadership. It is preparing for the second half of that formulation:

insurrection; army resolution.

When the city, speaking through Police Chief Brian O’Hara, tells residents to call 911 whenever unidentified armed or masked people are detaining someone, it is not urging a confrontation, but it is knowingly accepting one. A police chief does not imagine a quiet verification; he anticipates shouting, pleading, federal agents asserting authority, and the moment becoming public. That is a cauldron.

Chief Brian O’Hara told 60 Minutes that Minneapolis’s 911 system has been overwhelmed by calls related to federal immigration enforcement and that he fears “a moment where it all explodes,” underscoring how deeply tense and combustible the situation has become.

The local police show up. Citizens will be howling (rightfully so). The person in ICE custody will stand in cuffs, breathless from running. Or, cuffed and gasping on the ground, surrounded by family, half of whom are citizens. The imprisoned person may be, too. And, all of them will be screaming and pleading with the uniformed local cops.

Local cops who will need to go face-to-face with ICE or DHS agents.

Who blinks?

Remember:

A positive federal action; a state interposition rejects; insurrection; army resolution. vs.

A negative federal action; a state interposition rejects;

So rejected by local police, if ICE / DHS stands down, and is forced into retreat, as soon as they do, they just pick up the phone, call Washington and say, “The local cops here just stopped (interposed) one of our immigration actions.” Interposition.

Insurrection.

Why the City?

It seems that this is the direction of the Minnesota case: from federal action, to state interposition. In this case, on the side of the angels. Yes, in fact, that’s what Washington is counting on.

No state can watch its residents publicly degraded, seized in the street by masked men, pressed to the pavement while families scream, and still pretend that order remains intact. That is not Minnesota escalating a conflict; that is Washington provoking one. And it is deliberate. Federal actors are waiting for interposition. They are waiting for the moment a city or a state finally says enough, so that the word “insurrection” can be spoken without hesitation. The danger is not that the label fails to fit; the danger is that it fits by design.

This is the unsettling truth: the statutory form of insurrection can be satisfied even when the substance is moral resistance. The law does not ask whether the federal action was just. It asks whether a state has interfered. That is the leverage of bad faith. In Little Rock, federal power was exercised to vindicate constitutional equality. In Minnesota, federal power is exercised to deny it. The choreography is the same; the moral direction is reversed. Interposition occurs. “Insurrection” is declared. Troops are summoned. The difference is not legal architecture. The difference is intent.

The words “call 911” came from the police chief and city guidance, not from the governor and not in the mayor’s own voice. This is not a lack of coordination; it is structured deniability. Minneapolis is not acting apart from Minnesota; it is acting as Minnesota’s largest city, closest to the provocation, where encounters are most visible, where cameras already are, where courts and witnesses are within reach. The governor stands one step back not because he is absent, but because clarity is punished faster than complicity in moments like this.

When the city says “call 911,” with the police chief as its instrument, what follows is understood. Local police arrive. Federal agents are confronted in public. Families surround the scene. Voices rise. Phones record. The question becomes unavoidable: who governs here, and under what law? If ICE retreats, interposition is declared. If ICE presses on, indecency is documented. Either way, a record is made.

However, here is the quiet counterweight to the thunder of the Insurrection Act. A sort of silver lining, if only for a moment. Troops sent under the Insurrection Act do not bring martial law. They do not dissolve courts. They do not suspend the Constitution. They do not cancel civilian authority. They become domestic law enforcement—bound by warrants, probable cause, civilian courts, and civilian judgment. Whatever fury attends the declaration, the law reasserts itself at ground level. That, it appears, is the number Minneapolis is betting on, with the governor one step back and the city taking first contact.

And, it is something certainly Trump does not know. It’s sure that no one has told Trump about this. He’s just got himself all wrapped around the axel of the phrase. It sounds so James Bronson, right? In his mind, he’s going to send Sgt. Skullcrusher to Minnesota on remote control.

On Elections

But there is a deeper danger, and it is not confined to Minnesota.

Confusion itself can be the objective. Not victory in one state, but precedent. Not enforcement, but disorientation. With insurrection, six months to a year of blurred authority—federal or state, lawful order or executive fiat—creates the opening. From there the argument writes itself: these states are “in rebellion” – this is sure to be among their phrases; conditions are “unsafe”; elections cannot proceed; extraordinary measures are required. Governors appoint. Or the Executive appoints. Or, no one does. Democracy is not overturned in a single stroke; it is paused, “temporarily.”

That is why this moment matters. Dr. King warned, not in hope but in indictment, that “law and order exist for the purpose of establishing justice and when they fail in this purpose they become the dangerously structured dams that block the flow of social progress.” What is at issue here is not disorder in the streets, but order weaponized against the people it claims to govern. Delay, confusion, and procedural fog are not neutral conditions; they are instruments. Abuse does not need to prevail forever—it needs only to persist long enough to be normalized, litigated into exhaustion, and folded into routine.

And here lies a concealed threat just as grave as what we see in the streets: the integrity of elections. Not Minnesota’s compliance, not Minnesota’s resistance, but precedent. A template. Two or three states branded “rebellious,” authority blurred long enough to argue that conditions are unsafe, governance suspended in the name of stability. History shows that democratic erosion rarely announces itself with tanks; it arrives by memo, by emergency order, by postponement justified as temporary and prudent. The danger is not that Minnesota is lost, but that confusion is made productive—productive enough to test whether consent can be deferred, representation reassigned, or democratic processes quietly placed “on hold.”

And so the question is not whether Minnesota is right. It is whether being right is enough. Refusing to provoke a declaration may require something far harder than defiance: patience under injustice, restraint under humiliation, and a willingness to deny bad-faith actors the clash they seek. Dr. King named this burden without euphemism in Letter from Birmingham Jail, warning that “justice too long delayed is justice denied,” and that order prized over justice becomes an instrument of oppression. The hardest choice may be whether to endure delay—knowing the cost is borne by real people, lived in wounds rather than abstractions—or to act now and risk turning conscience into pretext. That is the question this moment presents.

1. Commercial-use and heavy vehicles exceeding defined daily or rolling mileage thresholds must hold same-day operating authorization during the emergency period. – DAILY MILEAGE AUTHORIZATION

Reporting regimen: Daily mileage-exceedance log with odometer documentation, filed in person or by certified mail at the local transportation office.

Permit display: Daily dated windshield sticker.

Resident hotline: Yes, visual absence or expiration only.

Violation results: Ordered off public roads until cured; civil fine per day.

99% civic impact control: Thresholds set above ordinary commuting; non-commercial vehicles excluded.

2. Heavy vehicles exceeding curb-weight or axle thresholds may not occupy public street parking beyond posted short-term limits. – HEAVY VEHICLE PARKING CONTROL

Reporting regimen: Street-parking movement logs retained by operator.

Permit display: None.

Resident hotline: Yes, location and duration overstay only.

Violation results: Citation, towing, impoundment, and fees.

99% civic impact control: Residential vehicles below thresholds excluded.

3. Commercial-use and heavy vehicles must maintain current state safety certification during the emergency period. – COMMERCIAL VEHICLE SAFETY INSPECTION CERTIFICATION

Reporting regimen: Weekly inspection-status certification filed by the operating entity.

Permit display: Valid inspection decal.

Resident hotline: Yes, missing or expired decal only.

Violation results: Temporary operating suspension until inspected; civil fine.

99% civic impact control: Private, non-commercial vehicles excluded.

4. Vehicles exceeding defined load, weight, or utilization thresholds on designated corridors during restricted hours must comply with infrastructure-protection controls. – CORRIDOR LOAD MANAGEMENT

Reporting regimen: Daily corridor-use report listing time block, route, and load category.

Permit display: Time-window or route sticker.

Resident hotline: Yes, visual sticker mismatch only.

Violation results: Civil fine; route or time-window suspension for repeat violations.

99% civic impact control: Thresholds exceed typical civilian travel patterns.

5. Mandatory delay between purchase and installation of commercial-grade tires applies to commercial-use and heavy vehicles. – COMMERCIAL TIRE INSTALLATION DELAY

Reporting regimen: Weekly deferred-installation report filed by sellers.

Permit display: None.

Resident hotline: Yes, installer noncompliance only.

Violation results: Civil fine per tire; temporary suspension of installer authorization.

99% civic impact control: Limited to commercial accounts and heavy-vehicle SKUs.

6. During peak dining hours, large parties must split into smaller tables or dine outside peak times. Not enough tables? Establishment must decline service. – PEAK-HOUR SEATING CONCENTRATION

Reporting regimen: Daily peak-hour seating log with weekly summary.

Permit display: None.

Resident hotline: No.

Violation results: Administrative fine; tighter permit conditions for repeat violations.

99% civic impact control: Peak-hour only; no patron identification.

7. Lodging stays during the emergency period must be booked no fewer than 21 days in advance, and same-day or walk-in stays are prohibited. – ADVANCE LODGING BOOKING (21-DAY RULE)

Reporting regimen: Daily booking lead-time report filed by licensed operators.

Permit display: None.

Resident hotline: No.

Violation results: Civil fines; temporary booking suspension for repeat noncompliance.

99% civic impact control: Ordinary residents not engaging in short-notice lodging are unaffected.

8. Concurrent short-term lodging bookings exceeding defined thresholds require verification before confirmation. – BULK SHORT-TERM BOOKING VERIFICATION

Reporting regimen: Weekly bulk-booking disclosures by platforms.

Permit display: None.

Resident hotline: No.

Violation results: Booking holds; platform civil penalties.

99% civic impact control: Single, ordinary bookings excluded.

9. High-volume commercial laundry operations must observe extended turnaround times to manage utility strain during the emergency period. – COMMERCIAL LAUNDRY LOAD MANAGEMENT

Reporting regimen: Biweekly throughput and turnaround reports certified by management.

Permit display: None.

Resident hotline: No.

Violation results: Administrative fines; utility throttling for repeat violations.

99% civic impact control: Household laundry excluded by volume thresholds.

10. Aggregated purchases of designated staple goods during a single shopping visit may not exceed emergency thresholds. – STAPLE GOODS AGGREGATION LIMIT

Reporting regimen: Transaction-aggregation reports generated by retailers when thresholds are crossed.

Permit display: None.

Resident hotline: No.

Violation results: Delayed fulfillment; civil penalties for non-reporting.

99% civic impact control: Thresholds set above normal household buying.

11. Residents or small businesses experiencing incidental compliance burdens from emergency measures may claim time-limited relief. – TEMPORARY TAX ABATEMENT

Reporting regimen: Simple attestation citing affected rule(s) and dates; receipts optional.

Benefit: Refundable credit or fee waiver capped per filer.

Abuse control: Random audit eligibility; civil penalties for false claims.

On our Well-Ordered Society Being Tapped

Buddy, we have an armed force descending on an infrastructurally sound region, misrepresenting it as being in rebellion, then swinging by the amply stocked supermarkets to get fresh hot sliced bread every morning. In sum, they are using the SUCCESS of a rule-of-law society - clean restaurants, wide streets, warm hotels, welcoming aspirant merchants, cars for hire of every kind - using all the FRUITS of what LAW allows, to rip out parts of the fabric of society they find offensive.

It is that TAPESTRY, bent backs straining together, that BUILT those very same green nirvanas - that call to the most-motivated from around the planet.

So, you want to use our well-maintained state system to your own masked and perverse ends? Well, friend, you see - one of the things about being in “law” enforcement? You need to ABIDE by the laws.

Use state law.

And, Mock Them

To ADD to all that, I would encourage people to go buy big puritan hats. And, whenever a masked federale comes in to your place of business, put it on and LAUGH your ass off at them. Take a picture of their rental car and then ask them, “Did you follow the law on rental inspections? Can I see the papers?” “I notice you malcontents have a lot of protein bars? Did you follow our state’s STAPLE GOODS LIMIT rules? Can I see your receipts? I’ve got your photos - you know we have enforcement in this state, right?” “What hotel are you staying at? Was that a 21-day in-advance reservation?” “Hey, Captain America - who was John Locke? When was Jamestown founded? When was New York the capital of the USA? Well? (point to the hat) Well?!”

Attempts to determine the identity of the perpetrator in the Zodiac case often begin by framing it as a story of a criminal so clever that he outpaced the tools of his era and vanished by force of intellect alone. That explanation has always been unsatisfying. A more grounded reading starts elsewhere—not with what did happen, but with what did not.

No authenticated archives were discovered. No notebooks ever surfaced. No practice sheets appeared. No private library of symbols, codes, or drafts ever emerged.

And the perpetrator himself did not reappear, anywhere, in any form that counts, after 1974.

All of these things that did not happen offer a way to narrow the field—to move toward the shortest list of possible names for who the killer might be.

The starting point is not psychology. It is in after-effects. Begin with what the offender demonstrably produced. In the surviving letters alone sent to newspapers the Zodiac drew by hand at least 793 cipher characters - 408 in the Z408, 340 in the Z340, 13 in the Z13, and 32 in the Z32, plus additional symbols and diagramming in the surrounding letters and cards.

These were not casual marks. They required reference, practice, false starts. No one reliably produces that volume of symbolic material from memory alone. Such work presupposes source materials and rehearsal: pages of trial and error, discarded drafts, and reference texts kept at hand.

The ciphering and symbols allow us to bracket his formative years. The first clue to who he might be, or where we can find evidence of him.

Letter-substitution codes, symbol alphabets, and rotating decoder wheels were standard features of mid-century American youth instruction and hobby culture. The technique is mechanical: write a message in normal letters, then replace each letter with a mark from a lookup key. For example, if the key says A = △, B = □, C = +, then the word CAB becomes + △ □. A decoder wheel does the same job with two printed alphabets on rotating disks: you set a starting position, then write each letter as its shifted partner.

The Zodiac’s cipher writing operates in that same register. The symbol inventory is dominated by basic geometric and typographical forms - circles, crosshairs, plus signs, triangles, squares, short strokes, and punctuation-like marks—exactly the kind of marks that recur in youth code pages because they are easy to draw consistently and hard to misread. The structure aligns as well: a mark stands in for a letter, and some common letters are given more than one mark so the text does not repeat in an obvious pattern.

That combination points to a specific life stage. People do not typically acquire this style of symbol-alphabet writing in middle age; they acquire it when the culture hands it to them—through youth books, clubs, and instruction. If the Zodiac is using it fluently in 1969, the most direct inference is that his formative exposure falls in the 1940s through the early 1960s. That places him, when the crimes begin, most plausibly in the late teens through early thirties.

What distinguishes him is not that he once learned these systems, but that he stayed with them and brought them forward unchanged. He did not treat the codes as a one-off stunt; he returned to them as a recurring instrument of control—deciding who can read, when the public must wait, and how much effort must be spent to reach him. That persistence is not compatible with vague childhood reverie. It implies retained reference material: manuals, copied tables, notes, or practice sheets. In other words, he kept those works as seeming reference materials for a world he would rather live in - and he used them repeatedly, as a private toolkit that anchored his identity and his method.

Yet none of these kept tools have ever appeared over the ensuing years.

Such held materials have a way of resurfacing. They turn up in places everyone recognizes: a cardboard box pulled from a closet, a paper sack at a garage sale, a banker’s box under a folding table in the shade of a driveway sale. Old notebooks get flipped through. Loose pages are thumbed. Dog-eared manuals sit among mismatched paperbacks. This is how parts of private lives re-enter the world.

None of that happens here. No notebooks resurface. No manuals drift into circulation. No stray pages appear in flea markets, secondhand shops, or estate clearances. For someone who produced this volume of symbolic work, the silence of the ordinary afterlife of possessions is the anomaly. Writers leave things behind. Symbol-makers leave even more.

That disappearance is not limited to objects. The offender himself vanishes. After 1974, nothing. There is no relocation. No re-emergence in Dallas. In Philadelphia. In Minnetonka, or any other city under a new name and the using same perverse calling card. There are no analogous crimes, no new taunting letters to different regional powerhouse - and unusually local - newspapers, no attempts to perpetuate the persona. Everything simply ceases. The generally accepted corpus of evidence stops at 1974.

For someone so determined to seize public attention, the categorical evaporation makes no sense. By 1974, through a half-decade horrific chain of violence and human indifference - 7 victims, 5 deaths, at least 13 threats to society mailed to newspapers - the Zodiac had crowbar-ed himself into national public consciousness. He forced the Bay Area’s largest newspaper to serve as his conduit, demanding and receiving prominent publication of his cipher and threats. He kept police, editors, and readers in a roiling state of anxiety, and the case was vivid enough that when a caller claiming to be the Zodiac phoned a live television broadcast with host Jim Dunbar and attorney Melvin Belli, he was put on the air - an episode so well known it remains a fixed landmark in the story.

That level of notoriety mattered - but not because it rewarded the violence. Because, by the time that identity reaches the point of acting out, it has already been shaped by attrition rather than choice. A sequence of rebukes, failures, and uncorrected humiliations has narrowed his inner life to grievance, until resentment becomes the only stable orientation left. What arrives is not a blank slate waiting to be seen, but a hardened posture, carried intact into isolation.

And then, the notoriety. The identity exists privately until it is exposed. Once seen - however obscene the exposure - the mere fact of visibility, with attention being paid, is sufficient to sustain repetition. The acts continue not because they work, but because they are no longer solitary.

Voluntary cessation is unlikely. Stopping would require more than restraint; it would require dismantling the posture that has come to organize his inner life.

We can clearly infer that being this monster occupied all of his non-working hours. As we can infer other things, from his case, and those who have repeated such crimes over the years. Then, finally, from his age - late teens to mid-twenties to mid-thirties - we can infer much more. The footprint he leaves in the snow. Unaware.

He is far more likely to have been a loner by circumstance and temperament, but not an idle one. He would have found steady employment, yet the kind of work that leaves nothing behind at the job itself. Blue jeans labor. Hands on, tool based work. A trade or site job where you show up, do the work, and leave with what you brought. Roofing, perhaps.

Such a life produces little outward record. No office, no desk, no drawer of papers to be inventoried. No colleagues handling personal effects. No supervisor boxing up a workspace. Everything you own stays in your rented room.

And socially, such a person is often estranged rather than merely solitary. No spouse. No children. Few, if any, close friends. No one waiting to claim boxes when the lease is broken. Or, when it stops being paid. Or, even to notice you’re not there, or not coming out.

And, for an entire symbolic archive such as what must have accompanied the hand-written production of nearly 800 ciphers over at least 13 mailed letters, for every scrap of that to simply disappear, the work space must satisfy strict constraints. It must be occupied alone. It must lack family members, spouses, or adult children who would sort, save, or question what they found. And, it must be rented. Rented rather than owned. Only a rental explains the evaporation of all the expected physical evidence. A rental abandoned due to non-payment.

Cleared quickly, by people whose task is disposal, not interpretation.

Indifferent disposal of all the contents of a rented room in a single day. Followed fast by quick next-day whitewashing to speed turnover. And, this is the key clue that leads us to a concrete list of potential suspects.

If we take these constraints seriously - a renter who retained adolescent cipher systems into early adulthood, who produced an extraordinary private archive and yet left no trace of it behind, and is unlikely to have lived inside dense social networks – if we focus on this, a picture begins to slowly come into focus rather than leap into view

This matters because the psychology implied by the crimes-public boasting, symbolic exhibitionism, controlled violence-requires both isolation and structure. Enough solitude to cultivate lurid fantasies uninterrupted, enough routine to sustain it over years. A rented room supplies both. It is small, controlled, and entirely private. It becomes the whole interior world.

With this, the end state follows, and the vanishing of not just the person but every single scrap of his after effects makes perfect sense - and points the best way for us to identify who he probably was.

Given that we assume he was employed in such a way as to let him arrive to do a task and then leave wholly self contained - speeding back to his solitary cell - in-cel before cel, but surely the celibacy was there - speeding back to his burrow on this day, perhaps on a motorcycle, something happens. A center line is crossed. A turtle on the road...

When such a person dies suddenly, the response is procedural, not personal. The calendar advances whether anyone cares or not. Day six. Day fifteen. Day thirty-two. Rent goes unpaid. A note is taped to a door, or isn’t. A landlord waits briefly, or not at all, and does what small landlords have always done when rent stops arriving. The room is opened. Whatever is inside is treated as abandoned property. Papers are thrown out with the rest.

Everything in the room is treated alike, because there is no one present to argue for distinction. Perhaps the cleaning crew spoke no English. The notebooks are not notebooks; they are trash. The symbols - if the notebooks are ever even opened - are not symbols; they are doodles. The worn manuals are not books; they are weight. Bags are filled. The contents are removed in bulk, sometimes with irritation, sometimes with contemptuous curses muttered, always with indifference - to the dumpster.

Anyone reading can understand the setting. A door banged on. A posted notice flapping loose. A stranger deciding what stays and what goes. If your own life were reduced to a single room, and you did not answer, the same switches would flip. The same bin would be filled. The same erasure would occur.

That mechanism does more than explain disappearance; it narrows the field.

Only a small class of lives end this way: single men, living alone, renting, estranged, dying suddenly, leaving no one to intervene.

In a city the size of Vallejo in the mid 1970s, those cases are few. They appear in coroner logs, in landlord complaints, in county burial records. They linger, sometimes, even in memory.

Within that handful of records, the mystery collapses from myth to name. Not hidden in code, not buried in genius, but written plainly in the clearest script - an unclaimed death in 1974 of an unmarried man under forty in Vallejo, California.

Why Vallejo?

Stop the timeline at July 1969. After only the first two attacks. Look what repeats.

The first two crimes happen in the Vallejo area.

After the second attack, a call is made from the payphone at Springs Road and Tuolumne Street in Vallejo to… the Vallejo Police Department.

Then the mail arrives and repeats Vallejo again. The 408 cipher is split into three parts and mailed to three newspapers: the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and… the Vallejo Times-Herald. San Francisco is the obvious place to send material for a large audience. The Vallejo Times-Herald is the choice that narrows the focus back to Vallejo.

Put the pieces side by side and the early pattern is plain. The first phase sits around Vallejo. The call is placed from Vallejo. The local newspaper selected alongside two San Francisco papers is the Vallejo Times-Herald. Vallejo shows up as the operating area, the phone location, and the local audience.

After that, later crimes do not require a new home base. And, if anything, indicate a person leaving FROM Vallejo, in a fugue we can imagine, driving in a straight line, and then in a straight line back again.

Lake Berryessa - Northbound travel runs from Vallejo into Napa on State Route 29, passing through American Canyon. From the Napa area, the common southern approach toward Lake Berryessa follows State Route 121 and the Monticello Road corridor. The same roads allow the return: Lake Berryessa back to Napa, Napa back through American Canyon, American Canyon back to Vallejo.

Southbound travel is just as direct. Interstate 80 runs through Vallejo and carries travel across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco. Interstate 80 also provides the return: San Francisco back across the Bay Bridge, back through Interstate 80, back into Vallejo. The map makes both directions workable as out-and-back trips rather than a move.

The dates fit the same practical picture. Lake Herman Road occurred on Friday, December 20, 1968. Blue Rock Springs occurred late on Friday, July 4, 1969, continuing into the early minutes of Saturday, July 5, 1969. Lake Berryessa occurred on Saturday, September 27, 1969. Presidio Heights occurred on Saturday, October 11, 1969. The cluster is late-week nights. Late-week nights are when a person can leave, drive a corridor, and still return to weekday routines.

But, then, in 1974, everything stops. For years people have tried to find the culprit by pinning the crime on the living – a parade of unlucky, hapless suspects.

They looked odd. Lived odd lives, and may have been - truly - odd.

But, being odd ain’t no way to find killers.

Recall, Christopher Jefferies, the UK landlord and retired schoolteacher whose individuality was mistaken for menace, allowing tabloids to invent a murderer before the facts had even arrived.

The clues all point to Vallejo: a male renter, unmarried, who dies in 1974 - unexpectedly and young. Under forty. Most likely in an accident. Get that list - it’s your strongest set of possible perpetrators.

Timeline

Among the dates, the mailings listed below are the ones that are publicly authenticated or have entered the evidentiary record, and that bear directly on the structural constraints at issue.

Lake Herman Road, Benicia (December 20, 1968)

1. Two people shot and killed, and no phone call is reported.

---

Blue Rock Springs, Vallejo (July 4, 1969)

1. Two people shot, one died, and a call was later made to the Vallejo Police Department from the Springs Road & Tuolumne Street payphone in Vallejo.

2. On July 31, 1969, a handwritten letter was mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle with one-third of the 408 cipher, and the envelope was San Francisco postmarked.

3. On July 31, 1969, a handwritten letter was mailed to the San Francisco Examiner with one-third of the 408 cipher, and the envelope was San Francisco postmarked.

4. On July 31, 1969, a handwritten letter was mailed to the Vallejo Times-Herald with one-third of the 408 cipher, and the envelope was San Francisco postmarked.

5. On August 4, 1969, the “This is the Zodiac Speaking” letter was mailed to the San Francisco Examiner.

Lake Berryessa, Napa (September 27, 1969)

1. Two people were stabbed, one died, and a phone call is placed directly to the Napa Sheriff’s Department from a payphone in Napa—dialing the department’s number rather than any emergency relay.

Presidio Heights, San Francisco (October 11, 1969)

1. One person shot and killed, and no phone call is reported.

2. On October 13, 1969, a letter was mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle enclosing a piece of Paul Stine’s shirt.

3. On November 8, 1969, a mailing to the San Francisco Chronicle included the Z340 cipher.

4. On November 8, 1969, a mailing to the San Francisco Chronicle included the “Dripping Pen” card.

5. On November 9, 1969, the “Bus Bomb” letter was mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle.

6. On December 20, 1969, the “Melvin Belli” letter was mailed to Melvin Belli.

7. On April 20, 1970, the “My Name Is...” letter with the Z13 cipher was mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle.

8. On March 13, 1971, the Los Angeles Times letter was mailed and was Pleasanton postmarked.

9. On January 29, 1974, the “Exorcist” letter was mailed.

The Victims

Lake Herman Road (Benicia, California) - December 20, 1968: David Arthur Faraday (male, 17, high school student) and Betty Lou Jensen (female, 16, high school student), dating (a young couple), both shot and killed.

Blue Rock Springs (Vallejo, California) - July 4, 1969: Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin (female, 22, restaurant worker/waitress) and Michael Renault Mageau (male, 19, laborer), acquaintances / on a date that night, both shot; Ferrin died, Mageau survived.

Lake Berryessa (Napa County, California) - September 27, 1969: Cecelia Ann Shepard (female, 22, college student) and Bryan Calvin Hartnell (male, 20, college student), friends (not a couple), both stabbed; Shepard died, Hartnell survived.

Presidio Heights (San Francisco, California) - October 11, 1969: Paul Lee Stine (male, 29, taxi driver), alone (no companion victim), shot and killed.

There is no war.

Call it what it is.

Felony murder.

WHAT TO DO

State charges to follow.

Recently, the citizens elected to helm the executive branch have been fond of “creating facts on the ground,” then telling the rest of the government to catch up. Time for us to do the same.

State murder charges for everyone, from Hegseth down. Trump left out just to make him squawk.

HOW SO?

A civilian Secretary of Defense who orders or enables the unlawful killing of a non-combatant in international waters may be prosecuted for homicide by the state in which he is domiciled, because a civilian federal official has no UCMJ shield and state homicide law applies fully to its own residents for murder - committed anywhere in the world.

Thus, if the Secretary is a resident of Idaho, Idaho may indict, extradite, and try him just as it would any resident who caused a death abroad, with federal Supremacy Clause protection unavailable because ordering the killing of innocents is never within lawful federal authority. This rule is supported by Skiriotes v. Florida, 313 U.S. 69 (1941), and Blackmer v. United States, 284 U.S. 421 (1932).

AND THE UNIFORMED OFFICERS?

Killing, or ordering the killing of, a non-threatening unarmed person unable to fight back is always unlawful under military, federal, and state law.

Accordingly, any uniformed military officer who commits or directs such an act anywhere may be prosecuted for homicide by the officer’s home state, because killing innocent people is a crime every state punishes when committed by its own residents, regardless of where in the world it occurs - and the UCMJ offers no shield for conduct that is unlawful in all circumstances. This authority is supported by Skiriotes v. Florida, 313 U.S. 69 (1941), and Blackmer v. United States, 284 U.S. 421 (1932).

IT’S INTERNATIONAL WATERS!

Under federal law, soldiers on U.S. vessels in international waters are fully subject to U.S. criminal statutes — including 18 U.S.C. §1111 (murder) — because U.S. jurisdiction follows American nationals aboard U.S. ships outside U.S. territory; this rule is formally defined as the Special Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction (18 U.S.C. §7).

A non-soldier on an American vessel in international waters is likewise fully subject to U.S. criminal statutes — including 18 U.S.C. §1111 (murder) — because federal jurisdiction attaches to U.S. nationals aboard U.S.-flag ships outside U.S. territory; this, too, operates through the Special Maritime and Territorial Jurisdiction (18 U.S.C. §7), which extends ordinary federal homicide law to Americans on U.S. vessels beyond national waters.

I’M A FAMOUS SEC. DEF. TV STAR IN MY STATE OR A DECORATED GENERAL AND FAVORITE SON

Not any more. Killing unarmed people morally corrupts every American. That’s WHY it is illegal.

And we’ve designed the system to protect us from this very set of people who simply will to power. Looky here: under our federal system, no state may shelter a fugitive from another. Kinda clever sometimes, them framers, right? Once a valid charge and warrant issue, the receiving state must surrender the accused.

In sum, if your home state properly charges you and issues a valid warrant, you will be arrested wherever found and you will be extradited, as shown when billionaire financier Allen Stanford was seized in Virginia and delivered to Texas to face fraud charges — Puerto Rico v. Branstad, 483 U.S. 219 (1987).

I HEARD DE SANTIS REFUSED TO DO THAT TO (NATCH) PROTECT TRUMP

DeSantis publicly vowed that Florida would not “assist” in extraditing Trump, but the issue never reached a legal showdown because Trump voluntarily appeared in New York and no extradition request was ever issued; had New York actually demanded extradition, Florida would have been legally powerless to refuse under the Extradition Clause and Puerto Rico v. Branstad (1987), meaning that despite the rhetoric, a valid interstate warrant would still have resulted in arrest and extradition.

CONCLUSION

This ends the pretense: since there is no “war,” there is only felony murder committed against unarmed civilians.

Call it what it is.

Felony murder.

State charges must now follow. We’ll create our own facts on the ground.

Every participant — from Hegseth downward, with Trump strategically omitted just to make him howl — stands indictable where they reside because neither uniforms nor titles erase homicide statutes.

And no governor’s posturing will save them, because interstate extradition is mandatory and DeSantis’s bluff collapsed the moment Trump surrendered voluntarily, proving that a real warrant would have forced Florida to comply under Puerto Rico v. Branstad (1987).

BAND ON THE RUN - HOW IT TURNS OUT

Captive in your own state and on the run, you rotate between state highway motels and the cramped back seat of your car — your car, which becomes a rolling cell you keep promising to replace, then realizing you can’t, then obsessing over how you might, before accepting that every option only tightens the net.

You arrive at the homes of people who once toasted your promotions: an aunt who opens the door with terrified eyes; a cousin who whispers your name like a question; an old friend whose kids stare at you as if danger itself had knocked.

They give you a couch, a blanket, a hurried plate of food, but never the ease that used to greet you, and you leave before dawn because their faces make clear what no judge has yet said aloud — that the man who fired on the unarmed can’t stay under their roof.

By day you haunt chain restaurants, always the same type — bright menus, plastic booths, anonymity by design. You have cash, plenty of it, the residue of a career that once made you a minor state legend, a favorite son whose return home once drew smiles without effort. Now unshaven in a corner booth, slovenliness like a disguise, only to fear the next second maybe it’s like a beacon.

You pay in cash, tip too much, ache for nothing more than a waitress’s passing smile, the casual warmth that once came to you naturally, as a birthright almost. But none of it comes. Instead, fragments of yourself in the window’s reflection — the man who once pointed to that very code and called it a higher moral calling. You watch that man flicker and disappear, again and again. And for what? All for a moment in the toxic sunlight of a decaying autocrat.

Press secretary (rude pushback)

Don’t insult me. These emails are federally held evidence in an active investigation. A false statement about evidence — even in a press briefing — is the kind of thing that gets referred to inspectors general and prosecutors for obstruction. So let’s avoid that: is it true that Trump’s name shows up in more than half of the Epstein emails in congressional custody?

Rude answer but confirmation

“And let’s anchor this properly: is it true that Jeffrey Epstein was a state-registered sex offender who pled guilty to soliciting sex from a minor?”

Glum answer

Thank you. No further questions

Rude Insult again

“You sound confused. I asked a factual question. You may think you’re working for Mr. Trump. He selected you for your role, yes, but you serve the people of this country — every one of them. You work for me, and for the citizens who rely on this room for clarity, not combat. I advise you to remember that your real duty is not to shield a single man, but to safeguard a republic that depends on honest service. You stand here on the public’s behalf — act like it.”

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/the-epstein-email-cache-2-300-messages-many-of-which-mention-trump-5edf0226

DEETS

When a matter is under active federal investigation, statements about the contents of federally held evidence fall within federal jurisdiction. Knowingly making false or misleading claims about that evidence, even in a public forum, can be treated as an effort to obstruct oversight or impede the proper administration of the inquiry. Because of this, such conduct is subject to scrutiny under false-statement and obstruction statutes and may be referred to inspectors general for review.```

18 U.S.C. § 1001 — False Statements:

Whoever, in any matter within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government, knowingly and willfully makes any materially false, fictitious, or fraudulent statement or representation shall be fined or imprisoned.

18 U.S.C. § 1512(c)(2) — Obstruction of an Official Proceeding:

Whoever corruptly obstructs, influences, or impedes any official proceeding, or attempts to do so, shall be fined or imprisoned.

18 U.S.C. § 1519 — Falsification in Federal Investigations:

Whoever knowingly makes a false entry or false statement with the intent to impede, obstruct, or influence the investigation or proper administration of any matter within the jurisdiction of any department or agency of the United States shall be fined or imprisoned.

We left the 4th Estate to HELP the 4th Estate.

Ask, “Is it true that people allied to Juan Orlando Hernández bought Trump crypto products?“

RUDE PUSH BACK from press secretary

Respond, “You sound confused. Mr. Trump is a public servant, right?.”

RUDE PUSH BACK

Respond: “Again, you sound confused. I asked if Mr. Trump is a public servant?”

RUDE PUSH BACK WITH ADMISSION

Respond: “Exactly — he’s a public servant. And when his crypto business feeds his revocable trust, Section 102 requires disclosure.”

https://law.justia.com/codes/us/2010/title5/app/ethicsing/sec102/

⭐ 5 U.S.C. § 13104(a)(3)

(formerly 5 U.S.C. App. § 102(a)(3))

“(3) The source and type of income exceeding $200, and the amount or value of income exceeding $1,000, from any source, except for income referred to in paragraph (1)(A), aggregating less than $1,000 from a single source, which shall be listed by the category of amount or value prescribed in section 13105 of this title.”

⭐ 5 U.S.C. § 13104(e)(1)(A)

(formerly 5 U.S.C. App. § 102(e))

“(e) The term ‘income’ means all income from whatever source derived, including but not limited to—
(1) compensation for services, including fees, commissions, and salaries,
(A) gross income derived from business,
(B) gains derived from dealings in property,
(C) interest,
(D) rents,
(E) royalties,
(F) dividends,
(G) alimony,
(H) annuities,
(I) income from life insurance and endowment contracts,
(J) pensions,
(K) income from discharge of indebtedness,
(L) distributive share of partnership gross income,
(M) income in respect of a decedent, and
(N) income from an interest in an estate or trust.”

We already have Trump’s favorite dodge in the mix. Per the Post, on giving the order to kill all the survivors, “Trump said Hegseth told him ‘he did not say that’, and I believe him, 100 percent.”

Paging Vladimir Putin? “…I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today...“ “I have President Putin — he just said it’s not Russia.“

War crimes. Plain and simple.

80 more bodies on 5th Avenue. And, still, Red America never wavers.

The Roman statesman Cato the Elder (Marcus Porcius Cato) is known for ending his speeches—regardless of the topic—with the declaration: “Carthago delenda est” - “Carthage must be destroyed.”

And, you see, going forward, there is more democrats need to do. So, allow me to adopt something similar but to expand upon it:

No stealing from the working as we build a government only to fund the wealthy in their lifestyle pursuits. H.R. 1, 119 - Trump’s budget proposal - is, too, simply a crime.

Denying life, liberty or property without the right to try the evidence against the acused is Unamerican, and unacceptable. A Church Committee for ICE.

Candidate quality: Trump did’t WIN the election, Kamala Harris LOST it: Democrats cast about 6–7 million fewer votes in 2024 than in 2020, based on national popular-vote totals (≈ 75 million in 2024 vs. ≈ 81.3 million in 2020). No Candidate that doesn’t motivate.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/11/30/trump-hegseth-caribbean-strikes-kill-order/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2019/11/15/trump-issues-pardons-war-crimes-cases-despite-pentagon-opposition-move/

https://www.cfr.org/article/2024-election-numbers

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2025/06/26/voter-turnout-2020-2024/