I favor the Democratic United States of America," said Bob Ryan. "But there are lots of other good suggestions worthy of some consideration." Ryan was making his initial report to Interim President Colin Powell regarding the restructuring of the nation, including giving it a new name more reflective of the reformation caused by the O.U.T.R.A.G.E. revolution. Ryan was anxious to submit his report, then get back to the Shiggity Shack for an afternoon of gazing at beach beauties and breaking out a few more six packs of that smooth St. Kitts beer of which he'd become so fond. The life of a beach bum appealed to Ryan, and as long as he was stationed in St. Kitts for this patriotic volunteerism, he was going to soak up as much of the West Indies lifestyle as he possibly could. Smokey, AROB's 'designated driver', hastily returned Ryan to his the blanket-sized parcel of beachfront real estate he'd come to call his 'home away from home' to find Jil Adams, Ron Oetting, and Phil Baker had gotten a head start on the daily ritual of consuming mass quantities of alcohol. They had been busy all morning working on their respective projects, but - as Smokey wisely counseled when they first hired him as their exclusive driver - the afternoons in St. Kitts were reserved for reflection and rest so that they could energize themselves for the long, warm nights of partying on the sands of the Caribbean. While the lifestyle wasn't all that much different from his routine back in the states, Ryan enjoyed the laid-back easiness he found in St. Kitts Sure, he worked in the mornings at his home improvement business and spent the afternoons in a favorite bar or two back in the Midwest, but here on this 69-square miles of Heaven, life was much more relaxed. Traffic jams didn't involve cars; instead, cars would stop while a herd of 150 wild goats would cross the road to graze in the lush grasslands at the bottom of the mountains, where goats and monkeys roamed free. Ryan, Oetting, Adams and Baker never stopped delighting in these kinds of free-spirited island activities. Monkeys were routinely welcomed in bars and restaurants where they would entertain patrons and sometimes steal food right off their plates. Monkeys, in fact, were protected by St. Kitts law; it was illegal to harm or kill a monkey.
As the AROB team of four sat on the beach drinking Brinley's Gold rum and/or that delectably smooth beer, they actually managed to come up with some reasonable ideas for reforming the United States, dramatically influenced by their south sea islands surroundings. Adams, ever vigilant of the hassles facing bar owners, suggested that resources now earmarked for police 'stings' to catch drunk drivers be re-allocated. "Why can't that money be used to allow police officers to drive drunks home safely and at no charge?" she asked. Bartenders would still be required to not serve anyone they deemed to be 'overserved', but in the case of those severely impaired drinkers, the police would drive them home as part of a public safety effort. "After all," Adams reasoned, "aren't the police supposed to 'protect and serve'? It seems to me this would be a wiser use of taxpayer money than entrapment programs. Too many of our U.S. laws are designed to either punish or raise more money for the government; it's time the laws were designed for the betterment of our society. I believe if you took a more positive approach to law enforcement, people wouldn't resent authority as much as they do now. You could even charge a nominal fee to help sustain the program. Then that money couldn't be funneled into other pet projects that politicians always seem to have in their hip pockets." It was a rational idea, worthy of public consideration.
Ryan supported an income tax reform similar to that proposed in Article III, introduced on Friday, January 25, 2008. The resolution provided for a more equitable taxation with those who had more paid more. "The present tax system is rigged to save the rich billions of dollars while the rest of us shoulder the burden," he claimed. "There's no doubt a complete overhaul of the tax system must be a priority. Between chugs of that smooth and creamy St. Kitts beer, Ryan scribbled memos to himself in a small black-and-white spiral notebook. A qualified and competent tax preparer, he knew taxes inside out, and he also recognized the inequities within the current IRS codes. Baker swizzled Brinley's Gold coffee-flavored rum from a 2-liter beer mug with an Indianapolis Colts logo emblazoned on its side. He, too, had been a professional tax expert who had his own ideas about how to reform the complex tax system. Before retiring to his Iowa pig farm, he had run a successful tax office that dealt with myriad tax problems dropped at his doorstep by bewildered, confounded taxpayers who couldn't understand why they were having disputes with the country's most despised bureaucratic boondoggle. The IRS was in dire need of reorganization; IRS employees needed to be retrained to understand they were actually public servants and not a veiled version of Hitler's Gestapo.
Oetting, on the other hand, was just drunk most of the time. Occasionally he would have a rare lucid moment that would result in his coming up with a self-declared 'brilliant' idea. But for the most part he was recruited as the AROB Group's secretary since he seemed capable of pounding out damn near anything on a keyboard, even in a drunken stupor. Oetting didn't care for the sun - or the water - all that much. But there was something about the south seas breeze that kept him in a constant state halfway between sobriety and being absolutely comatose-trashed. Now in his 65th year, he was the oldest of the four members of the AROB Group, and by now had turned into a full-fledged alcoholic. As they had back in the states, his three friends tolerated his sometimes-juvenile antics and annoying cackles as he repeatedly told the same stale jokes over and over again. Jil, Bob and Phil reasoned it was better listening to his insipid humor than trying to sober him up and have to listen to him reminisce about his past; the problem was that most of the time he could no longer remember many of the details, and his tales often got lost in a foggy, fuzzy mental file that usually came up empty. Senility was beginning to set in, and the other three Musketeers simply had learned to ignore Oetting's drunken outbursts, knowing that it would only last a few brief moments before he'd pass out in the sand again.
Still, things were getting done. Life was good. And the O.U.T.R.A.G.E revolutionists were, believe it or not, on track.