#68 / A Private Equity Primer

    

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If you have heard about "Private Equity," and aren't exactly sure what that is, and aren't exactly sure how our economy is affected by it, I am inviting you to click the link below. If you do, you should be transported to an article from The New York Times, "The Finance Industry Is a Grift. Let’s Start Treating It That Way." I am told that no paywall will prevent you from reading all about it. I encourage you to click the link, and to do so. 

The first link in the paragraph above, which takes you to the Wikipedia description of "Private Equity," may not fully illuminate how much we, as a nation, are actually undermining our own economy by investments that are touted as bringing bigger returns to those with some money to invest (which might even include you). The Times' article, however, I think does make clear the very real dangers to which our increasing investments in "Private Equity" are exposing us - both as individual investors, and as our individual investments in "Private Equity" affect our overall economy, thus impacting us collectively. In fact, "Private Equity," which The Times' article calls "financialization," steers investments away from efforts that provide substantial support to the nation's economy as a whole, and divert and siphon away the much-needed investments that might otherwise renew, and sustain, and grow our economy.

The short story is this: "Private Equity" convinces us to "invest" in an expectation that the money we make available from our savings will grow. There is no claim that the investment, itself, will actually produce something new and valuable, or that it will serve as the foundation for the future growth and success of the economy that sustains us all. "Private" equity panders to us "privately," as individuals, and is thus "selfish" equity. "Private Equity" essentially says "F-you" to those who don't already have money, and who have been hoping - even "expecting" - that new investments in our economy will be like "a tide that lifts all boats." 

"Our" government, which should be working for all of us, has largely been captured by those with great wealth - and "Private Equity" (emphasis on the "private") is an effort to make sure that no one other than those who are already rich will benefit from the "investments" that those with some money to invest are being enticed to make. 

Read the article I have linked, if you have any doubts about my description of "Private Equity," and why the word "grift," actually, is an altogether "too nice" a way to describe what is really going on!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/06/opinion/capitalism-industry-financialization.html

#67 / Time Is Piling Up

 

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I have written, often enough, about the positive impacts that come from "Memento Mori." That's one way of naming the practice of reminding ourselves that we must die. Click that link, above, to read what I had to say about that idea, way back in June of 2021. If you do, you will note that my earlier blog posting gives some credit to Sister Theresa Aletheia Noble. Click the link to her name if you'd like to learn more about what she says about this topic.

In short, that "Memento Mori" advisory suggests that if we can truly come to accept the fact that we are not permanent features in the world, we might also figure out that it is to our benefit to celebrate the wonder and the joy of being alive at all, and alive right now, instead of bitching about everything that has gone wrong for us, and with the world. Our life is a "short trip," so why not glory in it? Maybe it continues on, or maybe it doesn't (I'm personally on the side that believes it does) but we do know that we're alive right now!

One way I keep reminding myself of that "Memento Mori" advice is by walking around listening to a set of Bob Dylan songs that I call my "Memorial" playlist. "Mississippi" is one of those songs. It's one of my favorites. Click here to listen. I have placed the lyrics below, and have emphasized the verse which I have used as the headline for today's blog posting: 

Mississippi

WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

Every step of the way we walk the line

Your days are numbered, so are mine

Time is pilin’ up, we struggle and we scrape

We’re all boxed in, nowhere to escape

City’s just a jungle, more games to play

Trapped in the heart of it, trying to get away

I was raised in the country, I been workin’ in the town 

I been in trouble ever since I set my suitcase down 

Got nothing for you, I had nothing before

Don’t even have anything for myself anymore

Sky full of fire, pain pourin’ down

Nothing you can sell me, I’ll see you around

All my powers of expression and thoughts so sublime 

Could never do you justice in reason or rhyme

Only one thing I did wrong

Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Well, the devil’s in the alley, mule’s in the stall 

Say anything you wanna, I have heard it all

I was thinkin’ about the things that Rosie said

I was dreaming I was sleeping in Rosie’s bed 

Walking through the leaves, falling from the trees 

Feeling like a stranger nobody sees

So many things that we never will undo

I know you’re sorry, I’m sorry too

Some people will offer you their hand and some won’t 

Last night I knew you, tonight I don’t

I need somethin’ strong to distract my mind

I’m gonna look at you ‘til my eyes go blind

Well I got here following the southern star

I crossed that river just to be where you are

Only one thing I did wrong

Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Well my ship’s been split to splinters and it’s sinking fast

I’m drownin’ in the poison, got no future, got no past

But my heart is not weary, it’s light and it’s free

I’ve got nothin’ but affection for all those who’ve sailed with me 

Everybody movin’ if they ain’t already there

Everybody got to move somewhere

Stick with me baby, stick with me anyhow

Things should start to get interesting right about now

My clothes are wet, tight on my skin

Not as tight as the corner that I painted myself in

I know that fortune is waitin’ to be kind

So give me your hand and say you’ll be mine

Well, the emptiness is endless, cold as the clay

You can always come back, but you can’t come back all the way 

Only one thing I did wrong

Stayed in Mississippi a day too long

Copyright © 1996 by Special Rider Music

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https://www.bobdylan.com/songs/mississippi/

#66 / Another Mention Of Jeff Bezos

   

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You probably know who is pictured, above. In fact, I wrote about him only yesterday, in my blog posting about billionaires. 

Jeff Bezos. That's who is pictured above. I got the picture from a news article in The Guardian that let me know that Bezos is currently "the richest man on the planet." He is not, though - the way The Guardian sees it - the "richest person ever." You can read the article if you are interested in finding out why that's true. 

Though I am mentioning Bezos in this blog posting today, the blog posting is not really about Bezos. It's about The Washington Post, the newspaper that Bezos bought in 2013. On February 4th of this year, a little over a month ago, Bezos cut 300 members of the Washington Post newsroom, in what The Intercept called "a journalistic bloodbath." The Intercept's article was not alone in commenting on Bezos' actions. A column in The New York Times, by Carlos Lozada, was titled this way: "An Elegy For My Washington Post." 

If you click the link just provided, you should be able to read the entirety of Lozada's column, which is focused on the "Meyer Principles," named for Eugene Meyer, who purchased The Washington Post in 1933. These principles are formally titled, "Seven Principles For The Conduct of A Newspaper," and are prominently displayed in the new building into which Bezos moved the newspaper after he purchased it. 

Seven Principles for the Conduct of a Newspaper:

• The first mission of a newspaper is to tell the truth as nearly as the truth may be ascertained.

• The newspaper shall tell ALL the truth so far as it can learn it, concerning the important affairs of America and the world.

• As a disseminator of the news, the paper shall observe the decencies that are obligatory upon a private gentleman.

• What it prints shall be fit reading for the young as well as for the old.

• The newspaper’s duty is to its readers and to the public at large, and not to the private interests of its owners.

• In the pursuit of truth, the newspaper shall be prepared to make sacrifices of its material fortunes, if such course be necessary for the public good.

• The newspaper shall not be the ally of any special interest, but shall be fair and free and wholesome in its outlook on public affairs and public men.

          - Written by Eugene Meyer, March 5, 1935

The sixth one of these seven principles suggests that the "richest man on the planet" could have followed that sixth principle, and made what for him would have been a minor sacrifice of his material fortune, had Bezos actually believed in that principle (or any of them). He clearly didn't, and doesn't. 

An "Elegy" (which is what Lozada calls his column) is a "lament," and is intended to express sorrow, and to mourn for something. Lozada is mourning for the end of The Washington Post as he knew it. Is it time for us to "lament" and "mourn" the loss of our nation? That is not my suggestion. I'm with Joe Hill!

Joe Hill was songwriter, itinerant laborer, and union organizer, Joe Hill became famous around the world after a Utah court convicted him of murder. Even before the international campaign to have his conviction reversed, however, Joe Hill was well known in hobo jungles, on picket lines and at workers' rallies as the author of popular labor songs and as an Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) agitator. Thanks in large part to his songs and to his stirring, well-publicized call to his fellow workers on the eve of his execution—"Don't waste time mourning, organize (emphasis added)!"

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https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jan/10/is-amazon-founder-jeff-bezos-the-richest-person-ever

#65 / How Do Billionaires Acquire Their Wealth?

 

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Good question, right? How do those billionaires acquire all that wealth? Hard work and grit? Personal genius? Got it from their parents? Other explanations?

According to an Opinion column in The New York Times, which ran in mid-December of last year, recent events (including the Jeff Bezos-Lauren Sánchez wedding - see the photo above) appear to have caused people to change their minds about billionaires. Amazingly (to me, anyway), The Times' column reports that just six years ago, a Cato Institute poll showed that 69% of those who responded to a question about this topic thought that the billionires got rich by "creating value for others." A slightly smaller percentage of people thought that "we are all better off when people get rich." 

Like I say, those past poll results are rather amazing, at least to me. If questioned about the topic, I never would have given answers like the ones I just reported. However - and I believe our current president, himself a billionaire, has helped change people's perceptions - I am encouraged to find that there are now fewer people who feel "positive" about the billionaires above us (I was going to say "among" us, but realized that using "among" wouldn't really be accurate). The Times column reports that the public at large is increasingly "turned off" to the billionaire class. The apparent greed and self-regard of the billionaires has probably contributed. It does seem that the Bezos-Lauren Sánchez wedding illuminates those traits, and giving full credit where credit is due, "greed and self-regard" does pretty well describe some of the key personal qualities of our current president. 

I am willing to go back to the beginning, and to remember that our Declaration of Independence proclaimed that it is "self-evident" that "all [persons] are created equal." The word "equal" in this sentence does not, of course, mean "the same," and there is no doubt that "creating value for others" can be an important reason that a person might acquire a level of personal wealth that outpaces what others have been able to accumulate. In the end though, the way I read The Declaration of Independence, our nation was founded on the idea that we are "all in this together," and that means that we need, collectively, to ensure that what Adam Smith called the "wealth of nations" is wealth mobilized for the common good.

Just think of how different our social, economic, and political situation would be if that principle were currently informing our public policy!

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#64 / Everyone Complains

  

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"Everyone complains about their energy bills, but few take any action." The text I just linked comes from a news article published in the December 10, 2025, edition of The New York Times. Click the link to access the article (my typical paywall warning applies). 

The article I have linked documents efforts in New York's Hudson Valley to take over the private utility company serving that area by exercising the public's right of eminent domain. The idea, says the activists promoting it, is for the public to run the utility themselves.

Not a bad idea! That's my view. However, it is actually the overall attitude of these activists that I want to promote, as opposed to the specific idea of taking over private power companies. 

Everyone complains. Few take any action. That's the problem, and don't ever let someone tell you that taking action is "unavailing" or "irrelevant." 

We do "run the place," as I am fond of saying - at least the political system we have established justifies our right to make that claim. However, "few take any action" is what is most often the actual case in the "real world" that we mutually inhabit. In essence, I am reiterating the point I was trying to make in my "I Get Tired" blog posting.

Like I said then: "I get tired of people describing what's wrong, and leaving it at that." 

It is actually pretty easy to document "what's wrong." To reiterate my earlier comment, the real question is always this one: "What are we going to do about it?"

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https://www.arrowenergy.us/blog/who-is-my-texas-electricity-utility-provider/

#63 / Incumbantis Erectus: Skills Sadly Lacking

  

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Pictured above is H. George Frederickson. He served as President Emeritus of Eastern Washington University until 1987. He served as President of the American Society for Public Administration, and was the founding editor of the Journal of Public Affairs Education. He was also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory. 

Below, I am providing an excerpt from one of Frederickson's papers, which is available online. This online paper is called, "Up The Bureaucracy," and it appears from the title (and the text) that Frederickson's approach to scholarship did not compel him to be stuffy. Many thanks to Stephen Harding for bringing Frederickson to my attention. 

oooOOOooo

Elected officials at all levels of American government have evidently decided that they are more interested in practicing administration than in making law and policy. This preference is particularly noticeable among elected executives--mayors, governors, and presidents. In recent years virtually all candidates for executive offices have campaigned on a “reinventing government” platform, essentially a promise to manage the city, the state, or the nation better. These political campaigns argue that governments are not well managed and that an elected executive with management ideas can do a better job than the professionals and experts in the bureaucracy. 

For several reasons this has proved to be particularly good politics. First, promising to manage better is uncontroversial; no one favors bad management. Second, taking positions on policy issues is dangerous and can result in a short incumbency. Third, establishing policy and passing laws requires political skills beyond the capability of getting elected, the skills of coalition building and effective legislative relations, skills sadly lacking among modern incumbantis erectus. This kind of political leadership is more difficult than, say, implementing a hiring freeze or contracting-out a service. Finally, this form of politics is compatible with the modern mood of limited government and tax reduction. Policy ideas can be expensive, and new laws often require direct enforcement costs or impose mandates on other governments.

oooOOOooo

I believe that Frederickison is definitely "on target" in making the observation just presented. "Politics" does require "coalition building," and effective work, within a legislative body, to achieve a desired policy goal. "Administration" is all good and well, but the key question for our politics can essentially be phrased this way: "What should we do, and how can we achieve the political power that will allow us do it?" How we administer the government is not unimportant, but if all we care about is bureaucratic administration, we're missing the point. 

I agree with Frederickson that the kind of political skills needed to be an effective political leader are sadly lacking, today. Those skills are definitely what we need, and if you will concede that "practice makes perfect," ask yourself how much you (and your friends) have been practicing the skills necessary to create a meaningful and powerful politics. 

If you conclude that you aren't really paying much attention to "politics," and to the "political" side of government, as you consider your duty as a citizen - a citizen charged with the responsibility of making "self-government" work - then it's time for a course correction, and a time reallocation.

We are going to get back to a healthy "politics" when lots of people start acting like "taking over" their local, state, and national governments is a lot more fun and engaging than binging on the latest Netflix series. 

And let me tell you something. It is!

 

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#62 / A "Prediction Market" Potluck

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You have probably heard about "prediction markets," right? Prediction markets are "open markets that enable the prediction of specific outcomes using financial incentives (gambling on real world events)." I am citing to Wikipedia, here, copying out their definition. Wikipedia also calls prediction markets "betting markets." 

I got to thinking about prediction markets because The Wall Street Journal devoted quite a lot of space to prediction markets in the edition of the paper published on February 3, 2026. A big, page one article in that edition of the paper was titled, "Wild Betting Markets Propel Polymarket's 'Truth Machine.'" On page B11, another article described how a "derivatives exchange seeks to capitalize on the popularity of yes-or-no wagers." That is language from the hard copy version of The Journal. Online, that second story was headlined as follows: "Cboe In Talks To Bring Back All-Or-Nothing Options To Vie With Prediction Markets." "Cboe Global Markets, Inc. is an American financial exchange operator headquartered in Chicago. It owns and operates a portfolio of exchanges and trading venues across equities, options, futures, and digital assets. It was founded in 1973 as the Chicago Board Options Exchange (CBOE)."

As I was growing up, I remember that my father regularly read The Wall Street Journal. He was a successful business executive, the Vice-President For International Sales at Lenkurt Electric Company. My impression, growing up, was that The Wall Street Journal was intended to provide news and information to investors and business people, so that they could make responsible (and profitable) investments and make knowledgeable business decisions, based on the information and analysis that The Journal provided.

It now appears that significant numbers of business people and investors make their "investment" decisions by way of "betting" on things over which they have very little, if any, direct control. To my mind, this reveals something important about the world in which we are living today - that "world" including, very significantly, our personal "world view," which is the way we think about the world. 

In my daily blog postings, I frequently urge us to think about "reality" as something that we create, by our own actions - that's my, personal "world view," and "possibility" is "my category." 

While we live, ultimately, in the "World of Nature," into which we are each born, and which we don't, ourselves, "create," the most "immediate" reality that affects us is that "human world" that we do, collectively, create. That "human world" is the world that I also call the "Political World," a world that is, demonstrably, the product of our past and current human choices and actions. By our actions, by what we choose to do (or choose not to do) we truly do "create" the world in which we most most immediately live.

Well, going back to The Wall Street Journal, and to "prediction markets," my dad's view was that you read The Journal to get real and reliable information about things affecting your business and your investments - information that could help you make better decisions and take better actions when informed with "the facts." Accurate information about what currently exists, and about current activities and proposed future actions and activities, could let us know where we are, and where we appear to be going. In possession of such reliable information, we could make better choices about what we should do to achieve the kind of future we wanted.

While "betting" about the future is likely to provide more winning bets when the betting is informed by factual information, the whole premise of the "prediction (betting) market" idea is that the realities are independent of our own, personal choices and actions, and are external to us. We "bet" on future realities, instead of determining to take appropriate action to "create" the future realities we desire. 

That means, it seems to me, that we have largely "given up" on the idea that we will, by our own choices and actions, create the world we will inhabit in the future.

"Prediction markets," in other words, are a sign that what is now oftentimes called human "agency" has atrophied. Different from my father's relationship with the paper, we read The Journal to inform our bets, not to inform us of current realities, as we decide upon the actions we will undertake, ourselves, to forge the future we desire. 

Am I right in interpreting the rise of "prediction markets"? If I am, that's a mighty big loss from the way it used to be!

 

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https://www.tradingview.com/news/invezz:8ac53ac0f094b:0-a-major-challenge-cftc-faces-in-regulating-prediction-markets-in-2026/

#61 / Don't Pee On My Leg And Tell Me It's Raining

 

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I have already noted that the State of the Union speech, presented by our current Chief Executive on Tuesday, February 24th, was not noted for any genuine evaluation of where we actually are, right now, as a nation. As I said in that earlier blog posting, CBS found that most of what was asserted by our current president was either flat-out "false," or "misleading."

I have not read about anyone renaming that most recent "State of the Union" speech as the "State of Delusion," but I was tickled to see that a couple of New York Times' columnists suggested that the speech brought to mind the statement that I have used as my title, today: "Don't Pee On My Leg And Tell Me It's Raining." Another, similar, statement would also work: "Who Do You Believe? Me, Or Your Lying Eyes." 

The Times' column I am talking about, which ran in the February 27, 2026, edition of the paper, was called, "Trump Has Lost Touch With Reality." Click on the link to read it. No paywall should prevent you from doing that.

Friends, whatever tenuous connection our Chief Executive has with "Reality," it is imperative that "we, the people," don't succumb to delusions (of either grandeur or misery). We need to be in touch with the "real world," the world as it actually is, not the world that somebody is trying to pawn off as reality.

Why is that particularly important? It's important because "we, the people" are actually responsible for what our nation does, and we can't (properly) blame someone else. 

The way we run the country is by electing people who act as our "representatives," much as lawyers "represent" their clients in court, and in important negotiations. 

If you happen to end up with a representative who is not, actually, "representing" you, and who is not doing what you would like that representative to do on your behalf, election time is the time when you can make some changes.

In case you haven't noticed, there are some alarming signs that our current Chief Executive, and his henchmen, would like to make sure that this doesn't happen. There are concerted efforts to make sure that the upcoming November elections will result in the elevation to office of people who will do what they're told (by our current president), as opposed to telling our current president what he is supposed to do, on behalf of their constituents. 

This is just one more thing to worry about, right? 

Well, true! And there is nothing wrong with worrying about it, but how about getting yourself together with one of those groups across the nation that are working to ensure election integrity? Locally, in Santa Cruz County, I am partial to "Indivisible." Think about clicking some links! Do something, in other words, don't just agonize!

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https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/25/us/trump-coins.html

#60 / Something Is Happening Here

 

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Something is happening here

But you don't know what it is

Do you, Mister Jones?

          - Bob Dylan

"Ballad of a Thin Man," the Bob Dylan song in which the above words appear, is not, by any stretch, one of Dylan's specifically "religious" songs. If you'd like to check out a sample of those religious songs, I invite you to click this link, which will take you to a past blog posting that provides access to what I call my "Last Day" or my "Memorial" songs - songs I regularly listen to as I consider the issues of life and death while I walk around town. Except for one, all my "Memorial" songs are by Bob Dylan.

The complete lyrics to "Ballad of a Thin Man," which is where the above-quoted words appear, will be found at the bottom of this blog posting, and while that song is not, itself, a song that raises lots of "religious" questions, the "pull quote," I think, does make a specifically "religious" observation, one that strikes me as worth commenting on in what I have come to think of as my "Sunday blog posting series," in which various "religious" topics often seem most appropriate.

When we consider our life - you know, when we consider it in a kind of "existential" way - we need to account for what we think it all means. At least, that's my own view. 

So, what does it all mean? 

I don't have easy pronouncements and have been known to celebrate the idea that we should just "let the mystery be." 

But I do want to declare myself. I do, most definitely, think that "something is happening here," and "what's happening" testifies to the fact that our lives are a "mystery," and that we need always to be careful to understand and acknowledge that there is something both mysterious and sublime in the fact that we are alive, here, together, on this beautiful planet, and that we didn't create either this planet or ourselves. 

There are various stories about what all means - about that existential what's it all about? I like the one that ends up talking quite a bit about Jesus, but what I want to affirm is not that everyone should be seeing it my way - just that something is (definitely) "happening here," and what is "happening" is of the greatest and most profound importance, to each one of us, and that this makes each one of us, and all others, "important," too. 

We need to pay attention! And if we do, we will end up understanding that what is "happening here" is of magnificant and majestic significance - of more importance than we can ever fully comprehend - at least in the detail that so many of us demand.

oooOOOooo

Ballad of a Thin Man

WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

You walk into the room
With your pencil in your hand
You see somebody naked
And you say, “Who is that man?”
You try so hard
But you don’t understand
Just what you’ll say
When you get home

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You raise up your head
And you ask, “Is this where it is?”
And somebody points to you and says “It’s his”
And you say, “What’s mine?”
And somebody else says, “Where what is?”
And you say, “Oh my God
Am I here all alone?”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You hand in your ticket
And you go watch the geek
Who immediately walks up to you
When he hears you speak
And says, “How does it feel
To be such a freak?”
And you say, “Impossible”
As he hands you a bone

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

You have many contacts
Among the lumberjacks
To get you facts
When someone attacks your imagination
But nobody has any respect
Anyway they already expect you
To just give a check
To tax-deductible charity organizations

You’ve been with the professors
And they’ve all liked your looks
With great lawyers you have
Discussed lepers and crooks
You’ve been through all of
F. Scott Fitzgerald’s books
You’re very well read
It’s well known

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, the sword swallower, he comes up to you
And then he kneels
He crosses himself
And then he clicks his high heels
And without further notice
He asks you how it feels
And he says, “Here is your throat back
Thanks for the loan”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Now you see this one-eyed midget
Shouting the word “NOW”
And you say, “For what reason?”
And he says, “How?”
And you say, “What does this mean?”
And he screams back, “You’re a cow
Give me some milk
Or else go home”

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Well, you walk into the room
Like a camel and then you frown
You put your eyes in your pocket
And your nose on the ground
There ought to be a law
Against you comin’ around
You should be made
To wear earphones

Because something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?

Copyright © 1965 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1993 by Special Rider Music

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#59 / Resist The Machine

  

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Paul Kingsnorth is proposing "Six Ways To Resist The Machine." Click that link to be directed to Kingsnorth's article, which appears on a website maintained by Plough Magazine. Plough advertises itself with the slogan, "another life is possible."

Since I have always claimed that "possibility is my category," you can see why I like the magazine. I liked Kingsnorth's article, too, and I think you can read the whole thing by using that link in the first paragraph. The reason you should want to read the article, and to consider the strategies proposed by Kingsnorth, is summed up in this excerpt (emphasis added): 

The American historian and cultural critic Lewis Mumford, in his massive study The Myth of the Machine, published in two volumes between 1967 and 1970, attempts to chronicle the rise and triumph of the system of power and technology which now increasingly entwines us all. He calls this system “the megamachine.” In the first pages of volume one, he explains what he means by this:

“The last century, we all realize, has witnessed a radical transformation in the entire human environment, largely as a result of the impact of the mathematical and physical sciences upon technology.… Never since the Pyramid Age have such vast physical changes been consummated in so short a time. All these changes have, in turn, produced alterations in the human personality, while still more radical transformations, if this process continue unabated and uncorrected, loom ahead.”

Mumford’s “megamachine” manifests today as an intersection of money power, state power, and increasingly coercive and manipulative technologies, which constitute an ongoing war against roots and against limits. Mumford predicted that this structure would allow “the dominant minority [to] create a uniform, all-enveloping, super-planetary structure, designed for automatic operation. Instead of functioning actively as an autonomous personality, man will become a passive, purposeless, machine-conditioned animal whose proper functions, as technicians now interpret man’s role, will either be fed into the machine or strictly limited and controlled for the benefit of depersonalized, collective organizations.”

This, I believe, is where we mainly find ourselves today. We are trapped within this Machine, whose momentum is always forward, and which will not stop until it has transformed the world. To do that, it must raze or transmute many older and less measurable things: rooted human communities, wild nature, human nature, human freedom, beauty, religious faith, and the many deeper values that we all adhere to in some way or another but find difficult to describe or even to defend. Its modus operandi is the abolition of all borders, boundaries, categories, essences, and truths: the uprooting of all previous ways of living in the name of pure individualism and perfect subjectivity. Its endgame is the replacement of nature with technology, in order to facilitate total human control over a totally human world.

Any effort to create a "totally human world" is, in essence, an attempt to deny and defy what I call my "Two Worlds Hypothesis," which is my suggestion that we live, simultaneously, not only in a "human world" that we create ourselves, by what we, collectively, do (what I generally call the "Political World"), but that we live, ultimately, in a world that we did not create, the "World of Nature," or (for those willing to be a little "religious") the "World That God Made." 

It is really very important that we understand our subservience to and our dependence upon that "World of Nature," that world that existed and exists before we do any human and creative work at all. 

Of course, we do need to give great attention to that "Political World" that we can shape, ourselves, and in which "possibility" (for both "good" and for "evil") is the category that prevails. But ultimately, we depend upon - and our "human world" depends upon - the "World of Nature," the "World That God Created" - and if we have any serious thought that we can supplant that world with a "totally human world," we have lost our way entirely. 

 

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Image Credit:

https://www.plough.com/en/topics/life/technology/six-ways-to-resist-the-machine

#58 / The East Wing Demolition

    

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I have recently been pointing out that our nation's chief executive has a misplaced idea of his function and position. If you'd like to check back on a couple of earlier statements about this matter, please click on my links to "The Royal He," or "Wrecking Ball." 

The picture above is a good reminder why calling our current chief executive a "Wrecking Ball" is exactly "on point," as we all consider the state of the nation (and the state of the East Wing of the White House). 

On February 24th, The Washington Post (owned by the sychophantic Jeff Bezos, billionaire, in case you have forgotten who is in charge there) ran an article titled, "GOP Lawmaker Quietly Questioned ‘Disturbing’ East Wing Demolition." That's where I got the picture above.

Unfortunately, a paywall may well block your effort to read what a couple of the Post's reporters had to say about this topic, but give it a try, anyway. In sum, it turns out that not every Member of Congress was unconcerned, as the current occupant of the White House acted as though the White House were his personal property. 

It wasn't, and it isn't, and it's about time that "we, the people" start asserting our rights to our nation - and to all the assets of this great country of ours!

It is important that people start speaking out, in public, to let everyone else know what they think about the idea that an elected official who occupies the White House by reason of his election, actually "owns" the official residence - or can act like he does. 

OUR country! Got it?

If we don't make clear who this country actually belongs to, we're going to find out that the doctrine of "adverse possession" will result in us losing our ownership interest. Click this "adverse possession" link for an earlier comment, made back in 2021. 

OUR country! Got it? You snooze, you lose!

Got it?

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Image Credit:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/02/24/trump-ballroom-gop-concerns/

#57 / Strong?

    

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A friend challenged me to watch the "State of the Union" speech last Tuesday evening. I do not, normally, ever watch television (Golden State Warriors' games, sometimes, and Netflix films being the two exceptions to this rule). In fact, I get my news from the "newspapers," the non-online kind that get thrown towards my front porch each and every morning - the kind that leave my hands dirty with ink stains, to the extent that I need to wash my hands after reading the papers, and certainly before I touch my computer keyboard. 

I found that our chief executive's claim that the State of the Nation is "Strong!" to be extremely heavy on "assertion," and vanishingly light in terms of the actual factual support brought forward to support his claim. You can click right here to get a review by CBS News of some of the assertions made in that State of the Union speech. "False" and "Misleading" is what CBS says about most of the claims made by our current president. 

Here is what I found most unsettling as I watched, however. After every major assertion made by our current president, and after every honorary presentation made, our current president turned his head, and raised his chin, and presented his profile in just the way that is pictured above. What was unsettling (unsettling to me, anyway) was this: our current president's pose captured perfectly the pose first perfected by Il Duce, Benito Mussolini.

As I say, I did find this to be disturbing - as I found everything else about that television presentation to be disturbing, too. 

Weren't you (whoever you are, who might be reading this) disturbed, as well?

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Image Credit:

1- https://annotatedgilmoregirls.com/2017/10/12/il-duce/

2 - https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/watch-trump-state-of-the-union-2026-online-free-streaming-1236514002/

#56 / The Supreme Court Has A Plan (Oh, Yeah?)

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Sarah Isgur hosts a podcast for The Dispatch, a conservative media outlet. She is also the author of Last Branch Standing: A Potentially Surprising, Occasionally Witty Journey Inside Today’s Supreme Court. Last month, Isgur authored a Guest Essay that appeared in the December 8, 2025, edition of The New York Times. The title of her Guest Essay, online, was as follows: "Actually, The Supreme Court Has A Plan." This "Plan," one gathers from Isgur's essay, is intended "to rebalance the separation of powers in the federal government," a topic directly touched upon in my blog posting yesterday.

Isgur's online essay speaks to the likelihood that the Supreme Court is about to overturn a long-term precedent, established by the case of Humphrey's Executor. The Court's decision in that case, decided in 1935, held that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had no right to "fire" a Commissioner of the Federal Trade Commission, when the law setting up that Commission made clear that the Commission was to be "independent." 

Isgur worries about any such claim of "independence." "In a self-governing republic," Isgur says, "voters have to be able to hold someone accountable," and Isgur therefore thinks that any effort by Congress to limit the president's power to fire specified officers, in agencies created by the Congress, is simply, absolutely, dead-on wrong. Here is how she puts it: 

“At its most basic, the idea [is] that when the Constitution says, 'The executive power shall be vested in a president,' it means only the president. All members of the executive branch derive their authority from the president, and Congress can’t put limitations on the president’s power to remove executive branch officials. In a self-governing republic, voters have to be able to hold someone accountable (emphasis added)."

According to Isgur, the problem today is that the federal bureaucracy, or the "Deep State," or the "Administrative State," as some call it, is not really accountable to anyone. Congress has made many important federal agencies "independent," so Congressional legislation, she thinks, doesn't really hold the agencies accountable, and under the precedent of Humphrey's Executor, the president can't effectively tell the heads of those agencies what to do, either. 

It is unclear to me, having read what Isgur has to say, what "Plan" she thinks the Court actually has in mind to deal with the situation just described, but her statement, as highlighted above, is clearly wrong. Members of the executive branch don't "derive their authority from the president." They derive their authority from the laws enacted by Congress. In our system (as it's supposed to work, anyway), Congress "legislates," and the president "executes," but the President is only empowered to "execute" according to the laws enacted by Congress. The president, under our Constitution, has no independent authority that allows him to establish and implement his own personal public policy, based on what the president thinks that public policy should be. 

As our news media make clear every day, however, our current president doesn't agree with this system. He thinks that since he was elected "President" he has a completely independent authority to make deals with foreign nations, to use the nation's military forces to kill those in foreign waters he decides should be killed, to topple governments, and to set up tariffs not authorized by Congress but which tariffs he, as president, can change at any moment, on his whim, to establish what he, the president, thinks would be a good result. This is just a "partial list," of course, of what our current president believes he is somehow entitled to do, as the nation's Chief Executive.

There may well be some problems with federal agencies becoming so independent that they, and they alone, decide that our national policies should be, instead of simply implementing the policy directives enacted by the Congress. Let's agree that this is both a potential and a real problem. That's the issue that has led to claims that there is a "Deep State," or an "Administrative State," independent of the people, independent of Congress, and independent of the president that is operating solely on its own ideas of what is right. 

If there is a problem there - and I'm willing to say there may well be - how do we deal with it? Where is this "Plan" that the Supreme Court supposedly has?

Well, Isgur's essay makes plain that the Supreme Court's "Plan," if the Court does, as now predicted, remove the "independence" of federal agencies, is to let the president decide, unilaterally, what every federal agency should do. Adam Liptak's story in the December 9, 2025, edition of The Times quotes a prominent "originalist" legal scholar, Caleb Nelson, as coming out against this idea that the so-called "unitary executive" understanding of the Constitution is correct. "Letting the president fire officials 'for reasons good or bad,'" Nelson says, "would grant him 'an enormous amount of power - more power, I think, than any sensible person should want any person to have.'"

In other words, according to a prominent, respected, "originalist" scholar (meaning a "conservative" legal scholar), what Isgur is advocating is not a "plan" to restore democratic control over our federal agencies and to hold them accountable to the people. It's a "plan" to make the president the only person in our government who has the ability to tell federal agencies what to do, and if that is how the government works, who cares about Congress, anyway?

Well, here is who should care: "WE, the people." WE should care, because those Members of Congress are supposed to be working for us! They are our "representatives." 

If you'd care to read what a "liberal" commentator has to say about this topic, I strongly endorse this excellent discussion by former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance. 

 

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Image Credit:

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/05/opinion/supreme-court-trump-congress.html