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President
Bush Announces
Restructuring
of USA
By
David
Krieger
President, The
Nuclear Age Peace Foundation
TFF associate
January 25, 2002
In a surprise announcement, President Bush has called
for a restructuring that would convert the United States
of America into a wholly owned subsidiary of the
Department of Defense. "This will be a good move for both
sides," the President said. "It will give the Defense
Department what they want and it will make the American
people feel more secure."
The new entity will be known as the Department of
Defense USA (NYSE symbol: DOD). Mr. Bush said that under
the new structure he would remain on as president, while
Donald Rumsfeld, currently Secretary of Defense, would
assume the position of Chairman and Dick Cheney would
continue as CEO.
The president announced that an important step toward
achieving this goal would be to turn over another $48
billion to the Defense Department in fiscal 2003, raising
their annual budget to nearly $400 billion. This comes on
the heels of a $33.5 billion increase for fiscal 2002.
The president also announced his intention to raise the
budget for Homeland Security to $25 billion. "Our first
priority is the military, our highest calling," Mr. Bush
said.
The president likened the arrangement to a gated
community for wealthy homeowners. "We're rich," he said,
"and there are a lot of people that don't like us for
that. We need to protect ourselves from the people who
don't like us and are evil. The best way to do that is
with our military forces, meaning our brave men and women
with missiles, camouflage outfits and other defense
stuff. These people are protecting us and they deserve a
bigger ownership stake."
The president referred to a recently released study by
a senior World Bank economist that found that the richest
one percent of the world population earn as much as the
poorest 57 percent. In bolstering his argument, the
president pointed out that the poorest ten percent of
Americans are still better off than two-thirds of the
world's population.
"We can't exactly build Great Wall around America like
the one they have in China," the president stated,
"although we can sort of put one up in the sky to keep
out the missiles of evil people. We can also give enough
money and power to our military that we won't need to
build a Great Wall, which would be costly and take
resources away from the education of our children."
Wall street reacted favorably to the president's
proposed restructuring. Said one analyst, "This
reorganization has been needed for a long time. It really
only recognizes the reality of the situation."
[For the record, in case this sounds too close to
reality, it is not yet true, except for the president's
quote in paragraph 3, his intention to raise the Pentagon
budget by $48 billion and the Homeland Security budget to
$25 billion, and the World Bank expert's figures on
income disparity. The United States is not yet, in fact,
officially a wholly owned subsidiary of the Department of
Defense.]
©
TFF & the author 2002
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