I have watched the debate unfold across the country on data centers. It’s a hot debate in Nevada. I was speaking at the Boulder City Republican Women’s Club in late May. A person who builds data centers spoke before me and dispelled a lot of the false arguments against data center buildouts.

For some in the room, it didn’t matter. These “data dogs” who supposedly form their opinions on data believed the hype and were against data centers. One question: “Why are they building data centers where it is hot when they get hot and need to be cooled?”

You might say the same for that person’s house or a fast food restaurant that gets built.

We know people are easily misinformed. My bet is the same Republicans who are against data centers were against the response to Covid. This time they took the bait and played into the hands of the anti-progress people.

Let’s get the hyperbole out of the way.

1. Data centers do not increase energy prices. They generate their own energy. Here is a photo of an energy plant Elon Musk built in Mississippi for a data center a few hundred feet away across the border in Tennessee. You can internet search why he did that. He wanted to build it all in Tennessee, but people are dumb.

2. Data centers do not take a lot of water. They get filled up with water, and 100% of it is recycled. They don’t use evaporative cooling. Some book was written with false information in it by an activist, and people cite it all the time. Data centers use about the same amount of water as two fast food restaurants. In fact, some data centers use artificial coolant. Where there is a problem, there is an entrepreneur. I just came across this Nevada-based company. WAVR Technology can make water out of desert air. The problem will be solved for data centers soon.

3. Data centers do not cause cancer or disease. This is totally false. Yes, they make some noise, but they shouldn’t be built in residential areas anyway.

What do they do? They create thousands of jobs during construction. They create hundreds of jobs when they operate. They sustain millions of tech jobs after being built.

They generate millions of dollars in tax revenue for state and local governments.

If you live in a rural town, where are you going to get the money to sustain your city services and schools? You are faced with a hard choice. Grow, or raise taxes. Data centers are growth and might be a lot better than a mining operation or something else. If your community is against a data center, how is a factory going to build there?

The idle vacant land in the middle of nowhere isn’t productive. Putting a data center on it is hugely productive.

Yes. People and communities ought to have input. We shouldn’t take every inch of land and put data centers on it. Areas are zoned industrial for a reason. There can be traffic issues, but those are solvable.

For what it is worth, I bet the anti-data center crowd has no problem at all with taking that same land and putting in an inefficient solar installation.

It’s not hyperbole to say it is a national security issue. Our military needs data centers.

Someday soon, they will build them in space. But we need them today. I’d encourage you to listen to this podcast from about 14 minutes in to 23 minutes, where they discuss data centers.

Artificial intelligence is here, and it will expand. It’s not going away. Bernie Sanders and the communists are against it because it usurps their power if they can’t control it.

Open source artificial intelligence will make it significantly harder to have one company dominate. Data center buildout enables open source and increases the total volume of compute power so the United States can have fierce competition between companies.

That’s better for you.

The anti-data center movement reminds me of the anti-nuclear power movement. The US blew it. We are forty or fifty years behind. Nuclear power offers up incredibly cheap green energy. But the Luddites are still against it, including every Democrat in the Nevada federal delegation.

Our US economy isn’t agrarian or “factory” now. Factories are fine, but America is an on-demand energy information economy. We are building robots, electric vehicles, driverless vehicles, and software. If you are at all interested, follow Aayush Pathak on Substack. is building chips for physical artificial intelligence and explains it well. You will have robots in your home soon. In fact, technically you do today if you have a washing machine. The new robots won’t be dedicated to one task, and will be able to perform multiple tasks.

As a matter of fact, our agrarian and factory ecosystems in the US need data centers to produce and innovate. You need them for your cell phone, computer, and general standard of living as well.

The Chinese are building data centers like crazy because they know they are in a race for tech supremacy with the US. They want to see the anti-data center crowd win.

My friend Nick Kokonas used to trade treasuries at the CBOT. He cofounded a three star Michilen restaurant, Alinea. He also started a restaurant reservation business, Tock, which he sold. He and I don’t agree on everything, but we agree wholeheartedly on data centers. He tweeted:

The politicians and people who are against "data centers" (a ridiculous catch-all) are creating bills against progress, abundance, and literally intelligence itself.

There is a certain irony to that last point.

But it is truly painful to watch. And a line in the sand.

I saw the one on Treasurer. I lost the Republican primary to Drew Johnson, who is now the candidate. I tweeted about this article and the answers, but thought I would put them here for people who aren’t on X.

Very few voters in Nevada understand what a Treasurer does. Politicians don’t even understand. The Indy had it right. Nevada's chief banker, the treasurer is charged with overseeing state investments, maintaining records of unclaimed property and helping decide when to issue bonds. The nearly 60-person office also administers the Millennium Scholarship program, which has helped about 200,000 students afford college since it was established in the late 1990s and facilitates tax-advantaged savings programs for future college students and people with disabilities.

Let’s be clear. Neither candidate understands banking. Neither understands finance. Both are career bureaucrat/think tank policy people looking to become career politicians. This office is a stepping stone to get name recognition because no one pays attention. It’s a resume builder.

In primary debates, it was extremely rare for me to get a question that remotely had anything to do with being treasurer. At the Veterans in Politics “debate”, we got a question on “light rail”. Steve S didn’t even know the meaning of the word “macro”. Kind of hard to debate when people don’t understand finance. Also hard to debate when your opponent is financially illiterate, which Drew Johnson is.

Here are the questions the Indy asked. For what it’s worth, they deal with the role, but they are broad, matter-of-fact questions anyone can avoid and answer. Both candidates did. You can click over and read their entire answers.

• Should Nevada divest from any industries?

• The Millennium Scholarship is not expected to cover all eligible students by next year. How do we increase funding for the scholarship?

• How do we increase enrollment for college savings programs, such as 529 plans and prepaid tuition, the latter of which is only enrolling about 300 people?

• The State Infrastructure Bank has been used as a tool to help create more affordable housing, but has received minimal funding from the Legislature. Do you have any ideas on how to increase its funding?

• Is Nevada doing enough to return unclaimed property? What changes should we make, if any, to improve that?

• There is about $1.2 billion in Nevada’s rainy day fund as of 2025. Are you satisfied with that amount and what changes would you advise, if any?

• Are there any programs you would like to expand in the office?

Nevada’s current treasurer, Democrat Zach Conine, instituted a DEI investment policy. The Democrat, Tya Mathis-Coleman, would continue it. Drew Johnson would end it. This should be table stakes for any Republican with half a brain.

It should be ended. Corporate America is running away from it, and other states are running away from it. Why? They are getting a shitty return on investment.

The Millennium Scholarship answers are funny. Instead of taking on the real core issue head on both avoid it by either kicking it to the legislature or starting a new government program. Neither is the conservative way to deal with this issue, and as a matter of fact, both are thinking like liberals.

I did the math. If you accept the current level of growth with the scholarship and fully fund it as an evergreen endowment, it’s a $1.2B endowment. That assumes a 5% growth rate and a 2-3% inflation rate.

The Millennium Scholarship is broke. The conservative solution to this problem is to end it. College, the need for college, all have changed tremendously since 2000 when the scholarship started. Keep the commitment to the kids who have it, and end it.

Or, figure out a way to fund it via the legislature and private donations from people similar to Trump Accounts. Drew advocates seizing private property in the unclaimed property account. That’s not being Republican.

I’d be on the side of simply killing it. That’s a common-sense businessperson answer, not a politician’s answer.

Prepaid tuition looks like a good idea that has gone nowhere. Maybe kill it. It only works with Nevada colleges, and there just isn’t the population or demand for them. 529 programs are a good idea, and there needs to be a lot of education around them. The way you do it is using alternative ways, not the way we have always done it. Again, neither candidate breaks new ground here.

The State Infrastructure Bank is a politicized organ. Money flowed into it and into the unions of Clark County for political favors. Again, neither candidate has a clue as to what to do with the SIB.

It was supposed to be an evergreen fund that invested in net present value-positive projects and returned the money to the SIB for reinvestment into more net present value projects. Except, it’s run by politicians who do not know what NPV-positive projects are. These two candidates are politicos, not MBAs or bankers or investors.

The SIB is another “do-gooder” idea that probably should be killed, saving Nevada taxpayers boatloads of money. Expansion of government programs is a left-wing idea. Government isn’t the answer to problems. Government does its role best when it is a facilitator.

An alternative for the SIB is to give it a new mission. Counties and municipalities across Nevada sometimes have difficulty accessing public debt markets. The SIB could bundle debt, access the market, decrease the costs of accessing the market, and save taxpayers money while getting infrastructure projects built across the state. Lord knows, after going around the state, there is a lot of infrastructure that needs to be built.

Unclaimed property…..again, more of the same. There is not much difference between the two candidates. Unclaimed property is private property. Raiding it infringes on private property rights. Treasurers love to raid unclaimed property and turn it into political giveaways. However, today, I’d program AI agents to scrape public records and match unclaimed property with a human check on the end result before any distributions. Cheap, efficient, and quick.

The Rainy Day fund. Let’s be clear. The Biden spending boom funded the Rainy Day fund. It wasn’t investment magic. Tya is looser with the purse strings around the RDF. You could raise the cap, but that means more money will have to go in the fund. Where is that coming from? Your wallet. Investing it better for greater return will help, but that’s marginal.

The answer is don’t spend it. Save it for a truly Rainy Day where it is an absolute emergency.

Drew wants people to be able to pay taxes in precious metals, a terrible idea. He also advocated holding Bitcoin as an asset in the portfolio. Another terrible idea.

Expanding programs is a leading question for liberals. They always want to expand programs. Drew’s idea isn’t terrible, but I would be looking at cutting programs everywhere I could in order to save taxpayers’ money and get government out of the way.

One thing the Indy didn’t ask about was financial literacy. Nevada ranks #41. Ten years ago, it ranked #41. Nevada ought to partner with Brilliant.org’s KOJI app and use technology to boost financial literacy. In debates, Drew wanted to go through the public school system. Been there, done that, yawn. No doubt, Tya wouldn’t be much different.

Is there a difference between them besides the obvious? Political party, gender, and skin color?

Not much. Tya has a PhD in public policy, whereas Drew has a master’s. Neither has done anything in the private sector. Neither is a finance person, and both are running to be the chief banker.

Tya’s personal character is light years better than Drew’s. No FEC or finance problems in her personal history, whereas Drew has a long track record of mismanagement and shadiness. His 2024 campaign was full of financial shenanigans, and he had a couple in our primary campaign too. That’s what happens when you use Thomas Datwyler as your treasurer. He was George Santos’ treasurer too. Santos went to jail and was pardoned by Trump.

From all accounts, the Democratic primary race was not nasty. My race was. Drew was in the gutter from the starting line, and he has done that in all of his primary races.

The treasurer has access to over 50 bank accounts. The potential for fraud, kickback schemes, crony capitalism, and other nefarious things like that are right there for the taking.

Republicans and Democrats will urge their tribes to vote red or blue, but the Treasurer’s position should be the most apolitical in government. Even the hard lefty paper I linked to agrees.

What should questioners be asking? The Millennium Scholarship, SIB, and Unclaimed Property questions are fair, but I’d go deeper into it than a broad brush.

As the state’s chief banker, these are good questions.

What do you think about the duration of the bond portfolio? Would you change it? Why or why not?

What do you think about the mix of investments on the $12B portfolio? Would you change it? Why or why not, and if you were to change it, how would you change it?

Both will outsource the core parts of the job to consultants. That means fees for Nevada taxpayers. It also means slippage in the market. It also means getting a second or third look, not a first look, at bonds that are on the market and peddled by the institutions that sell to government treasuries.

Neither is going to take Nevada to the next level when it comes to finance. Nevada is not a state people look to for cutting-edge or competent financial management. It’s not in Tier 1, but Tier 2. Average.

In 2001, the internet bubble blew up, and Chicago’s internet community was torn asunder. It was never big, but at that time it had momentum. The bleeding had stopped by 2007.

JB Pritzker was “Mr. Venture Capitalist,” and frankly, the venture community bought into the bogus stuff he was selling. I was invited to his “listening tour” but declined to go. I think Trump was right; JB is a terrible businessman and a worse politician. It’s his brother Tony that has the business intellect.

JB Pritzker just torpedoed the Illinois startup community. He signed a law that clawed back the QSBS exemption. Now, if the startup you invested in exits, you owe tax to the state of Illinois. 3.95% on the first dollar of profit.

HPA started writing checks at what today would be called “pre-seed”. Back then, it was called “seed”. Typically, a company would raise $500k-$750k at a $2MM pre-money valuation. Today, pre-seed rounds often go off above $10MM.

One of the benefits of startup investing is baked into the US Federal Tax code. It’s called the qualified small business stock exemption, QSBS, or the 1202 exemption. In the Big Beautiful Bill, Trump expanded QSBS.

Why is this a good idea?

Because it encourages early-stage investment in innovation. So many startups fail; getting a tax break on one that makes it is nice. It was limited to the first $10MM in profit.

By the way, that tax break also passed through to Limited Partners of funds. If you were an LP in a venture fund but resided in Illinois, JB just kneecapped you too.

Here is how it would break down. Say you invested $50k into Uber at seed. That $50k turned into $80MM. Big winner. Ring the cash register. QSBS would let you pay zero federal tax on the first $10,050,000 of gains. You’d owe tax on the rest.

You would also owe NO state tax on that first $10MM. Not anymore!

It’s a nice-to-have since when you invest early, you assume a lot of risk. But the world doesn’t go forward without a lot of capital being invested into early-stage companies.

It didn’t break down that way for entrepreneurs. They owed the full tax on their gain from their stock. I knew an entrepreneur who was based in California. We invested in his early round. He exited successfully. He owed federal income tax at the highest bracket, and also owed the state of California tax at the highest bracket. 37%+12.3%=49.3%. Almost 50% of the gain you made taking huge risks building a company went to the government.

Illinois startup community is struggling. Funding was down. I don’t know what it is now, but HPA doesn’t actually write real early-stage checks anymore. There are some efforts, but there just isn’t a lot of early-stage money in Illinois like there is on the coasts or in Texas.

Illinois realizes this affects very few actual taxpayers. That’s why they did it. However, they just put another dagger in their startup community, which was struggling. If anyone was trying to solicit money from an Illinois resident for a venture fund, the tax incentive vanished.

My home state of Nevada has no income tax, so no QSBS worries. It also has a very, very small startup community. There are reasons for that beyond the scope of this post.

I cannot believe JB and the Democratic gluttons in the Illinois Assembly haven’t gone after retirees yet. In Illinois, you pay 0% income tax on your retirement after age 59.5. Do they have the cojones to do it? It’s a huge chunk of change, and it is hard for a Democrat to ignore a huge chunk like that.

Of course, any new tax revenue coming into the state won’t change a thing. They are on the highway to Hell.

I will relay a story about leadership.

When I was on the CME Board, we had a big discussion over salaries one day. As a board member, you were paid roughly $37,000 per year. For that $37k, you were in meetings almost daily from the market close until 4PM, sometimes working through dinner.

During the day, members would talk to you while you were trading about some issue or another. I am just going to go out on a limb and say that the money you were paid was less than the opportunity cost of not being fully engaged in trading.

In those days of the exchange, there were “exchange employees,” and they had power, but it was the actual boards who ran the exchange. I am not demeaning or marginalizing those employees. Some tremendous people did incredible stuff for the exchange. In my opinion, CME had some of the most innovative and motivated employees in the entire exchange landscape. But the directives came from the top, and that was the board.

In our salary discussion, it started with the idea that we should pay our chairman more. He was doing a lot, and while the chairman made more than a regular board member, it wasn’t appreciably more. That was the nature of being a non-profit.

As a board, we started to discuss the pros and cons. Then, it was mentioned that two other board members were spending quite a bit of time on the exchange, and shouldn’t their level of pay be increased too?

The board had a very animated discussion on the topic. In the background of the discussion, there were internal politics with internal rivalries, but truth be told, the discussion on this topic was relatively apolitical and focused on the merits or lack of merit on the topic at hand: pay.

It was time for a vote. The question was called. The board was 100% divided. The salary increases were passed.

But the board wasn’t ready to move on just yet. One board member spoke up. He said, “I don’t know about you guys, but I am not comfortable increasing salaries without a nearly unanimous or unanimous vote.

Remember, the board was accountable to the members. Members elected the board members. The incumbency factor in these elections wasn’t as strong as it is in traditional political elections. Members already were sort of upset that board members were being paid at all, and they were upset that board members received the ability to get a good parking spot in the parking garage. Board members still had to pay and didn’t receive free parking.

If the board walked out of the board meeting and members found out there were special salary increases for three board members and it wasn’t unanimous, or nearly unanimous, what do you think would happen?

In the meeting, the board took a step back. The discussion started again to see if minds could be swayed. It was not lengthy. The support just wasn’t there.

The motion that was passed was rescinded.

That one board member (it wasn’t me) exhibited strong leadership at that moment. He felt agency and was confident enough to speak up. Even the people who voted for the salary increase knew full well that he was correct. Nearly unanimous, and the story would have been different.

When I was on the World War Two Museum board, sometimes we would get into extended discussions about how something would be presented. There were board members who would remind everyone that one of the missions of the museum was to present the war from the American perspective, and how Americans learned about the war.

When you hew to core values, discussions change.

Another similar story is what happened on the Facebook board. The company had a huge run. Yahoo wanted to buy it for a billion dollars. Board members wanted to sell to Yahoo. Board member Marc Andreessen spoke out. He reminded fellow board members there was a bigger business here. Venture capitalists have a bias toward selling out of investments once they are successful because they can pay their LPs and raise the next fund. Andreessen got them to recognize that bias. He spoke for the company.

VC Fred Wilson talks about “speaking for the company” when you are a board member. Take yourself out of your investor role, or CEO role, and try to put yourself into the shoes of the company as if it is a person at the table. What would the company say?

I think the same goes for charitable organizations and civic organizations. Someone has to speak for the original mission of the organization to make sure everyone is hewing to the core values of that organization and not getting twisted by the way current winds are blowing. Often, leadership is facing the wind and tacking into it.

One great thing about the internet is the transparency. We are learning that there are leaders and followers. Politically, we are learning that most of our elected officials, whom we colloquially call “leaders”, are just followers.

David Burge is a great follow on X. I had beers with him at a bar the night Obama won his first term. We both knew what was coming. This is a tweet from a number of years ago, and it works over and over again.

@iowahawkblog

1. Identify a respected institution.
2. kill it.
3. gut it.
4. wear its carcass as a skin suit, while demanding respect.
#lefties

I saw this happen in Chicago. The Chicago Economic Club is no longer a serious economic club. None of the old civic clubs are serious. They are run for the benefit of the left, not debate or knowledge.

I bring this up because my new state of Nevada has fewer clubs, but still has them. Probably the most venerable business one is Keystone Corporation. They have “corporation” in their name. Hence, they are pro-business and generally lean very Republican.

When I moved to Nevada, I was told I had to join Keystone. It was respected and all that. I did join before I entered my campaign. I will not be renewing my membership.

They used to be very relevant and lead. Now, not so much. In the Hollywood Handout debate that raged in the last legislative session, Keystone weighed in, but it took quite some time. It was as if they had their finger in the air. I can imagine the internal debate was tough, because they are certainly supporters of Governor Joe Lombardo, as am I.

But if you are a leader, sometimes you make tough calls. That comes with the territory of leadership. Jumping on the bandwagon early would have given a signal to the governor, but more importantly to legislators. They would have had clearance to vote against it.

It certainly wasn’t a pro-business bill! It was a transfer of wealth from taxpayers to businesses who wanted to buy tax credits. I was against it right away. Thankfully, both of the Republicans running in my district, George Harris and Drew Teitelbaum, will vote against it because, like a bad penny, it’s back. Funny thing, my primary opponent will point to a tweet that he was against it, but it was very late in the game. He’s a finger-in-the-wind guy that can be bought.

We notice leadership failures all the time. It’s fair to say leadership in the Democratic Party has failed. They caved to the socialists. It is rare to see a leader in the Democratic Party openly call them out and disagree. I think Senator Fetterman is the only one.

Republicans break ranks more often than Democrats. Sometimes it’s grandstanding, but often it is true leadership. One of the things Brad Gerstner said about getting the Trump Accounts going was the lack of leadership by the “leaders”. Pulled this from a Pirate Wires article.

Normally, when gigabills like the One Big Beautiful Bill (we like to call it OB3 around here) have been “cooked,” that’s the death knell for getting anything done.

But Gerstner had already done the hard work. Invest America had written 26 pages of technical changes to the tax code and made sure it could fit into the reconciliation package. They’d built relationships with the “four corners” of reconciliation: Speaker Johnson, House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith, Senate Finance Chair Crapo, and Senate Majority Leader Thune.

Even then, it seemed impossible.

Before the White House meeting, Gerstner recalls, “I went and saw Speaker Johnson and Chairman Smith on Capitol Hill and said, ‘Guys, we got to get [Trump Accounts] in [the reconciliation bill].’”

Their response?

“‘We can’t. We love the idea, but we can’t,’” per Brad.

“It was one of those crucible moments as a founder,” Brad remembers. “You just have to get this deal done.”

There was only one way forward: the man in the Oval Office.

“We had 72 hours to get to the president,” Brad told me. “And we knew that he would have to demand its inclusion” in the reconciliation bill.

Michael Dell made the call. “The president said, ‘Come to see me on Monday.’” And then, Brad explains, “I had the idea that we should make a video that really explained to the president what it was. So while sitting at my son’s lacrosse game, I wrote a transcript for a video, 60 seconds.”

Convincing POTUS was more straightforward than anyone expected.

“It took him less than five minutes to say, ‘This is the whole reason for my presidency.’”

Trump called the Speaker and told him to add Trump Accounts to the bill.

Gerstner had, basically, gone founder mode in Washington. And that’s why every newborn American is going to get $1,000.

You wonder why stuff doesn’t get done in Congress. Re-read the above. The leaders don’t lead.

I say all this because leadership sometimes has to make hard choices. Sometimes making NO choice is the right choice.

Civic organizations that do not speak out against far-left policies lose their credibility, and then follow in the path of Iowahawk’s tweet.

Nevada’s Keystone Corporation is in danger of starting to walk down that path. Keystone makes candidate endorsements. Sometimes they do it in the primary. Sometimes in the general. They don’t have to endorse.

They endorsed my primary opponent, Drew Johnson, in the race for State Treasurer against Democrat Tya Mathis Coleman. When you look at their records and Keystone’s mission, neither measures up. Here is their credo: “Keystone Corporation is Nevada's premier political advocacy organization dedicated to advancing a pro-business, free-enterprise agenda in Carson City and beyond.”

Leadership would have been- we aren’t endorsing anyone. Ironically, the Las Vegas Chamber generally endorses in the primary but didn’t in our primary. They decided not to choose.

Warren Buffett famously said you don’t need to swing at every pitch. You don’t need to endorse every candidate either. I have a friend who is a big force in the Republican Party. Sometimes he sits races out that people think he should be involved in. When he doesn’t like the candidates, he sits out.

Neither candidate has ever been in business. Neither candidate even has a business background or business degree. Neither candidate is pro-free enterprise. They both favor big government solutions to problems because they are both policy people.

It is decisions like this where you feel like you have to be in the game that changes the momentum of the organization. In Chicago and other cities, civic organizations wound up being taken over by the socialists. Keystone is corporate. Corporate is different than entrepreneurship, and corporate, depending on the corporation, sometimes embraces free enterprise. Often they don’t.

For example, I agree with the casinos that the CFTC shouldn’t allow prediction markets in sports. In free market competition, the casinos would compete, not sue and complain to a regulator.

I had a tweetstorm here. Feel free to weigh in. Agree with me or not, weigh in.

When you compromise your principles, you start down a path. It’s not a good one. See Iowahawk and take his advice.

Obviously, Nevada and the prediction markets aren’t going to get along.

I was on the CME Board when the CFMA was passed. I remember the debate, both in the board room and informally amongst board members about what should be in it, and whether it would pass.

At the time, the world was radically different.

The internet was a thing, but not omnipresent. There was no cryptocurrency and it wasn’t even fathomable. There was no artificial intelligence. No phones that hooked you up to the World Wide Web instantly by cellular or wireless tech.

Additionally, exchanges were competing. At CME, we competed directly with CBOT, NYMEX, LIFFE, Eurex, and tangentially with CBOE, AMEX, and PHLX. As the regulation was being written, exchanges were more concerned about giving another exchange an edge, not technology.

You cannot blame regulators or policy makers or companies for not foreseeing the future.

We had former CFTC head Wendy Gramm on our board. She was surprised that the legislation made it through in the form that it did.

Here is the key piece in the CFMA that prediction markets are using. In the CFMA, there was a huge debate over over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives. These are privately negotiated contracts between two parties that allow risk to be transferred. Generally, big investment banks are counterparties and manage the margin along with the terms.

At the exchange level, we were wary of OTC. It was cutting into our potential trading volume. At the same time, as the OTC market expanded, our volume grew since both sides of an OTC transaction often managed the risk via the regulated, standardized futures market.

There was a massive threat that a judge could make a decision, wiping away trillions of OTC contracts overnight. The OTC market needed “legal certainty”. That was one of the sticking points in the CFMA. How did it look and how would it be administered? Prediction markets are using that piece of the Act to build their businesses.

Also in the Act was the ability for exchanges to offer Single Stock Futures. The industry tried to do it, but frankly, they failed because regulation was managed in a way to cause them to fail.

One of the reasons I ran for office is that I do not think anyone in the state of Nevada has my background or depth of knowledge when it comes to a very critical issue like prediction markets and regulation. I am sorry I lost my primary.

My friend John Lothian produced this piece on Single Stock Futures. If you listen to the video, you will learn about a lot of things like free markets, liquidity, margin, and competition between different asset classes and regulators. You will also get a feel for how different parts of the industry were looking at the problem SSFs were trying to solve.

However, if you listen closely, you will understand how the prediction market operators try to build a foundation to make their case. It is the OTC legal certainty provision in the CFMA 2000 Act that helps them make their case.

Nevada federal legislators have been absent on this issue. It has raged at the state regulatory level across the country. State and Federal courts have heard and ruled on cases. At this point, it will become a Supreme Court case.

If Nevada federal legislators are smart, and given our cadre, that is a stretch to assume, they will propose common-sense legislation to fix the loophole. They should have allies with any other state that offers up sports gambling, or gambling.

The legislation is simple. Sports or awards show gambling should be regulated by the state. Bonafide prediction markets on economic events, political races, and things like that should be federally regulated by the CFTC.

I don’t care if someone uses cryptocurrency or fiat to use a prediction market. I don’t care if they use any tech to access the market, nor do I care if they use an algorithm or AI-generated software to place and manage bets. I don’t even care if a prediction market became a socially driven platform where participants could create their own markets.

I do care about the difference between betting on a sporting event and an economic release.

Sports betting has no beneficial social impact, nor does it manage risk. Sports betting operators and venues that use sports prediction markets show they are sophisticated, not that there is a use for the market. CME has just created an index for hedging these transactions.

Other markets transfer risk between entities and are beneficial to society, making our world more efficient. Weather derivatives are a perfect example of that.

Legislators should write and pass a bill that clearly delineates and draws a sharp line.

Offering prediction markets under state regulation doesn’t mean they will go away. If there is demand for a market like that, it will exist. It will exist under state authority. Yes, that makes it tougher and will increase the costs for prediction market companies to offer up sports prediction markets. There is precedent. Insurance regulation is state by state.

Broadly, when you go lay down a bet at a sportsbook, it is an OTC kind of bet. The book assumes all the risk. Prediction markets are different, because as the game moves along, you can buy and sell, assuming there is liquidity. The provider of the market assumes none of the risk.

Advocates for prediction markets will say I just contradicted myself based on existing regulation. They would be correct in theory, but the lens I am using to frame my argument has nothing to do with existing regulation and everything to do with what’s best for society.

No one cares if the Browns beat the Jets. Sports betting offers no tangible benefit to society except pure entertainment.

We do care if our costs for air conditioning go up because it’s hot outside. An ice cream store does care about the weather. Businesses ought to be able to hedge in prediction markets.

Why are business leaders afraid to speak out when they see things that are obviously wrong?

I have had to confront this in my own experience. Being an out-of-the-closet conservative Republican in the Chicago business community became very hard at the end of my career there. It wasn’t in the 50s/60s/70s/80s/90s/00s, but in the latter half of the 10s it did. “I can’t invest in your fund because you are a Republican.” “We don’t want him on the cap table because he is a Republican.” “I don’t want him on our board of directors because he is a Republican.” Discrimination went from covert to overt.

Understand, these ideologically driven communists want you to help pave the way for them. They will stomp on you after you do.

For one example of an obvious issue, look at Sophie Cunningham and the subsidized from the NBA, or it would be broke, WNBA. She said she thinks that women ought to play women’s sports, and men ought to play men’s sports. How is this even controversial?

It is!

Name one business leader who stepped up to support Sophie.

It’s such a stupid issue; the WNBA won’t take up Clay Travis on his $10MM bet. I hope Nashville gets a franchise and staffs the entire thing from President to players to trainer with men who think they are women. They won’t lose a game.

There is a gigantic price to pay when a CEO speaks out.

The first price is in the media. The media is a left-wing mouthpiece bordering on a far-left-wing mouthpiece. The media will faithfully assassinate the character of the CEO who speaks out. They will take statements out of context.

The next price will be with the civic organizations in the community. They will pile on. Civic organizations in the US have been taken over by the left. I look at organizations like the Chicago Economic Club, and they are shells of their former selves. I single out the CEC, but virtually every “civic organization” in Chicago has been taken over by the commies and woke.

Academics will pile on as well. They will get interviewed by the media and talk about how a CEO is going rogue and hurting shareholders. Look at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics. It’s a place where loser Democrats go to “teach”. Harvard’s Kennedy School isn’t different. Academia never, or very rarely, has a true free market conservative in any position of authority.

True conservatives aren’t even allowed to speak in academia. They get shouted down and protested.

The chardonnay-swilling Karens will gossip about what the CEO said. Politicians will seize the statement and investigate.

The threat of investigation gets the corporate lawyers involved. They advise the CEO on internal policies. All of a sudden, the internal culture of the company might change. Who gets promoted? Who gets hired?

Will a statement affect hiring? Getting talent to come and work for the company is one of the most important things a CEO does. Having the hot spotlight of the media shining on what is seen by the left-wing as a bad policy is not something a CEO desires.

Some CEOs toe the left-wing line. They never paid a price before, but now they are. The internet is exposing them. Consumers are voting with their feet. Ask Cracker Barrel and Budweiser.

Most corporate CEO’s are very good leaders. You rarely get to the top of a public company without merit. But they understand the opportunity costs of speaking out are far higher than the costs of staying quiet.

It takes incredible courage for someone like that to call things out. However, I think they should start doing it when it is obvious. Supporting Sophie Cunningham is obvious.

Ken Griffin called out JB Pritzker and Chicago politicians. They shat on him. He left and went to Miami. Citadel is easily uprooted and moved compared to a company like McDonald’s. No corporate is moving from a red state to a blue state.

Coinbase’s Bryan Armstrong said the company would be apolitical. 60 employees left. Coinbase is better for it. Coinbase sent a message to the community, and the community is responding. They are getting the kinds of employees they want.

Some CEOs move quietly, though. My friend Jeff Minch wrote about how here. Expect more and more businesses to leave blue states in the coming years. For many businesses, they have a high fixed cost that they can’t abandon, or it is financially adverse for them to take a write-down on it tied up in the blue state.

People networks are incredibly hard to move. But you can start one in a new place.

My Nevada Senator Cortez-Masto praised him effusively.

Democratic Senator John Fetterman can’t get on board with the antisemitic socialist.

Let’s cut to the chase. If you are a person who is persuaded by the Democratic agenda, ask yourself why. Democrats are telling you that you will get free stuff. Free buses. Free health care. Free college. Free housing. Free stuff.

Remember the old saying from when internet companies started giving away everything. “If it’s free, you are the product.” Facebook and the rest monetize you. In return, you get to use the platform for free, and you might get utility value out of it.

You are willing to make that trade-off with a private company.

Are you willing to make it with the government?

If you make that deal with the government, and you become the product, you get monetized. They get to use you any way they want.

• You don’t get to say where you want to live.

• You don’t get to choose your college.

• You don’t get to choose your job.

• You don’t get to choose.

• You won’t get to choose when it comes to your body.

You are told. You are a commodity, like cattle.

There will be wealthy enough people who still get some choice. There will also be government bureaucrats who will find ways to get themselves or some cronies some choice.

The average citizen will not get choice.

They will dress it up. It will look appealing, like one of the Sirens from the Odyssey. Choose “free”, and it will end your ability to choose.

The big problem with freedom and independence is that it comes with consequences. Failure happens. Some people do better. Some do worse. Some do the same. But if there is a potential for failure, abject crushing failure, that also means there is a chance for soaring unbelievable success too.

Your choice. But if you choose wrong, you will never be able to choose again.

We left our cabin in Minnesota to attend a friend’s son’s wedding in Detroit. I was able to see my 92-year-old father and spend some time with the grandkids in Chicago. On Monday, my wife and I attended the Cubs game. Before the game, we were able to listen to a presentation by our dear friend Sylvie Legere and Ashley Davis. Ashley has a new book, The Power Pivot. You can hear the interview on Sylvie’s podcast.

One great question after the presentation was this: Why don’t business leaders speak out when they see crazy stuff they know is wrong?

I was able to meet some old friends and make some new ones. It was nice to run into entrepreneur Chris Hill and my old friend Mark Tebbe. I also got reacquainted with Bob Odenkirk. He and I met through my friend Doug Nash back in 1988. Plus the Cubs won.

One of the guests was a national pollster. I won’t mention his name. If you watch the news channels, you have seen him. He would be considered a “Republican” pollster.

We were talking about the political climate in America with midterms coming. Basically, it stinks for Republicans. Not just a little. Across the country, Republicans are not turning out for elections. In our Nevada primary, 82% stayed home.

One huge problem is the inaction of the Senate in passing Trump’s agenda. Recess appointments do not happen. The SAVE Act is stalled. That’s affected turnout. Why elect them if they aren’t going to do anything?

The other problem is that Trump is not popular among independents. He’s lost them. Some polls have him negative 15 or more among independents. Why? Mostly the actions in Iraq. Trump said “no endless wars”, and even if Iran won’t be the price, gas jumped a couple of dollars a gallon. I don’t think Iran will be an endless war, but it seems like a military action that could have waited.

I know Trump says they were “ten weeks from a bomb,” but frankly, after Iran in 2003, my confidence in US Intelligence isn’t high. I am willing to be wrong about that. I also understand we have to deal with Iran. They fund Hamas, which attacks Israel, and Hamas needs to go just like the Palestinian terrorists needed to go.

If you think about the situation in economic terms, the Iran/US relationship was in something of an uneasy Nash Equilibrium. It would have been better for midterms if Trump waited until after they were over to upset the equilibrium.

So, the timing might have been better.

We spoke about Nevada politics. He mentioned we had a strong governor. But he said given the polls and turnout, it will be a very close race. If the Democrats had a decent candidate, it would have been a solid seat to flip. Fortunately for Nevada Republicans, they don’t.

For example, if Sen. Cortez-Masto decided to run, she would have been a solid favorite. At the time all the decisions were being made, Trump was much more popular, so the race seemed very uphill.

The other thing we are finding out is that a lot of big national donors are sitting on their hands. They aren’t going to be as active as usual. They read the prediction markets and polls as well as anyone else.

The good news is the Democrats have embraced a lot of socialists to lead them. Today there is a primary in Michigan. Let’s see how turnout is and if the socialists in Michigan win or not. Minnesota has a primary on August 11.

We are still in August, and no one is paying attention. Things get real after Labor Day, and it all can change.

Added:

An alert reader sent me this link. Democratic fundraising is down because USAID was exposed. All those people who said DOGE wouldn’t work should shut up. Looks like it worked. 95% of the money contributions from organizations that were shut down by DOGE went to Democratic candidates.

Dems have problems of their own. At the wedding, I spoke with a Democratic Senate staffer. They agreed the socialists are a problem. Anti-semitism is a huge problem for Democrats, but they were quick to point out the Republicans have a Tucker Carlson/Candace Owens/Nick Fuentes/Thomas Massie problem.

My opponent in the primary, Drew Johnson, predictably pandered. Drew doesn’t understand money or finance, but he understands talking points and how to tell people what they want to hear. Even today, he is willing to raid the Unclaimed Property accounts to fund the scholarship and has added a raid on Unclaimed Property to fund a brand new scholarship for disabled kids. Meanwhile, he says he will return Unclaimed Property to its rightful owners. That’s a sleazy politician for you.

Both viable Democrats talked about the Millennium Scholarship, but only Joe Dalia had a plan. His was basically the same as Drew’s. Raid Unclaimed Property.The Democratic nominee Tya Mathis Coleman has no published plan. The scholarship is broke, and anyone who was inside the Treasurer’s office knows it.

I am sure I lost votes because I was honest. Departing treasurer Zach Conine was finally honest in his last year.

I answered the question about the scholarship publicly here. Edited for brevity, but you can see the entire answer at the link.

The honest answer here is that the Millennium Scholarship, as currently designed, is for all practical purposes insolvent. Run the numbers honestly. To put the Millennium Scholarship on a permanent, self-sustaining footing using a standard endowment model, Nevada would need approximately $1.9 billion invested at an assumed 5% nominal return and 2% inflation; a real return of roughly 3%.

At Nevada News and Views, they wrote an article about the scholarship. They connect the dots and uncover the community that is underserved by the state. The poor. The poor have no chance, and their college scholarship funding is capped. Not only that, the Millennium Scholarship, besides being financially broke, is being given to almost anyone. It’s not the “best and brightest”. By the way, it won’t matter to a lot of the best and brightest. They will go to schools outside Nevada. The trick for Nevada policymakers is how to get them to come back.

There is a perverse economic incentive built into the administration of the scholarship because it gets some funding from the state seizing stale Unclaimed Property. I believe that artificial intelligence can match up private unclaimed property with the people it should rightfully be owned by. I also am a staunch proponent of private property rights, so raiding Unclaimed Property seems totalitarian to me.

NN&V also wrote about the tribal waiver, which is a different problem in the same vein. It’s a taxpayer-funded giveaway disguised as doing “good”.

Nevada needs to re-examine every program that is funded by taxpayers and given to students for college. A lot of them should be relegated to the junkyard. Nevada is not a huge state with a large tax base. Government has grown to the point where Nevada is between a rock and a hard place.

Choices have to be made. All the voices that are against growth in the state scream bloody murder when a tax increase has to happen to pay for some government program. Data centers are a perfect example of that.

Wealthy people moved from other states to Nevada to avoid high taxes in other states. Nothing will stop them from moving again if Nevada’s choice is to raise taxes. Nevada needs to figure out ways to cut taxes. Ending programs is necessary, but not politically palatable.

Nevada needs to re-examine every program that is funded by taxpayers and given to students for college. A lot of them should be relegated to the junkyard.

There are solid reasons for this.

1. Statistically, graduating from college will give people a path to a better life, but in a world that is changing pretty rapidly, it makes a difference in what your undergraduate major is. Women’s Studies, PoliSci, and Sociology are a waste of time, and most graduates are destined for a life of government/NGO grift, unlike STEM or Business students. Getting a great, solid traditional education, meaning a 1930s-era liberal arts education, is also a good idea with the type of world we will have over the next 30 years. There is always grad school if you want to specialize. Maybe only fund students who do a difficult major.

2. Trade Schools are also a great alternative for a lot of people. Going there combined with classes on economics, accounting, marketing, and finance can help them build businesses.

3. The nature of college itself is changing rapidly. Just like homeschooling is bringing innovation to K-12 education, advancements in AI, merit-based credentialing, and other developments are bringing competition and pressure to a traditional college path.

These are not fun conversations for politicians to have. Business people have them all the time and act on them. Special interests and government giveaways that seem like “free money” even when couched in nice-to-hear political terminology aren’t free.

Unfortunately, I don’t think voters want to hear the truth. But when their taxes go up, they will learn the truth. Maybe.

Nevada is not a red or blue state. It’s purple. Our Assembly and State Senate do not reflect that.

In 2030, that can get rearranged with a Republican governor and Republican Senate, along with a few more Republicans in the Assembly. Having a Republican Attorney General to give air cover and a Republican Secretary of State aids the cause as well.

Across the country, the Democratic power base is unions. In Nevada, it’s the Culinary Union. The Culinary Union is pretty smug. But their comeuppance is coming.

It’s called robots powered by artificial intelligence. Eventually, quantum computing will power robots. We have a ways to go on quantum, but AI is here.

ATOMS is a company started by Travis Kalanick, the founder of Uber. He just raised $1.7 billion to grow the company. He has been messing with robots in the kitchen and will scale it to other places. As he said when he came out of stealth, “Do you really care if a human makes your pancake? All you care about is if it is a good pancake.” Extending that, do you care if a human takes your order? Delivers your order? ATOMS will build robots for mining and other high-risk occupations.

By the way, robots do not need health insurance and don’t have sick days or vacation days. Customers also don’t need to tip them. Robots will drive down the costs of everything, making our entire economy and way of life efficient and affordable. Get in a Waymo taxi, you will experience what I mean.

Elon Musk has been working on robots too. Sure, they will be able to displace humans who are in the Culinary Union. I don’t think the union feels this is a high-probability event, but it is. Elon needs them in space too. Robots can also do dangerous jobs where a human life might be threatened.

They aren’t the only ones working on robots. Years ago, I saw robots at the University of Illinois College of Engineering that were built for farming. Someday soon, farms will be entirely robotic from planting to harvest. So will ranching, slaughter and meatpacking.

Lobbyists joked with me when I mentioned this to them. “Can you imagine the picket line you’d have to cross to check into your hotel?” Sure. In the not-too-distant future, I am going to fly to Las Vegas. I am going to take my driverless taxi to the hotel. I am going to check in online, and robots will provide security, cook a lot of our food, and do a lot of the cleaning and commodity tasks. Robots never go on strike. They simply need recharging.

I bet that having humans at the gambling tables will remain.

Robots and tech underscore why Nevada’s mining industry is so critical to the world’s future.

If you think the unions will be able to pressure casinos, think again. Las Vegas competes intensely for convention business. Do you think places like Dallas, Houston, Orlando, and other convention hubs will hold back robotics? They will embrace them to save on costs, driving prices down.

Chicago is losing a lot of convention business because its costs are artificially high.

2030 will be a huge year, because artificial intelligence and robots will have made gargantuan leaps forward by then, and the Culinary Union will be threatened.

Already, we see progressives and Democratic Socialists try to derail artificial intelligence. They want to regulate it. They know they cannot stop it because it’s just too good for everyone not to use. I regularly use AI for search now because it is so much more efficient than any search engine. I use it for a lot of other things as well. We used it for opposition research in our political campaign. It pulled public information and put it all together nicely so we could see what a despicable fraudster we were running against was.

Because progressives and the DSA can’t stop AI, they are turning their howitzers to data centers. My social media feeds are filled with disinformation about data centers. Data centers do not increase power rates. Data centers do not put strain on water supplies. Data centers do not cause cancer or anything like that. Even the noise pollution they supposedly create can be solved for.

Data centers spit out a lot of tax dollars. That’s great in a state with no income tax and a small tax base. They support a lot of jobs as well. Jobs to build them. Jobs to maintain them. Millions of ancillary jobs around the globe that rely on a data center being there as well.

If you like your computer and cellphone and you like all the innovation that happens because of them, you ought to be a big fan of data centers.

I see Democrats like Dina Titus proclaim daily how terrible they are. She’s right there with Bernie Sanders. They are trying to use the power of government to stop innovation because that very innovation threatens their strongest political supporters.

That’s why this election is critical. Nevada needs nuclear power and data centers and can be a leader in innovation. Or, it can cede to other states like Texas and get left behind.

The choice is yours, Nevada. Choose innovation and growth. Or, get left behind. Nevada won’t become California. It doesn’t have the population, industry, or tax base. More likely Vermont.

I was a Cubs fan and still am. I have a soft spot for the Twins only because of my grandfather.

It is prime time for the boys of summer, and there are pennant races on. The Cubs are seven back from the hated Brewers but in the Wild Card. That team on the South Side of Chicago is in first place.

Funny thing. I knew Kirby before he was Kirby. I dropped out of the US Air Force Academy. I was recruited there to play basketball. I had a love-hate relationship with the place, more hate than love. There were other reasons I decided it wasn’t for me as well.

I wound up at Triton College. My dad taught there and was their first athletic director. He hired some tremendous coaches. Triton was tops in basketball, baseball, wrestling, gymnastics, tennis and swimming.

In my sophomore year, Puckett had left Bradley University and was at Triton. Triton’s basketball team that I was on was very good. Triton’s baseball team was better than that. The baseball program had plenty of guys drafted into the majors. A couple had even made it to The Show.

The first time I met Puckett in the fall of 1982, I was taken aback. First of all, he wasn’t huge. He was around 5’7” and built like a fire hydrant. He was amazingly chatty. We were talking in the locker room, and I said, “Why’d you come here?”

He said, “Because we are going to win the Junior College World Series.”

Kirby had a drive and a competitive nature that couldn’t be matched. He had a lot of talent, but he worked relentlessly at improving himself. He had an incredibly positive attitude, and it was infectious.

When you were around him, you wanted to win.

The baseball team at Triton worked out incredibly hard during the fall. Their coach, Bob Symonds, was one of the best in the US. Drills, drills, drills, and more drills. I got to be friends with a lot of them. Jim Cesario from St. Laurence. Lance Johnson. Mike Kincannon, Jeff Stange, and Mike Duckhorn. Kincannon was a pitcher, and one of the best pool players you ever saw.

A lot of the baseball guys chewed. They’d go to the Skoal factory in Franklin Park and pick up sleeves fresh off the line. One guy from Cincinnati, a catcher whose name I forget, put one pouch of Red Man in one cheek, one in the other, and a whole can of Skoal in his lower lip on a dare. Sometimes some of them would go an entire class period and not spit. Others would carry cups with them. Puckett never chewed.

One of the things about a JC, a lot of the athletes never bothered to go to class very often. Just enough to get by. I never missed a class. Got straight A’s in everything.

Our basketball team worked out hard as well. In the fall, it was just us playing five-on-five in a converted truck garage with a tile floor that we called a gym. There was about 15 inches between the baseline and the wall at each end, with huge padded posts at halfcourt.

Often, lots of players would show up. Rickie Wilson, a Proviso East legend, often played. Sometimes Glenn Rivers would come.

One time, a team came into our “gym” ranked as one of the top defensive teams in the country. We ran 100 on them. There was no three-point line then either.

My sophomore year, we played in an actual new gym on campus with a wood floor! I was the only player at Triton to ever play in both.

During the winter, Puckett and the team worked out even more. They’d set up a batting cage with a pitching machine and hit. One day I snuck into the locker room and picked up a wooden bat. Most players used aluminum, so it was funny to see a wooden bat.

It had stickum all over it. I swung it and ran out of the locker room. Puckett came back to his locker and looked for his bat. I didn’t know I had taken his bat to play around with, but he chased me down. “White boy, don’t mess with that bat.”

I started laughing. I asked him, “Why do you use a wooden one?” He said, “All the pros use wood, and all the scouts want to see how you will hit with wood, so I am using a wooden one.”

Our basketball team was pretty good. In one game, I stole the ball at half court and went in for a slam. I put it off the back of the rim, and the ball went out to half court. Puckett started shouting at me. “You were the great white hope, but now you are the great white dope.” Man, I still wish I would have gotten that one down.

Coach Rich Maack was our coach. He is in a junior college Hall of Fame. He was a great coach. Funny thing about Coach Maack, he never swore. He’d look at you when you made a mistake and say, “What were you thinking?”

He told me, “You weren’t the best to play for me, but you were the smartest.” Bob Larsen was the best. 1972 NJCAA All-American and outplayed David Thompson at NC State when freshmen weren’t eligible.

Puckett and the baseball team made it to the JC World Series in Grand Junction, CO. They didn’t win, but they were competitive. Puckett hit .688 for the tournament.

After he was drafted by the Twins, we were sitting in Burger King. We all congratulated Kirby. He said, “You know, if I don’t make it, I will become a cop. I just want to help kids.” We all laughed. We knew he was going to make it.

Turns out, a lot of people off that team were drafted, and Lance Johnson had a very long major league career too.

Of course, Kirby won two World Series with the Twins. He was MVP.

It was sad what happened to him. Glaucoma in his eye made it so he couldn’t play the game he loved. Separated from the game, I believe he got depressed. Finally, he had a stroke and died shortly after it.

I knew him when, and today, since it is Kirby Puckett Jersey Day in the Twin Cities, I was reminded of all that.

VC Fred Wilson here.

VC Chris Dixon here.

If you want to go deeper and learn about crypto, my friend William Mougayar has an excellent blog, and you can read about it here.

Predictably, it is Democrats holding up the passage. They never met an innovation that they liked while Trump was President.

Chris Dixon writes:

History shows that open, neutral platforms governed by clear rules create the greatest value. The internet succeeded because entrepreneurs knew the rules of the road. They could build, attract capital, and compete on merit rather than on regulatory guesswork. Blockchain networks deserve the same chance.

Regulation versus innovation is a false choice. GENIUS already disproved that: During the second half of 2025 — after GENIUS was signed into law — more than $13 billion flowed into crypto startup investment, nearly double the $6.9B invested pre-GENIUS in the first half of that year. Meanwhile, forecasts project the market for tokenized assets to grow 100x growth over the next few years. The choice is between certainty and uncertainty, America can assert its leadership and build the future here at home or watch it be built elsewhere

Crypto certainly had its problems over the last fifteen years. But those are mostly ironed out, and things are progressing nicely now. Memecoins are still around. If you spent money at the Bored Ape Yacht Club, sorry. You might still wonder what Bitcoin is and what you will do with it. That’s only one small facet of cryptocurrency. An entire new infrastructure for moving money and assets around the globe is being built, and it needs regulatory certainty.

I have written about this before but will relay a couple of crypto investing stories. These are very abbreviated.

Our fund invested in a company that was trading real estate investment trusts (REITs). REIT trading is incredibly inefficient. The company wanted to tokenize the trading. The company spent millions of dollars and dedicated hours and hours going through an SEC regulatory gauntlet and got the first-ever license to trade tokenized REITs. The next day, Gary Gensler’s SEC sent them a letter telling them the SEC wouldn’t allow trading in that asset class. We sold the company to an Israeli firm that prized the license and made a bet on the future. We received 1x. The company wouldn’t have survived until today, but if it had, we probably would have been able to sell it for more than 1x.

That’s not helping innovation. That’s putting a roadblock in front of innovation with a wink and a nod. Gensler and people like him should never have a lever of power at their fingertips again.

In 2014, I invested in a crypto futures exchange. I went to $CME to try and get them to trade crypto, but they weren’t ready yet. Bitnomial went through a CFTC process and became the first futures exchange to trade crypto with physical delivery, and it utilized crypto for margin. That process was expensive and took years. The company was purchased by Kraken a number of months ago for $550 million.

With clear federal regulation, innovation can happen. It will happen faster and more economically. Companies won’t build, faithfully go through a government process, and get the rug pulled out from under them at the end.

The Clarity Act reminds me very much of the Commodity Futures Reauthorization Act of 2000 (CFMA 2000). Back then, the monster in the closet was over-the-counter derivatives. There was no legal certainty or regulatory framework around them. It was the Wild West, but there were trillions of dollars in OTC contracts out in the market. One judge could rule against them, wiping them out.

We passed the CFMA, and now the OTC industry is lightly regulated. It works to manage risk for businesses.

Passing the Clarity Act is not going to allow predators to take Grandma’s money. It will give clear guardrails to innovators who will make the cost of using, transferring, and spending Grandma’s money a lot cheaper so her money goes further.

Truth be told, the lawsuit has nothing to do with business and competition, and everything to do with the fact that a Republican is the main driver behind the merger. This is a politically motivated action, not one based on business facts.

Last fall in Nevada, the Hollywood Handout failed. It was great that it failed for a variety of reasons. I argued against it long before Keystone, and others joined the party.

One of the hardest things to do in antitrust is draw the lines that determine where businesses compete during mergers and acquisitions. Regulators and politicians often do not understand the state of play inside an industry. They can’t see around the corners at potential or possible innovation. They are political hacks, not visionaries, subject to arguments drawn up by paid advocates.

Things we don’t see develop over time. In 2010, did anyone see Amazon ($AMZN) becoming a grocery company? They bought Whole Foods, and they are one. Yet, government wonks wouldn’t let grocery chains merge. Amazon defines its business a lot differently than a government wonk.

My argument about Hollywood didn’t have to do with the economics of Hollywood, which are bad. It had to do with technology.

Surely, you have heard of Christopher Nolan’s epic The Odyssey. It’s in theaters now and I want to see it. I am re-reading the book first. There is a lot of political theatre around the movie. It’s a liberal Trojan Horse. It’s not a liberal Trojan Horse.

The main themes of the Odyssey are:

• Homecoming and Restoration: Odysseus must overcome divine wrath (Poseidon), monsters, temptations, and his own flaws to reclaim his throne, wife, and son. The poem contrasts the chaos of the wandering world with the ordered stability of Ithaca.

• Cunning Intelligence (mētis): Odysseus is the ultimate survivor because of his wits, not just strength. He is “polytropos” — a man of many turns, tricks, and disguises. This sets him apart from the brute force of Achilles in the Iliad.

• Loyalty and Fidelity: Penelope’s steadfast wait for her husband (weaving and unweaving the shroud) and Telemachus’s growth into manhood parallel Odysseus’s own perseverance.

• Hospitality (xenia): Proper treatment of guests is a major moral code. Violations (the suitors devouring Odysseus’s household, the Cyclops eating visitors) are punished harshly.

• Fate, the Gods, and Human Agency: The gods constantly intervene, but Odysseus’s choices and endurance matter. The epic explores the tension between destiny and free will.

• Revenge and Justice: The bloody climax where Odysseus slaughters the suitors restores cosmic and social order.

Hollywood and the Democratic Party in America are on their own Odysees. Different issues, but out at sea on their own ships.

This morning Elon Musk tweeted that by the end of the year, Grok Imagine will make The Odyssey. Amazing. Here is how it works.

California, Georgia, Illinois, and Louisiana all have generous film tax credits. Hollywood hasn’t moved there, and they film outside the United States for the most part. Hollywood corporate execs lost their way and became corporate, rather than creative.

The corporate part catered to China. Big market. Boring sequel after boring sequel. Boring comic book character movie after movie. They also catered to the far left. The Academy changed the metrics to be nominated for an award, cheapening the prestige of the award.

Technology is coming, and the suits will have a choice. Regroup and come back, or stay corporate and fail. I bet they will fail. They won’t be able to see past cash flow. Their MBAs will help them focus on spreadsheets and ignore creatives. The AGs suing will help them fail faster.

Democrats are in the same predicament. They have pandered to the socialist wing of the party, and that socialist wing is eating the party. They have a choice. Kill the socialists and lose power for a while. They can regroup. Or, they can choose death because surely, they won’t stop the socialist tide.

Democrats cannot see through their hate of Trump to make a good decision.

Nevada Democrat Aaron Ford is front and center, leading the socialist DEI movement. It is what he thinks about when he wakes up in the morning, and what he dreams about when he sleeps. I have never seen a tweet, a statement, or an action out of him or his office that didn’t try to advance the anti-American agenda. So far, mainstream Democrats are supporting him. They will get eaten.

Here is the link to the announcement on X.

I and other Trump supporters look the other way on a lot of Trump stuff. It is what it is, and it’s just bluster. Go to NYC, and you will meet 1000 other people like that.

When Trump issued his and Melania’s cryptocurrency after he was elected, a lot of people cried foul. I didn’t. Why? Because it’s a memecoin and memecoins are meant to be worthless.

I was against the US government taking equity stakes in companies. There should be no “golden dividends” or anything like that. I don’t care how Howard Lutnick tries to sell it. There will be regulatory capture and conflicts of interest. I am also against ideas like a sovereign wealth fund at any government level. It’s taxpayer dollars, not government dollars, and ripe for fraud and cronyism.

Selling access to tweets before anyone else gets them is different. Trump’s tweets move markets. We decry Nancy Pelosi and Susie Lee and others for insider trading as sitting legislators. The President selling access to his tweets knowing they will move markets is just as bad, if not worse.

I do not think the President should be selling access to his TruthSocial account.

John Lothian and I are friends, but often we see things a lot differently. I am a conservative Republican, and John is not. Trump was the best choice for President in 2016, 2020, and 2024. John does not think that at all. John is a veteran of the commodities markets like me, and though we come at it from different angles, we find we agree sometimes and disagree others. I am still trying to persuade that prediction markets are a good thing. Of course, excluding things like sports or awards.

John wrote a piece about Trump selling access to Truth Social tweets here, and it is worth reading.

John writes,

Let’s stop pretending this is just another data product. This is not weather data. This is not a better feed of soybean bids from a country elevator. This is the family-linked media company of the president of the United States proposing to sell the fastest look at words that can move stocks, bonds, oil, currencies and the wealth of millions of people. McGurn called it monetizing proprietary assets through a “high-margin, recurring revenue stream.” I call it a tollbooth in front of public consequence.

The business model is simple and ugly: buy the Truth and sell the delayed fact. The paying firms get the “Truth” first — literally the Truth Social post — and everyone else gets the fact after the machines have already read it, parsed it and traded it. That phrase belongs at the top of every regulator’s memo: buy the truth and sell the delayed fact.

I remember when we found out you could pay for Michigan Sentiment data ahead of the number. It ticked those of us trading off because we were making markets and getting picked off. I also remember being Chairman of Wireless Headset when that technology came to the trading floor. We stopped them from standing on the top step so they wouldn’t have an edge. As an exchange, we also regulated a few other things around headsets so that market makers who were providing liquidity and taking risk weren’t getting picked off.

One thing that people like John and I agree on, we want fair, competitive, and transparent markets. We want regulations written so those markets stay fair, competitive, and transparent. We want transparency at the Exchange rulemaking and disciplinary level so everyone knows the game and has a fair shot.

One of the principles I believe in strongly is that free markets should not be rigged, or even appear to be rigged. That’s why I am vehemently against government people insider trading. When they appear rigged, faith in the capitalistic free market system is threatened. Currently, we are in a battle with socialism. It’s sweeping through our major cities and getting control. Free markets can spit in socialism’s face and help stomp it out.

If we fail to call it out and stop it, we will never stop it. A person like me who knows how to trade might run for Congress and spend an exorbitant amount of money to win if they could insider trade. If people who don’t know what they are doing can strip millions out of the market, imagine what someone who knew what they were doing could do.

Please read John’s entire post because it is full of examples of how we have curbed abuse in the past, and why this could be especially toxic to fair, competitive, and transparent markets.

Another technological innovation that has been brushed aside over the past couple of years is cryptocurrency. Most people think it is a vehicle for fraud and drug dealing. Sure, maybe. But it also has some tremendous uses.

To be clear, governments should NEVER hold cryptocurrency as an asset. Even if they transact in it. Cryptocurrency as an asset class is a pure speculative play. When a government receives crypto, it should turn it into fiat currency immediately. The risks to hold fiat vs crypto favor fiat.

My opponent in the Nevada Republican primary pandered to the crypto class and said he would hold Bitcoin in the Treasury. It’s pure ignorance and a lack of financial understanding. The fraudster will deny it, but he eliminated this from his Instagram and locked it down so you can’t see. Did the same with X accounts. Mr. Transparency.

Holding Bitcoin in state funds is a truly financially illiterate idea. The idea to pay taxes and fees in precious metals is financially illiterate as well.

Crypto does have some great uses though, and his last two points are correct. They are difficult to implement because of the structural changes needed for current infrastructure. It’s not impossible, but a state cannot do it. Third parties have to do it for the state.

One of the great potentials of cryptocurrency is fraud prevention. At least 50% of the country is ticked about the fraud Nick Shirley uncovered. The same 50% are concerned about voter fraud and want the Save Act passed.

Cryptocurrency might be able to solve both problems.

Why?

Because cryptocurrency can be programmed for a specific use, it’s “programmable money”. In China, with a totalitarian regime, this idea is sinister as it pertains to freedom. In America, it’s useful.

You can use an Ethereum token and program it for a specific use. You can program onto that token exact specific uses so it won’t work anywhere else, and it is not able to be traded or bartered for anything else.

Critics of some government programs will say, “Cash is fungible”. If you give money to Planned Parenthood for birth control and women’s health, it can easily find its way into active abortion advocacy.

Not so with a pre-programmed Ethereum token. That token could only be used for its intended use.

When I was running for state treasurer, I talked about modernizing the treasury. You can’t go into specifics because your opponents will say what a terrible idea it is. People are always reluctant to change. Low-information voters even more so.

In Ohio, they are starting to experiment with programmable tokens for different welfare programs to make sure the money gets used for the program, not something else. If a fraudster gets a hold of it, the money is no good because it cannot be spent on anything except its intended use.

If the state wants to pay rent for a welfare recipient, the token can be programmed to pay rent. It will work for the current address. If the person moves, they won’t be able to take that token and apply the money to someplace else.

Ohio will also allow state fees to be paid with cryptocurrency. This is smart because it will make payment systems more efficient and save citizens money on fees.

When it comes to voter ID, crypto might provide an answer. When crypto is posted on a blockchain, it is “proof of work”. Nothing can get posted there without the proof and the entire blockchain agreeing that it happened. That blockchain could be viewed in real time online by the public. If every registered voter was given a unique token, that would be the same as voter ID. Using the token to vote would be a unique identifier and eliminate voter fraud.

Yes, Voter ID is much easier and cheaper to implement, and we should do it immediately across the nation, but in the future I bet we see crypto-enabled voting.

Crypto could be used for immigration as well. Again, a unique identifier with a unique blockchain. Cannot be duplicated.

Tokenization of assets would make them easier to track. The art world has an entire industry and legal profession arranged around determining if art is real or fake. My friend Robert Edsel is involved with some of it.

Tokenizing assets would help when people die. Instead of seeing unclaimed assets grow at state treasuries, estates would know the provenance of them and who they should belong to.

Crypto has gotten a bad rap over the years, and some of it is well earned. However, there are some great uses for cryptocurrency and tokenization, and we ought to be embracing them.

It’s not a cut-and-dried answer. Kind of complex. To understand why Warsh is doing it the way he is doing, you have to understand a few other things so you get it. The first part of this will give you the groundwork, and the second some analysis.

First, economics is not a monolithic discipline. Sure, there are capitalists and Marxists, but within “capitalism”, there are various schools of thought. If you look at free-market economists, there are splintered segments. You might have heard of the Chicago School and the Austrian School. There are a lot of points of agreement, but there are differences.

Economics is not absolute. It’s not 2+2=4. It’s about one thing relative to another given constraints. It’s calculus that moves along a curve. Sometimes, the curves move in or out, but most of the time, demand and supply move up or down an existing curve. When a curve moves, it is a true shock to an economy.

Broadly, there are two main lines of economists in the US. They are “freshwater” and “saltwater” economists. Here is a simplified way to segregate them.

Typically, the freshwater economists are for less government regulation and letting private businesses and citizens chart their own course. They believe a decentralized economy is more efficient. They prefer far less government intervention. Let the market decide. Their main focus is on the supply curve. Why? Because it can be actively managed and understood. There is far less randomness in supply. There are no degrees or certifications in “demand management”. There are extensive ways to learn about supply management. It turns out the universities that promoted this sort of economic thought were located near freshwater bodies of water, hence the name.

Classical economists are freshwater economists. Examples of freshwater that you might know are Friedman, Sowell, and Becker. If you want to read freshwater economists regularly, read John Cochrane at The Grumpy Economist or Craig Pirrong at Streetwise Professor.

The saltwater economists see the economy as a puppet. They believe strongly in centralized planning. They believe experts can make better decisions than the individual. Their belief leads them to believe that if you change a policy, pull a string based on my puppet analogy, then something will happen. Those strings are often focused on the demand side of the economy. Taxes, subsidies, price floors, and price ceilings are used to force various behaviors. Keynesian economists are in the saltwater crowd.

Behavioral economics is a subset of this discipline. Read the book “Nudge,” and you will understand why. Behaviorists love “choice architecture”, which leads an individual down a path so they make the decision the behaviorist thinks is good for them. In a totalitarian government, this style of economics can be extremely damaging. In a laissez-faire government, it can be beneficial.

Examples of saltwater economists would be Paul Krugman, Joseph Stiglitz, and Thomas Piketty. Angry Bear is a blog written by saltwater economists.

The Federal Reserve has been dominated by Keynesian thinking almost since its inception. That framing has affected US economic policy not only at the Fed, but in Congress and states.

I opine that the Fed has traditionally been late in making decisions because it has been Keynesian in focus. It’s not as if the Fed has ever been ahead of the curve; it’s always late to the party. Frustrating.

Classical economics should be more responsive because it doesn’t rely on centralized experts, but on the market and individual decision makers.

Interest rates affect a lot of decision-making. Most people look at mortgages and leave it at that. But the weighted cost of capital (WACC) that businesses use for internal hurdle rates to decide whether to invest in growth or not is heavily affected by rates.

Warsh is NOT a Keynesian. He is NOT even an “economist”. He has a law degree, not a PhD in Economics. He favors the classical economists.

Looking at the Consumer Price Index and Producer Price Index is fine. But they miss a lot of stuff when it comes to inflation. Why? One reason is technological innovation. Technological innovation drives down the costs of things. It can distort the two indices. You might have paid $1000 for a phone two years ago. Today, you buy a new phone for $1000, but the new phone is 100x more powerful than the old phone. That gets distorted in the indices. CPI also includes volatile products, so to get a true read on inflation, you need to exclude them, make a judgment about them, or massage the number.

Warsh looks at trimmed-mean PCE to gauge inflation.

• PCE basics: The PCE price index tracks price changes in a broad basket of goods and services consumed by households. Headline PCE includes everything (volatile items like food and energy).

• Trimmed mean approach: Instead of simply excluding fixed categories like food and energy (the common “core PCE”), the trimmed mean statistically removes extreme price changes (outliers) each month.

When we think about inflation, what matters?

Labor is the highest cost of production. Energy is also a big input. Commodities are an input, but commodities are very volatile in price, which is why we have regulated and established futures markets to hedge. The GSCI Index is probably the best index to watch to get a handle on commodity prices. The true driver of inflation is government spending. Government debt by itself isn’t a driver of inflation as long as you can grow out of the debt. That being said, the level of US debt relative to US GDP growth is out of control. The reason we had so much inflation post Covid is government spending. We spent trillions of dollars. Trump spent to combat the mandatory economic shutdown, and then Biden put fuel on the fire by spending trillions in February of 2021. Shutting down the economy should go down as one of the dumbest decisions in American history. It probably was driven by politics, not “safety”.

CPI was 3.5%, but down .4% month over month. The Fed’s official target is 2%. At 2% inflation growth with 3% GDP growth, the country is in a financial sweet spot. The drop in oil prices was the reason for the drop.

Trimmed mean PCE was 2.4%. The overall PCE inflation rate was 4.1 percent on a 12-month basis, and the inflation rate for PCE excluding food and energy was 3.4 percent on a 12-month basis

If you want to think deeper about inflation, there are two other basic concepts to pay attention to. One is elasticity, and the other is price stickiness.

Elasticity shows how steep or flat the supply/demand curves are. Think about gasoline. The curve is steep. There are no substitutes, and you will pay whatever price is at the pump to fill your car. As prices rise, you might conserve. However, if you want to drive your car, you have to pay the price. Craig has a good piece on elasticity and Chinese oil demand here.

Price stickiness is the ability for prices to rise and stay there, despite conditions changing. Can producers keep prices high, or will competition and the availability of substitutes force them to drop them? Cochrane has a technical paper that describes price stickiness here.

Conservative media will tout the drop in trimmed-mean PCE as a reason to drop interest rates. Since the WACC for businesses has returned to traditional metrics, to around 8%-11%, businesses would welcome a decrease in interest rates. Trump, of course, wants an interest rate drop as well. He is a real estate guy, and they are highly cognizant and sensitive to interest rates. They’d love them to be 0%!

He will think, “I appointed the guy; now he has to do what I want.” Au contraire. He doesn’t, but at least Warsh follows the right discipline and frames things the right way, unlike Powell or Yellen.

Warsh has inherited a tough pickle. I do think inflation is coming down, but I don’t think it is falling fast enough to lower rates. Additionally, you throw in the curveball of what is happening in Iran, and it is easier to argue to stay the current course than to decrease rates.

Additionally, Warsh has to change the entire culture of entrenched thinking inside an agency. Appointing Warsh was refreshing. It was the right thing to do, and Trump made another great decision here to get the government on the side of the people and not bureaucrats.

The arguments between the two schools of economic thought are not pedestrian. They are fierce. They get as ugly as any academic argument will get.

Chicago Booth professor Merton Miller often chastised my fellow traders and me. “You guys are the supposed last bastion of capitalism, yet you won’t auction off pit space, which might be one of the most valuable things here.”

In the media, spectrum is one of the most valuable assets. It is just like a trading floor.

The mainstream media outlets were given free spectrum in the 1940s. Television was a new technology. Before that, their radio frequencies were given free spectrum. In the 1910s and 20s, radio was the new technology.

Why?

Public resource with obligations: The airwaves are considered public property. Licenses were granted at no (or very low) upfront cost to the government in exchange for broadcasters serving the public interest—providing news, entertainment, education, and local programming, with rules like the Fairness Doctrine (later repealed) and children’s programming requirements.

Technology has leapt forward. The old mainstream media is not needed to spread, report or do anything with news to make sure our First Amendment rights are secure. The idea that they are the “fourth estate”, left the world sometime in the 1970s.

As a matter of record, the media is incredibly biased and one-sided in its reporting of the news. It no longer serves the public interest, but serves itself. That includes public television and public radio.

The free allocation of spectrum also helped ABC, CBS, and NBC create dynasties and monopsonies. Upstarts like the Dumont Network couldn’t get traction. The US auctioned off spectrum, reallocating it starting in the 1990s through 2010.

It is time to force the major networks to bid for their spectrum in an open auction format.

An auction will create more competition. We should prize competition in the US. Make the monopsonies compete.

Having to pay for their own spectrum will dramatically change their costs of doing business. That will change who they target as their market, and it will also make them less dominant when it comes to influence on the airwaves.

Making them compete differently might rejigger the way they report the news as well. Instead of an organization like CBS claiming there was a Russia plot to elect Trump in 2016, then saying the election was totally fine in 2020, and now denying that the Chinese were trying to actively influence our elections in 2020, 2022, 2024, and 2026, they might change their tune.

I saw an Alex Berenson tweet this morning. He put it best when it comes to US elections. “Trump lost “unfair and square” - the 2020 election was not rigged, but the media did what it could to hurt him, including badly exaggerating Covid’s risks to try to keep the country afraid and in lockdown. It worked, barely.”

I might dispute Alex a bit. Biden’s 81MM votes surely seem like a statistical outlier when you look at winning vote totals over the course of time. I don’t believe there are fat tails in political statistical distributions like there are in stock market statistical distributions. Political statistical distributions are normally distributed.

Making the monopsony compete for spectrum will also change the US Deep State. They run cover for the Deep State now by reporting or not reporting what the Deep State wants. With competition, that ends. The Deep State loses its media air cover.

Remember, it is not just elections. We are competing with China. If you think communists play fair, you are stupid or totally naive.

Rediscovering America’s founding spirit of competition will help us preserve our country against forces like the CCP. Auctioning off spectrum to the Big 3 and forcing them to compete is just the start. But it’s a good start.

We live on a “wilderness lake”. We have motors on our boats, but there is no recreational stuff like water skiing, jet skis, and things like that. Almost everyone has no more than a 9.9 hp motor on their fishing boats. If you have a pontoon, most are 25 hp or 40 hp. Our lake has a huge rockpile in it and a mostly mucky bottom. It’s not a swimming paradise. It’s rough country.

You can go up the Gunflint Trail from Grand Marais, and there are fires at the very top of it. There are fires in Canada too.

Fire is always in the back of your mind when you live in the woods. Earlier this summer, a neighbor down the way had a gas generator backfire and light the shed it was in on fire. I helped put it out. Fortunately, my grandfather was in the US Forest Service, and we have a lot of fire extinguishers around.

We were lucky. The ground was wettish from recent rain, and there was no breeze. This was later at night, around 10:30 PM.

I always asked my grandfather about fires. He said, “If one comes, there is basically nothing you can do to save anything.” That being said, we trim trees up at least 8 feet off the ground. We get rid of the brush. We cut down dead trees and nuisance trees. Currently, we have an outbreak of spruce budworm, and we will have literally about 40-50 balsam firs to drop in the next couple of years as they die.

I have never seen smoke like this up here before. I have been coming since I was 10 (I am 64). It’s thick like a pea soup fog, and you can smell the “burnt”. Ash is falling from the sky. We had some ash fall from the sky a few years ago, and the result of it was that a pond weed started growing in the lake that we all hate. Eventually, it will fade away. That’s the way things go with wilderness lakes.

Lightning strikes ignited these fires. Not global warming. Not a campfire.

The USFS shut down the entire Boundary Waters due to fire. That’s going to hurt a lot of businesspeople there who rely on summer tourism to make a profit. It was the right decision. You can’t use motors inside the Boundary Waters. It’s paddle and portage with campsites. Holiday Inn is camping for me, which is why I love our cabins.

The USFS also has a system, “Ready, Set, Go” to help people prepare when fires happen. Often, they get contained by lakes or some other firebreak when they are in the wilderness. If there isn’t any private property, resorts, or humans nearby, it’s best to let them burn. Burning is a natural process that removes material and paves the way for new growth. If you ever see a stand of Jack Pine, you can rest assured a fire was there.

Logging helps with fire prevention. Clearcuts provide natural breaks. Forests have to be managed. I understand the “live and let live” ideas of environmentalists, but the world just doesn’t work that way anymore.

Towns near us just got a “Ready” order today. Lutsen, Tofte, and Schroeder are a little too close for comfort.

In Maine, the Democratic Senate primary winner, Graham Platner, was forced out of the race. Before the primary vote, he was known to be an antisemite, a Nazi tattoo on his chest, a communist, and a serial abuser of women. He also had a fake background a la George Soros and maybe someone else we know from Nevada.

A poll came out that showed him losing to the incumbent Republican, and the centralized Democratic Party went into a tizzy. All of a sudden, they discovered Platner’s warts. It might be a made-up story that he assaulted a woman or not. We don’t know. We know the Democrats manufactured rape stories against Justice Kavanaugh and President Trump that were not true, though lots of Democrats still believe the malarky. They still believe the made-up stories about Clarence Thomas, for goodness sake. It’s entirely possible this one was made up, too, to get the central planners what they wanted.

Remember, Joe Biden won the Democratic Primary, and after one bad debate performance, he was removed too. There is precedent for this stuff, and the more they do it, the easier it will be to do again.

Democrats don’t want to hear from the plebians who vote. They say they do, but don’t act that way.

Contrast that to South Carolina. Senator Lindsay Graham had a tragic aortic rupture that killed him.

There was a mad scramble behind the scenes to jockey for position for appointment to fill out Graham’s term. Graham’s body was still a bit warm, so the mad scramble wasn’t very public, but you know it was happening. The appointee would obviously have name recognition. But, perhaps more importantly, a de facto endorsement for re-election.

That would limit competition.

President Trump suggested Lindsay Graham’s sister fill the remaining five months of her brother’s term.

Oh, the outrage! It was the patrimony. The Senate was the “House of Lords”. Forgetting that the Dingell family has held the same seat for 100 years or that the Kennedys have done similarly. If anyone remembers, Democratic Senator Mel Carnahan was tragically killed in an airplane crash, and his wife filled out the term, and then ran and served! Throughout U.S. history, plenty of spouses or siblings have filled in when someone has died. Do some research on President Woodrow Wilson, a stroke, and his wife.

What does that appointment do?

If you assume Graham’s sister will not run, and I think that is a pretty good assumption, it creates a highly competitive environment inside South Carolina. Now, anyone who wants to attain the seat has to stand up an organization and compete for it.

The voters get to choose twice. First in the primary, then in the general.

It’s one reason why I am a Republican, not a Libertarian. Libertarians prize chaos and disorder. That always ends with totalitarians seizing control because people prefer a little order to arrange their freedom around. It’s also why I will never be a Democrat because they believe in centralization and are anti-competitive. Democrats are takers.

What just happened in South Carolina is the essence of being a democratic republic. Ben Franklin said it would be good for us if we could keep it. Seeing the evolution of the Democratic Party since 1850, it’s awfully hard to keep.