299 Days: The Community

Chapter 87 Words of the Day (May 8)

Jeanie woke up in a military barracks. She hadn’t slept in…she didn’t even know how long. It felt great to have slept. The difference was amazing. Now, with a little sleep, things didn’t seem so totally out of control.

She got ready for work. “Work”? Sitting in a military base and spinning the destruction of Washington State to the idiot media seemed like a strange job, but it was her job. She was safe on base, doing something important, and helping to calm down the crisis. Just yesterday, when she was sleep-deprived and terrified, the situation seemed hopeless. Now this mess seemed like a series of problems that could be tackled one by one. Besides, everyone around her seemed to be calm, so she shouldn’t overreact to things.

The more she thought about it, the more she concluded they might actually get through this. They would laugh at how they thought all this was the end of the world. Things always seemed bad right at the beginning, but got better. They’d make it through. Things would get better. Especially now that she’d had a good night’s sleep.

She missed her bathroom and her makeup. Oh well. Most of the women around her were military and had no makeup, so she would fit right in. She only had a few changes of clothing, but there was a note on her door that she could leave her clothes to be cleaned. They thought of everything here at Camp Murray.

Her roommate in the two-person barracks had already gotten up or was still awake. She was a National Guard JAG officer. They had met for a minute a few days ago or whenever that was. Time was blurred together.

Jeanie went to the cafeteria or, as the military people called it, the “DFAC,” which stood for dining facility. The food was really good. She had expected slop like she’d seen in the movies. In the past few years, some of the stimulus money had gone toward remodeling the National Guard headquarters at Camp Murray. She noticed the plaque with the date of the work and the contractor’s name. As a campaign person, she recognized the name of the company as one that had given lots of money to the Democrats. But who cared. The place looked really nice. It had kind of a “palace” feel. They were being very well taken care of.

During a breakfast of organic oatmeal and fresh organic fruit, Jeanie wondered about Jim, her boyfriend on Guard duty somewhere. She knew he’d be safe with all those soldiers around him. She also knew that, as a computer guy, he would be in a headquarters away from the fighting, if there was any. She texted him. A few minutes later, he texted back saying he was fine and he’d be back home in a few weeks once this was all cleaned up. For the first time in about a week, she was actually feeling hopeful.

She was also feeling like she wasn’t a bad person to be working for the government during all of this. They were solving the problems that hit them like the “perfect storm.” The electrical outages, internet problems, terrorism, spike in gas prices, the May Day drop of the dollar, the Mexican refugee problem, the Southern states talking like they were leaving the union, and the nuclear exchange in the Mideast. All of this came at the same time. Even the best government would have a hard time coping with all this at once.

Things were bad, but not the end of the world. About 90% of the people were safe in their homes. They were listening to what the government told them to do. Sure, there was more crime than anyone had ever seen. Some people on medications were dying because the just-in-time inventory was screwed up with the internet outages and especially the traffic and gas shortages preventing the semi trucks from rolling effortlessly up and down the interstates. McDonald’s was out of french fries, but people would live. This was starting to feel like a national-scale Katrina, not Armageddon. Sure Katrina sucked and innocent people died, but in a year people were basically back to normal after some adjustments. That’s surely what would happen here.

After breakfast, Jeanie went to the conference room where she was working. Someone told her a briefing would start in a few minutes. She logged onto the internet. They had a reasonably stable connection. She checked the local news. She needed to know what they were reporting because her job was to get information to the local news. It said there was some isolated looting in Seattle, some gas stations out of gas, Interstate 5 jammed and people told to stay home, medically-dependent people flocking to hospitals that were overwhelmed. Lots and lots of “neighbor helping neighbor” stories. Plenty of scenes of National Guard and police helping people. Things might actually be OK.

People started coming into the conference room. Jason, the guy from the Governor’s Office who had been briefing them, opened the day.

“Good morning,” Jason said. “I hope most of you got to sleep last night. I know I sure feel better now that I have. Here’s what’s going on now. First, DC has authorized federal and state authorities—and that would include us—to seize critical infrastructure and supplies under the Insurrection Act. We need a nice word for this. Any PR people want to help me with that?”

Jeanie raised her hand and said, “Requisition? It has a military and temporary sense to it.”

“Requisition it is,” Jason said. He was impressed with Jeanie’s smarts, and she wasn’t bad looking, either.

“So,” Jason continued, “we’re requisitioning gasoline, prescription medicine, trucks, food, and other things. Stress to people that this is temporary. Everything will be given back once the Crisis—oh, yeah, that’s the term DC wants us to use, ‘Crisis’—is over. So ‘requisition,’ ‘temporary,’ and ‘Crisis’ are the words of the day.” The political people were accustomed to using key words that had been focus grouped and tested by polls, the “words of the day.” They were sometimes called “talking points.”

Jason continued, “First responders will keep records of the things they…requisition and there will be a claims process when this is over.” He paused for a moment.

“Here’s the part that people can’t know,” Jason said. “We don’t have any money to pay people back with. You guys familiar with the Olympia situation know this. So brush off the questions about ‘how will this be paid for.’ Stress the need to get medicine to people and that kind of thing. Ask them, ‘how much is a human life worth?’”

Everyone wrote down that talking point: “how much is a human life worth?”

“Second,” Jason said, “thinking a little more long-term, we are going to start up some state farms. You know all that wheat and potato farm land in Eastern Washington? We’re going to organize some farms to produce food and distribute it. The feds get some of it, but they have to transport it, which could be a problem if we had to try to solve that one on our own. We get most of it, and transporting it over to Seattle from eastern Washington will be less of a problem than transporting it to LA. We’ll work with the large agribusinesses in the state. We’ll offer employment to people to go over there and work on the farms and processing plants.”

Jason didn’t say it, but the political strategist in him loved the idea of the Governor solving a big problem like food production, getting all the credit, handing out jobs, and helping the agricultural companies that had been helping the Governor and her selected candidates with donations. It was perfect. This would be permanent. The state would be in a new and giant business—and people would be begging them to do it. Never let a good crisis go to waste, he thought.

“Here’s something that’s in the works,” Jason said. “You can describe it to reporters off the record and on background. The official announcement will be coming in a while. We’re coming up with a way for people to pay for their necessities. Let’s face it: inflation is off the charts. Some stores aren’t taking money anymore. ATMs are shut down and so are banks. People need a way to get things. We’re working on expanding the EBT cards.” Those were the “electronic benefits transfer” card, which were given to welfare recipients with their welfare money on it. They were accepted like debit cards at places that accepted regular debit cards.

“We will probably call the new cards ‘Freedom Cards,’” Jason said. “We’re already calling them ‘FCards’ for short.”

Jason put his finger up in the air to emphasize this next point. “Don’t call them ‘ration cards,’ but that’s essentially what they will be. We can pre-load them with the amount we want people to have and we can track what people are getting.” He didn’t say it, but people like him and the people in the room who were crucial to the recovery would get more—lots more—loaded onto their FCard. He also didn’t say it, but while they could theoretically track what people got, they didn’t have enough data analysts to really know what everyone was doing. They did, however, have enough analysts to track what “problem people” were getting. They would be the ones visited by the Freedom Corps for “hoarding.” He wouldn’t tell them that right now. That was a different briefing for a later day.

“The difficulty right now,” Jason said, “is that the internet is down sometimes. So electronic cards aren’t working all the time, but as we fix the internet and electricity problem, we can start to bring the FCards online. But, first things first. We need to have products in stores for people to buy with the cards so we’re working on that.”

Jeanie wondered how the cards would be paid for. She raised her hand.

“Yes, Jeanie,” Jason said. Jeanie was thrilled that he knew her name.

“I know we’re supposed to dodge the question from reporters about how we’re paying for everything,” Jeanie said, “but we should know these answers. So, how are we paying for the FCards?”

“Excellent question,” Jason said, “and I have an excellent answer.” He couldn’t help being a little flirtatious with a beautiful and smart woman like Jeanie.

“We’re ‘securitizing’—another word for the day—financial accounts,” Jason said. “That’s not news yet, so don’t mention it. But all those bank accounts, mutual funds, 401(k)s, and pensions people have? The federal government has taken them in for safekeeping; ‘securitizing’ them. They are now safe from the ups and downs of the market. So, like Social Security, the federal government will guarantee a return on them. But,” Jason grinned his widest grin, “we have to take possession of the funds.”

People in the conference room were stunned. Was this guy grinning about the federal government taking all the money everyone owned?

“So,” Jason said with that same wide grin, “all those securitized funds are what will be drawn on for FCards.”

It was brilliant and horrific, Jeanie thought. Americans had trillions of dollars just sitting in those accounts; money that was useless now that the banks were closed. And even with the out-of-control inflation, trillions of dollars was still a lot of money. It was enough to buy plenty of wheat and potatoes. People would never let the government take their bank accounts in normal times. But now, with no way to get their money out of those bank accounts, the Feds knew that people would be more than happy to use that money to eat. They had no choice.

And, Jeanie realized, now that the government had taken over all the accounts and no one had retirement money anymore, the government could start up a new system. Social Security on steroids. Even after the current Crisis was over, and food was back in the stores and people weren’t using FCards, their retirements will have been wiped out. Now people would be forever dependent—entirely dependent—on the federal government for their retirement. There goes the Republican Party, Jeanie thought. If there would even be elections any time soon.

Jason continued. “One bad thing out there is that most law enforcement and some Guardspersons,” he used the politically correct term instead of “Guardsmen,” “are going back to their families. They’re worn out and overwhelmed. We don’t have figures on it, but there is a pretty significant AWOL problem. So we’ve come up with a solution: the Freedom Corps.” The news about Freedom Corps had leaked out a few days ago, but the people in the conference room likely had not heard about it, so Jason briefed them.

“It’s a civilian law enforcement auxiliary,” he continued. “It’s loosely modeled on AmeriCorps and all that. The feds came up with it. So we’ll be rolling out the Freedom Corps here. People are encouraged to join up and they can take care of their neighborhoods. They won’t be armed by us—we don’t have any extra weapons—but they are authorized to carry guns.” He paused.

“Oh, that’s the other thing,” Jason said. “Guns. We’ve banned them. Private ownership is illegal. Now, we’re not—I repeat—not —going to seize them. We don’t have the person power to go get them, which is not for public consumption, but the part about guns being banned is. We can’t have criminals and vigilantes out there. If the authorities, which now include the Freedom Corps, find someone with a gun, they can seize it. No one will be arrested unless there is some other reason to do it.”

Jason was on a roll. “Here’s another thing not for public consumption: there are no jails any more. They emptied out, first from budget cuts a few weeks ago and now because the guards either went home or were killed, so we have no place to put law breakers. Local law enforcement and some Guard units are creating makeshift detention facilities. They’re using schools and that kind of thing, but we’re going out of our way not to arrest people because we have no place to put them.” He thought for a moment, “And we have nothing to feed them. Yet.”

He waved his arms for emphasis, “Stress to people that the President has this authority in an emergency. It’s part of his authority as Commander in Chief and it’s authorized under the Insurrection Act and the NDAA.”

“Also stress,” Jason continued, ”that all of this is temporary. As things go back to normal, we’ll end all of this.”

Jason pointed his finger up in the air to make a point. “That’s the other thing: normal. Stress how things will get back to normal. Remind people of what normal is and will be. Tell people they’ll be able to go back to their jobs, get groceries, even go out to eat. People need hope. Thinking that normal things are just around the corner is what they need.” Even though it’s not true, he thought to himself.

Jason had been in meetings with the Governor in which she made it clear that most of these “temporary” measures would be permanent. The state needed to take over most of the economy to dig itself out of this financial hole. Besides, people were begging the state to take care of them. It was perfect.

Jeanie sat back and thought. She could spin this stuff. No problem. Most people would be glad their government was “doing something.” She was troubled by it, though. This ration card—or Freedom Card or whatever—was the perfect way to control people. Pop off about the government and your card gets zeroed out with a few keyboard clicks. Support the government, and magically your account balance goes up.

She thought about Grant and the other WAB guys who were on the POI list. Well, there weren’t any jails or any cops, so they probably wouldn’t be arrested. Given all the things on the government’s plate right now, arresting political opponents couldn’t possibly be a high priority. Besides, they were just “persons of interest;” they weren’t actually wanted for a crime. They’d be fine, she told herself.

But the gun thing really disturbed her. She didn’t personally own a gun, but she was a Republican political strategist. Banning guns would cause most conservatives and many independents to hate the government. This was a really big deal, and these liberals didn’t seem to understand that. She knew that in rural areas and good chunks of the suburbs, people would hear that guns—things they desperately needed right now—were illegal and some neighbor in a funny Freedom Corps helmet would be taking them. Oh, but don’t worry, no one is going to jail…because there are no jails. So you can’t have a gun but there are no jails to put bad guys in. Only politicians could come up with this. But…

Hey, you’re taken care of, Jeanie reminded herself. She knew her FCard would be loaded up. Well, actually, she’d be eating great food there at the Camp Murray DFAC. She had the best organic oatmeal served to her and machine gun nests protecting her. She was in her late-twenties now. Maybe she had been too idealistic about politics and conservatism and Republicans and all of that. She needed to take care of herself and her boyfriend. And the State of Washington was helping her do a very good job of that right now.

Jeanie started dialing the phone to start her day long talks to reporters. She had some news to get out there. The State of Washington was taking bold actions to help people in this temporary situation, and pretty soon things would be back to normal.