WIRED tries to make the case that virtual crimes should carry criminal penalties because the virtual world seems real to some people. I have a few questions:
Ridiculous.
It’s been a month since we last looked at inflation here at Sector 8.
The government has been creating too many dollars. In December of 2020, one third of all dollars that had ever existed had been printed in the past ten months.
It appears as though the Federal government was just getting started. Six months later in May 2021, it was said that 40% of every dollar that has ever existed was created in the preceding 12 months.
Another 5 months later, that had increased to 80 percent of all dollars that have ever existed were printed in the past 22 months.
This is a cycle that causes hyperinflation: Printing more money causes that money to become less valuable. To counter this, more money is printed, which causes it to become less valuable. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
In fact, the Fed printed an average of $27 billion per day in 2020 and put those dollars into circulation.
In 2021, the Fed increased that rate to nearly double that. Of course, most money today isn’t physically printed. It exists only in the electronic minds of computer systems. That’s because no one could physically print that many bank notes.
This out of control creation of money is warping the entire economy. Excluding food and energy, consumer expenses are up 4.9 percent from a year ago. This is the largest increase in 40 years.
According to a friend of mine who works in the banking industry, the Fed governors were recently polled on where they see the Federal funds rate going in the next 24 months. The average was 2 percent.
A two percent increase is a big deal. It also isn’t enough. The greatest impact that higher interest rates will have is on the largest borrower in the world — the United States government. The United States national debt is nearly 30 trillion dollars, which it finances through Treasury bills, notes and bonds. The public holds 80 percent of this debt, which requires direct interest payments, rather than ledger transfers on the Treasury books.
The fiscal year 2021 United States budget included over $562 billion spent paying interest on the federal debt. To put this into perspective, the cumulative net worth of the five wealthiest people in the US (Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Warren Buffet) was $465 billion. So, the interest paid on the debt in 2021 is more than these five people’s net worth COMBINED.
An increase in those interest rates will cost the government a lot of money. Money that they do not have. Any increase in interest rates will add hundreds of billions of dollars of interest to the federal budget. In fact, a one percent increase in interest rates means an extra $300 billion in interest on our national debt.
The only way for the government to pay the higher interest is- you guessed it- to print the money, which will cause the currency to be devalued, and worsen inflation, which will again cause higher interest rates. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
We are riding this sinking ship all the way to the bottom.
Children as young as 9 years old who are trying to win video games are launching attacks against computer networks. In an attempt to get any edge that they can against opponents in online games, they use mods and other computer software to attack the networks of their opponents, slowing that opponent’s network connection to a crawl. This gives them an edge and enables them to win the game.
Research has suggested that many young students do not consider it “wrong” to disrupt other players’ gaming experience because it is considered just “another way to win,” their peers are doing it too, and they certainly do not believe that they are likely to get into any trouble with the law.
While in the immediate, it is disturbing that children are slowing Internet service, the most troubling thing about this is the attitude. The “I need to achieve at all costs” attitude lowers the bar for what children consider cheating and unethical behavior. This attitude that it is OK to attack an opponent’s network to beat him at a game is the equivalent of hiding your opponent’s baseball bat in order to prevent him from getting on base. The children view it as “using your resources” to win the game.
It’s cheating.
This is an indication that children are viewing unethical behavior as something that is acceptable, as long as it helps you win. This is carrying over into other facets of their lives. They cheat on homework. They cheat on tests. When teachers call them on it, they claim that they were just using the resources available to them. Too often, their parents support this attitude.
So these children eventually grow into adults, and those adults have the same set of morals and opinions that they learned as children: a winner take all attitude where the ends always justify the means.
Now apply this attitude to politics. It becomes OK to stuff ballot boxes. It becomes OK to game mail in balloting. All that matters is winning, and gaming an election becomes a mere exercise in “using your resources” to win the game. At any cost.
We learn our sense of fair play, morality, and how to interact with others from playing games with other children when we ourselves are children. If we are allowing our children to think it is acceptable to damage computer networks to win at a video game, what will they think is acceptable when they want to win an election?
With two oceans insulating us from Asia and Europe, along with friendly (and relatively weak) neighbors to the north and south, the United States has relied on the oceans as a buffer zone against hostile forces. Those oceans are the main reason why Americans haven’t seen a war in our cities in over 150 years.
In any conflict against the Russians, winning or losing will come down to how well we can get munitions, supplies, and reinforcements across the oceans.
Both of these facts mean that we need a Navy to protect the shores and to keep our sea lanes open.
During the cold war, the US had 15 carrier battlegroups. Now it has 10. A 1980s carrier battle group had the carrier, two cruisers, three destroyers, three frigates, and a pair of supply ships. (I am not counting the submarines as a part of the group, because they seldom stay close to the carrier. Besides, submarines are not there to keep sea lanes open, they are there to deny those sea lanes to others.)
The air wing of the 1980s consisted of an Airborne Early Warning Squadron flying E2 Hawkeyes, a pair of F14 squadrons flying the F14 Tomcat, a pair of attack squadrons flying the A-7 corsair, an ASW squadron flying the S-3 Viking, a squadron of A6 bombers and tankers, an Electronic Warfare squadron flying the EA6B prowler, an ASW helicopter squadron flying the SH-3 sea king. In all, there were 92 aircraft and 11 ships in a cold war carrier battle group. The aircraft back then had more than double the combat radius as today’s airwing. The battle group had a dedicated ASW capability that was far more capable than today.
Fast forward to today: The CBG has a much diminished ASW capability, and the group consists of the carrier, one cruiser, five destroyers, and a supply ship. The airwing still has 9 squadrons, but they are smaller than squadrons just 30 years ago and carry just 53 aircraft. The Navy has eliminated the submarine hunting S-3, and has combined the functions of the A-6, EA-6B, KA-6D, F-14, and A-7 into just one aircraft platform: the F/A-18.
It doesn’t do most of those jobs as well as the aircraft they replaced. The A-6F Intruder had a 16 ton payload (pdf alert). The A-7 Corsair could carry a 6.8 ton payload. The Hornet has a 4.5 ton payload.
The F/A-18 Hornet has a much shorter range than aircraft of the cold war. This means that the carrier group must get closer to potential adversaries, which is more dangerous.
As an example, the A-6 Intruder had a combat radius of 900 miles, the A7 a radius of 700 miles, the F-14 had a radius of 650 nautical miles. Compare that to the Hornet’s radius of only 330 nautical miles. Now the carrier has to get more than 300 miles closer to the enemy in order to conduct operations.
The CBG used to have the capability of carrying and delivering nuclear weapons. With the elimination of the carriers’ W division, and the elimination of the TLAM-N, that capability has been lost. The personnel who were trained to handle and load these weapons are gone, and it would take years to regain the knowledge and weapons.
I can hear it now- the forces we have are technologically more advanced, meaning that we don’t need as many ships and aircraft to do the job. While I agree that our platforms and weapons are more capable, so are the platforms and weapons of any near peer enemy. Russian and China have stealth platforms. They have long range missiles. They have hypersonic weapons. So I don’t think we can rely on a technology edge to the point where we can do with fewer ships and aircraft with shorter ranges.
Not only are the ships we have less capable than in the past, the Navy is smaller, as well. In all, the US Navy is half the size now (289 ships) as it was under Secretary Lehman, when the Navy had 594 ships.
One thing the Navy has plenty of is senior officers. In World War II, there were 30 Navy ships for every admiral. In 2022, the Navy has 243 Admirals and only 289 ships. There is one commissioned officer for every five enlisted sailors.
Don’t think that the Navy is the only branch that has this problem. One in 400 soldiers in the US Army is a general. The Air Force has more 3 and 4 star Generals than the Army, despite having half as many personnel.
Generals and Admirals aren’t cheap. Many of those top officers are surrounded with entourages including chauffeurs, chefs and executive aids. Top flag officers have private jets always at the ready. They live in sometimes palatial homes and frequently travel in motorcades.
Investigations have shown some in power misuse these perks. General Wiliam “Kip” Ward was demoted for using his staff and military vehicles to take his wife shopping, to spas and on vacations in $700-a-night suites, all at taxpayer expense. Demoted. When I was in the Navy, I saw sailors get kicked out on an OTH discharge for being 15 minutes late to work, and this guy gets a demotion for stealing tens of thousands of dollars.
Our military is no longer capable of doing the job it needs to do. Like a banana republic, it is only really good at taking on small bands of civilian militia. It’s only a matter of time before it is used for exactly that.
The US has cut its ability to project power so severely, that it can no longer afford to be, nor can it be, the world’s policeman.
Russia and China know that.
Justice Breyer just announced his retirement. He claims that the SCOTUS isn’t a political entity:
“It is wrong to think of the court as another political institution,” he said in an April speech at Harvard Law School. “And it is doubly wrong to think of its members as junior league politicians.”
He added, justices “are loyal to the rule of law, not to the political party that helped to secure their appointment.”
OK. Pull the other leg, it has bells on it. The Supreme Court is, and always has been, a political entity. Breyer is retiring at this particular point in time because there is a Democrat in the White House, and the Democrats hold a razor thin edge in the Senate. They rolled the dice in 2016 and lost that bet, so they aren’t likely to do it again.
The left is still salty because the Senate wouldn’t allow Obama to replace Scalia with a leftist, thus cementing a hard left SCOTUS for decades.
The Democrats could have selected Scalia’s replacement in 2016, and the accusation is that the Republicans wouldn’t allow his selectee to be voted upon. That is pure BS. The Obama administration could have had Scalia’s replacement in 2016. All they had to do was offer a replacement that was not a hard core leftist. Had the Democrats offered a more centrist candidate, the Republicans would have likely approved. The Republican Senate would have approved a left leaning centrist, rather than wait to see the hard core leftist that HRC was going to nominate.
But Obama didn’t do that. Why not?
Because everyone who mattered was absolutely convinced that Hillary was going to be the next President. Her victory was a guarantee. The Democrats believed it so much, they decided to stick to the extremist pick on the theory that HRC was going to ram through a leftist candidate to replace Scalia and swing the court to the left.
Instead, the Republicans got to install Gorsuch. That was bad enough from their point of view, but still didn’t swing the court to the left.
The real damage came because Ginsberg decided to hold out for the HRC presidency that never materialized. RBG could have retired in 2016 and been replaced by an Obama selectee, but chose not to. Why did she do that?
Ginsberg wanted to be in the history books after retiring during a Hillary Clinton Presidency, so she could become the first female Justice to be replaced by the first female President.
That big mistake became the decision that threw SCOTUS firmly to the right by giving President Trump a recently unheard of three SCOTUS picks. The last President who got to do that was Ronald Reagan.
Everyone who mattered thought that Hillary was going to be the next President. The Democrats believed it so much, they decided to stick to the extremist pick on the theory that HRC was going to ram through a leftist candidate to replace Scalia and swing the court to the left. They didn’t need to pick a moderate SCOTUS candidate. If the Senate didn’t confirm Obama’s pick, HRC would get the pick. RBG didn’t need to retire while Obama was in the Oval office, HRC would pick her replacement.
They bet on an HRC victory. Trump’s victory destroyed all of that, and this set up to make the SCOTUS a conservative court for the next 20 years.
The retirement of Breyer won’t change that.
President Franklin Delano Roosevelt got eight of his nominees on the Supreme Court in six years while in office. There was also Dwight Eisenhower, William Taft and Ulysses Grant, each of whom got five nominees on the court.
Nixon, Truman, Harding, Harrison, and Cleveland each got four picks.
Reagan, Hoover, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Trump each got three.
Obama, both Bushes, Clinton, Johnson, Kennedy, and Hayes each picked two for the high court.
Ford, Coolidge, McKinley, and Garfield each only picked one justice.
Capitol Police, who you will remember have an office in the Tampa area, are conducting surveillance of Republican members of Congress, their contacts, and their donors.
There is a huge effort by Federal agencies to create and maintain a list of Americans who are enemies of the revolution. The post office is keeping a list. All they have to do is see who you get mail from. The NRA? Second Amendment Foundation? Conservative fundraising? Think about the mail you get, and ask if someone could determine your political leanings by looking at your correspondence. It’s basic traffic analysis.
After all, a sitting member of Congress is the one who suggested that the government keep an “enemies list” so they can be confronted. Even the media joined in, including the “conservative blogger” who works for the Washington Post:
These lists are going to eventually be used. Make sure that you have robust contact with others who may be on the list. Once prominent people on the list begin to disappear, you will know that the lists are being used.
It is a sure sign of a dictatorship when there are mass arrests and disappearances. The Soviets even had a word for it- “vzyali” meaning “they have taken,” and there was no pronoun or noun needed to indicate who “they” were- “they” were unspeakable. They were feared. It was never “arrestovani” or arrested, because there were no charges and no trial. They simply disappeared. Vzyali was a word that struck fear in the hearts of Soviet citizens.
The people who were vzyali were never put in jail. They weren’t executed, for the most part. No, they were put into camps where they were forced to work themselves to death. Read about the eight most evil gulags at this page, and remember that all communists wind up using their lists for this purpose.
Fedex changed the world of shipping. They came up with the idea that everything would be taken to a regional hub, sorted, and then sent back out. So wanting to send a package from Orlando to Miami could result in the package going to Atlanta before being sorted and sent back out to Miami.
Even though it seems counter intuitive, it is actually faster and more efficient to do it that way. I fully understand that.
However, I don’t understand what is happening right now. I ordered a tablet computer on Monday.
This is the tenth package that has disappeared for me in the past two and a half months.
I can’t even blame the train robbery in California for this one.
Orlando will soon be paying criminals to not commit crimes, and to counsel others to avoid crime as well. Called “neighborhood change agents,” they will be individuals who have similar backgrounds, come from similar communities as those who are at risk of committing violent crimes. They may be people who got in trouble as youth themselves, who have been arrested, and involved in gangs. According to the program:
Neighborhood Change Agents” (NCAs) who will intervene to disrupt situations when violence appears imminent, and maintain daily contact with participants, serving as mentors, case managers and life coaches. Their goal will be to pivot participants away from circumstances leading toward violence, and instead to non-violent, economically, and socially productive lives.
Paying criminals not to commit crimes. This was a program that began in Richmond, CA back in 2016. Fox News reported on it at the time. San Francisco started doing it last year.
So this year, as you are filing your taxes, remember that this is where your hard earned money is going: you are paying protection money to criminals in the hopes that they won’t kill you. I don’t even know why we need cops anymore.
Those of you who read this blog on a regular basis remember my credit card problem. If not, let’s recap:
In the meantime, I was not happy with the support I was getting from the credit card company, Barclay bank, so I decided to apply for a card from another bank. I figured that with a credit score of 815, I could get any card I wanted. I was correct. I got a cash back card with a large credit limit and even more favorable terms than the one I was using.
I recently got a call from Barclay’s management team. They decided that the charge was not authorized after all, and told me that the charge would be credited back to the card. When I asked the manager where the documentation was that I requested, the caller danced around it and made vague noises without actually admitting what I already knew: they don’t have any documentation.
Taking the charge off was too little, too late. My new card came in the mail today and I will be taking my business elsewhere. Of course I won’t cancel the card. I will simply stick it in a drawer and stop using it. That way it stays as a positive tradeline on my credit report.
Biden says that, should Russia invade Ukraine, it would be the largest invasion since World War 2. I am sure that the South Koreans, who were invaded by 2 Corps of North Korean troops numbering 107,000 troops in the first wave, would disagree.
While it is good news that we aren’t going to war, the fact that Biden is a completely inept pussy is bad news for the US reputation. Now that the rest of the world knows that the US is a paper tiger, expect more countries to make this nation into their bitch.
That doesn’t mean that I am trying to say that we should get involved with Ukraine, because we shouldn’t. The point is that Biden should have seen that from the beginning, instead of running his mouth and proving to the world that he is completely impotent.
The problem here is that Putin has just exposed the US for what it is- an Emperor that has no clothes. The US military, though large, is not capable enough to accomplish all of the missions that it has been tasked with.