Chapter Two

Ch. 2: Solution A
Ch. 2: Solution A

SUMMARY: In Chapter Two of the Restoration Party Manifesto, I describe the problem of the national debt and its ramifications for the coming financial apocalypse, which must mathematically occur within sixteen years at the current rate of accumulation and acceleration. There is a price to pay for fixing the national debt but my solution does not involve either increasing income taxes or removing any government services. I propose the entire twenty trillion dollar debt can be eliminated in a single day. I then address common objections to my solution and challenge the reader to propose a better solution to submit as the Restoration Party Rx.

In every chapter I describe a basic problem and then provide the solution. There is no point in griping about problems without fixing them. Why not join me in being part of the solution?!

The Restoration Party Manifesto is an eight chapter book with supporting appendices that will serve as the basis for the ideology and mission statement of the Restoration Party.

The work is currently in progress. The first six chapters have been published for a preview and the seventh chapter is on its way. If you would like to see it published sooner, rather than later, please contact me about ways you can help.

Click here to read chapter two.

P.2: Stepping Back

I’ve decided to write my story backwards.

Backwards in time. It explains things.
Backwards in time. It explains things.

As I journey backwards in time, why I hate my job will get easier to understand. I want you to hate it as much as I do.

There are a lot of things I want you to hate.

I don’t mean I want you to become bitter or mean. I want you to care. I want you to hate it when people get hurt and abused their entire lives. I want you to hate it when life sucks and it sucks for reasons that didn’t have to be that way.

I only took this job because there wasn’t anything else that matched my provable skills at the range of income I needed to survive. I also took it because I didn’t know it would be such an outrage. I thought I would be helping people.

And now I have to quit but that means totally screwing myself because I have to have an income. I’ve already done what I could to change the system from within. I wrote in suggestions for how to make changes that would turn it into an ethical business. They didn’t implement them. My job is done here. The rest is pure desperation for an income on my part.

We moved last month. Lisa couldn’t walk up the stairs anymore because her stroke-affected left side has caused her knee to give out. We needed a first floor apartment. It was OK. We moved closer to Corinne’s nursing home. We’ve started visiting her more.

Moving is expensive and time consuming. It wasn’t a good month for the new car to have three major break downs. I just put $4,000 down on that Kia Rondo. It was perfect for Ubering, or would’ve been if the shocks, fuel pump assembly and compressor hadn’t all gone out. It was another two grand plus a loss of more Uber income.

In no time at all at this rate, I’ll be back where I was when we first moved to Tallahassee two years ago. We moved here ostensibly to be closer to Corinne. Largely we also left Palm Beach Gardens with our tail between our legs because the company I was trying to get funding for didn’t get its funding. I worked a whole year without pay.

It was a risk entrepreneurs take. We were so damn close. I had a falling out with the CEO over not getting paid. I was afraid if I stayed near there I might kill him.

Not really, but I didn’t want to be reminded of how bitter I felt. I asked Lisa not to ever mention his name. She still constantly brings it up. I can’t sue bankrupt companies. I just wanted to leave it. I needed peace in my soul. Looking back doesn’t do anything positive. I just had to rebuild.

But every time we didn’t have money to rebuild with, Lisa looked back at him who shall not be named. I could be rich if I had a nickel for every promise he made as he swore on his mother’s grave.

I hate being poor. I hate that my wife is half paralyzed and we can’t shop at Costco or Sams.

There are two reasons we can’t shop at Costco. First, Lisa can’t pick up anything heavy. Second, George eats everything in site. He’s over three hundred pounds now. What would he be if we bought in bulk?

George, our eighteen year old, wakes up at dusk, right when Lisa goes to bed. He goes to bed around sunrise, right when I wake up. He rules his own life. Making himself uncontrollable to us is part of his strategy. If we leave anything in the refrigerator at dusk, it disappears by morning.

The weigh in for the Cromagnon.Diet will be July 4th, at which point we start our forty day Cromagnon Action Plan. I have serious doubts about it working. Lisa and George are both far too controlling. She’ll buy stuff I asked her not to and he’ll eat the stuff I asked her not to buy.

Lisa Carvin
The very elegant, Lisa Carvin, ready for her new job and enjoying the new apartment. The struggle is not depicted here.

It’s not good that things are like that in a month when I earned $3000 less than I usually do and spent $10,000 more than I usually do, not when I’m still reeling from a year without pay at all. It all gets so wearisome. She was bad about overspending before the stroke. Now with the memory loss, it’s like fifty first dates but instead I have to educate her daily on how to stop buying stuff that costs money and does nothing but poison our bodies.

George closes his door. He doesn’t want to hear me yell at his mother. I hate that I couldn’t just keep quiet. I hate that I might have lost his respect. I look at him and apology flows from my heart in a flood of undropped tears that match the words I can’t think of to fix something that is just … hopelessly broken.

Don’t anybody tell me I don’t know the pain of poverty just because I live in the richest nation in the world. Poverty is all about math and cooperation in families. When cooperation doesn’t exist, the pain of poverty eats at your soul.

It’s not that the banks kick poor people farther down when they overdraw their accounts. It’s not the extra the poor have to pay for insurance, rent or loans, while the wealthy enjoy lower rates, cheap mortgages that build equity and gain money from investments instead of pay it, yet with lower pay checks. That’s not where the greatest pain is. That’s just the math.

The most painful part is the  never ending struggle to get a family to cooperate and still manage to have something worth holding on to – when it fails. When we can’t pay our medical bills we can blame it on the system. Our planned out monthly budget surplus is designed to reverse all this. It pays off a credit card. Our rates dropped from 30% with all maxed out cards down to 12%. We were getting somewhere. We’ve lost some ground – another year’s work maybe.

My hair would be gray if I didn’t shave my head. I really don’t want to see how old I’m getting.

Happy anniversary, Dear. The dollar movie tonight sounds great. Please. No popcorn. Promise?

Chapter Three

Ch. 3: How to Slay the Giant Monsters
Ch. 3: How to Slay the Giant Monsters

SUMMARY: In Chapter Three of the Restoration Party Manifesto, I identify the core systemic sources of government corruption in the United States and provide the tools for delivering America from their tyranny. The main problem is that our politicians look on public service as a way to be served rather than to serve. To restore government to the role of serving the public, it is necessary to limit it as a career path and to break up the media monopoly as well as revamp the election process. There are five major Acts presented as solutions. They must be taken together in order to work and as such they show the need for a new political party, the Restoration Party. In short, the solution is the Restoration Party.

In every chapter I describe a basic problem and then provide the solution. There is no point in griping about problems without fixing them. Why not join me in being part of the solution?!

The Restoration Party Manifesto is an eight chapter book with supporting appendices that will serve as the basis for the ideology and mission statement of the Restoration Party.

The work is currently in progress. The first six chapters have been published for a preview and the seventh chapter is on its way. If you would like to see it published sooner, rather than later, please contact me about ways you can help.

Click here to read Chapter Three.

Chapter Four

Ch. 4: The Most Powerful Position
Ch. 4: The Most Powerful Position

SUMMARY: In Chapter Four of the Restoration Party Manifesto, I outline the position of the Restoration Party relative to other parties using an X, Y and Z axis. I review the history of the emergence of third parties in America and contrast successful long term third parties with parties that have had low impact or faded as soon as they made a hit. There is a close comparison between the Republican Party’s positioning in the nineteenth century and the Restoration Party as I am posing it. In short, the Restoration Party is positioned and designed to last.

In every chapter I describe a basic problem and then provide the solution. There is no point in griping about problems without fixing them. Why not join me in being part of the solution?!

The Restoration Party Manifesto is an eight chapter book with supporting appendices that will serve as the basis for the ideology and mission statement of the Restoration Party.

The work is currently in progress. The first six chapters have been published in draft form for friends to critique and the seventh chapter is on its way. If you would like to see it published sooner, rather than later, please contact me about ways you can help.

Click here to read Chapter Four.

P.1: My New Job I Hate

I hate my new job. I’m like a lot of people. But I think I hate it worse.

 

My Job is Crushing My Soul
My Job is Slowly Crushing My Soul

I hate it because it is against everything I stand for and care about. The stories I hear every day break my heart. It is my job to break hearts even more while pretending to fix problems. I hope what I do helps because it does sometimes but most of the time I know it doesn’t. My job is to help people get into debt. I’m a loan representative.

 

I thought I would like this job. It looked ideal from the outside looking in but now that I’m doing it, I realize that we’re not really in the business of lending. We’re in the business of taking advantage of people who are either unfortunate or addicted to debt and incapable of facing their addiction. I don’t like taking advantage of either kind of person. I don’t just find it unethical. I find it abominable.

 

I hate summer. In summer I lose my ability to drive for Uber full time because the students leave. That’s why I had to take this new job. The job market in Tallahassee sucks. It’s either government work, and I haven’t found a match for me there, or it’s part time minimum wage work in the private sector. Employers know they don’t have to pay a fair wage in Tallahassee. They get students to work part time from TCC, FSU and the high schools. In the summer it’s like a ghost town. It took me four months just to find a part time minimum wage job in Tallahassee before Uber was here.

 

I picked up a few passengers from this lending company that takes advantage of such desperation. They seemed to really like it. They like it because they get paid more than minimum and they earn commission too. They believe they are helping people but now that I’m working there too I know they hurt more than they help. Please help me get out of this. I’d quit in a heartbeat if I could.

 

So that probably seems odd to hear from the first blog of a Presidential candidate. But it shouldn’t be odd at all.

 

We hear it said all the time that our politicians care about the people. Bernie had his picture taken not flying first class. Being with the people – that was a big deal. Let me ask a question: which of the two of us knows what it’s like to suffer from unemployment? Which of the two of us is talking to people who are struggling with debt all day long for a living? Which of the two of us has attempted to start a business and knows what it’s like to lack the cash to do it? Which of the two of us knows what it is like to fail? Which of the two of us knows what it is like to pick up the pieces from failure? Which of the two knows what it is like to take care of a wife whose had a stroke, whose son is autistic, whose worked for minimum wage?

 

If being a person of the people is a qualification for office, I’ll begin my story by describing how I’m a guy just like the average American. I’m not a career politician. I’m a person who cares. I’m a person who really knows what it’s like. But that’s not even why I’m beginning this story by telling you how much I hate this new job. I hate it because I’ve struggled with debt for twenty eight years now, ever since I started my first business venture. It was a music studio. I bought the equipment with my own credit. Financially speaking, it was a mistake I’ve paid for ever since. In terms of life’s lessons, not so much.  We fail and we learn.

 

I hate debt. It’s not the job. Its the fact that the job looks at making debt possible as a good thing. And most of the time it’s not. Debt is my nemesis and I can’t let it win.

 

But no. It’s worse than that. The customer calls up looking for a loan. My first job is to sell them on a credit monitoring service they didn’t call up for. I get a mini-commission for each sale. I convince them they need all three credit scores. Sometimes that info helps. Usually it doesn’t matter. Their credit sucks. We already knew that before they called. We’re going to give them the same set of lenders almost every time. It’s pretty much just a big lie, though technically it may be true, but I have to follow the script.

 

The reason we get paid to sell them this service is so they can get their credit scores. We get paid a commission even though it is a free trial is they invariably forget to unsubscribe from the free trial until they see a $39 bill on their credit card statement – if they look.  The very thing I have always hated as I’ve looked at my credit card bills and my wife has gotten suckered into something that was supposedly free – God how many times has that happened? – I am now earning a commission from selling. I’m being paid to be a slime ball.

 

So you hate your job? So does everybody else.
Bars Need Support Groups to Keep Coming Back

The script has me telling these desperate people that I’m going to call back when they’ve got their credit scores. Really? Ten minutes before my shift ends with new callers constantly on the line? I do try to call back when I get notified they’ve got their scores but I only reach about 20% of them, at most. But that part isn’t in the script.

 

No, the script then has us giving them their lending options once they call back or if they already had their scores or just refused to be suckered by the first pitch and somehow I hadn’t lost them yet. That’s when we see what kind of predatory lenders are out there willing to charge ridiculously high rates of interest to a person with credit in the four and five hundreds or below. I have to tell them at that point that they should pay for a credit repair service for $99/month. That’s where the big commission is for me. I get almost $20 per sale. One an hour and I can meet my own family budget. I can’t ignore my family’s needs. I’m desperate just like they are, living paycheck to paycheck, struggling to get out of the debt trap.

 

The system is pretty slick. I don’t actually have to close the sale. All I have to do is transfer the sucker over to the credit repair company while pretending to have them on hold while I prepare their lending options. In reality, there are no lending options to prepare. That part is already determined before the transfer. It is a bold-faced lie. But it is in the script. Throughout the day, I receive messages from the floor managers encouraging me to do more calls and make more credit repair transfers. The repair company does the close. The more lies I tell the more I get paid.

 

I come home and I yell at my wife because she wants to go out for our anniversary and she knows we can’t afford it. She bought cereal last weak and I made her take it back to the store. She wanted to buy milk. My autistic son had drunk it all. Gotta have more milk. He’s obese. She bought some ice cream two days ago. He ate the whole tub in one night. Nobody else had any. Why was she surprised by that? How many times had we had this conversation? Does Bernie know anything about any of this? I don’t think so. I think he earns over $200,000 a year and doesn’t need more than one job to make ends meet.

 

Half the time the lenders don’t approve the client. The script says to tell them they can work the cost of the credit repair into the loan so not to worry about the cost. I see people losing homes. I see leaky roofs not getting fixed. I had two calls in one day where people had been involved in fatal accidents and been sued for all they had. One’s husband had cancer and was trying to pay for the treatments. Car repairs destroy lives and constitute a good chunk of the calls for emergency cash. Shitty things happen to good people. It’s my job to make their life shittier by selling them credit repair and monitoring they don’t need and can’t afford while they are in a crisis because my family has to make its budget.

 

Accumulation of Deficit By President - Does Not include IntraGovernmental Holdings
Accumulation of Deficit By President – Does Not include IntraGovernemntal Holdings

 

 

Government is fucked up like that too. That’s why I’m qualified to be your President. They keep screwing us over and then we keep just coming back for more of the same old shit. We’ve got to get over our addiction to the red and blue pills. They are running us into the poor house. If I can beat this debt in my own family after all I’ve been through then I can fix this country too. Damn. I can do anything if I can get through this. I’m a living super hero. Is Bernie a living super hero? I don’t think so. I think he’s just another variety of blue pill lunacy.

 

As I see it, its my job to deliver this country from its addiction because its life has become unmanageable. First it needs to recognize it has a problem. And then it needs to move forward and take a fearless moral inventory of its self-destructive behavior. In steps five and six it will start taking necessary actions to overcome those behaviors. You know the drill. Yes, we’re that fucked up.

 

This is no laughing matter. I have no barriers I can put up against the damage it is causing short of digging a hole in the ground and storing up canned foods and ammo. I have been predicting an apocalypse as the nation fails to face its addiction to debt and I’ve stated the math shows we have no more than sixteen years remaining before all hell breaks loose financially. I have solutions both for my own family and for this nation for getting out of debt. But count how many blog subscribers I have and when you see the irony, that’s how fucked up we are. I’m considered the nutty one just for telling the truth.

 

Bernie has no plan to get us out of debt. He has plans to spend more money and he hopes to trim a few projects and bring in some revenues – all of it just enough to hypothetically pay for his new spending so we can all have free college and health and more. He has zero plan to eliminate the Twenty Trillion dollar national debt that is published and less of a plan to knock out any of the intragovernmental holdings that go unpublished, which some estimate are as high as $200 Trillion.

 

If we count the holdings, in another decade or two we may just reach the Quadrillion Dollar Debt Mark. When all this implodes, as always happens to every nation that gets itself into more debt than it can handle, the picture won’t look pretty. All government operations will completely shut down. What that looks like in terms of the word “apocalypse” may be absent a few monsters stinging us from the sky. I’m not entirely sure but there is most certainly one thing it will require if we are to survive – restoration. Because it will mean utter failure – a literal death of the country, not just of its government, but of its entire financial system. Anarchy will be the only rule of law. It will be the job of the Restoration Party to prepare for that time but creating a plan of recovery from that type of anarchy. This is what I call “Solution B.”

 

There are many ways to take action. Here is a brief list.
There are many ways to take action. Here is a brief list.

I really do look forward to publishing Solution B for you as I complete the #RestorationParty Manifesto but unfortunately, right now I have two jobs, one of which I hate with all my heart and the other of which is underpaying me because it is seasonal. In the meantime, I do have two great start up opportunities. I have the Cromagnon.Diet and I also have the CabbyCam. I believe it would be a very wise investment to please get me the hell out of this lending place by being a patron for me in either one or both of these business endeavors. I have linked to their respective pages and if you instant message me I will discuss what economic opportunity there may be in them with you at length.

 

In the meantime, I am going to continue working for this demon lending company and there is another side of all this I want you to see. Those people I picked up in my Uber who said they loved this job – they don’t see anything wrong with what they do. In fact, I doubt they’ve ever even questioned it. There are over a hundred people working there doing what I do and I doubt more than  handful see anything wrong with it.

 

I wonder whether the best salesman isn’t a completely naive one. You’ve got to believe in your product. I know it’s not just me. I’ve lived these products. The damage is real. My wedding ring has been in pawn no less than five times thanks to the fun of living paycheck to paycheck since we moved here to Tallahassee. The rate of interest is over 300%. My first job was a savings counselor at a Savings and Loan. Remember those? 5% interest was a big deal.  When rates shot up to 30% on T30 Certificates of Deposit in the 1980s we were on a high that our money could earn like that. Those were the days when my Dad was trying to keep his business afloat. He had 300 employees and two plants that he had to keep refinancing mortgages on to keep things going. Cash was king. If you had it, you made boatloads. If you needed it, you paid boatloads. That was 30%. A pawn is ten times that much. Pay Day Loans, those I’ve had a few of too. They’re even higher than pawn shops. We sell those.

 

Up until now the USA has had a great credit rating. When credit ratings fall, interest rates shoot higher and higher. Right now, we pay less than 1% on much of our debt. Much of this is in what is called a “balloon” state. It is an artificially low state held down until the balloon period ends. At that time, the rate is scheduled to increase. The way this is typically solved is through a loan buy out or refinance. At that time, the balloon period is extended and the fees for the loan go into the pockets of a banker. If they aren’t earning interest, they’re selling loans at discounts at a loss and then refinancing their debt into new balloons. This all eventually pops because the credit worthiness of the borrower, in this case the United States government, eventually gets reassessed, all while the actual debt amount increases dramatically. Now since only the actual interest paid is going into the budget figures that get published, the other forms of profit taking involved go unreported, while the real debt dramatically increased in the form of intragovernmental holdings. And that, my friends, is how our corrupt government is handling a looming problem. They’re partying while the getting is going good. For tomorrow we shall die.

 

But I don’t like living lies or selling them for a living. I will not tolerate this bullshit behavior and I don’t care if I’m the only one dismayed. I’m going to publish real solutions to real problems. I’ll probably die in this struggle as I continue to be ignored but my writings will remain. And that’s my goal. Still, even in that I’ve been frustrated, because hundred hour work weeks have slowed down my publication of the Restoration Party Manifesto. Now you may well not agree with the solution I provided in chapter two. I’ve heard the objections. And I acknowledge the validity of some of them, as the chapter itself states. It’s not like I’m proposing to produce Twenty Trillion dollars out of thin air. But maybe you do agree that an entrepreneur who wants to change the world for the better ought to at least have his say. Why not consider making a bad investment for me into the Cromagnon.Diet? Write it off as a loss if it doesn’t work. Or try the CabbyCam if you prefer it? And if neither of these suits you, and you can’t muster the will to contribute to my political campaign, just consider contributing to an I feel sorry for you fund. I’ll accept.

Chapter Five

Ch. 5: What is a Tax Policy with Restorationist Values?
Ch. 5: What is a Tax Policy with Restorationist Values?

SUMMARY: In Chapter Five of the Restoration Party Manifesto, I show how the Neutral Tax is ideally suited for a Restoration Party policy position. Any national debt elimination Rx proposed by any Restorationist leader will be better served when states have the freedom to choose tax policies in their own best interest. The program is not only compatible but allows net worth tax alternatives such as the one I proposed in Chapter Two through a back step process to Article 2 of the Constitution. The general position of states as being served by the Federal government parallels the service all government has to be restored to in order to serve the people. The proposal eliminates the IRS and simplifies the tax code without robbing from the poor to give to the rich.

In every chapter I describe a basic problem and then provide the solution. There is no point in griping about problems without fixing them. Why not join me in being part of the solution?!

The Restoration Party Manifesto is an eight chapter book with supporting appendices that will serve as the basis for the ideology and mission statement of the Restoration Party.

The work is currently in progress. The first six chapters have been published in draft form for friends to critique and the seventh chapter is on its way. If you would like to see it published sooner, rather than later, please contact me about ways you can help.

Click here to read Chapter Five.

Chapter Six

James Carvin visits his sister, Corinne Lewis, at a nursing home between campaign stops.
Ch. 6: Restored Health Care

SUMMARY: In Chapter Six of the Restoration Party Manifesto, I introduce the Restored Health Care System. It takes a step back from the Affordable Care Act, inventories through its failures, examines its systemic causes, follows the advice of industry insiders, follows the money trails, undoes worrisome tax relationships, and delivers one step at a time what the American people, rich and poor, actually seek.

In every chapter I describe a basic problem and then provide the solution. There is no point in griping about problems without fixing them. Why not join me in being part of the solution?!

The Restoration Party Manifesto is an eight chapter book with supporting appendices that will serve as the basis for the ideology and mission statement of the Restoration Party.

The work is currently in progress. The first six chapters have been published in draft form for friends to critique and the seventh chapter is on its way. If you would like to see it published sooner, rather than later, please contact me about ways you can help.

Click here to read Chapter Six.

Ch. 7: Defending America

SUMMARY: We are currently sending bombs into seven different countries with which we are not at war. This is not exactly earning us worldwide love and admiration. In Chapter Seven of the Restoration Party Manifesto, I will introduce the Military Repentance Act (MRA). America has much to be proud of but we must not let pride blind us to the humility that makes any nation truly great. We do not just proceed forward blindly to build our military out of historical or economic context. The way to prevent more towers from toppling down is to build them on a more solid foundation. True world leadership makes amends and it leads by example, walking in mindfulness. We will restore our military strength through sound fiscal policy at home and abroad. This requires building on the previous chapters of the Manifesto. It also requires a clear signal to the world that we are confessing our sin. We have much blood on our hands both at home and abroad. While much of this is rationalized and justified, it is nevertheless regretful and something we must commit ourselves to avoid in all future endeavors to the extent that this is possible.

In every chapter I describe a basic problem and then provide the solution. There is no point in griping about problems without fixing them. Why not join me in being part of the solution?!

The Restoration Party Manifesto is an eight chapter book with supporting appendices that will serve as the basis for the ideology and mission statement of the Restoration Party.

The work is currently in progress and has been written in my spare time while campaigning. The first six chapters have been published in draft form for friends to critique and the seventh chapter is on its way. If you would like to see it published sooner, rather than later, please contact me about ways you can help.

Click here to read Chapter One.
Click here to read Chapter Two.
Click here to read Chapter Three.
Click here to read Chapter Four.
Click here to read Chapter Five.
Click here to read Chapter Six.
Click here to read Chapter Seven. (coming soon)