Jack Smith's appointment ruled unconstitutional and thus the indictment against Trump dismissed.

Former President Trump’s Motion to Dismiss Indictment Based on the Unlawful Appointment and Funding of Special Counsel Jack Smith is GRANTED in accordance with this Order [ECF No. 326]. The Superseding Indictment is DISMISSED because Special Counsel Smith’s appointment violates the Appointments Clause of the United States Constitution. U.S. Const., Art. II, § 2, cl. 2. Special Counsel Smith’s use of a permanent indefinite appropriation also violates the Appropriations Clause, U.S. Const., Art. I, § 9, cl. 7, but the Court need not address the proper remedy for that funding violation given the dismissal on Appointments Clause grounds.

Note that Merrick Garland failed to answer on what authority under the Constitution said appointment was made before Congress.  An act undertaken without authority, and Garland cited none, is not only void it's malicious by definition.

There's no law broken "per se" when you're wrong but when you can't point to the specific Statute or Constitutional basis on which you took an action then if said action is struck as unconstitutional that act was undertaken with actual malice as you refused to even put forward a theory upon which your act was appropriate and legal.

Garland tried to deflect claiming he was relying on a "regulation" that the DOJ itself established without a legal basis.  But the fact remains that without a foundational law or Constitutional provision under which you can issue a regulation its a dead letter issue and thus knowingly malicious in that your act serves to harass or otherwise interfere with someone.  Never mind that a former AG (Meese) actually filed an amicus in the case arguing exactly this; that there was no statutory basis for the appointment and it had created an office without Congressional authorization.

This is just another in a long line of acts of this general character that are blatantly unconstitutional and most of them go unchallenged because they either create huge classes of beneficiaries (e.g. DACA) and thus become politically very difficult to reverse even though they're illegal or they create a nearly-impossible economic burden to obtain review and relief although blatantly unconstitutional (e.g. the attempted use of SarBox against the Jan 6 defendants.)

Both have now gone up in smoke but the question remains what deterrent effects now exists, and will exist in the future, to prevent a second or subsequent abuse?  That question requires an answer.

There are multiple types of law.

The one everyone is familiar with and understands occurs when the cop behind you turns on his lights.  He or she thinks you broke some sort of law, usually a traffic violation of some sort.  You might get a ticket and you might not.  You might have to pay the whole ticket if you do get it, and you might not -- depending on what it is you might wind up having to actually pay nothing (e.g. a "fix it" ticket), pay half with no points (e.g. a "clean" record and a modest speeding ticket) or have to pay the whole thing.

Note that the penalty for breaking that law is often situational, and has two prongs to it -- the cop might let you go, and if he does write the ticket there may be some way to reduce or eliminate the penalty.

Many people believe, as a result of this, that all laws are this way.

Certainly in the political sphere you can see evidence of that.

But there is a second sort of law that always is exactly the same, and comes with the same penalty if you violate it.  There are no exceptions to these laws, ever.  They are in fact laws and perhaps we should come up with a different name for either them or the man-created prohibitions and constraints because they are of very different character.

As an example acceleration under the force of Earth gravity is always 32 ft/sec².  Yes, it varies a slight bit from this place to that because the Earth is not exactly round and centrifugal force, which contributes to it, is not exactly the same at all points of the planet.  But there is no exception possible for man, beast, machine or, as far as we can tell, God from it.  That is an actual law and if you attempt to violate it you will learn rather rapidly (and quite-possibly fatally) that there are no exceptions.

Mathematics, the language of physics (including its subsets thermodynamics and chemistry), describes these laws with exact precision.

Today, due to 20+ years of attempting to "cheat" these laws which cannot be done and worse, we claim we're not cheating, we have multiple and very-serious distortions in our economic systems worldwide.  There are plenty of people -- indeed the majority -- who do not understand that these are in fact unnatural conditions and cannot permanently persist, and worse, just as the damage you will take from a collision in a vehicle at 40mph is much worse than the same collision but at 20mph the economic damage that has been built in by these policies is much worse as well.  That impact could be spread over time but the amount of it cannot be decreased once it is accrued, just as once you climb to 100' the only way you can reduce the damage from jumping onto a hard surface, assuming no parachute, is to climb down part of the way first.

Mathematics provides a very simple relationship when it comes to "money printing" (really credit and they're not the same any more than "laws" are between nature and man) and the economy of a nation as a whole.  The basic economic equation is and always has been:

GDP = C + G + N(I) + (E - I)

In other words Consumption (by private entities) plus Government Spending (consumption by government) + Net Investment + Net Exports (or exports minus imports)  You can find this data on the official BEA web page here as "Domestic Product and Income" under Table 1.1.5.

This computation assumes that the denominator (dollars, which is what we measure it in) is fixed in number.  Obviously if there are 100 bushels of corn (and that's all) and 100 dollars then each bushel will likely trade around $1 each, and if all other things being equal you double the number of dollars so will the price.

Plenty of people mislead you to believe that in fact "dollars" are constant or in some way hard to compute.  Well, in some ways it is hard to determine exactly how many dollars effectively exist because anyone can issue credit -- that is, let you buy something now and pay for it later.  But the government keeps a very good set of accounting books called the Monthly Treasury Statement which is, on a cash basis, the spending and taxes received, and thus if they spend more than they take in we know that the number of dollars the government controls has gone up by the difference, and the extra were literally "wished" into existence rather than being produced by addition of value.

So let's take the May 2024 MTS.  That represents eight out of twelve months (the fiscal year ends on September 30th) so we'll multiply be 12/8.  That figure is thus far $1.202 trillion; annualized it is 1.80 trillion.  Divided by the current GDP figure of $28.269 trillion that amounts to 6.38%, which is the inflation rate from government spending at the current excess credit rate.

Note that the BEA claims that the "GDP" increase on an annualized basis is 4.5% in today's dollars but the government is inflating at slightly less than 2% greater than that, so in real terms, no matter what the BEA claims as "real" GDP based on their black-box "deflator", we are in fact taking approximately a 2% decrease in real economic activity.

That is the more the government emits in deficit spending the less comes back out per unit of credit in real goods and services.  That is the inevitable outcome of this graph when you persist in deficit spending for a long enough period of time:

That graph shows a hypothetical situation (but not far from reality) where you start with much less debt than GDP (say, $1,000 in GDP and $100 in debt) and increase the amount of debt faster than GDP expands by emitting more and more credit.  No matter how much advantage you started with in GDP if you don't stop doing that you will reach the point where for each dollar of new debt you get back less than one dollar of GDP and the more you continue to do it beyond that point the worse it gets AT A RAPIDLY ACCELERATING RATE!

This is not conjecture or politics -- its mathematics.

If you do not stop upon crossing that threshold and continue indefinitely your nation's economy will be destroyed each and every time.  There are no exceptions because this is mathematics, not a speeding violation where the cop can be nice to you and let you go with a warning.  Just as you will never get a different outcome from the pull of gravity you will never get a different outcome and in fact no nation that has done this ever has obtained a different outcome because mathematics makes clear it is not possible.

Every nation that has done this in the past has either stopped and accepted the economic damage accrued or been destroyed. 

There is no way to prevent having to absorb the entire amount of damage that has accrued from the point from where those two curves crossed.  You can stop accruing more damage but you can't avoid that which you've already done.  The longer you continue doing what you've been doing the worse that damage is.  In the extreme case it can AND WILL literally collapse your entire society because obviously if net GDP is reduced to zero everyone starves, and the actual collapse point is thus far before that happens.

Worse is that this situation is even more-treacherous than it appears because by the above fundamental equation all that government credit emission went into GDP more than once in that when a dollar is spent at a merchant that merchant pays salaries and those people then spend that money; this is the "virtuous cycle" of economic expansion in that there is a multiplier effect (which varies; obviously in some cases its very small, but in others, where you wind up with some breakthrough technology it can be very large) -- but in no case is it less than 1.0.  That is, when you contract said excess "on credit" spending you will shrink GDP by some amount more than what you took out.  It may be a little more or a lot more -- but there is no way to avoid it being more.

To make that choice and accept the accrued damage is thus essential when this crossover happens -- and as we can see from the GDP tables it has happened and we are into the rapidly-expanding part of the curve beyond the cross-over point.  Failing to recognize this and stop it means that for each successive day we let it continue the contraction in GDP will not only of necessity, by mathematics, be the entire excess credit creation over time it will be worse due to that multiplication effect and since it is impossible to thus know in advance exactly where society will collapse you'd better stop doing that as soon as you detect it.

Will Congress recognize this and cut expenditures by a third, raise taxes by 60%, or some combination plus the multiplicative effect from that spending being withdrawn or taxes increased to reach the same outcome?

Not so long as you don't force them to because if they do huge numbers of people will, at least temporarily, lose their jobs, many of which provide no actual value to anyone except themselves -- and people elect members of Congress.  We know you won't force them to do it (accepting that there is a price that might be paid by you as a voter) for the simple reason that if you were going to do that you should have back in 2008 as we knew this was happening, I wrote on it at the time, Leverage made this all clear including that chart up above and nobody did anything except make it worse, doing even more damage, over the next fifteen years.

So no, Congress won't stop -- until they're forced to stop.

If voters won't force them to stop what will force them to stop?

RAPIDLY escalating interest rates in the market, which The Fed cannot do anything about and which will force them to cut it out since Treasury won't be able to finance the spending bills they vote for.

The key takeaway item is this folks: Rates are not going to go back down to any material degree in the near future and likely, if they change at all, will only go higher for a decade or more because they can't to lower; once you get into that rapidly-escalating part of the curve nobody will lend money at a lower rate because they recognize that to take less is to lose money in real terms.  Government can offer whatever rate they want for their bonds but can't force people to accept their offer.  The current rate structure of about 5.25% in the short term is in fact still negative in real terms, but not by a lot, because while it looks like its negative about 1% (and about -2% on the longer end) as productivity remains slightly positive for now and that is defined as "doing more with less".

But as that curve continues to diverge, assuming Congress does not change its spending behavior, productivity will rapidly become negative too because that is, as you might guess, computed in dollars which are not constant.  It will not be long before that figure goes into negative territory and cannot be turned back positive by ordinary advancement in human achievement.

You cannot evade this in metals, cryptocurrencies or anything else.  You can try, of course, and plenty of people in the mainstream and on social media will attempt to sell you something and you might in fact be among the very few (e.g. 1% or less) who manage to pull it off but if you do it will be by pure luck -- not skill.

The first item in mitigating the risk from such an economic dislocation -- and one I've pointed out for more than a decade -- is to not need things that are at the root of the credit game.  First and foremost in the inflationary environment engendered by this is health care.  If you need it you are very unlikely on a forward basis to get it as if and when the foldback comes the place the problem is centered in the MTS (go look for yourself) is in CMS which is Medicare and Medicaid, both of which runs through and is a huge component of the entire medical system.  Worse, this is not just a federal problem in that Medicaid also implicates State budgets.  It is not, as politicians often claim, Social Security that is the problem and the reason is that Social Security is mostly covered by current tax receipts.  Yes, in an all-on collapse Social Security fails too because so do tax receipts as employment collapses but short of that Medicare and Medicaid go first and long before there is a complete collapse the squeeze will be on and, if you need medical care of any sort, aimed directly at you.  I've warned of this for more than a decade and you've had time to address your personal situation -- but now time is short if not entirely-expired in that you need to be healthy and accept your mortality one way or another along with your personal responsibility for both where you are and where you're headed.  If you have a cabinet full of pills and other troubles and are reliant on the medical system to remain upright the future is not very bright irrespective of your chronological age.

The second is to recognize that if you own a home and do not have leverage on it even serious negative "value" changes in your house do not realistically help or harm you because you need somewhere to live.  If your home's value is cut in half (and yes, I believe that or more is coming in much of the nation) the new house you buy will also be cut in half so the net is zero just as it was on the way up.  If, however, you have serially-refinanced you're in serious trouble and if you bought in the '21-23 timeframe at very low rates, put little down and cannot remain where you are as your job is in the impacted industries (which will be most of them) and thus your income gets cut or worse, you're forced to move to remain employed at all you are probably cooked.  But if you can remain where you are and bought it as a place to live rather than seeing it as an "investment" you'll be ok -- even in a fairly serious economic dislocation.  That doesn't mean you won't be impacted (you will) but compared to your neighbor who did any of those foolish things you'll be in much better financial shape.

If you can get rid of levered things, especially "toys", and actually get out without taking a cash loss now the time is -- and the risk of that time having passed rises with each passing day.  In another year or two it probably will be passed.  The modern version of "keep up with the Joneses", played most of the time with home equity or worse, credit cards, is going to blow up in everyone's face and when it does a hit to GDP will come out of that as well.

Be aware that the current valuations in the public equity markets are at nosebleed levels, particularly among technology.  If you're in the markets, and a lot of people are and thinking their "retirement" is safe do not be surprised if you see a 30-50% or even worse drawdown over the next year or two.

What's different this time from the last couple of times is that with government credit creation returning less than a dollar in GDP for each dollar put in it is extremely unlikely that they can do the sort of things that were done in the wake of 9/11 (which was really an excuse after the 2000 tech crash) and in 2008 and get a positive, new-bubble result where that market value is recovered in a reasonably-short period of time.

Congress might try it but it is very likely to blow up in their face if they do rather than produce a "rebound" or "recovery" as it did the last two times.  Thus, when those declines come they are likely to persist and not be recovered for many years -- perhaps as long as twenty years down the road, if ever, and in those time frames we will run into the demographic problem we have created and are living with right now with birth rates among those of higher intellectual capacity which are utterly essential to continue our national progress.  Those who are five today are the ones who, in 20 years, will be producing our GDP while those who are 60 today will be lucky, per the actuarial tables, to be alive at all so think long and hard about the incentives or lack thereof we have all put in place over the last few decades because at this point there is no avoiding the outcome of those decisions.

We should have accepted the consequences of this credit creation in the 1990s and then once again in the early 2000s but we did not and now, having done the same thing again we're faced with much more of a contraction that has to be accepted in order to bring the economy back into balance and make possible ordinary family formation and thus healthy next generations of Americans.

Realize that the actions taken during the pandemic did an amount of damage equal to four to six full months of economic output within the United States and at the same time we destroyed a year or more of educational progress for our young people in the majority of our children.  This in turn all showed up in prices; you (as a single person) got $3,200 in "stimulus checks" over two years time but if your income is around the median of $50,000 a year that $3,200 you received costs you close to $14,000 a year in higher prices each and every year and will not stop costing you an additional $14,000 each and every year until Congress stops putting excess credit into the economy.  Worse, for you to recover any of the roughly $30,000 you've lost thus far in purchasing power Congress has to take that excess back out!

If you're in the older cohort (I am, by the way; I'm 60) you are well-past the point where advocating for yourself at the expense of the younger generation will work and, even if you don't have children or don't care "don't work" means you won't "win" anyway so any such advocacy is pretty-much a guaranteed loser for everyone -- yourself included.

It's time to change course folks and accept that there are consequences for our prior actions and advocacy, the check is on the table, and attempting to avoid paying it by ordering up and downing another round of shots is no longer viable.

We all know that people have, through history, tried to hide things for various reasons.  Some of those attempts have been lawful and some not-so-much, but abuse of a law intended to protect people's creative efforts is a tactic that appears to have not been foreseen.

Chancery Court Judge I’Ashea Myles found that The Covenant School children and parents hold the copyright to any writings or other works created by shooter Audrey Hale, a former student who was killed by police. As part of the effort to keep the records closed, Hale’s parents transferred ownership of Hale’s property to the victims’ families, who then argued in court that they should be allowed to determine who has access to them.

Without a will and no offspring Hale's parents would be the "inheritors" of the decedent's estate.  In apparent collusion with the victim's families with the intent to keep said writing from the public they transferred the rights to said estate's writings to those families.

Now here's the problem -- there's no financial interest in these works.  Copyright exists for that reason; the owner has explicit control of exploitation for other than fair use, which is a defense to infringement (in other words fair use isn't a right per-se, its a defense against being sued for money.)

Does a copyright holder (such as myself with regard to source code I write on a not-for-hire basis, as an example) need a monetary reason to refuse to give it out or let others have it?  No.  My reason for refusal is not material to whether I can refuse; I can simply want it to die with me, for example, and that's perfectly fine.

But here we have competing interests, one of which is the very compelling public interest raised by the state of mind and how it occurred in the person who is deceased and, in the process of becoming deceased, committed a heinous series of criminal acts that, if they had not died, would have been punishable.

There is an application of this in "true crime" media known as the "merger doctrine" in that news is not copyrightable because facts cannot be copyrighted.  The same applies to, for example, a baseball game score.  The score is a fact and thus cannot be copyrighted.  The play-by-play, however, can be as it is largely creative expression.

This has likely guided decisions such as the above but there's a problem there, which I suspect requires further judicial review: The fact that someone committed a heinous act (and due to events at the time is now dead) is, when they have documented the reasons for it, arguably subject to the merger doctrine.  Or is it?  That link from UC argues that it cuts the other way because of the implication of a person's right to privacy which is not explicitly in the Constitution at all but is supported by much case law.  The challenge here is whether that properly survives one's death when there is a public policy aspect to the event surrounding same.

This is complicated by the fact that Tennessee explicitly recognizes a right to publicity (that is, the control of same) in its statutes.  Does that survive such an event in the context of a heinous criminal event perpetrated by the alleged "protected party", and if it did during that person's life is it subject to transfer as part of the decedent's estate or is it extinguished at the moment of death?

It appears the court has found the former is the case as the law exists today -- but should it be the case?

Note that courts have found that a right to publicity is separate from privacy, and thus can be differentially treated.  Some states, for example, prohibit a prisoner from profiting from retelling their criminal acts by publishing a memoir as an example.  Should the legislature clarify that in fact it is not mere exploitation for profit that is forbidden in such a circumstance rather the protection itself is void at the moment a heinous act moves from contemplation to criminal liability, which occurs at the moment an act in furtherance of it takes place?

I'd argue the answer is "Yes" in circumstances such as this, in that there is a very valid public interest in analysis of such events, their precursors and thus possible policy changes to deter possible future manifestations of the same thing.  As we have repeatedly seen over the decades allowing restrictions on access to these fact-based materials (by definition what I write down is a fact as I saw it when I wrote it) prevents independent analysis and impeachment of narratives that some people would prefer to advance which may or may not be truthful.

I believe this requires examination and, where necessary, a change in the law such that this kind of collusive transfer is presumptively void as contrary to public interest and public policy, both of which argue strongly for the right of all to analyze and propose conclusions as to what led a person to commit mass-violence.

Sometimes there is no good answer and all we have is speculation but even so those who wish to look at the source information left behind by the deceased or jailed, once judgment has been passed in either case, have the winning argument.