Freedom of Breach: The Amendments

FREEDOM OF BREACH: The Amendments
*by Scoppertop
Copyright 2006

AMENDMENT OWE-ONE

Americans have the freedom to pay 100 times more for electricity than it costs the utilities to provide. The freedom to pay $70 per month for a phone number that anyone can use, for example, to say they’re so sorry you missed your fraudulent appointment to have your satellite dish installed -- or that you won a Lexus RX330 in a sweepstakes they will claim you recently entered at the mall.

Obviously, there are living humans who still fall for this tactic, since solicitors wouldn’t be doing it otherwise. Deception has become a “product.” Even my bank account has become a product. Companies don’t give their products away. I don’t want to give mine away, either.

If a telephone solicitor wants to call any of my phone numbers, their company should pay me $1.00, automatically deducted from their bank account product and credited to my phone service product. If I have to answer, or they want to leave a message on my voice mail, they can pay me another dollar.

If my power is interrupted for any reason besides non-payment, I should be credited for one watt-hour, the extra spin on a meter when everything in the household surges back to life. If the phone goes out, I’ll want long distance revenge -- 5 cents for every minute I am deprived of my service. Ditto for water, with all those annoying bacteria, bubbles, and rust.

Why should I be forced to give away my products to unwanted customers? Junk mailers can credit my garbage pick-up service. Spammers can credit my ISP user account. Parking Lot flyer distributors can leave a $1.00 coupon toward my next car wash -- or my car insurance. Door-to-door salesmen can credit my homeowner's insurance. Industries who cloud local air and water with waste can credit my life and health insurance -- and pay to have my house painted (and clean my plumbing pipes and air ducts) every five years. The service I provide all of them costs me money.

I won’t mention the number of my hours spent per year fixing large corporate mistakes at, let’s say, $100 per hour. I'm worth it. I finally got rid of AOL, but had to hang up on the first service rep after 20 minutes of a sales spiel for their Broadband service, tell the "second" rep I was moving off the planet and no longer required AOL (I said “Jupiter” when he asked where I was going), return two “Thanks for Agreeing to Continue Your AOL Service” forms with “Error” box checked, and call Amex to change my credit card number. Total 2 hours. Where’s my $200?

I’d like to propose a solution -- Terms of Payment should replace Terms of Service policies. Let’s toss TOS! If you sell me a product or service (including government) that does what it is supposed to do, lasts as long as I do, and doesn’t create other problems in my life or wallet, screw up the environment, or kill me or my fellow humans, I’ll pay for it -- or you can take it back. In the meantime, I’ll just keep trying to get credited where credit is due.

AMENDMENT OWE-TOO

Why is the standard deduction for income taxes only $5000? In 1913, it was $3000--an amount based on the cost of living for one year -- you couldn’t live under a freeway overpass on $5000 now. Looks like the IRS forgot what the deduction amount was supposed to represent.

I vaguely remember learning about Indexed Income Taxes in the Pre-Lobby, Pre-Multi-Trillion-Offshore-Tax-Haven years--and it worked like this: If you made below $3K, you paid nothing. $3K to Infinity went up the scale until the top earners paid 87% to Uncle Sam. It wasn’t profitable to overcharge or pay yourself unnecessarily lavish compensation if you only got to keep 13%.

We called it the American Way -- the idea proposed by our Revolutionary Forefathers to create a true democracy where citizens were free from all types of corruption and sociopathic price gouging, which is what Ben Franklin meant by "a Republic, if you can keep it," when he was asked what type of government the Forefathers were planning for us. Unfortunately, their idea also included getting rid of the rightful citizens here at the time.

This phenomenon is called the “Human Way,” not to be confused with the “Humane Way.” Now, George II is busy foisting the Human Way on the populace of the Middle East that surrounds Israel and its illegally occupied territories. Kids can be so cruel. How much will we be paying for gas once Georgie and his bullies own it all -- lock, stock, and $500 per tankful?

WHY NOT? IS NOT AN ANSWER

Why do American taxpayer dollars pay Halliburton, et.al., to build oil pipelines overseas that belong, not to us, but to the oil companies? Why are we paying our troops to protect these privately-owned enterprises? Because Georgie Too calls it the War on Terror, that’s why. We’ll be paying for the Alaskan pipeline, too. Where's my rent money, or will he call it the War on Bigfoot?

Why don’t Americans recognize their own money when it reappears in somebody else’s wallet? Freedom of Breach has become the global product--and I have more “why” questions. Why are the oil companies allowed to charge so much for their products? Why does gas cost 25 cents more per gallon in Georgia than in Florida, Tennessee, Kentucky, or Ohio?

Why are billions of taxpayer dollars being given as subsidies to gargantuan corporations when we also have to pay for their products? Wall-to-Wal-Mart got $50 million last year for building one store in Florida -- Is that why they hired former Florida Congressman-turned Lobbyist Sam Gibbons as their mouthpiece? They just fired former-mayor-turned-Lobbyist Andrew Young last week for anti-Semitic comments so they could build one near downtown Atlanta. Wal-Mart should be using their own profits to expand their business, instead of ours.

Why does the video game industry make violence "fun" for $10 billion a year--just from our American kids? Apparently, Hollywood should be so lucky. Why is the biggest money grubber Big Pharma, whose products kill 40,000 Americans per year -- death by allergic reaction? Oh, the terror!

Why did a bunch of prominent scientists on the brink of introducing cures for various diseases and non-polluting energy resources end up “mysteriously dead” recently? If something happens to our planet, the rich guys will be the ones living in the International Space Station, not us Mere Plebeians who happened to pay for the Space Program--if I don’t get to go, I want my money back.

WHY NOT?

Seeing as the rich guys got all their money from selling overpriced stuff to us and our ancestors, you’d think they’d let us have something for our contribution to their tax havens. Looks like these rich guys owe all of us poor customers a refund. At least, a return on our investment. Uncle Sam’s lobby gets that, too. What an expensive trick.

Last month, Warren Buffett gave $32 Billion to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. I’d like to make a suggestion to B & M for $280 million of it: Give ten thousand dollars to each US citizen next year on their birthday, automatically deducted from your non-profit foundation product and credited into our bank account product. Fair's fair.