Why Failing to Raise the Debt Ceiling is Bad — Government Shutdown Threat 2024

I’m not going to get too into why a government shutdown is bad. There’s no reasoning with any anti-government goon that thinks it’s good. Critical funding to law enforcement and other initiatives stops and workers potentially go unpaid, maybe even deciding to walk off the job for an employer that will pay them steadily.

But there’s a major threat to your wallet.

When the U.S. government takes on debt by issuing bonds, it’s putting the full force of our country’s credit and credibility behind those bonds. To put this in really simple terms think of it like a credit card. You have a credit limit. The United States as a sovereign government has the power to raise its own credit limit and lenders are willing to lend more and more money because the United States is a safe bet with a strong dollar — they will get their money back with interest. Some of those lenders are Americans. Some are foreigners. All are relying on the United States to pay its debt. The faucet will pretty much never turn off as long as we keep telling people we’ll borrow some more money — or at least it’ll be a damn long time before the faucet turns off because people believe in our country’s ability to pay its debts.

Now, if we choose not to raise our credit limit and borrow more money to pay off the interest on our current debt, we default pretty quick, because the government simply doesn’t have the cash on hand. I suppose it could print money, which would cause inflation and make every dollar you own less valuable — but that’s not a great idea. So what happens when we default and stop paying the interest on United States debt?

Lenders get nervous. Interest rates go up. And again, we get inflation that makes every dollar you own less valuable — and prices go up to reflect this new reality of decreased purchasing power around the world.

So this is really a no brainer. The fact that it’s used as a political weapon is the single greatest failure of modern government. Theres no end game where failing to raise that debt ceiling is good for Americans.

Oh, and if you own a United States bond and they stop paying your interest, that’s bad too. There are many seniors that rely on the fixed income from bond interest to survive, and I don’t think I need to get into what happens when you turn older folk’s income off and potentially crash their investments. There’s just no good reason to do that. It’s evil.

If we go this route the world may no longer see us as a safe place to invest. A weak dollar means Americans lose.

It’s my sincere hope we don’t go there and that there are some adults in the room. But for the time being I’ve got all my money in brokered Certificates of Deposit because it seems like the ultra rich are trying to crash everything so they can buy cheap, cheap, cheap.

Addendum:

I just saw this. Needless to say I agree.

Governments in America Seizing Journalist Devices and Records…

Recently the case of Tim Burke came to my attention. A journalist charged with no crime as of writing. His devices were seized by the FBI, harming his ability to do his job.

It’s now come to my attention that the Marion County Record had its office raided too. And it’s been reported that a co-owner died from the stress of the raid. It’s also been reported there was no probable cause affidavit attached.

Search Warrant from the raid on the Marion County Record

I did reach out to the police chief there. Though other journalists from the r/journalism subreddit told me it was a pretty standard police response.

Response from Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody

Generally I don’t bring non-court reporting stuff to this blog, but quite frankly throughout these last many years I’ve learned how underpaid journalists are. There are only maybe 50,000 of them according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the occupation is facing a 9% decline this decade. That pretty much means that 1 in 10 journalists is going to be losing their job this decade as the population continues to grow. There will be more and more news with less and less coverage. If you’ve ever wondered why not a single journalist seems interested in the court reporter shortage fraud, it might be because they’re overworked, underpaid, and willing to lap up whatever crap the companies in our field say. But the situation as a whole gives me a natural bias toward supporting journalists.

Of course, I leave my mind open to the possibility that journalists can use their position to facilitate crime, but given the absence of a probable cause affidavit, it’s looking less likely now. I’ll create an addendum if I learn more.

This is a concern. If everyone from small-town governments to the Feds can just come claim journalists’ stuff for “investigation,” then what good is our constitution, really? “We can violate you as much as we want, and you might win in court later, but in the interim, your mom’s dead and your life’s upended.” There were also journalists targeted during 2020, according to one article.

The satire I wrote on this issue may just come to life someday. To the extent I’m a citizen journalist that writes against powerful people, I may one day see unjust retribution. If this style of censorship comes to your municipality, please stand up against it. If the citizens don’t demand free speech, those who uphold the law have shown they don’t mind trampling it.

And when your news is only coming from government-approved sources, are you really free?

Addendum:

The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press issued a letter.

A court later ordered copies of the electronic records destroyed.

More Graphics for the Stenographic Legion

As I went into in another post, pictures get several times more engagement than text pieces. But it’s difficult to cram what’s going on into small bites.

I’m going to try a hybrid approach and run the newspaper image below as an advertisement. Hopefully it will shock consumers into action. If you’d like to contribute to the ad campaign, feel free to use the front page of Stenonymous .com to donate.

Feel free to spread these images if you think there’s somewhere they belong. I’m only one person. I can only post so much. There are like 30,000 of you.

Cartoon commissioned by Stenonymous.com to stop corporate fraud in court reporting by the Speech-to-Text Institute

Cartoon commissioned by Stenonymous.com to warn consumers about digital court reporter training by BlueLedge. DCRs have less career mobility/flexibility.

Satire created by Stenonymous.com to explain the likely outcome of corporate fraud in court reporting, which goes unabated thanks to government’s failure to enforce existing law, including the FTC and New York Attorney General.

Indiana’s Proposed Prohibition of Stenography and the Government’s Role in Court Reporting Economics

There is a proposed rule change for Indiana courts that seems to point to keeping stenographers out of the courtroom. Big thanks to Steno Strong and the stenographers that brought it to my attention. It’s pretty straightforward.

The Indiana government apparently seeks to purge stenography from court.

Much like Arizona, Indiana is asking for public comment. I’m feeling less dramatic than usual, so I gave it a shot.

Christopher Day (Stenonymous) responds to Indiana’s proposed purging of stenography from courts.

As I understand it, our institutions and many members of our community are already organizing a response. I would say get involved. Brainstorm on the best ways to phrase things or the right angle to go at this from. See if any attorney allies or anyone related to the legal field will pitch in a public comment. In my mind, it’s unquestionable that we have to give it to them straight. They’re handing an economic win to audio recording vendors. Once stenographic vendors are eliminated, price goes up. This is a concept so well understood that it’s part of the antitrust theory of predatory pricing. But there are probably dozens of arguments that I didn’t address that other stenographers can bring to the table more articulately.

This comes on the heels of the November 1, 2022 dissolution of the Indiana Court Reporters Association.

This is a convenient real-life example of how government impacts the demand for court reporters. They’re considering a rule change that would delete us from the courtrooms. They’re telegraphing a huge drop in court reporter demand. Is it any surprise that the market responds by training fewer court reporters? This is the deathblow I wrote about in 2018. How are we going to attract investors for stenographic education if a large purchaser of court reporting services, like the government, is saying “yeah, thanks for the memories?”

There were other comments far better than mine. Hopefully some of you will copy and paste yours below too.

We have to be assertive here. If not now, when? Again, public comments are open on the government site.

Addendum:

This article later came out about us being blindsided.

Court Reporting Antitrust Conspiracy Explained

*The initial version of this post was written in a vulgar, ranting, raving, and confusing manner due to a medical episode I was having. Sorry for how that was written. I have scrapped it. It held no creative or intellectual value that cannot be reproduced at a later date. Many of the people I named and cursed at are actually good people that I admire.

See the new version below:

The “conspiracy” is simple. It is very similar to what Purdue Pharma did to healthcare. Lies and misdirection, as well as possible government corruption. I should note that in our case, because the government has not yet investigated to my knowledge, it is hard to tell if we’re seeing tacit parallelism or a fully-planned plot. That said, numbers do not lie, and there are problems with the numbers.

Veritext, US Legal, STTI, and others publish misleading and demonstrably false info. There is likely a baseline assumption that it won’t matter in 10 or 20 years because AI will “take over.”

Data starts coming in that AI sucks. We can also extrapolate from our own experiences and Testifying While Black that recording and transcribing will simply never be as good as us. Nobody notices because we’re not data scientists or actuaries. I notice because my love for court reporting leads me to embrace media, math, computer programming, science, etc.

Our associations, either by design or habit, just keep staying the course. Old tricks don’t work in a new and modern world. I start to change minds with a $10,000 budget and become suspicious of the association management industry. Dave Wenhold, whose intelligence and charisma I openly admire, becomes suspicious to me. This is about where I start to deteriorate. How do I use my media to bring people to associations that shut down new ideas without debate; as NCRA did for Amendment 5 this year? How do I support associations that give responses so boneheaded a six year old could do better? Even my beloved NYSCRA seems intent on crushing new ideas quietly and behind closed doors.

NYSCRA also seems oddly inert whenever I suggest anything that would strengthen the association.

Then, like with Purdue, there is potential government corruption. There is a concept called the revolving door, where someone on behalf of the company catches the ear of a government official and the government official just so happens to do what the company wants. Then the government official retires to a nice new job with the company. So far I’m told California Court Reporter Licensing Board officials have actually done this — which is incredibly suspicious. California may well be the state with the strictest regulations for court reporting. It refuses to regulate digital court reporting. Consumers should probably demand the complete dissolution of the board. It would be like heavily regulating snack foods but refusing to regulate pretzels.

Let’s not forget Arizona, where my public comment was completely ignored by Director Byers, even though I sent him an e-mail well before my personal issues began. Very convenient for AAERT and anyone who thinks courtrooms should be investing in recording equipment.

There are also issues here in New York. It is apparent that members of the public are being told no spots are open and the government is sitting on provisional applications.

I cannot say for sure what we are seeing. I do see a pattern of passive aggressiveness toward court reporters from corporations, associations, and government — a passive aggressiveness that peculiarly fades any time someone questions it.

The antitrust conspiracy may not be an actual conspiracy. But if I was designing a plot to exaggerate and exacerbate the stenographer shortage, it would look exactly like what we are experiencing today.