Chapter 151

Thursday I spent some of the day in meetings, reviewing the California and Washington martial law orders and the progress. Progress was being made but entrenched liberals were doing everything they could to create roadblocks.

Planning and zoning rules that had been used to stop low income housing for decades were being purged along with the planners who were still digging in their heels.

The generals had purged four thousand administrators in California that had taken immovable positions for refusing to accept or implement the changes. The outcome was that thousands of new housing permits and permits for low income developments had been approved.

One well known tech billionaire pledged one billion dollars to the construction fund. He was also advocating other Silicon Valley billionaires do the same. The homeless battle was going to be won - one affordable housing development at a time.

Another result was criminal laws under martial law were being enforced to the letter. Shoplifting that had been rampant by and with organized gangs had stopped. Under the old system they had to steal over seven hundred and fifty dollars’ worth to be arrested. The new system - any amount was enough to go behind bars.

The military judges had no sympathy. When individuals were arrested now they were held instead of being released. The downside - the jails were filling up quickly.

But California was slowly being normalized. It was now safe to walk the streets in San Francisco without being accosted by drug addicts and the homeless. The rioted areas had been cleaned of debris and rebuilding had started.

As with all things it took loans, grants and property tax cuts to motivate the property owners. That was easy to understand after being burned out four times in the last four years. There was growing confidence that it wasn’t going to happen anymore. When there was confidence, banks and businesses were more willing to take a chance.

As expected the powerful unions were filing lawsuits to regain their control of the government. Those unions were going to get a wakeup call from the Justice Department very soon.

Investigators were nearly finished going through the state and politician financial records, plus the politicians in Gitmo had decided it was time to start singing like a canary if it would help reduce jail time. Union officials were soon going to get served with warrants containing hundreds of charges with bribes, payoffs, intimidation and threats against family - and those were only the beginning.

By lunchtime I was done listening, or at least I thought I was - only to be found by Dick James with a large folder.

The Emirs advance team had delivered the general topics they wanted to discuss during his visit starting on Thursday of next week. This was going to be a new area for me. Usually I followed some else’s lead with an outline to follow. Now I had to develop the outline for others to follow.

The result was an intense planning session with Secretary James, General Ingram and others in a full blown cabinet session. I was going outside precedent established boundaries on foreign aid and develop my own. In the process I was going to piss off the UN world soon enough. Ever since the Obama administration, foreign aid needed to be funneled through and coordinated with the UN.

When I signed the budget I ordered a freeze on all payments to the United Nations. Those payments were made through the State Department and part of the State Department budget. It wasn’t enough that we were paying the lion’s share of their operating budget - three times as much as China and twice as much as Russia.

But under the Obama administration during his great apology tours, he had agreed to fund many separate agencies through special grants and grants from the executive - for the lack of a better term - slush fund.

Every time the President promised money for some particular reason that was not coming from ‘say’ disaster relief funds or the agriculture department funds, it came from his discretionary budget. Billions of dollars were allocated in the budget for the fund - same as there were billions in the Congressional slush funds.

It was money that simply went under the table and over the dam to be spent with little public accountability. The Congress was never going to challenge the President’s money because their own fund ran the risk of being exposed. All state and federal agencies and departments ran a slush fund in their budgets. That is why the last month of the year they went on a spending spree - to make sure it was used so it would be replaced in next year’s budget.

Obama ordered funds from his slush fund to be given to the UN as well as money from the State Department, the USDA, NASA, NOAA, the transportation department, even the DOD was on the hook to give funds to the UN under all kinds of peace keeping agreements. Once started, that type of funding always continued.

According to my researchers it added up to seventy five billion above the public disclosed amount we gave to the operating budget.

Two days after I signed the budget, the UN treasurer called and asked when they could expect to receive the funds. He already knew I had frozen them including the operating funds. He also knew US laws regarding our budget and its dispersal as well as anyone.

We received no information on what or where the UN directed funds were spent even when we asked in writing. There was zero accountability from the UN, other than they were always short of money.

China - one of the largest economies in the world - had just received billions in no interest loans from the UN development agency for infrastructure improvements.

China had over a Trillion dollars in cash reserves - they never should have gotten any loans from the UN. It should have been reserved for countries that truly needed infrastructure funding.

When asked, the development agency refused to discuss the issue. There was no accountability and the UN was out of control.

But they did have money to hold massive meetings all over the world - France, Germany, Tokyo, Australia and Africa - with hundreds and sometimes thousands of UN employees as attendees, all expenses paid.

The US was always bashed for one thing or another, the list would take dozens of pages. There had always been anti-American countries in the UN but now they were organized to eliminate the power and influence of the US.