Monday, August 28, 2017

Why did we use leaded petrol for so long?

From:  BBC



SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY

Image caption                                                                           Chemist Thomas Midgley insisted that tetraethyl lead was safe    

Leaded petrol was safe. Its inventor was sure of it.
Facing sceptical reporters at a press conference in October 1924, Thomas Midgley dramatically produced a container of tetraethyl lead - the additive in question - and washed his hands in it.
"I'm not taking any chance whatever," Midgley declared. "Nor would I... doing that every day."
Midgley was - perhaps - being a little disingenuous. He had recently spent several months in Florida, recuperating from lead poisoning.
Some of those who'd made Midgley's invention hadn't been so lucky, which is why reporters were interested.  MORE




Saturday, August 26, 2017

Did you know that before 1973 it was illegal in the US to profit off of health care. The Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 passed by Nixon changed everything.

From:  IWB

BY  · PUBLISHED  · UPDATED 

Is the health insurance business a racket? Yes, literally. And this is why the shameless pandering to robber baron corporations posing as “health providers” is such an egregious … and obvious … tactic to do nothing more than plump up insurance company profits.
And do you know who’s to blame?   Believe it or not, the downfall of the American health insurance system falls squarely on the shoulders of former President Richard M. Nixon.
In 1973, Nixon did a personal favor for his friend and campaign financier, Edgar Kaiser, then president and chairman of Kaiser-Permanente.  Nixon signed into law, the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973, in which medical insurance agencies, hospitals, clinics and even doctors, could begin functioning as for-profit business entities instead of the service organizations they were intended to be.  And which insurance company got the first taste of federal subsidies to implement HMOA73 … *gasp* … why, it was Kaiser-Permanente!   What are the odds?  It’s all right here to read for yourself.
And to perfectly cement HMOA73 as the profiteering boondoggle that it actually was, the law Nixon mandated also included clauses that encouraged medical providers to not CURE afflictions, but to PROLONG them by only treating the symptoms. There’s no money to be made in CURING sickness.  But the sky’s the limit when it comes to forcing people to endure repetitive doctor visits, endless (and often useless and redundant) tests, and … of course … let’s not forget the ever-increasing demand for American-made prescription drugs!
Have you noticed recently that the words “prolonged coma” and DEATH have wormed their way into the fast-spoken side-effects list of just about every new drug you see on television or hear on the radio?  Death!  From the medicine that’s supposed to cure you!  You know what?  I’ll take restless legs over DEATH. MORE

Sunday, August 20, 2017

Milankovitch Cycles and Ice Age Explained Tushar Goyal Tushar Goyal

From:  YouTube DPS Randipu

Tushar Goyal 




Published on Jan 30, 2016
Milutin Milankovitch was a Serbian Mathematician and Astronomer who observed and suggested four cycles later named the Milankovitch Cycles.

This video gives a slight overview of these cycles and the outcomes associated with them, Ice Age being one of them.

Study Finds Drought Recoveries Taking Longer

From:  Jet Propulsion Laboratory

NEWS | AUGUST 14, 2017




Global patterns of drought recovery time, in months. The longest recovery times are depicted in shades of blue and pink, with the shortest recovery times in yellow. White areas indicate water, barren lands, or regions that did not experience a drought during the study period. Credit: Woods Hole Research Center
As global temperatures continue to rise, droughts are expected to become more frequent and severe in many regions during this century. A new study with NASA participation finds that land ecosystems took progressively longer to recover from droughts in the 20th century, and incomplete drought recovery may become the new normal in some areas, possibly leading to tree death and increased emissions of greenhouse gases.
In results published Aug. 10 in the journal Nature, a research team led by Christopher Schwalm of Woods Hole Research Center, Falmouth, Massachusetts, and including a scientist from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, measured recovery time following droughts in various regions of the world. They used projections from climate models verified by observations from the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) instrument on NASA's Terra satellite and ground measurements. The researchers found that drought recovery was taking longer in all land areas. In two particularly vulnerable regions -- the tropics and northern high latitudes -- recovery took ever longer than in other regions. MORE

Wednesday, August 16, 2017

Just One Reason You Can't Trust Government to Defend Earth



By Brock d'Avignon & Melinda Pillsbury-Foster 

        After 9/11 Congress no longer received its correspondence from constituents, or anyone else, directly.  Congress is supposed to represent Americans.  But it does not even read their mail.  Correspondence is filtered through a staff of flunkies who note the subject of the correspondence in one line.  These lists are then sent on to the staffs of Representatives. 
        The story below shows you how timely and effective this system has proven to be for the last 18 years. 
     Representatives have increased their staffing to between 10 -25 staffers, but these are unelected when the intention was direct representation. Further, communications sent to the House of Representatives are first opened by young assistants and their contents noted in one sentence. 
     Pages of these notes are then viewed by staffers, who determine what their representative will see.

    Consider the impact this could have on a timely response. One example of this:
     Representative Dana Rohrabacher, California Congressional House District 48, serves on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Chairs the House Sub-Committee on Science and Technology, and in 1998 created The Asteroid Danger Commission -- after Earth had been missed a few times without any astronomers looking for them, nor any defense discussed.
     In November of 2001 an asteroid threat arose among many. An expert he personally knew sent an updating notebook to be delivered to him as a senior member of the House Committee on Science and Technology. Before the anthrax scare and 6 weeks before 9-11-01 it was no problem to communicate with pictures, charts, or emails about a comet calving into three pieces over the eastern seaboard. One melted down over New York City, another splashed off Delaware, and another broke windows in a ten-mile radius in Pennsylvania. Dana asked astronomers, and Congress asked NASA to find first the bigger than 1-kilometer Extinction Level Event (ELE) asteroids.
        In May 2000, Vice President Cheney had made a standing request to know from this same expert all about asteroids, and all about the British reaction to a 15-mile diameter asteroid Matihilde narrowly missing the Earth and Moon, as the Brits too had created an Asteroid Danger Review Board concerned for their little island. In 2001 through 2004 important warnings were attempted to be sent to the Vice President and copies to Congressman Rohrabacher from the expert, and relaying warnings from the UK's Comet & Asteroid Information Network (CAIN). Congressional staffers used ot open the mail and were believed to be getting combat pay to do so.
      Packages after the anthrax scare had a different fate to the Vice President and Congressman Rohrabacher intercepted at the secure USPS Dulles Airport Mail "Sorting" Facility. In 2003, a box holding a red see-thru plastic case, held a notebook two-inches thick, a print out of 200 PowerPoint panels and a CD. The notebook was a detailed briefing on an imminent danger plus policy requested by Vice President Cheney. The case and notebook were clearly marked in inch high letters:


"To VP Cheney at his request."


 There was also a letter, succinctly explaining, the need to take action on asteroid 1998 OX4, presumed to be following Earth's path after changing course twice and sling-shotting around Mars and Venus. Its expected time of impact on Earth was then estimated to be September, 2004, only it had become lost and all telescopes needed to find it. This package was recorded by a young assistant at the Dulles Mail Sorting Facility for Congress.

     The one-line notation made by the young assistant was: "Rock may hit Earth." and placed in long lines of correspondence summaries to be emailed to staffers scrolling through them cross-eyed.It took a month of inquiries to relocate it for VP Cheney. That was one month of 9 the asteroid hunt went on, that was lost time. Copies to Rohrabacher and Mitchell had the same fate, their cases were never found nor delivered.

       It is assumed they are sitting next to Indiana Jones' boxed Ark of the Covenant in a federal warehouse somewhere to this day. Unless they burn our physical correspondence. 

     Further, the ability to communicate with Congresspersons or staffers by email were curtailed in the name of cyber-security limiting emails at first to 2GB for a picture, and then to just texting like on an old cellphone or pager. No thought of the Congress decapitating itself from the American people was given then or now. Our leaders don't know what's going on because we can't tell them. 

      President Trump's Twitter account, notwithstanding what is tweeted,  at least provides a measure of the man. Better to know. 

    The Obama White House and Supreme Court made other arrangements besides the Dulles facility to get papers. Congress has not.   Hillary Clinton did her own end run around security protocol to know what was going on and issue orders. Yet then the rest of the world could know too. 

         Snowden did us all a favor by informing us of the National Security Agency surveillance state knows all and sees all, while we know nothing and see nothing. 

              Timely delivery of correspondence as knowledge is essential, but for sixteen years, the House of Representatives has ignored this issue of how to have a second internet. The military has two internets for this same reason, open and confidential. The problem of death and destruction from space is also a problem, One the House of Representatives is tasked itself to solve before cyber-anthrax paranoia paralyzed them with fear. 

          No action has been taken because little knowledge in modern charts, animates, graphics, pictures, and videos are unknown to Congresspersons unless you beg a staffer for their home email that can let 25MB through their server.

During the weeks around 9-11 for the next 100 even-numbered election years, 1998OX4 "Oxymoron" (as in asteroid defense) usually chases and overtakes Earth in our own orbit within a range of 10,309,594 miles between us until we diverge. NASA's analyst placed it first missing us by 89M miles, The expert phoned the White House on Christmas Eve 2003 informing Dr. Lynne Cheney it would miss us. NASA got it wrong as it actually missed us by 5.9M miles. More private observations have been made in the years since. 

      In 2004, Oxymoron's swing close by both Mars and Venus altered its course up & just enough to accelerate its speed into a possible rear-end collision with us before 18 OCT 04. But that won’t happen. Not because naysayers to doom said so in usual denial of reality, but simply because the z component luckily again went the other way and it will miss us comfortably.             Whew, you say. It could have just as easily gone to the Devil takes the hindmost at dusk with 10,000 other asteroids discovered annually now. Normally, Oxymoron passes under the Earth and move onwards; however, with its acceleration, its course change courtesy of Mars and Venus, its vertical “z” component could have struck us anywhere from South Pole penguins to the Americans.  

       Its future orbits will match the plane of Earth’s path and it will remain a megadeath threat. This is not an issue of ideology, but one of survival. It is also a  opportunity to discuss 9/11's after mathematics in costs far greater than a few buildings.  

      It is time to take effective action.  Visit Earth Path Defense  Governments and billionaires want the wealth represented by asteroids.  But they ignore the potential for liability exactly as they have on Earth.  We, the people, can change that.  

     Recall for 9 months we lost a deadly asteroid and every scientist in the Geophysical Union was talking about it. 1998 OX4 was relocated in 2003. Yet the Chair of the Asteroid Danger Commission never knew. He still wouldn't today except for a quick and easy way separate from house.gov computers. 

        Now there is CongressionalClearinghouse.com.  Interactive television, delivered by satellite, delivers power to the people to listen, judge, question, and debunk the lies they are fed by those in power.     
     Solve the problems, especially those which put us at risk.  And if government is not competent to do the job, then remember you do not need them to solve problems. 

         This is a problem far more complex than mail delivery.   Contact us to bring Freedom Interactive TV Networks up and on satellite.  Sign up to receive updates for Congressional Clearing House! 

Tuesday, August 15, 2017

About Earth Path Defense and why everyone must act now.


by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster 

What We Have Done Since 1989 (Now we can tell you)
It is time for the Earth Path Defense Fund and StarCo

Until the movies “Armageddon” and “Deep Impact” began raising public consciousness on the threat from asteroids impacting the Earth government ignored the issue. Astronauts and others working for government knew, but were ignored.
It was the frustration of two men, both experts on asteroid danger and other related issues, that put both movies into the theaters. Tired of being viewed as paranoid when a realistic alarmist, Brock d'Avignon and his associate, Stephen Cervantes, a collateral merchant banking specialist, wrote two proposals to Viacom/Paramount Studios and Universal. The proposals were each comprised of 51 FYI proposals and included a synopsis for a movie using a scenario for tandem asteroids, deliberately on the first page. It was sent, "FYI," meaning the studio had no obligation to contact those providing it. d'Avignon and Cervantes were perfectly well aware of this and confidently believed the studio would steal the synopsis but, cautious, not use the other technical proposals. 


Included was language provided by Admiral Crowe, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 1989, to Brock, quoting President Bush. The President, briefed by Crowe on the asteroid, then one day away, was, "Oh My God." This comment made it into Armageddon, along with other language taken verbatim from the proposal. 

The synopses were sent in 1991 to and relayed to other production companies. As expected, each studio produced a movie based on the synopsis. 

From 1998, when both movies hit the theaters, public awareness shot up. Brock and Steve had achieved their goal. 

Understanding human nature is essential to enacting change. The movie industry now knew about asteroids, as did 2.5 billion people who have seen these two movies. 

In 1999, Congressman Dara Rohrabacher, head of the Congressional Science and Technology sub-committee, created an Asteroid Danger Commission which, with the approval of Congress, gave NASA the mission to locate all asteroids within ten years larger than one kilometer in diameter. 

As of 2017, NASA asserts it has found 85% of these Extinction Level Event (ELE) asteroids. In reality, they have accounted for only 0.0085% of 200,000,000 asteroids, there are 200-Billion comets of which Trans-Neptunian Objects (TNOs) slingshot around the Sun coming at us fast at 70,000 miles per hour. Most asteroids travel at or below 25-thousand miles per hour.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has intercepted or landed on four asteroids or comets, prompting Stephen Cervantes, over the years, to lower the severe discount on asteroid mines playing hard to get from 1/10,000th of a penny to 1/10,000th of a dollar. This is still small enough for the world’s banking systems to absorb and begin to end generational debt. 

Today, the potential of asteroids as a resource for rare metals and other resources is well understood. 

Former astronauts formed the B612 Foundation to lobby NASA to experiment with deflection systems, which has not happened, though they have thought up a few, equivalent to what d’Avignon’s high school students over have identified. A study on the cost-benefit of both the B612 Foundation and NASA is forthcoming. 200 power point panels of technologies and policy for asteroid detection, deflection and development (ADDD), were available by 2003 with a price tag of $353-Billion to encompass Sol with helioscopes silhouetting asteroids and related point and zone defenses. 

Their proposals went to the United States Congress Commission on the Future of the Aerospace Industry which had $2-Million to interview 154,000 people. In the final ten ideas submitted to the president two were by d’Avignon students on the value of space collateral and how the development of property title could pay for all space missions in the free market. 

But, when the US and others realized the enormous potential value of asteroids they took steps to take possession of these. This is wrong in so many ways it boggles the mind. 

Less than 1 – 2% of the telescope time of major observatories, world-wide, funded by governments, are used for asteroid or comet-hunting. 

In 2004, the addition of digital recording with charged-coupled devices (CCDs) allowed unmanned observation which increased the automated discoveries 1,000%. However, the tracking and course projection facilities and budgets of the Minor Planet Center at Harvard Astrophysics, and the Math Department of the University of Pisa, Italy, have remained constant for the last 15 years. 

We began to lose track of asteroids which could hit us, beginning in 2003. The ‘system’ for projecting the tracks of identified asteroids was not funded. NASA’s budgets are always spent for the next five years, so it is turning to Junior High students to analyze streaks from CCD chips, indicating the existence of an asteroid. 

Humanity is still completely vulnerable. It is no better to have an extinction event take place by being hit with an asteroid made of platinum, than one made up of iron. 

Fortunately, free-market efforts began in 2001 by Brock d’Avignon and students at the Mojave High School Aerospace Engineering Academy d’Avignon founded, and has continued since with many other schools’ students, and professors who assay asteroids. These continued efforts have brought the threat and potential for profit to the attention of electronics billionaires and aerospace firms’ CEOs, to an awareness of Rare Earth Elements (REE) contained in asteroids; and their value to the world’s monetary systems. 

What worked for the movie industry, is working again! Greed, or more positively, aligning individual self-interest with available resources, gets people moving. The trick was watching them and ensuring they could see their potential profits. It was a trick carried out when reason failed, as demonstrated with the movie industry in 1991. As expected, the awareness of the threat had only minor residual impact. However, the awareness for potential wealth remains. 

The next round was similar. 

Government allots money. But after the PR is issued, and statements made, the money finds its way into other uses. 

During this continued negligence by government, politicians failed to take any steps to detect and deflect these potentially extinction level threats to humanity. 

Talk is not action. Detection is NOT deflection. NASA, like any other governmental entity, talked but did not produce. 

Another prod was obviously in order. 

Without a system rewarding millions of people for providing eyes in the sky detection will not take place. On any given night, only 300 telescopes are aimed at the sky, covering only 1/20.000th of what is needed. The obvious way to provide for this, beyond the resources of any or all governments and the resources of any or all corporations or wealthy individuals, is allotting a percentage share to people on Earth who obtain a telescope and begin sentry duty. Knowing this, can immediately benefit them far more and likely than buying a lottery ticket. 

Here is the payoff for you doing the right thing along with millions of others, being a participant in Asteroid Detection, Deflection & Development. 

From: earthpathdefense.com/title-rights (Training and explanations are coming. Check back) 
“ The Earth Path Defense Fund (EPDF) believes that neither government welfare scientists nor any military have the motivation, the clear mission, nor funding, to protect Earth. The failure of this paradigm is obvious. Trusting the concept of governing is foolish, instead of recognizing incentive-based earned property rights-to-title percentages for Asteroid Detection, Deflection & Development (ADDD):

  • 2% for the discovering astronomer(s) of an asteroid or comet from a telescope or helioscope.
  • (See Project Lookout! And Project Look-in! to discover 200-million asteroids and 2-billion comets)
  • 2% to the telescope or helioscope owner(s) of an asteroid or comet
  • 2% to the funder(s) of the scope that budget year instrumental in discovery of an asteroid or comet
  • 1% to the first confirmation astronomer, scope owner, and funder of the scope, to verify a new discovery, including at least a two time-lapse course track against the night sky
  • 3% for ground or space-based assay of asteroid surface by spectroscope, radar, infrared, or remote means (See Project Gehrels, which is now in development)
  • 3% for assay core samples of the asteroid or comet in 8 compass points by 8 more at right angles (See Project Shoemaker)
  • 6% for recording, tracking, observational and path projections, and publishing past & present title for next 500 years from 500 accumulated status observations. For property rights to title, no more than the first 20 track observations within any of the first 5 years post-discovery, and 20 per every five years for the next 20 years, will be shared from the first 1% of title rights. After that, no more than one first observation per year for property rights to title as a fraction of 500 divided into the remaining 5% will be rewarded, unless a slingshot course change occurs around any gravity bod(ies) changing its course is detected, (such as 1998OX4 was lost after sling-shotting around both Mars & Venus and threatening Earth while it was lost for 9 months in 2003 and subsequent observations narrowed its miss of Earth’s fantail from 89-million miles down to 5-million that year or it is part of a tandem asteroid orbiting each other until gravity field is disturbed by another object like the Earth or Moon). Then the first 20 more new astronomical time-lapse observations sufficient to track its new course will be rewarded another 1%. The deficit one-percents coming from re-navigation 15% when no party either had or had not prior assumed this responsibility with ability to perform.”

StarCo Space Code for Development & Property Rights for Mining, Transportation, Habitat (see StarCo.info) 


There are responsibilities prior to development totaling 40% Rights-To-Title, leaving 60% for either mining or habitat property rights. 

The United States Congress was asked, simply, by the billionaires activated by showing them the potential for profit to, formulate a law allowing them to retain ownership of materials mined from asteroids. The simple statement was signed by then US President Obama in 2016. It danced around the vagueness in the Moon and Celestial Bodies Treaty on property rights, government oversight of citizen activity in space, and the specific prohibition of governments being able to claim any territory in space. 

Meanwhile, in the tiny Duchy of Luxembourg, its legislature of bureaucrats, panting at the hoped-for business license fees and their officials issuing Certificates of Public Need, based on mostly largess of large ‘Limited Liability Corporations,” have already created a nightmare of unnecessary permissions. US politicians are now trying to emulate the Duchy to create their own government ‘management’ business extortion racket. Two of the three Billionaire-groups known as Planetary Resources Incorporated and Deep Space Industries, have been foolish enough to take them seriously and open offices in Luxembourg. StarCo and Earth Path Defense Fund rejects the asserted authority to take governmental and corporate incompetence into Space. 

The alternative paradigm, the right approach, requires the continued existence of Humanity be funded through the development of the resources Space offers. Repeating their behavior documented above, the only thing they have eyes for are profits and avoidance of liability. 

StarCo’s Space Code for Development & Property Rights for Mining, Transportation, & Habitat provides the essential security for Humanity to continue by acknowledging the risks and potential liability the aforenamed entities are trying, so elegantly, to evade. 

Starco’s CODE provides for Detection, Deflection and then, last for Development, because no other approach can preserve our species. 

The “Common Heritage of Mankind’ is the phrase used by collectivist dictators to control and plunder all the blue and black oceans utilizing their certified permission slips. 

StarCo recognizes the ‘Common Individual Heritage of Humankind,’ by issuing property by all humans who then have a self-interest in ensuring quality control, liability insurance, and externality factors, for instance pollution. 

Self-interest, in alignment with billions of people, will create a better level of accountability than government asserts for itself, meaning it has none itself and confirms the same for Limited Liability Corporations. 

Space resources are too dangerous and too valuable to leave to politicians and their crony friends. Any business that wants to go into Space will be answerable to property owners by parcelization or planets and moons, or by earned property rights to asteroid resources, prior to exploitation of resources, not people. 

Opening space can bring peace to Humanity using the on-point suggestion of Whoopi Goldberg on “The Letterman Show” for achieving peace between Palestine and Israel. Whoopi suggested parachuting Century 21 Real Estate Agents in gold jackets and sending in ladies from Chicago Title into the war zone to document ownership of property. After a long pause, the audience erupted in cheers, giving Whoopi a standing ovation. It could work there. It can absolutely work in space before conflicts begin.
Yes, what we need is honest title insurance in competition in Space. Additionally, we issue property rights to 75% of the 8 planets and 149 moons of the Solar System to every one of the 8-billions of us now living on Earth. This leaves enough territory to allocate to children born after 2023, providing common and transit areas. 

Everyone will receive a share, to use as they like. It can be sold, assigned, mined, used as collateral or, you can go there. It’s yours. If you or an aerospace company decides to go there, its collateral value will rise; therefore, you can borrow against its new value to get there. You will be very interested and know what is happening, as opposed to a disinterested politician or bureaucrat. 

StarCo studied frontiers throughout history to determine what works to create peace and prosperous people, living in freedom. These include Property Charters and Percentage-As-You-Earn finansurance. These were the kind of tools which ended indentured servitude and slavery, creating the largest voluntary emigration in known human history. We can do it again. Granted, this would take some capital, but it can happen by providing a system assigning liability for even failing to handle your waste, in this case rocks and dust, which can cause damage to your neighbors. These measures are necessary to avoid conflicts and harm to others. 

The need to ensure this happens, benefiting all of us to provide motives for all to do the right thing, is what led d’Avignon, Cervantes, and the much larger Earth Path Defense Team to start the Earth Path Defense Fund (EPDF), and Space-Property Title & Asteroid Resources Consortium (StarCo). You did not know we are working on this, way back in the late 1980s, but we were. See earthpathdefense.com abd StarCo.info for further on this fight for your freedom in the Solar System. 

Clearly, we will have to do it ourselves, and we can. 

Buy a telescope, sign up as a Detecting Sentry and Prospector. Stand with us. Get ready to deflect and go mining.

Privateers' PAYE Financed Defense of Free-Market America

Excerpt from HI: Human Investment, written in 1978

Historical Examples of the Free Market utilizing Percentage As You Earn (%AYE), Finance & Finansurance for solving major problems and reducing conflict.
  
Written by Brock d’Avignon, 1978, Edited by Melinda Pillsbury-Foster. 2017
Historical Probe #2






Privateering Goes to War – 1775 – 1782 & 1812 - 1815

Privateers' PAYE Financed Defense of Free-Market America



Privateer Ship, Revolution
Once upon a time, 792 stock-share owned and privately armed rebel warships set sail against their government's barriers to free trade. Over 3, 100 of His Majesty's vessels were captured or destroyed by American Revolutionary warships, entirely outfitted and operated with Percentage As You Earn (PAYE) finance. Joining the fray to end the Crown's legalized monopolies, the Colonial Burgesses and later Continental Congress taxed or printed enough money to finance in a similar manner, 64 republican warships.

On 15 April 1775, four days before the Lexington Commons and Concord Bridge Battles, the Massachusetts State Ship Tyrannicide hoisted anchor. Congress requested dividends from its U.S. Navymen of 66% percent of any captured prize-ship and cargo. By contrast, typical American investors, such as little old ladies with 20 dollar gold pieces who were interested in thwarting subsidized tea monopolies; invested into capitalist cruisers.  The investors in Privateer ships, requested dividends of only 33% percent, leaving to the crew the 66% percent of whatever enemy vessels the Privateersman boarded and brought to ports' maritime title company courts ' condemnation" hearings or government Admiralty courts to verify they were actually British ships. Not surprisingly, the skilled seamen signed aboard the instruments of war that would be loaned to them at the much lower rate:

Comparative List of American Armed Vessels:  Years 1776 - 1782
                                                        


Circa 1775, Americans calculated the return-on-investment in the quite literal removal of the British Roi's taxation-subsidy cycle. Idle ships were bottled up in harbors and were thus useless to the owners. Their " opportunity cost" was no less beneficial in risking the equal loss of the ship at sea, while volunteers loaded a gesture of defiance at the Crown's enforced protectionism. Since blockaded shipowners were often broke, the outfitting of the vessels was usually underwritten by a popular stock offering to other colonial rebels who had seen the strategic wisdom of a unilateral declaration of free-trade. The number of American stockholders grew:

Comparative Number of Guns Carried By the American Vessels:  Years 1776 - 1782


According the author of Pirates, Privateers, and Profits, by James G. Lydon. Introd. by Richard B. Morris, both owners and operators floating on percentages, decided to structure privateering's merit pay incentives aboard ship in three ways:

 1) Smugglers like John Hancock had early defined 18 basic jobs in high-risk operations plus 2 incentives; so aboard Privateers the 2/3rds "earnings" of the crew were formally divided into brackets of 20ths by shipboard tasks.  

Custom was established aboard square-rigged ships that cabin boys, for instance, no matter how many, received a sub-bracket of 1/5th of 1/20th; still a sum enough on some voyages to place a boy into the middle class economically. If seven or eight cabin boys were optional, then they decided if they wanted more hands-on task or cut their numbers down to seven and so to receive a larger payout.  The same 1/20th bracket concept applied, no matter how many occupied that bracket, all the way up to the First and Second Mates who split a full 20th.  Sometimes the ocean-crossing privateers captured six ships and manned them.  

2)The "captain's purse", however, was a notably outsized 3/20ths or 15% of crew booty. There were two good reasons for the size of the captain's purse, and they were encouraged by the crew. It was widely recognized by these sea-going mercenaries that no one dies for money.  

Ideas counted as did obligated duty; but risking death more than other crewmates were willing to risk, had better account for something more than the thrill of a fight. The captain allotted merit pay percentages from his purse based on sub-bracket percentages according to any specified success totaling 1/20th of the booty, equaling a third of his purse.   Examples:  for gallantry (the first man to board an enemy vessel would receive an extra meritorious wage, or his widow at home would); for marksmanship (the first Kentucky Rifle up in the marines' "fighting tops" to pick off the enemy captain); for a lookout's eyesight from the crow’s nest; or for an excellent cook.  The captain usually kept 1/20th for his own.

3) The last third of the captain's purse merit pay incentives was a 1/20th designated by the captain and the owners for the crew if they achieved some extra-un-ordinary feat. This action might be the burning of a specific revenue cutter or capturing a patrolling frigate.   This 1/20th or third of the captain’s purse was often nailed to a mast, and the impossible became the routine. For instance, Privateer Captain Jonathan Haraden captured over 1, 000 British naval cannon during the Revolution.

The Revolution's sea-power became self-financing within 3 years, which attracted more participants, Unlike most forms of capitalism that make money, privateering set out to take money back as a reprisal for financial suppression and impressment servitude.. Privateers went to sea with an overload of men and materials for the purpose of re-outfitting and skeleton crew re-manning several captured prize vessels. Fortunes rose or sank in prize vessels on their way to American or French ports, Prisoners-of-war often rose to recapture prizes back from the skeleton crew; sometimes a ship changed hands and navigation several times. 

For this reason of disparity of luck among the same original privateer crew, the admiralty courts judged that all hands who sailed off together would be entitled to their agreed portion of wages and dividends in the overall venture. This trend concerning reprisals was standard throughout the former colonies. All previous and future reprisals, accrued to the privateersman no matter where  they are now, "in heaven, in port, at sea, in hell, or worse as prisoners in Britain". If the original Privateer ship as lost, it was not usually deducted from the crew's pay but from the stockholders'  “capital gains"; although a refundable insurance bond accumulated from prizes sent in, until the original ship's return. The admiralty courts clearly sided with the sailors since they were in fact risking their lives on the high seas whereas the stockholders were not. Many sailors became "men of property" and could vote in the title company courts to sustain judges on their bench.

During this era, through the Revolution and the War for Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights, there were two female privateer captains who inherited their ship at sea.  The daughters and wife of China trader, Captain Uriah Sears, were attacked by French privateers on their way back in 1803, and sunk the French ship.  They were my ancestors, Chloe Ida Sears, Keziah and Hannah Sears; the French hulled their armed merchantman, allowing water to expand silks and tea to burst their hull.  A British frigate out of Jamaica rescued both crews.  

When a prize vessel came in, it often carried financial instructions from some of the privateersmen who captured it regarding investment in it to create yet another Privateer. Some privateersmen used their wages from the prize to buy or barter stock shares in its hull or reoutfitting.  This practice aided cash flow in the war effort and became known as "waging war" against England's not-so-commercial empire.  Several such wage warrior stockholders in a prize vessel, for some reason, made the best watchful prize crew imaginable. Thus, whenever a spyglass sighted a convoy of the Crown's Mercantilistic “business" underway with a warship, eyeing it was referred to as “taking stock" in the situation.  Indeed, the word enterprise means to enter a captured prize.  

Many privateersmen who didn't invest in gambling that prize vessels would reach port, retained their bloody hard-won hard silver specie while sailing the currents of war.   A Privateer captain could rely on his crew's stout self-interests down in the hold; much in contrast to the U. S. Navymen who were paid in ever-inflationary paper currency.

While subsidized British commerce lobbied in the lobby of Parliament for more restrictive laws, sail, and cannon to inflict more economic woe on the untaxable colonials---American seaboard political pressure in October 1776 rose with the tide of Congress' inflation of money. Congress acquiesced to lower its 66% "rePAYEment" from Navymen to 50% on cargo craft captured. Congress would forego revenue if the crew captured an enemy man-o-war or British Privateer; and would pay in paper money a bounty for the destruction of any British vessel of half its adjudged value in a governmental admiralty tax court. For the Continental Navy then, the policy to attract volunteers was translated into the orders: burn, sink, & kill. To an American Privateersman's point of view, it seemed as if Congress had institutionalized the bloodthirsty failure to bring capturable ships of any sort to any port.  Glance again at Maclay's table to see how well regarded these measures of vague "national interest" were, and how few signed aboard USN warships in the name of "national security” 

Navy Captain John Paul Jones wrote Congress decrying, "the impossibility of manning a government vessel whenever a Privateer was outfitting and recruiting in the same harbor, which is most all the time. Alas without a Navy!" Some republican navy captains became desperate enough to try involuntary servitude, which crossed against the individualist grain of most other revolutionaries and what they thought they were fighting for.  Congress was dominated by Privateer interests; the man they chose to command the fledgling U.S. Navy was Commodore John Barry due to an incident of principle on the Delaware River. He was selected because as Privateer Captain Barry, he had been already primed to fire a broadside into a Continental sloop commanded by a USN lieutenant under Navy Captain Seth Harding. The Navy ship had sent an impressment gang to Barry's Privateer to conscript his privateersmen. Barry piped the would-be draft board aboard and simply pointed to a gunner's mate holding a lighted fuse and silently saved the Revolution. It is Commodore Barry's statue in front of Independence Hall today that stands as a testimony against upholding the sins of governance with efficient PAYE finance.  

Barry knew that State mis-determinations will cause tax-revenue over-reliance, causing inept use of bonds, causing a desperate need for inflated printed money.  As government loses its power base to the free-market using the same financial method: governments will excuse their lack of insurance liability on its "good faith & credit" based on its tax-supported military's ease in killing and enslaving to "man" its programs of "national service' -- all ironically in the name of" national defense education acts for liberty.  Perhaps we won't get fooled by that line anymore than the Commodore. 

Freedom makes living worthwhile, and a living worthwhile. Percentage As You Earn (%AYE) finance is determined by both "worth" and "while". Its PAYEment systems are relevant to only those tools and services that increase a borrower's erratic yet ever-increasing capability to be more productive. Freedom itself, in this case was the service sought, the tools were gun platforms. PAYE finance was well suited to build freedom's defensive infrastructure in 1775, again, in 1803, as Jefferson cut the Navy budget in order to encourage privateer action against the Barbary Pirates. Six United States Marines, two US Navy ships, along with six hundred ship-wrecked Greek sailors and a Libyan army under the command of a 7-foot tall, black, Egyptian Republican Revolutionary in Haiti and a future American privateer named King Dick, captured Tripoli after sweeping across the desert.  Declaring a constitutional sultanate of the United States of North Africa, its victory was given away in diplomacy to save the sensibilities of US southern states.  How different American history would be if there were neither a Pentagon today nor slavery yesterday.      

Thus, the investors' strategic orders were very precise: raid only British commerce, since that was the raison d'etre of the Royal Navy blockades and its influence in Parliament. American Privateers' orders were aimed at protecting the salubrity of all vessels in a fight, making the resale of enemy vessels profitable. Privateers captured 16,000 well-equipped "redcoats" on the high seas during the Revolution, as compared to the 8,000 not-so-well-equipped Kingsmen that Washington captured on land, until Yorktown. Prisoners were worth $20 at the exchange rate in America. The investors' orders translated into: capture, extinguish fires, minimize loss of life, and run blockades to port with prize vessel, cargo, and exchangeable prisoners, Thus, new Revolutionary warships returned to sea flying the 13 gold and black striped Privateer ensign emblazoned with an American rattlesnake proclaiming, "Don't Tread On Me”.

American Revolution Privateer Flag
American Privateer's revolutionary success in comparison to their U.S. Navy compatriots was of little note as compared to their practical success against the formidable foe of the Royal Navy. His Majesty's incentives to gain enlistments were lumps on the head, lump sum fixed bounties, pension installments, and occasionally an insurance company's salvage reward for recapturing a formerly British cargo ship.
The British Navy was embarrassed by American Privateer tactics being blatantly concerned with retaliation against their commercial empire. Instead of a suicidal nationalistic urge to go up against the King's majestic ships-of—the-line with three times their armament; the American's lightweight, fast, shallow-draft, 16-gun platforms would dart from Merchantman to Merchantman. Privateers found themselves capturing several 36-gun frigates anyway, as they turned the Merchantmens' carronades upon King George's folly. 

The only desire the Americans ever had to dare attack the even larger "hell ships" manned by the impressment of Americans enslaved for years, was to show-off gunnery skills. The Royal Navy did not practice gunnery as did the pecunious Privateers who had to make every shot count; but relied on massive multi-decks of firepower. The Americans would quickly capture and sail away the dreadnought' s little cargo convoy, leaving the lumbering slow warship without a purpose.

The British taxpayer quickly grew tired of paying for such worthless objects of nautical art.  Lloyds of London ship insurance went up 6,000% and was the major contributing argument in the House of Commons for making peace with their break-away cousins.  

Whenever a British fleet actually nabbed an American Privateer that wasn't quite quick enough downwind, the British sailors couldn't handle the amount of sail crowded on them because it wasn't Navy Regulation. "Going by the book" they cut down masts and spars, and then after filling the hull with rock ballast; they wondered why it couldn't catch other Yankee designed vessels.  Meanwhile, Yankee Privateer Captain Jonathan Haraden invented the “jackass brig” air rudder to run circles around enemy ships; as well as the swinging plumb-bob to order level broadsides.  When out of annunition Haraden loaded his cannon with silverware and crowbars, tearing an English Privateer to shreds off the Spanish coast.  This inspired a Spaniard named Farragut to join the American Revolution, his son would command the Union Navy in the Civil War.

Thomas Paine's 1776 challenge to Americans was to build with their forests enough Privateers to deny British business the fruits of its Navy's tyrannical canvas and cannons. Paine had been in America one year before he gave this advice. He was probably not expecting ocean-crossing Privateers to dare attack English cities in the Thames, nor sink the Dover fishing fleet for being loyal to the royal's protectionism. After such actions, Ben Franklin personally financed three Privateers from France with Irish crews to raid the English Channel. These too were PAYE financed and PAYEment operated.

The Royal Navy could not fathom the lack of concern American Privateers had for not carrying permission of a government to attack them; a ”letter of marque and reprisal" or in modern business license parlance, a " certificate of public need". The British Admiralty always referred to their own few Privateer ships as "letters of marque" and hoped they would envelope something. Fortunately, the British did recall the Elizabethan principle of a stock market deciding on the number of warships at sea instead of a maritime bureaucracy, so only early in the Revolution were any rebels hung as pirates. Yet as monarchists they could not comprehend people contracting on their own as sovereign individuals without a Sovereign authority. To Americans of the era, corporations were not creatures of the State; to the British they were chartered by the Crown. British political pressure at sea ironically caused the legitimacy of the Congress to rise, at least in the subjective eyes of the British sailor.  

The Continental Congress and the various United States were happy to remedy the difficulty in gaining Royalist and Loyalist respect by issuing letters-of-marque like they were licensing the waves of the sea, 3, 000 marque "coasters" from Massachusetts alone kept their ports and sea lanes open before they returned to peaceful pursuits of happiness.   

The British mind was satisfied, but to Americans such national permission was a sham.  Investors were interested in eventual free trade with England. When the Crown recognized its loss by surrender and treaty, only 2 American Privateers remained at sea to become pirates in 1783. Seaboard America defined them as rebels without a cause and sent a fleet of Privateers with one Navy ship to end their aggression.  Only three US Navy ships were left operable in 1782.

Little was said in the "London Times" about George Washington or Congress; the news was all maritime disasters. When Lloyd's of London insurance rates rose 5000%, it was time to tell the Royal Navy that the war for mercantilism's empire in the Atlantic was over. They decided to send Cornwallis to India to impose upon a different set of Indians who didn't use such savage PAYE finance incentives against their imperialism.

Such lessons did not go unheeded 29 years later during the War for Free Trade and Sailors’ Rights, according to Privateer Captain Coggeshall’s  History of American Privateers, published in 1856; and Theodore Roosevelt’s War of 1812.  This time 517 ocean-crossing American Privateers again captured over 3, 100 vessels from the British Navy and Merchant Marine. The U.S. Navy's 23 ships didn't do too bad either.  The Navy honors names like Jones, Preble, Decatur and Rogers.  Tax-supported history books in schools do not tell the tales of privateers captains like Haraden and Boyle, nor commodores Barney and Barry.  

Perhaps the most valuable lesson taught us by American Privateers was their keen insight into how to motivate employees within wide-spread sophisticated, contractual enterprises that floats on a percentage-of-income. Their activities were deadly and hold for those into constructive pursuits of education, medicine, and tooling today -- an objective view of organizational co-operation, pay scale identification by function, merit pay for both individuals and the crew, and benefits recognized for brave souls whose buckle got swashed. These were ordinary beings who could calculate the odds of risk that today we call econometrics, and gambled with their lives on improving those risks with commensurate rewards. Heroism increased their capacity to "earn" beyond the stockholders' investment in rigging masts with “green hands". Freedom isn't free; yet it can have its rewards.




Brock d’Avignon -  has been a student and advocate of Percentage-As-You-Earn (%AYE), finance & Finansurance history and 28 modern applications since 1973. The historical research covers 375 years of precedents. Privateering came to his attention as an adjunct of these studies in 1977 as it was relevant to providing an example for paying employees in a hospital empire that would use Percentage As You Earn (%AYE) for all to provide finance of pre-existing conditions, insurance for unexpected events, and Human Investments (HI).   

William E. Simon Sr., then recent Secretary of the Treasury asked him about how this could be done when he was advising 11 medical empires while with Booz Allen and Hamilton Management Consultants as a actuary. William H. Donaldson, Chair of the New York Stock Exchange, couriered Brock's research to the Clinton Economic Summit to Vernon Jordan who had endorsed PAYE finance for collegiate tuition at Duke and Yale to get minority and female faces into the Ivy League, for relay to a former Yale Law School student who had once used PAYE finance to get through college. Jack Kemp, Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, used Brock's research to sell all government housing to the people with erratic incomes that were living in them, never fearing repossession and gaining pride of ownership with no defaults. This at one time eliminated homelessness. 

Kemp later used Brock's research to raise $596-million for Habitat for Humanity for fixer-uppers that could be sold to people with inconsistent income. Brock is today a credentialed Social Sciences teacher in California, and economist and Adjunct Professor with the Women's Institute for Individual & Political Justice, when not ramping up Freedom Interactive TV Networks.  He describes himself as an individualist feminist as did his mother and aunts.