Washington State farmer Joel Gross says government officials turned the regulatory machinery against him after he publicly criticized what he viewed as an unconstitutional assault on his private property. Gross operates nearly 5,000 acres outside Wilson Creek, including about 400 acres of irrigated alfalfa and wheat and another 4,400 acres of rangeland supporting Black Angus cattle. He wanted to build a home on his own property, and instead discovered just how little the concept of private property means once unelected bureaucrats decide they have authority over your land.
Gross wanted to build a 6,000-square-foot home on his own farm, but Washington’s shrub-steppe conservation rules require landowners to offset protected habitat disturbed by construction. Gross says that for every acre affected by his house, driveway, and required solar infrastructure, he may have to permanently preserve at least two additional acres where future development would be restricted. Otherwise, he could be forced to pay mitigation fees. He owns the land, pays taxes on it, yet must sacrifice additional acreage or pay the government for permission to build on his own property.
Gross called the arrangement “extortion,” and his anger is understandable when you look at the economics. AgWeb cites research from the Building Industry Association of Washington estimating that state and local regulations account for approximately $203,976, or 29.5%, of the $690,701 median new-home sales price in the Washington counties it sampled. The comparable nationwide regulatory burden was estimated at 23.8%. Gross says merely obtaining the required habitat inspection from an accredited biologist could cost another $2,000 to $10,000 before construction even begins. Then politicians hold hearings about why nobody can afford housing anymore while their own regulations have added six figures to the cost of putting a roof over someone’s head.
Gross finally did what Americans are supposedly permitted to do under the First Amendment. He complained. On June 25, 2026, he posted his criticism of Washington’s regulations on Facebook under the title “CONFISCATED,” attacking what he viewed as government encroachment on private property. Two days later, Grant County Development Services Director Jim Anderson-Cook responded with a roughly 1,500-word Facebook post disputing Gross’ claims. Anderson-Cook said county employees had received death threats following Gross’ public criticism, while Gross maintains that his complaints were directed primarily toward state-level regulations and he never incited violence.
What happened next is precisely why his allegation deserves scrutiny. Months before the Facebook dispute, county representatives had visited Gross’ property because he wanted to crush rock from his own farm into gravel to maintain his farm roads, cattle pads and erosion controls. Officials had given him the green light in February and indicated that he would not need a commercial mining permit so long as the material remained for on-farm use. Gross says he invested $400,000 in rock-crushing equipment so he could maintain his own property. The gravel was not being hauled off and sold commercially. It remained on his farm.
After Gross publicly attacked the regulations in June, he says the county suddenly treated that same activity as an “industrial surface mine.” That classification could require a conditional-use permit, a Mining Resource Overlay, and review under Washington’s State Environmental Policy Act, potentially creating a multiyear process costing as much as $200,000. Gross contends agricultural grading for his purposes is exempt under Washington law and says no farmer in Grant County history has been required to obtain an industrial mining permit merely to crush rock for use on his own farm.
Agriculture becomes less about producing food and more about satisfying an expanding army of administrators who have never risked their life savings on a crop, worried about rainfall, paid for fertilizer, repaired machinery at midnight, or wondered whether commodity prices will cover the year’s expenses. Regulators are coming after this man for daring to utilize his own land.
Farmers are already being crushed economically. Costs remain elevated, fertilizer has again become a major concern in 2026, financing costs remain painful, equipment has become extraordinarily expensive, and farm debt continues mounting. Farmer’s Keeper survey of 4,000 farmers found 20% were cutting corn acreage as fertilizer prices and supply problems forced them to reconsider planting decisions. The government should be asking how to keep these people producing food rather than inventing another permit, environmental review or mitigation scheme that requires them to hire consultants simply to use their own property.
Private property means absolutely nothing if government can dictate its use without assuming the financial burden of ownership. This has been one of the most destructive changes throughout the West. Politicians discovered they do not always need eminent domain to control land. They can leave your name on the deed while regulating what you may build, where you may build it, how much land must remain untouched, what environmental studies you must purchase and how much you must pay for the privilege of receiving permission. Gross still receives the property-tax bill, naturally, because government never seems confused about who owns the land when the taxes become due.
People vote for legislators, but they do not vote for the thousands of administrators who interpret rules, issue permits, conduct inspections and decide whether ordinary activity falls inside another regulatory classification. Those decisions can destroy a business without a politician ever casting a vote. A bureaucrat does not need to confiscate $200,000 from a farmer if he can create a regulatory process that forces the farmer to spend $200,000 defending the right to continue operating.
Gross declared rural Washingtonians are being “regulated to exhaustion,” and that description extends far beyond Washington. The people producing food are being squeezed by debt, energy, fertilizer, equipment, insurance, environmental mandates, taxes and increasingly complex land-use restrictions while government continues demanding more. Then everyone acts surprised when farms consolidate, small operators disappear and food production becomes concentrated among fewer enormous corporations capable of employing entire departments of attorneys and compliance specialists.
Recent parasitic food pandemonium have led the public to question: where are the smaller farms? How does Taylor Farms have a near monopoly on lettuce? Where is our food grown? Many are not waking up to the fact that agriculture has been regulated into oblivion and smaller operations simply cannot compete.
There is something fundamentally wrong when a farmer must hire experts and potentially spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to convince government that crushing rock from his own property for roads on that same property does not transform him into an industrial mining company. There is something even more disturbing if regulatory treatment changes after that farmer publicly criticizes the people administering those rules. America was built upon private property and the right to challenge government authority. If exercising one right causes bureaucrats to threaten the other, then the problem is much larger than Joel Gross’ farm.
Germany spent decades building one of the most successful industrial economies in the world and then its politicians began dismantling the very foundations that made that possible. Reuters is now reporting that Germany’s trade deficit with China exploded to roughly €55 billion during the first half of 2026, up from €40 billion during the same period last year. German exports to China collapsed by more than 12% to less than €37 billion while imports from China surged 8.9% to €91.8 billion. This is not simply a trade imbalance. Germany is discovering that China increasingly does not need what Germany is selling.
China was Germany’s second-largest export market as recently as 2021 when German companies sold €104 billion worth of goods there. China has now fallen all the way to ninth place among German export destinations, behind economies as small as Austria and Switzerland. Think about that for a moment. German industry spent decades treating China as one of its primary engines of growth, and now Austria is buying more German goods than China.
The politicians will blame Trump, tariffs, China, Putin, COVID, climate change, or whatever excuse happens to be fashionable this week. They will never look in the mirror. Germany voluntarily destroyed its competitive energy structure, abandoned nuclear power, severed itself from cheap Russian energy and embraced an EU regulatory regime that makes producing almost anything more expensive. Meanwhile, China did what any rational industrial nation would do. It invested in manufacturing, infrastructure, technology, energy, supply chains, robotics, batteries, automobiles, and domestic production.
China learned from the West and then began replacing the West. Germany taught China how to manufacture many of the sophisticated products China once imported. German corporations poured capital and technology into China because labor was cheaper and the Chinese market was enormous. Beijing never intended to remain permanently dependent upon European engineering. China used foreign investment to climb the technological ladder and develop its own domestic supply chains. Corinne Abele of Germany Trade & Invest told Reuters that falling German exports reflect China’s increasing focus on domestic value chains. Commerzbank economist Vincent Stamer reached the more important conclusion: China’s declining reliance on Germany demonstrates that it is becoming increasingly independent of Western powers and catching up technologically.
This is precisely what Western politicians refuse to understand about China. They still speak about China as though it were the China of 1995, producing cheap toys, textiles, and plastic junk for Walmart. That China no longer exists and Beijing is determined to force the world to see it as an economic powerhouse. China produces electric vehicles, batteries, solar technology, industrial machinery, electronics, drones, ships, high-speed rail equipment, and increasingly sophisticated technology. Reuters recently described the current export wave as “China Shock 2.0,” with China gaining enormous market share in advanced manufacturing sectors such as EVs, batteries, and solar cells.
Germany is being squeezed from both directions because the entire German economic model was based on globalization remaining frozen in time. Germany imported cheap energy, manufactured high-value industrial products, and exported them to China and the United States. Berlin assumed those arrangements would continue forever.
The automobile industry demonstrates the problem better than anything else. Germany once possessed an almost mythical reputation for automotive engineering. Mercedes-Benz, BMW, Volkswagen, Audi and Porsche represented German industrial superiority. Then politicians forced the industry toward electric vehicles while China spent years building the battery supply chain, securing critical minerals and developing enormous manufacturing scale. Europe created the demand through regulation while China positioned itself to supply it.
Chinese EV manufacturers are now competing directly with European manufacturers on price, technology, software, batteries and increasingly quality. German manufacturers are consequently being squeezed inside China itself, a market they once expected would provide decades of growth. Reuters notes that the pressure from Chinese competition and American tariffs is already contributing to major job reductions at industrial giants including Volkswagen.
There is another dimension here that the politicians will not discuss. German corporations themselves increasingly manufacture inside China rather than export finished products from Germany. That means even when a German company sells something to a Chinese consumer, the economic benefit does not necessarily flow back through a German factory employing German workers. The multinational corporation may survive while the domestic industrial base contracts.
German companies are producing more inside China itself.
China has also overtaken the United States again as Germany’s largest overall trading partner. Total German-Chinese trade exceeded €128 billion during the first half of 2026, approximately €3 billion more than trade with the United States. Yet the composition of that trade is changing dramatically because Germany is buying far more from China than China is buying from Germany.
Germany is therefore becoming increasingly dependent upon Chinese production at precisely the same time China is becoming less dependent upon German production.
Germany imports the products. China acquires the manufacturing capacity. Germany regulates industry. China expands it. Germany worries about carbon emissions. China worries about market share. Germany’s politicians talk endlessly about strategic autonomy while implementing policies that make their own industries less competitive.
The numbers are now exposing the consequences. Germany’s Federal Statistical Office reported that imports from China were already up 6.2% during the first five months of 2026 to €72.4 billion. China remained Germany’s most important source of imports. Germany’s overall merchandise trade with China had already reached €252.4 billion in 2025, allowing China to reclaim its position as Germany’s largest trading partner.
This is bigger than Germany. Europe is losing its industrial position because Brussels believes prosperity can be legislated into existence. You cannot tax energy, regulate businesses into submission, impose endless environmental mandates, increase labor costs, suffocate entrepreneurs and then demand that European companies compete against China.
Capital does not care about political speeches. It moves to where it is treated best.
China certainly has enormous domestic problems, including its property crisis, weak consumer demand and indebted local governments. This should not be portrayed as China becoming economically invincible. Reuters reported second-quarter growth of only 4.3%, while retail sales actually contracted 0.6% in May before increasing just 1.3% in June. Beijing is responding to domestic weakness partly by pushing manufacturing outward through exports, which only increases the competitive pressure on Europe.
This is why the trade numbers matter. China does not have to possess a perfect economy to displace European manufacturing. It simply has to remain more competitive than Europe.
The relationship between Israel and Britain is deteriorating in a way that would have been almost unthinkable only a few years ago. Benjamin Netanyahu has now taken a direct verbal shot at Britain, referring to it as the “Islamic Republic of Britain” and invoking the joke that Britain could become the first Islamist country with nuclear weapons. This is no longer some disagreement behind closed doors over Gaza. Netanyahu is openly mocking one of Israel’s longstanding Western allies while Britain’s government has moved steadily away from the unconditional support Israel once enjoyed.
Netanyahu made the remarks while discussing how British attitudes toward Israel have changed since the 1967 Six-Day War. After praising Winston Churchill’s grandson for being a “lover of Israel,” Netanyahu said, “Just try to find that kind of attitude in Britain now,” before referring to the country as the “Islamic Republic of Britain.” He then recalled the remark that Britain would become the first Islamist nation to acquire nuclear weapons and connected that directly to Israel’s confrontation with Iran.
This is Netanyahu’s style. Anyone who questions his government’s policies eventually becomes an enemy of Israel. Britain, France, Canada, the United Nations, the International Criminal Court, journalists, humanitarian organizations, and even members of the Israeli opposition have all been attacked when they refuse to fall in line. The distinction between supporting Israel’s existence and supporting Netanyahu personally has been deliberately blurred. Criticize Netanyahu, and suddenly you are accused of abandoning Israel and antisemitism.
London supported Israel after October 7, defended its right to self-defense and maintained a relationship that goes back to the very creation of the modern Israeli state. Britain has also confronted antisemitism domestically, and only last month banned Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a national-security threat. Netanyahu nevertheless appears willing to insult the entire country because its government will no longer provide him with unquestioning political support.
The deterioration has been building for years. Britain suspended some arms export licenses to Israel, halted free-trade negotiations and sanctioned Israeli ministers Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich over what the British government described as repeated incitement of violence against Palestinian civilians. London joined Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Norway in imposing those sanctions. That was an extraordinary development because these were not sanctions against some obscure settler organization. Britain sanctioned sitting ministers of the Israeli government.
Then came the Palestinian question. Britain’s movement toward recognizing a Palestinian state infuriated Netanyahu, who accused the British government of rewarding Hamas. The relationship deteriorated further as criticism of Israel’s conduct in Gaza grew across Europe. By July, Israeli officials were openly describing relations with the new British government as effectively “frozen.”
This is becoming a serious geopolitical problem for Israel that Netanyahu apparently refuses to acknowledge. Israel cannot indefinitely alienate Europe and assume Washington will compensate for every diplomatic relationship it destroys. Netanyahu has even recently rejected a U.S.-backed Gaza peace proposal, although Gaza has been bombed into oblivion and hardly exists. Israel is increasingly behaving as though its allies require Israel more than Israel requires its allies. That is a dangerous assumption for a nation of roughly 10 million people surrounded by a region of hundreds of millions.
Now is a poor time to abandon European allies. Turkey has become increasingly confrontational toward Israel, and Ankara sees an enormous opportunity emerging from Israel’s deteriorating relations with Europe. Netanyahu may think he is simply insulting Britain, but geopolitics does not operate according to personal grudges. Every ally you drive away creates an opening for somebody else.
Britain certainly has serious problems with uncontrolled migration, social fragmentation, radical Islam and the political establishment’s refusal to confront any of it. But that makes his statement even more reckless because he is exploiting Britain’s domestic divisions to attack its government over foreign policy. That will not strengthen relations between the two countries. It will poison them further.
Israel once enjoyed extraordinary bipartisan support throughout the West. That consensus is breaking apart, particularly among younger generations. Netanyahu appears to respond to this deterioration by attacking anyone who questions him, which merely accelerates the process. You cannot insult entire countries into supporting you.
Netanyahu should be very careful what he wishes for. Britain helped shape the political order from which the modern state of Israel emerged. Today, an Israeli prime minister is publicly ridiculing Britain while relations with Europe continue to deteriorate. The Middle East is realigning rapidly. Israel cannot afford to discover too late that Netanyahu succeeded in winning every argument while losing its allies.
COMMENT: Hello Marty,
I hope you are well. I’ve been thinking of you and hope all is going well on your end.
Peter and I went to visit a customer, Safran, in Sarasota the same week I attended your conference in Tampa. You looked energetic and healthy. It was great to see so many young people engaged and involved. I also saw your posting for the 2026 conference, and I’m really looking forward to it. Possibility for Technical Analysis or Geometry of Time?
…
You should read some of the crazy contracts that we have to agree to, it leans 99% to their favor , really unfortunate. Plus, the big “Primes” in aerospace are asking the Tier 2 suppliers to Tier 3 (Sunset) to push payments out 120 days. I asked them would they like not getting paid for 4 months?
How are you doing? Josephine and Napoleon? I hope we can grab a cup of coffee one day and catch up.
Take care, and I’ll see you in December!
K
REPLY: Josephine and Napoleon are best buds. It was the best thing I did to get my dog a dog. Yes, there is brewing a credit crunch as we move into 2028. A number of our institutional clients are issuing bonds locking in rates. I have suggested that they look to private equity to lock it in rather than bid the market up. With war on the horizon, rates will press higher and that is separate from domestic inflation.
The Tampa Conference was really great to see nearly half the audience was students. Some people are greedy and just seek how much money they can get even if they would not be able to spend it. They leave nothing behind and often when they finally die begrudgingly trying to hold on to that last breath, they have nothing for they cannot take it with them. They are despised and might as well put then in black trash bad and put them out for the next trash collection. They are nothing but solent green to feed the worms. They never had any purpose in life.
No matter what the subject, there are two sides to every coin. Unfortunately within humanity there are the greedy ones who measure life only by how much they can accumulate, even if they’ll never live long enough to spend it. They leave nothing behind. And when death finally comes, they cling to their last breath as if it’s a possession they can hold onto. Yet, they take nothing with them. They’re despised. You might as well toss them in a black trash bag and set them out for collection. They’re nothing but Soylent Green – food for the worms. They never had a purpose in this life and assume if they had more than someone else they were better some how. They never even looked for a purpose in life. They are just consumed with greed and leave nothing behind.
I was raised with the belief that I have a purpose in life, and that it is my duty to discover what that purpose is. We are given only this one journey through life, and with it, the opportunity to acquire knowledge. It then becomes our responsibility to pass that knowledge on to the next generation.
As for the socialists—they are the greedy ones. They invented inheritance taxes because all they see is money. In their view, it was somehow unfair that one parent could pass something on to their children while another could not.
I am undertaking this work in the twilight of my years, not at the start of my career, and not for money. I am fully aware that my work will never reach the mainstream, because those who despise me will do everything in their power to prevent it from gaining traction. That is to be expected—new ideas are rarely appreciated in their own time; they are only embraced after the originator has long since departed.
This conference was always meant to be a passing on of what I have learned. My goals were twofold: first, to show that you can never truly predict where life will take you; and second, to demonstrate that much of what is taught in economics and finance is still rooted in the gold standard era, when currencies were fixed against the dollar. No one ever seriously considered what would happen under a floating exchange rate system—one that was, after all, supposed to be only temporary.
It was Milton Friedman who came to listen to me speak about the FOREX markets and how I was getting called in from country by country all because of a currency crises one way or another. It was Milton who told me what I was doing as a trader was important for this was a whole new field that had to be experienced to understand.
I am trying to have this book to hand out at the December WEC on the Business Cycle and the discovery of the ECM. This is so important because both Marx and Keynes saw recessions or depressions as a FLAW in capitalism so the strived to eliminate the business cycle. Most economists have struggled to try to control it at minimum or devise schemes to eliminate it like “You will Own Nothing and Be Happy.”
This, the Geometry of Time and Modern Analysis for the 21st Century (Technical Analysis) are what I am trying to pass on to the next generation before Scotty beams me up..
I just did the Understanding the World Economy, adding to the previous works: Fiat, Plot to Seize Russia, and Manipulating the World Economy. As I said at the conference, I was a trader, not an academic. All major advancements typically come from the outside looking in. Even the discovery that the computer was forecasting wars was NEVER my intent. Like penicillin, which was discovered by mistake, there are always uninteded consequences. The establishment always rejects it or in my case they call it “controversial” since they cannot disprove that the business cycles exists or all the forecasts the model has produced.
Representative Jim Jordan appears on Fox News to discuss the recently declassified and released information that highlights ongoing corruption within the FBI.
As noted by Jordan, within the documents the FBI continued operations to interfere in U.S. elections beyond 2016 into 2020 and 2024. WATCH:
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Top Men!
Approximately six days from now I will share a great deal of information on World War Reddit. I took the insert picture about a week ago as a Ukraine drone struck a venue 500 meters from my location. Suffice to say, I’m not reporting information to you based on propaganda media, seriously skewed alt-media or misinterpreted/intercepted Telegram channel discussion; there’s an information war on that platform also.
Almost everything being told, shared and sold about the Russia vs Ukraine conflict is entirely made-up nonsense that has zero basis in reality. My goal has been to find out why there is this much effort toward twilight-zone level propaganda being pushed by unified interests in western media. Honestly, it’s beyond crazy.
According to Ukraine/NATO media, and probably soon to be shared by President Trump, “Russia suffered 42,860 battlefield casualties in July, its highest monthly losses since January 2025.” This type of stuff is so far beyond silly no one can figure out where they come up with the ideas for the rates.
In media headlines you might have read that Ukraine is celebrating the biggest launch of drones against Russia in a single day, Sunday. The Russian media counter by saying they have shot down 822 drones, with 600 of them targeting the Russian capital of Moscow.
Inside Russia, none of this stuff is happening; however, the govt of Putin finds some sort of purpose/value (personally I think it is just Russian humor) in countering the Ukraine nonsense by accepting the claim and then reiterating it in their claims of interception.
It’s all an illusion. First, the illusion makes it look like Russia is under bombardment (western happy), and then the Federation flips the script (it is indeed a script) and uses the claim as evidence of their exceptional capabilities at interception of the non-existent.
If you are suddenly cross-eyed, yes, that’s the level of crazy I’m talking about.
(VIA CBS) – Ukraine launched hundreds of drones across Russia Sunday, killing at least six people in one of Kyiv’s largest aerial attacks of the war.
Russia’s Ministry of Defense said that it had destroyed 822 Ukrainian drones overnight. Some 600 drones were detected headed toward the Russian capital, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said, with a third of those destroyed over the Moscow region itself.
An 83-year-old man was killed after a Ukrainian drone hit a private home in the Moscow region, local Gov. Andrey Vorobyov said. He also confirmed that a Ukrainian attack had sparked a blaze at a Wildberries warehouse in the town of Podolsk.
A drone attack targeted three towns in Russia’s southwestern Rostov region, killing five people, local Gov. Yury Slyusar said. The attack, with more than 150 drones, damaged several homes and a railway station and sparked a forest fire.
Kyiv has stepped up its attacks on Russia this year, with long-range missiles and swarms of drones increasingly targeting military industries and energy facilities. It has also increasingly pummeled giant Wildberries depots, burning billions of dollars’ worth of merchandise belonging to the Russian online retail giant and bringing the war home to the Russian public nearly four and half years into Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. (read more)
It is accurate that Ukraine drones have hit about a half dozen Wildberries distribution centers. Think about Wildberries as if you combined Amazon with E-Bay. What would life be like in America if a dozen (out of 1,300) Amazon distribution centers caught fire? Well, that’s the sum of the disruption.
All those stories of gasoline refineries taken offline(?). More nonsense.
Gasoline shortages(?), total gibberish – beyond silly.
Beyond the overstated drone attacks all this stuff about military industrial centers, energy facilities and infrastructure being damaged is non-existent. So, why is this such a common thing to read about? Factually, I have no idea. It’s like me telling you that right now there’s a gorilla in your bathtub playing chess, and all your neighbors believe it.
Somewhere there is also a story about a new FP-9 Ukraine ballistic missile about to go into operation (next 60 days). They are supposedly working out an issue with the rocket engines. However, where they are being built is not easy to determine. All indications are in Europe somewhere.
The FP-9 is part of a rushed missile and defense system from a company called Fire Point {citation} that is hoped to replace the missing U.S. Patriot Missile (defense) and Tomahawk missile (offense) that Ukraine and Germany have desperately been seeking. As the story is told, the funding comes from Ukraine, the targeting system from Germany and the build operations are taking place somewhere unknown.
I don’t have it all figured out yet, but from what is visible on the surface is there appears to be a plan to drag out the conflict as long as possible, often with as outlandish claims as needed, in order to structure some kind of narrative that will eventually bring Europe -maybe NATO- into a direct combat operation against the Russian Federation.
I have created this site to help people have fun in the kitchen. I write about enjoying life both in and out of my kitchen. Life is short! Make the most of it and enjoy!
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