299 Days: The Preparation Part 15

"Do you think that's a good idea, Grant?"Menlow said with grave concern. "I mean, WAB is pretty partisan."

"Yeah, partisan for your party," Grant said. "You are a Republican."

It was becoming increasingly socially awkward to be a "conservative" in this liberal town. The liberals weren't screaming or throwing things, but there was definitely a separation between them and those who were conservative. Only fellow liberals were allowed into this mainstream world. The WAB guys talked about this over too many beers at the Fourth of July party.

This was the perfect time for Grant to ask for his job back. After they started talking about what a piece of s.h.i.+t Menlow had become, Grant simply said to Tom, "Can I come back to WAB?"

"About time," Tom said. "Same salary and everything?" "OK," Grant said. "You drive a hard bargain." That was it.

Grant was no longer a state employee. It felt liberating. They celebrated some more.

Now that they were good and drunk, Ben had an idea. A conservative think tank in town (the only one) had a full studio for making political podcasts and doing radio shows. WAB knew them well. Ben suggested that WAB get together and start a podcast called "Rebel Radio" to begin describing all the corruption they were seeing.

It would be more than just a show about state politics; it would have an edge. A "Don't Tread on Me" edge.

"How about a show on the coming collapse of California?" Tom offered.

"Yeah, and how public employee unions are looting the treasury of this state," Brian suggested.

"We need to have a show on Baby Boomers and how they voted themselves tons of s.h.i.+t and now the rest of us need to pay for it," Ben said.

The show topics started flowing like all the beer. Brian was writing them down.

The conservative think tank was happy to produce the podcast, but secretly. Their sound engineer could easily electronically alter each speaker's voice to make them unrecognizable. It didn't sound like an artificial robot, just like another person. It was amazing. The sound engineer made Grant's average radio voice sound rich and deep. Hiding their voices was important because the ident.i.ties of the podcasters and the think tank had to remain a secret.

They knew that Rebel Radio was going to say some unpopular things that would make some very powerful people mad. The WAB guys still had to lobby legislators for their small-business members. This "Don't Tread on Me" edge to Rebel Radio would terrify the spineless Republicans they had to lobby. The think tank was especially interested in not having anyone know they were involved with Rebel Radio because they had a tax-exempt charitable status. They knew the IRS would yank it if they put out opinions like this. Of course, it was perfectly legal for them to do this but the IRS had been "interpreting" the tax-exempt laws pretty harshly against conservative groups.

A few days later, Grant resigned from the State Auditor's Office. The resignation was anti-climactic. He didn't even go into Menlow's office and talk to him like he used to. He just wrote a letter and put it on Menlow's desk. The letter was polite and didn't go into all the details. It just said that Grant was going back to the private sector after he had a.s.sisted the Auditor with his reform goals. It was bland but Grant didn't care. He just wanted out.

The two-week period at the State Auditor's Office between resignation and his last day was weird. The bureaucrats there started unloading on him since they knew he was leaving. All kinds of little things that had been festering for a while came out. A few of his soon- to-be former co-workers actually raised their voices with him. He couldn't wait to get back to helping people for real again. He also couldn't wait to start broadcasting Rebel Radio.

A few weeks later, Rebel Radio was taped. The show consisted of the WAB guys knocking back a few beers on the air and just saying whatever they thought. No holds barred. Exactly what they thought. WAB knew things that no one else knew because they were insiders. They knew exactly how bad the state's finances were because they got the briefings. They interviewed citizens getting screwed by government; the stories were amazing. No one else was saying the things they were saying.

The number of downloads grew each week. It was becoming a pretty big deal. Most of the listeners were in Was.h.i.+ngton State because they described facts specific to that state, but they were noticing downloads from computers in other states, too. Rebel Radio tapped into something out there: rage at increasingly unjust government. They had fans, at least among the little people out there getting screwed, who had no one else telling them exactly how things were.

Rebel Radio wasn't loved by all, however. It made the State Auditor's Office look bad because that agency was supposed to be helping people, but Rebel Radio described why they weren't. The people in the State Auditor's Office made no secret that they would shut down the podcast if they could. It frustrated them that they couldn't. They were so angry at the criticism that it was a little creepy. They really, really hated the people doing Rebel Radio, especially Grant. Despite the voice synthesizer, they suspected that Grant was one of the podcasters and hated him for sharing his inside knowledge of their failures.

The Governor's Office openly talked about how they could legally shut down Rebel Radio. No one in state government could come up with a way to shut them down. Things were getting mean. In the past, it would have been absurd to say that the Governor's Office would be talking about how to silence criticism, but things were getting nastier and nastier.

The state budget deficit was ballooning. The "recession" meant less economic activity, which meant less tax revenue. Despite far less taxes coming in, the state kept spending money. And more money. Was.h.i.+ngton State was a smaller version of California: chasing out businesses, falling tax revenue, and ma.s.sively increasing spending.

The people doing it were being re-elected by huge margins. The voters loved having more stuff. They could not comprehend the debt they were running up. Besides, the "rich" paid for it all, right?

In these tough times, the government employee unions demanded more money. They insisted on pay raises. They even wanted more for their gold-plated pensions. They said that with the losses in the stock market that had previously paid the interest on their pensions, the state must put in more money so they would not suffer a decline in pension payments. In the mind of government employee unions, the taxpayers needed to pay more to them so they wouldn't suffer any losses from the stock market - like all the taxpayers had. The Legislature and Governor, all elected with the money donated by the unions, were happy to do so. The voters, at least enough of them to swing an election, seemed to be OK with it. Actually, voters in the largely agricultural eastern half of the state were not OK with it. But the conservatives in Eastern Was.h.i.+ngton were just a small part of the population, so they didn't count when it came to politics. Most voters in Was.h.i.+ngton State had been told for several decades how underpaid public employees were (which was no longer true), so many of them thought the recession was a chance for the unions to "catch up" with the private sector on pay and benefits.

Of course, with unemployment going up, the government scrambled to create more "safety net" programs. State unemployment benefits were increased. The federal government was handing out several billion dollars in aid to the state. That would allow all this spending without any consequence. For a while, until eventually even the feds realized they couldn't keep shoveling money to the states and started cutting back on aid. Now what? The state budget deficit would be about half of all the money they had control over. About half of the state budget was spent on federally mandated things like Medicaid, and the state portion of other ent.i.tlements that couldn't be cut. Half of all the money? No more federal money and no more accounting gimmicks. The state had to, for the first time ever, actually consider cutting.

State workers were asked to take furloughs, which was a week or two off each year without pay. "Essential" services, about 40% of the employees, were exempt from the furloughs.

Union representatives responded as if state workers were being executed in the streets. They ginned up huge protests and angrily demanded a stop to the cuts. Most people in the dwindling private sector looked on in amazement. They had either been laid off or knew plenty of people who had, but these government employees were going nuts over taking a tiny pay cut.

Instead of making real cuts, the government demanded more money. It raised every tax it could. It started charging "user fees" for the most absurd things. Every government permit - and there were hundreds of them needed to conduct daily life - came with a price tag. Registering a car now had a new fee of several hundred dollars. Fire departments started to charge to respond to 911 calls. Counties started to require inspections of appliances to ensure they were energy efficient and charged a hefty "inspection fee." Cities started charging a license fee to owners of dogs, threatening to take unlicensed dogs and euthanize them. It was like the government thought it was ent.i.tled to as much of the people's money as it demanded. Grant remembered the meeting at the Governor's Office when they said exactly that.

But the people, for the most part, just stood by and watched. They didn't want to get involved. A surprisingly high number of them were getting government money in one form or another. Almost half of households were dependent, in whole or in part, on government benefits. They wanted to keep theirs.

The rest of the people who weren't getting government benefits didn't want to rock the boat because they didn't want to be "extremists" or be called "greedy." Besides, they had enough to eat (actually, too much, in most cases), there were plenty of good reality shows on TV, and they didn't really understand politics, anyway. All they knew is what they learned in school: government needed more money to do great things for the little guy and business was greedy.

People a.s.sumed that the WAB would be looking out for big business. Not true. Big business and small business had radically different interests. Big business could get the government to write regulations and tax laws to put their small-business compet.i.tion out of business. Big business was run by CEOs who, by and large, were products of the liberal education system and the Seattle c.o.c.ktail party circuit where one chats about how awful Republicans are.

Small business, on the other hand, actually wanted government to be limited. The taxes, regulations, and stupid paperwork requirements were killing them.

Big business and government got even cozier during the "recession." At the federal level, the Administration, with ample help from the Republicans, bailed out GM, Chrysler, AIG, Goldman Sachs, and just about all the other big corporations.

The same was true at the state level, but the help was in different forms. Big business in Was.h.i.+ngton State got all kinds of state contracts for "stimulus money" projects to build roads and government buildings, and to buy many things big business sold. For example, the big car dealers' a.s.sociation got the state to buy millions of dollars of "fuel-efficient" cars for the state motor pool, which didn't actually need any new cars. Big business returned the favor, donating almost all their corporate contributions to the ruling Democrats and the few Republicans in office. Big business would help the politicians in other ways, like PR stunts disguised as meetings between business leaders and the Governor with the business leaders praising the Governor. The state returned the favors by imposing requirements on businesses that only large employers could afford to comply with, thus reducing the number of small businesses and thereby reducing the compet.i.tion big businesses faced.

This was soft fascism; government and large corporations helping each other to the detriment of everyone else. It was still fascism though - just without the little mustache and the genocide.

"Are we the only ones who see what's going on?" Grant asked Brian one day.

Brian sighed. "Pretty much. Most people don't know or care what's going on. They're pathetic. But they'll get what they deserve."

Grant decided to have "the conversation" with Brian.

"You know, Brian, this whole thing is going to come cras.h.i.+ng down," he said. "Soon, too. Maybe a year, maybe five. But, soon."

Brian looked relieved. Finally someone was saying what he was thinking, but he thought it was too outlandish to say out loud. "I know," Brian said. "The government is out of money and they can't stop spending. The only thing that will stop them is bankruptcy. It's going to get ugly."

They talked about the civil unrest that would come from the cuts and the protests of all the people dependent on government money. They talked about how the government would crack down on dissenters like them. Not haul them off or anything, just start auditing their taxes and that kind of thing. Soft fascism; not the little mustache stuff.

Grant didn't tell Brian about the preparations he had been making. It wasn't time yet. But he did say to Brian, "If things get crazy, we need to stick together. You, me, Tom, and Ben and our families."

Brian nodded, solemnly. He couldn't believe they were having this conversation, but he was glad they were.

Chapter 30.

Foreign and Domestic Grant had two ARs; the standard A2 and his customized M4. What to do with the A2? Having two ARs was important. There was a phrase among preppers that "one is none and two is one," meaning that a backup is always necessary.

At Capitol City Guns, Grant saw a .22 conversion bolt for an AR. Just by popping out the bolt and putting in the .22 bolt, an AR became a .22 rifle. This allowed cheap and realistic training, and provided a lot of fun.

Manda didn't know about Grant's guns. She knew he had some but had never seen them. He needed to get her proficient on the AR. "Every girl needs to know how to use one nowadays," Grant told her.

Cole was still a little spooked by loud noises so Grant would wait to get him shooting. The .22 conversion bolt would be perfect for Manda's training. It had no recoil and was quiet. What better way to introduce a fifteen year-old to ARs?

"Hey, Manda, want to shoot a real live Army gun?" he asked her one day.

"Are you kidding?" she asked. "Do you have one?"

That was the beginning of Grant and Manda's Sunday afternoons at the shooting range. She quickly became very good with the AR in .22. The light recoil made it perfect for training a new AR shooter. Shooting the AR with the regular 5.56mm ammo after that was no big deal for her. She even learned how to field strip the AR. She loved the fact that she had a thing to do with her dad, and she could keep it secret from her mom. Lisa would have spazzed out if she knew Grant was teaching Manda to shoot an "a.s.sault rifle."

Next, Grant got her shooting the AK. She was good at that, too, but it had more recoil for the fifteen year-old and the folding stock made it harder to aim. However, she could shoot an AK no problem, and she loved it.

It got even better. The AK-47 had a cousin, the AK-74, which was the rifle the Russians used. The AK-74 shot the smaller 5.45 x 39 cartridge, which, like the AR's 5.56 x 45, had little or no recoil. And AK-74s were light, about half as heavy as an AK-47. On top of all that, the AK-74 had a short "European" sized stock for smaller Europeans.

Light, short stock, and virtually no recoil. The perfect gun for Manda, and any other smaller person. It was a "wives and kids" gun.

The AK-74 was cheap. The Russians made millions of them, and they were about $400. A person could put a cheap red-dot sight on and have a fine rifle with an optic for about $500. Magazines were dirt cheap, about $10 a piece. And, to top it all off, ammo was absurdly cheap. A person could get a metal tin, called a "spam can" because it looked like one and was opened with a can opener, of 1,080 AK-74 rounds for $120. All of this meant that a prepper could get an AK-74 with a basic red-dot sight and over 1,000 rounds of for half the cost of an AR-15 without an optic or any ammunition.

Since they were so cheap, Grant got two AK-74s - one for him and a matching one for Manda. She loved shooting it. One time she said, "Daddy, I did all my homework. Can we go shoot the AK-74s? Please."

Grant got one spam can at a time with the expense-check envelope money. Pretty soon, he had four spam cans (over 4,000 rounds) at home and another four at the cabin. He got ten magazines for each rifle. It was the cheapest SHTF battle rifle to be found. And it was so much fun to shoot.

Now it was time to tell Manda what was in all those green square cans in the garage marked "5.56" "7.62" and now "5.45." Grant was glad he gently and slowly broke the news to Manda that her dad was a "survivalist." He could only imagine if he had just announced one day, "I have stored a bunch of food and guns. I think the world is ending."

He now considered Manda a full partner in prepping. They talked about the details of their prepping and planned it out together. They also talked about how the country was disintegrating. At least he could talk to one person about this. Too bad it was a fifteen year-old instead of his wife and friends.

Grant had to make sure there was a check on his emotions and that he was making rational decisions. He was dealing with such heavy thoughts - the collapse of the country, food shortages, protecting loved ones from uncontrolled violence - that he had to have something in place to make sure he didn't overreact. Fear should never rule decision making. Grant figured Manda could be his reality check. Looking to a teenage girl for emotional clarity wasn't the best option, but given that she was the only one who he could tell about all this, it was his only option.

One day at the shooting range, he said to her, "Manda, I want to make sure I'm approaching prepping rationally. I don't want to get emotional and buy a bunch of food or guns every time there's a dip in the stock market. Prepping isn't a crutch; it's a logical plan to handle bad times. So here's the deal. Any time you think I'm not doing something logically, you have permission to say, *Dad, you're wrong.' But you need to be able to then say, *Here's why.' Deal?"

Asking a teenager if she wants permission to tell her parent when they're wrong?

"Of course Daddy," she said. "Nothing you've done so far has been weird."

It turns out lots of other people, a few million, were having the same concerns as Grant.

Capitol City Guns was lucky to have opened its doors when it did. During the various recent ammo scares, customers felt they needed more guns, ammo, and accessories. They would return to the place where they got their first guns, as they responded to the Federal Reserve's continued printing of absurd sums of money, the increasing crime rate, and all the other signs of what might be coming scared more and more people. They kept buying guns; lots and lots of guns.

During this time, an estimated one to three million AR-15s were manufactured, sold, and put into American civilians' hands.

Some thought that there were about as many civilian AR-15s, or maybe more, than the military's stockpiles of military-version M-16s. Americans bought hundreds of thousands of tactical shotguns and millions of pistols during this same period. Billions of rounds of ammunition were also moved from warehouses to Americans' gun safes, ammo cans in garages, storage sheds, and sock drawers. All of this didn't count the tens of millions of scoped hunting rifles and hunting shotguns already existing in the United States. Estimates were that there were over 100 million firearms in the country. They were in closets, night stands, and attics all across the nation.

Not only guns and ammo, but sophisticated gear was flying off the shelves. Stores like Capitol City were stocked with night vision scopes and body armor. There were millions of extremely well-armed American civilians. Most of them were not trained as soldiers, but they had decent gear and could train later.

The military and law enforcement knew this. The vast majority of them never thought about trying to take over the country. However, a tiny percentage of them - the political ones who wanted to get promoted - planned out how to do it under the guise of "contingency planning." Those planning a takeover realized that it wouldn't be a cakewalk. It would be a nasty, brutal civil war with guerillas killing them for years and years. No army - not even the U.S., which had the most powerful military in the history of the Earth - could possibly take over and occupy the country.

Another reason it would be hard for the military to totally take over is that many in the military and law enforcement hated the politicians who would order them to try to take control. It would be a hard sell for a politician to tell a soldier or cop, "Go kill your neighbors and stand a good chance of getting killed yourself - all so I can have more power." Of course, some in the military or law enforcement would use the "crisis" as an excuse to grab their own power. It had happened for all of human history; America was no exception to the laws of human behavior and history.

Others would be in-between. Some in the military and law enforcement would go along with the politicians at first; there would probably some genuine crises to protect people against. But after a while, they would increasingly refuse to shoot and imprison Americans if that's what they were ordered to do. Therefore, eventually most in the military and law enforcement would probably not be part of an attempted takeover. In fact, a good portion of them would actively fight against the politicians trying it.

Special Forces Ted was one of them. He was a member of Oath Keepers, as were many of his Special Forces buddies.

It would be safe to a.s.sume that something as simple as pledging to keep an oath to uphold the Const.i.tution wouldn't be too controversial. But it was. The progressive politicians hated Oath Keepers. They thought Oath Keepers were violent right-wing militia nut jobs bent on taking over America via a coup.

One day, Grant went to Capitol City and found Chip and Special Forces Ted in the shop making some ARs. Now that Ted was retired and divorced, he spent most of his time there. Grant had apparently interrupted them in some deep conversation. Ted wanted to change the subject but Chip wanted to continue with it in front of Grant.

Chip said to Ted, "Go ahead, man, you can trust Grant. Tell him what you were telling me."

Ted paused. He didn't want to keep talking. Finally, he reluctantly said, "I'm organizing an Oath Keepers group in my old unit. There are lots of us who think something bad is going to happen." Ted paused and chose his words carefully, "We didn't sign up to take over our own country. We signed up to protect it. We will. Enemies foreign and domestic. Domestic."

Grant was stunned to hear this. An American soldier saying out loud that he was concerned that the government was thinking of taking over by force and other soldiers would have to get involved to stop it. The part that wasn't surprising, at least to Grant, was that soldiers had to think about this. Grant knew things were collapsing. Those Green Berets knew it, too. They received the briefings on what was happening.

Now that Ted was warming up to the idea of trusting Grant, he got on a roll about Oath Keepers. He explained to Grant that at least half of the guys in his old unit were Oath Keepers, or wanted to join. The other half were either "not into politics" or were so young that they didn't fully appreciate what an unlawful order was. The young guys hadn't been deployed to h.e.l.lholes around the world, like the older guys had, where it was the norm for power-hungry politicians to use force against the civilian population. Of the half not immediately interested in Oath Keepers, Ted figured about half of them (about a quarter of the unit) would be open to it, especially if the rest of the unit was. The remaining men in the unit were either not interested or, in a few cases, were "ladder climbers" who would follow just about any order to advance in rank. Ted couldn't think of any ladder climbers in his former unit, but he had to admit that when times got tough some guys would just follow orders. Ted explained that the more elite a unit was, and Special Forces was certainly at the top of that list, the more open the unit was to Oath Keepers. Mid-level infantry units would have many good Oath Keepers, but also had a higher percentage of guys who joined for a free college education. The lower level units, especially the non-combat support units, had a majority of guys who treated the Army as just another job. Guys like that would probably follow orders just to keep their jobs. But, a unit full of Army administrative specialists isn't too fearsome compared to a couple of Green Berets.

Besides, Ted explained, America's high-tech military was extremely dependent on supplies and logistics. If semi-trucks quit rolling, the Army would face shortages of fuel, ammo, and spare parts just like everyone else. They had stockpiles but they, too, had fallen for just-in-time inventory. Cost-cutting wizards at the Pentagon had decided to go with just-in-time inventory to save money. Oh, how shortsighted that would be. Just like almost everything else in America. Shortsighted and disastrous.

"Another big problem a unit will face in a domestic crisis is that most guys will want to get back home to their families," Ted explained. "Especially the lower level units. But, with the more elite units, we are each other's family so we'll fight as group. And most of those units will be Oath Keeper units."

"What about cops?" Chip asked. "Those guys come in here all day to buy guns and hang out. They seem pretty solid to me." Ted and Chip talked about law enforcement and how they thought a good chunk of them would choose the Oath Keeper side, either at the outset of a collapse or a little bit into it.

Grant didn't know what it was like to be a Green Beret, but he knew a little about cops. "Hey, I don't claim to be an expert here," he said, "but aren't cops a little more p.r.o.ne to corruption than, say, Army units? I mean, I see a little cop corruption in the cases I work on."

Ted and Chip agreed that cops would be more likely to be corrupt just because cops were in constant contact with criminals, whereas soldiers weren't. The consensus among Ted, Chip, and Grant was that some cops would go bad and maybe steal from people, but that the majority would not.

"Cops are local," Ted said. "They don't move around to a new base every few years like we do. That means they'll think twice about shooting people in their own towns who are their neighbors and relatives, in some cases."

Most cops would probably just quit their jobs. The current round of budget cuts would mean even fewer cops would be around. Those that were might decide that a collapse was a good time to quit, especially when it meant getting killed, or having to kill their neighbors.

Grant was soaking all of this in. He still couldn't believe what he was hearing. It was rea.s.suring. No, actually, it was a huge relief to hear, straight from the horse's mouth, that the military and lots of law enforcement would not turn into an anti-civilian thug force. It sounded like there would be plenty of good military and law enforcement people to keep the bad ones under control. But there would still be plenty of bad military and law enforcement units.

As much Grant had improved his tactical skills, he always knew that his little Team was no match for any competent military or law enforcement opponent. Not even close. He remembered the day at the range with the Team when some Rangers from Ft. Lewis showed up to shoot. The Team was glad to let them use the range to learn from them. Those Rangers were amazing; ten times better than the civilians on the Team. Right then and there Grant and the rest of the Team knew their limitations. They were only able to defend themselves against civilian criminals, maybe up to the sophisticated gang level of civilian criminals. But that was it. Now he realized that his side would have some military and law enforcement backup with the Oath Keepers.

Grant had to head home, which was a short drive from the gun store. He would have stayed and listened to Ted for hours if he could. On the way home, he tried to "normalize" himself by getting back into the suburban world he was returning to. He struggled with making the mental switch from hearing a former Green Beret talk about which of the guys in his unit would fight against the U.S. Government in a coup, to hearing about how ballet practice went and what homework the kids had that night.

When Grant got into the driveway, he hit the garage door b.u.t.ton. Hitting that b.u.t.ton had become a symbol to him that he needed to go from thinking about the end of the world to thinking about being a suburban dad and husband. It was a hard transition on evenings like this one. Very hard.

Chapter 31.

Budget Crisis The State of Was.h.i.+ngton was technically bankrupt. Of course, a state can't really declare bankruptcy, although California was considering it.

The official Was.h.i.+ngton State deficit for the year was $5.7 billion. It was widely rumored to be even bigger. Was.h.i.+ngton State's budget for the previous year was about $30 billion, but half of that was the state portion of federal programs like Medicaid that the state couldn't cut. That meant the state had about $15 billion it could control, and it was short by $5.7 billion. The local schools got almost all of their money from the state, which was close to $5 billion. The state was required by the state const.i.tution to pay for education, so that meant that $5 billion could not be touched. That left Was.h.i.+ngton State with $10 billion to pave roads, operate prisons, provide social services, have a state police force, and more.

Of course, a big chunk of paying for those things was paying the salaries, and especially the pensions of the state employees. But, with $10 billion of spending and a $5.7 billion deficit, the state had only half of the money it needed to do those things. Half.

It never should have gotten to this crisis point, Grant thought. The policy wonks at WAB told Grant that if the state would have just spent at historically normal levels for the past six years, there wouldn't be a deficit. But, during the boom years, the state was raking in the tax money - and spending even more than the record-setting amounts it was taking in. Spending kept growing faster than revenue, and when revenue stopped coming in, the spending actually went up. A lot. Besides the increases in "safety net" spending, the other reason that spending kept going up was that, unlike the private sector, government spending was not a one-time thing. Once a program was created, it had to continue being funded, and each year the budget for it went up. It was called "baseline budgeting" which meant that one year's spending was the "baseline," and an increase for the next year was required. To reduce the increase was a "cut." And voters hated "cuts" even if the cut was just slower growth in spending, not an actual cut. This stupidity was only possible with ma.s.ses of brainwashed people.

The biggest reason spending went up so fast was that the state kept saying "yes" to every state employee union it could. More pension money? Sure. State employees had the most generous pensions of anyone in the state. Want to get out of paying for any real portion of your health insurance? Sure.