Ebook

How the “First State” has enabled international crime, sheltered tax dodgers, and diverted hard-earned dollars from the rest of us

The legal home to over a million companies, Delaware has more registered businesses than residents. Why do virtually all of the biggest corporations in the United States register there? Why do so many small companies choose to set up in Delaware rather than their home states? Why do wealthy individuals form multiple layers of private companies in the state? This book reveals how a systematic enterprise lies behind the business-friendly corporate veneer, one that has kept the state afloat financially by diverting public funds away from some of the poorest people in the United States and supporting dictators and criminals across the world.

Hal Weitzman shows how the de facto capital of corporate America has provided safe haven to money launderers, kleptocratic foreign rulers, and human traffickers, and facilitated tax dodging and money laundering by multinational companies and international gangsters. Revenues from Delaware's business-formation industry, known as the Franchise, account for two-fifths of the state’s budget and have helped to keep the tax burden on its residents among the lowest in the United States. Delaware derives enormous political clout from the Franchise, effectively writing the corporate code for the entire country―and because of its outsized influence on corporate America, the second smallest state in the United States also writes the rules for much of the world.

What's the Matter with Delaware? shows how, in Joe Biden’s home state, the corporate laws get written behind closed doors, enabling the rich and powerful to do business in the shadows.

The birth of the book!
With the success of my first book, 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive, I was commissioned by my publisher to write a book on urban survival in June of 2004. They initially wanted to use 98.6 as a framework for the new book, and even offered to help write it (cringe). Of course I refused. Nearly a year passed before more dialog happened with my publisher regarding the project. Over the months, I had grown even more disgusted with what was happening to my country, and how “fear” seemed to hold sway over the masses. I knew I could offer people an alternative to fear, vulnerability and powerlessness, and it was this knowingness that led me to want to pursue the project. After months of contract wrangling and negotiations, I started to write When All Hell Breaks Loose sometime in late 2005.

My contract paid me to write a 200 page book. However, even though I tried to keep it simple, the more I delved into the realities of what an urban calamity might entail, the more the book gained page length. My publisher gave me the green light to proceed and then the real work started. I received three extensions on my contract deadline that ultimately ended up being nearly six months over-due. The last several months of the project were grueling and consisted of six day work weeks writing 11 hours a day. Everything else was put on hold.

When the book was finally released, When All Hell Breaks Loose sold out its first printing of 10,000 books in less than three weeks. It’s regularly listed in Amazon’s top five sellers under the “Disaster Relief” and "Survival Skills" headings, is in its seventh printing, and is still selling strong. Thanks to everyone for continuing to make the book a success!

Urbanely Yours,
Cody Lundin

The birth of the book!
Nearly ten years before the publication of 98.6 Degrees in 2003, I had been thinking about writing a book about outdoor survival skills. I wanted to do something "different" in the survival book genre and focus exclusively upon the issues facing the vast majority of modern outdoor enthusiasts, and why many of them came home dead. I knew I would experience fallout from some readers and survival instructors alike who were enslaved by out dated, mind numbing concepts of what a modern survival book should contain. These misconceptions had been indoctrinated and perpetuated since time began by old military survival manuals that while cool, were geared for combat and “living off the land,” not surviving a day hike gone bad and dealing with hypo and hyperthermia--statistically the biggest killers of all outdoor travellers. I also knew that I wanted to go with a real publisher. Self-publishing seemed like an endless, self-marketing journey, complete with sagging leaf springs from a vehicle overloaded with poorly photocopied “books” held together with staples. Worse yet, I had to pay someone to print them!

Survival expert Cody Lundin shares practical wilderness wisdom for maintaining your core temperature at 98.6°—the ultimate guide to staying alive whether you're in the backcountry, backyard, or stranded on highways.

In his entertaining and informative style, Cody stresses that a human can live without food for weeks and without water for about three days or so. But if the body's core temperature dips much below or above the 98.6 degree mark, a person can literally die within hours. It is a concept that many don't take seriously or even consider, but knowing what to do to maintain a safe core temperature when lost in a blizzard or in the desert could save your life. Lundin delivers the message with wit, rebellious humor, and plenty of backcountry expertise.

Watch naturalist Cody Lundin on "Dual Survival" as he uses many of the same skills and techniques taught in his book: 98.6 Degrees: The Art of Keeping Your Ass Alive.

Our Own Worst Enemy: The Assault from within on Modern Democracy

A contrarian yet highly engaging account of the spread of illiberal and anti-democratic sentiment throughout our culture that places responsibility on the citizens themselves.

Over the past three decades, citizens of democracies who claim to value freedom, tolerance, and the rule of law have increasingly embraced illiberal politicians and platforms. Democracy is in trouble--but who is really to blame?

In Our Own Worst Enemy, Tom Nichols challenges the current depictions of the rise of illiberal and anti-democratic movements in the United States and elsewhere as the result of the deprivations of globalization or the malign decisions of elites. Rather, he places the blame for the rise of illiberalism on the people themselves. Nichols traces the illiberalism of the 21st century to the growth of unchecked narcissism, rising standards of living, global peace, and a resistance to change. Ordinary citizens, laden with grievances, have joined forces with political entrepreneurs who thrive on the creation of rage rather than on the encouragement of civic virtue and democratic cooperation. While it will be difficult, Nichols argues that we need to defend democracy by resurrecting the virtues of altruism, compromise, stoicism, and cooperation--and by recognizing how good we've actually had it in the modern world.

Trenchant, contrarian, and highly engaging, Our Own Worst Enemy reframes the debate about how democracies have ended up in this dire state of affairs and what to do about it.

Artificial intelligence – breeding ground for copyright infringements. Mathematics as a universal helper, packed in bits and bytes. Simple numbers, as states of tension, are capable of creating billionaires and people hacked at the same time. Unsuspecting and believing that they will receive free online services, the masses give away everything they have, namely their independence, their thoughts, their belongings. Above all, however, their own future and that of their fellow human beings. The ignorant must be made into knowers, if only to balance the yin and yang. The habit of imitating others turns many things into a uniform mush and destroys individuality. Such behavior makes it impossible at a certain point to maintain or maintain human social contacts. But this is exactly what some want! If artificial intelligence is preferred to human interaction, certain circles see a weak point into which they can stab. Cryptocurrencies, Internet of Bodies, consciousness sciences, and exploring suffering and feelings is not something that should be left to artificial intelligence. If data is collected over decades and then serves as a training basis for AI, regardless of existing data protection laws, there will once again be educational work for certain professions and our privacy will continue to suffer. Creative professions depending on language, painting, writing and education as well as in social areas will sooner or later be replaced by AI. Why this only makes sense for a few, but not for the general public, can be found here. Learn why online services make you unemployed sooner rather than later, turning generations into useless bodies. What increases one mans power and bank account is another mans downfall. The very fact of establishing rules for others that apply to everyone except those who issue them testifies to inferior thinking, which at best serves only individuals, but not humanity, which needs to be developed.