Chapter 10

I shut down the office early; there was little going on other than the media orgy about the ones going to Iran. None of them were happy, for all kinds of reasons.

The Secret Service agents that had been wounded in the Pakistan attack and the attack on the Capitol steps were all back to work now. Several had brought me Soldier of Fortune and various other gun magazines when they came back to work. It was the kind of reading they were doing while they were convalescing.

It was mostly because every issue had some kind of an article on the various terrorist attacks on me and operations that JBG carried out. Filled with information from anonymous sources, it was interesting reading.

There were even articles and breakdown descriptions of the parts of the Glock - my personal weapon of choice - along with performance charts.

It was in these magazines that I became aware on the increased attacks on the Second Amendment by the anti gun crowd, liberal politicians and by liberal states. There had always been those against the second, thinking it would make crime go away.

They were putting pressure on the banks supplying operating capital through boycotts, letter writing campaigns and protests at stockholders’ meetings. It was becoming a serious problem.

Several major banks and credit card companies had shut off all funding and were refusing to process checks and credit cards to the companies and retailers selling ammunition and weapons.

Winchester was long gone, bankrupt, bought and sold and bankrupt again and in receivership. Remington was in the same boat; bankrupt, sold, bought and sold multiple times. A holding company had the patents and buildings and manufacturing equipment.

Ammunition manufactures were no better off. Pressure was being applied from the anti-gun lobby - as usual, blaming the gun and not the person pulling the trigger. As well as environmentalists complaining about lead pollution, trying to use it as a hammer against the industry. They were citing all kinds of things including noise created by firing weapons and shell casings creating trash. All the anti-gun groups were on a mission to close down all shooting ranges, training facilities, gun shops and even now were wanting to close down all hunting in all states.

They were trying to close down all hunting on federal lands but that was going nowhere. I had already vetoed a couple bills trying to get the law forced in by attaching amendments. I let it be known that any and all bills that tried to restrict hunting on federal lands or hunting on private property was DOA at the White House.

I made a note to question Jeanna about the credit card issues. If anyone would know about alternatives, she would. I was sure problems were coming our way at some point. I needed to check with Marcy to see if there were any funds left after she made all the business changes she wanted.

Tuesday morning it was more of the same for Washington; politics was heavy in the air. All the newly elected representatives and senators were making the rounds trying to find out the things they were supposed to be doing and how they were to do it.

Many made the mistake of hiring the staffs of representatives that were defeated in the election. In my opinion they were simply hiring the swamp and it was one more reason nothing ever changed in DC. They all had a song and a dance on how great they were, how many contacts they had and how much they could do for the new rep.

This afternoon I met with the new House and Senate leaders. I presented my agenda for the new Congress. There was to be a new emphasis on nuclear and fossil fuels as backup for solar and wind. I planned to eliminate completely the subsidies for wind and solar.

The government had spent two trillion dollars of tax payer money over the last two decades developing the liberal utopia green dream, only to be caught short on power when needed. It wasn’t working, and the solar panels were failing with age at a much faster rate than predicted. Some were needing to replaced at ten years old when they were supposed to last thirty years.

They weren’t recyclable as promised; landfills were taking thousands of tons of them daily. Yet there were those appointed in the energy department that wanted hundreds of billions more money so for the government to pay for new ones. I had succeeded in the budget just signed to cut the funding by fifty percent and now in next year’s budget I wanted it gone completely.

The wind generators were just as bad. They were unusable in heavy snow, icing and freezing weather even though they were supposed to have heated components. The gear boxes were self destructing, the generators starting fires that were impossible to put out so high in the air.

I gave the leaders a list of my priorities. Reliable electric energy was at the top followed by creating new jobs. Improving our highways was third. Fourth was reducing and in some instances eliminating overbearing government regulations on business.

Another was ending the homeless problem with housing projects copied from the new California, Oregon and Washington State models. The plans were working and I wanted it expanded elsewhere. The streets in California were safe and clean today. The numbers of homeless in the camps were being reduced everyday as they found jobs and affordable housing was being completed.

I wanted an overhaul of the judicial system - not only the Supreme Court but the entire Federal system and all the lower courts as well. I wanted harsh penalties to reduce crime in the streets. The catch and release programs and policies had been miserable failures. All crime was increasing by double digits each year in the cities.

I wanted murder to be a federal crime with only one penalty - death to be carried out in one hundred and eighty days after the trial - with the trial going directly to the Supreme Court for review, side-stepping twenty years of appeals. I wanted it done in a way that no President could stop the process, other than a presidential pardon or a repeal by two different sessions of Congress.

I wanted to maintain our strong defense, but I wanted it smarter. I wanted the funding spent on things that worked. I wanted real accountability from defense contractors and they knew it.

And above all I wanted taxes reduced as business improved and the waste was gone out of government. The savings from December’s final budget cuts were going to save ten trillion dollars over the next ten years. This year’s planned budget changes would make it balanced, I hope.

I failed to understand why the Congress-critters always talked about budget cost or savings over the span of a decade, like there was some magic in it to happen. If there was red ink this year, there would be even more next year, so the decade thing was a joke.

The next four years of my budget were only going to get better as the nuclear weapons were reduced and the troops numbers were reduced along with the base changes. And then there was the wealth tax plus the growth in the economy creating more tax revenue.