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mostlysignssomeportents · 1 month

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The one weird monopoly trick that gave us Walmart and Amazon and killed Main Street

I'm coming to BURNING MAN! On TUESDAY (Aug 27) at 1PM, I'm giving a talk called "DISENSHITTIFY OR DIE!" at PALENQUE NORTE (7&E). On WEDNESDAY (Aug 28) at NOON, I'm doing a "Talking Caterpillar" Q&A at LIMINAL LABS (830&C).

Walmart didn't just happen. The rise of Walmart – and Amazon, its online successor – was the result of a specific policy choice, the decision by the Reagan administration not to enforce a key antitrust law. Walmart may have been founded by Sam Walton, but its success (and the demise of the American Main Street) are down to Reaganomics.

The law that Reagan neutered? The Robinson-Patman Act, a very boring-sounding law that makes it illegal for powerful companies (like Walmart) to demand preferential pricing from their suppliers (farmers, packaged goods makers, meat producers, etc). The idea here is straightforward. A company like Walmart is a powerful buyer (a "monopsonist" – compare with "monopolist," a powerful seller). That means that they can demand deep discounts from suppliers. Smaller stores – the mom and pop store on your Main Street – don't have the clout to demand those discounts. Worse, because those buyers are weak, the sellers – packaged goods companies, agribusiness cartels, Big Meat – can actually charge them more to make up for the losses they're taking in selling below cost to Walmart.

Reagan ordered his antitrust cops to stop enforcing Robinson-Patman, which was a huge giveaway to big business. Of course, that's not how Reagan framed it: He called Robinson-Patman a declaration of "war on low prices," because it prevented big companies from using their buying power to squeeze huge discounts. Reagan's court sorcerers/economists asserted that if Walmart could get goods at lower prices, they would sell goods at lower prices.

Which was true…up to a point. Because preferential discounting (offering better discounts to bigger customers) creates a structural advantage over smaller businesses, it meant that big box stores would eventually eliminate virtually all of their smaller competitors. That's exactly what happened: downtowns withered, suburban big boxes grew. Spending that would have formerly stayed in the community was whisked away to corporate headquarters. These corporate HQs were inevitably located in "onshore-offshore" tax haven states, meaning they were barely taxed at the state level. That left plenty of money in these big companies' coffers to spend on funny accountants who'd help them avoid federal taxes, too. That's another structural advantage the big box stores had over the mom-and-pops: not only did they get their inventory at below-cost discounts, they didn't have to pay tax on the profits, either.

MBA programs actually teach this as a strategy to pursue: they usually refer to Amazon's "flywheel" where lower prices bring in more customers which allows them to demand even lower prices:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaSwWYemLek

You might have heard about rural and inner-city "food deserts," where all the independent grocery stores have shuttered, leaving behind nothing but dollar stores? These are the direct product of the decision not to enforce Robinson-Patman. Dollar stores target working class neighborhoods with functional, beloved local grocers. They open multiple dollar stores nearby (nearly all the dollar stores you see are owned by one of two conglomerates, no matter what the sign over the door says). They price goods below cost and pay for high levels of staffing, draining business off the community grocery store until it collapses. Then, all the dollar stores except one close and the remaining store fires most of its staff (working at a dollar store is incredibly dangerous, thanks to low staffing levels that make them easy targets for armed robbers). Then, they jack up prices, selling goods in "cheater" sizes that are smaller than the normal retail packaging, and which are only made available to large dollar store conglomerates:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/27/walmarts-jackals/#cheater-sizes

Writing in The American Prospect, Max M Miller and Bryce Tuttle1 – a current and a former staffer for FTC Commissioner Alvaro Bedoya – write about the long shadow cast by Reagan's decision to put Robinson-Patman in mothballs:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-08-13-stopping-excessive-market-power-monopoly/

They tell the story of Robinson-Patman's origins in 1936, when A&P was using preferential discounts to destroy the independent grocery sector and endanger the American food system. A&P didn't just demand preferential discounts from its suppliers; it also charged them a fortune to be displayed on its shelves, an early version of Amazon's $38b/year payola system:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/28/enshittification/#relentless-payola

They point out that Robinson-Patman didn't really need to be enacted; America already had an antitrust law that banned this conduct: section 2 of the the Clayton Act, which was passed in 1914. But for decades, the US courts refused to interpret the Clayton Act according to its plain meaning, with judges tying themselves in knots to insist that the law couldn't possibly mean what it said. Robinson-Patman was one of a series of antitrust laws that Congress passed in a bid to explain in words so small even federal judges could understand them that the purpose of American antitrust law was to keep corporations weak:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/04/14/aiming-at-dollars/#not-men

Both the Clayton Act and Robinson-Patman reject the argument that it's OK to let monopolies form and come to dominate critical sectors of the American economy based on the theoretical possibility that this will lead to lower prices. They reject this idea first as a legal matter. We don't let giant corporations victimize small businesses and their suppliers just because that might help someone else.

Beyond this, there's the realpolitik of monopoly. Yes, companies could pass lower costs on to customers, but will they? Look at Amazon: the company takes $0.45-$0.51 out of every dollar that its sellers earn, and requires them to offer their lowest price on Amazon. No one has a 45-51% margin, so every seller jacks up their prices on Amazon, but you don't notice it, because Amazon forces them to jack up prices everywhere else:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/01/managerial-discretion/#junk-fees

The Robinson-Patman Act did important work, and its absence led to many of the horribles we're living through today. This week on his Peoples & Things podcast, Lee Vinsel talked with Benjamin Waterhouse about his new book, One Day I’ll Work for Myself: The Dream and Delusion That Conquered America:

https://athenaeum.vt.domains/peoplesandthings/2024/08/12/78-benjamin-c-waterhouse-on-one-day-ill-work-for-myself-the-dream-and-delusion-that-conquered-america/

Towards the end of the discussion, Vinsel and Waterhouse turn to Robinson-Patman, its author, Wright Patman, and the politics of small business in America. They point out – correctly – that Wright Patman was something of a creep, a "Dixiecrat" (southern Democrat) who was either an ideological segregationist or someone who didn't mind supporting segregation irrespective of his beliefs.

That's a valid critique of Wright Patman, but it's got little bearing on the substance and history of the law that bears his name, the Robinson-Patman Act. Vinsel and Waterhouse get into that as well, and while they made some good points that I wholeheartedly agreed with, I fiercely disagree with the conclusion they drew from these points.

Vinsel and Waterhouse point out (again, correctly) that small businesses have a long history of supporting reactionary causes and attacking workers' rights – associations of small businesses, small women-owned business, and small minority-owned businesses were all in on opposition to minimum wages and other key labor causes.

But while this is all true, that doesn't make Robinson-Patman a reactionary law, or bad for workers. The point of protecting small businesses from the predatory practices of large firms is to maintain an American economy where business can't trump workers or government. Large companies are literally ungovernable: they have gigantic war-chests they can spend lobbying governments and corrupting the political process, and concentrated sectors find it comparatively easy to come together to decide on a single lobbying position and then make it reality.

As Vinsel and Waterhouse discuss, US big business has traditionally hated small business. They recount a notorious and telling anaecdote about the editor of the Chamber of Commerce magazine asking his boss if he could include coverage of small businesses, given the many small business owners who belonged to the Chamber, only to be told, "Over my dead body." Why did – why does – big business hate small business so much? Because small businesses wreck the game. If they are included in hearings, notices of inquiry, or just given a vote on what the Chamber of Commerce will lobby for with their membership dollars, they will ask for things that break with the big business lobbying consensus.

That's why we should like small business. Not because small business owners are incapable of being petty tyrants, but because whatever else, they will be petty. They won't be able to hire million-dollar-a-month union-busting law-firms, they won't be able to bribe Congress to pass favorable laws, they can't capture their regulators with juicy offers of sweet jobs after their government service ends.

Vinsel and Waterhouse point out that many large firms emerged during the era in which Robinson-Patman was in force, but that misunderstands the purpose of Robinson-Patman: it wasn't designed to prevent any large businesses from emerging. There are some capital-intensive sectors (say, chip fabrication) where the minimum size for doing anything is pretty damned big.

As Miller and Tuttle write:

The goal of RPA was not to create a permanent Jeffersonian agrarian republic of exclusively small businesses. It was to preserve a diverse economy of big and small businesses. Congress recognized that the needs of communities and people—whether in their role as consumers, business owners, or workers—are varied and diverse. A handful of large chains would never be able to meet all those needs in every community, especially if they are granted pricing power.

The fight against monopoly is only secondarily a fight between small businesses and giant ones. It's foundationally a fight about whether corporations should have so much power that they are too big to fail, too big to jail, and too big to care.

Community voting for SXSW is live! If you wanna hear RIDA QADRI and me talk about how GIG WORKERS can DISENSHITTIFY their jobs with INTEROPERABILITY, VOTE FOR THIS ONE!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/14/the-price-is-wright/#enforcement-priorities

#pluralistic #Robinson-Patman Act #ftc #alvaro bedoya #monopoly #monopsony #main street #too big to jail #too big to care #impunity #regulatory capture #prices #the american prospect #Max M Miller #Bryce Tuttle #a and p #wright patman

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gregraven · 2 years

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Fiat forever

These statements were made during hearings of the House Committee on Banking and Currency, September 30, 1941. Members of the Federal Reserve Board call themselves “Governors.” Governor Marriner Eccles was Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board at the time of these hearings.

Congressman Wright Patman: “How did you get the money to buy those two billion dollars worth of Government securities in 1933?”

Governor Marriner Stoddard Eccles: “Out of the right to issue credit money.”

Congressman Wright Patman: “And there is nothing behind it, is there, except our Government’s credit?”

Governor Marriner Stoddard Eccles: “That is what our money system is. If there were no debts in our money system, there wouldn’t be any money.”

Congressman Duncan Upshaw Fletcher: “Chairman Eccles, when do you think there is a possibility of returning to a free and open market, instead of this pegged and artificially controlled financial market we now have?”

Governor Marriner Stoddard Eccles: “Never, not in your lifetime or mine.”

#fiat currency #Wright Patman #Marriner Stoddard Eccles

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living400lbs · 1 year

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Ever hear about the WWI veterans that marched to DC for their promised bonus pay?

In 1924, Congress had voted (over Coolidge’s veto) for the World War Adjusted Compensation Act, which was meant to make up the difference between a soldier’s pay during wartime and what he would have made in civilian life. The maximum a veteran could hope to receive was $625. The catch, however, was that this bonus was not scheduled to be paid until 1945. For men hunkered down in the trenches of the Great Depression, that seemed a long time to wait; $600 could make a huge difference to the life of a hungry and jobless veteran. Some Democratic politicians agreed.

Since 1929, Congressman Wright Patman of Texas had campaigned for a bill to amend the Compensation Act to pay out the bonuses immediately. By early 1932, it looked like the bill might finally come up for a vote, against the strenuous opposition of the president, almost all Republicans, and even many Democrats (including Governor Roosevelt). Portland’s veterans’ association asked all its members to sign petitions and write to politicians to help secure the vote. Walter Waters was a little more canny about the ways of Washington: “Our only hope was in following the successful tactics of Big Business; when its representatives wanted something from Congress, they went to it personally and said so.” He stood up in veterans’ meetings and suggested that Portland veterans send a delegation to Washington to directly lobby senators and congressmen. Initially, the men were unconvinced and trusted their government to do the right thing. But in Washington, politicians from both parties saw the bonus bill as a license to print money without the backing of gold or bond issues. On May 6, 1932, the House Ways and Means Committee voted to permanently shelve the bonus bill. Four days later, Portland’s veterans agreed to send a delegation of 250 men under strict military discipline to the nation’s capital. That same day, they headed down to the rail yards to embark on their journey across the United States. ...

Meanwhile, in Texas, Florida, Maine, Michigan, California, and dozens of other states, thousands of veterans suffering through hard times had read about the Oregon marchers, and they, too, hit the road for the nation’s capital. By May 29, when Walter Waters and his men finally made it to Washington, more contingents were on their way, some as large as 1,500 men, with a few wives and children in tow as well.

From A Square Meal by Jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe

#bonus marchers #veterans #wwi #wwi veterans #jane Ziegelman and Andrew Coe #a square meal #great depression #us history

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agape-philo-sophia · 2 months

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➝ How YOU as ‘Slaves’ Or ‘Cargo’ became Lost At Sea.. Never likely to return - And It’s All Legal. 🚨

“Nothing in this world, nothing, works the way you think it does. There’s always more to the story.” – Jordan Maxwell

“The SEA gave up its dead, and death and the grave gave up their dead. And all were judged according to their deeds.” —Revelation 20:13

“Your dead will live; Their CORPses will rise. You who lie in the dust, awake and shout for joy, For your DEW is as the DEW of the dawn, And the earth will give BIRTH to the departed spirits.” —Isaiah 26:19

Banking/”Government”

“All of the perplexities, confusion, and distress in America arises, not from the defects of the Constitution or Confederation, not from want of honor or virtue, so much as from downright ignorance of the nature of coin, credit and circulation.” – President John Adams

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.” – Henry Ford

“And I sincerely believe, with you, that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies; and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” – President Thomas Jefferson

“Since I entered politics, I have chiefly had men’s views confided to me privately. Some of the biggest men in the U.S., in the field of commerce and manufacturing, are afraid of somebody, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it.” – President Woodrow Wilson

“There exists a shadowy government with its own Air Force, its own Navy, its own fundraising mechanism, and the ability to pursue its own ideas of national interest, free from all checks and balances, and free from the law itself.” – Senator Daniel Inouye

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the large centers has owned the government of the U.S. since the days of Andrew Jackson.” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt

“In the United States today, we have two governments. We have the duly constituted government and then we have the independent, uncontrolled and uncoordinated government in the Federal Reserve System operating the money powers which are reserved for Congress by the Constitution.” – Rep. Wright Patman

“Whoever controls the volume of money in any country is absolute master of all industry and commerce.” – President James A. Garfield

“History records that the money changers have used every form of abuse, intrigue, deceit, and violent means possible to maintain their control over governments by controlling money and its issuance.” – President James Madison

“Let me issue and control a nation’s money and I care not who writes the laws.” – Mayer Amschel Rothschild

“The powers of financial capitalism had a far-reaching plan, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole… Their secret is that they have annexed from governments, monarchies, and republics the power to create the world’s money…” – Prof. Carroll Quigley

“Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth.” – Sir Josiah Stamp, Director of the Bank of England

“Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States.” – Sen. Barry Goldwater

“We have in this country one of the most corrupt institutions the world has ever known. I refer to the Federal Reserve Board and the Federal Reserve Banks. Some people think the Federal Reserve Banks are U.S. Government institutions. They are not government institutions. They are private credit monopolies; domestic swindlers, rich and predatory money lenders which prey upon the people of the United States for the benefit of themselves and their foreign customers. The Federal Reserve Banks are the agents of the foreign central banks. The truth is the Federal Reserve Board has usurped the Government of the United States by the arrogant credit monopoly which operates the Federal Reserve Board.” – Congressman Louis T. McFadden, Chairman of the House Banking & Currency Committee

“This Act establishes the most gigantic trust on earth…When the President signs this Act, the invisible government by the money power, proven to exist by the Money Trust Investigation, will be legalized…The new law will create inflation whenever the trust wants inflation…From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.” – Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, on creation of Federal Reserve, 1913

“Equality of opportunity is dying in an era when central banks are gaming the global economy.” – Ray Dalio, Founder Of World’s Largest Hedge Fund

“The Bank of England was incorporated on July 27, 1694, as a private joint-stock association, with a capital of £1.2 million. In return for the loan of its entire capital to the government it received the right to issue notes and a monopoly on corporate banking in England. Of course they only lent the principal so the interest would keep accumulating by compound interest. Since the loans could NEVER be repayed the moneylenders had complete control of the government and people.” – Secrets of the Bank of Rome

The King of England financially backed both sides of the Revolutionary War. – Treaty of Versailles- July 16, 1782 Treaty of Peace 8 Stat 80

“The Colonies would gladly have borne the little tax on tea and other matters had it not been the poverty caused by the bad influence of the English bankers on the Parliament, which has caused in the Colonies hatred of England and the Revolutionary War.” – Benjamin Franklin

“If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their money, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them, will deprive the people of their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered… The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.” – President Thomas Jefferson

The IRS is not a US government agency. It is an agency of the IMF, which is an agency of the United Nation. – Black Law’s Dictionary 6th Ed. pg 816. The US has not had a treasury since 1921 – 41 Stat. Ch. 214 pg 654. The US treasury is now the IMF – Presidential Documents Volume 29 – No. 4 page 113, 22 USC 285-288.

The FCC, CIA, FBI, NASA and all of the other alphabet gangs were never part of the US government. Even though the “US Government” held stock in the various agencies. – US v Strang, 245 US 491 + Lewis v. US, 680 F.2d, 1239

SSN’s are issued by the UN through the IMF. The IMF issues the SS5, not the Social Security Admin. – 20 CFR Chap. 111 Subpart B 422.103 (b)

Voluntary Servitude

“A nation or world of people, who will not use their intelligence, are no better than animals that do not have intelligence; such people are beasts of burden and steaks on the table by choice and consent.” – William Cooper

In 1302 Pope Boniface VIII issued the papal bull Unam sanctam which states “It is absolutely necessary for salvation that every human creature be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” They control the CIA, Homeland Security & The Council on Foreign Relations. The Pope can abolish any law in the United States. “The 1st Cestui Que Vie Trust, created when a child is born, deprives us of all beneficial entitlements and rights on the land. This Bull had the effect of conveying the right of use of the land as Real Property, from the Express Trust Unam Sanctam, to the control of the Pontiff and his successors in perpetuity. Hence, all land is claimed as “crown land.” – Stop The Pirates

“The word “common” was created from the combination of two ancient pre-Vatican Latin words com/comitto – “to entrust, commit” and munis – “burden, public duty, service or obligation”. In other words, the real meaning of common is the concept of “voluntary servitude” or simply “voluntary enslavement.” – Frank M. Webb

The word service originates the Latin servus for servant or slave.

“The attorney’s first duty is to the courts and the public, not to the client, and wherever the duties to his client conflict with those he owes as an officer of the court in the administration of justice, the former must yield to the latter. “Clients (You) are called “wards of the court” in regard to their relationship with their attorneys.” – Corupus Juris Secundum According to Black Law Dictionary “Wards of court.” are “Infants and persons of unsound mind.” You cannot be in wardship status in a court and execute authority. + picture. It is not the duty of the police to protect you. Their job is to protect THE CORPORATION and arrest code breakers. – Sapp vs. Tallahassee, 348 80. 2nd. 363, Reiff vs. City of Phila. 477 F.Supp. 1262, Lynch vs. NC Dept. of Justice 376 8.13. 2nd. 247

“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution” – Aldous Huxley

“It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.” – J. Krishnamurti

“The real hopeless victims of mental illness are to be found among those who appear to be most normal. “Many of them are normal because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does.” They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness. These millions of abnormally normal people, living without fuss in a society to which, if they were fully human beings, they ought not to be adjusted.” – Aldous Huxley

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

Maritime Law

Before the emergence of Common Law, we were all subject to Canon Law of the Roman Cult, also known as the Law of the Sea (counterpart to maritime law.) The Law of the Sea is banking law. It is international by nature.

“We can’t even begin to count the number of times Judges, Lawyers and statesmen have said: “There isn’t any common law anymore. It has been replaced by statutes.” They would be more truthful if they said: “It has been replaced by martial law.” – Supreme Court Judge A.H. Ellett. There are No Judicial courts in America and have not been since 1789. Judges do not enforce Statutes and Codes. Executive Administrators enforce Statutes and Codes. – PRC v. GE 281 US 464 Keller v. PE 261 US 428, 1 Stat. 138-178

“A place, district, or country occupied by an enemy stands, in consequence of the occupation, under the Martial Law of the invading or occupying army, whether any proclamation declaring Martial law, or any public warning to the inhabitants, has been issued or not. Martial Law is the immediate and direct effect and consequence of occupation or conquest. The presence of a hostile army proclaims its Martial Law. ” – Article 1, Lieber Code. Check out r/EndlessWar

“The United States Revenue Cutter Service, officially the Division of Revenue Cutter Service, was established in 1790 as the Revenue-Marine by then-Secretary of the Treasury Alexander Hamilton, to serve as an armed maritime law enforcement service.” Their logo is the same used on US currency.

The Law of the Flag is used to designate the rights under which a ship owner, who sends his vessel into a foreign port, intends to contract. If you enter an embassy, you will be subject to the laws of that country, just as if you board a ship flying a foreign flag, you will be subject to the laws of that flag, enforceable by the “master of the ship,” (Captain), by the law of the flag. The judge sitting under a gold or yellow fringe flag is the “captain” or “master” of that ship or enclave and he has absolute power to make the rules as he goes. The judges are appointed because the courts are military courts and civilians do not “elect” military officers. Flags displayed in the courtroom with gold braid and fringe means it’s an admiralty court that administers the law of commerce. – Ref.: Ruhstrat v. People, 57 N.E. 41

It’s all commerce. Witnesses in court testify in the dock and your case is placed in a docket. Witnesses are vessels. We use words like currency (current,) cash flow, liquid asset, banking, drowning in debt, bank accounts can can dry up, or be frozen. We all try to stay afloat. We may ask a Loan shark for help. When you place your home on the real estate market; you are putting it up for sale/sail. When a product leaves a warehouse, it is shipped. Citizen-ship, Partner-ship, Owner-ship, Relation-ship. The gate between you and a judge is a floodgate. On top of it is a bar (sandbar.) You haven’t been licensed to pass the bar (exam.) This is why they call going before the judge being in deep water. You’re passing the sand bar into deep water. You will need to be legally bailed out. To bail out means to “remove water from a ship.”

They are criminals engaged in press-ganging land assets into the international jurisdiction of the sea. What we are dealing with are governmental services corporations – not our lawful government. They are merely claiming to “represent” our government. Every living American has more civil authority on the land jurisdiction of the Continental United States than the entire Federal United States government. It’s time that we exercised that inherent power and put an end to this gross criminality, fraud, and usurpation by our “public servants.” – Anna von Reitz

“The 3rd Cestui Que Vie Trust, created when a child is baptized. It is the parents’ grant of the Baptismal certificate––title to the soul––to the church or Registrar. Thus, without legal title over one’s own soul, we will be denied legal standing and will be treated as things––cargo without souls––upon which the BAR is now legally able to enforce Maritime law.”

Birth certificates

Under Maritime law, when a ship pulls into a port, it is considered to be “in it’s berth. When a ship berths in a port or dock, the captain has to provide a berth certificate (passenger manifest.) This is why all ships are referred to as female. When you are born, you come through your Mother’s birth/berth canal through water. Now you too must provide a birth/berth certificate.

“Since the 1540 creation of the 1st Cestui Que Act, whenever a Baptismal Certificate is issued, the parents have gifted, granted and conveyed the soul of the baby to a “3rd” Cestui Que Vie Trust owner by Roman Cult … This live birth record as a promissory note is converted into a slave bond sold to the private reserve bank of the estate and then conveyed into a 2nd and separate Cestui Que (Vie.) Trust per child owned by the bank. Upon the promissory note reaching maturity and the bank being unable to “seize” the slave child, a maritime lien is lawfully issued to “salvage” the lost property and itself monetized as currency issued in series against the Cestui Que (Vie) Trust.” – Frank M. Webb “The 2nd cestui Que Vie Trust, created when a child is born and, by the sale of the birth certificate as a Bond to the private central bank of the nation, depriving us of ownership of our flesh and condemning us to perpetual servitude, as a Roman person, or slave. When a mother signs a registration of live birth she is actually abandoning the child under maritime Admiralty Law.”

“In 1933 the US went bankrupt. Central bankers said we have a way for you to conduct commerce, pledge citizens as collateral. Since the early 1960′s State governments, themselves legal fictions as indicated by full caps, have issued birth certificates to “persons” using all-caps names. This isn’t a record of your physical birth, but a legal fiction indicated by the use of all-caps. It may look as if it’s your proper name, but that’s impossible since no proper name is ever written in all-caps. Your “strawmans” life and property have been pledged as collateral for government debt. Each one of us are considered assets of the bankrupt US. We are designated by this government as human “resources” or human “capital.“ – Executive Order 13037. You may have noticed that all “personnel” offices have been converted to “human resource” offices.”

“The all-caps fictitious corporate entity is then placed into a “trust”, known as a “Cestui Que Trust”. Trust in the form of a Registry Number by registering the Name, thereby also creating the Corporate Person and denying the child any rights as an owner of Real Property. You are identifying as a corporation existing in the jurisdiction of corporate law. This makes you liable for any violations of corporate code. The system created the trust, and the system can dictate EXACTLY how that trust must perform, or it will suffer penalties.” – Frank M. Webb The Birth Certificate is the government’s created legal instrument for its legal title of ownership, or deed, to the personal legal fiction they have created. – Stop The Pirates. The 13 original colonies were called companies and the United States Is a Corporation. They are using a language you were not taught against you constantly. Mort (Mortgage) is derived from the word death. You are considered a legally dead, fictitious entity.

“Don’t let this information alarm you because without it you cannot be free. You have to Understand that all slavery and freedom originates in the mind. When you mind allows you to accept and understand that the United States, Great Britain and the Vatican are corporations which are nothing but fictional entities which have been placed in your mind, you will understand our slavery is because we believe in fictions.” – Stephen Ames, The Ultimate Delusion

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mike-jacque-c-the-world · 3 years

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10/19/21 - Atlanta State Park, TX - We’re enjoying our stay in the woods by the lake. We’ve had great weather and as you can see, gorgeous sunsets as well. It’s also been a great location for hiking and cycling. All we need now is a pickle ball court and there would be no reason to leave.

#atlanta state park #texas #wright patman lake #lake sunset #by the lake #life is good

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agentnico · 3 years

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The Batman (2022) Review

For those of you doubting Robert Pattinson being cast as Batman, may I remind you that he has played a vampire before. Is it not therefore natural for a vampire to turn into a bat? I rest my case.

Plot: When the Riddler, a sadistic serial killer, begins murdering key political figures in Gotham, Batman is forced to investigate the city's hidden corruption and question his family's involvement.

Right, time to do some maths! So the current DC Extended Universe Batman is Ben Affleck (though rumoured to be leaving after The Flash), Michael Keaton is confirmed to be donning the suit once again for multiple DC films, Robert Pattinson is now flying in as Patman, the lovely charitable Keanu Reeves is voicing Batman is DC League of Super-Pets and I’m certain Will Arnett’s Lego Batman (he still counts!) is still out and about. So that’s what, 5 current Batmen? I don’t know what this means but what I do know is that this shows that Hollywood is out of original ideas. Regardless, Robert Pattinson is now Batman, and this one is promised to be even darker and more brooding than the previous versions. Eventually with every iteration trying to be darker in a couple of years we’ll be watching a Batman movie that is literally just a plain black image that stays on for 2-3 hours. Speaking of the runtime, The Batman is way too long. I don’t want to jump straight to a negative, but gosh is this movie too long. Running at 3 hours, and with most of the imagery being dark and plain one naturally gets bored. Yes, I said it, I got bored watching The Batman. Not through all of it, there are some genuinely good scenes and some of the cast performances are stellar, however for a lot of it I did notice myself checking my non-existent watch. Yes, I don’t have a watch, sue me! Who even has a watch these days? Ever heard of a phone? Tap the screen and you’ve got the time! Easy. That being said you shouldn’t be on your phone in the cinema as I don’t condone such behaviour. So what I’m saying is, I was bored and I couldn’t even check the time! Disastrous, I know.

The Batman’s story is one that strips the superhero character to the basics. Yes, there is action, but at its heart the movie is a detective mystery, where Batman alongside Jeffrey Wright’s James Gordon follow Riddler’s clues to find him as well as discover secrets behind the corruption of Gotham. That is all well and okay, however the mystery and its solution are quite predictable. The reveals can all be seen from a mile away, so seeing Batman and Gordon take their sweet 3 hour time trying to work it out themselves is tedious and also proves that they both are terrible detectives and should reconsider their career choices. That being said, Bruce Wayne here really seems to love riddles, as whenever Riddler leaves him with yet another riddle, Bruce is like “yes, I know!! I know the answer to that!”. Alright mate, calm down, no one likes a show off. Then again, he must get bored walking around at night dressed as a bat. Guess solving riddles and puzzles adds some flair to his otherwise depressing life. I don’t know why I’m judging Bats so much, he’s actually one of the highlights of this film.

That’s right, Robert Pattinson makes for a good Batman. He’s reserved yet you can feel the anger behind the mask. He also does the voice well. But also Pattinson makes for a solid Bruce Wayne. You can feel Bruce’s tortured self reflect in his eyes, and you can really tell that this guy has missed a good few therapy sessions. Paul Dano as The Riddler is obviously great. Anyone who has seen the film Prisoners already knows that Dano can play creepy criminals well. He’s got that innocent everyday-guy face, however he can easily transform into a deranged maniac and do so successfully. He turns The Riddler into a truly scary presence, adapting the character more into a terrorist rather than a green suited gent with question marks on his outfits. Paul Dano is a stand out here and I love seeing him take these roles. Jeffrey Wright as Gordon was okay. Nothing against the guy, but his entire shtick here was to say every line with huge intensity as if he’s constantly constipated. Zoe Kravitz as Catwoman did Catwoman things, and Andy Serkis appears as Alfred and doesn’t do much. Kinda feels like he was only on set for a couple of days. Colin Farrell is unrecognisable as the Penguin, having received a similar face transformation to that of Jared Leto in House of Gucci and Gary Oldman in The Darkest Hour. Usually I see Farrell as a cast stand out, however in The Batman he’s, as Iron Man would say to Spider-Man “if you’re nothing without this suit, then you shouldn’t have it.”. For I feel outside of the Penguin fat-suit Colin Farrell doesn’t do anything special here. And lastly I wanted to mention John Turturro as Carmine Falcone, who feels like he walked straight out of The Godfather set, as he played the mob boss with eloquent charm, and I kept waiting for him to say “I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse”. He never did though. He never did. Shame.

Overall The Batman I think should be titled as A Batman. Not terrible, and has its moments, but overall I don’t think it adds much new to the Batman formula, and again, I must say, its too long. I kind of feel if it was shorter the negatives wouldn’t stand out so much to me, but 3 hours for this was too long. Also, the ending of the film is flat out silly. Following the serious realistic tone of the first two hours, the movie ends on a catastrophic event that in a nutshell doesn’t make sense. There’s this big thing that happens, and then in the next scene characters just act like nothing happened and that what occurred was an easy fix. Felt a tad stupid, however I cannot say more without spoilers. Anyway, enjoyable but forgettable. And here be lies my verdict.

Overall score: 6/10

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antoine-roquentin · 5 years

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In 2009, when the world was falling apart, a lot of people were asking new President Barack Obama to turn to Paul Volcker, the tall and prestigious former central banker whose reputation was of near God-like stature. Obama did, asking Volcker for advice. But Larry Summers, key advisor to Obama, sabotaged the relationship. Volcker encouraged Obama to stop banks from gambling with internal hedge funds, but Summers wanted banks to keep gambling with internal hedge funds. Summers won the bureaucratic fight.

Volcker’s titanic reputation was by then decades old. But so too was Volcker pursuing honesty in finance, and getting pushed out because of it. In 1986, Ronald Reagan essentially fired Volcker from his position as the head of the Federal Reserve because Paul Volcker was trying to crack down on the junk-bond fueled mergers craze that was clearly corrupting America’s savings and loan banks. Felix Rohatyn, a Democratic fixer and Lazard investment banker, pleaded with the Republicans, “if we sacrifice Paul Volcker for the junk-bond mania, we will clearly show the world that we’ve lost any sense of financial responsibility.”

Here’s a story from 1986, at the height of the frenzy.

Volcker lost the battle at the Fed, and ultimately Alan Greenspan, who was on the payroll of one of the largest corrupt savings and loan banks, took over. Volcker, in pursuing financial rectitude, had no allies except the ‘respect’ of the financial world, which, as it turns out, isn’t worth much at all. And the reason, ironically, is because Volcker killed his greatest would-be allies.

I first ran into Volcker’s career while researching Penn Central, the train system that went bankrupt in 1970 in the greatest then-collapse in American history. It was like the Enron of its time. The Nixon administration tasked the conservative Volcker with overseeing the fiasco, and he was a fairly honest broker. He tried, not very hard, to get a bailout, but when Congressman Wright Patman said no, that was that.

In 1979 Jimmy Carter nominated Volcker to be the head of the Fed. Carter's advisor warned him that Volcker was the "candidate of Wall Street." In an era of red-hot inflation, Volcker's goal was to cut the growth of prices, with the ultimate end of keeping the dollar strong globally. He had popular backing, Americans saw inflation as the most pressing economic problem. Volcker went straight at the auto sector, the unionized pace setting industry which set the informal wage growth patterns of the entire country since the 1950s.

His goal was to crush wages, straight out. To give you a sense of how strongly he felt about this goal, consider that during this period, from the late 1970s to the mid-1980s, Volcker walked around with a card of union wages in his pocket to remind himself that his goal was to crush the middle class. Volcker even angered Reagan officials by keeping interest rates too high for too long. When they complained, he would pull “out his card on union wages” and note that inflation would not come down permanently until labor “got the message and surrendered.” Volcker said that the prosperity of the 1950s and 1960s was a "hall of mirrors" and that the "standard of living of the average American must decline."

Volcker was a deeply conservative, but not corrupt, official. I think the speech that best exemplifies how he thought was one he gave in 1981 before the Economic Club of New York, lauding the bankruptcy and turnaround of the city.

Five years ago, when I last addressed the Economic Club, the preoccupation of the day was the acute financial distress of this great City and State. That big black headline in the Daily News—"Ford to New York: Drop Dead"—was not quite accurate. But in its bold and brazen way, it did carry an essential message. Any lasting solution to our economic problems would have to begin, and end at home.

A month or so ago, I was struck by another headline, this time in a Wall Street Journal editorial: "The Supply Side Saves New York." Somehow, in five years, New York had become an example for the rest of the country to follow.”

Volcker, in other words, was an ardent fan of austerity. And in his speech, he explicitly noted that New York City had no printing press to get out of the fiscal jam it had been in. That was, as Volcker put it, “fortunate.” Instead, the city had to slash expenditures, particularly on the poor. Volcker hoped that the America would take this lesson to heart nationally, and since he ran the printing press, that’s what he made sure happened. He also believed strongly in slashing taxes, government spending, and in deregulation, as he said to businessmen in Kansas City that year.

Volcker raised interest rates radically, crushing small businesses, farms, banks, and credit unions. To many of his fans, and even his opponents, this was simply what had to be done to get inflation out of the system. But there was a brief experiment, if forgotten, experiment in trying a different path, In the spring of 1980, Jimmy Carter encouraged Volcker not to raise interest rates, but to place “credit controls” onto consumer borrowing. Credit controls are direct public rules on specific lending institutions that make it more or less expensive to lend or borrow, and were a major mechanism to keep inflation out of the system during World War Two and the Korean War. And the Fed had the authority to make it more expensive for banks and financial institutions to issue credit cards and lend money to consumers.

Volcker used these tools incredibly poor, clumsily even, with some suspecting he was intending to sabotage the use of regulatory tools he didn’t like. Inflation collapsed, as did interest rates and the economy slid rapidly. Within a few months, Volcker and the bankers got rid of credit controls. Inflation and interest rates jumped right back up, and Volcker was able to discredit credit controls. He then inflicted massive pain on the middle class instead of the banking system by using interest rates and monetary policy, instead of explicitly telling big banks to stop lending.

At the same time as Volcker was destroying unions, small banks, small farms, and small businesses, he was structuring the Too Big to Fail model of finance. In 1980, Nelson and Bunker Hunt, two oil billionaire heirs, tried to corner the silver market in league with Arab interests. Volcker organized a bailout. By 1980, Wall Street had gotten the message. Economist Albert Wojnilower explained, “It is now everywhere taken for granted that no monetary authority will allow any key financial actor to fail."

In the middle of the 1980s, Volcker’s strategy looked like a success. Inflation was gone, the economy was growing, technology seemed to be restructuring society, and the workforce had largely been de-unionized. But there was a something of a mirage, as a bubble in financial leverage through savings and loan banks and junk bonds emerged. Volcker tried to crack down on this bubble, to block the use of junk bonds for certain kinds of seedy transactions. He knew a scumbag when he saw one, and the junk bond peddlers and M&A artists were scum. But by then, his allies against financial corruption, notably the small banks, small business, and unions, were dead or dying. So it was Paul Volcker and all his vaunted respect, versus an army on Wall Street.

There was no contest. The predatory bankers won, as they did again in 2009.

Towards the end of his life, Volcker railed against the corruption he saw everywhere. But he never connected the dots between his own actions destroying public institutions and the inability to constrain the financial corruption he despised. Many people in finance have fond memories of an incorruptible Paul Volcker standing up against financial corruption and reigning in inflation. Which is true. But Volcker really wasn't on the side of democracy, and that's why he oversaw nothing but decline.

I ran into Paul Volcker a few years ago at a conference when I was a Democratic Congressional staffer. He harangued me and said 'why are you Democrats so weak?' I wish I had responded, 'because you killed the unions.'

And that is the tragedy of Paul Volcker.

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