Book 3 Chapter 55

At 1300 I walked out to the new fancy podium that the crew had placed in the news room while we were at lunch. The news people were making their way in with papers in their hand.

I knew what the papers were, my tax returns had been released this morning along with other things. Lorrie and Marcy had texted me during lunch. I knew things were coming. It was going to be a blow out afternoon.

‘’Good afternoon, I have a lot of announcements to make today. First, the new revenue measure was introduced in both Houses today and I support the bills in the current form. After months of negotiations, meetings, finger pointing, yelling, screaming and various obscenities, the final bill does the following,’’ I said.

‘’It eliminates all individual income tax brackets and replaces the tax code with a ten percent sales tax. If you make a Million or a billion you spend it on something, it does not go under your mattress so tax will be paid on it. Many of the loop holes in the current system will be gone,’’ I said.

‘’If you buy stocks, bonds or investments, you will pay the sales tax but there will be no tax on dividends – and if you sell them, the buyer pays,’’ I said.

“There are a few of the dedicated tax programs that were retained,’’ I said.

‘’One is the Social Security tax – both for the employee and employers – as was the Medicare tax. The tax was bumped up by half a percentage point in the proposal. Social Security payments have escalated over time with inflation, it was past time for an adjustment,’’ I said.

‘’Business will also be under the ten percent sales tax; there are no exemptions or exclusions. Everyone will pay the same,’’ I said.

‘’Fuel taxes such as gas, diesel and aviation fuel taxes were retained, as were excise taxes on cars and trucks. These taxes support specific transportation programs – an example is road and bridge maintenance and construction,’’ I said.

‘’The Internal Revenue Service budget will be reduced from last year’s peak of one hundred and twenty-five billion to one billion next year, saving an estimated one trillion, two hundred billion over a ten-year period,’’ I said.

I hated the government norm of ten-year averaging on budgets – it was just a promised cloud hidden by a smoke screen. But it sounded good for the media presentations.

“The Internal Revenue Service has been operating under a hiring freeze for the last three years and with the billions spent on AI programs that have now proven effective in audits and revenue related problems, it’s time for a down size,’’ I said.

‘’There were multiple agencies caught up in the SWAT team scandal that those operations were suspended or the agencies were temporally closed. Those suspensions and closures will continue for another physical year,’’ I said.

‘’That whole problem is much bigger, more involved than the early investigations indicated and involved thousands more federal employees; many are going to be serving time in jail cells,’’ I said.

‘’With all these changes, the Treasury indicated in its reports that we will have a surplus budget for two years in a row, something that hasn’t happened in decades,’’ I said.

‘’There have been ongoing discussions for several years about adding more states to the current fifty states. This has been brought about by a change in demographics of our population with a few cities with liberal, progressive agendas controlling massive states,’’ I said.

‘’I support this expansion of our sates. Currently there are five states that are candidates for division; Maryland, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia, California, New York and Washington.’’

‘’There was some discussion in these meetings about Washington DC being added to the list. I am fiercely opposed to DC ever becoming a state. It was called the District of Columbia for a reason – so that the federal government or operations of the federal government would not be hamstrung by state laws or an aggressive state government,’’ I said.

‘’The package of rule and law changes necessary will be entered in the House and Senate today. Included in that package is language that will forever stop DC from ever becoming a state. Another piece of legislation in that goal to keep DC the seat of our federal government is to stop all private ownership of property in DC and building or renovation permits,’’ I said.

‘’As the current owners of property pass on the Government will acquire the property by outright purchase or use of eminent domain with the heirs being compensated. Corporate ownership will be phased out over ten years,’’ I added.

‘’The next item is the court system. I am terribly disappointed in the direction that our court system has and is going in. The Supreme Court seems to have taken a leave of absence. States and the lower courts are running over our rights with a steam roller and the Supreme Court seems uninterested any more,’’ I said.

‘’I don’t know if there are too many cases needing Supreme Court review or the judges are slowing down with age or whatever the problem is, but something has to be done. The Constitution and the Bill of rights will soon be a memory if the Supreme Court doesn’t step up to the plate to reign in the lower courts and states,’’ I said.

‘’The freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the right to keep and bear arms, the right to vote and civil rights seems to be under constant attack from the states, special interest groups, Congress and the Justice Department itself. The Supreme Court sits idly by, ignoring challenges from distressed citizens,’’ I said.

‘’I am proposing that the current nine-member court be expanded to a twenty-seven-member court. Along with that comes multiple changes in the operation and members of the court. We are starting with mandatory retirement at age sixty-seven for all federal and judicial personnel, including all judges,’’ I said.

‘’Additional changes would require all emergency appeals to be approved by nine members of the bench. This would stop attorneys from shopping for a judge that was sympathetic to their cause,’’ I said.

‘’Another change would require all challenges between Congress, the Executive Branch, the Department of Justice and the Courts to be heard directly by the full Supreme Court, eliminating the massive deadlines, and delays of dealing with the lower court and appeals process. It shouldn’t take months or years to resolve disputes,’’ I said.

‘’Another change would be a review of all rules, regulations and laws of all agencies be reviewed by the committee from the court to determine if they are constitutional before they are put into effect, not months or years after,’’ I said.

‘’Another change would require that an agency or agent of any agency that had been determined to violate the rights or civil rights of a citizen or citizens to be punished by termination of the individual or in the case of an agency, they lose fifty percent of their finding for a two- year period,’’ I said.

‘’Currently they get to shrug their shoulders and say “Oh well’ and walk away with no punishment to do it again. And they will push the envelope, knowing that it would take years for another court case to make it through the system while ending with the same results. These actions are unacceptable,’’ I said.

‘’The final piece of the Judiciary changes will be a Jurist review board at the executive level. This board will be a fast track to impeachment. All judicial decisions by all federal judges will be reviewed by the board for constitutional compliance,’’ I said.

‘’Any judge that had five of their decisions overturned or is deemed to be legislating from the bench, rendering biased decisions by the review board shall be considered to be impeached. Congress can overturn the decision of the review board by a two-thirds vote,’’ I said.

‘’The makeup of the review board shall consist of two members from the Senate Judiciary Committee, one from each party. Two -members from the House Judiciary Committee, again one from each party and four appointees from the executive branch and one retired Supreme Court justice,’’ I said.

‘’The bills necessary to bring about these changes shall be entered in both Houses today. A couple of the changes have been deemed to need changes to the Constitution through amendments. All fifty states will have the proposed amendments sent to the governor and their legislators today,’’ I said.

‘’I do not and will not support a Constitutional Convention to make these or other changes,” I said.

‘’The next issue is the rolling blackouts from the Hawaii volcano. I have been informed by the emergency taskforce that is overseeing utility restoration that they expect enough emergency generation to be on line by the end of the week to end the blackouts,’’ I said.

‘’I know the duration and geographical size of the blackouts has been steadily reduced almost weekly. I’m sure everyone will be glad to see them gone permanently,’’ I said.

‘’There is still more emergency generation being installed and to be online before winter as a safety factor,’’ I said.

‘’Sadly, I have learned that the promises of recycling have not panned out. An estimated two-hundred and fifty million tons of solar panels are going to end up in landfills, ‘’ I said.            

‘’The news about the damaged wind generators is not any better. There were high hopes that many of the gearboxes and generators could quickly be rebuilt or repaired. So far inspections are only showing that one in ten are candidates for repair,’’ I said.

‘’That said, the temporary generation may have to be used for a much longer time. The utilities in the affected area are requesting permit approval for additional coal, gas and oil power plants to get the generation reserve back to comfortable levels. I expect construction to begin immediately on that series of projects,’’ I said.

‘’The utilities have been pushing the envelope with existing generation and transmission lines for months. Maintenance of those systems was cancelled or postponed and now is in a critical state. The western generation is coming on line in the nick of time so the work can be done so without additional outages and blackouts,’’ I said.

‘’In other news, the USS Missouri has been at the Newport News shipyard and is in drydock for cleaning, repairs and repainting from the ash damage. I also understand the dredging and other things necessary for permanent berth at the Navel Academy are nearly complete,’’ I said. ‘’I plan to be one of the first visitors to the ship when it officially opens to visitors,’’ I said.

‘’While I am talking about the Navy and Navy ships, there is another concern with the ship building program. They are simply too far behind on construction of new ships. They are twenty ships behind and at least fifteen years or more before those ships will join the fleet – with no end in sight. This doesn’t even begin to address the huge repair backlog,’’ I said.

‘’I had hoped that the lesson learned by the Navy and shipyards from the war would be carried over to correct the deficiencies, but it has not. Therefore, I have ordered the Navy not to award any more new construction contracts to any ship builder that cannot guarantee delivery in four years,” I said.

‘’I ordered the Navy several months ago to begin the process of engineering and investigating locations for a new ship yard and drydocks that would be under Navy control. That work is done and the final evaluations are on my desk for the Sectary of the Navy and Joint Chiefs to review tomorrow,’’ I said.

‘’I also ordered an investigation into foreign shipyards that had the capabilities to build some of our smaller Navy ships. Several of our allies that have shipyards have responded with attractive proposals that are being seriously considered,’’ I said.

‘’I know this is going to cause serious discussions within our defense community. To have to even be looking at foreign shipyards to build our ships gives me horrible indigestion. But when the latest destroyer to be funded has a keel laying date of twelve years out with a four year completion date after, something has to be done differently,’’ I said.

‘’There have been a couple of mergers with foreign ship builders constructing US Navy ships in our local shipyards. The change in the rules will allow the destroyers to be built at their foreign yards with the top-secret equipment installed after they make their wat to the US,’’ I said.

‘’The next item on the list is our educational system. It has gone from being the world’s best to being the worlds worst in some areas. Our college education is no better off,’’ I said.

‘’In order to get a real picture instead the white washed stuff the boards of education are pushing (with an abundance of sugar coating), national standardized testing has been ordered by the Department of Education. This new testing is mandatory,’’ I said.

‘’The tests will be delivered to all states in early May. Students from the sixth to twelfth are required to complete the test before May fifteenth,’’ I said.

‘’The department took testing from five countries with the highest rated education systems in the world. A team of experts compiled all the test questions for each grade level and developed the test we are going to use,’’ I said.

‘’This testing will help set a base line of what is needed to being our schools to top again. Our education system is failing our citizens of tomorrow,’’ I said.

‘’Let’s take a ten minute break and I will come back to take questions. I have some phone calls to respond to,’’ I said.

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