No, that's not the racket.
Convective thought.

Earlier I made the fairly obvious point that we don't have TV or radio shows warning us of rackets and scams now, because the entire economy is rackets and scams.

Tonight while watching this 1952 Racket Squad episode I came to a deeper realization.

Most of the economy ISN'T a racket as such.

A successful scam is complicated. Lots of staging and scripting and acting. Layers of deception that can be impenetrable. Inheritances that don't exist, oil wells that don't exist, companies and patents that don't exist. In this episode a large amount of real money moves around, appearing to the sucker as legit transactions while never truly leaving the control of the scammers. At the end, the real money rejoins the scammers, PLUS a large amount of the sucker's money.

Our economy is NOT sophisticated. When you look up the OBJECTIVE definition of things like QE or options or derivatives or shorts or HFT, you can see with brutal clarity that they are pure theft. The transaction is based on things that don't exist; lots of money moves around; at the end you lose and Goldman wins. But nothing is hidden. When Bugsy started QE, he TOLD US openly and directly that he was doing it to pump up the stock market, and that's exactly what happened.

ZIRP is the simplest of all. You put money in the bank. You have an expectation, an implicit contract, based on NINE HUNDRED FUCKING YEARS OF BANKING, that the bank will pay you a little bit of interest on your savings. Goldman steals the interest. You have no recourse. There are no competing banks, no alternatives, no banks operating outside the crime syndicate. All banks steal your interest. Nothing hidden, nothing mysterious. Goldman wins, you lose.

NOT A RACKET because you have NO EXCUSE for being deceived. The entire robbery is OUT IN THE OPEN. It succeeds because Goldman owns the government and the "laws". It doesn't matter if you understand. You lose and Goldman wins. That is all.

But other aspects of USA STRONG do qualify as rackets. Consider the world of "hate crimes" and "date rapes" and "terrorism" and Dolezal. These are based on "events" that did not occur at all, or "events" that are intentionally staged, or actions like "transing" that cannot possibly exist; but everyone tells the same fake story about the "events" and "transitions". Or consider Big Science. Based on pseudotheories and pseudothings like Climate Change and evolution and dark matter and parallel universes that DO NOT EXIST, but everyone tells the same fake story about the "theories" and "universes".

All of these rackets involve a lot of work and drama. A lot of real money is sloshing around. In the end you lose your money or your education or your mind or your soul or your life, and you DON'T KNOW HOW IT HAPPENED.

That's a racket.

Labels: Carbon Cult, the broken circle

  ¶ 7:11 PM

  The new anti-racket squad
Returning to an old point... Media no longer trains us to detect rackets and scams because everything is a racket. Training would ruin the effectiveness of everything Deepstate does.

The Tesla 'shorts' have taken up the role of anti-racket training. One of them quotes a cartoon about engineers:

Engineer's Syllogism.

1. I am good at understanding numbers.
2. The stock market is made of numbers.
3. Therefore, ... WOW! Where did all my money just go?

The old-fashioned Racket Squad and Hello, Sucker emphasized that conmen LOVE to find a sucker who is focused on numbers. Even the simplest gaffs involve lots of money sloshing back and forth. If you're focused solely on adding and subtracting the dollars and cents, you aren't asking the basic question. WHY is all this money sloshing around? WHY isn't this a plain and simple transaction, trading a specific product or service for a specific amount of money?

If you're focused on REAL VALUE, direct exchange of labor for money, you're harder to fool. The entrepreneurial gaff and MLM gaff are clear violations of REAL VALUE. You put in years of hard and creative work, betting that you might get a big payoff. The payoff comes for a few but not for most. The few who get rich are the cheaters and conmen, not the honest workers.

Labels: Natural law = Sharia law, Natural law = Soviet law

  ¶ 11:55 PM

  Better understanding
After listening to lots of old radio shows about scams and rackets, I've come to understand the Carbon Scam in a more refined way. It's a two-part racket with a typical form. Setup and Payoff.

Setup is a fortunetelling scheme.

Payoff is blackmail by the parasitic parts of society against the productive parts.

A fortunetelling racket typically persuades the mark that her money is cursed, and requires her to turn over all of her money to the scammer for purification. (Historically the most successful instance of this racket was Catholicism.)

The carbon racketeers have mobilized the media, schools, government, army and churches to persuade all suckers that all productive activities are cursed. Making things is a Mortal Sin, because making things always generates Waste and Carbon. (Again the Catholic racket is a major player because of its superior experience.)

The priests (scientists) get lots of money (grants) for establishing this delusion in "scientific" form, but that's NOT the payoff. Priests are a necessary expense for the scammers.

Rackets are never something for nothing; on average the ratio of payoff to effort is within the same range as a regular investment. Scammers run scams because they are criminals. Doing things dishonestly brings them intrinsic pleasure. You can see this clearly in the 2009 Climategate emails. A few of the "scientists" are honest men who don't quite know what's happening; most are criminals who get their kicks from stacking the deck and lying.

The payoff starts AFTER the priests (scientists) have firmly established the delusion. After everyone 'knows' that all bad events are caused by Carbon Curses, the parasites (reinsurers, lawyers, bankers, speculators, journalists, EPA) can blackmail all producers. Give me your money and I'll remove the curse. (Curse = bad publicity, legal troubles, protesters.)

As with any blackmail, the amounts are carefully chosen. Big suckers can be milked for a long time; small marks are simply killed with the first lawsuit or fine.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Make or break

  ¶ 2:11 AM

  Cui bono MMT?
MMT and Bitcoin are similar and parallel rackets. Both are pluponents, pretending to oppose the current monetary system by making the system EVEN WORSE IN THE SAME DIRECTION. More debt, more abstraction, more disconnection from real value, more disconnection from negative feedback.

The payoff for Bitcoin is obvious. NSA gets complete information about all transactions made in the pretend "dark world" by idiots who think they're "private", and NSA also gets free computation service by the "miners", who are solving hard cryptographic problems for NSA. The pushers and charter racketeers like Max Keiser are making money in the old-fashioned Ponzi way. 1. Buy a bunch of tulips. 2. Create a Theology Of Tulips with rabid followers who defend Sacred Infinitely Valuable Tulips from all doubters. 3. Profit. No missing steps, no mystery.

The payoff for MMT is completely opaque and possibly nonexistent. The founders of the racket are academic economists at UMKC. They don't seem to be getting rich, though they are certainly gaining academic prestige. The secondary pushers are "leftist" "progressives" who are also gaining coolness and respect but no obvious money.

Every racket involves a whole bunch of money sloshing around. Suckers are invited to grab some of the money after paying the swindler for the privilege of sticking your hand in the pool.

MMT doesn't have any money sloshing around YET. Part of its advertised advantage is UBI, a guarantee of "free" money for everyone, but the proposed amounts aren't enough to be worth all the effort.

Possible indirect explanation: UBI is the worst part of MMT because UBI supposedly eliminates the need for work. Deplorables who have been permanently disemployed by Goldman's debtism will supposedly feel better when they have money coming in. No they won't. What they need is USEFUL WORK verified by ACTUAL PAYCHECKS that are DIRECTLY COMPENSATING THEM for the USEFUL WORK BECAUSE THE WORK IS USEFUL.

From this angle, the payoff of UBI is to "justify" the total takeover of our economy by the debtists.

But again, how do the UMKC folks gain from this? Prestige, maybe consultant or advisor jobs? Nah. As economists they already get consultant and advisor gigs.

= = = = =

Later, after letting the above simmer for a while, a better analogy for MMT but still no answer to cui bono.

Better analogy = Prosperity gospel. PG was created by Rome 1000 years ago to "justify" Rome's fabulous wealth and exquisite depravity. Rome reinterpreted the New Testament to turn Jesus into a superwealthy supermonster just like popes and priests. Because the bible wasn't accessible to ordinary folks, the trick was easy.

We deserve to be rich because we're like Jesus. Your job is to give us all your money so we can be EVEN MORE like Jesus. After you give us all your money, you will get an early parole from Purgatory.

Since Purgatory is a myth invented by the same Roman monsters, PG is the perfect protection racket. All money goes to the swindlers, NO money goes out. The suckers aren't even expecting real money, so they can't get pissed and try for revenge. The mobsters don't need to spend money on thugs and arsonists because the suckers are buying protection against future thugs who don't exist.

The Inquisition began as an attempt to silence a few academics who had read the real gospels and tried to correct the record. After Gutenberg leaked the truth more widely, the suckers were less willing to give, so the Inquisition had to become more like a secular Sicilian protection racket, with real arsonists providing a real-world threat.

MMT is identical to modern versions of PG. Give all of the economy to the NYC priesthood, and in return you will get "riches" in the form of UBI.

But again, how do the MMT pushers gain from this? They aren't Popes. They aren't Jim and Tammy Faye. At best they're ushers in the Goldman megachurch.

= = = = =

Much later thought: Basically MMT is just a Democrat rebranding of the Repooflican ZERO TAX mantra. Both have exactly the same goal: Removing all input and feedback from the debtist Goldman-government. A government that relies on taxes is like a business that relies on profit. To gain more income tax or sales tax, the government has to shape its activities toward improving REAL VALUE production. A government that is free from taxes is like a business relying on share value. It doesn't need customers or employees or products; it can increase its budget by pure mathematical manipulation.

R and D are working toward the same demonic goal of total feedbackless tyranny.

Labels: MMT, Pluponents

  ¶ 3:05 AM

  Halting the pump and dump
Inquisitions and bubbles are the same racket. Pump and dump.

In both cases the organizers pump up a mania, then find ways to make money or power from the mania.

The church and government versions focus more on power, which means money in the budget. Parkinson cycle. Make a problem, "solve" the problem by making more of the problem. Infinite exponential increase in budget.

Sometimes the gov't and church work more directly with money.

In the 1400s the Inquisitors and Indulgencers formed two sides of a protection racket. Inquisitors cultivated "witches" who could curse you any time they wanted, and Indulgencers sold you protection from the curses that the church created.

In modern times CIA and DEA work the money side, especially in the classic mob commodity of drugs. CIA and DEA produce drug addicts, then profit by selling drugs to the addicts and confiscating money from independent sellers. CIA also works in the financial realm, including the Global Warming racket and Bitcoin itself. (Satoshi is openly CIA.)

= = = = =

Why is the bitcoin bubble suddenly reaching the endpoint of its pump, and why are the organizers starting to dump? Tax law. The newly passed law treats crypto crap as a collectible like wine or paintings or real estate. Capital gains tax when you sell. The organizers knew this was coming, or more likely made it happen. They started the final push at the correct moment to maximize their returns before the law takes effect.

Okay. Turn it around.

= = = = =

Can we tax the inquisitors?

Can we make their pumping significantly less profitable?

Yes. We can RESIST their attempts to cultivate matching pairs of alt-right vs antifa and Islamic vs Christian witches.

So-lu-tion = Se-lu. Loosen yourself. Cut the ropes, break the bonds, scrub off the TV toxin, step out of the trap.

If nobody grabs the sting, the sting doesn't work. Result: Very little witchcraft, thus very little need for Indulgencers to "protect" us from the curses.

Labels: Make or break, se-lu

  ¶ 5:06 PM

  Wrong from start to finish
My bedtime playlist is mainly episodes of This Is Your FBI from around 1950. The scripts were realistic depictions of human nature, including the distinct criminal nature. But the moral of the story, and the moralistic lecture from the announcer, were pure lethal ratshit.

Tonight's first episode was about a protection racket. The script was trying to show what happens when you don't tell the cops about the racket.

Moralistic lecture: You need to clean up your local governments by voting for reformers, because dictatorships always start from local government failures.

= = = = =

Wrong from start to finish.

Telling the truth about ANYTHING is a good way to get shot or jailed. The protection rackets own the government. Rackets R Us. Ask Daleiden or Snowden.

"Voting" for a "reformer" candidate is useless. No matter what the "reformer" says, he will carry on the same corruption as before. At city level he will end up serving Bloomberg. Federally, he will end up serving Goldman. Both "parties" run the same criminal rackets.

"Voting" for a referendum to reform the behavior of governments is even more futile. The black-robed demons, both state and federal, will cancel the referendum and replace it by an even worse crime than before.

Dictatorships rarely start from local government failures. They start with power-mad lunatics in the central or imperial government. It's usually an external input, not a local failure, that gives the lunatics a pretext for total takeover. Obvious with Hitler. Not so obvious with Lenin because we've been covering it up. Our occupation of Russian territory in support of the Mensheviks (the War of Intervention) made it easier for Lenin to associate the Mensheviks with foreign invasion. More recently, the external input by our own agent Sheikh Osama made it easier for Bush/Obama to consolidate Wilsonian power. Currently in EU, external input from "migrants" generated by US/UK/EU invasions of Arab lands makes it possible for EU to consolidate its power.
  ¶ 2:03 AM

  What are you paying for?
Still feeling somewhat guilty for using Brüel & Kjær when I could have pushed for GenRad, I decided to make a small votive offering to the Made In USA gods, who are also the analog gods. Found a GenRad sound level meter on Ebay from a vendor in Kansas, bought it for $50.



This one is about 20 years old. It was used by the Kansas Dept of Transportation, probably for highway noise abatement studies. Note the calibration sticker from 2004. Presumably the Ebay vendor bought it at a state gov't surplus auction.

SLMs aren't especially exciting or complicated. I bought a similar-looking Chinese unit from Radio Shack back in the '90s for the same $50. New Chinese SLMs of similar specs are still in the $50 range.

This GenRad unit is higher quality than the Radio Shack SLM. Claims to be made in USA. Satisfyingly hefty and still working perfectly. The pouch is real leather. Based on those differences, I guessed the price of a new unit should be around $300.

What's the actual GenRad price?



THREE THOUSAND DOLLARS? YOW!

What are you paying for?

Simple answer: Legal authority. Chain of evidence. Bully power. When you buy new from GR and maintain calibration through GR, you can use the readings in court. That's why the Kansas DOT buys from GR instead of using cheap Chinese meters. They have to be prepared to defend all of their decisions against a Soros-powered environmental group, or against a JPMorgan-powered corporation. Noise readings are a minor part of those defenses, but even noise readings have to stand up in court.

Direct parallel to medical costs. When a doctor tells you to buy a Mylan EpiPen for $700, the doctor is comparatively safe because Mylan has performed all the FDA nonsense. If the doc told you to buy an equivalent EpiPen through Craigslist for $10, he wouldn't be safe from lawyers.

This is the dominant form of 'economic rent' in USA STRONG. It's a Tribal protection racket, indistinguishable from the older Italian version. Syndicate creates a threat, then charges citizens to avoid the threat.

Well, there is one difference. The Tribal syndicate has an iron grip on all levels of government, while the Italian syndicate was only able to buy some parts of some city governments. So there's no Bunco Squad available to counteract this racket.

= = = = =

June 2020 footnote: I finally made this SLM useful. I don't really need to take noise readings. I bought it partly as gratitude to GenRad, and partly for the sound output, thinking it would serve as a microphone. At first I couldn't make the output work, so I assumed it was broken, or maybe it wasn't really meant to be a sound output. The SLM stayed on the shelf for 4 years. Finally this year I got bored enough to try it again with different plugs and cables. The jack is a 'micro' size, and it's recessed behind a D-shaped plastic hole, so most plugs can't get in. I suspect it was meant to take a proprietary GenRad plug, like the similarly official Webster Chicago wire recorder. After I found the right narrow-handled plug, the SLM turns out to be a splendid microphone, putting out lots of voltage to satisfy the computer's input. No hum or hiss, and the weighting buttons filter the sound in different ways. Rediscovering or rejuvenating a forgotten item is one of life's outstanding pleasures.

= = = = =

July 2020: Now I'm using it for noise readings after all.

Labels: Age of Stings, Metrology, new toy

  ¶ 5:42 PM

  Outsourcing crime


Been watching episodes of Racket Squad, an excellent 1952 TV show. Low budget required constant re-use of the same sets and cars (mainly Nashes!) and the same small group of actors; and the intro was oddly misplaced, belonging more to a high-action cop show. But they didn't scrimp on writing and research. Excellent scripts based on real con-men and rackets, with real and useful information about the inner workings of the scams.

Trite but true: scams don't change much through history. Except! Many of the old scams are no longer possible within America because of electronic banking and tight regulations.

Polistra and Happystar are watching an episode that deals with a 'bill-of-sale' scam. The con-men pretended to be moving from a distant town to buy a business. Their offer was irresistibly high, so the suckers felt they were getting the advantage on the dumb outsiders. (Always a key ingredient of a scam.) The outsiders paid with a promissory note against an escrow account in their hometown bank. The suckers called the bank and heard that the escrow account had more than enough money; but by the time the note came due, the money was gone and the con-men had already resold the business (irresistibly low, of course) to another sucker who couldn't be prosecuted because he bought it innocently. The resale is where the con-men made their money.

You couldn't do that now. Banks are much tighter, and you can't write checks without proper OCR codes and such.

Many of these scams have moved overseas now, where banks are loose and corrupt. Nigeria is, of course, the classic location.

Since outsourcing honest labor is evil and treasonous, you might deduce that outsourcing dishonesty would be a good thing.

Is it? Do suckers get a better break because American con-men have been replaced by Nigerian con-men?

No.

When the con-men were local, we could arrest them. When they're in Nigeria or Russia or China, we can't.

Note that very few police depts have a Racket Squad now... but this may be more related to a different type of outsourcing. The low-level cons have been hugely overwhelmed by galactic-scale official con games. Wall Street, Securitization, Global Warming, Diversity. These quadrillion-dollar scams own everything, leaving no suckers unsucked. Our "economy" consists solely of rackets now, so there's no point in discriminating against the small-time scammers by arresting them.
  ¶ 3:52 AM

  Constants and variables 125, trailing racket edition
I occasionally receive emails from an academic open-source outfit carrying PDFs of various articles about criminology. Most are pure shit, but today's offering had a bit of useful info that helped to solve half of a puzzle.

Our media formerly helped us to recognize and defend against rackets and scams. Sometime around 1974 this emphasis faded. Now that everything is a racket, we're not supposed to defend ourselves.

Today's article explains how and when the media emphasis started. Around 1940, "social" "science" decided to start examining white-collar crime in the same way as ordinary crime. "Sociologists" were behind the trend, since FDR had already formed the equivalence in real laws and regulations.

From the emailed article:

Sutherland’s approach in White-Collar Crime (1949) helped move the field beyond the legal formalism that Sellin critiqued by arguing that regulatory violations could also constitute a type of unlawful, yet not necessarily criminal, behavior – thus justifying a criminological analysis. Considering these unlawful behaviors to be white-collar crimes was important because of their propensity to produce social harms capable of exceeding traditional crime. Indeed, it is the truly social nature of these harms that make them particularly dangerous. As Sutherland suggested, the financial loss from white-collar crime, great as it is, is less important than the damage to social relations. White-collar crimes violate trust and therefore create distrust, which lowers social morale and produces social disorganization on a large scale.

FBI's radio outlet echoed this text in a 1952 episode:

Occasionally it is possible to remove the ill after-effects of a crime. When a criminal is apprehended after a burglary, for instance, and his loot is returned intact to the victim, nobody is penalized except the lawbreaker.

Such complete restitution is never possible in the case of one particular criminal: the impostor. He usually works with forged credentials or false letters of introduction from well-known people. Even after the impostor is apprehended, he leaves in his wake a wave of suspicion, a feeling by his victims that never again will they be able to believe anyone.

After quoting Sutherland, the author descends into typical modern ratshit about privileging and social constructs, so the rest of the article is useless.

The start of media concern about white-collar crime was a trailing variable. FDR clamped down on NYC in the '30s, and the "social" "scientists" picked up the ball in the '40s, followed shortly by the media.

Was the end also a response to government shifts? I don't think so. The point of inflection in culture and "science" and media was 1974, marked by the Watergate coup. After 1974, the Maoists (who later became Sorosians) owned everything. The media was at the leading edge of this change. Government enforcement agencies like SEC and FTC partly surrendered in the 80s, then finally in 1999.

Now white-collar crime is required, not prohibited. When agencies are given a chance to respond to obvious violations of their own regulations, they put on reasonableness pants instead.

Labels: Constants and Variables, defensible spaces, defensible times

  ¶ 1:05 AM

  Delicate language
The journal bizarrely called 'Nature' has been publishing some oblique articles about trust and facts in science. The science racket doesn't want to be moral or trustworthy, but feels that it needs to make these noises for PR purposes.

Latest:

Second, the number of countries with a strong science base is growing, which inevitably leads to greater heterogeneity in cultural norms with respect to research ethics, and to more diversity in the approaches of regulatory authorities.

Third, science is being conducted by a shifting cast of commercial entities — either independently from, or in collaboration with, traditional research institutions. Such organizations might not have the same ethics culture and systems of regulation as traditional universities.

Heterogeneity in cultural norms = China doesn't give a fuck.

Might not have same ethics culture = Zuck doesn't give a fuck.

It's way too late to do anything about China since US universities have been welcoming and supporting Chinese spies for 40 years. We've outsourced our skills in science along with everything else. The science racket doesn't WANT to do anything about Zuck because he serves as a convenient cutout to bypass pesky ethics committees.

So we meekly and delicately complain about our colonial masters, knowing full well where the money is.

Labels: Carbon Cult, Ethics

  ¶ 6:08 AM

  Thinking out loud
Caveat: Just thinking out loud, no claims of validity or data!

I noticed that the old radio and TV cop shows NEVER mention the words misdemeanor and felony. Once or twice you'll hear the phrase penitentiary offense, which is ambiguous. Why was this distinction skipped?

I don't have an answer, but I started thinking about the distinction ...

Before 1975 a lot of people had experience with misdemeanors. Most working-class people live on the 'shady side', where alcohol and unemployment lead to a certain amount of trouble. This is a permanent constant. Before 1975, trouble generally brought short sentences for cooldown or soberup time. A week of dry discipline can make a real difference.

After 1975, as globalism started to grind into American life, good and useful jobs got scarce. Trouble multiplied. The correct solution was to back off the globalizing. Of course we couldn't do that.

Instead, we started to move more offenses into the felony category, and started to eliminate flexible and short sentences. Judges and juries were NOT ALLOWED to distinguish between professional criminals and temporary lawbreakers. Common sense was illegal.

This approach was helpful for a while, because many judges had been skipping common sense in the other direction, giving short sentences and easy paroles to pros. The new strictness kept more of the pros inside.

Meanwhile, "privacy" laws and "inmate rights" movements grew. Lethal "privacy" laws made it impossible for judges and juries to count the crimes of a pro. When he was first caught under adult rules, he had already committed a dozen major crimes which officially didn't exist. So he was allowed to continue improving his skills.

The "rights" campaigners make it impossible to use common sense in selective enforcement. Laws against jaywalking and loitering formerly allowed cops to discipline crime-seeking behavior by known crime-seekers, while ignoring similar behavior by ordinary people. When normal natural discrimination is impossible, the cops have to catch EVERYONE regardless of known tendencies. Britain is taking this one step beyond, with loitering laws that SPECIFICALLY EXEMPT known criminals. Can't punish existing criminals; have to create new criminals.

Net result: A lot of shady types who need occasional discipline have UNFAIRLY AND UNJUSTLY ended up as permanent inmates, and a lot of pros who should be permanent or executed are getting UNFAIRLY AND UNJUSTLY SHORT sentences.

Soros is taking advantage of this situation, trying to get inmates released into the custody of Sorosian NGOs where they can be weaponized for Sorosian ends. It's a classic racket. Globalism pushes people into trouble; laws written by globalists insure that the trouble puts non-pros in prison; globalists use the resentment at unjust punishment to create a private army.

We need to break all parts of this racket. Break out of globalism and restore local industries so working-class people can rebuild a normal culture (even if it's shady!). Break the rigidity of sentencing that turns momentary trouble into permanent crime. Eliminate the NGOs that trade release for loyalty.

Labels: Asked and sort of answered, Make or break

  ¶ 2:58 AM

  Diesel smell
Several oddities about EPA's fine against VW, and also about the market response to the fine.

I'm certainly not defending VW. It has grown WAY too large, and I'm overjoyed to see extreme automation lose credibility.

(1) There's nothing new about fiddling with emission tests. Other carmakers have been playing this game for 30 years, and I don't blame them. For instance, Honda equipped early Civics with manual chokes. Because EPA tests assumed bimetal chokes, they didn't specify pulling the choke knob. In fact you need some choke for cold starts, and the choked condition would fail the test.

(2) Emission tests, like state safety inspections, have always been a racket. Their main purpose is to create business for favored repair shops. So fiddling with a racket (eg Libor) is only a "crime" from the viewpoint of the racketeers.

(3) Normally huge corporations swallow regulatory costs as part of overhead. Why isn't that happening here? Why is this particular fine larger than usual? Why did VW fail to anticipate, and thus fail to bribe, the EPA regulators?

(4) Normally the stock markets don't worry much about a regulatory cost. Why this time?

= = = = =

I don't know if these oddities are connected, but taken together they smell like a missed blackmail payment.

A bit later: ZeroHedge answers the question and even puts an exact number on the missing payment! $144,699,788.
  ¶ 4:22 AM

  What happened to them?
Last week I quoted a prophetic little book written in 1889 by a Kansas populist leader named JM Graybill.

What happened to Graybill? Found out accidentally.



This paragraph is in a 1919 publication by the trade journal of Fraternal Benefit Societies. Graybill had become the head of the Kansas branch of American Union of Workmen, which was the biggest of the FBSs at the time.

FBSs were a MAJOR force in American life around 1900. They were the IMPLEMENTATION of the Populist idea, as Graybill demonstrated. FBSs provided most of the services that we now get from government. Pensions, health insurance, nursing homes. The 1919 trade journal shows a movement getting ready to splinter, fighting invasions on all sides, but mainly from the regular insurance industry.

What happened to all those FBSs? Some were mainly for workmen in specific industries, and morphed into labor unions. Some degenerated into what we now know as lodges: drinking and gambling clubs with a charitable facade. Some decided to join the insurance industry instead of fighting it, and became regular insurance companies with a 'mutual' label.

Kansas example: Security Benefit Assn began in Topeka in 1892. It built a nursing home, a hospital, an orphanage for children of deceased members, and a collective farm to supply its institutions and give work to the poor. Members paid 5 cents per month to gain access to these services. Not a typo.

Security Benefit lasted much longer than other FBSs in its original proper form. In the '50s it finally converted to a commercial life insurance company and sold its massive grounds to the Menninger outfit. It's still running, after NEEDLESS TO FUCKING SAY an LBO by GuggenheimCapitalPartnersLLC.

= = = = =

Later thought: A more interesting question is what DIDN'T happen to these FBSs? Many of them were strictly ethnic, which would be strictly illegal today unless the ethnicity is CORRECT. For instance, Bnai Brith is still around but Fraternal Patriotic Americans would be shot. Legal or not, ethnic associations that handle money OFTEN mutate into gangs or "terrorist" groups. IIRC, the original Sicilian Mafia started this way. Mutual protection ---> Protection racket. None of these groups went in that direction. They either moved toward union or commercial success, moved into frivolity, or dissolved. I wonder if the strong association with 'proper' insurance kept them more honest? In the modern world of commerce and investment, 'proper' insurance companies are the only honest players. Everything else is a racket.

Labels: Alternate universe, Asked and answered

  ¶ 3:00 AM

  Missing instruction
Random and pointless thought.

As I've noted often, TV and radio used to help us avoid scams and frauds by dramatizing the various types of rackets. Media no longer do this because everything is a racket. We're not supposed to detect fraud, only reject TRUMPKKKHITLER brands of fraud so we can pour all of our money into fashionable brands of fraud.

But the old setup missed a big part of the instruction.

This 1947 episode of This is your FBI caught my attention. The story is about a team of scammers running the Wallet Drop, an obsolete variant of the pattern that now gives us the Nigerian Prince. You encounter a potential windfall; you pay the scammer for access to the windfall; the scammer disappears.

At the start of the show the team is arguing.

The last five marks you've picked were a waste of time! They were too rich or too honest!

Okay, if you think you can do a better job, you pick this time.

These shows often mention that the racket fails, but we never hear how the failure happens. We never hear what the mark says or does to break the connection after the connection is made.

When the scam arrives by phone or mail, rejection is simple. No instruction needed. Hang up the call, throw away the letter, delete the email. But when the scam arrives in person through a persuasive or attractive trapper, detection is harder and rejection is not automatic. The old shows didn't give us any guidance, and of course the new media never mention the whole subject.

= = = = =

Later: Some modern instructions via the Spokane-News FB page. This dude is wanted for running a car sale scam, and his picture was posted because the cops don't know his name. Dozens of people have encountered his rackets in real estate and cars and dating. He's a real vocational criminal. Some of them tell how they resisted his scams, others fell for the traps. His name is given repeatedly in the comments, and the victims say they've reported him to the cops by name.
  ¶ 6:49 AM

  It's all Spanish Prisoner
Democracy and meritocracy are variants on the Spanish Prisoner racket.

The classic version of the racket goes like this:

I need to get access to a pile of money.

I can't reach the money without some 'processing', which may be travel or bribing officials or paying taxes.

Will you help me with the 'processing'? If you help me, I'll give you a cut of the money.

And then the scammer simply disappears. You've lost money and received nothing.

= = = = =

Bribing is the most common version of 'processing'. When you believe you're helping to violate a law, you're less likely to call the cops.

The modern scammers, known as the Yahoo Boys, have reduced the pattern to the absolute minimum, and it still works. Sucker Filter.

They don't even bother to promise that you'll get a cut. You're doing it solely for "friendship", or in some cases for "patriotism". The scammers pretend to be US soldiers trapped in Yemen or Syria or Afghanistan.

= = = = =

Elections follow the same pattern, except that the potential windfall is power, not money.

A candidate says:

I need to get access to a pile of power.

I can't reach the power without some 'processing', which may be travel or bribing officials or campaign expenses.

Will you help me with the 'processing'? If you help me, I'll give you a cut of the power.

After you help, the candidate wins and proceeds to implement exactly the same agenda as the other politicians. Or else he stops running and endorses the Deepstate candidate. He now has access to power, but you don't get a cut of the power. Your views are still completely ignored and unrepresented.

= = = = =

Meritocracy follows the same pattern, except that the windfall is status, not money.

You think you're paying to get access to a cut of status. After you pay, the mentor or school or advertiser has more money, but you still don't have any more status.

Labels: Sucker Filter

  ¶ 8:24 AM

  Odd non-correlation
Elon laid off a significant part of his employees in both SpaceX and Tesla last week, and his stock WENT DOWN.

This is highly unusual and abnormal in the modern world of Share Value. Normally the Dow HATES employees and products. Normally a stock SOARS when the company exterminates its Negative Externalities. Zero employees = infinite Dow.

What's different here? Is the stock racket trying to return to real economics? Unlikely. Must be something else. Maybe the Dow perceives that Elon has lost his will to kill?

A bit later: Yes. This article in Bloomberg verifies that the racket is disappointed in Elon's failure to offer more stock and incur more debt to continue infinite exponential growth. The job cuts are not the main issue.

Labels: Asked and badly answered

  ¶ 12:48 AM

  Not a puzzle
Lately there's considerable discussion of the near-total fakery of web advertising and web "news". Bots talking to bots. The discussers claim this is a "problem" that needs to be "solved".

A couple of points are missing from the discussion.

First, these numbers are not surprising or shameful to the BIG players like Google and FB. They can tell who's bot and who's not, and they also generate a lot of bot traffic on their own.

Second, why would a big player WANT to have lots of fake eyeballs reading and watching its outputs? Fake eyeballs don't buy real products, so the fake watching doesn't lead to profit for advertisers.

Putting those two together, the answer emerges. It's plain old fraud. A small or midsized business using FB for advertising will pay FB the same rates whether the clicks are real or not. When most of the clicks are fake, the small business is NOT getting value for its payment. FB won't let the sucker know that the clicks are fake.

Small suckers need to understand that they're being defrauded... and in fact many of them have already understood and moved away from FB to more local or direct or old-fashioned forms of advertising.

Both FB and Google are clearly happy with this development. Both are working HARD to drive away large portions of REAL viewers and REAL advertisers. Demonetizing unfashionable channels, banning unfashionable speech. They WANT a system consisting solely of bots producing "content" watched by bots.

= = = = =

This is only a puzzle if you start with the old assumption that business seeks profit.

Small suckers do still operate on profit, but the big tech monsters operate SOLELY on share value. The stock racket has always preferred businesses without real customers and real employees. The preference has become an absolute rule since 1975. The stock racket is computers bouncing pure numbers back and forth.   ¶ 12:09 AM

  Musings on mafias
Mafias make money when governments make necessary things illegal, scarce or absurdly expensive.

Most of these 'necessaries' are not universal. Alcohol, gambling and cocaine are only necessary for a segment of humanity with a particular vulnerability. Sex is necessary for nearly everyone, but only a small segment needs more sex than marriage, masturbation and infidelity can provide.

If you doubt this connection, look at the prohibition of alcohol in America from 1920 to 1933. Proves the point with a neat controlled experiment. Gangs started immediately after the 18th Amendment, then faded after the 21st Amendment.

The Carbon Mafia is different.

In this case the government prohibits a set of universal necessities. Everyone needs to breathe. Everyone needs heat in the winter and heat for cooking, everyone needs food, and in richer countries everyone needs fuel for transportation and electricity for communication and industrial processes.

The government sets up the profit environment for the mafia by making breathing, electricity and fuel illegal without proper licenses and permits; and by diverting food crops into completely unnecessary "substitute fuels" to make food scarce and expensive.

The Carbon Mafia then profits massively by re-selling and trading permits and indulgences; by speculating on the effects of future prohibitions; by speculating on the newly-scarce food crops; and finally by raising prices on all energy and food well beyond the percent needed to compensate for the permits and speculation. These Mafia front businesses do not create value or enjoyment for anyone; they exist solely to serve as protection-racket middlemen between the mass-murdering EPA and the vulnerable public. If the genocidal EPA did not exist, protection-racket fronts wouldn't be needed.

Classic mafias are not an unalloyed evil. They kill a few civilians in the crossfire between competing gangs, but also provide temporary pleasure to the people who buy their illegal goods and services.

The Carbon criminals are pure evil, providing pleasure to nobody and mass death to civilians everywhere. Poor people die by the thousands from lack of heat and by the millions from biofuel-induced famine. These deaths vastly overwhelm the thousands killed each year in various Mexican gang wars.

= = = = =

12/7 Bulletin: The genocide specialists at Berkeley, the American equivalent of Dr Mengele's Auschwitz Research Facilities, have developed a brand-new way to starve the poor and restore malaria to America! How do you fulfill this wonderful dream? You force "carbon-emitting" (i.e useful and productive) industries to pay farmers to turn cropland into miasmal mosquito-breeding swamps! Beautiful! Destroy American industry, starve the poor, and reverse a major accomplishment of civilization, all at once! Elegant mass murder!

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 9:29 AM

  Fakedowns
Convective thought.

Most of the "activity" of Sorosian dysgovernments is FAKE SHAKEDOWNS.

Fakedowns are an old classic in ordinary crime, but relatively new in dysgovernments. Ordinary blackmailers often threaten to expose letters or documents that don't really exist, or letters that the blackmailer has forged. Ordinary kidnappers often threaten a kidnap that hasn't happened yet. If the threat is credible, it brings in money with no real labor by the criminal. No document theft, no grab, no killing.

Real shakedowns are old and universal among governments. Give an ultimatum, get the payoff. If no payoff, real invasion and destruction by armies or SWAT teams.

The biggest dysgovernment fakedown is "climate change", where governments ruin their own industries and slaughter their own people to fund fake shit like "carbon sequestration" and "carbon reduction", which CAN'T POSSIBLY AFFECT THE WEATHER. The weather responds to internal changes in the earth's magnetic field and core. CO2 is a RESULT of those changes. Thanks to 45 years of vicious genocidal propaganda, all corporations have decided to go along with the racket. Going along was hard at first, but after the 1980 switch from profit to share value, it's easy. Eliminating production and skills and jobs is the only way to gain share value.

Trump is a virtuoso fakedown artist. He threatens to do some shit, gets the payoff, then turns off the threat. It doesn't matter if the shit is possible. Sometimes he even surrenders before getting the payoff, but he still seems to think he's winning. Invading Russia is impossible. We did it in 1918, but that was before nukes. Invading Persia is physically possible, and we've done it before, but now Persia will respond by blocking Saudi oil, which is the ONLY oil, so we aren't going to do it. Invading Venezuela is physically possible, and we've done it before, but we're currently proving that we aren't competent enough to make it happen.

As with the classic protection racket that relies on silence by all businesses, Trump depends on other countries to go along with the fakedowns against Russia and Persia. BUT: Unlike the "climate change" fakedown where going along gets easier, cooperation is getting harder. Euro countries are losing massive amounts of money and fuel, and they've finally decided to break the chain.

Labels: Carbon Cult

  ¶ 6:20 AM

  Should happen, won't
The Quoth The Raven podcast talks often about MLM scams like Herbalife and Hubbard. He said something like "It's too bad we weren't evolved to detect frauds."

Like all human talents, perpetrating frauds and detecting frauds are two ends of a spectrum. Some people are good at the active end, some are good at the passive end. Most of us aren't inclined to create elaborate schemes and aren't good at spotting elaborate schemes.

That's where EDUCATION is supposed to enter the picture. Most of us can be TRAINED to detect a racket when it approaches us. The trouble is not lack of evolution, the trouble is TOTAL lack of education.

As I've noted before, radio and TV formerly did a fair job of showing how rackets work. The shows tended to emphasize one or two rather rare schemes like the Found Wallet or the Betting System, and probably didn't pay enough attention to MLM. This Racket Squad episode deals effectively with MLM, but I haven't seen any others.

Schools have NEVER touched the topic. The closest we got in high school was one hour of reading the old useless Guide To Propaganda Methods, which didn't help with real propaganda and didn't do anything for rackets.

I looked in DonorsChoose.org. Nope, no specific projects.

I tried a web search and found EXACTLY ONE lesson plan devoted to rackets. It looks good, but it's solely about identity theft, not MLM or stocks or bitcoin.

Government agencies offer plenty of useful info pages.

From Census Bureau.

From FTC.

And one good page from a commercial bank.

The info is there, but it's not distributed and taught to the people who need it.

Won't happen, of course. The people** in charge of school curricula are on the perpetration side, not the detection side.


= = = = =

** Wait! I was one of the people who wrote a school curriculum. Am I a fraudster? No, but the whole story shows that the original sentence was correct. When I was teaching at DeVry, one of my colleagues came up with the bright idea of setting up a training class under the Federal JTPA jobs program. He had worked with them before, and induced me to write a one-year electronics curriculum. The JTPA grant didn't come through. Later, after I burned out at DeVry, I applied for a different government training job and showed them the curriculum as part of my resume. They didn't hire me but they took the curriculum and used it. So the people in charge were in fact fraudsters.

Labels: Aberree, defensible spaces

  ¶ 3:55 PM