How the Scaling Debate and Hard Fork Highlight Several Important Differences Between Bitcoin and Gold

You know stuff’s going down when I write two posts in a row about Bitcoin, something which almost never happens these days. In Friday piece, Is the Bitcoin Civil War Over? Here’s How I’m Thinking About Bitcoin Cash, I discussed a potential strategy that “big blockers” might attempt to execute should the 2x part of Segwit2x not happen later this year. Today, I want to discuss how the entire episode has actually served to highlight one of Bitcoin’s (and cryptos in general) huge competitive advantages in the realm of monetary-type assets.

There’s been a lot of FUD written at length about the whole scaling debate, and the fair observation that network splits cause confusion and is bad for the Bitcoin “brand.” As I mentioned in Friday’s piece, I don’t see this being the case with Bitcoin Cash (BCC), since I don’t think there will be any real debate about which one is Bitcoin and which is an alt-coin. Interestingly enough, although the nastiness of the scaling debate has left a bad taste in a lot of people’s mouths, it’s also highlighted one of Bitcoin’s greatest strengths.

Earlier today I came across a tweet from an account I had never seen before, but it was simply genius in its poignant simplicity.

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Open the Books Reports – 63,000 Illinois Public Employees Earn Over $100,000 Per Year

Adam Andrzejewski, CEO of OpenTheBooks.com, has written an interesting piece over at Forbes detailing some of the enormous salaries being paid by taxpayers to Illinois public sector employees.

Here are a few excerpts from the piece, Why Illinois Is In Trouble – 63,000 Public Employees With $100,000+ Salaries Cost Taxpayers $10B:

Illinois is broke and continues to flirt with junk bond status. But the state’s financial woes aren’t stopping 63,000 government employees from bringing home six-figure salaries and higher.

Whenever we open the books, Illinois is consistently one of the worst offenders. Recently, we found auto pound supervisors in Chicago making $144,453; nurses at state corrections earning up to $254,781; junior college presidents making $465,420; university doctors earning $1.6 million; and 84 small-town “managers” out-earning every U.S. governor.

Using our interactive mapping tool, quickly review (by ZIP code) the 63,000 Illinois public employees who earn more than $100,000 and cost taxpayers $10 billion. Just click a pin and scroll down to see the results rendered in the chart beneath the map.

Here are a few examples of what you’ll uncover:

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Liberty Links 07/29/17 — Trump Tells Cops to Be More Violent

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Trump Tells Police to Be More Violent (The guy is a goon, YouTube)

Intercepted Podcast: Glenn Greenwald on the New Cold War (Excellent, The Intercept)

Facebook Worker Living in Garage to Zuckerberg: Challenges Are Right Outside Your Door (So typical, The Guardian)

Microchip Implants for Employees? One Company Says Yes (Total insanity, The New York Times)

Bill Burr on Microchipping (This is so good, YouTube)

Nobody Cares About the Discourse (Great piece on “bend the knee”-gate, Jacobin)

Steve Bannon Wants Facebook and Google Regulated Like Utilities (The Intercept)

How Decentralizing Institutions Will Unite the Left and Right (I hope so, The Daily Bell)

U.S. Politics

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Is the Bitcoin Civil War Over? Here’s How I’m Thinking About Bitcoin Cash

Before I get going, let me start out with the usual disclaimer. I’m not a Bitcoin expert, nor do I claim to be. I love people who live and breathe Bitcoin every day, and I have the utmost respect for all of you, but that’s not me. As you can tell from a quick glance at my website, my current focus revolves around the current political environment as well as the geopolitical implications of a declining U.S. empire. That said, I’ve been involved in Bitcoin since 2012, and I care deeply about it. In my opinion, globally interconnected humans functioning within decentralized systems of economics and political governance provide the best framework for the human species going forward. We have the tools, we just need the desire.

Today’s post is about an alt-coin that is about to fork from Bitcoin, led by a contingency in the civil war known as the big blockers. This piece is not meant for newbies, but is written for people who own Bitcoin and already have a good understanding of all the drama that’s been going on and may continue to periodically resurface after August 1. If you aren’t already up to speed on these things you should probably stop reading. The post will just sound confusing and won’t have much impact on your decision making anyway.

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The U.S. Empire Continues to Stumble Towards Ruin

There is a true law, a right reason, conformable to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge us to duty, and whose prohibitions restrain us from evil. Whether it enjoins or forbids, the good respect its injunctions, and the wicked treat them with indifference. This law cannot be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation.

Neither the senate nor the people can give us any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other expositor and interpreter than our own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome and another at Athens; one thing today and another tomorrow; but in all times and nations this universal law must for ever reign, eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all beings. God himself is its author,—its promulgator,—its enforcer. He who obeys it not, flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man. For his crime he must endure the severest penalties hereafter, even if he avoid the usual misfortunes of the present life.

– Marcus Tullius Cicero

There’s been a lot going on this week, so it’s unsurprising that an extremely important vote in Congress failed to get the attention it deserves. What I’m referring to is the recent Russia/Iran/North Korea sanctions bill passed by the House of Representatives in a frighteningly lopsided 419-3 vote.

Let’s turn to Bloomberg for a quick analysis on the Russian reaction:

Russia threatened to retaliate against new sanctions passed by the U.S. House of Representatives, saying they made it all but impossible to achieve the Trump administration’s goal of improved relations.

The measures push U.S.-Russia ties into uncharted territory and “don’t leave room for the normalization of relations” in the foreseeable future, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said Wednesday, according to the Interfax news service.

Hope “is dying” for improved relations because the scale of “the anti-Russian consensus in Congress makes dialogue impossible and for a long time,” Konstantin Kosachyov, chairman of the international affairs committee in Russia’s upper house of parliament, said on Facebook. Russia should prepare a response to the sanctions that’s “painful for the Americans,” he said.

The bill, passed by a vote of 419-3 on Tuesday, would strengthen sanctions against Russia less than three weeks after President Donald Trump and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin held their first official meeting at the Group of 20 summit. The measure, which now goes to the Senate, would let Congress block any effort by Trump to unilaterally weaken sanctions imposed under the Obama administration for Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential elections and its support for separatists in Ukraine. The White House has sent mixed signals about whether Trump will sign the bill.

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Politics of the Next 4 Years – Part 3 (What’s an Independent to Do?)

Before we get started, it’s important for me to clarify where I’m coming from politically. First, here’s what I’m not, as described in last year’s piece, Thank You and Welcome New Readers – A Liberty Blitzkrieg Mission Statement:

I am not a Democrat or a Republican. I do not consider myself a libertarian, progressive, socialist, anarchist, conservative, neoconservative or neoliberal. I’m just a 38 year old guy trying to figure it all out. Naturally, this doesn’t imply that there aren’t things which I hold dear. I have a strong belief system based on key principles. It’s just that I don’t think it makes sense for me to self-label and become part of a tribe. The moment you self-label, is the moment you stop thinking for yourself. It’s also the moment you stop listening. When you think you have all the answers, anyone who doesn’t think exactly as you do on all topics is either stupid or “paid opposition.”  I don’t subscribe to this way of thinking.

If I had to describe my politics at the most macro level, I guess you could call me a decentralist. I believe the primary threat to human liberty, happiness and evolution is the concentration of power, whether it manifests in government or business.

In today’s America we’ve seen the worst of both these things come together, as oligarchs and large corporations have used their money and influence to transform the country into an undemocratic, neo-feudal cesspool. The grotesque amount of centralized power that resides in Washington D.C. proved a very tempting and easily controlled target for modern day robber barons. The major threat we face today shouldn’t be simplified into a soundbite that consists of simply attacking “business” or “government” in isolation. We need to understand and accept that concentrated power in both these areas has morphed into a unified attack force against the general public.

Two tweets I sent out yesterday summarized how I see our current situation:

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Politics of the Next 4 Years – Part 2 (Last Chance for the Democrats)

In yesterday’s post, Politics of the Next 4 Years – Part 1 (Rise of the ‘Dirtbag Left’), I discussed the fact that a very potent grassroots movement has emerged to the left of corporate, neoliberal Democrats. This self-described “Dirtbag Left” and its allies have the potential to not just drive the Democratic Party into extinction, but also ultimately challenge Trump on the national stage. Although I’m not a Democrat or a leftist (I’m not a Republican or conservative either), I welcome this development for a number of reasons.

First, if economic populism becomes aggressively embraced by those who lean left, it will force Trump to become genuinely populist on at least some issues in order to compete in 2020, as opposed to the fake populism he enthusiastically embraced since the election. Second, it will present corporate Democrats with a choice, either “bend the knee” as the folks at Chapo suggested, or die. Nobody believes in neoliberal ideology other than donors and their corporate media spokespeople. The entire thing is a discredited failure and isn’t coming back. As such, today’ post will explain why this is the last chance for the Democratic Party.

The political world was abuzz yesterday with chatter related to Charles “Chucky” Schumer’s op-ed in The New York Times in which he suddenly proclaims himself an economic populist, and incredulously claims the Democratic Party has somehow changed. It consisted of many comforting phrases, but I wouldn’t believe a single line of it until I see actual action on the ground. It’s easy to talk a big game when you have zero power. Talk is cheap, as we all should have learned from both Barrack Obama and Donald Trump.

Before I get into some specifics about what I think all of this means, let’s take a look at some excerpts.

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Politics of the Next 4 Years – Part 1 (Rise of the ‘Dirtbag Left’)

A lot of people remain in denial about the current political environment. Whether it’s a neocon Never Trumper, or a manic Hillary dead-ender, what these people all have in common is they firmly and passionately think their world is somehow coming back. They still don’t understand that the party’s over.

In our foolish apathy, we entrusted the country to these “very smart people” and they handed the entire thing over to crooked oligarchs, while simultaneously cheerleading us into a never-ending stream of reckless, inhumane imperial wars. They hollowed out and feasted on the entire nation and now, incredibly enough, rebranded themselves as leaders of a toothless, limp “resistance” to the mess they created. Delusional doesn’t even begin to describe these people. They genuinely think Trump’s rise represents some bizarre historical blip, and once the hideous blemish is removed, things can carry on as they were. That’s not gonna happen.

Before I get into the thick of it, I want to revisit something I wrote a couple of weeks ago in the post, The Center Cannot Hold – Decentralize or Die:

In order to understand the long-term implications of these emails on the future of the nation, you need a good understanding of the primary warring factions in American politics today. We have Donald Trump supporters/voters, Hillary Clinton supporters/voters, and a resurgent left inspired and energized by the principles and ideals espoused by Bernie Sanders. The first two have absolutely zero overlap and pretty much hate each other, while the third group can sometimes identify with either camp depending on the issue, but pretty much think they’re both crazy and dangerous. The key point I’m trying to make is that there is no “center” in American politics anymore, and any discussion of this is pure fantasy. Moreover, any remaining center that still exists, is unlikely to exist at all in a year or so as more and more people feel forced to choose sides. When you create an environment as charged as this one where everyone is accusing their political opponents of treason, this is what you get; and it’s only going to get worse. A lot worse…

If what I wrote above rings true to you on any level, it has dire implications for the future of these United States. The first two groups, Trump supporters and Hillary supporters have absolutely nothing in common and that’s not going to change. In fact, it’s probably going to get much, much worse. Trump supporters think the Democrats and the media have been gunning for a way to remove him from office since the day he was elected, while Hillary supporters think he’s a treasonous puppet of Vladimir Putin. How can these two warring factions come to any sort of agreement on anything? The answer is, they can’t and they won’t. Meanwhile, Bernie supporters are likely to largely stay on the sidelines hoping these two sides destroy each other in their madness.

In a gross oversimplification, the above implies that the political environment going forward will be defined by a vicious battle between the Trump faction and the Hillary faction. While I think this will probably be true for much of the rest of 2017, I think there’s a decent chance that a year from now, the union of Hillary donors, Never Trump neocons and the corporate media will be on the run — on the way to being wiped off the face of the political landscape forever. In it’s place, a more genuine opposition political movement will take its place and face off against Trump on real issues.

This movement was first really seen on the national level with the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, but it takes on many different forms. The one aspect I want to discuss today due to its growing influence and potential for explosive growth, is a faction that has become known as the “DirtBag Left.”

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Liberty Links 07/22/17

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Must Reads

Facial Recognition Surveillance is Here — But Privacy Protections Are Not (Huge issue not getting the attention it deserves, The Hill)

Our Relationship with Saudi Arabia Is an Embarrassment (Excellent, National Review)

Pentagon Study Declares American Empire is ‘Collapsing’ (Nafeez Ahmed, Medium)

The Massacre of Mosul: More Than 40,000 Civilians Feared Dead (Good thing the U.S. brought Iraq all that freedom, The Independent)

Why These Professors Are Warning Against Promoting the Work of Straight, White Men (Madness, The Washington Post)

J Street, a Reliable Foe OF BDS, Urges Congress to Oppose Israel Anti-Boycott Act for Now (You know it’s bad when lobbyists have to stop Congress from torching the First Amendment, The Intercept)

Murder Of Green Berets In Jordan Exposed Secretive CIA Syria Program Details (This article is nuts, Zerohedge)

A Whistleblower Plays By the Rules at CIA, and Finds ‘Nothing Gets Done’ (McClatchy DC)

U.S. Politics

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Wall St. Moves to Consolidate Power Over Democrats as the DNC Posts Disastrous Fundraising Numbers

Poor fundraising by the Democratic National Committee (DNC) has been a reality for much of this year, and the trend continued in June. The Hill reports:

The Democratic National Committee (DNC) added $200,000 to their now $3.3 million debt in June, according to the most recent Federal Election Commission report, falling further behind Republican fundraising efforts.  

The Republican National Committee (RNC) outpaced the Democrats in fundraising in June by over $8 million, raising a staggering $13.5 million compared to the DNC’s $5.5 million. 

Unlike the Republican debt-free committee, the DNC typically goes into debt during election seasons, but it currently remains far behind the GOP financially. 

The DNC has only $7.5 million on hand, after a string of losses to Republicans in special congressional elections, including the race for Georgia’s Sixth District, which broke fundraising records to become the most expensive congressional race of all time. The RNC has $44.7 million in cash on-hand, according to the filings. 

Of course, this shouldn’t come as a surprise given the sleazy way the DNC handled last year’s Democratic primary, in which key players including head Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, stacked the deck against Bernie Sanders in order to promote one of the worst Presidential candidates in U.S. history.

Moreover, the Democrats’ Russia obsession isn’t doing them any favors amongst the public, which rightly cares more about issues that affect their every day lives versus what Vladimir Putin ate for breakfast.

Indeed, the following graphic sums it up perfectly:

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