Amended Form 1 Cover Letter: Fill & Download for Free

Ethics and legal nuances aside (which we’ll get to), my main interest here is just how much of a mess this whole story has been at nearly every level.Now, yes, I promised myself a while back that I’d stop writing about Musk and the media and all my concerns with BuzzFeed. And I really do wish I could honor those promises! I wish, often and in earnest, that I could reach a place of acceptance with the idea of so many professionals not feeling obligated to carefully read the stuff they’re writing about, and I really wish I could think less about how we’re trusting them and the institutions they represent to help keep this world from descending into chaos and darkness and measles epidemics.But here we are again, so we might as well get going.ContextMusk infamously did that thing last year where he tweeted “funding secured” when the reality was more like “some funding verbally offered”, which caused all sorts of market swings and made lots of investors very angry, leading the SEC to punish Musk by stripping his chairmanship of Tesla, fining him $40m*, and making him promise to stop tweeting stuff that would cause markets to flip out without a Very Serious Adult first saying “ok, go ahead”.(Tesla’s resulting comms policy assigned these approval powers to Tesla’s general counsel and a new “Designated Securities Counsel” who cleverly chose to remain nameless, with the CFO serving as backup adult.)It’s now been a little over two months since this new policy kicked in, during which time the SEC hadn’t found cause to complain, right up until Musk decided to shake things up with this tweet last week:Tesla made 0 cars in 2011, but will make around 500k in 2019— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2019Now, I want to call attention to one detail in this tweet that will turn out to be really important: Musk said cars, not Model 3s specifically.(Also, I looked it up and Tesla did produce cars in 2011. Only Roadsters, and only in the hundreds. But this feels like Exhibit #6,676 supporting the case that we should all just agree to take Musk’s tweets for what they are — i.e., shower thoughts and off-the-cuff directional updates, not precise statements of material facts; which is to say that they’re, you know, tweets and not short-form 8-K disclosures. Like, there may be legal arguments against this re-categorization, but I’m pretty sure I speak for ~98% of people in saying that this adjustment would make everyone a whole lot happier, with the added upside of giving the laziest journalists fewer things to pearl-clutch and tut-tut about.)Anyway, the above tweet was followed up some four hours later with this one:Meant to say annualized production rate at end of 2019 probably around 500k, ie 10k cars/week. Deliveries for year still estimated to be about 400k.— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 20, 2019Both were posted while the NASDAQ was closed, which I think is itself a hint that Musk’s intention was maybe less “let’s manipulate the market!” and more “500k is the type of number Justin Timberlake would get more excited about in a dramatic restaurant scene!”. While there’s an obvious and serious argument that CEOs ought to reject these aggrandizing impulses (especially Musk!), there’s also a not-totally-offsetting argument that Twitter has a way of inducing bad decisions, with the sin here being fractional to that of #karajack.(Alternatively, Musk simply got the numbers confused, which would put him in the company of the majority of people involved in this whole dumb thing.)Whatever Musk’s motivation(s), the SEC, uh, didn’t care much for the whole episode. They guessed correctly that Musk hadn’t gotten sign-off on his first tweet, which they opted to interpret as equivalent to Musk saying “lmao, I was crossing my fingers when I said I’d stop doing exactly this sort of thing”.As such, the SEC filed a request with the SDNY district court to find Musk in contempt of his agreement. **And this is where things get interesting:The SEC argued that the original tweet violated both the deal and Tesla’s new comms policy because it contained material information that hadn’t been pre-approved by counsel.Bradley Bondi, a former SEC guy, answered on Tesla’s behalf (pages 24-26 here), arguing that Musk’s original tweet was just a bungled rehash of a disclosure made in Tesla’s Q4 statement (“we are targeting annualized Model 3 output in excess of 500,000 units sometime between Q4 of 2019 and Q2 of 2020”), and that this original statement had been properly vetted per the agreement, meaning that Musk didn’t do anything wrong in repeating it without explicit approval, but simply made an honest mistake in repeating it incorrectly.The WSJ subsequently put out a story about the SEC’s lawsuit, which prompted someone on Twitter to respond back with this:Read the transcripts from Q4 earnings. He said it there pic.twitter.com/Q6kw5oZBdM— JonP (@JPUConn) February 26, 2019(You have to click the tweet to see the whole excerpt. For those who can’t open it, the money quote is Musk saying "maybe on the order of 350,000 to 500,000 Model 3s, something like that this year”, either in reference to hoped for sales or deliveries. Note that this general lack of distinction between production and sales and deliveries leaked into the SEC’s suit and much of the reporting on this subject. Those numbers should all be close-ish, but would never be the same. Using arbitrary numbers, Tesla could very well produce 350k Model 3s, sell only 315k of them, and deliver only 300k within the calendar year, etc.)Anyway, as Musk is wont to do, he then did the other type of tweeting that his employees and peers and friends and loved ones and local baristas probably all implore him to stop doing, opting to respond to the quoted excerpt with:That all in mind, here’s a non-exhaustive list of grievances:The SEC lawsuit failed to note the distinction between “cars” and “Model 3s”, which is almost inexplicable to me (by which I really mean I wish it was inexplicable, as all the obvious explanations seem bad).BuzzFeed News (I’m fighting a powerful urge to put the word news in quotation marks here) also got it wrong: “Musk’s tweet was potentially misleading because it suggested that the company would make 500,000 Model 3 cars this year, conflicting with earlier reports from the company that it would deliver more than 350,000 of those vehicles in 2019.”(Quick sidebar to unpack how bad and representative this single sentence is. First, Musk didn’t say Model 3s. Second, reports is plural, yet the author didn’t link to a single such report. I looked and couldn’t find any public source for the 350k claim. Third, the author’s use of “potentially” reminds me of how some people feel this reflexive need to lace their arguments with adjectives, yet don’t go on to consider what these added words actually mean. In a similar vein, Musk’s tweet didn’t “suggest” anything. It stated something. I guess this is the standard of copyediting you get after significant layoffs — or just in an era where enough people agree that words don’t have to mean things.)Whatever happened to live pushback? Musk’s estimate on the earnings call (of 350k-500k Model 3s, in whatever context) was more or less irreconcilable with the actual earnings report, which clearly said “we are expecting to deliver 360,000 to 400,000 vehicles in 2019” (emphasis mine). Just under 100k of Tesla’s 2018 deliveries were S and X models, which is a number Musk suggested would decline only slightly in 2019. If we assume 85k non-3 deliveries this year, this means a forecast of some 275-315k 3s, which I’m pretty sure is enough fewer than 350k-500k to be worth at least a quick clarification question. Amazingly, none of the people on the call asked said question, despite the enormous bottom-line impact inherent in the disparity. ***Putting this all together, I’m led to a few conclusions:Nothing in this SEC lawsuit is really about protecting investors. Musk’s tweets came after-hours and were corrected before the market re-opened (some damage can happen after-hours, but you’d be hard-pressed to find real litigants who sustained meaningful losses).[NOTE: Because I’m a curious kitten, I asked Glenn Luk to look into the real-time impact of Musk’s original tweet. His response: “Around 5-10k shares changed hands from 7:15pm to the end of extended trading hours. So around $1.5-3 million worth. These impacted shares traded in the $306.50 to $307.50 range. The official closing price on that day was $305.64.” I have two general comments here: 1. If you aren’t following Glenn, you should be. 2. This impact is trivial. Even at the high end of $3m, that’s 0.005% of Tesla’s float. Also, some of the trades in the remaining 45 mins following Musk’s first tweet actually went for less $/share than those immediately before!]The SEC mostly seems interested in forcing Musk to both respect the system more and to stop making fun of them. While that first concern is certainly valid, their actual response here seems antagonistic to said hopes. Their suit was weak and lazy. Whatever Tesla/Musk did wrong here, they also self-policed. I can see the logic in maybe a stern letter, but it’s hard to see practical value in the route they took. While I’m vaguely sympathetic to what they must have felt were a lack of alternative options, this ultimately feels like a failure of creativity and/or latitude. They should be able to suggest things like “hey, you made a mistake, now go make a $10m good faith donation to charity”, with those amounts doubling for every additional trivial infraction. Or if they really wanted to get through to him, they could force him to donate said money to BuzzFeed (whom I’m told could really use the help).The SEC also over-reached (page 12) in arguing that even if Musk had been accurately quoting his previously-vetted Q4 disclosure, that said vetting is only valid for 48 hours per Tesla’s own comms policy — which I find to be a dubious and/or disingenuous reading of said policy. Like, are they seriously trying to argue that Musk wouldn’t be free to repeat an exact quote from a past disclosure without re-approval? That’s the sort of argument that makes it hard to take the whole complaint seriously.Anyway, moving on from the SEC, let’s talk about the people who make money reporting on Tesla in a professional capacity. My restrained take? Most would benefit from spending less time on Twitter and more doing their homework with an appropriate level of diligence.(If any journalists are reading this and feeling keen to turn the tables, please note that I offer financial rewards for corrections. All are welcome to pick holes where they can. I’ve been careful here, but would also be gracious and enthusiastic in improving the accuracy of this piece where possible. Though I don’t make a dime off these posts, I’m happy to pay such incentives out-of-pocket on principle.)Lastly, we have Musk. He, uh, really needs to stop doing this, if for no other reason than that he’s an example that many model. He needs to lead the way, and that means using Twitter responsibly. The tweet was wrong, whatever the cause, and it should have been right. It’s (arguably) a small thing in itself. But it’s also value-destruction in its purest form. This can only hurt the causes he cares about.NOTES & EDITS:* There were actually two fines: $20m to Musk, and $20m to Tesla. Musk partially offset the latter by buying $20m in stock directly from Tesla. (I say partially because Musk got stock in return, which had a dilutive effect on existing shares. So it’s less that he paid $40m in fines and more that he paid $20m and then supplied Tesla with $20m in ready cash to pay theirs.)** More precisely, their request was that Musk “show cause” to prove to the judge that he wasn’t in contempt.*** Emmanuel Rosner from Deutsche Bank kinda-almost asked this question, but ultimately narrowed his context to why their official estimates were so cautious. It isn’t clear to me how anyone could come up with a useful price assessment without clarity on the single largest item affecting Tesla this year. Either there’s a substantial reason to believe that Tesla can produce/sell/deliver 350k+ Models 3s this year, or there isn’t — which feels like something we should desire a clear answer to, which I’m told is the point of earnings calls.PS - One of the things on the call (transcript here) that I’m surprised didn’t get more coverage is the exchange between Musk and Gene Munster about Waymo. Musk laughed off their recent valuation projections, claiming that Tesla has 95% of all accumulated training miles thanks to their fleet size. Now, this isn’t quite the same as autonomous miles. Waymo has more of the latter. But the argument implied here is that miles driven where the autonomous driving system is taking in data even while not fully engaged are still worth an awful lot, with Tesla having the lion’s share of these. There’s a lot to this that’s beyond my pay grade, but I’m a little miffed that more people who do know about this aren’t talking more about it.EDIT (03-12-19)Musk’s legal team (well, one of them) filed a response to the SEC’s “show cause” filing, and, well, it’s a hell of a read. Focusing on just the new stuff:(i) The SEC’s second request for info came at 10:28am PT on a Sunday, with a deadline to respond by 5pm PT the same day. Musk’s lawyer (Bondi) responded back around 5:30pm PT basically saying “I’ve been off email all day dealing with another US Attorney’s office about a different trial, and I obviously can’t get you answers on a Sunday, but I’ll get back to you ASAP”. The SEC responded by filing with the court Monday afternoon (3:10pm PT), which honestly just feels petty.(ii) While I already covered one way in which the SEC misread Tesla’s new comms policy above (i.e., the facially silly argument about needing re-approval for something that had already been publicly disclosed), there’s also this bit:While I’m not entirely sold on Musk’s argument that his “500k” tweet was 100% justifiable, the SEC’s reading here is the sort of thing you kinda expect from a document written angrily and in haste. As Musk’s team points out later in their filing, if you take out the “depending on its significance” qualifier, the level of restriction would almost certainly become a first amendment issue. It’s fine to make Musk look for pre-approval for likely market-moving stuff, but interpreting Tesla’s policy so broadly is a definite reach.(iii) If you scroll down to the bottom of the PDF, there’s an interesting appendice from Christopher Noe, an MIT Sloan lecturer brought on to quantify the materiality of Musk’s original tweet by way of how it moved the market. I’m pleased to report that he came to the same conclusion that Glenn and I did as it concerned the after-hours activity. But where he went beyond us is looking at the pre-market trading the next day (after Musk’s “correction” tweet). Interestingly, the stock went slightly up (0.7%), which indicates that investors saw no net concern. Noe also looked through the analyst reports available on Thomson One and couldn’t find any that referenced the tweets prior to the SEC’s filing, further suggesting that no one really cared. (Noe separately pointed out that after-hours trading following the SEC’s filing was ~17x brisker than after Musk’s original tweet, which does kinda make you think about relative harm.)(iv) While it’s true that Musk has never actually gotten any of his tweets pre-approved since the new policy went into place (though he did begin doing so after the most recent filing), it’s also true that his self-filtering had made said step unnecessary. (His lawyers even went so far as to challenge the SEC to find a single tweet that would have required pre-approval, which is a pretty strong gambit.) And given that the Very Serious Adults were reviewing Musk’s tweets in real-time to flag any that straddled the line (as they did successfully here), it’s hard to argue that they were acting in contempt. IMO, the SEC was so worked up about his TV interview (“I don’t respect the SEC”) that they failed to see this with any objectivity. If they were waiting for their moment to nab him, this wasn’t it.

Wrong question. How about, "Is today's system of laws constitutionally valid?".NO!Thanks to our government-controlled education system, the vast majority of Americans don't know how our Republic was set up or the vagaries of the English language. You parrot what you have been taught, but never see that it is wrong. The Republic set up by the Founders was mortally wounded in the 1860's and died in the 1930's. Most of you, if you did realize it, wouldn't care and would argue for your continued enslavement.Consider this:….Congress wears two hats and operates in two capacities or jurisdictions simultaneously, each of which covers a different and mutually exclusive geographical area:1. As the municipal government for the District of Columbia and all U.S. territories. All “acts of Congress” or federal statutes passed in this capacity are referred to as “private international law”. This political community is called the “National Government” and it is described in the municipal statutory law for federal territory.2. As the general government for the states of the Union. All “acts of Congress” or federal statutes passed in this capacity are called “public international law”. This political community is called the “Federal Government" and it is described in the Constitution.Each of the two capacities above has different types of “citizens” within it and each is a unique and separate “body politic”. Nearly all laws that Congress writes pertain to the first jurisdiction above only.“It is clear that Congress, as a legislative body, exercise two species of legislative power: the one, limited as to its objects, but extending all over the Union: the other, an absolute, exclusive legislative power over the District of Columbia. The preliminary inquiry in the case now before the Court, is, by virtue of which of these authorities was the law in question passed?”(Cohens v. Virginia393H, 19 U.S. 264, 6 Wheat. 265; 5 L.Ed. 257 (1821))In order to understand why we are experiencing so many attacks on our freedoms we must have an understanding of language. We must know what words mean in the context being used.United states of confusionLet’s look at how words are used and understood. You must train yourself to not presume any meanings to words or to assume limits where they are not specified.When you see “United States” in a sentence or law you know that it is referring to the country, right? Well maybe not.The U.S. Supreme Court in Hooven & Allison Co. v. Evatt, 324 U.S. 652 (1945) stated;The term 'United States' may be used in any one of several senses. It may be merely the name of a sovereign occupying the position analogous to that of other sovereigns in the family of nations. It may designate the territory over which the sovereignty of the United States extends, or it may be the collective name of the states which are united by and under the Constitution.So the term “United States” may be (among others):1. A nation among other nations, as when the United States is represented at the U.N. A singular entity.2. The territory over which the sovereignty of the United States extends. Since this is also a singular entity it must mean the areas over which the Federal government has jurisdiction.3. The Several States united by the Constitution. A plural term. The term Several States is usually used to denote the 50 separate States in law.The first definition is easily understood; the second and third are not. Let’s look at the second definition in the U.S. Constitution. Note that these definitions are mutually exclusive to one another.13th AmendmentSECTION 1.Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.Note the "their jurisdiction", it is plural and means the several States, but not the federal government or its possessions and territories. (In English, and Law, explicitly naming entities implicitly excludes entities not named. So, since this Amendment explicitly and exclusively names the several States it excludes the federal government from its provisions against involuntary servitude.)So the 13th Amendment states explicitly that: Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the SEVERAL STATES, or any place subject to their jurisdictionANDImplicitly states that: Either slavery or involuntary servitude shall exist within the Federal Government, or any place subject to the jurisdiction thereof. The punishment exception doesn’t apply here since it is negated by the implicit allowance of involuntary servitude.I have gotten a lot of flak because of this from people indignant over the clear meaning of this amendment. One thing you must remember here is just because the law allows something doesn’t mean it has to either state it or refute it. It would be better to look at our lives and see if we are truly free or not.On to the alleged 14th Amendment and the second definition of United States. The former Confederate States, after being welcomed back into the Union and after voting to ratify the 13th Amendment, balked at the intent of the proposed 14th Amendment. Only Citizens of the several States, known as We the People, could vote for President and had representation in Congress. This amendment's purpose was to create a new class of citizen, one not of the several States but a subject of the federal government. All federal territories and possessions were, and are, under the exclusive control of Congress through Article 1, Section 8 of the federal constitution.In retaliation for their refusal to cede to the federal government a Right that was always held exclusively by the several States, the Northern Congressmen refused to seat those former Confederate Congressmen and then passed the Reconstruction Acts that called for the military occupation of those States (except Tennessee who voted for the 14th), the overthrow of the duly-elected officials and the appointment of replacements by Congress. These appointed officials then voted to ratify the amendment. You think that's constitutional?Since the 14th Amendment was unlawfully and unconstitutionally declared ratified, why was it important to those who instigated the War Between the States to write it? You must step outside your government-controlled education. Despite the teaching that the Founders were supportive of the new concept that ALL political authority was held by We the People, quite a few were opposed to a Constitutional Republic. Some wanted a monarchy, some a pure democracy, others an oligarchy, with them and their heirs as leaders.They could see that slavery was going to slowly be fazed out. Industrial innovation would reduce, if not eliminate, the need for slaves so the then corrupt officials had to create a situation that would allow them to take control of the nation.Let's look at the alleged Amendment.Section 1:"All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States..."The creation of a new class of citizen wholly subject to the federal government."Privileges and immunities clause of Fourteenth Amendment protects only those rights peculiar to being CITIZEN OF THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT; it does not protect those rights which relate to STATE CITIZENSHIP."Jones v. Temmer, Federal Supplement, Vol. 829, Page 1227 (1993)"We have cited these cases for the purpose of showing that the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States DO NOT NECESSARILLY INCLUDE all the rights protected by the first eight amendments to the Federal Constitution against the powers of the Federal government. They were decided subsequently to the adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment..."Maxwell v. Dow, 176 US 598 (1900)"..... and of the State wherein they reside....."This is interesting because a State Citizen is by definition a Citizen of their respective State but since a federal citizen is, lawfully, a citizen of the District of Columbia, the Seat of the federal government, which is not one of the several States, they would have been considered alien to them. That means they would be ineligible to vote within one of them. The original California Code stated that a person was either a Citizen of California, one of the other several States OR you were an alien."No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."This portion, since federal citizens had little State Constitutional protections, forces a State to respect the privileges and Immunities GRANTED to them by the federal government. Note that the term "Rights" is not here.Section 2:"Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed."Note the lawfully designated "several States". This changes the apportionment to "persons" which includes the mentioned alien federal citizen. It has, currently, been construed to include illegal aliens."But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabit￾ants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and Citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State."This reduces the basis for representation by excluding persons whose right to vote has been suspended. But not the exception to the reduction for "participation in rebellion". This was aimed at those former members of the Confederacy who would be denied their Right to vote. While white males, a considerable number that would affect representation, were denied that Right by the unlawful Reconstruction Acts, those former Confederate States soon to be APPOINTED reps would not be diminished allowing the traitorous Congress to further enslave the former We the People."No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Con￾gress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof."While sounding reasonable, note the "...shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same,....".The States making up the Confederate States of America LAWFULLY SECEDED from the Union. Hence, no rebellion or insurrection. But it does deflect the real reason for the Amendment.".... But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability...."This alleged Amendment then allows the Congress to have those it wants to be in Congress and the States' legislatures regardless of crimes. Sound familiar?Section 4:"The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void."So this prohibits anyone, including you, from questioning the now astronomical debt. Nice!The Republic formerly known as The united States of America died a quiet death in the 1930's following a mortal wound inflicted in the 1860's. In it's place what I call a feudal democracy was instituted. The presiding rulers lord over the domain from Washington DC with lesser nobles at state and local levels. Their subjects, all current Americans, are given the impression of being able to elect people who represent themselves but are simply choosing from a cast of preselected clones.This feudal democracy, known as the federal government, currently consists of 50 federal states created by the Buck Act. These can be recognized by their two-uppercase-case letter abbreviations: CA; NJ; AZ; etc. The former Republic's States had abbreviations such as: Ca. or Calif.; N.J.; Az. or Ariz.; etc. These Buck Act federal states, known in law as legal fictions, are deemed to be political subdivisions of the District of Columbia.These two amendments, as written, formed the foundation of the destruction of the Republic and the conversion of the once free We the People into chattel of the federal government15th, which forbade the several States from disallowing non-state, these aforementioned federal citizens, from voting. Having non-state citizens vote in State elections is the same as having non-citizens, foreigners, vote today.Since Congress has the power “To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District…”; the courts have held that Congress can do pretty much whatever it wants in the district. Remember, “…the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States (Congress) do not necessarily include all the rights protected by the first eight amendments to the Federal Constitution against the powers of the Federal government.” Also note that citizens of Congress only have “privileges and immunities of citizens....” and not “rights protected by the first eight amendments” although those privileges and immunities mimic Rights they can be revoked.That may be a concern for folks living in Washington D.C., but what does it have to do with correcting the peoples’ concerns about our runaway government?Plenty. One of the acts Congress passed is the Buck Act. The following is from “The Buck Act” by Richard McDonald. I strongly recommend you read the entire article.Now, the government knows it could not tax any remaining state Citizens (the 16th Amendment did not actually change any tax provisions but convinced people that that was why they could be taxed) who live and work outside the territorial jurisdiction of Article 1, Section 8, Clause 17 or Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2 in the U.S. Constitution. So, in 1940, Congress passed the "Buck Act". In Section 110(e), this Act authorized any department of the federal government to create a "Federal area" for imposition of the "Public Salary Tax Act of 1939". The rest of the taxing law is found in the Internal Revenue Code. The Social Security Board had already created a "Federal area" overlay.4 U.S.C.S. Sec. 110(d). The term "State" includes any Territory or possession of the United States.Thus, the obvious question arises: What is a "Federal area"? A "Federal area" is any area designated by any agency, department, or establishment of the federal government. This includes the Social Security areas designated by the Social Security Administration, any public housing area that has federal funding, a home that has a federal bank loan, a road that has federal funding, and almost everything that the federal government touches through any type of aid. Springfield v. Kenny, 104 N.E. 2d 65 (1951 App.).This "Federal area" attaches to anyone who has a Social Security Number or any personal contact with the federal or state governments. Through this mechanism, the federal government usurped the Sovereignty of the People, as well as the Sovereignty of the several states, by creating "Federal areas" within the boundaries of the states under the authority of Article 4, Section 3, Clause 2 (4:3:2) in the federal Constitution, which states:Therefore, all U.S. citizens [i.e. citizens of the District of Columbia, Congress] residing in one of the states of the Union, are classified as property, as franchisees of the federal government, and as an "individual entity". Under the "Buck Act", the federal government has created a "Federal area" within the boundaries of all the several states. This area is similar to any territory that the federal government acquires through purchase, conquest or treaty, thereby imposing federal territorial law upon all people in this "Federal area"…So, since virtually all laws passed have their basis in the alleged 14th Amendment, today's laws are constitutionally invalid. Of course the American Republic was conquered in the 1860's, so that makes it OK.

As stated in the article cited, this is referring to a July 22, 2020 letter of “the United States Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC).”The OCC is part of the US Treasury, and oversees licensing and chartering of national banks. (State licensed banks are not under OCC, but under supervision of the State that licenses them.)In fact, though, the OCC is playing a bit of catch-up with this July 2020 letter. The State of Wyoming already has established crypto-fiat bank law, licensing and custody rules for the same, and has done so without resorting to fractional reserve systems, all while requiring that clients be given the choice of how custody shall occur.It would seem, therefore that the OCC is simply realizing the success of the Wyoming model over the past couple of years, sees the future of both bitcoin and stablecoins, and is eager to encourage other states to follow in Wyoming's footsteps.The OCC was likely also following the path and interpretation of the U.S. Supreme Court issued in mid-2019, in the Total Wine case - which was a defining case on the application of the Commerce Clause not just in relation to wine but to any product or service. (See reference 3.)This effectively ends any efforts we've seen over the past five years toward a “NY bitlicense” or “California bitlicense” model for the 50 states in line with the ULC attempts - thankfully, the ULC model is dead on arrival, and the existing NY bitlicense system will be contained to that imprisoned island (NY) where it will die out eventually. The Wyoming model - requiring just one (state) bank license, if you want it, covering 50 states, instead of 50 Money transmitter licenses and / or 50 bitlicenses - will be a beacon for states that look to attract businesses that are fleeing the Western Wall, fleeing blue states and/or fleeing high tax / high regulatory states - the OCC basically just gave banks, and states, the green light to go ahead with a crypto custody solution that anyone can use in existing or new institutions.References: why OCC is following WyomingNew SEC/FINRA Staff Statement On Digital Securities Favors WyomingWhat Do Wyoming's 13 New Blockchain Laws Mean? (Since the publication of this article, Wyoming's law on SPDIs has been amended to allow both corporate (institutional) and retail (individual) depositors.)Opinion analysis: A total victory for Total Wine in 21st Amendment dispute - SCOTUSblogWyoming is the only state currently in the USA to have done all of the below: adopted state laws requiring reserves for the new crypto-fiat systems it has authorized, adopted state laws which acknowledge that you are the title holder to your private keys of your digital assets (bitcoin, etc) whether you have it in managed custody or self-managed cold storage, and has adopted law that prohibits rehypothecation of your digital assets when you have them under custody in a new form of Wyoming crypto-fiat institution, known as a SPDI. Additionally, Wyoming is the only state in the USA to explicitly recognize that you are the owner of your coins / keys regardless of how you choose to store your coins, and is the only state in the USA that expressly requires that the client be able to decide how to custody coins (fully managed custody, self custody, multisignature, or smart contract) when the client has an account with the crypto-fiat bank, or SPDI. Finally, Wyoming also exempts digital assets from being taxed by the state as property, thus, the state does not add new tax burden to the business owner or asset holder.