By John Galt
August 3, 2008
Juan and Isabella were exhausted, but the land they had been seeking for escape finally appeared over the horizon. The lights of the big city were way off to the West so they figured that their little boat with thirteen other refugees was safe and sound. Once they were ashore the group pushed the boat back out to sea and started to move inland, hoping to find some safety inland and to merge with the local population to find the underground help stations rumored to be there. As the group passed through the first clearing in the light of dawn the sound of weapons firing caused everyone to run and dive for cover in the underbrush. Juan volunteered, much to the consternation of his wife, to go ahead of the shaken souls to see what was going on. As Juan peered over the rise he saw a bunch of men dressed in what looked like hazmat suits with flamethrowers burning bodies. Just as he was going to creep back to the group “bang” another salvo of rifle fire and after shuffling to his left about fifteen yards, he could see another area in the field where people were being shot by a firing squad and the bodies being hauled off and burned by the strange men in the hazmat suits.
“My God” Juan thought to himself “what has happened to our world?” The soldiers were shooting men, women, infants, the elderly, it did not matter. What freaked him out is why in the world would they be burning the bodies. The smell of the pyre started to drift towards the group by the time he returned to them with the horrific news. Juan held Isabella’s hand as he spoke, “Everyone, please listen. We have to head towards the forested areas over there. The soldiers are shooting everyone, and I mean everyone then burning the bodies to hide the evidence.” The one family that was with them with the three and four year old children who burdened the trip but behaved well immediately shot up to their feet and started running, carrying the two kids on their backs. The rest of the group then took off like scalded dogs in every direct. Juan looked at Isabella and she knew what he was going to say and without a word they started running into the woods without paying attention to which direction they were heading, other than away from the gunfire.
It seemed like days running through the tropical forest in the 92 degree heat, but in reality it was only about eight hours when they came upon a small town which looked like a tourist town. They noticed what appeared to be a spring training baseball facility just to the left of them. Isabella said “How do I look?” Juan said “Gorgeous baby. Let’s see if all this running from the dictatorship has paid off.”
As they walked into town, nobody really gave them a second look. Then they both noticed the checkpoint over by the road leading to the baseball stadium and a sudden surge of soldiers in trucks, all wearing what looked like surgical masks. As they appeared around them, the citizens started running into shops, offices and back to their homes, locking the doors and looking for cover.
Juan said to Isabella “Let’s head over to the trinket shop over there and act like tourists.” As they started to walk into the door of the shop a stern voice yelled “HALT! DO NOT MOVE! PUT YOUR HANDS ON TOP OF YOUR HEAD!” The same instructions were repeated again in Spanish much to Juan’s surprise. The two of them dropped to their knees, more so in obedient exhaustion than anything else and put their hands behind their heads. Before either of them could utter another word, everything went black as they were both tasered into unconsciousness. Or so they thought….
Juan woke up in a tent, stripped totally naked with his hands handcuffed behind him as he sat in a wooden chair. As the fog started to clear he heard a scream elsewhere in the compound of a woman but his full attention was turned forward to the officer who barked out at him “SPANISH OR ENGLISH?” Juan, still groggy from the unwelcome nap looked up at the soldier and said “English is fine, how long have I been out?” The officer snapped back in a gruff voice, “You can address me as Captain from this moment on. You have been asleep for an hour. We tranquilized you and sterilized your body. We want to know how many of you snuck ashore illegally in your boat?” Juan was stunned. As he started to answer the question the Captain said “And if you lie, it is of no matter. If you lie, you will be dead in two hours. If you cooperate, you may get a chance to apply for repatriation.” Juan perked up “My wife also?” The Captain said “Yes, your wife included, of course. We are not animals, but we have been forced into extraordinary circumstances.”
Juan immediately ratted out his fellow boaters. He spoke about the couple in their fifties looking for a new start after losing their business to the new regime. Juan then told the story of the family of four who wanted to farm again. The story of his wife and his trials and tribulation. And then other five who the Captain just nodded and took a few notes about. After it was over the Captain barked out “Recordings off! You can proceed with the private here and he will get you some clothes and reunite you with your wife. You will be kept in a holding cell for one hour pending test results. If I were you, I would keep my mouth shut until you receive further instructions.”
Juan just nodded, put his head down and shuffled out of the room with the private. He was given a chance to use the community shower and then issued a white jumpsuit with an orange stripe down the middle of the back about an hour later. When he saw Isabella, she was in tears and just ran into his arms. “Oh honey…” she started to speak and Juan said “tell me about it all later, just keep quiet until we get our new instructions.”
Juan was sitting with her just holding her while she sobbed. A man in a white lab coat with a UN emblem on it said to them, please come with me. Juan and Isabella followed where they were informed that all of the tests were negative and they could proceed to the boarding area. As they did so, they noticed a large group of people, speaking various languages all happy and laughing as the fresh air of freedom laid ahead. “Juan and Isabella Castillo, report to desk 19″ the voice from the loudspeaker barked out in English and Spanish. Juan walked up to the desk holding his wife’s hand and said “We’re here. What do we do next sir?” With that the powder blue uniformed helmet on the guard glistened in the sun and he said “Sign here for your tickets” again, in English and Spanish. Juan looked at Isabella after leaving the desk and said “Why is everything in two languages? You would think they would just speak one or provide a translator.”
Juan and Isabella eagerly waited for their numbers to be called. The tickets were nothing more than numbers, but to them these numbers meant freedom from tyranny and a chance to start over. When their numbers were called they boarded an old school bus that had all of the windows blacked out and what appeared to be an armed guard sitting up by the driver. After everyone was seated on the bus, the driver spoke up on the speaker and once again, spoke clearly in English in Spanish “This bus is designated for repatriates. You will be given further instructions when you disembark. The bus is blacked out to prevent any unauthorized viewing of our nation’s military bases which are on the way to the repatriation center. Thank you.” And the bus lurched forward out of the base and on to a small highway.
Juan, unable to keep his mouth shut, asked the people in front of them what they saw. They recounted an almost similar story except they found out why the people were being shot and the bodies burned. The elderly man looked Juan in the eyes with a scared, gaunt look and said “They were infected. They had that bird flu thing. The new government here and the UN have agreed to destroy all carriers no matter the age or sex of the infected. It’s getting bad my young friend. I just pray this bus is not on the way to those camps.” Juan looked at the old man with a smile and said “Rest easy old timer, the UN doctor told us our tests came back negative. I’m sure we would all be dead if that were the case now.”
After what seemed like ten hours, the bus came to a stop. There were guards speaking back and forth in English and Spanish and what Juan swore was another language but could not identify it. As the driver instructed everyone to leave the bus in pairs or families when their names were called, he heard crying outside or so he thought. Isabella looked at him with that worried look and he softened his tone telling her “We’ll be fine sweetheart. Do not worry.”
As they left the old school bus, they saw the military compound they were in was crawling with activity. Then a young man with a UN and US flag patch on the shoulder of his uniform barked out at Juan “Okay you traitorous pieces of crap, welcome to the United Nations and United States Marine Corp Repatriation Processing Center. If you think escaping our shores and running will be that easy next time, think again. Women are to assemble in the line over here, men over there. Any disobedience and you will be shot on sight.”
Juan started to cry. He thought the new Cuba would save him from the conflict back home. After all these years of listening to his grandmother talk about how nice Cuba was in the 1940’s, he thought it would be a paradise after the fall of communism.
Instead, Cuba signed on to the North American Commercial Union Treaty and agreed to repatriate refugees and terminate infected citizens per the U.N. Infectious Disease Treaty of 2013. No more wet foot, dry foot freedom agreements; no more freedom for those who did not leave before the war inside the Americas started.
Unlike the prior Prepetorial, where I painted a picture of “refugees” being returned to the U.S. for trying to escape, this one will approach a different subject from the same theme. There is a natural bias to think that people named “Juan” and “Isabella’ would indeed be illegals sneaking into the U.S. from Cuba. This time, as the financial media likes to say, it is different. I was inspired to write this particular prepetorial by Jim Puplava’s Financial Sense Newshour program for this weekend, the last before he heads of to his well earned monthly vacation. There was a moment, dropped in the flow of conversation with James Turk, about the new “exit tax” which has been enacted inside the United States. Just what is an “exit tax” you may ask?
An exit tax is for any citizen or green card resident to pay a tax on their desire to repatriate to another nation. In other words a penalty for not wanting to stay on the team and be part of the “program” (or pogram in this case) with the Big Kahuna. While the tax may not seem exorbitant, when you read the devil in the details, it should wake you up. As America sinks further and further into a worldwide debt death spiral, what leader would want anyone with the ability to work, a marketable skill or resources to leave the plantation. Your job is to sit down, shut up and pay your tribute no matter how high the Patron Saint Obama and his party of drunken Caligulans raise your taxes.
The revisions to the exit tax were ushered into a Veteran’s bill which you can read by clicking on the link above. It is a shot across the bow of those who are capable of leaving these shores and trapping those who wish to work overseas as U.S. citizens earning very good wages then electing to stay there. This means you and I, the average citizen who may or may not inherit, earn or create enough wealth and elect to leave these shores for greener pastures in the future will not be allowed to take our money with us. The politicians will be demanding more and more revenue so look for taxes and fees to increase across the board. To escape their clutches you have to have the financial clout to rent one and pay for the privilege of bypassing the bureaucratic thievery they have in mind.
How Bad Will it Get?
There is the seven hundred trillion dollar question. I have been wondering that myself and after reading Mike Morgan’s excellent blog I am rethinking the possible final outcomes. A bankrupt nation takes desperate measures and I fear we may be on the precipice in the next four years of some unheard of and absurd course of actions which will leave true Constitutionalists searching their souls and praying that we can dig old Ronald Reagan up and jump start him again. The future for our nation is bleak.
The how bad question is one I often receive and every time it is asked I end up revising the determination downwards to a new low, a further deterioration, and a prayer we do not ride around on dune buggies like the Mad Max movies envisioned. The problem is that this period of uncertainty has no real political, moral, or symbolic leader that appears to have the “magic” to coalesce a tired, disgusted and frustrated nation behind them. The new leadership that does emerge will not want any capital flight and the new exit tax legislation is the first building block of preventing this from happening. The next layer of restrictions will be placed on exporting assets overseas deemed of “value” by the authorities. This means that selling your precious metals or commodities to overseas buyers could create a massive tax liability as the protectionist bent of our new modern progressives is a well established fact. It also means that labor will be deemed the next commodity of value. And what does that mean?
Is there a Doctor Willing to Stay in the House?
Imagine a nation where doctors, engineers, specialists and military personnel are not allowed to leave their nation of origin and forced to work at home only because of shortages in their fields due to restrictive taxation and labor laws. It is not going to be hard to imagine inside the U.S. in the next ten years. We are already facing issues with medical staffing in rural America. Imagine what would happen if income is “assigned” based on where you live and what profession you are engaged in. I know that if I were a doctor the airport would not be in my view fast enough. And that is something that our new progressive socialist movement is fearing and with great justification. If I were a financial specialist or software engineer and I could earn four times as much in Hong Kong or Singapore than I could in say Sioux Falls, SD would I stay in town? Nope.
That is the next shoe to drop in our lifetimes. There will be no desire to keep people out of our nation as the elderly population will not produce enough revenue to keep the Ponzi scheme afloat. This leaves only one option for our future (D) or (R) socialist tax planners. And I look for the new restrictions to be enacted the minute capital flight is detected and blocked or obstructed by the authorities within the next five to ten years.
Got Frequent Flier Miles?
Better think about using them……
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