During the recent meeting with President Obama, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao minced no words when he stated that “immediate action is necessary to keep a once prosperous nation” from falling flat on its face.
“If the U.S.economy collapses, so will China because we are so heavily invested in your country,” said Wen Jiabao. “We thought we were investing in a nation of the world’s greatest entrepreneurs, but a recent analysis shows that America has become little more than a home to overpaid union workers, whiney media, and spoiled welfare recipients. Our fears were confirmed last year when Americans elected you, Mr. Obama, as their president. But, to use one of your own expressions, America is too big to fail and so we will have to bail you out. This is no longer your decision. As your biggest creditor, we will now decide how to get the best return on our investment. You got elected on a vague promise of change; now we’re giving you the specifics.”
Mr. Obama was then given the following list of changes designed to fix America:
- Replace all regulatory czars with one mandarin of deregulation.
- Build the Great Wall on the Mexican border; it will employ at least 10 million people.
- Send 4.5 million troops to Afghanistan with a two-week victory plan.
- Crush the pesky Islamic extremists with a single wave of soldiers from Pakistan to Morocco. There will be no detainees. All suspects will be executed on the spot.
- Unilaterally institute a pro-American foreign policy. Make your national self-interest a priority, for crying out loud.
- Cancel all foreign aid. Retrain ACORN employees as small business instructors and ship them to third world countries with one-way tickets. Let them earn their keep by promoting the private sector and developing consumer markets for American products.
- Sell off Fanny Mae and Freddie Mac to the highest bidder with a special “buy one, get one free” incentive. Eliminate subprime mortgage programs.
- Begin immediate drilling for oil in ANWR, complete with a caribou meatpacking plant to feed the arriving workers.
- Disband EPA. Drop restrictions on energy and coal mining. If you want cleaner air, build nuclear plants.
- Remove “endangered species protections” from animals and give them to producers of American wealth.
- China will take title to all national parks and develop them into industrial and housing projects. Grizzly bears make tasty char siu and pandas attract more paying visitors anyway.
- Cut taxes and eliminate government programs including welfare and food stamps. Those willing to eat must wash dishes at Pei Wei Asian Diners and stuff fortune cookies with quotes by Friedrich Hayek, Ayn Rand, and Milton Friedman.
- Shut down public schools; that should double the national IQ within six months. Sell the buildings to private schools that teach strong work and study ethics. If you want your children to build self-esteem, convert the Department of Education into a Ping Pong Palace.
- Ensure a young and vibrant workforce by strengthening marriages with a minimum two-child policy.
- Purge Hollywood using Tiananmen Square tactics if necessary.
- Return decency, moral standards, and patriotism to American movies with a strict motion picture production code. That will boost national morale and optimism better than the daily lecturing on TV by a wussy president and his embarrassing sycophants.
- Repeal minimum wage, ban strikes, and dissolve labor unions. Reboot Detroit auto factories and Pittsburgh steel mills.
- Stop subsidizing industrial and agricultural concerns, ethanol plants, and wind farms. If they can’t stand on their own, let them fall and give way to those that can.
- Mandate all public officials to use public transportation and public health care. Cap their salaries until the economy in their districts fully recovers.
- Oust the defunct Castro regime. Expand the Guantanamo base to the rest of Cuba and change its name to Gitmo Island. Reuse Castro’s network of political prisons to house opponents of this recovery plan.
- Resettle those Americans who advocate green collective lifestyle to Cuban tobacco plantations with no electricity and polluting farm equipment.
- In case of emergency China reserves the right to demote Mr. Obama to a White House greeter and give his current position to Jerry Yang or a similarly adept business executive.
In conclusion, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao assured President Obama that “failure is an option.” If the United States doesn’t regain its former status of a self-sustaining and productive nation by 2012, it will become property of the Chinese government and open for a full-scale colonization under the name of New Taipei. “This is the kind of change we’re talking about!” said Wen Jiabao, paraphrasing Mr. Obama’s most successful campaign slogan.
This satire was written using ideas from several People’s Cube contributors.