Revolution (60 page)

    The massive increase in the money supply of wealthy bankers created inflation, which consequently decreased the purchasing power for the rest of the population. The Federal Reserve System became an endless cycle, which increasingly concentrated wealth in the possession of the richest bankers and businessmen, while reducing purchasing power and wealth for everyone else.

    The former private Federal Reserve System created inflation by setting interest rates at astoundingly low levels for wealthy banks within the system. By eliminating the Federal Reserve Bank’s control of interest rates, interest rates were consequently set by free market forces, which limited the money supply and thus limited inflation.

    The public Treasury Department was given the responsibility for printing debt-free money during times of recession. Instead of lending money to wealthy banks at shockingly low interest rates like the private Federal Reserve did (concentrating the money supply in the hands of the richest citizens), the public Treasury Department increased the money supply during times of recession by sending a check starting at $500 to every citizen of the country.

     The $500 check sent to every citizen in the country enabled all citizens to purchase more products – not just the wealthy bankers. The Treasury Department could adjust the check amount depending on the severity of the recession up to a maximum of $1,000 per U.S. citizen per year. With the new debt-free money system in place, recessions became a destructive phenomenon of the past.

    A Balanced Budget Amendment was passed that forced the Congress to only spend as much money as was taken in by taxes. The days of massive deficit spending were over. This meant the Congress had to cut their spending to match the existing tax rate and not vice-versa!

    With lower taxes, the Congress was forced to prioritize, slash the federal budget, and dramatically reduce the size of government. Thousands of useless government agencies, which did not deal directly with national defense, public safety, or workplace and product safety, were eliminated.

    As the icing on the economic cake, private sector bailouts were made illegal. The corresponding increase in consumer spending created by tax cuts boosted businesses nationwide and the pool of taxpayers increased as employment increased.

    The new tax structure was put into effect immediately in August, 2058 during the first four months of Campion’s eighteen-month dictatorship. Rosen had been her Chief Advisor, so it made sense that she would adopt his tax policy.

     President Prince continued Rosen’s tax policy when she took office in November, 2059. The immediate effect of the new tax policy in 2058 was slightly negative. Unemployment rose from 20% to 22% percent. Rosen believed the short-term rise in unemployment was a result of the country adapting to a new system and the resulting unstable stock market created by uncertainty about the new government.

    When President Prince took office in November, 2059, she faced an unemployment rate of 22%. She continued to implement Rosen’s progressive tax policies in addition to abolishing the private Federal Reserve Bank and implementing the public Debt-free Money System. As the Treasury Department sent out $500 checks to every citizen (reimbursing banks cashing the checks with newly printed money), demand started to pick up. By November, 2060, the unemployment rate had dropped to 16%.

    In January of 2061 President Prince introduced the Corporate Reform Act. Congress voted it into law in February. Under the new reform, major American corporations became democratic. However, the new reform only applied to companies with more than two hundred employees.

     Instead of being run by an un-elected Board of Directors and Chief Executive Officer, large American companies were required to be 50% owned by the company’s workers and 50% owned by the company’s stockholders. The workers and stockholders voted for the people they wanted as their company leaders in the Board of Directors. They also voted for the company’s Chief Executive Officer. The elected CEO and Board of Directors could then choose the people they wanted to appoint as managers and executives.

    Every four years, the workers and the stockholders of companies voted for new leaders. This brought accountability into the new corporate structure. If leaders did a poor job, they were voted out. If they did an effective job, they stayed in office. The days of tyrannical CEO’s giving themselves multi-million dollar pay raises, even when their companies performed poorly, were over. Elected CEOs were now accountable to the workers and stockholders of companies.

    By November, 2061, the unemployment rate had fallen to 12%. By November, 2062, it was 8%. And by November, 2063, the unemployment figures for the U.S. dropped to a record low of 1%. The unemployment rate stayed at 1-2% during the five-year economic boom from 2063 to the present day, May 7
th
, 2068. Production in the U.S. has broken all past records. Not surprisingly, President Prince was re-elected in 2063.            

    The economic system wasn’t the only system reformed under the new government. The Justice System was also overhauled. It wasn’t difficult to do after news of the former government’s Body Bank project hit all the major news stations, newspapers, and Internet news sites in August, 2058.

     Campion took Rosen’s advice to make everything the old government did public. In August, 2058, the new government allowed reporters from all the major television stations, newspapers, and Internet news sites in the country direct access to the Underworld; the reporters were able to explore and document the many excesses of the former Frump government.

     The Body Bank was the worst of the excesses. The media and the public were outraged. The discovery of the Body Bank united the public and bolstered support for the new government. The country and the international community began to see the Second American Revolution as a positive step toward major governmental reforms.

     The Justice Reforms established by the newly elected Congress in 2059 broke up the monolithic Federal Police Force, dividing them into smaller units of state and local law enforcement. Campion’s soldiers temporarily took command of all the state law enforcement agencies and oversaw a power transfer from federal to state and local law enforcement.

     Many of the former Shock Troopers were extensively re-trained for public service and community policing. Former troopers who couldn’t be re-trained were let go. Ironically, many of the former troopers, who were found to be un-trainable, often turned to crime, ending up in the newly reformed prison system. Apparently, the free reign to commit violence they had as Shock Troopers had corrupted them.  

    Many new police officers were hired directly from high school. The former police academies were reformed and lengthened from four weeks to four months. The pay for new police officers was kept high and the national crime rate dropped steadily in the subsequent years.

    The Constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment was re-instated. The court and prison systems were extensively reformed, so the justice system’s primary purpose was to subdue and punish violent criminals rather than incarcerating millions for drug possession.

     Nationwide organized crime was dealt an immediate death-blow when the Congress passed the Drug Reform Act of 2062, which legalized all former illegal drugs. The Drug Reform Act also helped the economy immeasurably by granting private companies the right to manufacture and distribute (with restrictions) formerly illegal drugs. Not to mention all the increased tax revenue for the government by taxing these new products!

     Billions of dollars that formerly went into the bank accounts of drug lords and violent criminals was now re-directed to private industry, which employed millions of workers in the production and distribution processes. Today, American companies compete against each other to develop the safest and cheapest formerly illegal drugs.

     Unsafe or dangerous drugs are controlled and eliminated by market forces. If a drug is discovered to have a negative effect or effects, consumers stop purchasing it and are allowed to sue companies that produce the drugs in court. In addition, the Food and Drug Administration (one of the few agencies to survive the purge) has been given authority to inspect all formerly illegal drugs that are produced so unsafe drugs can be modified or taken off the market.

    In the Drug Reform Act of 2062, restrictions – similar to those placed on alcohol –were placed on drug production and distribution. Medical marijuana became legal for use by persons of any age with a doctor’s prescription, but in order to purchase recreational marijuana, an individual must be twenty-one years of age. The same holds true for all other drugs of every class.

    Ironically, medical Marijuana was discovered to have many beneficial effects for those people suffering from various ailments ranging from seizures to many forms of cancer. Cannibus Oil was found to be crucial in shrinking the tumors of millions of cancer patients worldwide.

    As drug possession was legalized and decriminalized, new federal and state programs were introduced, which sent drug addicts, who commited non-violent crime, to detoxification centers rather than prison (depending on the severity of the crime). The cost of detox programs is less than one-one hundredth of the cost required to send the addicts to prison with a 24-hour security watch, saving taxpayers millions of dollars. The new programs keep the prisons from becoming overcrowded and significantly reduce the number of addicts in the country.

     However, there are limitations to the new system. A drug addict, who commits a non-violent crime, is only given one chance to detoxify at one of the new centers. If the individual commits another crime after detoxifying, prison is unfortunately the only remaining option.

    If organized crime tries to compete with legitimate drug manufacturers and distributors (who pay taxes and are subject to regulatory legislation) in the underground economy, the illegal drug distributors are sent to prison rather than their so-called “mules,” who are only paid small amounts of money to transport hefty amounts of drugs. In 2042 there were more than fifteen million people incarcerated in the nation’s prisons, including six million drug “mules” serving mandatory minimum sentences of ten years or more – imposed for being caught with large drug shipments.

    The flaw in the old system was that the “mules” were technically in possession of the drugs and took all the risks, but only the wealthy drug lords received profits from the distribution of the drugs. The wealthy drug lords escaped Scot-free because they could rarely be connected with the drugs – although occasional exceptions resulted from complex and expensive investigations.

     The overcrowding in the nation’s prisons led to the infamous Justice Reform Act of 2047 where many public prisons were “cleaned out” by sending inmates to the Body Bank or the sewers. Private, for-profit prisons put millions of prisoners to work for no pay, which damaged the economy by reducing the wages of workers nationwide, who couldn’t compete with “free” prison labor. The destructive correctional policies of the Frump Administration were universally condemned by the world community.

     Former President Frump was privileged to experience the newly reformed Criminal Justice System firsthand. He went on trial in January, 2060. I was the special assistant to the prosecutor. The case lasted for several months. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity. He was lucky the prison system had been reformed since he was in office. Otherwise, he might have taken a trip to the Body Bank or the sewers.

     You may also be wondering what happened to Virtual-world. In 2060, two years after the start of the Second American Revolution, Virtual-world was dismantled. The robotic technology was studied extensively and applied to medical technology.

     A new national hospital and medical research center was founded and built on the site where the Powerdrome once stood. Today, people visit the hospital from all over the world. Robotic technology is used to replace lost limbs and organs in the human body. Campion’s robotic arm is an early example of this technology.

    You also may be wondering about international policy. How did the new reforms in our country affect other countries overseas?

     The infamous “War on Terror,” which inspired countless non-defensive wars overseas, was determined to be an immense profit-making scheme. The scheme relied on the indirect cooperation of U.S. military industries and top politicians. The industries contributed incredible amounts of money to politicians’ campaigns and in response, the politicians gave the industries all the wars and profits they desired. Of course, the politicians always sold the non-defensive wars as being indispensable to “National Security.” Ironically, the U.S. media was found to be in collusion with the federal government by selling these wars to the American Public by exaggerating the terrorist threat to American citizens and by outright lying.

     To counteract the unholy alliance between the federal government and the mainstream media, President Prince’s administration broke up the five major U.S. media companies, which dominated the nationwide news industries, into thousands of smaller competing companies, which could be more objective and be less susceptible to coercion and influence by high-level officials in the federal government.

     President Prince and her administration orchestrated many of the economic reforms, which improved the economies in previously Third-World countries. For the first time in human history, Third-World countries became First-World countries. The economic reforms introduced by the U.S. had a domino effect by reducing poverty on a massive, worldwide scale.