Preaching to the choir.
I truly wouldn't be surprised if there was a under the table deal done between Jackson and Charlie Lee in regards to the merge mining set up. (I have no proof, but I was the first to tell Jackson about merge mining... 0 interest... meets Charlie Lee and tada... then puts distance between himself and the project.)
I sort of want to say "Well we weren't really taking direction from Jackson at that point" but that doesn't necessarily mean nothing happened (apologies for double negative there). FWIW I was backing merged mining in internal discussions for most of last year (coins remaining in conflict for mining power tend to end badly).
With respect to mining schedule (and I wasn't on the dev team when the decision to stick with the code as-is was made), it's very difficult to see Dogecoin having survived it's end of mining from December last year, with zero block rewards, either.
Jackson absolutely had Billy under his thumb at that point without a doubt.
I was for merge mining as well with a 0 block reward or something VERY small because the miners would mine DOGE for the publicity alone.
It doesn't cost them anything additional to merge mine DOGE.
I was the first to bring up merge mining to Jackson privately through Facebook... he gave close to no shits and I always got the vibe from him that he purposely wanted DOGE to fail to prove some strange point about cryptos being a pump n dump. (not trolling, but this is truly how I feel)
I'm absolutely sure if DOGE maintains course as is it will soon only trade DOGE/LTC. (again not trolling or fudding ect ect... check my post history in DOGE if you so wish)