An Open Letter to the President

An Open Letter to Barack Obama and/or his successor in office:

It is not noble for you and persons like Al Gore to lead the world toward the elimination of carbon fuels if in the process you subvert the short and long term interests of your own people.

Fact: Our nation is borrowing money from other countries to meet its current obligations, including interest on that same mushrooming debt, a circumstance that will debase the value of the Dollar and destroy our way of life if not reversed within a couple of years.

Fact: Creditor nations understand that we need to balance our federal budget or the Dollars they hold will plummet in value – Why? – Because we’ll be forced to continue printing paper fiat Dollars to meet obligations for which we otherwise have no money – this is the classic path to hyperinflation, which has been destroying societies for over 2,000 years . . . check out Milton Friedman and Keynes if you don’t believe me.

Fact: If we continue spending money we don’t have, the Arab states, Venezuela and Russia will soon stop accepting Dollars in payment for the oil we will need for a long time to come, and other countries like China and India will not loan us Dollars since what they’ll get back when repaid will not be worth what they loaned, and, defacto, the Dollar is no longer the world’s reserve currency.

Question: When this happened in countries like Mexico, Argentina and Brazil, we (and the IMF) bailed them out in exchange for they’re agreeing not to continue printing fiat currency – But who’s going to bail us out?

Suggestion: It is easier and far less harmful for America to become oil and carbon energy self-sufficient on the supply side NOW (as we can if allowed) - so we can cease the importation of Arab oil, thereby eliminating our foreign exchange deficit and buying time to get our federal budget balanced until sustainable green energy sources and more efficient uses can fill the Nation’s needs . . . totally.

Point: If you’re not prepared to lead us to carbon energy independence then you better stop right now spending Dollars you don’t have!

Send author a comment on this post

Justice for Justice

Here is a copy of the author's note to the Book Editor of The Federal Lawyer

Henry Cohen
Book Review Editor
The Federal Lawyer

Subject: Review of Justice

Dear Mr. Cohen,

Imagine my surprise to have my beach book novel on Washington politics reviewed by the Federal Lawyer. "Justice" is just that - a political mystery in which I've taken full advantage of the fiction writers' literary license creating memorable characters causing and solving conflicts involving the White House, Congress, and the Supreme Court. each operating on the Constitutional stage.

Ms. JoAnn Baca conducted a professional and fair review on the premise that "Justice" is a typical legal or crime thriller, a point on which she might have been mislead by the hype that came with the assignment, and for that please accept my ernest apologies. The hype must also be blamed for her assumption that the "mystery" to be solved is that Supreme Court Justices are not required by the words in the Constitution to be citizens, and why she suggested readers skip the Author's Note, which she expected would give away the plot. What she'd found was the red-herring, and the real "mystery" is revealed in the very last paragraph. I loved it, and I do hope readers will pay attention to that Note on the Constitution.

I'm flattered that the Federal Lawyer deemed "Justice" comment worthy, and I'm very content with Ms. Baca's description of Justice as a "good story." I might paraphrase Ernest Hemingway and say that's all I ever intended to do - write a good story, but then he was being defensive . . . so I won't do that.

Please thank JoAnn Baca for me, and tell her I'll be more careful taking dead people to court in my next book - #3 in this Washington Trilogy, and that she's absolutely right about my novels being character driven, even in death. I'll send her a copy of #3 without accompanying hype, and she can see if I've learned anything.

Thanks again to the Federal Lawyer, and to JoAnn Baca, for the time and attention given to this work. I appreciate her honesty and professionalism.

Jay Lillie, Author

James Woodruff Lillie, Jr.
Attorney at Law
New York, New York

Send author a comment on this post

A Chance Encounter

His nose twitched and he wickedly smiled and winked at me. “Come on Big Boy, give it up.”

How much?

“What you got?”

Twenty Five cents. Will that do it?

“What you think, Big Boy?”

I don’t know. I’m from Missouri.

“You not from Missouri. You from My District, Big Boy.”

Okay, so how much?

“All the Kings Horses, and all his woooo-men.”

I don’t have any horses.

“You got no woooo-men either, Big Boy.”

So what do you want from me?

“A license.”

To do what?

“Anything and everything . . . to spend your money; make you pay and pay, mortgage your children’s lives, give my friends what they want, buy your vote, send you packing, tie your hands, and bury you on the lone prairie.

Not much room in there for what I might want. I thought you were on my side.

“What side be that?”

Aren’t we on the same side here? It’s all one country you know.

“You don’t really believe that, do you?”

Who do you think you are, anyway?

“Exactly. Just check your vote at the door, and get the HELL out of here.”

No. I’m not giving you my vote, and you’re the one who’ll be leaving.

“Ha, ha, you can’t get rid of me. I’m in the details.”

I should have known . . . the devil’s always in the details.

Send author a comment on this post

CASTRO'S HEIR? Reprinted by popular demand.
originally posted: September 24, 2007

A friend of mine sent me an e-mail on the condition I not tell anyone. No one has heard from him now in almost two months, and I’m constrained to break my pledge of silence in the hope that someone may have seen him alive. A recent picture is attached. Here's what my friend wrote:

“The corked bottle of Cuban rum that floated onto the Gulf Stream shore was empty. I had to break the bottle to retrieve the short letter from Fidel Castro that was inside. Roughly translated it reads as follows:

To the person who finds the bottle in which I place this letter I bequeath all my worldly goods and the power to succeed me as President of the Cuban State. To redeem this grant all you need to do is spend 30 days in Miami before coming to Havana to be given my blank check and sworn into office by my brother, Raul. Good luck, my prayers are with you.
Fidel.

"According to the pundits, Fidel Castro is immensely rich, so I’ve been giving this a lot of thought. The part that bothers me is the 30 days in Miami. Why did he insist on that? Is it a test of some kind? Frankly, I don’t think I’d last a day there as Castro’s heir apparent, let alone a month. If I were to get all his worldly goods in cash I might be able to buy my way out of problems in Coral Gables, but if he’s not dead yet I guess there’s not much chance of that.

“I’m not sure I want the job anyway. I’d have to spend a lot of time keeping that clown Chavez happy, while balancing my affections for the Cubans in Havana with the ones who now live in the States. As great people as they are I’d rather meet regularly with the Mountain natives of Borneo. I mean that’s a job for insomniacs and masochists.

“The rum’s not bad, but I prefer the Jamaican variety. Having an unlimited supply of Cuban cigars was worth momentary consideration, until I remembered it hurt when the smoke got in my eyes.

“I’d get to give speeches to the United Nations and in Revolutionary Square about how awful Americans from the U.S. are. But that’s old hat at this point, and others do it better. My Spanish would need some major overhaul.

“The best part would be the beaches. I know they’re better than this beach where I found the bottle. Imagine what I could do with thousands of miles of unspoiled shorelines and estuaries. It brings tears to my eyes.

“If power corrupts, then the temptation to become powerful is overwhelming. So I guess I’ll take it to the next level and book a flight to Miami. It’s an exciting town now and full of beautiful people that will no doubt surround me with excesses. I’ll try it for a few days, and if it gets too much I can always return home no worse for the experience.

“Do you think I need to tell Fidel or Raul that I’m coming?”

Send author a comment on this post

CONFESSIONS OF A CUBAN COUNTER REVOLUTIONARY
originally posted: June 17, 2007

Sometimes the truth is hard to come by. In Cuba a couple of years ago in the company of a group of North American lawyers, I came across a 19 year old MAN who was complaining about the U.S. embargo against Americans doing business with Cubans in Cuba. I sympathized, but pointed to Fidel Castro’s repressive regime for the embargo’s rationale.

“You’re a lawyer,” he said, “and you tell me that?”

As I nodded a “yes,” I could see him getting up the nerve to make his point.

“Would you like to know why we Cubans haven’t overthrown Fidel Castro? Certainly you lawyers have heard of the Helms-Burton Act? This law, passed by your Congress in 1996, says your President and State Department cannot help Cuba form a new government until the claims against my country by those Cubans who fled to Miami are satisfied. Why should I risk my life to line the pockets of those people, who would then return and take Fidel’s place in Havana?”

Back in Washington I made good on a promise to check out Helms-Burton, and in the process turned up this bit of legislative history. Senator Chris Dodd, speaking on the Senate floor in 1995 during the debate on passage of the Helms-Burton Act, argued,

“…the language, Mr. President, is pretty emphatic – No assistance may be provided . . . to a transition government in Cuba. We now have 38 countries in the world, including Cuba, where United States citizens’ property has been expropriated, and we are in the process of trying to get those individuals compensated for that property. Some of these countries are very strong allies of ours. We never said before we cannot provide any assistance to those countries until those claims and matters are settled, and yet that is what we do with this legislation. . . I just think it’s bad policy, Mr. President [to] absolutely hamstring not just this administration, but future administrations, from being able to move intelligently and rapidly to try to shore up a government that will follow Fidel Castro.”

The Honorable Messrs. Helms and Burton are long gone from office, but the Castro’s are as painfully present as ever. Meanwhile this law, and the Trade Embargo on Americans doing business in Cuba which it was designed to tighten and expand, have not only failed in their purpose to depose Castro, they have helped keep him in power.

Does anyone doubt that having American engineers, entrepreneurs, teachers, builders, technicians, and farmers on the ground in Cuba would help provide the templates and incentives for a free society to evolve in Cuba as American businessmen have provided elsewhere around the globe? Of course Castro can try to prevent this from evolving, but those behind the Iron Curtain failed in their attempts to do the same. Anyway, why should we do Castro’s work for him?
Let’s give all of us Americans the freedom to make happen in Havana what those Cubans who came to Florida have had the freedom to accomplish in Miami.

Send author a comment on this post

A New York lawyer specializing in international and financial transactions and representing American, European and Japanese clients in over 40 countries, Jay Lillie has met and dealt with his share of brilliant minds and rascals amid serious conflicts of culture and self-preservation. A talent for writing fiction allows him to bring to his readers the sense and feel of being there in places and lands less familiar to most of us, dealing with real men and women in extraordinary situations. Jay is a prize winning essayist, blue water sailor, and since 2005 author of three published novels.