The Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, a prolific inventor with many patents, visited the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Tuesday morning, to give a speech praising innovation and the patent system, and then answer questions. A number of employees were in the auditorium; I attended remotely. In answer to one question, he defended Trump’s tariffs, whether out of sincere belief, or because he needs to say things like that in order to stay in the boss’s good graces. He did have a vision of factories being largely automated, rather than of tens of millions of Americans working on assembly lines, the way they did before America ceased to be great, and became in need of the Mango Mussolini’s work to restore its former greatness.

At the end of the session, the acting Director of the USPTO presented the Secretary with two gifts: a framed copy of his first patent, and a wooden pen made of American white oak, and crafted by Peter MacArtisan from a salvaged “shoe.” Back in 1998, the Patent Office still had “shoes” with paper copies of patents that examiners could consult, although there was an electronic search tool already. Today, we have more advanced electronic search tools, and no shoes. Ms. Stewart, the acting Director, described “Peter MacArtisan” as a former examiner, now on the Board of Appeals. The name was quite familiar to me (I’m not using the man’s real name because I don’t have his permission, and he’s not a public figure like Secretary Lutnick); a few months after I had submitted a job application, he got back to my father, who then called me (I had started my probationary period as a science teacher and dorm parent at a private high school for troubled teenagers) to inform me that I had a better offer, and here I am.

I talked with Mr. MacArtisan on the phone, and then met him; he was a supervisory patent examiner at the time, and then ascended to the Board of Appeals. I didn’t know that he also made wooden pens.

I began the week with three amendments on my Amended docket, and finished an Office Action on the earliest filed of them, after which another case appeared on my Amended docket, bringing the total back to three, although this newest isn’t exactly an amendment, but an Appeal Brief, appealing my final rejection of the case. Then an amendment appeared on my Expedited docket, so I’m up to a total of four cases, one of them Expedited.

Early in the week, I finished a new rejection on the one Request for Continued Examination application on my Regular New docket. Friday evening, I finished an Office Action on the oldest non-RCE Regular New application, so it’s been a productive week. There is now one biweek left in the third quarter, so I will need to continue being productive.

Last Saturday, I did finish the first action on a Regular New case that I had been working on, and did so in time to post it for last biweek, so that was good.

Someone filed another amendment, bringing my Amended docket up to three cases. I’ve been working on the earliest files of the three, and hope to finish it today, and get it posted. We notoriously lazy government bureaucrats sometimes need to work unpaid overtime on weekends and holidays in order to meet our production quotas. I also got two cases on my Expedited docket this week, one of them being an After Final amendment, and the other a printer’s query pointing out errors in an Allowance of mine, leading me to churn out a Corrected Notice of Allowability. I did what was needed, and have cleared my Expedited docket.

I have two oldest Regular New cases, a truly new one, and a Request for Continued Examination case. I hope to do the RCE quickly, and then work on the entirely new application. I also have two interviews with patent attorneys scheduled for next week. Then there is a case on my Regular New docket that doesn’t belong there (not in my field), so I spent some time this past week communicating with people, and finding a home for it. I will now officially do a C star challenge to get it docketed to someone in a different Technology Center.

When Karoline Leavitt was seven years old, a friend of her parents asked her, “What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The lass replied, “I’m gonna combine being a mom with a career as a professional liar.”

I bought some more asparagus at the farmers’ market Sunday morning , and plan to eat some more baked asparagus with thyme, olive oil, and lemon juice. I also bought such things as fresh garlic, basil, arugula, cucumbers, and apple butter spread.

One of my friends, Alanna Hartzok, has been trying to organize a Georgist Speakers’ Bureau, and we held a Zoom meeting on Saturday to discuss it. There are people who are willing to go speak to groups that have any interest in hearing us; I mentioned that I may retire in a few years, and then have more time to devote to Georgist activism, although less money to donate to Georgist organizations. The discussion was interesting; for example, there is a Georgist subreddit, and there are Georgists out there who are not plugged into the movement, what there is of it; they’re not members of Georgist organizations, and they’re mostly not lobbying their mayors, city councilmen, and state legislators to enact Georgist tax reform.

Also, when Alanna asked who said that all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, I chimed in, “Edmund Burke.”

A Patent Office employee named Len Tran joined USPTO Toastmasters a couple of years ago, and demonstrated excellence in public speaking. I competed against him in the club contest a few months ago, but he won. And did I mention that he’s an author? He went on to win the area level and division level speaking contests, and will compete at the District level. I will not be surprised if he wins again, and competes at the world championship level; he might even become World Champion of Public Speaking, either this year, or in a future year, and I will be able to say that I knew him when.

Reason published an article by former Congressman Ron Paul on how housing can be fixed without the Federal Reserve Board manipulating interest rates. He has a point, but he argues that artificially low interest rates cause people to take on too much debt, invest in projects which which won’t pay off sufficiently, and so on. This is a standard Austrian critique of artificially easy money.

The Georgist critique has a more thorough understanding of the problem. Low interest rates drive up land prices, and encourage speculation. For example, if the annual rental value of a piece of land is $10,000, and expected to remain at that level, and the interest rate is ten percent, the selling price of the land will be $100,000, but if interest is pushed down to 5%, the selling price increases to $200,000. In practice, selling prices will usually be higher, because people will expect future increases in land rent. So artificially low interest rates help make land hard to afford, and result in people taking on more debt to buy land.

I still think well of Dr. Paul; I remember, more than twenty years ago, he let the Council of Georgist Organizations use space in the Congressional Office Building, when there was a conference in the DC area, the first Georgist conference that I attended.

The estimable Ilya Somin, a law professor and defender of liberty, continues his efforts to have May First declared International Victims of Communism Day, a proposal which I heartily endorse. We should remember the tens of millions who were killed in warfare, outright murdered by the security services of a number of Communist states, or who starved to death in man-made famines. We should also endeavor to make their memories an immunization against future attempts to establish Communism.

There’s a table in the laundry room downstairs where people can put stuff to give away. I remember putting an extra box of Girl Scout Cookies there. The other day, I saw a bunch of compact disks, most of which were not of interest to me, but there were three classical CDs: one with several compositions by none less than Johann Sebastian Bach, one with Vivaldi’s “The Four Seasons,” and one with Ravel’s “Bolero” and “Piano Concerto in G Major.”

That was a good haul; I should leave something which someone will appreciate there. I have, so far, listened to “Bolero”, and to all the Bach.