“Quiet now,” the skinny man said. “We’ll be at our safe-house soon.”
Chapter 14
The balding Representative, Curt Sanders representing the State of New York, banged his chairman's gavel. Drawing his eyebrows together over bloodshot eyes, he declared, “Motion on the floor in the matter of refitting Florida voting machines stands as passed. The election's committee meeting is adjourned.”
With that gavel bang, Representative Maxine Smith heard the sound of money filling her family’s bank accounts. She had to continually grow those accounts. She thought of the huge financial obligations of her nepotism.
Maxine was Congress's poster child for nepotism. Her daughter, three brothers, two cousins and four other relatives, held high paying, mostly no show positions within her DC and Miami offices. She favored transferring as much money as possible from the public treasury to her family’s interests. She did this by adding riders to her party’s bills that funneled funds into projects owned and managed by her relatives back in Miami-Dade County, Florida.
Over the past year, money started rolling in from overseas donors pushing to enact this particular legislation. These first donations came with promises of much more in the future. Maxine imagined years of payments on her West Palm Beach, ocean front dream home materializing. Florida's representative from Mimai-Dade County beamed seeing Sander's smiling in the hall outside the committee meeting room.
Maxine Smith's district was dominated by her Democrat party. Because of her outspoken mannerisms and unquestionable ignorance, she became the party's floating mouthpiece for criticizing opposing groups. Her collection of wigs crowned her five foot, two inch, frumpy grandmotherly appearance.
The tall, six foot Sanders squinted his eyes accenting deep, pronounced ‘crows feet’ bordering the side of his face. He expected Maxine to be camped outside the committee’s conference room. His grinning face called her towards the elevator.
Sanders and Smith meet in the elevator. He pressed the button for the Congressional dining room floor. They aimed for congratulatory drinks after that committee meeting. "I don't think anyone will notice we authorized your election machines' refit. I tacked the measure onto the Clean Plastic Bill. It should sail through Congress by the end of the week.”
Maxine mused, "We'll be a lot better off in many ways. Do you think that some Bilderberg people are behind this move?"
Curt beamed imagining buying the land for his fifth upstate New York shopping mall. His meeting with the Brighton Beach Russian, Tariel Mogilevich years ago significantly grew his reelection campaign fund. This was merely another paid favor for the Russian and his friends.
Sanders told Maxine, “I feel that this last urgent move could only be from the people who sponsor or regularly attend the annual Bilderberg. They're aligning the United States with the New World Order movement. We'll never see their fully imagined Order in our lifetime, but we'll get rich resulting from its continued progress."
"Considering I ordered the refit before it was officially authorized and those machines are in our warehouse already, we are sitting pretty," Maxine glowed. “The Chinese started to get a little surly with Uncle Sam’s IOU. But, I threatened to blackball them from any more government contracts and they played nice. All we needed was the Fed’s blessing for the funding. The refit included all the state’s vote balloting computers in every polling district. The voting machines are our financial ticket to the future!”
"You are so sinister," Curt proclaimed. They toasted to their success. "I'll pick up the bill," he said.
Maxine frowned. "Why?" She questions. "I always sign an open tab. At the end of the month they tear up the tabs. By Congressional order no bills are carried forward past the end of the month. Don't you love the suckers that pay taxes for our three drink lunches?"
They finished the day celebrating with their respective staffs. Sanders picked a young, pretty intern, barely twenty to have an individual party with later that evening at his bachelor townhouse in Georgetown. Maxine for her part chose a mature female staffer to party with at her West Palm Beach, oceanfront home. Maxine enjoyed dominating women who were into kinky sexual pleasures. All leathered up, they both felt like masters of their universe!
Chapter 15
Mac marveled enjoying the view from the Presidio’s Water's Edge restaurant. He expressed his gratitude to former California Senator Steve Miller, "Thanks for the invitation. I never get tired of looking at our Golden Gate Bridge from here."
Senator Miller, a Hastings Law School board member, took Mac out to lunch today. At five foot, six inches, the elderly Miller seemed full of energy. He walked so briskly from the parking lot to the restaurant that Mac had to occasionally double his strides. He intended to recruit Mac, a recent Hastings’s graduate, to teach a freshman Political Ethics class at the law school.
During lunch Mac asked the senator if he’d heard of the Steve Miller Band. The former senator smiled and commented that half of his voters thought they were getting a rock star for a senator!
Mac grinned. “They did get a rock star, a political rock star.” Indeed, Senator Miller’s conservative views were the last of their kind uttered from San Francisco and the left-wing northern California area. After Reagan, the entire state was inundated with illegals. Their gullibility and numbers energized California’s liberal, left-leaning progressives. From the 1990’s on California seemed like it only counted votes from Democrats. Since then California has been a slam dunk ‘blue’ state for the Democrats.
Senator Miller inclined forward in his chair, as if remembering the good-ole-days. “Now they call the west coast, including Hawaii, the Communist States of America!”
Miller continued telling Mac about the days when he first became a senator before all the party bickering began. "I visited DC last week and ate in the Congressional dining room, the separate room off the main dining room. There were a dozen or so empty large round tables that seat ten people. When I served, Republicans and Democrats would mingle and eat at those round tables. They would share war stories and just plain laugh with each other. Today those tables are gathering dust. I was told by the dining room staff that those tables are always empty. They commented that these days the senators and representatives all leave DC Thursday night and don't return until mid-Monday. Now I ask you, is that any way to run a government?"
Mac remained somber. His thoughts drifted between understanding the senator's disbelief and the Foundation's video meeting. "Senator, I can only imagine what DC politics was like in your day. In today’s reality, we have a divided, frozen government. I’m sickened that our representatives put party politics ahead of what’s best for our country.”
The senator complimented Mac on his political savvy. “That’s why we need you teaching,” shrugging his shoulders, raising his eyebrows, emphasizing, “AND influencing future lawyers. The Political Ethics class presents a perfect platform for expressing pure legal concepts and practices. You can give students an ideal picture of relationships and proceedings based on legal precedent and not a narrow, melodramatic vision of some pie-in-the-sky economic theory. We live in a real world with real people and real problems. Theories ending with global solutions will destroy the U.S. Global rules cannot survive in the United States as it was founded two hundred and fifty years ago.”
Mac enjoyed tutoring and bantering ideas with others in his study group. He especially takes pleasure in expressing his opinion with Carol, Jimmy or Juan. Their feedback helped him cement many of his current convictions. “Let me think this over. I’ll have more time to seriously consider your proposal after Juan’s upcoming wedding. I promise I’ll seriously consider the teaching position. If for no other reason than I’ll have an excuse to consult with you more often.”
Senator Miller nodded his approval and asked. “Is one of your Foundation