WAR (47 page)

“Mr. Wolf, I know Leon, he’s offered to introduce me to all of his friends and to get me tryouts on the school’s sports teams.”

“Sports? Scott, here they play to win, they play tackle football, not soccer, you could get hurt, you could injure someone else. Is this what you want?”

“Mr. Wolf, yes it’s what I want. I want to win, I want to be the best, not one of the same.”

“Sissy, what about you?”

Sharon says, “Leave Sissy out of this discussion. She’s too young, we’ve discussed this before. You aren’t to try to place ideas in our children’s heads or sway our children. You’ve tried to get to us through our children. We’ve seen many of the differences between the LSA and the USA in the week we’ve been here. Frankly we like what we see. Sure, many of the details are different. We’re going to have to learn how to act and speak, we’re going to have to start all over again. We’re OK with that, we’re free of having you watch us 24 hours a day.”

“Sharon, what if something happened to one of you? Who’s going to come to your aid? What about all of the choices you’re going to have to make now?”

“We’ll take our chances, by the way, we like the way the USA tells us all sides of an issue and lets us decide for ourselves.”

Jason says, “I really like not having to worry about a ration card when we go to a restaurant. Do you know that you can order anything on the menu? Hell, if I wanted to, I could order everything on it. No one would say no to me. I’ve eaten things I only remember from when I was a kid. I like that we can paint our house almost any color we want. I also have to tell you I really like their cars.”

Scott adds, “I got a ride in a new Mustang yesterday, WOW, it has 500 HP and almost zero emissions. We went zero to sixty in less than 4 seconds. I loved it. I also saw an auto race on TV, it was amazing.”

“What about the environment? By the way, those cars aren’t safe.”

“Yes they are. It has like fifteen airbags and a computer which applies the brakes automatically if it sees we’re getting too close to another car, it communicates with other cars so we don’t hit each other, it even reads my emails to me and most of it operates from my voice. When we enter the car, the driver places his hands on the steering wheel, it tests his body and determines if he’d consumed drugs or anything else which might impair his driving.”

“Scott, isn’t that like our safety program?”

“No, it’s our choice here if we want to drink or consume liquor, if we do, we shouldn’t drive because we might harm others. This technology keeps the insurance cost lower than ours. They have some safety laws here like ours, they also allow a lot more freedom to make choices. Most of their safety rules are to protect the innocent without placing too many restrictions on the rest of us. I want to stay here. I like it here.”

“What happens if you make the wrong decision?”

“They call that learning. We’re supposed to learn from our mistakes.”

“Scott, don’t you see how much time that wastes?”

Sharon jumps into the conversation, “Wolf, enough. What are you doing here and what do you want from us?”

Their breakfast orders are delivered; the waitress asks Wolf if he wants anything, “I’ll have coffee, orange juice and a bowl of raisin bran with skim milk.”

Jason says, “You should really try the French toast it’s wonderful.”

Sissy says, “I like the chocolate chip pancakes, it’s like eating a large warm cookie for breakfast.”

Wolf shakes his head, “You’re eating too many calories for breakfast, too much sugar, don’t you remember your health classes?”

“We’re enjoying ourselves on a real vacation,” replies Sharon. “I’m the family’s mother, I told them they can order whatever they want. We’re in the process of changing our lives. Wolf, why are you here?”

“I was invited here by the USA to be a host with Sean for the special program. President Booker asked me to accept the offer so I can help you better position the LSA in a good light and offer you a trip home with no repercussions.”

Jason frowns as he chews his breakfast, he sips his coffee saying, “Wolf, we’re going to tell the truth. I can promise you we’re not going to lie. Is that good enough?”

“Jason, whose truth? Truth is different depending on which side of the question you’re looking at.”

“Wolf, truth is truth. All I can promise you is we are going to speak the truth.”

“Jason, if you’re asked how you left the LSA how are you going to respond?”

“We’re not going to respond. We can’t. We signed an NDA. I won’t break my word or a contract I signed.”

“Really? Didn’t you agree when you were selected to represent the LSA on television to speak the virtues of the LSA? Aren’t you now planning on breaking your word?”

“No, I’m not. We’re going to speak the truth. We’re not going to lie, not for you, not for President Booker, who is twisting the LSA’s rules and laws. I’m not sure he didn’t arrange the gas explosion which took President Bloomberg’s life. How can we support a President who arranged the death of his predecessor? Here, that’s called murder. Wolf, the contract we signed was for the original show, there wasn’t a word in it about any followup program. We had a USA lawyer review it.”

“What do you call what President, now VP Brownstone, did? Didn’t he murder tens of thousands to retaliate against terrorists? Aren’t you currently following a murderer?”

Jason’s face turns red, “Wolf, get out and leave us alone. Why don’t you go home?”

“I’ll see you later, I can’t go home, because I’m one of the hosts for the program.”

Sissy says, “Mommy, why did Daddy yell at Mr. Wolf?”

“Honey, he didn’t yell at him, he just told Mr. Wolf that we want to enjoy our breakfast before we go to the studio.”

@@@@@

Vice President Brownstone is leading a group of business advisors, “Ladies and gentlemen, the election is in 59 days, do you have any questions or suggestions of things we can or should be doing?”

The Chairman of the Boeing Company, which moved its headquarters from Washington State to South Carolina, says, “Mr. Vice President, my suggestion is to produce additional videos about the damage unions have done to the workforce in the previous twenty years.”

The President of Ford Motor Company replies, “Jack, I’ll admit they did a good job one hundred years ago, they set in place the protections our workers needed at that time. I agree with you, the last twenty to thirty years they have done more damage than good. They pushed the cost of labor so high we weren’t able to compete in the world markets. We weren’t allowed to shift people from one job to another.”

“I think you should focus on the ramifications of the LSA defaulting. By saying they’re going bankrupt, doesn’t strike a chord with people. Many people have gone bankrupt, they’ve come out of the bankruptcy with a higher credit score and with credit they didn’t have access to when they entered bankruptcy. When these people hear you use the term bankruptcy, they think everything’s going to be much better when the LSA exits from their bankruptcy. Most people have no idea what defaulting on the government’s loans means to them. Your advertising has convinced many people the LSA is going to default, but, when you ask follow up questions, almost none have any idea what it means to them.”    

“Mr. Vice President, as the President of Johnson and Johnson, we had to spend millions relocating from New Jersey to Atlanta, if the two countries reunite are we going to face trials from our old workers who are going to go to court to force us to move back and give them their old jobs back? Sir, we can’t afford to move our headquarters again, we’re not prepared to promise everyone who used to work for us, their old or even a different job. We have moved on. I’d feel a lot better if the Federal Government issues a statement that companies are not going to be held responsible to re-hire previous workers.”

“I see your issue, I promise I’ll speak with the President about this issue, are there similar issues you’re concerned about if we reunite?”

“Mr. Vice President, I’m the VP and General Manager at General Motors, Chevrolet Division, along the same lines as Doug’s, is the Federal Government going to force us to reopen factories and offices we closed when the country split?”

“Don’t you want to expand your dealer network?”

“Dealer network, yes, reopen offices and factories, most likely no. As Doug stated, we moved on. We know how the progressives operate, they’ll agree to anything in order to make a deal, once the deal is made, they forget what they said, while on the other hand they want us to honor current and twelve-year-old contracts which in our minds were voided when the LSA broke away from us. I, for one, don’t want my old workers back. We’ve advanced our processes, our new factories are very automated. We’re all afraid the unions will play nice upfront. When the dust settles, they’ll take all of us to court, they’ll want to represent our new factories without a vote, they’ll want to take up the contracts where they were the day they left with most of the rest of the progressives. If your intention is to sell the rejoining by promising them their high paying jobs back, please don’t do it. If it’s something that you’re planning on, then tell us so we can discuss it.”

“I hear you. It’s something that President Rand hasn’t promised the LSA, I don’t think he will. I’ll respond to you within the week.”

“Mr. Vice President, we don’t want the health care program turned around to the way it was twelve years ago. We’ve proven we can reduce costs and increase coverage by just letting insurance companies sell insurance across state lines, people are now able to get up to twenty quotes to choose from. We’re seeing more people getting coverage with lower costs,” Said the President of the United Health Care Company.

“That’s one I can promise you we’re not going to return to.”

The President of Ford asks, “Are we going to have to build a certain percent of electric cars?”

“No, the market will determine what you build.”

“Thanks, that’s very good to hear since our product line for the next three years is already in our pipeline.”

“In fact, our goal is to allow the market to determine what consumers buy, we don’t want a central clearing house, we’ve found a system that works, we have the lowest unemployment in more than sixty years, our GNP has been growing every year, we’ve paid off more than 90% of our debt, we have built a strong free country.”

“Mr. Vice President, then why are you working so hard to reunite the country?”

“Doug, the LSA is going to go bankrupt, when they do, we’re going to be flooded with refugees, we’re looking at a mess. President Rand and I think the better approach is a phase out of the LSA and a reunification of the United States. We think we can manage the costs, we’ll end up with everyone being free, everyone’s lives will be better off. If they crash and we get flooded, it’s going to upset the apple cart.”

“Mr. Vice President, why not just let them fail? They made their bed, let them live in the mess they made.”

“Doug, there are times I’d like to. However, we’re talking about millions of families. Remember the long cold winter when they ran out of heating oil for the North East, they kept saying Global Warming was going to negate the need for a lot of home heating oil, they blew that, if we hadn’t stepped in thousands would have died.”

“Sir, that’s why they can play around, they know we’ll step in to save them.”

“Doug, remember we haven’t responded to their invasion yet. We haven’t ruled out responding at a time of our choosing, I promise you, if we think President Booker is playing games with the election we will respond with a vengeance.”

Chapter 35

President Booker issues a formal protest against using The Blaze Studios in Dallas saying they are owned by Glenn Back and hence they support the USA. President Booker is worried The Blaze staff may have left things behind which would have an impact on the program. President Rand agrees to move the studio location. Wolf and Sean review the list of potential studios, they realize there’s really only one studio large enough and not already booked they can use, the WOLF station in Raleigh, North Carolina. They approach the station’s General Manager, who quickly agrees. Sean calls an Air Force plane to fly everyone back to North Carolina.

The staff at WRAZ, the Raleigh-Durham WOLF News Network, is rushing to prepare their studio for the upcoming program with the Smith and Jones families when Sean arrives at the station. The General Manager quickly jogs to the front to personally greet the President’s Press Secretary. “Mr. Bradley, thank you very much for allowing us to use your studio.”

“Sean, thank you for asking, it’s our pleasure. Let me show you our preparations to see if you want any changes.”

“I’m sure everything will be fine.”

The two walk into the station's studio, Sean looks around smiling, “Mr. Bradley, this is perfect. Thank you so much for building the set so quickly. I hope we didn’t alter your plans too much. I know the President thanks you for going out of your way to build the studio and providing the camera crews for the show.”

“Sean, it’s our pleasure. Thank you for selecting our little studio. It’s going to give us a lot of publicity. Our news crew is overjoyed you selected us. They ran a special showing the rebuilding of the studio in a day.”