Serving the High Plains
Serving the High Plains
For your consideration, a little speculative fiction:
It is 2030. The president is Sophia Borodin, a fifth-generation descendant of Russian immigrants who came to the U.S. in the 19th Century, narrowly escaping a death sentence from the czar for their advocacy of socialism.
President Borodin is an avowed socialist who has been able to mesmerize audiences with her confidence, eloquence and charisma.
As her constituents look on approvingly, she has created a $10 trillion government deficit by forgiving all college loans, making college free at state schools, and has all but destroyed private health insurance with a federal plan that essentially makes health care free to all comers.
She has cut the military to two-thirds its former size and taxed corporations on up to 60 percent of their net income and closed loopholes, but the deficit still stands at $10 trillion.
Gross Domestic Product is at $20 trillion, and economists and Wall Street are in panic mode.
Both houses of Congress have majorities in President Borodin’s party, but she has used executive privilege and emergency powers to push her agenda far beyond the wishes of Congress.
Just today, President Borodin has directed the General Services Administration to lock out the Supreme Court and the House and Senate rooms in the Capitol.
The lockout occurs on a day when both are due to consider action against the president. The Senate is taking a final vote on removing the president from office after an impeachment trial, which is expected to be unanimous in favor of removal.
The Supreme Court has already ruled unconstitutional the president’s action of sending troops to defend the dictatorship in Venezuela after Congress overrode her veto of a law prohibiting such aid.
The Supreme Court is expected to make a rare move: authorizing the use of physical force from police agencies to prevent the president’s order from being enforced.
The highest court in the land has assembled in a Washington, D. C., Circuit Court of Appeals courtroom and decides there is nothing they can do.
Why?
Well, 10 years ago, the U.S. Senate decided that a president can violate any rule or law imposed by another branch of government if the president believes such violation to be in the public interest.
In 2020, it was President Donald Trump’s case that set the precedent for Borodin’s exoneration.
Trump easily escaped removal from office despite his seeking to extort a foreign government to investigate a political rival.
Trump was going to make that investigation a condition for that government to receive Congressionally authorized aid.
That extortion to benefit Trump’s own campaign was justified by the president’s apparent belief that his re-election was in the public interest.
There is no question as U.S. troops head for Venezuela that President Borodin will resoundingly lose the next election, just as Trump was defeated in November 2020.
It is also expected that, as Trump was, Borodin will have to be escorted out of the White House at gunpoint by U.S. Marines.
Steve Hansen writes about our life and times from his perspective of a semi-retired Tucumcari journalist. Contact him at: