Presidential Q&A

Miller, from Henderson, Nevada, writes:

Q: Hey Charlie. I am 80, so your politics and mine agree well. I am curious about who your top five presidents are in history. You like Jefferson and Truman, I’ve read that. But who are the others? Tell me whom your best presidents were and what they did for the country?

A: Miller, I’ve mentioned more than 5 great Presidents, but here’s my list, in chronological order.

1) George Washington

Father of our country, and winning general in our War for Independence against the Brits—‘nuff said.

2) John Adams

Leader of our Declaration of Independence, and designer of the Massachusetts Bay Colony Constitution which was incorporated in our 1787 Constitution. As second President he had a heavy hand in designing and building Washington D.C., and temporarily kept us out of a devastating new second war with the Brits during our vulnerable infancy, when we were financially bankrupt (before Alexander Hamilton); a small navy; and no standing army.

3) Thomas Jefferson

Drafter of our Declaration of Independence and our Constitution, and as third President purchased our Louisiana, Midwest and Northwest lands from Napoleon for a song - tripling our country overnight. He was the truest revolutionary genius our nation has ever known.

4) James Monroe

Gave us the Monroe Doctrine, which told European powers to stay the hell out of “our” Western hemisphere—gutsy stuff, considering our very weak Navy and Army. Well, he bluffed it through and they stayed away from any further “New World” conquests until Spain tested us unsuccessfully at the turn of the last century in the Spanish-American War.

5) Andrew Jackson

Winning front-line general at the Battle of New Orleans, the definitive death knell for the Brits, who had razed D.C. and were otherwise winning the War 0f 1812. “Old Hickory” founded the Democrat Party and started the “spoils system”, which gave Presidents the power to kick out the old guard and replace them with loyal supporters—a quantum leap in Presidential power, which was sorely lacking at the time.

6) Abraham Lincoln

Forced to adopt Caesarean powers to save our Union, the greatest of which was voiding Constitutional States’ Rights, including secession. “Honest Abe” settled that issue at the cost of more than a million Yanks and Rebs killed or maimed—gutsy guy, above and beyond the abolition of slavery, which played little practical part in our Civil War, and would take another century to implement, in the form of 1960's "desegregation."

(7) Theodore Roosevelt

Combat Captain in the charge up San Juan Hill in the Spanish-American War, and later as President, "Teddy" didn't take any shit from anyone. "Walk softly and carry a big stick" was his mantra, and this advice has served every other President for the past century (except for battle wimps like Obama).

(8) Franklin Delano Roosevelt

Teddy's cousin, stricken in his prime by polio, but otherwise a giant among our Presidents - not because of his Great Depression Socialist programs, which in hindsight relieved relatively little social pain amongst Americans with 25% unemployment during the 30's.

FDR's lasting glory is in winning World War II, the greatest threat we have known since Revolutionary and then Civil War times. He had to use every subterfuge and every guile in his quiver to defeat Hitler and Tojo as well as the conservative isolationist U.S. Congress, when he decided to back Churchill and the Brits to the hilt.

(9) Harry Truman

Came to power as a lost puppy, but quickly became a ferocious German Shepherd by dropping a couple of A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. All of a sudden, Tojo was out and Emperor Hirohito back in as historical god/commander of 90 million Japanese. Hirohito surrendered forthwith, and Harry assigned Pacific Commander Doug MacArthur to rule Japan - he had already assigned European Commander "Ike" Eisenhower to rule Europe, and Patton to rule conquered Germany.

But Harry's lasting legacy is his Midwestern tenaciousness against a New Republican conservative Congressional majority and a new enemy which Patton was ready to march against - Soviet Russia. He started off with his "Truman Doctrine" regarding American supremacy in the Mediterranean Sea, which meant absolute protection for Greece and Turkey; including C.A.R.E. packages and Marshall Plan financing for Europe; and a 24-hour airlift for the cut-off Berlin in the Winter of 1948, which might have touched off WWIII. Harry played the same bourbon-backed poker cards in the Summer of 1950, when he told Doug MacArthur to stop the North Koreans and their Chinese allies - gutsy stuff against 4 to 1 odds, which might have touched off WWIII, had he not canned MacArthur and Doug's plan to nuke China back to the Stone Age.

(10) Ronald Reagan

Our most elderly President, he took the 50-year Cold War and ran with the football - just as he had on film 50 years earlier as Notre Dame's "Gipper." No question where this President stood - "full speed ahead and damn the Russkies." Ronnie knew the heart of America like no President before or since - he came eyeball with Gorbechev, and "Gorby" blinked, as they had once before when Jack Kennedy stared down Kruschev in Cuba.

Bottom line, Ronnie won the 50-year Cold War - as great a victory as Yorktown two centuries earlier and then WWII, and gave us command of our small planet in no certain terms.

Miller, we don't get these guys every time around - they are relatively few and far between. But not to fret, they have always been there when our country needs them most, and they always win, backed by our indomitable spirit.

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Rebecca, a 2nd year Harvard Law School student, writes:

Q: Mister Speer, I just can’t believe you have come up with an “idiot-proof” 2-page tax code, which you refer to continually but never enunciate in legal language. Are you just teasing us, or just conning us?

A: I trust neither is true, Rebecca. My lame excuse is that I don’t have a license to practice law; and very few lawyers have a license to certify financial statements, as I do. But you’ve challenged me, so I’ll give it my best shot in 2 paragraphs—not 2 pages; I want to leave room for our Congress!

Paragraph One: “Every financial transaction involving asset or service purchases; including but not limited to the purchase of money via loans; exchanges; gifts; donations; inheritances; or any other form of real or implied asset title transfer shall be taxed at the standard rate of 10% of the real or implied value involved, and is payable within 3 calendar days to the bank account of the local taxing authorities. There shall be no exceptions, upon pain of a 10% late penalty, and 2-5 years mandatory jail term for those convicted of tax fraud.”

Paragraph Two: “There shall be no other form of real or implied taxation, including but not limited to income taxes; inheritance taxes (in current form); property taxes; assessments; bondings; customs duties; and all other public fees or tolls.”

Rebecca, since you’ve called me to play lawyer, I’ll sign off with a parting shot at our return to States’ Rights after 150 years.

“The Federal government shall divest to the Sovereign States all real or presumed interest in the properties and social programs involving local citizens. The Federal government is henceforth restricted by our Sovereign States to provide for our common defense, and other matters of national security. No other powers are ceded, nor implied, other than those powers ceded by the States in our Constitution of 1787, as amended."

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William from Wilmington writes:

Q: Shame, shame shame. I hope your grandson is gay, because I want to hear you tell him he can’t get married to the one he loves. You describe yourself as a romantic, Speer. You must be one of those selective, racist elitist romantics. You oldsters love playing God, don’t you?

A: Bill, I’ve already written just about everything I have to say about same-sex marriage and family formation (see my July 20th response to Brent in Sonoma.)

Sorry to disappoint you, but my 6 grandsons are all alpha males like me—accomplished athletes and scholars in engineering and science, and my 2 granddaughters are the image of a 12-year-old Charlize Theron, and a 5-year-old Elizabeth Taylor—budding heartbreakers! But if any of my great grandkids should be gay, I promise you not to play God, because it would be His will, and if nothing else in my 73 years, I have learned to never argue with God—His grand design is my grand design—like it or not—and at times, I haven’t liked it one damn bit.

Me a romantic? Yes, I plead guilty, but a racist? Nothing could be further from the truth! (see my July 28th response to Sam, an ex-Biloxi Miss. Airman). I had life-defining formative years in both the Deep South, and within New York City confines. We boyhood sandlot baseball bums paid no attention to Jackie Robinson’s shade of skin—he was just another Brooklyn Dodger—like Pee Wee; the Duke; Campy; Gil; Carl and the other Boys of Summer. But then, I was, and still am a lucky Yankee fan, ever since we 8 year olds chose up daily sides, and permanent local ball teams--fair and square with an iron fist on the knob of our only pristine bat--my Joe DiMaggio 35-inch, 32-ounce Louisville Slugger, that I choked up 4 inches as a kid, and then one inch in college, just like Robert Redford’s hand-made “Wonder Boy” bat in The Natural.

That’s all there was back in the day—naïve and fair in all the our dealings with the great masses of new colored Southern folks; brown-skinned Puerto Ricans and Mexicans; milk-skinned Jews from Eastern Europe and Russia; yellow-skinned Orientals; and anyone else who happened to show up at our Statue of Liberty. That’s the way we Long Island kids were taught, by family and school.

Me an elitist? I think not, but an oldster certainly, with a sagacity that results from a lifelong love of family, God, and country, in that order. And, a family tree that dates back to bold Saxon barons more than a thousand years ago, when populist Baron Robert of Loxley (Robin Hood) teamed up with my York/Lancaster Barons; Fairfax, Throckmorton, and Wormsley--to challenge the Normans and force the Magna Carta's Bill of Rights.

After Hastings, my rebellious ancestors raised Hell in Northern England, allied at times with Southern Scotland’s Braveheart. Well, those rebel genes may have been dormant from time to time, but never lost.

Tina from Honolulu writes:

Q: I like the fact that you will eliminate income tax. I hate doing my taxes every year, and I’m told that most people cheat on their taxes anyway and that big corporations pay almost no tax at all.

A: Yes Tina, my CPA tax experience has shown me that most people and companies at least try to cheat on their income taxes, because it is basically unfair—all 70,000 obscene pages of it at last count. It has become a graft-ridden, politically-motivated tool to screw the average American—and needs to be shit-canned, if you’ll pardon my French. Band aids don’t work when major brain surgery is required.

But you’re dead wrong that corporations pay almost no tax at all—they and other “mom and pop” entrepreneurs pay 80% of the tax bite, and oddly enough still manage to provide 80% of all new jobs—go figure! Answer? No one can erase the independent spirit we have been blessed with by God; our Constitution; and our sacrificing Forefathers, who risked their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. This is the heritage we have been gifted in this great land of ours, and we are not permitted to piss it away, into a Sea of Obama/Pelosi Socialism.

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Q: Tex, a Montana rancher writes:

Charlie - You continue to frustrate me with your “Mozartian” all-or-nothing insistence upon a full symphony, instead of taking meritable movements one at a time. Why do you rush Americans to adopt enormous changes to the status quo? Obama is taking the same road, with an unacceptable Socialist agenda, and is running into tremendous opposition, even from his own conservative Democrats. Can’t you break down your “Jeffersonian Revolution” into more manageable chunks? Why can’t we do it one step at a time? You expect too much from your Constitutional countrymen, and I’m afraid that your “renewal” themes will be buried.

A. Tex, I wish it were possible to dissect my solution for America. Unfortunately, I have neither the time (I’m 73, and Wolfgang Amadeus died at 35), nor do I have the inclination to dissect my 21st Century “American Symphony” into bits and pieces, no more than we Colonial rebels would have ceded the cotton-rich South to the Brits for a 3-month war, instead of the 8 years it took. Nor would Czech composer Anton Dvorak have dissected his Symphony #5 From the New World, which today tells us everything we need to know about our Post-Jeffersonian American “Wild West” heritage, or Ferde Grofe’s Grand Canyon Suite a century later, which tells us everything we need to know about our Southwestern miracle of the second ice age.

We now have to pay the piper, and a 10% daily tax bite beats the hell out of a yearly traumatic experience, and I refuse to leave my progenitors with an overwhelming tax burden. You and I are responsible for resolving our country’s debts, from Chinese T-bonds to Social Security T-bonds. It’s just us boys, so don’t look elsewhere, because there is no elsewhere, elsewhere.

Next, there is no way for towns and counties to take over health care, social services, and infrastructure without the lion’s share of tax revenues, which must be in aggregate 50% more than today. And, we cannot ask Joe Taxpayer to carry this burden without giving clear, visible bangs for the buck.

Next, we can’t reduce the high cost of medical care without a revolution in preventive medicine to nip illness in the bud within our homes. Especially seniors, who cost a lot more than kids to keep out of 3 grand per day hospitals. This means at least enormously increasing the number of house-calling G.P.s, which means new tuition-free medical schools, and a lot of them—clearly a gigantic job tailor-made for Uncle Sam, in terms of sheer numbers and standards for training. Ergo, 52 new National Universities (converted state colleges) with med schools and campus hospitals for internship. Same deal for future scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs.

Tex, free medical services is an outright winner, along with unemployment work for 25 grand; disability pay of 25 grand; free prep schools (converted community colleges); free parking; toll-free roads, bridges, and tunnels; tax-free real property; tax-free business and investment profits, and so forth, all which justify the 50% aggregate tax hike from the “10% on everything” consumption/asset purchase tax bite—all $3.6 trillion per year, and $10 billion per day of it. And yes, those folks who have $400/hour tax advisors are screwed, but not you and me—we’re tired of being screwed - we're mad as hell, and won't take it any more!

Next, the 25 grand minimum wage (and $2,500 T-bond employer contribution) means a half-mil pension fund for retirement years, after 50 years or more of hard work. And, a promotion to “middle class” for 50 million Americans, who will gobble up every modest house and condo on the market today, while paying “income” taxes for the first time in their working lives; but in easy daily doses, like the European VAT, but without VAT’s self-defeating accounting complexities, which are enough to cross a Rabbi’s eyes (14% for bread and pasta, and 40% for jewelry and Alfa Romeos—another form of unacceptable social engineering).

My “concerto” movements are so financially intertwined and dependent upon town administration that they cannot be adopted without a return to States’ Rights and local rule. In my scenario, Uncle Sam would be hopelessly lost, as indeed he has been of late, trying to get "Joe the Plumber" fully employed, with community bank backing from people who have lost half their bank capital, and Joe half his business and 401(k) pension plan, like you and me.

The “D.C. Mafia” needs to stick to what we hired them for in 1787—protect us against foreign enemies like Iran and North Korea (yes you, Hillary); give us a working bank system (yes you, Bernanke); give up your not-too-subtle plan for American Socialism (yes you, Pelosi); and fuggedaboud Socialist “Big Brother” (yes you, President Obama).

Your "stimulus package" spending solution can never replace across-the-board tax reduction as supreme creator of national wealth - you have learned nothing since January, much to our collective national detriment. And if you ever again bow to a foreign potentate, I’ll show you just how nasty I can get in my writings - you ain’t seen nothin' yet!

What would George, John Adams, Tom, Monroe, Andy, Abe, Teddy, Franklin, Harry, and Ronnie say if they saw your “Munich Appeasement” approach to our 21st century American manifest destiny? Have you no shame?

Haven’t you realized yet that you pretend to rule over 350 million of the most independent-minded sonsabitches who ever roamed this small planet? We will always fight, and with rare exception, we will always win, no matter what the odds or the cost. So trade in your basketball for boxing gloves, Mister President, and start training for the heavyweight fight of your political life in the 2010 Bye-Elections, which we senior constitutionalist patriots will win, come hell or high water.

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Sam, a former airman during the 1950’s stationed at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi, Mississippi writes:

Q: Mister Charlie—as we airmen once addressed your father (if my memory still serves me at age 70), you continually allude to your Southern heritage, and indeed, my 2-year posting to Keesler AFB was an eye-opener when it comes to race relations. Do you plan to write about it? Your dad’s car deals were always fair, credit was easy, and as the local “AA” honcho, he bailed out many of my fellow airmen in the dead of night. Please confirm.

A. Yes Sam, the original “Mister Charlie” was indeed my dad, the “AA” go-to guy, who squared all accounts prior to his premature death in 1960, at age 52, including re-marriage to my mother when I was a junior at M.I.T. In fact, I probably sold a few cars to your Keesler buddies during my summer vacations. By the way, he not only bailed out Keesler guys in the dead of night, but also his own car lot boys. His late life commitment encompassed Negroes, but as a child, I was never permitted to call them “black”, on pain of mouth-washing soap. They were tagged "colored"; "mulato"; "quadroon"; "octoon"; and "high yella," depending on visible white/African blood content. "Black" meant "bad" in my day, and these folks were anything but "bad" in my childhood experience. but that's just me.

His secret was simple—he bribed the highway patrolmen, local cops, and judges in Biloxi and Gulfport with free “loaners” for their family vacations and holiday weekends, fuel tanks topped off with 19-cent/gallon Hi-Test.

When I complete my fables trilogy with CIA Fables later this year, I will begin writing about my Freudian, Deep South/Yankee heritage, so stay tuned for my first short story - Driving Miss Jennie!

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Francis Milliard of St. Paul, Minnesota writes:

Q: Are you really a Republican or just what we call a wannabe? I can think of a dozen folks that would be better choices than Newt or Palin for the Presidency in 2012 right off the top of my head, including Mitt Romney, Bobby Jindal, Mike Huckabee, Ron Paul, David Petraeus, Duncan Hunter, Jon A. Greenspan, Eric Cantor, Tim Pawlenty, Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Michael Steele, J.C. Watts—even people like Jeb Bush, Condoleezza Rice and Mark Sanford make more sense than your selections. Are you really a member of the Republican Party, the proudest of all political parties in the history of this country? If so, maybe it’s about time you showed up and got in the game.

A: Frank, I have always been a registered independent Constitutional conservative; my son is the registered Republican. As I state clearly in An American Fable, I have always disdained politics and politicians for mediocrity and phoniness, but with notable exceptions for gutsy visionaries like Ronnie, Harry and FDR. (during my lifetime).

I have also stated clearly in my blog answers that neither Sarah nor Newt will be the next presidential candidate, although I see Sarah as a valuable future cabinet minister, and with a great catalyst like Newt, an effective team for the 2010 bye-election battle. Without a newly balanced Congress, 2012 will be out-of-reach, so it doesn’t make much difference whether it’s Mitt, Mike, David or Jeb—the whole ballgame is next year, and the clock is ticking. And without concrete revolutionary financial and social solutions emerging from serious debate on tax simplification; a greatly expanded middle class; T-bond funding of pension benefits; local administration of “house call”-style medical care—just to name a few—you are all jus’ whistlin’ Dixie.

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Brent from Sonoma writes:

Q: What right do you have to say that gay people cannot be married and get the same benefits heterosexual couples receive from our so-called “Land of the Free?”

How dare you position yourself as a patriot, when in reality you’re a bigot who wants to play God and say we can’t legally get married?

What would you do if one of your children or grandchildren was gay? Would you deny them their rights then?

A: Brent, I was wondering when the guys and gals like you would come to life, so here’s the deal in a nutshell.

First, my “right”, like yours, is Constitutional, and I’m backed up by the great majority of Californians and Americans, if not San Franciscans in "Sodom By the Bay".

Next, our “Land of the Free” laws preclude same sex marriage.

Next, your “benefits” are the same as mine under my proposed “10% of everything/replacement of everything” 2-page tax code—no special tax advantage for heterosexual couples. Fair?

Next, what you and your mate do in private is none of my business, but you can’t get legally married. Unfair? If so, exactly why do you need to get married? For what purpose?

Next, I don’t have to “position” myself as a patriot—I am a patriot—in the true Jeffersonian mold, although my “peaceful revolution” calls for no bloodshed to accomplish the embedded truism our forefathers envisioned in 1787—one nation under God—not Mohammed; not Confucius; not Buddha—but Jesus Christ, His Son.

If you don’t like a Christian-dominated national ethos, you’re in the wrong country, because the great majority of your countrymen are European Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, or Jewish, and we all share “Old Testament”, and most of us “New Testament”, commandments which comprise our law of the land today. As my boyhood nannies Julia and Lucy Mae would say if they were still alive, homosexual marriage “ain’t fittin’, it just ain’t fittin.’”

Next, what would I do if any of my kids, grandkids, or great grandkids on the way was gay? Nothing, absolutely nothing, because amended laws (except for same sex marriage) would deny them no other “right”. They would select their companion as I did; buy a home as I did; prepare a will as I did; and would be no less loved and supported by me or their family. But they would never be permitted to marry or raise a family. Paziensa, I would say to myself, it’s God’s will, and as a somewhat errant Catholic I make it a practice to never argue with God, because my gay progenitor could become another Michelangelo Buonarotti.

Like Moses and the Hebrews of yore, we are today God’s “chosen people”, and like them, we have been endowed with the serious moral comportment that accompanies this Divine gift. Why us? Why not? If we Americans, comprising most of the planet’s cultures in a grand melting pot of humanity, cannot devise an idiot-proof peaceful 21st century, then who else will do the job? No one, because there is no there, there. Just you, me and our countrymen. The buck stops here, as Harry Truman so aptly put it, and the buck stops now, when as Harry rammed through the U.N. creation of the post-war state of Israel in 1948. Well, these 3 million folks on the Eastern shore of the Med have time again proven their chutzpah against 200 million surrounding Arabs, as we 3 million Colonial Americans had 3 centuries earlier against the 200 Man-O-War British fleet. Both battles were David vs. Goliath, and David won both battles, because that's the way God commanded it, and we should all make it a practice never to argue with God. His grand design for mankind is well beyond our comprehension today, but tomorrow is another day, and in the fullness of time, we will discover that there are billions of other "earths" like ours--some more advanced, and some far behind. We are not alone in His infinite array of universes--God does not waste space.