Mr. President,
I believe we are on the verge of a new world Renaissance, this time lead by the United States of America, instead of France.
I am writing you today in hopes that this document will become an historic one because I see in you the only President in history, other than Thomas Jefferson, who might take this document seriously. I would like you to set up an OFFICE of TAXPAYER OMBUDSMAN under the White House and your direction.
I can justify such an office under the following logic:
1. You are, with all the right intentions, investing the money of the current taxpayer base and all future taxpayers for generations to come in corporations whose results of late have been lack-luster at best.
2. We are getting very little back in the form of paperwork, hard cold confirmed statements of ownership on what we have purchased and under what circumstances and the amount of our Equity position.
Please ask yourself, if someone knocked on your door and told you they were going to take the lion’s share of all your future earnings from you and invest it into the largest American Corporations for you, without any guarantees, you would ask to see the paperwork, would you not? Or you would call the police?
If you were very convincing, I would at the very least ask to see the STOCK CERTIFICATES that I would get in return for my investments. You wouldn’t just take this man’s word for it and hope for the best, isn’t that true? You have your family to think about. You want to protect them, so it would only be natural, prudent and wise to demand that at the very least your family be given some certificates of ownership, a record of your investments, based on the money that this person was going take from you in order to give back to you.
Currently, the American taxpayers are not getting, nor are they asking for anything in return for the investments you are making in their behalf other than YOUR WORD that it will all work out and they will reap the dividends some day.
Isn’t this all correct so far?
An office of TaxPayer’s Ombudsman would at the very minimum have the best interests of the Taxpayer on hand to be present during these discussions that you have on a daily basis about how to invest our money. This can only be of major benefit to you and your administration and to the country in the long term.
And, if I were the Taxpayer’s Ombudsman, I would be continually demanding that the taxpayer, whom I represent, be given some stock certificates that entitle them to some sort of return on their investment as the economy got better and the value of these investments improved. At the very least, this paper in hand, would give us all some hope that the present enterprise we are engaged in at the moment, has their best interests at heart and that someday there may be a pay-off for our patience and good will.
In thinking about history this morning, I went over the most significant events in this country in my memory. They are, Viet Nam War of 1963 to 1973, The Oil Embargo of 1973, LBJ, the Nixon dictatorship, the administrations Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bush the Bad, Bill Clinton, and Bush the Impaler.
If you look at these administrations objectively, you have to rate only two of them with a C+ or better, Bill Clinton and I am confident that your own will be a C+ or better, (I’m hopeful it will be an A+, but only time will tell). LBJ, we have to rate with a C-, because even though he got all that Civil Rights legislation through Congress, I would put that down to the ghost of John F. Kennedy, not LBJ because LBJ didn’t have the brains to come up with anything that shining and good. The proof is how he led us down the Bay of Tonkin into a war with a country that actually wanted to be an ally, and get over 50,000 of our guys killed over it. A large brained mammal can’t possibly do something that immoral and illogical. It’s just not possible. Therefore, LBJ, doesn’t get the credit for completing what the Kennedy’s had laid the ground work for. And, Jimmy Carter gets a very hard cold ‘Incomplete’ to me because he was a nice guy, sweetheart really, but accomplished nothing, nada, zippo, a big fat goose-egg.
Now the others, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, the Elder Bush and the Jr. Bush all get failing grades from history, BIG FAT F’s. Mostly because they all lied to the American People about some serious stuff and they all did things that were only for the aggrandizement of big money interests, counter to the benefits of the American Middle Class, those they are sworn to serve. Therefore, they broke their oath of office and to me that alone deserves an F. Sorry, they all had their good moments, I’m sure, but overall, you can’t break your oath to serve the people and get anything but an F. Reagan takes credit for ending the Cold War, as you know, but it was actually Gorby who did that for us. Reagan was simply the dumb lucky bastard sitting in the Oval Office when Gorby decided to do the right things. Gorby is the only leader in world history as far as I know, who actually strategized to get himself and his party removed from power. It’s an amazing thing for which he gets very little desserts in this country because they want to give it all to Ronny Ray Guns. If it were not for Gorby, we might all be mute on this whole history thing, buried at the bottom of the radioactive rubble of WW III. I think it’s important to remember that Reagan was a War Hero in the movies, not in real life, so his overwhelming desire was to be a war hero in real life too. That was extremely dangerous and he was gambling with the lives of millions of innocent Americans and Russians. Proof that God exists lies in the fact that God, not Reagan, didn’t allow this to happen to us.
Now to the two Bushes whom I have written to you about before. They have been the worst disasters in modern times. These two have conspired with the Oil Sheiks to bankrupt our country, and it’s amazing to me that they are not in jail for this. There is no other explanation of this tragedy to me, other than this one because the evidence shows that we are now bankrupt and the Oil Sheiks are fat and sassy and so are the Bush’s personally, as well as all their Oil producing buddies. Bush the Impaler, when asked what he might do about the surging gas prices last summer, said, “There’s nothing I can do about it. This is the result of years in the planning.” Or words to that effect. He was admitting in public his own role in the theft of our resources from this country to another.
I belabor this point of fact only to show you the greatest moral of history. The SCORE for the American system of Democracy in my lifetime is 3 to 1 Against. If you were counting above, you see that we’ve had 6 Presidents (Nixon, LBJ, Ford, Reagan, Bush the Bad, and Bush the Impaler.) who screwed the American People royally, got many of us killed for no reason, wasted our time, our treasure, our resources, while there are only two we can point to who have had our interests at heart. Yourself and Bill Clinton, and maybe Jimmy Carter, though that’s hard to prove and so you have to put Carter in the neutral camp. So, 6 to 2 is the same as 3 to 1 AGAINST democracy and liberty and freedom and common sense and that spells doom for our civilization over the LONG TERM. Even if your administration is another Camelot, it can only last 8 years. Then, the Impaler’s Party takes over again.
Therefore, I am asking that you think about the LONG TERM of this country. Your own legacy is destined to be good because of the incredibly lousy job that your predecessor did. You could sit on your hands for 8 years and come out the winner because The Impaler did us so wrong. The fact that you’re trying your hardest is how I can give you the A+. Any objective person can agree with that.
HOWEVER, the best Presidents in my opinion, are the ones that look for their nation’s security far into the future, helping preserve this great democracy for all future generations of Americans. George Washington, Ben Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison come to mind when you think about great statesmen who truly had the country’s best interests at heart, not just their own careers.
For you to rank in this rarified air, you have to think about all future generations, not just the one or two we can see and hear now. And, these future generations will look upon these massive investments you are making on their behalf and they will want to see the Dividends, or else they will suffer the consequences.
In order for your great experiment to win in the long run, you have to give something to the American People for everything you are taking from them. In my mind, this is more than just words and comfort. You have to give us something material, something in writing, a pact, an offer, a fair chance of a return on Equity, Guarantees, certainly not, but at least the gesture that this may all end up right.
AS SOON AS the PEOPLE SEE and FEEL something in their hands that they can UNDERSTAND and believe in, they will WORK HARD to attain it. Just look at what we did in World War II as one great example. We won that war only because FDR fought so hard to give us something we could see and feel in return for our sacrifice. He gave us Social Security, a sense of history in the making, a sense of purpose, like no other in history and it held us all these years since.
To me that is America 2.0, Inc. By issuing STOCK CERTIFICATES to every American Taxpayer in return for the buys that you are making in the private corporate world, you could be making the greatest statement and placing the greatest bet on Human Capital that anyone has ever made. You’re already making the bet, but there are no chips on the table for us to see and for us to pick up when we win. Only chips that we can see and feel draining from our pockets as we lose.
If you give us this much chance to lose, you have to give us an equal chance to WIN, or the HOUSE is the Casino and the Casino always wins.
Think of it this way. We now own 80% of a failing institution, AIG. We own maybe 50% of the major banks. There’s more coming, but how do we get paid back? AIG has already sent much of our money to foreign banks and foreign corporations. There is little doubt we’ll get any of that back. So, where and how will the American People get paid back? If we can actually hold the STOCK in these corporations that the GOVERNMENT is now holding for us, there is hope. Most people do not understand the complexity and doubt anyone in government comprehends the complexity of what we are doing right now. With stock certificates in our hands, there is at least the smoldering glow of recognition deep down in our brains that we are the true owners of these assets.
In reality, the people are always the true owners of their country’s assets. The fact that we are not treated as shareholders, and no citizens in history have ever been treated fairly, is only an oversight of history that YOU and ONLY YOU CAN NOW RECTIFY, Mr. President.
I grant you that this is radical thinking. It’s highly radical thinking to say that the American Government should now become like a HOLDING COMPANY for these assets and pass-through the ownership of these assets over to us, the people who are the Government by proxy, with real certificates that bear the Full Faith and Credit of the United States. In this radical way, it is at least conceivable that some day, far off into the future, perhaps, but someday, these certificates will be worth something that we can all use to pay off our debts, buy new homes, pay for our health care or our retirement.
Right now, without thinking radically like this, you are allowing this great country, perhaps the greatest ever conceived, to drift deeper and deeper into the abyss of Socialism. You are a scholar and therefore, you know that Socialism doesn’t really work. It looks good on paper, but it really exacerbates the worst traits in the human animal, laziness.
By giving us all Stock In America 2.0, Inc. you make a bold step in the opposite direction, into the path of self-determination, American ingenuity, hard work, enterprise, Social Capitalism. The Government needs to think in terms of Profit and Loss and not just LOSS. It needs to think in terms of holding our corporations to higher ethics and standards of behavior. Government needs to be in total control of the currency. Government needs to be the TaxPayer’s Ombudsman. The government needs to represent the SHAREHOLDERS in all matters related to our Treasure and our ultimate destiny.
For centuries our governments have taken from their people and given back very little in the way of EQUITY. Governments are very good at delivering debt to the average citizenry. But, debts are not the objective of most living, hard-working souls. We all strive to build EQUITY in our lives, a pride of ownership, a sense of accomplishment, taking care of our families, the knowledge that our lives have purpose.
With our system of taxation turned on its head and using this great resource to build Equity for the American People, instead of more debt, you will have created the greatest social experiment since 1776. It’s all there in the Constitution. I know you sense it since you studied this greatest document in the history of the world. Now, amended some 27 times, it is almost perfect. The one or two things it leaves out that would make us whole, that would make the last few decades stand for something truly positive and wonderful are for your administration to consider.
I am appealing to you nearly every day in faxes and emails and twitters about this issue because I honestly feel that if we don’t get this accomplished during YOUR administration, it may never come and I fear that the trend that is always sitting there, looking over your shoulder the 3 to 1 Against common sense and Equity, the force of darkness and evil, will eventually win the day.
Mr. President, I truly believe with all my heart that an office of the Taxpayer’s Ombudsman is a role that should be played out on the American political stage. There should be someone sitting next to you in all your important meetings with your economic advisors. I don’t see anything coming from them so far that really has the taxpayer’s interest at heart. Don’t get me wrong, all these Doctors of the Economy are important to have around to give you their sage advice. However, you should also consider that these same Doctors of the Economy from Harvard, Princeton and MIT where not good enough to save the patient from the terrible disease we’re all enjoying today. Therefore, there must be a balance you can strike with someone sitting there and giving you the thoughts of the average Joe, the actual patient who can tell you his symptoms and tell you where it hurts right along with the Doctor because he’s the guy that’s laying there in his hospital bed watching his hard earned money get spent in such a frivolous manner as advised by the Doctors who have always been running this hospital.
AND apparently GOOGLE agrees with me. They write about their Upcoming Conference on Web 2.0 –
“The potential for Government 2.0 is both real and exciting: technology-wise, we can now cheaply and efficiently enable a government that is transparent, participatory, collaborative, and effective. But there are some very real, very stubborn obstacles in the form of outdated laws, regulations, and policies. Andrew will outline these barriers, and set forth an agenda for reform.”
Don’t let Google make all the changes for us regarding Government Reform. As much as I care for Google, and with the Founding Fathers of this great nation in mind, this great responsibility, should be shared come amongst all the people.
And, one final thought. Just before the French Monarchy fell in France in 1789, Queen Marie Antoinette is quoted as replying when she was told that the her countrymen had no bread and were starving, said, “Let them eat cake.” She, and her husband, Louis, were later taken to the guillotine where her countrymen responded to her unprecedented lack of compassion.
Tired of “Let them Eat Cake” Politics? – Let the Renaissance Begin!
Michael Mathiesen
America 2.0, Inc. – Take Stock In America
www.america2inc.com
www.michaelmathiesen.com
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