Chapter 312: We Become Very Rich

Late-May to Thursday August 10, 2006 (Continued)

Once the Government was dancing to our tune nicely, our lawyer sent the other side the "Mark Anderson Memorial Bill" - the bill we wanted passed into law. It had two sections:

1. "Citizens Betrayed by their Government".

2. "Honest Government Employees".

"Honest Government Employees" is easy to explain so I'll give it first. Once enacted, if someone is an employee of a State or Federal Government when they commit, are charged with, or are convicted of a crime, then the duration of their incarceration and value of their fine are to be increased by 50%. A mechanism was specified to make sure judges didn't under-sentence such people to offset the 50% increase. The stated purpose of the section was "The Government recognizes that its employees have greater than normal power over the lives of citizens, and therefore greater opportunity to do more harm, as they did to Mark Anderson. It is therefore necessary to discourage persons with criminal intent from seeking Government employment, and once so employed, to discourage all such persons from committing crimes."

Our lawyers' solution to the tax exemption was imaginative. Tax law allows individuals to appoint agents to do their tax returns for them (usually accountants), but the individuals are still liable for any mistakes made in the returns, EVEN when the agent is an employee of the IRS! In other words, if the IRS does your tax return for you, and gets it wrong, then the IRS can penalize you for 'your' mistake, while their employee and organization itself have no liability at all!

It turned out to be fairly easy to create a new legally recognized department within the IRS: the "Tax Exempt Citizens Department" (TECD), and to modify the law so that if the TECD made a mistake on a tax return they had completed on behalf of an individual, then the IRS employee who made the mistake and the IRS itself would continue not to be liable, AND the individual concerned would also not be liable. In other words, no one would be. I'd like to make a joke here about how easy it is for the Government to think of ways of being unaccountable, but the new law was written by our lawyers. Maybe they'd been in DC long enough to absorb the culture of the place.

To describe it somewhat simplistically, the TECD would almost be a fictional department, in that it'd have no staff for 364 days of the year. On the remaining day, someone would be given the job of filling out tax returns for the list of "Citizens Betrayed by their Government" (the twelve members of "The Family"). He'd write zeroes everywhere, stamp the forms "Completed by the Tax Exempt Citizens Department of the Internal Revenue Service", then mail the returns to the citizens to sign and then file with the IRS as if they were normal returns. In reality it wouldn't be a one-day-a-year as described, but would work much the same as it does with accountants, so whenever we needed a personal IRS return of any nature done, we'd ask the TECD to do it for us - it just wouldn't take them very long.

It was an inelegant process because we'd be filing returns that were known to be wrong, but it was the easiest solution we wanted. If all we'd wanted was tax exemption, there easier ways or the TECD-creating legislation could have stopped there, but Vanessa had other ideas. Vanessa wanted the "Citizens Betrayed by their Government List" to be expandable beyond the twelve members it'd be created with, so she could use it as something that could reliably and repeatedly bring the Government's abuses to the public's attention.

It was VERY easy to imagine all sorts of people trying to get on "Don't Have To Pay Tax List" (say, for example, politicians), but according to the Mark Anderson Memorial Bill, to be added to the list required the person to:

• Have suffered an egregious and significant loss caused by illegal actions carried out by State or Federal Government employees abusing the powers of their positions, and

• To be an American citizen, and

• Had never worked for State or Federal Government, in either an elected or non-elected capacity (however, see note below), and

• The Membership Committee (initially the twelve foundation members) had to approve each addition. The Membership Committee could also remove members if they deem it appropriate.

• The number of non-foundation members on the list could not increase by more than 52 per calendar year (dual justification for the value of 52 were its roughly equaling either one person per week or per state, although those were really just cute and meaningless excuses for having a fairly high number).

Note: The "No Government Employees" provision turned off on a state-by-state (or federal, counting that as a 'state') basis if either:

• Five years had passed with no one being added to the list as a result of abuses carried out by employees of that state (or federal), or

• After an initial period of five years to build up the statistical base, the state (or federal) with the fewest "Betrayed Citizens" would have its employees qualify to be included. In the case of a tie, the winning state would be the one with the greatest time since the last "Betrayal".

Letting individual states have their employees qualify for possible tax exemption was ostensibly as a reward for them doing a much better job of restraining abuse than other states, but it was really just another inspiration for publicity Vanessa could create about good versus bad state governments.

The Membership Committee was to determine their own meeting rules, succession process, etc. This was to be a CITIZENS committee, "of the people, by the people, for the people", to redress the harm already caused by the Government. The Membership Committee were to have the power of veto over any future amendments to the "Citizens Betrayed by their Government" law, to protect it from Government interference.

To put it mildly, the Government's lawyers' eyebrows went up when they read the proposed bill. They passed it onto their client, whose eyebrows mimicked the first group's, while its collective mouths said, "Who the fuck do they think they are?"

Our lawyer had included a paragraph in his cover letter pointing out that there was a routine bill about to return for its final reading, "so adding the Mark Anderson Memorial Bill as a rider to that would see it passed into law within a couple of days." A suggestion which drew another, "Who the FUCK do they think they are!"

So the Government's lawyer called our lawyer to express, "We're surprised by the wide-ranging suggestions you sent us."

"I'm surprised that you're surprised. Haven't you realized that the Andersons want to create an appropriate legacy for their son?"

"I understood that the foundation was to be his legacy."

"His parents thought Government employees should be discouraged from kidnapping and murdering other children, and if the Government did commit such egregious acts, those families should be exempt from having to fund the existence of that Government, the same as my clients will be. Those sound reasonable to me. My clients are very moral people, and they can easily feel for other people in similar situations to themselves."

"That's what the courts are for. If someone has a grievance they can sue, as your clients are well aware."

"As you are well aware, many people don't have the stomach for that, especially when they're distraught. Even if they can start it, that process usually takes years because the Government almost never admits liability and fights all the way. Under the Andersons' structure, the victims can be granted tax exemption immediately. If they later win a major settlement, the Membership Committee can revoke their membership if it deems someone else is more deserving or in need."

The Government's lawyer had several other objections, all of which were easily countered. His final objection was, "But things aren't done that way."

"They weren't before, but they will be soon. Either when your client passes that bill, or when my clients win their case and gain enough leverage over the Federal Government to force its passage, along with whatever else they've thought of during the years of legal battles. By then they'll be even more strongly motivated to make sweeping changes to ensure that the Federal Government takes responsibility for its actions.

^-- "You should know my clients well enough by now to know that if someone does something wrong, they'll be required to make good appropriately and to a greater extent than the harm they originally caused. That's why the settlement agreement now includes forfeiture of the vehicles used in the crimes, together with the additional penalties of making your client replace the emergency vehicles in Corvallis and pay for The Family's using their jets. If your client tries to avoid its responsibilities by fighting a pointless legal delaying action, then my clients are likely to develop a very imaginative list of ways the Government will have to make good."

"I'll get back to you."

The Government was, by then, even more firmly entrenched in its opinions. How DARE citizens want control over their taxes! That was a terrible precedent! (They'd forgotten about the American War of Independence.)

Our lawyer received another call from the Government's lawyer, "My client isn't willing to submit the Mark Anderson Bill as is. If it was changed to..."

"First, its name is the 'Mark Anderson MEMORIAL Bill'. Second, if you change a single comma it won't matter whether you enact it or not. I explained that to you very carefully several days ago. For obvious reasons, including the President's being caught intending to cheat on the settlement, my clients don't trust the Government so they won't trust any changes it makes. Settlement won't move forward unless you pass the bill as is."

The Government wasn't going to pass my bill in its current form, or anything like it, so it sat on its ass doing nothing. There was no need to act quickly, and the politicians knew that problems often went away if they were ignored for long enough.

That didn't apply to problems being caused by Vanessa. She gave the Government three weekdays to prove they were doing nothing, then my families publicly released the "Mark Anderson Memorial Bill". Vanessa is a senior lecturer in ethics, she cared very much about the bill, and she'd had plenty of time to prepare for going public about it - including many hours of discussing it with selected colleagues, refining her arguments down to very sharp, effective points - so she DESTROYED the Government's attempt to rationalize their refusal to pass the bill.

Vanessa had been involved in many interviews over the last few months, and had made many points, but they'd nearly always been isolated, quick comments. Most had deliberately been sound-bite morsels. In the debate over the Mark Anderson Memorial Bill, Vanessa showed her true mettle for the first time, and she blasted the Government out of the water, making anyone who spoke up about the issue look like pathetic, whiny, irresponsible little brats. Every argument they tried to raise - or the reporter raised in anticipation - Vanessa shot down in flames with killer comebacks.

Public opinion was, of course, highly in favor of the bill. Tax exemption for citizens who'd been horrendously abused by the Government was a VERY easy sell; and even the +50% on sentencing was salable. There was some reluctance about that, but as Vanessa said, "The only people it'll harm are criminals and it'll protect the rest of us by making government employees less likely to commit crimes."

Vanessa had more to say: "We're FORCED to trust government employees. If you don't like your phone provider, you can change carriers. But you have no choice when it comes to the Government. If YOU are required to trust them, then THEY must be required to be trustworthy. That's commonsense. Otherwise they could pick your son off the street just because he's suspiciously smart. Or maybe your daughter because she's suspiciously pretty. Maybe she's so beautiful that our delusional Homeland Security people think she can't be human. That sounds like a stupid joke, but over a hundred people were told that Mark was suspected of having mind control powers, and not one of them blew the whistle on that insanity, so they're obviously highly paranoid delusional people.

^-- "If your sons and daughters are accosted by a member of the public, they can scream for the cops. But if they are taken by a cop, what can they do? Mark Anderson was raised to trust the police, and by extension, Homeland Security agents. When they asked him to get in their car, he went with them. Because he trusted them, they took him to his death. We MUST protect ourselves and our children from untrustworthy government employees. We're not being responsible parents if we don't do everything we can to ensure that government employees are the most honest people possible.

^-- "What horrifies me is that our Government is refusing to pass our bill because it wants to protect CRIMINALS! It doesn't care that there are hundreds of DHS and CIA people that turned a blind eye to kidnapping a child and performing horrendous medical experiments on him. No, the Government's only concern is getting its criminally guilty employees out of jail faster.

^-- "They say they'll have trouble getting enough staff if working for the Government exposes people to longer jail terms. My answer to that is 'Thank God!' The people who're put off working for the Government for that reason are EXACTLY the people we want to be put off. People who're worried about their committing a crime even before they start their jobs are FAR TOO dangerous to be let into positions where we're forced to trust them. I figure if the Government lost half its employees, but the remaining workers were all honest, then our country would be a much better place to live. Dishonest people cause far more trouble and misery than they're worth, so I say 'Good riddance to them!"

The public responded very well to Vanessa's points.

Vanessa also had fun when one politician was stupid enough to say, "Our prison system is already overcrowded and costing us too much. We can't afford to have prisoners stay even longer."

"That's a remarkably short-sighted and naïve view, even for a politician. People commit crimes when they give in to the temptation of an opportunity. Being in a position of trust and power creates FAR more opportunities and temptations, so it results in more crimes. By scaring criminally minded people away from Government work, they'll be less tempted, there'll be LESS crime, therefore LESS pressure on the prison system. That's what 'disincentive' means.

^-- "If you're still confused, think about Robert Moran. If he hadn't worked for the Government, he wouldn't have wanted to kidnap Mark or been able to order other criminally minded Government employees to do it for him. That crime wouldn't have happened and there'd be one hundred fewer people heading for jail."

Another of Vanessa's points was, "You say you're concerned about the increased money required to run the prison system. As a direct result of the Government letting the DHS and CIA behave criminally, the Andersons are now suing the Government for $242 trillion. You could DOUBLE the number of prisons in the entire country for the cost of that one lawsuit, and still have $241 trillion left over. But I forget; you're a politician. You don't care if a few years from now our sons and daughters are being kidnapped, stripped naked, experimented on and murdered, just so long as you can look good by keeping within your budget this year."

The public loved the tax exemption idea, but there were still attempts to criticize it. A 'hard hitting journalist' (i.e., one that makes annoyingly aggressive accusations), annoyingly and aggressively accused Vanessa: "You and your so-called committee could take bribes to give people tax exemptions."

"We COULD. We could also NOT take bribes. Did your comment have a point?"

"What's to stop you selling tax exemptions to the highest bidder?"

"My sense of morality, my desire not to let my family and friends down, my desire to perform a socially important function to the best of my ability, my desire to help people in need who've been betrayed by our government, my desire to leave an enduring legacy behind me when I die, my lack of interest in acquiring more money, my strong desire not to spend my final years in jail, my desire to shame the Government into lifting its standard of behavior so the lives of millions of Americans are improved. I can see you're not doing me the courtesy of listening to my answer, so I'll stop."

"None of those reasons stop you taking bribes."

"To the contrary, every one of those reasons stops me. Your sense of morality may not stop you selling yourself out because of your greed, but mine does. Do you want to keep playing posturing games about how important you must be because you're so unpleasant, or would you like me to answer the question you're too busy to ask?"

"What question?"

Vanessa recited: "'What safeguards will you be putting in place, Mrs. Williams, to ensure that the process of choosing members is fair and honest?' Is that the question you would've asked if you hadn't been too busy being insulting?"

"So what'll the safeguards be?"

"I'm glad you asked that question. It's the most intelligent thing you've said all interview." The cameraman chuckled. "The short answer is 'People like you.' Not too much like you I hope, but other members of the press and the public. All meetings of the Citizens Betrayed by their Government Committee will be open to the public, we'll have webcams streaming our meetings live for anyone in the world to watch, and all our minutes and other documentation will be available online. Applicants will have to agree that everything we have about them will be made public because we won't tolerate important decisions being made based on secret information. In particular, the meetings we hold to choose who to give tax exemptions to will be in public and our voting will be open so everyone can see our individual votes.

^-- "We have a large responsibility and we wish the public to see us carrying it out. We'll be doing our best to choose the most appropriate beneficiaries, but if people disagree with our processes or priorities, we'd like to hear about it so we can reexamine our approach. We want to accurately reflect our country's values. Making choices between people who've suffered greatly will be a heart-rending experience and it'll be difficult to maintain the right balance between emotional and rational perspectives, so having the media's and public's feedback will be appreciated.

^-- "We're not the Federal Government so we won't be having our discussions and votes in secret behind closed doors. We won't be ashamed of how we act or of our decisions. What we'll be doing will be important for our country, so we will be ensuring that everyone who wants to will be able to see it happening, including seeing that the process is fair and honest. Ensuring our transparency and accountability will cost us a considerable amount of our own money and time, and no doubt lead to our receiving abuse from people who disagree with us, but that's something we knew would be required when we decided to volunteer for this role.

^-- "As you saw from the copies of the bill that we passed out, the Membership Committee will be empowered to establish its own rules and procedures for its meetings. One of those procedures will be to invite guest members to help us reach our decisions. They will have access to all the information we have, will sit at the table and will have a full vote in the decisions. We're particularly looking forward to inviting some of our critics from time to time, to see how they enjoy being in one of the hot seats. We're also eager to invite others who might be better at the job than we are. Maybe we'll be able to learn from them, or maybe they'll take over from some of us, in which case we'd pay for their time out of our own pockets.

^-- "There are many other ideas we have for making this work as well as it deserves, but you have to remember that so far the Government is adamantly refusing to give up its right to force everyone to pay taxes, even though the fifty two people we're talking about each year will have had their rights trampled on by the Government. We're doing our best to talk the Government into recognizing that they have a moral obligation to make good to people they've wronged, but it's extremely difficult to talk the Government into behaving morally. Nearly all of the senior Government people do their utmost to avoid taking responsibility for their mistakes, which is unfortunately the essential first step in developing a sense of personal morality. It's looking like we'll have to wait until the appeals in our case have run their course, and we finish in the Supreme Court about three years from now. Then we'll have enough power over the Government to force it to enact the legislation we want."

Vanessa's ideas amazed the reporters, resulting in many excited follow-up questions. Only one is worth commenting on, about the youth of some of the Committee's foundation members.

Vanessa answered, "We hadn't forgotten that. When the youngsters think they're ready for it, they'll join us around the conference table. They'll participate in the discussions and will vote, but their votes won't be counted. All of their words and actions will be transparent and accountable, so the Committee and the public will be able to judge when the youngsters are ready to have their votes count. They'll be able to judge their own readiness too.

^-- "They'll be making important decisions, so they need to be prepared for the responsibility. In my daughter Julia's case, I wouldn't expect that to take long because I've often brought my work home and discussed ethical issues with her. She's better prepared for ethical debate than most of the students who graduate my classes. Donna clearly needs to mature for a few more years before she could be ready to participate. Other than the Government's stealing her brother, she thinks the greatest crime it's committing is not giving everybody their own pony, so it'd be best give her a few more years yet."

Another point Vanessa made VERY explicit, "The Government has tried to get us to agree to an as yet unwritten set of modifications to the Mark Anderson Memorial Bill. We've told them in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that we trust them less than the distance my old, one-legged husband can throw the White House. The President has already been caught intending to cheat on the agreement, so we're sure that if they change the bill it'll be something dishonest. If they change a single word of it, then they'd better change the name of the bill too, because we'll dissociate ourselves from it. They KILLED Mark, so we're not going to let them twist his legacy to suit their political agendas. The bill is for the PEOPLE, not for the politicians."

Most of the media and pretty much all of the public loved it. Commentators were immediately excited about the form of democracy it offered. Totally transparent and accountable "Citizens Committees" made up of people as impressive as Vanessa Williams sounded might solve many of the ills that plagued modern politics. The enthusiastic endorsements that opinion immediately received (everything is "immediate" in modern TV reportage; there's no time for thought) sent icy chills blasting up AND down politicians' backs. Up and down their fronts too, it was that serious! The second-to-last thing they needed was politically naïve civilians making important policy decisions. The LAST thing they needed was for transparent and accountable decision-making to catch on. That'd RUIN the way the politicians preferred to operate!

Despite the chilly blasts, the Democrats loved the bill. They weren't going to have any real power for three years yet, which was too far away to worry about. Political opposition is all about making life hard for those in power, not worrying about the consequences of your actions. Vanessa had said the President was immorally refusing to take responsibility for his administration's actions, therefore the Democratic Party - "the MORAL party!" - would prove how moral they were by submitting the Mark Anderson Memorial Bill themselves. They dropped it unchanged into "the hopper" and moved urgency on it, thus starting the process to make it law.

That left the Republicans with a tricky problem. Whether to smile sweetly and vote the bill speedily through the enactment process as if they'd always intended to, to delay it, modify it, or kill it. The problem was that for the first time they'd gotten sight of what Vanessa was intending to do in the future, and it wasn't to sit in the sun in Florida playing canasta. Vanessa & Co. were going to be creating recurring bad publicity for the Government. Four aspects decided the Republican's minds:

1. Fighting the bill would be politically expensive.

2. What Vanessa would be uncovering in the future would just be human drama domestic politics, and none of the inner-circle cared about that stuff. Some of the public would care, but the public could usually be pushed around or ignored, and they'd fall all over themselves with gratitude when the price of gasoline reduced (not too much though) after America gained control of large oil reserves and turned the taps on the correct amount.

3. Whatever screw-ups Vanessa's group uncovered would be easy to spin. The Administration could effectively say, "Thank you VERY much for bringing this misbehavior by a junior nobody to our attention. We'll fire him and fix the problem right away." They could even do what they said - an unusual situation in politics - because it'd be occurring far enough from the Beltway not to touch anyone important (i.e., them). Vanessa's group would do their thing, someone of middling seniority would smile for a quick photo opp', thank them for providing such a wonderful service to the country, then appoint someone junior to fix the screwups while everybody important carried one with the real work. A day later, it'd be old news.

4. Bush's inner-circle REALLY wanted to get their realpolitik back on track. The invasion of Iraq had been only their first major step of a grander plan to control the Middle East's oil production, but it'd become horribly bogged down. Now this nonsense over a single missing boy was causing a totally disproportionate loss of international credibility and influence. A period of stability was needed to rebuild Bush's and America's ability to manipulate the world's opinions in the desired directions. If passing the bill was what it took to get the settlement done, then so be it. They certainly didn't want the last three years of Bush's term to be full of our case's progress through the courts, with the international loss of prestige that'd cause. For the next step in Cheney's plan to succeed, America needed to be able to claim that its way of life ("Democracy! Yay, yay!") was better than Iran's. Better to get the scandals settled, and when Vanessa's little human dramas were uncovered, the Government could leap to fix them, claiming they demonstrated how wonderful democracy-in-action was.

So the Republicans joined the Democrats in supporting the Mark Anderson Memorial Bill, and a few days later the tip of Vanessa's iceberg became law. The Mark Anderson Foundation would be able to publicize governmental corruption and abuses all year long, pushing for the offenders to be prosecuted with the +50% penalties and granting victims tax exemptions whenever a particularly bad case arose. And near the end of every calendar year, just in time for Christmas, there'd be a well-publicized allocation of any of the fifty two remaining annual exemptions, and stories comparing how the different states were ranked for how many of their citizens they'd abused into tax exemption status. With those legal powers, billions of dollars in its coffers, and Vanessa running it, MAF was going to become a significant force for good.

As our bill was being enacted, the Government's lawyer called ours. As usual, to check how things were progressing.

Our lawyer responded, "I'm constantly amazed at how good your client is at damaging its position. I took it upon myself to write the bill for you because my clients didn't trust your suggestions. Instead of your client's quickly enacting the bill exactly as written so it could gain credibility and goodwill in my clients' eyes, your client refused, annoying the Andersons even further. Now the Democrats have forced the issue so the bill's going to get passed anyway AND your client has lost credibility as well. How can your client be so expert at doing precisely the wrong thing time after time?

^-- "The one thing my client's most want is to have their son's body returned to them, and your client can't even do that. We're preparing the papers now for an application to the court ordering the CIA to return Mark's body to his grieving family. The family has waited too long for that, and further delay isn't credible. We'll be filing those tomorrow.