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Lead Story
by Earl Coleman

SPECIAL REPORT
New York Times, Jan 2, 2011

In another sweeping Edict (427), vacating a previous responsibility of government, the Bush Administration today closed down the FCC. This is the latest Governmental Agency to be terminated, following on the heels of the SEC, the FDA, and the ATF, all of which were abolished shortly after President Bush was elected for an unprecedented third term, pursuant to a controversial fiat by Chief Justice Clarence Thomas overturning a prior ban on third terms.

Spokespersons for the Bush Administration, interviewed off the record, said they expected protests on the FCC closure from the “usual pointy-heads and old-economy leftovers.” Foreign governments have thus far refused comment on how this might impact them, citing insufficient time to study this latest ruling. Since Presidential Edicts have had the force of law following the elections of 2008 and the ensuing acrimonious struggle in the Senate, the termination of the FCC as an Agency will be effective at midnight, January 31.

Pat Buchanan and Trent Lott, co-Secretaries emeritus of the Office of Realignment and Redistribution, (R&R, formerly known as the State Department), joined with Chairman Ralph Reed in hailing Edict 427 as “one more evidence of this Administration’s determination to shrink government’s stranglehold on the people of this republic, . . . and . . . a bold step to reaffirm free speech, the place of religion in every day life, and States' Rights . . . the very cornerstones of what the Founders had in mind when they wrote our Constitution.”

This latest ruling (an integral part of the unfolding conservative agenda), has now placed almost all responsibility for governance as it was practiced at the turn of this century “in local jurisdictions which are familiar with the problems of governance close up, as the Washington elitists can never know them,” as one spokesperson said, thus leaving the remaining responsibilities of the Federal Government vastly different from what they were during the first Bush (George W’s) Administration when he came to office in a close election in 2000, also requiring Supreme Court intervention.

Administrative spokespersons also shrugged off the remarks of critics who have posited that rather than shrinking, the Government has grown enormously since that time, with the addition of dozens of sprawling new agencies, many of them newsmakers on their own account. The teams of lawyers for the Reproductive Obligations Bureau (ROB), for example, have been extremely busy for the past two years, with further hearings currently pending before many legislative Committees and the Supreme Court itself. Similarly, the Environmental Exploitation Agency has one of the largest legal teams in the world in constant litigation, now that Presidential Edict 329 has endowed it with the right to claim by eminent domain all land which may hold potential for important oil or mineral discoveries, or to place thereon new electric transmission lines, enabling the agency to sequester private properties (all public lands having previously come under its jurisdiction, in an intensified and continuing effort to ease the energy crisis.)

Rumors had been circulating for some weeks that the Bush Administration was particularly eager to curtail the negative coverage it has been receiving by the network news departments concerning the two-month-old Morality in America Agency, (MAA) networks fearing that this agency, with its sweeping authority and powers, would put in jeopardy their airing of various programs, including several nude shows, which have developed a large audience. When Edict 427 is in place it is expected that Attorney General Dan Quayle will move immediately to monitor and perhaps ban many of the proliferating programs which have sexually explicit themes, as well as certain shows which have run for decades (like "Saturday Night Live"), because they have “held the Bushes and other conservatives up to ridicule,” as one spokesperson said.

The stock market seems to have taken these developments in stride, the Dow still trading above 100,000, and Nasdaq rising to a new high of 35,000. It is perceived by many market watchers and investors that the continuing wars in Africa over the quarantining of the 30 million persons with AIDS, the nation-building wars in Greater Israel and the Balkans, as well as the militarizing of all Central and South America now ruled by their respective armed forces, will actually serve to bolster bond and securities prices, as “the safest havens on earth,” as Michael Millken, the head of Merrill Lynch, remarked, especially after the dramatic rapprochement and newly declared partnership between the former Russia and the People’s Republic of China, (which some in the financial world have termed a hostile takeover), created as Russia was teetering on the brink of collapse. The Pentagon is on full alert because of this new alliance, and its budget has been raised to one and a half trillion dollars for fiscal 2012, approximately quadruple what it was only ten years ago, much of the budget assigned to the troubled Missile Shield Program.

On another economic note, the legislatures of each State, including the newly admitted States of Mexico and Puerto Rico, have passed emergency tax laws, now that the federal government has stopped funding governance programs entirely, forcing state governments to carry the full burdens of education, health, public welfare, workplace safety, etc., while paying the governmental tithe of 10% of Gross State Production (a two-year-old law sponsored by Senator Orrin Hatch prior to his leaving office suddenly for unexplained reasons, some conjecturing his leaving being related to his alleged past involvement in various Olympic Games, and others to his marriage to a fifth wife and his need to supervise personally the erection of the wing in the building of a new complex to accommodate his wives, some of their parents and twenty-three of his children not yet gone out on their own).

The Democrat Wing of the Republican Party has thus far refrained from criticizing Edict 427, as they have refrained from criticism of prior edicts since their merger into the Republican Party. They seem to be in an anomalous situation, on the one hand a coalition almost unchanged from their previous status when they were the Democratic Party, and on the other hand the bulwark for many of the Bush Administration’s initiatives as they come up for vote. The effect has been disastrous for Democrats at the polls, since in the 2008 election when 33% of the electorate voted, those running as Democrats received less than 45% of the votes cast. A commission assembled by the Bush Administration is studying the relationship of affluence and poverty and the potential for its causality for the lowest voter turnout ever recorded.

This story was first published in Mobius, October, 2002, under the title "Special Report."

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© Copyright 2002 by Earl Coleman. All rights reserved.
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emc@stubbornpine.com.