The Commoner

Tuesday, November 10, 2026

Sup, freaks.

Republicans kept spending and went to war. Now Texas has elected a governor who wants to freeze residential electricity rates.

WHAT TO EXPECT IN THIS NEWSLETTER

• Average hourly pay bought no more in October. Gasoline is finally offering some relief.
• Texas's incoming governor wants to freeze residential electricity rates.
• EJ Antoni's debt chart and his $41 trillion Christmas forecast.
• An iOS sandbox escape, Anthropic's access rules and Massie's Hegseth push.
• A uBlock Origin update, bitcoin data and tomorrow's Jordi Visser webinar.

Marty's Bent

More Expensive by the Month

Reading October's inflation report, I keep coming back to how badly Republicans squandered the opportunity they were given. Average hourly pay on private nonfarm payrolls rose 0.4% during the month. Consumer prices also rose 0.4%, leaving average hourly pay with no gain in purchasing power. Real hourly and weekly earnings went nowhere, which follows a September in which real earnings went backwards.

The headline increase slowed from September's 0.6%, but it still came in above the 0.3% economists expected. Food went up another 0.5%. Electricity went up 0.9%. Shelter went up 0.3%. These increases get added to prices that were already making people miserable. Slowing the rate at which the cost of living rises does very little for someone who has spent the last several years cutting things out of their budget. They need their income to buy more.

There is finally some good news at the pump. Anas Alhajji pointed out this morning that gasoline has fallen back below $4. AAA puts the national average at $3.98, about 17 cents less than a week ago. It is still roughly 91 cents above where it was a year ago, but I will happily take the decline. NBC's reporting connects the oil selloff to reduced expectations of further escalation with Iran. Imagine that. The prospect of less war gives people a little breathing room when they fill up their cars. The decline Alhajji is highlighting comes after an October in which gasoline was still getting more expensive.

As EJ and I discussed, Republicans had an opportunity to cut spending and keep the country out of another Middle Eastern war. They chose to keep spending and go to war. Now we get to watch the anger over affordability help politicians who want to dictate even more of our economic lives. Texas's incoming governor is promising to freeze residential electricity rates. The market has been responding to a massive influx of people and businesses, adding supply and keeping residential rates below the national average. Apparently this is something that needs to be brought under tighter political control.

The power plants still have to be built. Someone has to put up the money, acquire the equipment and get electricity to the people who need it. Hinojosa wants the PUC to freeze residential rates. The costs of building and delivering electricity will still have to be paid. Making it less attractive to build the next plant while more people arrive is a particularly stupid way to make electricity affordable. Yet this is where we find ourselves after the party that campaigned on affordability failed to deliver it.

I focus on Bitcoin because I believe individuals need the opportunity to voice their displeasure with the current monetary system and government spending by opting into a monetary system of their choosing. One that is not forced upon them. Using bitcoin as your money is a vote of displeasure with the current system and how it operates. It is a vote of confidence in a system that central planners cannot control and manipulate. Now more than ever, people need that exit vote. One that does not depend on going to the polls and hoping somebody counts it accurately. I view bitcoin's market cap as a gauge of confidence in the incumbent system. The higher it goes, the more I see individuals, businesses and institutions expressing their lack of confidence in the way central authorities are managing the government and economy.

SIGNAL

Texas elects an electricity-price fixer

Elections have consequences. Texas's reported returns put Hinojosa roughly 1.68 million votes above the Democratic nominee's 2022 total, while Abbott added about 87,000. Incoming governor Gina Hinojosa wants the PUC to freeze residential electricity rates until lawmakers make data centers and other large users pay their own costs. As I wrote this morning, she wants to bring political control to a competitive electricity market that has been an incredible boon for Texas for decades.

Look at what that market has been accommodating. An influx of residents and industrial-sized businesses, with ERCOT consumption up 5.7% in 2025 and market participants adding more than 16,000 MW of supply capacity, primarily storage and solar. EIA's preliminary August 2026 residential averages were 15.91 cents/kWh statewide in Texas versus 18.16 nationally. The ability to respond to that much change while keeping rates below the national average is remarkable. Putting the governor in charge of the price is how you screw it up.

Your phone is a terrible place to take custody shortcuts

Charles Guillemet's warning is worth your attention if you keep wallet secrets on an iPhone. The worse_query proof of concept describes an iOS sandbox escape that can let an app access other apps' local files. A malicious app could reach seeds or credentials stored there, depending on how the wallet protects them.

Binance's advice is to remove untrusted apps, install official updates and, if compromise is suspected, move funds to a new wallet on a clean device and reset login sessions. Apple issued updates yesterday; a fix for this specific flaw remains unconfirmed. A software update cannot make a stolen seed secret again.

$41 trillion before Christmas?

EJ posted this chart last night, along with his prediction that the federal debt will hit $41 trillion before Christmas. “R's could've cut spending, could've enacted the DOGE cuts, could've stayed out of the mid east, but threw it all away.” Treasury's November 6 total was $40.553 trillion. Another $447 billion gets us there. The party that was supposed to bring fiscal restraint back to Washington has given EJ very little reason to expect it.

Chart: EJ Antoni, using Bureau of the Fiscal Service data.

Anthropic has a permission slip for that

Claude Fable 5.2 and Mythos 5.2 are the same underlying model, according to Anthropic. Fable has stronger cyber and biology safeguards. Direct Mythos access through the cybersecurity verification program requires approval: individuals can apply for Defense Access, while Red Team and Specialized are organization-only. Specialized applications are reviewed in collaboration with the U.S. government.

The capability is sitting there in the model. Anthropic decides whether you can use it, under what conditions, and whether you get to keep using it. At the highest tier the government is involved in deciding who gets through the door. I do not want access to these capabilities concentrated in the hands of a company and the government. Keep building models people can run and inspect themselves.

Massie wants a House vote on Hegseth

Thomas Massie renewed his push yesterday to force a House vote on eight impeachment charges against Pete Hegseth. Among the allegations: continuing the Iran war without congressional authorization and violating the War Powers Resolution. Massie is trying to make his colleagues take a position on what the executive branch has been doing in their name.

Congress has become very comfortable funding wars while pretending the responsibility belongs entirely to the president. If these representatives think Hegseth acted lawfully, let them vote and explain why. If they think he exceeded his authority, they have a job to do. The people paying for the war should at least be able to find out which of their elected representatives supports it.

⚡ FREEDOM TECH CORNER

DATA SNAPSHOT

Spot price, block height and hashrate estimate: November 10, 2026, 9:36:27 a.m. ET. Bitcoin Lab daily series and U.S. spot ETF flows: November 9, 2026.

Sources: Kraken spot quote, mempool.space block height and hashrate, Bitcoin Lab daily metrics, and TFTC ETF flows. Daily metrics use the provider's November 9 observation, not live intraday estimates.

Have a great day, freaks.

Marty Bent · TFTC · Nostr

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