If I Gave The State of the Union

Friends, Citizens, Congress Critters, lend me your ears!  I have come here at this solemn moment to share with you the state of our union as I see it.  Y’all aware that up until 1913 this was delivered in a letter?  So let’s dig in and, let me start by saying y’all ain’t gonna like what I’m about to say.

If you haven’t noticed, the world’s a mess, and some of that is the fault of the United States.  We’ll cover the world being a mess in a different address though, but let’s stick to why we are here and that’s so I can tell you the state of our union and my vision of where we could and can be.

Overall?  We could be a lot better off.

Where does the blame for our condition lie?  Look to your left, now to your right; now turn your front facing cameras on and look at your selves.  Yes, the blame lies squarely on YOU and those around you!  While a few of you are building your wealth on insider trading most of our people are living paycheck to less than paycheck.  They are finding there is just too much month at the end of their money because y’all suck at doing things that actually help, but you’re the first ones in front of a camera clamoring with platitudes trying to say something, anything to keep your seat here. YOU ARE PUBLIC SERVANTS!  A good servant is not seen.  A good servant does not seek praise.  A good servant relies on the knowledge that a job done right is all the praise they need.

Now, I can do some things to help, but not everything.  By the power of the executive branch I have a plethora of agencies under my command.

Fuel prices: sadly they are going to hurt for awhile because in 50 years no one in congress, the petroleum industry, or the automotive industry, has had the balls to fix what we know happened in 1972 and we knew would happen again!  What did we get?  We got Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency standards commonly known as CAFÉ standards.  Did they help?  Not much.  All it set was an average goal across a fleet, and exempted all trucks–I bet y’all wondered why SUVs are considered trucks and where the hell did the station wagon go?

Here’s how CAFÉ works: A car company makes the Behemoth. It has 500 cubic inches of fuel sucking power spread across 10 cylinders, it gets 12 miles per gallon highway on 93 octane, but hauls a family of four, a weeks groceries, sports equipment and tows a recreational vehicle all at the same time.  They also make the Sipper: It has 2 cylinders, 8 speed manual transmission, no air conditioning. It gets 75 miles per gallon on diesel, has room for the driver, their lunch, a briefcase, no passengers, and you might get a bag of groceries squeezed in somewhere.  Their CAFÉ rating is 43.5 miles per gallon but the standard is 30 miles per gallon so they exceeded the target by roughly 50%!  Now you tell me how that helps.

Because I can compare within a brand and model, the 1983 Honda Civic got 46 miles per gallon in the city and 59 on the highway.  That same model today gets 29 city and 37 highway.  What the hell happened?  I can tell you the weight increased, but why?  In 1983 it was a manual transmission, carbureted, car with a distributor.  We added weight with On Board Diagnostics, transmission control computers, vehicle stability control, anti-lock brakes, airbags, specially designed crumple zones, then just things we take for granted like air conditioning, cup holders, and so on.  Technology has advanced so why did we lose fuel economy?  Can we not be safe and get good mileage?  Do we need to return to carburetors and manual transmissions?

While we are on fuel economy, have any of you filled your tank in the last couple of days?  Probably not, I would but Secret Service frowns on me getting out of the car. But I do pay attention to my surroundings.  So let’s talk about oil.  We as a nation are addicted to the stuff and like any addict our fix is killing us and keeping us from achieving our potential. With that in mind and through the power of the Enviromental Protection Agency I am mandating that all cars be manufactured as flex fuel, capable of running 100 percent ethanol fuel by January 1st 2024.  Brazil has had tremendous success using ethanol and became the first successful bio-fueled economy; we could have been the leader, but now we need to catch up.  All new diesel vehicles need to be capable of running 100 percent bio-diesel by the same date.  I am aware that this does nothing for today’s fuel consumer but we have to break the cycle as we should have done in 1972!

I am also authorizing the phase out of gasoline powered vehicles.  All new mid-size and smaller cars will be either electric or plug-in, bio-diesel hybrids by 2035.  Large cars and all trucks will be bio-diesel hybrids by 2040. I am also unilaterally removing the mandate that corn be used to make ethanol.  There are other alternatives such as sugar beats, and in the end ethanol is ethanol no matter the source, and corn simply requires too much fertilizer.

Now let’s face facts: Humans have lost the drug war. The plants have won.  So I am instructing the Drug Enforcement Agency to stop prosecuting first time drug offenders and instead use the money intended for incarceration to get those people the quality health, and mental health care they need. I am also informing the DEA to relax enforcement as we petition congress to rework the schedule system.

I want industrial hemp to be fully decriminalized by June of this year.  Hemp is an amazing plant and can serve as a wonderful solution to many of our problems.

Due to fertilizer shortages I am instructing the USDA to consider the use, safety, and effectiveness, of biosolids fertilizers such as Milorganite.  This is a high nitrogen fertilizer that slow releases and could take us off petroleum based fertilizers or at least reduce our need for them, in time.

Now, through the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission I am hereby and immediately stopping all futures trading, and I mean ALL of it!  The U.S. consumer is constantly paying the price of commodity futures traders speculating and by default gambling against the economy and now it stops!

By using my authority over the Federal Railroad Administration I am bringing in a task force to ascertain the viability of getting high-speed rail running on our existing rail infrastructure.  Now many here tonight will be wondering why I don’t lobby congress for a massive infrastructure spending bill to ram this through.  Simple: the Government does not own the right-of-ways needed.  We would be looking at billions in spending and eminent domain litigation just to acquire the needed ground.  Why do that?  The major rail carriers already own it.  We need to convince them that Amtrak needs some wiggle room in the meantime so we can speed up passenger rail service.  We also need to cut the number of stops that Amtrak makes on corridor runs.  We aren’t copying the metropolitan bus model where we get to speed and stop every little bit.  We used to have a thriving rail passenger system in this country and we can again, if we get the major rail carriers to work with Amtrak.  By working with what we already have we can get our footing, get going, and move forward!

As a nation, we are under-water in debt.  I am telling y’all now I want an itemized budget, I want it balanced so that there is money left to pay down the debt and if it does not meet these criteria I will veto it.  I am instructing the Treasury Department to end our FIAT currency system and move us to a silver backed dollar.  Now, some will wonder “Why silver?”  Simple: because in 2019 we mined 965 tons of silver right here in the United States!

I am also instructing the Internal Revenue Service to seize and audit the Federal Reserve System and until the audit is complete I am instructing the State Department to ensure none of the board or central bankers leaves the mainland U.S.
Since no-one here really wants me to stand up here and a bloviate for hours on end, over the coming weeks I will be releasing more detailed information into other aspects of modernizing our United States.  A modernizing of our tax codes, of our health-care system, of our welfare and retirement systems, of our educational system and framework.  Modernizing that will help to once again put us on a solid footing with the world economy and maybe even bring us back into the leadership role we once had.  We aren’t going to “Build Back Better” nor are we going to “Make America Great Again” because basically those are the same thing.  It is time to consider our faults, learn from our mistakes, and improve our nation.  What we should be doing is leaving a better place to our grand children than we had as children.

“We are looking ahead, as is one of the first mandates given us as chiefs, to make sure and to make every decision that we make relate to the welfare and well-being of the seventh generation to come. … What about the seventh generation? Where are you taking them? What will they have?”

–Oren Lyons, Chief of the Onondaga Nation