Let's clear things up

[Wolf DeVoon]

After 10 pages of Google "Jonathan Smith Minnesota" there's not much to say, except

What's your real name?

[Jonathan]

After 10 pages of Google "Jonathan Smith Minnesota" there's not much to say, except

What's your real name?

Yes!!! Finally an example of a real human trait from "Wolf"!

J

[Brant Gaede]

reality deleted

[Wolf DeVoon]

Jonathan,

Adults don't putz around with fuzzy innuendo ("a human trait"). Try plain speaking. I don't care whether you can paint or not. I've known lots of artists who could. They didn't spend time taking other people's spiritual inventory, or crowding them with deliberate ill will and insults. You're way off the mark, bub.

[Wolf DeVoon]

reality deleted

Reality noted and respected, sir.

[Jonathan]

Adults don't putz around with fuzzy innuendo ("a human trait"). Try plain speaking.

Hahaha! As Fred Zinnemann would say, "You first."

I don't care whether you can paint or not. I've known lots of artists who could.

And I don't care whether or not you think that you can write or not. I've known lots of writers who could. Yet here you are, day after day, reminding everyone that you think you're a writer, quoting yourself, and then quoting youself again. Verbal selfie after verbal selfie after verbal selfie. We get it, Britney, you adore yourself, and you desperately, pathetically crave our adoration. You can't stop youself from begging for it.

They didn't spend time taking other people's spiritual inventory, or crowding them with deliberate ill will and insults. You're way off the mark, bub.

Did they spend their time begging for adoration? Did they puppet praise their own self-published work? Are those the kinds of healthy activities that you'd advise me to engage in rather than criticizing your crowding us with your pathetic puffing and posing?

J

[william.scherk]

I don't recall who suggested above that Laissez Faire City was a "government" of some kind. That's not what anyone experienced or advocated. Nor were we employed by Rex as such. He had very little operational control over what anyone did, although several people became unwitting stooges because Rex put them in charge of ATM and other projects that depended on Rex handling money as a fiduciary.

You suggested a better government, at least in The Constitution of Government in Galt's Gulch. You mentioned 'self-government' at least one time in this thread. Everything organized can be said to be governed by something, even if only vague principles and/or lies and deception.

Of course there was some kind of 'governance' in LFCIT and LFC itself. The King was in charge. He hired you, paid you, gave you instructions. The King directed all operations through his catspaws, the Trustee and the City Clerk. He acted as the Trustee as a hand in glove.

He put no one 'in charge' of the fake, fraudulent 'bank,' ATM. It was his independent baby, as the audit notes confirm. Rex was able to loot what deposits weren't already sucked into his slush funds.

I think it's a mistake to say that Rex pilfered funds or benefited from illiquid accounts.

Well, if you think that in relation to the ATM/OTC fake bank, no wonder you cannot get a grip on truth in this matter. In any case, you will let us know where Rex went in late 2002. His lottery scam ran for some fifteen years or more, Wolf. Why don't you know or at least acknowledge this stuff? I just don't understand why you cannot separate yourself from "Rex." He was your patron, and a criminal. Your ignorance of his criminality does not transfer his bad behaviour to you. You are a separate person.

Lots of people were fooled. The very design of LFCIT/LFC -- it's secrecy, its opacity, its hidden commingling, its fake financial reports -- that design helped fool good people. I am just saying you could acknowledge you too were fooled.

Exactly the other way around.

Oh, that is rich. Exactly the other way around would mean what? -- that his trusted advisors and counsel and Clerk and Trustee stole from him? In which case they embezzled from his ill-gotten gains? Which makes him come out good? Jeezuss H Freaking Murphy.

He went broke promising too much, paying too much for software development, paying too much to Russian and Dutch intermediaries -- but that's just a guess on my part.

Oh, dear. Rex did not go broke, Wolf. The money was still 'coming in' to Rex's lottery scam for years to come. If he didn't transfer funds into LFC after February 2002, does that mean he had no funds?

No, it means he was prudent. A prudent predator.

Like I said previously, Rex took the fall. He didn't have to.

No. You said that Rex 'took the fall' for the multi-year lottery fraud. Rex did not take that fall until many years later -- falling with him, of course, were the other four con-men in his 'business.' Your earlier paragraph was a post-facto whitewash:

Rex took the fall. It had nothing to do with Laissez Faire City, other than the fact that Rex paid in over $3 million in cash, some of it proceeds from the lottery -- roughly a third of all paid-in LFC working capital. He stole nothing from LFC's founders or deep pocket backers. ATM operated like a bank, accepting deposits and making loans. There was a run on ATM, fueled by panic, after Orlin seized all the privacy software that Rex spent millions of his own money to develop and launch. He was a brilliant man, operating outside of the law, accused but acquitted previously. There are worse things than breaking the law, you know, like collaborating with the Clintons and Alan Greenspan.

I will leave with one question hanging. I don't know if you will be bothered to 'clear things up' by answering ...

When LFC was in trouble, after Orlin ran off with all the “freedom technology” software, I came back to help Rex. I don't regret it.

Help him how? Why help him? What help did he need? What did you actually do, Wolf? The record is almost entirely opaque.

Edited October 4, 2015 by william.scherk

[Wolf DeVoon]

I will leave with one question hanging. I don't know if you will be bothered to 'clear things up' by answering ...

Help him how? Why help him? What help did he need? What did you actually do, Wolf? The record is almost entirely opaque.

Fine. But you've got this stuff wrong:

The King directed all operations through his catspaws, the Trustee and the City Clerk.

Mikhail didn't do anything except banking. The City Clerk processed paperwork for Founders, answered email queries, and spent most of his time researching and writing about the Hanseatic League as a model for his draft City Charter that I shredded.

He put no one 'in charge' of the fake, fraudulent 'bank,' ATM.

Not true. Johann Gevers' audit report skipped over the detail of others who had nominal public charge of ATM, and rightly pierced the corporate veil, so to speak, because ATM was dependent on Rex and Mikhail to execute trades and transfer funds. It failed, I believe, because Rex's intermediaries in Holland and Russia grabbed the cash. Can't prove it, but I think that's probably what happened.

Your "unanswered" questions:

Help him how?

Orlin had left for Dubai and took all the freedom software, claiming that it had been badly coded, had security holes. There were others who joined him. The rump team in San Jose worked on Dodge City and kept the old LFC servers running. At the time there were a couple hundred people using LFC internal PGP email, plus MailVault, plus interactive newspaper comments and back issues and about a dozen active public-facing and member-password LFC websites. It took a lot of maintenance.

Rex was in a jam because ATM clients were hopping mad and Dodge City users began to suspect that Rex was ghostwriting Trustee announcements and/or using multiple "nyms" to back his curb market shenanigans and attest to prompt, efficient customer service. Meanwhile, the LFC Board of Governors was upset about lack of transparency and worried about solvency. There was a candidate nominated and qualified to serve on BOG who openly campaigned to fire the Trustee. Worst of all, Sonny had bailed.

Why help him? What help did he need? What did you actually do?

No matter whether he was right, wrong, or blue, Rex Rogers organized LFC and poured every dime he had into it. He had been screwed by most of his allies and left holding a huge pile of obligations he couldn't satisfy. Okay, much of the pain was of his own making, by promising too much and thinking too little. He had bad habits. He was bombastic and crude. Doesn't change anything. Lawyers take clients who are in trouble. Ultimately, Rex gave me his proxy to handle the Board of Governors. I voted to seat the dissident megalomaniac and defused that crisis. I persuaded him to let me edit an issue of Laissez Faire City Times, to keep the flag flying after Orlin quit. I posted on Dodge City and told people that problems were being addressed. I spoke to Sonny and asked him to come back, his dad needed him. I wrote to Orlin to suggest that we should talk. He replied that I was welcome to visit in Dubai. I spoke to Johann about the need for an audit. I spoke to many others, tried to rebuild a sense of community. After a couple weeks of this, Rex couldn't stand it any more. I was fired. Everything went downhill from there.

The record is opaque because I won't name names. Hopefully, the Russians burned everything in the outdoor furnace that LFC inherited from the Nicaraguan Embassy when Rex leased the property from them in 1997. You have to hand it to him, he could talk anyone into almost anything, and LFC enjoyed diplomatic immunity in Costa Rica because it was foreign diplomatic property, next door to the Russian Consulate and across the street from the Belgians.

[syrakusos]

Identity? There is no real sense of a person that I got when he contacted me by PM some time ago using what I assume was his real name. Pen name? Sure. Pen person? That would take a hell of a lot of imagining. The concentration required would be so staggering he'd have to go away and regroup every now and then.

--Brant

The Mystery Objectivist?

Sometime in early 21st century, I read a portion of The Good Walk Alone and then ordered the book from the author. That was obviously the same person who wrote The Constitution of Government in Galt's Gulch. It was also the same person who spent a morning on my back deck smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee after the screening of Alongside Night here in Austin the previous night. He is exactly what he seems to be: brilliant, deep, and complicated.

[william.scherk]

Kudos and thank you, Wolf. A few details I will come back and get extremely boring about, but.

A couple of things stood out in lovely relief Re Rex ...

He had bad habits. [...] You have to hand it to him, he could talk anyone into almost anything

There you go.

[Brant Gaede]

Identity? There is no real sense of a person that I got when he contacted me by PM some time ago using what I assume was his real name. Pen name? Sure. Pen person? That would take a hell of a lot of imagining. The concentration required would be so staggering he'd have to go away and regroup every now and then.

--Brant

The Mystery Objectivist?

Sometime in early 21st century, I read a portion of The Good Walk Alone and then ordered the book from the author. That was obviously the same person who wrote The Constitution of Government in Galt's Gulch. It was also the same person who spent a morning on my back deck smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee after the screening of Alongside Night here in Austin the previous night. He is exactly what he seems to be: brilliant, deep, and complicated.

I have no problem with any of that. What I wrote was just before I knew he had come back. He came back a lot stronger than he was before he left.

I'm kinda complicated myself.

--Brant

sometimes confused

(don't stop smoking, Wolf; it's too late)