He was a congenial man. At first.
We met in a small sealed room, part of a vast underground bunker below the Washington Monument.
The second button on my Savile Row worsted tweed silk thread roasted lamb skin jacket was a recording device. So I was able to document the conversation…
Before I was summarily arrested, tried, convicted, and executed by a firing squad at dawn last Tuesday.
Here is a chunk of the conversation:
All right, Mr. Rappoport. I’m happy to take this meeting with you. What are you looking for?
I assume we’re going to have a trackable federal digital currency soon.
I would concur.
It occurs to me that my tax dollars could be tracked.
Generally, yes. Any dollar, for any purpose, could be followed from hand to hand, so to speak.
This has certain advantages.
I would say it’s quite beneficial.
So we’re on the same page there.
Yes, Jon. Glad you agree. Are you looking for a job in our press office?
I might be. I feel I could make a contribution.
But that’s not why you’re here today.
No. I want to be able to track every dollar I pay in taxes, when the new currency is installed.
I suppose that might be possible. With restrictions.
What restrictions?
Technical problems. Think of tax payments as a giant melting pot. Separating out a given dollar and its progress would be challenging. What did you have in mind?
Reparations.
Excuse me?
Reparations are coming. Wouldn’t you agree?
Why, yes. They’re already here.
And at some point, the federal government will assume the burden of paying them.
That’s the plan.
So I want to track my tax dollars that specifically enter the reparations trough. I want to follow those digital dollars “all the way.”
Into the hands of the people who receive them?
Yes. And beyond. I want to know what the reparations recipients do with my tax dollars. How they spend them.
No. That wouldn’t be possible.
Why not? If I buy a candy bar with the new currency, you can track what the seller does with my payment. You can follow it through the seller’s bank account and eventually out of the account into, say, a part of his purchase of a light bulb from a hardware store.
Yes, true. But again, taxes form a melting pot. It’s one glob, one soup.
I don’t think so. Not if every dollar has a signature that can be surveilled.
Let me ask you this, Jon. Why are you intent on knowing how a person uses “your” reparations dollars?