FTX - Multiple Choice Subject

The facts emerging from the multi-billion dollar fraud perpetrated by FTX and its shell companies are not looking good for the gang of nerds who concocted the system and executed the embezzlement. But the facts are also not looking good for Congress and particularly not good for the elite universities that granted degrees and status to those committing the crimes and those in charge of properly regulating such firms to prevent billion dollar frauds from occurring.

The issues involved cover lots of ground so picking a title proved difficult. It will be left to the reader to pick their favorite.

Is THIS What an Elite Education Gets Us?

And the Congressional Chutzpah Prize for 2022 Goes To...

Will YOU Be My Regulator?

To understand why picking a title is problematic, first examine a partial roster of some of the key players gaining notoriety so far in the fraud:

Sam Bankman-Fried - FTX CEO - BS from MIT
Joseph Bankman -- father of SBF - professor of Law at Stanford
Barbara Fried - mother of SBF - professor of Law at Stanford (retired 9/2022)

Caroline Ellison -- Alameda Research CEO - BS Mathematics from Stanford
Glenn Ellison - father of Caroline Ellison - Professor of Economics at MIT
Sara Fisher Ellison - mother of Caroline Ellison -- Lecturer of Economics at MIT

Gary Wang -- FTX Co-Founder - BS Mathematics / Comp. Sci from MIT
Nishad Singh -- FTX Director of Engineering -- BSEE/CS from UC Berkeley
Ryan Salame - FTX Co-CEO - BS Finance from Georgetown University
Sam Trabucco - (former) Alameda Research Co-CEO - BSEE/CS from MIT

Tom Emmer - US Representative (R - Minnesota) - University of Alaska / William Mitchell College of Law
Warren Davidson - US Representative (R - Ohio) - Mendoza School of Business
Byron Donalds - US Representative (R - Florida) - BS Finance from Florida State University
Ted Budd - US Representative (R - North Carolina) - BSBA Appalachian State / MBA from Wake Forest
Darren Soto - US Representative (D - Florida) - BA Rutgers / JD from George Washington University
Jake Auchincloss - US Representative (D - Massachusetts) - BA Harvard / MBA MIT
Josh Gottheimer - US Representative (D - New Jersey) - BA University of Pennsylvania / JD Harvard
Ritchie Torres - US Representative (D - New York) - attended NYU

Is THIS What an Elite Education Gets Us?

The first thing that jumps out from that listing is that, with few exceptions, these players were not exactly night-school graduates of Whatsamatta U or Hickville State. The vast majority have undergraduate technical degrees, MBAs or JDs from the top universities in the country. If this fraud was as tightly held as the Bernie Madoff ponzi scheme, it might be understandable how six young criminals might have each independently entered the already suspect business realm of cryptocurrency and devised independent frauds stealing thousands or milliions from other cryptocurrency speculators. In fact, THAT is already happening every day in the crypto realm, if not in actual trading systems and currencies but in selling sure-fire trading training related to unique currencies.

That's not what happened with FTX. These six people worked in concert, across at least two shell companies (FTX and Alameda Research) and spent four to five years designing user experiences and back-office systems to allow embezzlement that fraudulently inflated assets of their two firms, allowed executives to cash out MILLIONS of dollars of REAL cash for their personal use and cover losses for a time by stealing assets from customer accounts. All while maintaining the illusion for customers that their cryptocurrency deposits were protected and present in their individual account.

The leaders of this fraud, Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison, both have parents holding professor / lecturer positions in LAW and ECONOMICS at two of the world's most elite universities (Stanford and MIT). In the case of Joseph Bankman, he actually WORKED "part time" for FTX presumably providing legal advice at times but also as a "rainmaker" - attracting large scale investors in the months prior to the collapse and seeking emergency investments to fend off collapse before the meltdown. In the case of Glenn Ellison, at one point when Gary Gensler taught Economics courses at MIT, Ellison was Gensler's department head, a fact that might have been helpful in deflecting SEC focus when desired (see below...)

As the companies started up, it is very easy to imagine the canned "pitch" they would provide to prospective investors that would cite their prior work at firms like Google and Jane Street, then their technical pedigree and degrees from MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, Georgetown, yadda, yadda, yadda. Couple that with the fact that their parents teach LAW and ECONOMICS at MIT and Stanford and it seems obvious -- familiarity with money, banking, security, etc. was in their family DNA. We're not some freshman dropout pitching some Theranos pipe dream, we have serious academic chops and industry experience with well-respected and well-connected family in these fields.

How effective and insane was this cloak of intellectual pedigree? One anecdote seen online involved a video conference call between Bankman-Fried and a handful of HIGH DOLLAR hedge fund investors. As the pitch was being made and questions were being answered, one of the participants noticed a video game appearing on one of the giant monitors behind SBF on camera. If I had been on that call and recognized someone asking me for MILLIONS couldn't be bothered to give me their full attention and instead was MULTITASKING in the background PLAYING A GAME, I would have dropped the call immediately and thanked my stars I spotted such a scammer. In this case, the party who noticed it instead came to a much different conclusion… The participant typed in a chat channel of the call "I LOVE THIS FOUNDER!" He essentially concluded, "This guy is so cool and confident of what he's doing, he's playing (whatever) in the background. GIVE THIS GUY OUR MONEY NOW." And he did. The firm Sequoia Capital invested $210 million dollars and lost it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20BEJouWBgY?t=480

If you think this YouTuber is making the story up or that I'm making the story up, the story was recounted in a profile of FTX and Sam Bankman-Fried that Sequoia Capital published on its own web site on September 22, 2022. The story has subsequently been removed and replaced with a link to a letter the firm sent to its own customers explaining how $210 million of their money vanished.

https://www.sequoiacap.com/companies/ftx/

So exactly what does one get when dropping $45,000+ per year for attending some of America's elite institutions? Any exposure to ethics? Any overarching insight that even if you're only a technical person writing software, if you're creating logic in accounting systems that initiate trades without logs, you might be participating in a felony? Does anyone believe the PARENTS of these actors didn't understand the risk of creating new fangled banking systems without any legitimate outside auditor and mention concerns to their children? If not, WHY ARE THEY TEACHING at these institutions?

There's one extra factor for Stanford University and its alumni to ponder as well. Because SBF made bail via his parent's pledge of a home, his bail terms require him to stay in his parent's home essentially under house arrest with an electronic ankle tracker. His parents's home is actually ON the campus of Stanford University, right across from the president's mansion. Because of SBF's high profile, the university has beefed up security and closed some campus streets to traffic to keep away press and the curious. I wonder if this will make alumni think twice the next time an endowment fund raiser email shows up in their inbox. Am I funding cutting edge research and top-notch undergrad education with my donation or am I paying for a university to operate a "Camp Cupcake" jail to protect an alum who traded on my school's name to steal billions and tarnished my degree?

https://stanforddaily.com/2022/12/23/sam-bankman-fried-to-be-under-house-arrest-on-stanford-campus/

And the Congressional Chutzpah Prize for 2022 Goes To…

Why are all of those US Representatives listed in this roster of players? They are all co-signers of what will likely prove to be one of the most cringe-worthy letters in political / economic / criminal history. That team of seven US Representatives sent a letter March 22, 2022 to SEC Chairman Gary Gensler itemizing THIRTEEN very specific concerns they had about how and why the SEC was bothering to spend time investigating cryptocurrency markets in general and any specific firms that might be in its crosshairs.

https://emmer.house.gov/_cache/files/0/c/0c7fc863-7916-4b19-bc44-52bef772287e/9B0B9D1CA9B3C215DDC762DF5B0F6864.3.16.22.emmer.sec.letter.pdf

The SEC’s regulatory functions, while broad, are limited to the extent of its statutorily mandated jurisdiction. Enforcement powers, while conceptually broader with respect to non-SEC regulated entities, are still circumscribed by statute, federal judicial review, congressional oversight and the Commission’s own policies and procedures for initiating and conducting inquiries and investigations. It appears there has been a recent trend towards employing the Enforcement Division’s investigative functions to gather information from unregulated cryptocurrency and blockchain industry participants in a manner inconsistent with the Commission’s standards for initiating investigations

The tone of the letter speaks for itself. This isn't pleading with the SEC Chairman to hurry up his work then share it with the House Financial Services Committee so they can get caught up as well to the state of crypto market stability and security. It is CLEARLY a warning shot across the SEC's bow to back off. That becomes especially apparent when it is known that FTX as a firm and its leaders individually donated to many members of the House Finance Committee, including these members. The letter had the intended effect. Gensler's staff tabled the investigations they were initiating and no new actions were taken regarding FTX or any other corporate parties. The SEC did announce sanctions against INDIVIDUAL players involved in PROMOTING various cryptocurrencies such as (sigh…) Kim Kardashian but no actual operators of specific currencies or exchanges.

Among all of the signatories, perhaps Ritchie Torres merits a special shoutout for sheer chutzpah. Torres is relatively new to Congress but has made adoption of cryptocurrency a focus of his policy proposals, under the assumption that new cryptocurrency exchanges and payment systems will become a lower-cost alternative to "traditional" high-fee banking services. He claims such innovations will aid the "under-banked" or "unbanked", a key demographic in his district.

Despite co-signing the March 2022 letter that clearly attempted to stifle SEC investigations into the current state of cryptocurrency exchanges, after the collapse of FTX, Torres sent a DIFFERENT letter on December 7, 2022 to the Government Accounting Office demanding an investigation of the SEC, flagging that same Gary Gensler as being "singularly responsible" for the fraud.

https://punchbowl.news/wp-content/uploads/Letter-to-GAO-on-FTX-Collapse.pdf

I am writing to respectfully request that the Government Accountability Office (GAP) conduct an independent review of the SEC’s failure to protect the investing public from the egregious mismanagement and malfeasance of FTX, which has brought billions of dollars in losses to about a million creditors and customers.

Chair Gary Gensler, by the logic of his own public pronouncements, is singularly responsible for the regulatory failures surrounding the collapse of FTX and its affiliate FTX US. Chair Gensler has said on countless occasions that there is no need for authorizing legislation from Congress: the SEC presently possesses the authority it needs to regulate crypto exchanges. If the SEC has the authority Mr. Gensler claims, why did he fail to uncover the largest crypto Ponzi scheme in US history? One cannot have it both ways, asserting authority while avoiding accountability. It is on Congress to pass laws, but once the necessary laws have been enacted, it is on the regulators to apply those laws to conduct investigations and protect the public. When it comes to FTX, Chair Gensler fundamentally failed as a regulator, and he has no one but himself to blame.

The ironies here abound. Torres professes to be in favor of cryptocurrency adoption as a means of providing modern payment services at lower transaction fees for the poor and "un-banked,", a key demographic in his district. Yet anyone familiar with cryptocurrency technology knows that using blockchain ledgers to process payments is an incredibly INEFFICIENT means of journaling transactions - especially billions of transactions only worth pennies or dollars. Blockchain ledgers require large but widely distributed investments in compute and storage likely to need auditing and regulation to ensure protections of that software and infrastructure are in place. Yet, there he was in March of 2022 grandstanding in front of his DONOR constituency (crypto firms including FTX) by firing off a letter to the head of the SEC demanding they "stay in their lane" and not bother investigating unregulated entities supposedly outside their purview. After FTX tanks, Torres attempts to grandstand again in front of his VOTER constituency demanding the SEC be accountable for missing the fraud while still claiming the core nature of cryptocurrencies, exchanges and payment systems are secure and worthy of continued adoption.

But it gets better...

Prior to his December 7 letter, on December 5 Torres also introduced two bills that would impose regulations on the crypto industry:

HR 9421 Crypto Exchange Disclosure Act -- https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/9421/text

SEC. 2. CRYPTOCURRENCY EXCHANGES PROOF OF RESERVES DISCLOSURES.

A cryptocurrency exchange that holds assets on behalf of customers shall periodically (as determined by the Securities and Exchange Commission) disclose to the Securities and Exchange Commission information relating to proof of reserves of the exchange, including, with respect to the exchange at the time of the disclosure, the amount of assets held by the exchange compared to the liabilities of the exchange.

HR 9422 Crypto Consumer Investor Protection Act -- https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/9422/text

SEC. 2. LENDING, LEVERAGING, AND CO-MINGLING PROHIBITED.

A cryptocurrency exchange may not lend, leverage, or co-mingle the funds of a customer without the consent of such customer.

If cryptocurrency really is a currency, then a cryptocurrency EXCHANGE is actually operating as a combination of BANK (if customers are only "exchanging" tokens by converting them to intermediate coins with fractional values) and BROKERAGE (if customers are purchasing / selling cryptocurrency tokens for speculative gain). Any entity operating as a BANK or BROKERAGE should already be subjected to audits against Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and bank-specific accounting rules. We already have laws and regulations covering that so why should cryptocurrency firms be exempt from such regulations? Why should a PARALLEL set of regulations be created requiring some PARALLEL enforcement effort within the SEC when ongoing audits of reserves, capitalization and journals are already the purview of the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency?

Why is specific legislation required to prohibit the lending, leveraging or co-mingling of funds in cryptocurrency exchange accounts? Again, if cryptocurrency is currency, cryptocurrency exchanges are operating as BANKS or BROKERAGES and existing rules regarding disclosure of terms of service regarding account holdings already apply and any transfer of customer funds to other accounts without prior consent of the customer is already a crime - EMBEZZLEMENT.

Also worth noting for Ritchie Torres is that he was one of the Finance Committee members to get individual donations from FTX or its leaders. In total, $95,000 in donations were given to individual campaigns of eleven members of the house Financial Services Committee. Of course, Torres (and others as well) immediately announced he had identified the dollar amount of the contributions involved -- $35,000 for him alone -- and has immediately given it to a charity. Of course, that raises a question… When you become aware that the man who delivered a bag containing $35,000 to your front door likely STOLE those dollars among BILLIONS from other people, is giving the $35,000 to another third party the appropriate response? Shouldn't that money go BACK to those from whom it was stolen?

Will YOU Be My Regulator?

One key reason the political donations and committee actions are so important is they reflect a larger scandal about cryptocurrency specifically and corruption in general. As was the case in the financial meltdown of 2008, the concept of regulatory capture is crucial to understanding the real dangers still lurking even after the collapse of FTX. In the financial realm, stocks and bonds are labeled "securities" and companies and processes related to the trading of securities fall under the purview of the Securities and Exchange Commission. In contrast, options and derivatives originally stemmed from the trading of commodities like corn bushels, pork bellies, etc. and are regulated by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission which -- believe it or not -- falls under the jurisdiction of Agriculture committees in both the House and Senate.

That split is important for two reasons. One is that the members of those two committees are not interested in surrendering control / influence over such important aspects of the economy. That might because they have a genuine interest in the topic but it is ABSOLUTELY the case those members can rely on a continual stream of political donations from firms in those fields as long as they "play ball." The split is also important because historically, the Commodities Futures Trading Commission has been consistently underfunded given the costs of properly regulating the functions under its control. That is very advantageous for the firms subjected to its regulation if they know it will be perpetually understaffed and underfunded to truly execute its mission.

In the case of the cryptocurrency industry and in particular FTX, this known dichotomy of turf and enforcement funding led most cryptocurrency industry members to lobby Congress to AVOID having regulatory obligations assigned to the SEC and to ensure what few regulations might be devised were assigned to the CFTC. This goes beyond "regulatory capture" where an industry so thoroughly corrupts its assigned regulator that it can operate with near impunity. This is a case where the industry gets to CHOOSE its regulator from the outset. This was found to be a key contributing factor in the financial meltdown of 2008 as well. Here is a quote from teh book 13 Bankers published after the meldtown that summarizes the flawed regulatory climate at that time:

But banks also had a more direct means of putting pressure on their regulators -- the market for regulatory fees. The Federal Reserve makes the money for its day-to-day operations from its banking activities, and the FDIC makes its money from insurance premiums levied on banks. But the other major regulators, including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) and the Office of Thrift Supervision (OTS), are funded by fees levied solely on the banks that they regulate. And while each regulator nominally had its own sphere of jurisdiction -- bank holding companies for the Fed, national banks for the OCC, and so on -- financial institutions that fell under multiple regulatory agencies were allowed to select their primary regulator. As a result, regulatory agencies had to compete for funding by convincing financial institutions to accept their regulation, which created the incentives for a "race to the bottom," in which agencies attract "customers" by offering relatively lax regulatory enforcement.

The same corrupt forces were at work with FTX and the entire crypto industry. One other story widely circulating in crypto circles but not attracting much attention in more general media involves a battle for top-dog status between FTX and peer / rival Binance that hinged upon looming regulation as a weapon in the battle. Suspecting regulation was looming, FTX and Binance were hoping to disrupt the other's business enough that they would suffer major losses (in assets and market share) just as regulations were imposed. Each thought they could influence the regulation enough that it would serve as protection for market share and whoever was on top at the time regulations were imposed would cement that top dog status - permanently. Such sparring might have been taking place throughout the first half of 2022 but by early fall, Bankman-Fried actually approached his peer at Binance in the weeks before the collapse looking for a capital infusion. In the two or three days prior to the final collapse, FTX desperately sought out an infusion from Binance and its CEO publicly stated it would purchase FTX outright. In less than a day, however, that statement was retracted with Binance issuing a new statement via Twitter:

In the beginning, our hope was to be able to support FTX’s customers to provide liquidity. But the issues are beyond our control or ability to help.

After due diligence didn't take even twenty four hours to find a smoking gun, the willful suspension of disbelief of the entire industry was shattered and FTX folded.

The likelihood of corruption cannot be overstated here. Either via donations from FTX the firm or its individual leaders, nearly $40 million dollars was donated to Democratic PACs or specific candidates over the last three to four years. Bankman-Fried has also stated similar amounts were given to Republicans using dark money channels because it was clear if money was given to Republican efforts publicly, that would clash with the "charitable" front the firm and its leaders were trying to convey as part of their entire "effective altruism" charade. The matched dollar amounts clearly indicate the donors didn't assume one party or the other was more likely to regulate in their interest, they simply wanted to ensure access and influence regardless of who had control at any point.

WTH

The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Engineering and Art

The use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) software and the ethical, legal and artistic implications of its use are a growing source of debate and conflict in many fields. Current capabilities are already testing established concepts in copyright protections, intellectual property rights and the very definition of what it means to create art. News stories over the past year are a good indication of the current state of AI, the conflicts between the rights of past creators versus the present / future, resulting economic impacts of those changing claims of rights and the future of art itself.

Copyright for Past Works Leveraged by AI

Teams building modern, complex software applications are commonly distributed across nearly every time zone on the planet, allowing nearly continuous 24x7 work. A core necessity of this distributed development is use of a centralized "vault" (or "repository") to which each developer can push code they've completed for use by others or from which they can pull completed modules built by others which they need to use. GitHub is one of the largest online source code repositories used by developers in every industry and can be used for open source projects and private projects where source code is supposed to be protected.

Github was purchased by Microsoft in 2018 in a move which immediately raised suspicions as to Microsoft's intent. At the time, Microsoft pitched the acquisition as its sign that it was fully supporting the open source "movement" while also re-engineering its internal processes to leverage work flows proven to be successful with open source platforms. By 2022, the larger developer community's suspicious seemed to have been justified when Microsoft announced a tool called CoPilot, aimed at speeding up "boilerplate" grunt work required in almost any software project.

CoPilot is a process running within a developer's favorite editor that constantly compares what is being typed with keywords and syntax seen from scanning / categorizing the MILLIONS of lines of source code within GitHub. When it finds a match, it can auto-insert a complete programming statement or block of code that is likely an exact match for what the developer was going to type. Even if not an exact match for what the developer intended, the suggested code may often only require changing a few variable names, etc. which takes far less time than typing the entire statement or block by hand. In theory, this tool improves quality as well by recycling "best practice" code from existing software that likely already works. All good, right?

For open source developers owning copyrights on those millions of lines of existing code in GitHub, having their code scanned and normalized into generic boilerplate for re-use without accreditation or compensation is NOT what they agreed to when putting their code in GitHub and/or publishing the code via open source licenses. The fact that Microsoft trained the CoPilot AI on the content of GitHub BEFORE informing current users the training was underway denied those copyright owners the ability to remove their code from scanning. Once scanned, it is likely impossible to definitively prove a suggestion by CoPilot derived from a particular block of previously scanned copyrighted code.

Copyright for AI-Created Works

The creation of CoPilot by Microsoft raised questions about the rights of PRIOR creators whose works become training fodder for AI algorithms to use in creating new works. The next obvious question involves whether AI created works themselves can gain copyright protection. There's an answer to that question, but it isn't clear the answer is obvious or correct.

https://www.cbr.com/ai-comic-deemed-ineligible-copyright-protection/

In September of 2022, Kris Kashtanova received notification from the US Copyright Office that copyright protection had been granted to a comic book she had created using a "text-to-image" AI engine called Midjourney. On December 20, 2022, she received a second notification from the USCO stating they had made a mistake and that the work was NOT eligible for copyright protection having been created by AI tools. The original copyright application mentioned the use of Midjourney but did not attempt to estimate how much of the overall labor of creation had been performed by the AI versus a human.

In general, it seems USCO policy is to NOT grant copyright to AI works and the initial grant in this case was a mixup. In order to gauge the fairness of the USCO's current policy, it is helpful to review a few examples and summarize how these tools function and either speed up existing manual "grunt work" or yield entirely new permutations not likely to have been created by humans. This type of "creative" AI logic is significantly different in its goals than the types of AI used to provide "expert systems" that for example leverage the past decisions of thousands of doctors to act as a quality check on the next diagnosis but much of the capability stems from similar pattern recognition and training algorithms.

The current state of the art isn't limited to creating static images for pages in a comic book. A now-common use of AI involves the creation of "music videos." I like rock music and see many examples like these in my YouTube recommendations:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5xtrK0iF6M - Black Hole Sun - Soundgarden
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kGLo8tl5sxs -- Echoes - Pink Floyd
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPtntfM1tJM -- White Rabbit -- Jefferson Airplane

I have not personally tried using these tools to create a video to learn EXACTLY what is involved but have seen descriptions of the current process. In general, the "creator" provides a set of inputs to the engine comprising the following types of information:

• desired length of the video
• text containing lyrics or words related to themes or imagery desired
• key milestones identified by timestamps (offsets from time 00:00) where transitions are desired
• for each milestone, hints about specific concepts desired for the imagery at that point
• for each milestone, hints about the type of imagery desired (photo-realistic? cartoonish? abstract / impressionistic? surrealist?)
• for each milestone, hints about action desired within a milestone scene (static? with motion?)
• for each milestone, hints about how the imagery should transition from the prior milestone (jump? fade out and in? dissolve? etc.)

These configuration settings are defined in a file or collection of files as essentially script inputs (key point…) and provided to the algorithm which has already been "trained" by scanning millions of images on the Internet that have already been labeled with descriptive info that can be matched up to the hints in the input. Each milestone is treated as a "clip" which the software will create by rendering images using the nouns and hints parsed from the script input. After each "scene" is created, the engine goes back and uses the other hints about transitions between scenes to render the final pass of the entire clip.

Because the process is script oriented, whatever part of the process is still manual with current tools can always be further automated with more scripting. For example, additional logic will likely be created to further eliminate human labor by performing these tasks:

• scanning a music audio file for audio patterns indicating tempo / beats or detect rock guitars versus symphonic strings to suggest mood
• filtering for frequencies in the human voice range to extract that portion of the audio for transcription to provide further hints about the subject matter
• mapping timestamps within the audio for key transition points (volume transitions, the start of voices for verse and chorus sections, etc.) and feeding those to the final transition planning beteen "scenes" rather than having a human manually listen to the work and define them

Those with a background in software engineering or video / audio production can see descriptions of this process and instantly recognize how much tedium is eliminated from just the ASSEMBLY of dozens / hundreds of short "scenes" into a final product, much less the actual synthesis of each of those short scenes. The key question raised in all of this is perhaps this: If software is used to create "art" and artificial intelligence algorithms are used for both elimination of grunt work and "synthesis" work, where is the boundary between automation of those two and where is the boundary between "machine product" and "art?"

The challenges of making those distinctions are already being discussed by top notch players in the field. Here's a link to a video of an interview of Smashing Pumpkins guitarist / songwriter Billy Corgan by Rick Beato in which the impact of AI on the music industry is discussed:

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

The key point about the impact of AI on artists and producers begins at 1:25:00 in the clip but the entire 90 minute interview is worth watching. In that specific segment on AI, Corgan recounts a trip he made as a child where he visited the Salvador Dali museum in St. Petersburg, Florida. As a child, he was familiar with Dali and how his public persona and flamboyancy had influenced the art world but when he actually saw the body of work in person, he was surprised that Dali could actually PAINT. Really paint. He wasn't just a showman and successful at the business of art, he mastered the craft.

The Beato interview above is one of the better discussions about the impact of artificial intelligence technologies (others abound online) but the vast majority of these discussions address AI in the context of art being primarily a PRODUCTION problem in creating a consumable PRODUCT, like making Hershey bars or a pair of shoes. Orienting conversations about AI from that perspective leaves a vastly more important aspect of its impact unaddressed.

Misunderstanding Art - Product or Process?

In my senior year of high school, I was fortunate enough to have been forced to read an influential essay (in literature circles, anyway) published in 1925 by Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset. Versions of the book containing the essay are still available for purchase and a PDF of the essay itself is available at the link below for those interested.

https://monoskop.org/images/5/53/Ortega_y_Gasset_Jose_1925_1972_The_Dehumanization_of_Art.pdf

This essay was the first reading assignment in an English class dedicated to analyzing four key genres of literature --- short stories, novels, plays and poetry. The essay acted as the thesis for the entire year course by encouraging students to abstract away from all of the SPECIFIC literary works covered in the class to think in more general terms about what ALL forms of literature (and more generally, all forms of art) are attempting to achieve.

At the time of its writing, the art world was witnessing a backlash against the then-new genre of highly abstract painting which didn't attempt to use techniques of shade and perspective perfected over the prior centuries to convey ideas but instead focused on vastly simplified shapes and patterns. Even today, one hundred years later, many people despise these forms of expression so it's easy to imagine now how much revulsion they generated among the public when they were new. The essay, entitled The Dehumanization of Art attempted to explain why the new emerging styles were literally removing traditional human shapes and conventional forms of representation of space and perspective as a means of shedding new perspective on the present which, after a first heavily industrialized world war, drastically altered people's perceptions about the world. The essay outlined a way of thinking about art as a PROCESS, rather than a PRODUCT or outcome. Specifically, artistic creation is a perpetual cycle of experience and creation intended to expand the understanding of the world for both the creator and the consumer.

For creators, the process of creating art requires mastering a set of skills in a medium (painting, sculpture, music, words, etc.) established over decades / centuries. This effort in mastering "the basics" not only makes the creator more productive but helps convince potential audiences that the artist is more than a layman or hack and HAS something worthy of consideration. After honing those skills, the creator then applies them to the surrounding environment to yield a unique perspective which is reflected in their creation. The degree of novelty of that perspective is a key element of the "worthiness" of the art created because it is the novelty of the creation still wrapped in the familiarity of the form that attracts the attention of consumers.

However, the metaphysical "worthiness" of that output can be impaired if a unique idea or feeling is still "encoded" into the form of the medium in a routine, cookie-cutter, reductive fashion. Imagine rock and roll's evolution STOPPING at the point where the first guitar player mastered the first I - IV - V shuffle riff and ALL subsequent songs were written with that rhythm and chord progression. It doesn't matter what genius is contained in the lyrics or melody, no one would see value in The Sounds of Silence or Let It Be buried in a two minute, thirty second rock shuffle after five thousand prior songs had been recorded with the exact same chord progression and rhythm.

As a result, successful "art" cannot just reductively combine new insight with established artistic patterns and yield new worthwhile art. The form of the art itself must be tweaked nearly continuously to yield the required amount of overall novelty to attract an audience and serve its function by sharing an insight between the artist and the audience. Tweaking of the form is required not only between artists working within a form, but even for an artist between works. Part of the challenge to the creator is deciding how much variation from established norms should be included. That degree of variation is not only a function of the artist's inventiveness but how far they are willing to stretch the boundaries of the existing form. If they only stray a small bit, the work risks being perceived as too derivative and being ignored -- FAILURE. If they stray so far from norms that the audience cannot recognize the work within the established medium and cannot adjust to it without EXTENSIVE exposure, the work will be ignored as too bizarre -- FAILURE.

In contrast, if the artist's mastery of current norms is so perfected they can include new alterations which pay homage to or mock those norms while still embodying them, audiences are more likely to recognize the creativity, absorb the work and gain exposure to the idea the artist was attempting to communicate -- SUCCESS.

All of the above is a very abstract, intellectual means of describing something we all intuitively understand about any of the art we enjoy. No one wants to turn on their favorite radio station or open their playlist and find every song sounding 95% like their favorite band. The same is true for literary or visual arts. Readers traditionally expect a novel to have a beginning, a story arc over a primarily linear timeline and an end. Reading a story like Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut that has no temporal sequence at all is an odd, even disorienting experience because it strays so far from conventions. However, that altered form was uniquely suited to the unique idea Vonnegut wanted to convey, an idea that only clicks at the random point he chose to use in the novel to convey it.

Our self-defense wiring is optimized to search for novelty as a reflection of danger or opportunity but we are also wired with incredible pattern matching capabilities that act as mental short cuts / time-savers to quickly associate common inputs with required responses. In essence, art is a means of entertaining ourselves by "hacking" these contradictory processes as they operate simultaneously to attract attention through novelty yet quickly convey ideas by leveraging familiarity with prior trained inputs.

But how does all of the above tie to concerns about artificial intelligence and art? Or artificial intelligence and engineering?

Much if not all of the discussions about the use of artificial intelligence in art focus on its impacts on the final PRODUCT of an artist and that product's consumption and acceptance by an audience. Left unaddressed is the impact of AI on the PROCESS of creating art and that process' impact on the artist and eventually the audience. Writing a symphony, recording an album, writing a screenplay or painting a mural can take enormous amounts of time doing things "the old way" without AI. Matching audio to video scenes... Selecting final takes from 64 tracks and setting levels, effects and balance to merge into a stereo mix... Considering plot flow while also factoring in stage blocking or scenery in a theatre or movie set...

Training AI algorithms by scanning thousands of hours of prior albums or films to identify production patterns to recycle CAN save an artist or engineer enormous amounts of time. But doing so can actually rob time from the creator as well -- time they were spending thinking about the idea being conveyed or problem being solved while they were doing the grunt work. Time that might have resulted in a refinement or perfection of an idea that can transform the larger work. It is perhaps THAT impact of AI on creativity and art / engineering that is the hardest to quantify but will prove most impactful -- to our individual and collective detriment -- in the long run.

WTH

Musk and National Security

Elon Musk appears in the news nearly every day, often for his behavior as the owner of Twitter or his behavior as a user of Twitter, and the news is typically troubling. Calling for the prosecution of a lifelong medical profession as a form of harassment. Coordinating with gonzo "journalist" Matt Taibi to essentially dox prior Twitter executives for (gasp) fielding complaints about questionable posts of politicians and public figures regarding COVID as an issue of government censorship instead of a corporation managing its own platform as it is legally entitled to do. Directing a halt to paying basic expense obligations like rent at Twitter. Directing a review of payments of legally required severance payments to laid off employees. Volunteering his own "peace plan" for Ukraine -- involving Ukraine ceding territory invaded by Russia to Russia in exchange for not getting bombed.

It's a free country. Musk owns Twitter outright as a privately held company. He can communicate anything he wants on his global bullhorn without prior restraint. He can de-platform anyone he wants and they can find another technology to spread their ideas (good or bad). He can overpay billions for a firm then micromanage its accounts payable ledger and screw over whichever creditors he chooses.

However, Musk is not free from exposure to the consequences of those actions. Nor are his other companies, which include SpaceX. And he isn't the only party to his actions with choices. And that is where things get concerning.

SpaceX has contracts with the US government worth billions for

• five flights of US crews to the International Space Station ($1.4 billion)
• ongoing cargo deliveries (unmanned) to the International Space Station
• confidential launches for the Department of Defense ($297 million)
• construction of a lunar lander ($2.9 billion)

In light of events between Russia and Ukraine and an unwillingness to provide cashflow to Russia by using their Soyuz rockets, European nations have also increased their dependency upon SpaceX for commercial and military purposes.

If Musk continues driving away staff at Twitter, who cares? The next "feature" is delayed? It takes an extra ten hours to restore service after a software bug or hacking event? NO ONE should be relying on Twitter for emergency communications (though some communities have adopted it as a tool for weather alerts and civil defense...). Corporations should not be relying on Twitter for internal communication or public relations with investors, media and the public. It has already been hacked to spread bogus financial news tanking share prices of billion dollar firms.

If Musk begins driving away engineering and manufacturing staff at Tesla or The Boring Company because of his public conduct, who cares? Self-driving cars slip off into the future another five years? The expected Cybertruck slips from 2023 into 2025? A tunnel doesn't get dug? Customers have multiple viable alternatives in the marketplace to consider. Some communities considering The Boring Company for tunnel projects are finding TBC's costs skyrocketing before the first shovel or finding TBC "ghosting" them during negotiations, indicating a lack of confidence in delivery capabilities likely to trigger cancellations.

In contrast, if engineering, manufacturing and operations personnel at SpaceX begin leaving as reaction to his conduct, the US government faces immediate human safety issues for crewed missions and likely national security issues for the top-secret launches likely related to spy satellite launches and test flights of upcoming technologies.

Famed astronaut John Glenn had a famous quote related to his answer to a question he heard countless times -- what were you thinking as you sat waiting for launch? His answer was supposedly "I felt exactly how you would feel if you were getting ready to launch and knew you were sitting on top of two million parts -- all built by the lowest bidder on a government contract."

Fast forward to the present in 2022. How would you like to be an astronaut sitting on a launch pad or already in flight or sitting in a space station knowing that your safe return might depend on:

• a engineer on the ground being available to troubleshoot an equipment issue on your craft?
• the availability of a part in short supply because SpaceX manufacturing is short on machinists or assembly personnel?
• expertise from a sub-contractor currently in some payment battle with SpaceX stemming from a random fit of pique by Elon Musk?

How are people in the Department of Defense feeling about our ability to keep spy satellites up as old ones need replacing so we aren't missing critical intelligence about Russia, North Korea, China or Iran? SpaceX has proven, state of the art rocket technology but that expertise cannot be retained if the culture of the firm and the behavior of its leadership is viewed as toxic to a wide swath of current employees. Even if current employees are willing to tolerate it, will the company be able to attract additional employees from the outside to keep pace with higher delivery tempos?

American leadership in the Biden Administration and Congress needs to take a serious look at supplier diversity in its military and intelligence programs. Given Musk's behavior in the management of Twitter, relying upon contracts alone to assure performance does not seem wise. Too many eggs have been placed in the SpaceX basket, given that the lead egg in that basket is -- by all normal benchmarks of behavior and professionalism -- obviously cracked.

WTH

Staffing Out the Obstruction and Contempt

On December 9, 2022, U.S. District Judge Beryl A. Howell denied a request filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith and team to hold Donald Trump in contempt for failing to cut to the chase and designate ONE person with ultimate responsibility for signing affidavits stating that all requested top-secret documents either HAVE or HAVE NOT been returned to the government. Smith's request seemed perfectly logical and appropriate in light of the sensitivity of the information involved and Trump's consistent, irresponsible behavior in this case. In rejecting the request, Judge Howell basically told the two parties to act like adults, figure something out and GET ON WITH IT.

But that's exactly what Smith was trying to do.

If nothing else, Howell's ruling confirms that Trump has again demonstrated his status as a pre-eminent innovator in white collar crime. Some are saying he might be the greatest of our time. Others are saying the greatest of all time. Trump has essentially absorbed all of the legal abstractions of incorporation and learned to apply them to his inner criminal psyche, in all of its incarnations -- Trump the ex-President, Trump the CEO, Trump the resort resident, etc. -- and foisting external legal obligations involving those different roles upon employees and lackeys assigned to each gigantic corner of his ego. Given Trump's primary modus operandi -- learned at the feet of the master, Roy Cohn -- of exaggerate / sue / lie / delay / obfuscate, he is providing the rest of the white collar criminal cadre a master class in staffing out obstruction of justice and contempt for the law.

Everyone in the country, including Judge Howell, apparently needs to be reminded that Smith's work In "the document case" has TWO distinct purposes. One is to determine if Trump's conduct in taking thousands of confidential documents, mixing them with low-security detritus and souvenirs and improperly securing said stolen documents will rise to the level of an indictable offense and eventual conviction. The OTHER purpose is the GET ALL OF THE DOCUMENTS BACK and ensure they do not become exposed and divulge names / methods / contacts of top-secret assets across the globe.

Trump's criminal actions in delaying the return of the documents not only thwart justice for the first goal of obtaining justice regarding his actions but thwart the second goal as well. And as maddening as it might be, the damage of those documents leaking into the wrong hands could be worse than Trump the individual somehow escaping individual justice. WE DON'T KNOW because his obfuscation and delay have prevented the government from KNOWING WHAT WAS TAKEN and WHAT COULD STILL BECOME EXPOSED IN THE FUTURE IF NOT RECOVERED.

Would ANY other US citizen thought to have taken THOUSANDS of top-secret documents be allowed to trigger this kind of paper chase with five lawyers playing Who's On First? Would any other US citizen with a couple of homes accused of similar actions have only faced ONE search warrant for ONE home? Even after having been found to have filed a false affidavit claiming the return of all documents?

Reading between the lines, Smith's action was intended to trigger a series of crucial events and collapse the time between them.

• cut through the finger pointing between Trump's legal minions
• put Trump the individual ultimately on the spot by forcing him to designate ONE lawyer as THE single point of representation for any affidavit filed about the final status of a search and return of subpoenaed documents
• if none of the lawyers can agree who should drink from that poison cup and risk criminal prosecution and disbarment for signing off on "completion", Smith would punch through Trump's cloud of legal clowns and ultimately force HIM to sign any such attestation
• Smith would then have "pierced the veil" of incompetence and obfuscation and allow analysis of potential security exposure to conclude to inform indictments and prosecution strategy

Smith's ask seems perfectly reasonable under general law and absolutely seems reasonable given the behavior of Trump since leaving office.

It is also worth remembering that Trump is under investigation for MANY actions. Illegally taking national security documents from the White House is only ONE of them. However, ending Trump's pollution of the political space will only take ONE key conviction in ONE case to achieve the two most important results -- ensuring he cannot become President again and thereby forcing the Republican Party to accept that reality and attempt a return to sanity. The laws around handling top-secret national security documents are very clear and the penalties for violating them have decades of clear precedent. Trump the President actually signed legislation that TOUGHENED penalties specifically for "unauthorized removal and retention of classified documents or material" (see section 202).

https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/139/text

Trump the President intended to use those penalties to go after Hillary Clinton for her email server but charges were never brought by Trump's DOJ. Trump's DOJ was certainly tough on a citizen, Reality Winner, who mishandled confidential information by leaking information about Russian election interference in 2016 to the press. She was sentenced to 63 months in jail and was incarcerated between August 2018 and June 2021 before being transferred to a transitional facility.

The case against Trump for illegally removing top-secret national security documents from appropriate facilities then REPEATEDLY refusing to return all such documents even under subpoena might be small potatoes in the larger scheme of his crimes against America but the case has two key merits in the larger picture. It is likely the easiest case to prove in front of a grand jury to obtain an indictment and it is likely the easiest case to present to a criminal jury to convict him. It may be the equivalent of nailing Al Capone for tax evasion but it is likely the fastest path to achieving the most important goals. Once those are achieved, prosecutors will have all the time in the world to pursue the more complicated charges around insurrection and a lifetime of tax evasion crimes. In the mean time, Judge Howell should have acted upon the DOJ request and imposed a contempt charge on Trump and his entire team. He is light years beyond deserving any deference from the DOJ or the courts.

WTH

What Passes for Justice in America

On December 6, 2022, after only two days of deliberation, the jury in the criminal trial of the Trump Organization returned guilty verdicts on all seventeen charges levied against the firm which involved consistent manipulation of accounting ledgers to hide income for key executives, dodging income taxes for those individuals and payroll taxes for the firm. The conviction draws obvious attention as a criminal conviction of a firm operated as a tightly controlled private business owned by a man running for then serving as President of the United States during some of the years covered by the charges. However, the conviction should also draw attention for what it says about how the justice system operates in America.

A Recap of the Charges

The charges were filed on July 1, 2021 in New York State Court as a result of coordinated investigations conducted by the Manhattan District Attorney (then Cyrus Vance) and New York State Attorney General Letitia James. You can read the full indictment HERE but bullets are excerpted below:

• the key crime cited in the indictment is SCHEME TO DEFRAUD
• charges cover the period between March 31, 2005 and June 30, 2021
• the indicted parties are The Trump Corporation (the administrative entity that employs senior executives), Trump Payroll Corporation, an entity owned by The Trump Corporation to process its payroll), and one individual, Allen Weisselberg, who specifically performed some of the manipulations of bogus accounting entries
• both indicted entities are controlled by The Trump Organization whose beneficial owners (only owners?) include Donald J Trump and the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust.
• the scheme disguised certain types of compensation to employees as NON-payroll expenses to the business, lowering the personal income tax obligations of the employees and lowering payroll tax obligations of the companies
• Allen Weisselberg alone received approximately $1.76 million in disguised compensation via this scheme (an average of $110,000 per year over the span of the charges)
• from 2005 to 2013, The Trump Corporation was listed as the leaseholder and paid rent for an apartment within NYC that was used exclusively by Weisselberg as his principal residence while he claimed his residence was outside of NYC, evading city income taxes for that period
• between 2012 and 2017, private school tuition payments for children of Weisselberg were paid via personal checks from Donald J. Trump or the DJT Revocable Trust, tracked internally as compensation but NOT reported as income for federal / state / local tax purposes, avoiding incoming taxes on those amounts totaling $359,058 (nice schools, that averages to $71,916 per year)
• between 2005 and 2017, lease costs totaling $196,245 for Mercedes autos used solely by Weisselberg and his wife were paid by The Trump Corporation, tracked internally as compensation but NOT reported as income for federal / state / local tax purposes, avoiding incoming taxes on those amounts
• between 2011 and 2017, Weisselberg initiated the drafting of checks payable to other employees (presumably for misc expenses) which were cashed by the receipient and the cash given to Weisberg as spending money -- again they were tracked internally as compensation but NOT reported as income for federal / state / local tax purposes, avoiding incoming taxes on those amounts totaling $29,400
• substantial portions of year-end bonuses paid to a subset of Trump Organization executives were not paid out of Trump Corporation and reported on state / federal income but instead paid via checks issued from at least SEVEN other Trump owned entities to obfuscate the nature of the payments and facilitate avoiding income and payroll taxes

Implications of the Verdict for Trump

Any discussion of impacts from this verdict must begin with a reminder that this was a CRIMINAL case (not civil) whose DEFENDANTS were The Trump Organization, The Trump Payroll Corporation, and Allen Weisselberg. Two corporate entities and one non-Trump individual. Weisselberg already pleaded guilty in a plea deal in exchange for testimony about some of the mechanics, even though he managed to negotiate an arrangement where he did not have to say directly that Donald Trump (human) explicitly approved these actions. However, in the trial, the fact that evidence was provided that some payments were issued from the personal account of Trump or his Revocable Trust rather than the entity created for payroll functions would seem to make that point irrefutable. In fact, that evidence submitted in this trial and accepted by the jury seems to have given new Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg new courage to consider criminal charges, despite backing down from this path upon taking office in January 2022.

The Trump Organization as an entity faces up to $1.61 million in fines. It isn't clear if New York State or a federal entity will pursue charges against all of the executives who benefited from the off-books compensation and trigger fines or pay-back of unpaid taxes. On the surface, a $1.61 million fine is literally a slap on the wrist to a firm with $278 million in revenue as of 2020. Perhaps the only penalty that matters to both The Trump Organization and Trump the human is the conviction itself on financial fraud charges.

Trump's empire is HEAVILY leveraged and in constant need of re-financing existing debt to maintain solvency. At this point, virtually any reputable bank would have internal policies if not outright restrictions on lending money to a corporation -- especially a tightly controlled private corporation controlled by a single family -- that has been criminally convicted for financial fraud. So that rules out all the reputable banks across the world. Unfortunately, that still leaves dozens of overseas entities willing and able to fill the breach -- Saudis, Russians, random oligarchs on the run, etc.

Will The Trump Organization continue to be able to turn over loans with an even smaller pool of possible lenders? It seems unlikely. The State of New York has already imposed an external audit process upon The Trump Organization as of November 3, 2022 in light of other wider fraud allegations still being pursued separately by NYS Attorney General Letitia James. Those audits require a review of Trump Organization books against GAAP accounting standards. If that audit function is allowed to report findings back to the state, any efforts to infuse cash from suspect international players is likely to be referred immediately to state or federal prosecutors.

If The Trump Organization becomes unable to turn around its borrowing and collapses, Donald Trump the individual will clearly be exposed as an empty vault -- literally and figuratively. The only source of funds left available to him sit in his political action committee. Technically, PAC funds don't revert to the candidate afer they exit political life -- they must still be spent on "politics" and "issue education." In reality, campaign finance laws are so flawed that it is very easy to spend PAC money in ways that prop up a luxury lifestyle -- private jet flights between "rallies" and "education events", stays at deluxe resorts hosting said events, etc.

It seems clear that even individual criminal indictments of Trump might not stop him from running for President. It is also sadly clear that pending individual criminal indictments wouldn't stop some Republian voters from supporting him in primaries. He might even win the Republican nomination again. All of which can provide plausible justification for spending that PAC money down while continuing to live the high life, eating Chicken McNuggets at the Rizt Carlton, etc.

That's not a terribly satisfying result for a $9.6 million dollar crime. Especially a crime committed by an ex-President who not only extorted an ally in need of arms who wound up beign invaded by Russia but organized and promoted an organized coup to remain in power after losing a fair election.

Implications of the Verdict for Justice

One synopsis of the entire fraud mentioned that the majority of the fraudulent bookkeeping stopped sometime in mid-2017. The assumption was that after Donald Trump became busy doing whatever he was doing as President, his children were forced to become more involved with running The Trump Organization, a few different people became involved in looking at the books, the shell games were discovered and someone decided the manipulations had to stop. IMMEDIATELY. At that time, there were apparently at least four employees whose on-the-books compensation immediately jumped $200,000 to make them whole.

If this anecdote is correct, it provides an easy way to put a lower-bound estimate on the size of the entire fraud. Four people with $200,000 in income from 2005 to 2017 is at least $9.6 million dollars in hidden taxable income. That would be worth

• $3,552,000 in personal federal income taxes at the 37% marginal rate
• $657,600 in personal New York State income taxes at 6.85% marginal rate
• $371,232 in personal New York City income taxes at 3.867% marginal rate
• $734,400 in employee federal payroll taxes at 7.65% rate
• $734,400 in employer federal payroll taxes at 7.65% rate

That's a total of $6,049,632 in dodged taxes yet the maximum fine is only $1.6 million dollars? One the surface, it would seem to indicate that white collar crime pays well. In fact, had Trump kept his ego in check and NOT run for President and won, it seems highly likely this fraud -- though likely easily detected by any newly minted CPA -- would have continued uninterrupted forever.

While the interval from indictment to conviction seems rapid compared to many other high profile, high-dollar prosecutions, the time required seems inordinately long in light of the simplicity of the crimes committed and the paper trails created. These were not crimes stemming from an fraudulent but subtle / technical accounting treatment decision. When accountants at WorldCom decided to reclassify monthly expenses for trunk circuit connections between WorldCom and other carriers as CAPITAL expenditures, there might have been three people in the company who understood the nuance of that decision and knew it to be wrong, allowing the firm to shift BILLIONS off their profit and loss statement, inflating earnings. The dozens of other people in operations and accounting just adjusted an attribute as directed somewhere in an accounting system and reported the results.

The crimes committed by "The Trump Organization" were not subtle at all. Cars, an apartment for daily living and tuition expenses for children are NOT legitimate business expenses, under ANY interpretation of accounting principles. And routinely paying executive bonuses from accounts of unrelated affiliate firms and booking those charges as generic expenses in those firms is blatantly an illegal tax dodge. The only surprise in this case is that the jury took two days to reach the unanimous verdict on all seventeen charges. Would it take the government (state or federal) that long to indict and convict Joe Q Public for the same conduct? If Joe Q Public did this same thing using his Joe Q Public, LLC, does anyone think the government would settle with convicting Joe Q Public, LLC and leaving Joe Q Public out of jail? Hardly.

It also seems clear that The Trump Organization is an admittedly big example of a larger problem with financial fraud in general that is practically encouraged by not only the laughable penalties applied to the corporation but also the ongoing reluctance by courts to "pierce the corporate veil" through sane interpretations of the difference between diffuse actions taken by dozens / hundreds of employees of an even larger corporation versus specific actions taken by a HANDFUL of employees with concrete paper trails taken to defraud external parties for the benefit of individuals, not the company.

Again, in the WorldCom example, an inflated stock price created by artificial reductions in operations expenses benefited Bernard Ebbers and a few WorldCom execs but thousands of shareholders as well. The crimes in this case were perpetrated by possibly three to four people and likely only benefited fewer than ten. Since the company is tightly controlled by Trump and family, "The Trump Organization" is not an abstract entity reflecting hundreds or thousands of owners in absentia, it is a paper shell proxy for a HANDFUL of family members. The "benefits" to The Trump Organization for engaging in these crimes didn't stay with "the company,' they flowed directly to Donald J. Trump the person and the Donald J Trump Revocable Trust.

The concept of a corporation as a legal entity is intended to simplify raising capital across larger pools of owners and facilitate continuity of operations and enforcement of contracts beyond the life of individual owners. These capabilities allow businesses to grow larger and more efficient in ways that can benefit society. Providing a shield against individual liability for actions taken by a corporation was viewed as an acceptable trade-off in exchange for these efficiencies of scale over partnerships and sole proprietorships. However, when a "corporation" commits crimes and is still financially organized to funnel all benefits to a very narrow set of owners, the benefit / risk balance should not always tip towards honoring corporate protections. The Trump Organization is a poster child example of the results of honoring such a one sided deal.

WTH

A Tale of Two Cults

In a recurring newsletter published by The Atlantic writer Derek Thompson, he made an interesting point about two related stories in the news -- the collapse of cryptocurrency exchange FTX and a supposed ethos of "effective altruism" that was promoted by two of the principals involved in FTX's downfall, Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison.

https://www.theatlantic.com/newsletters/archive/2022/11/sam-bankman-fried-ftx-crypto-effective-altruism/672247/

In Thompson's commentary - which is recommended reading -- he refers to both cryptocurrency and the focus on effective altruism as cults. As Thompson explains it, cryptocurrencies reflect a cult he criticized from the outside as a technology "in search of a use case" clouded with ever-changing jargon that required a leap of faith from the uninitiated to accept. Effective altruism also reflects a cult -- one Thompson says he partially bought into -- because it requires people espousing it to accept all of the following premises:

• Giving vast sums of wealth to charities is its own awesome obligation and requires unique skills
• The uber-rich have already demonstrated expertise in MAKING money which is a good indicator they are likely to also possess expertise in SPENDING large sums effectively through charity
• Given the two extremes of a) doing nothing to correct wealth inequality and b) adopting draconian tax laws to actively redistribute money from the uber-wealthy to governments or directly to populations, a concept of letting the uber-wealthy keep control of their wealth while encouraging philanthropy managed to somehow guage its "effectiveness" to steer money into "effective" charities rather than "ineffective" charities is a reasonable middle ground.

Whether Thompson's concept of analyzing these trends using concepts related to cults is appropriate or not, both of these topics are worth a more detailed analysis -- particularly when the facts for each topic are related to each other in ways that cut through the myths promoted by advocates of both.

Cryptocurrency

Thompson's description of cryptocurrency as a solution in search of a use case is a VERY appropriate description. In a nutshell, cryptocurrencies are intended to support the following needs:

• allow creation of tradeable assets in digital form to act as currency without the involvement of central banks controlled by governments -- cryptocurrency advocates believe central banks are too eager to "print money" that exceeds the natural productivity growth of the country's economy, reducing the value of the currency
• use blockchain technologies to act as a highly decentralized but indestructible / irrefutable ledger clearly establishing ownership of digital assets at any point in time to facilitate transactions and eliminate fraud

So the algorithms for creating cryptocurrencies prevent a central banker from firing up printing presses and "stealing" from the public by printing sheets of twenty dollar bills to pay off government debts. The blockchain based ledger prevents someone from suddenly rigging computer logs to say THEY own YOUR bitcoin with "serial number" 1BvBMSEYstWetqTFn5Au4m4GFg7xJaNVN2 that's worth $16,485 cuz in order to do that, they have to originate updates to more than half the ledger copies in the world showing that coin was transferred to them before any of the systems in the ledger cry foul and reject the bogus transaction.

That leaves two problems unsolved.

We've prevented evil central bankers from printing money but why is anyone willing to burn $179 dollars worth of electricity in a data center worthy of being given an asset supposedly worth $16,485 dollars? What if rogue actors and rogue nations are infecting millions of computers with viruses to run in the background on someone else's bill to perform mining calculations? They're not "forging" the coins per se -- they are running all of the calculations required to "mint" a coin. But is value being delivered appropriately under circumstances where the compute for minting was stolen? That's identical to someone breaking into the US Mint and running the presses for their own private benefit. And it's happening. Only three US based crypto-mining firms responded to a 2022 Senate committee request for data on their energy consumption and greenhouse gas implications but electricity usage of those three alone equated to 1.6 million tons of greenhouse gases -- the equivalent of 360,000 cars. Residential electric bills are going up because increased electric demand at nearby data centers is requiring purchase of electricity across the grid at spot rates.

The ledger concept theoretically eliminates forgery of actual crypto coins and forgery of ownership -- helping to confirm the coin as a SYMBOL is valid -- but that has nothing to do with the VALUE imputed to that coin at any given point. The VALUE of the valid SYMBOL of money still requires other forces at work, none of which are provided magically by use of a crypto currency.

For a SYMBOL to effectively serve as a MEDIUM OF EXCHANGE, legal / social forces must exist that allow (require?) acceptance of one of those symbols to settle a debt. That's literally the definition of "legal tender". At the moment, cryptocurrencies are ALLOWED as mediums of exchange in many industrial economies but crypocurrencies are only treated as legal tender in about eight large countries.

For a symbol to effectively serve as a STORE OF VALUE for a wide range of economic participants, those participants must rely upon some power to be capable of ensuring currency origination isn't being cranked up (printing for paper money, "mining" for crypto) via fraudulent means unbeknownst to the masses that is actually devaluing each unit. Participants must also trust the operation of operators acting as "money changers" converting between currencies or allowing exchanges with fractions of whole currency units are not manipulating balances to create money out of thin air.

In the case of FTX, it wasn't operating as a "miner" running crypto mining processes on thousands of computers to create new coins. FTX operated as an exchange, to allow people to trade in and out of ownership of crypto coins and -- given the unwieldy valuations -- divide ownership of whole coins into fractional shares with prices more suitable for those with only tens or hundreds of dollars to "invest." Essentially, FTX was operating as a combination of traditional bank (where owners of coins deposited their assets online) and a trading firm (where owners would purchase crypto coins from each other and across other exchanges). But the trading function also included sales of options and derivatives (uh oh…) which technically have nothing to do with the original purpose of crypto-currency but bring with them the exact same types of risks as government issued currencies. And, as depositors and regulators have now discovered, FTX was also operating as an investment bank by allowing crypto coins on its books to be "borrowed" by a second firm Alameda Research, operated by CEO Caroline Ellison, on-and-off girlfriend of FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried.

So what was so new about this crypto / FTX business model? FTX created a retail front to collect "other people's money" into retail accounts equivalent to checking and savings accounts, then allowed what was essentially a high risk hedge fund to "borrow" those retail assets without the consent or knowledge of the owners to speculate on other investments. Like countless meltdowns before, the scam worked great as long as all of the bets paid off. When bets went south, there were no funds to return to the retail accounts and when the retail account owners needed their money, they found nothing left.

Glass-Steagull anyone?

In short, all this new fangled cryptocurrency "technology" purported to eliminate incompetent central governments and central banks from jury-rigging financial markets to suit THEIR goals still required the same types of retail intermediaries like FTX to function which exposed crypto assets to the EXACT same type of fraud that was perfected in the 1920s. It was outlawed in the 1930s under Glass-Steagull, allowed back into existence with the horrendously flawed Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 1999 and destroyed trillions worldwide in the 2008 meltdown. I can't help but wonder how many FTX account holders have heard of Glass-Steagull. I wonder how many have heard of CFMA. I wonder why so many were dumb enough to buy into a parallel financial system built upon the idea that money should be free from government regulation while having no understanding of WHY such regulations were adopted in the past and WHY oversight is required.

The fact that Sam Bankman-Fried, Caroline Ellison and the dozen or so other close associates of theirs operating these firms out of apartments in Hong Kong and more recently the Bahamas not only destroyed fifteen billion dollars (and counting) of "investor" money but spent considerable time pushing their goals of giving back their paper wealth via "effective altruism" just adds a second bitter taste to the core fraud they executed.

Effective Altruism

Unlike crypto currencies, effective altruism is definitely not a solution in search of a problem. The world definitely has a problem with hyper extreme wealth inequities. The question is whether effective altruism is a viable means of correcting such inequities in ways which not only flatten the distribution of wealth but actually benefit society as a whole.

Recapping from the introduction, evaluating effective altruism starts with three key premises underpinning the concept:

• Giving vast sums of wealth to charities is its own awesome obligation and requires unique skills
• The uber-rich have already demonstrated expertise in MAKING money which is a good indicator they are likely to also possess expertise in SPENDING large sums effectively through charity
• Given the two extremes of a) doing nothing to correct wealth inequality and b) adopting draconian tax laws to actively redistribute money from the uber-wealthy to governments or directly to populations, a concept of letting the uber-wealthy keep control of their wealth while encouraging philanthropy managed to somehow guage its "effectiveness" to steer money into "effective" charities rather than "ineffective" charities is a reasonable middle ground.

There's nothing controversial about the first premise. Charitable work is like any other work and managing millions and billions of dollars worth of chartable work involves people, goals, communications and measurement of outputs, all of which are subject to incompetence and deceit and experience in detecting and managing such problems.

The second premise that billionaires ipso facto possess skills across a variety of disciplines involving an organization managing billions of dollars of charitable work is where reality begins undermining the viability of EA. On the surface, this premise sounds obviously true and arguing the opposite sounds flawed. The billionaire MADE their billions running a firm spending billions and may still be running the firm -- it would appear obvious they KNOW how to do it well. In reality, billionaires who retain control of the firm that made them a billionaire often remain siloed in their skill set -- as a finance whiz, an engineering whiz, a marketing whiz, etc. They remain in control because they may have been smart enough to control the company's structure as it evolved to ensure they retain voting control. They might have been the best person to lead the company at one phase of its growth but FEW executives have the breadth of skills and emotional intelligence to evolve their management philosophy as the company grows from tens to hundreds to thousands of employees. They may HAVE the top job but that doesn't mean they are the BEST person for that job - or a new job of effectively spending money across a wide swath of potential charitable causes.

Anecdotally, it seems obvious that many of the largest fortunes made in the last thirty years involved technology firms -- software, hardware, biotech, e-commerce. Anecdotally, it also seems true that a large proportion of charitable giving involves research into means for correcting multi-generational problems of education, basic water and sewage systems in third world countries (or Lowndes County, Alabama), development of clean energy technologies, genetics and cancer therapies, etc. It is likely that many extremely fortunate but "narrow" billionaire CEOs would not have specific affinity to a role managing efforts involving significantly different work. Even a billionaire with engineering / manufacturing expertise might not have the aptitude for managing basic scientific research -- a discipline significantly different than applied engineering.

But, come on, it's their money… Shouldn't billionaires have the right to spend their own money as they see fit? That's the core of the third premise and the premise of EA most in need of debate.

There are over seven billion people on the planet. There are three thousand three hundred eleven people on the planet worth over one billion dollars. There are one hundred and ninety two people on the planet worth over ten billion dollars. At most, billionaires amounting to 0.0000453 percent of the population control 3.5 percent of the world's wealth.

If money was only a way of keeping score on how well someone's working career went, income inequality to this extent wouldn't be a concern. This inequality IS a concern because wealth increases one's influence over one's government and the world in general. The United States included some lofty language in its founding documents professing to create a democracy where "one man, one vote" was the guiding principle. Of course, it took nearly two centuries to explicitly include ALL men and women in that goal and we have Supreme Court justices who would love to roll some of that back but that's a different topic.

Most countries already operate with a "one dollar, one vote" model in their politics already, to disastrous effects. Rather than seeing policy ideas from a wide range of perspectives, only policies benefiting the already powerful even get discussed, much less enacted. Adopting the same "one dollar, one vote" model in science, research and charity is equally likely to artificially narrow the range of ideas considered when so much funding power is concentrated in so few people. Consider some real examples. Is Bill Gates likely to have all of the best ideas on improving education? Even education about technical topics like math and computer science? There are twenty content creators on YouTube I could name in five minutes who have hundreds of videos each with millions of views PROVING they know more about how to educate kids about technology. Why should Bill Gates get a $1 million dollar "vote" on that debate and those twenty creators get no vote? Bill Gates MIGHT reach out to people in that field but if the issue is so important, wouldn't it be preferable for funding for such research to START with a wider spread across more possible contributors?

The core flaw with EA is that it may reflect a subliminal goal of "guilt washing" -- after earning a fortune by ruthlessly competing with enemies and imposing poor pay and crappy working conditions on one's own workers, maybe EA is becoming popular for encouraging the idea one can "undo" all of that damage at the end of a career by giving some or all of it back to charities aimed at correcting the problems created by the deeds that earned those billions. Think of the Sackler family donating BILLIONS to charities... After earning those billions selling needless opioids and triggering a 30 year epidemic of drug addiction and death for 760,000 people and still killing roughly 69,000 per year. Maybe the Sackler family SHOULDN'T have earned all of that money in the first place.

Or maybe EA isn't "guilt washing" at all. Maybe EA is a cynical tactic to placate a gullible public while continuing work against the public's interest. A cost of doing business. Consider David H Koch, who has generously funded science programming on PBS for decades. Over the same decades where millions of viewers heard "David H Koch" as a sponsor at the beginning and end of episodes of Nova illustrating how science was making progress for mankind, David and his brother Charles funded over 90 different astroturf-style pseudo organizations which sowed doubts about climate change science with the public, media and politicians and worked to block meaningful regulations on greenhouse gas emissions. They devoted over $145 million to this effort to TRASH science between 1997 and 2018 while claiming to SUPPORT it on public television.

In the case of FTX and Alameda Research, the theory of EA as cynical tactic to delay the recognition of malfeasance certainly seems to apply. It may take a while for the courts to determine the facts but the appearances have all the makings of a complete fraud -- both in the core businesses and the public charitable face adopted by the leaders, Sam Bankman-Fried and Caroline Ellison.

WTH

Trump: The Perfect Criminal for His Time

With regular show schedules getting adjusted for staff over a holiday weekend, MSNBC used its 10pm slot on November 25 to air a program hosted by Ari Melber that aimed to outline the entire scope of the crimes committed by Trump, his senior staff, non-staff associates and selected politicians across the country in formulating and executing his ploys at remaining in office. Knowing that Melber has been commissioned by the January 6 Committee to write the forward to their final report when published in book form, the thesis put forward in this program is likely reflective of themes to be found in the final report. The program was well written and provided appropriate focus across the wide range of criminal actions initiated by Trump and team. But as I watched it -- along with probably only 20,000 others with nothing better to do on a holiday weekend -- I could not help but wonder "what's the point of this?"

First, a summary of the program.

Melber used a giant multi-pane TV screen to unite the different aspects of the story into one timeline dating from just before election day on November 3, 2020 through January 6, 2021. I've recreated that timeline here for reference.

As each key element of the story was described, that item was added to the timeline with a color code reflecting it's degree of legality at the time (green = totally legal, yellow = iffy, red = obviously illegal). Some actions begun immediately after election day STARTED green -- giving Trump the benefit of the doubt. If a candidate thinks election results were "off", they are more than welcome to file petitions to state authorities requesting investigations or recounts. That is UNTIL you gain knowledge that no anomalies ACTUALLY exist or their impact on voting margins are incapable of changing results. At that point, when you continue filing paperwork with courts "citing" illegalities that do not exist, you are in fact committing a crime. (Melber's graph left these efforts green. I would have turned them red…)

Other efforts started in suspect territory (yellow) and were based on fringe theories that had not been previously discussed by more authoritative counsel but within weeks had generated internal feedback that they in no way reflected a valid legal interpretation of current voting laws in states where efforts were being pursued. At that point, additional efforts to pressure state officials or elected leaders on those merits constituted work in support of a criminal conspiracy -- leading that timeline item to fade from yellow to red.

Other ideas put up for consideration from Trump's lunatic fringe of outsiders were reviewed in real time as they were raised by White House legal counsel and immediately flagged as illegal, yet efforts in those areas continued, making those actions "red" from start to finish.

As summarized by Melber (and likely through inference, the January 6 Committee), the timeline view of the entire effort cements the following conclusions:

1. The attack on the Capital on January 6 was not an isolated event, but only one of EIGHT different efforts undertaken to reject the vote of the American people and retain power by Trump.
2. The vast majority of schemes considered and pursued were ipso facto ILLEGAL from the outset and Trump KNEW they were considered illegal from the point he initiated them.
3. Even those actions that started with a fig leaf of legality BECAME illegal when no supporting documentation was found justifying claims of fraud while Trump's lawyers continued submitting false documents to state courts.
4. The calendar overlaps BETWEEN these efforts show that each time LEGAL obstacles to an effort were identified, new ILLEGAL efforts were conceived to go around those barriers, confirming not only ongoing criminal intent but that all such activities were being communicated to Trump and his core team to trigger alternative efforts.

All well and good. I agreed with the program 100%.

But... As they say…

That's not why I'm writing this commentary…

As I watched the program and yawned through the familiar FACTUAL summary, it occurred to me that many others who might ever watch this summary or something like it would have the same exhausted reaction.

It then occurred to me that it is possible Donald Trump could be America's perfect criminal -- a criminal tailor made to exploit all that ails America.

America has been saturated by fake news and outrage since the founding of Fox News in 1996. America has been dumbed down by twenty five years of "social media technologies" that have perfected the art of distraction with bright shiny 4k video and reduced people's attention spans to that of a gnat. Our justice system -- already understaffed, grossly inefficient and heavily biased in favor of the rich and powerful -- has become corrupted over the last thirty years by justices at every level who have more allegiance to talking points issued by the Federalist Society than clauses in the Constitution.

These conditions create the perfect environment for the types of crimes committed by Trump.

• There are LOTS of them occurring on a regular basis so listeners become fatigued listening to new reports of new crimes, assuming they are just recycled hype rather than additional crimes.
• The sheer quantity, complexity and interrelated nature of the crimes defy summarization in soundbytes, making it difficult to accurately convey the events in public media, making it difficult to rally support for appropriate actions in the political sphere
• The sheer quantity, complexity and interrelated nature of the crimes also complicates work for prosecutors who risk boring grand jury members when trying to obtain indictments and risk boring trial jury members when needing to obtain unanimous votes for convictions.
• If you have enough money, you can hire lawyers to submit lawsuits in friendly court jurisdictions who will interfere with court proceedings in other jurisdictions, further slowing down legal processes and generating more news fatigue among the public, helping to tune out news of more new crimes.

As previously opined during Trump's impeachments, the real danger to America doesn't stem from Trump escaping justice. It stems from others currently on the sidelines, studying a master at his craft and perfecting these techniques for the next time. And if Trump is not indicted and convicted, there WILL be many next times to come.

WTH

Russians or Republicans?

Who is doing more to destroy voting rights and democracy in America?

It is likely it will never be known for sure but one thing is clear... Both are doing their damndest.

On Election Eve, November 7, 2022, two different stories hit the wires. One involves comments made by a Russian businessman.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/russias-prigozhin-admits-interfering-us-elections-2022-11-07/

Not just any Russian bussinessman. This businessman is Russian businessman Yevgeny Prigozhin, who is a close financial / political ally of Putin and founder of Russian mercenary firm Wagner. Prigozhin bluntly stated:

We have interfered (in U.S. elections), we are interfering and we will continue to interfere. Carefully, accurately, surgically and in our own way, as we know how to do.

As if anyone with sanity had any doubt. But on the same day, The Washington Post published a story regarding lawsuits filed in at least three battleground states by Republicans to reject mail-in ballots on technicalities.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/elections/2022/11/07/gop-sues-reject-mail-ballots/

What technicalities? Technicalities like failing to write the mail-in date on the outer envelope, even though the ballots were received PRIOR to election day. In these same battleground states, Republicans have urged Republican supporters to only vote on election day. The Repubicans are WINNING these lawsuits, posing a very real likelihood such exclusions of THOUSANDS of ballots will skew heavily towards ballots cast both voters voting for Democratic candidates. Such wins are subject to appeals, possibly all the way to the Supreme Court, but it is very clear a majority of Supreme Court Justices would have no problem ruling in favor of these arbitrary and fickly enforced rules as part of supporting "state's rights" and supporting the Supreme Court's view that state voting laws and processes do not require federal oversight and enforcement to avoid abuses.

WTH

Constitutional Gene Therapy

Ask the wrong questions and you will always get the wrong answers.

As a Democratic (and democratic) rout seems to grow nearer on November 8, 2022, media outlets are already ramping up opinion pieces describing how the seemingly perpetually ineffective Democratic Party has squandered what was supposed to be a certain inescapable shift to the left as the Hispanic segment of the country grew to a larger share of the entire population. Democratic electoral majorities were viewed to be inevitable as a result. In reality, many areas where Hispanic voters previously voted Democratic over Republican by forty percent margins have dropped to the five to ten percent range and continue shifting to the center or right.

Much of the analysis of this surprise trend focuses on either

1. why aren't Democrats acknowledging the desires of the Hispanic segment that has rewarded them with power by acting on their key issues of interest like immigration, wages, etc.? or
2. why are Hispanic voters migrating to Republican candidates whose party goals seem antithetical to everything they want?

The first line of analysis implies that Democratic Party leaders are CONSCIOUSLY, CONSISTENTLY taking Hispanic votes each election day then CONSCIOUSLY, CONSISTENTLY flipping them the bird for the next term and instead culling favor with both the interests of the Hollywood / Wall Street elite and far-left environmental and social interest groups. The second line of thought implies that voting blocs have become so frustrated with the lack of perceived progress by voting Democratic they are deciding to actively vote AGAINST Democratic candidates in an electoral fit of pique but might return if Democrats "get the message" and do better next time. If true, this second theory would confirm voters thinking this way have no clue whatsoever about how the American government is structured and how very narrow interests have perfected their manipulation of that structure towards very undemocratic goals.

If an attempt is made to boil down the state of politics in America right now using the public positions stated by the two dominant parties, those summaries will lead one to infer that America is being torn between two diametrically opposed interpretations of our founding document -- the United States Constitution.

On the Republican side, the argument is basically that the Founding Fathers created a nearly perfect set of principals whose effectiveness in the intervening two hundred forty six years has been sullied only by modern generations reading into the original language intents that were never there instead of legislating new intents or explicitly amending the Constitution to allow such intents if not present in these "originalist" interpretations. If only we could "get back" to the original undistorted interpretation of a document created by slaveholders that didn't provide voting rights to women, we could straighten things out.

On the Democratic side, the argument is basically that the Founding Fathers created a nearly perfect set of principals for continually evolving to a "more perfect union" and that progress towards perfection is being slowed down by special interests corrupting the systems that allow the forces defined by the Constitution to function properly. In other words, the country didn't start in a perfect place, the country is certainly not IN a perfect place, but the systems in place SHOULD be capable of working to make progress over time if used ethically in good faith.

What if both of those assumptions are wrong? What is REALLY wrong with America right now?

Is it possible the Constitution itself contains the seeds of its demise and ours?

We already know the original Constitution (US 1.0, released in 1789) codified America's original sin -- slavery -- into our DNA by crassly allocating electoral influence to OWNERS of slaves while giving zero rights (voting, civil and human) to actual slaves. Most Americans were taught to believe the Civil War excised that bug from the operating system by defeating the South which intended to expand slavery further west and by amending the Constitution to provide full citizenship to all blacks and voting rights to black men.

What if more gene therapy in the Constitution was required beyond the Thirteenth Amendment to undo the damage caused by allowing slavery in the first place?

Article I Section 3 of the Constitution specifies the structure of the Senate and staggered terms of its members. Drafting of the Constitution began in 1787 and at that time, a majority of states allowed slavery but efforts were underway in some northern states to abolish it. Both the pro-slavery and anti-slavery participants in the drafting process saw the writing on the wall for future conflict and reached a compromise to coax hard-core slave states into joining the new nation under the revised Constitution. That compromise was the structure of the Senate.

The Senate structure gave equal legislative power to a body whose membership wasn't based on population or acreage but simply membership in the union. It also staggered terms over six years so the body as a whole would never be subjected to the risk of a wholesale changeout in a single election. The staggered terms might have been explained over time as a means for making the Senate a calmer, less reactive, more deliberative body than the House but they serve equally well to protect Senators from their voters' ability to swap them out. Pro-slavery forces viewed the structure as additional leverage that could protect what was likely to become a minority interest in near perpetuity and thus an incentive to join the new union. In a country claiming to focus on equal representation ("one man, one vote"), this structure is inherently undemocratic. While the original sin of slavery that prompted this flawed structure was corrected by the Thirteenth Amendment, the original flaw itself is still present in the core of the system, still available to be leveraged for any issue characterized by wide geographic disparities -- abortion, guns, land use rights, water rights, environmental protection, etc.

Is it possible special interests have perfected strategies for leveraging an undemocratic Senate to thwart majority supported change?

That certainly seems to be the case. And two of the special interests are the two dominant political parties in the United States. Much like giant faceless corporations that are provided legal personhood, the Democratic and Republican parties have become discrete interests in the country, representing their own interest in retaining and exercising power rather than transparently acting according to the wishes of their most recent voters. An important aspect of the "electoral physics" of an undemocratic legislative process is that many things desired by minority interests protected by such a structure don't require legislative "wins" per se, they just require the ability to BLOCK wins by the majority side of the issue.

This type of governance by minority obstruction also has unique synergies with social media technologies developed in the past fifteen to twenty years. A party only focused on stopping the other guy doesn't have to explain their own position and they certainly don't have to understand or explain the opposing position. Successful obstructionism only requires sowing enough fear and doubt in the public and applying that angst to very specific gates in the system to delay or kill legislation unfavored by the minority. As an added bonus, each win with this strategy by the minority has a secondary, cumulative benefit for the minority by sowing cynicism with voters in the majority who grow frustrated after WINNING majorities in elections yet not getting anything they wanted having "won." In 2022, do voters upset with Democrats think ANY of their pet issues had a chance of meaningful legislation related to those issues passing in a 50/50 Senate with two extremely conservative Democratic Senators (Manchin of West Virginia and Sinema of Arizona)? Do they believe they will be closer to achieving their goals with both the House and Senate controlled by Republicans who will also work to thwart changes imposed by executive order? Will the orange koolaid / benzene combination taste better by adding more benzene?

The entire world now operates in an environment where the SPEED of our communication tools has vastly exceeded our ability and willingness to FILTER that communication. The result is frankly a sewer. Mark Twain once said "a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth gets its boots on." It takes no energy at all to post a lie on Facebook or Twitter. It takes virtually no mental effort to READ a post on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. If the lie fits existing cognitive biases, it will be processed and accepted, triggering the desired doubt / anger / fear. In SECONDS.

In contrast, honestly REFUTING a lie in a two-sentence tweet requires thought and careful wordsmithing by someone with expertise and time then requires readers of the lie to be willing to spend the time reading something they know they don't agree with at the outset. Mark Twain also once said "it is easier to fool people than convince them they have been fooled." Of course, the sarcastic irony behind all of this is that there's no proof Mark Twain said either of these things. Americans seem to have completely forgotten a key lesson from Abraham Lincoln.

WTH