#7. Revolving door penal system

We in America incarcerate more people than anywhere else on the planet. Now don't think I'm going soft on crime, because I never will. I believe in law and order. What I see as a danger in our country is a virtual revolving door of convicts. I can't tell you how many people I have locked up, put into the penal system only to come face to face with them a few years later doing the same criminal activity or worse.

I understand that some people are just inherently evil. These people can not be helped. They can not change, it's just the way they are. What I am concerned with is how do we, as a great country help those who want to change?

Recently for a college class I was given the task of finding something and changing it from the ground up. I took this as a challenge and dove into our penal system. I read study after study of peer reviewed literature and generally was unsatisfied by what I read. That is until I read a study of a prison program in Kansas where non-violent criminals were allowed to work 8 hour shifts making airplane parts for an airline company. The results were fantastic. The inmates involved in the program performed exceptionally, the quality was off the charts. The company was very pleased and saved millions on labor. The problem came when these trained individuals were released and then took their newly learned job skills to the company they were unwelcomed because of their status as felons. Some went back to a life of crime, some determined individuals were able to gain employment with smaller contractors for the airline company and continue to produce quality parts. This got me thinking, and I came up with a grand scale idea.

Bear with me because this is a long plan, but if you care for the safety and security of this country I think it bears looking at. I will use my home state of Illinois as an example.

1. Find land, preferably a shut down prison to retro fit, in Illinois I am thinking of a certain downstate prison that was recently designated as a place to send all the Gitmo detainees, that quite frankly will never go there.
2. expand on that land to purchase surrounding land making in effect a smallish city, wall it off.
3. Choose the top 5 to at max 10 % of non-violent criminals already in the system who have not committed any crimes or major infractions while incarcerate, I.E. model prisoners, and give them the option to transfer to this "prison city".
4. The terms of the transfer must be met with:
            a. an admission of guilt by the prisoner
            b. a willingness to forgo any parole options, a full sentence must be served.
            c. a guarantee by the prisoner to stay a model prisoner any infractions of the law will get the prisoner sent back to a regular prison with no possible re-acceptance into the program.

5. In exchange for these promises the prisoner will get placed into a much lower level of security situation, his cell will in effect be a small one bedroom apartment to be built on this land. The prisoner will then be given an option of jobs needed to sustain the "prison city." Be it custodial duties, construction, cooking or agricultural. The prisoner will receive training for their new profession. The prisoner will be expected to work with their community to sustain it. There will be everything a normal city can expect to see, including farming. The idea being that eventually this community once up and running properly can maintain itself, costing the taxpayers virtually nothing more than paying the salaries of the guards and other staff. The prisoners will also get anger management classes, drug abuse programs, alcohol abuse counseling medical care, etc. My goal for this project is that within ten years of the first inmates being admitted to the facility they could actually then sell their products to the outside community effectively bringing in money for the "prison city" half the profits would go to staff salaries and half back to inmate accounts.
6. Upon completion of their sentence the inmate will be free to go, with their savings back into the outside world, with job knowledge. Ideally the inmates should be encouraged to go elsewhere other than where they originally were when they were arrested. Part of the program will help find outside affordable housing for the inmates, another part of the program will work closely with local businesses to hire these ex-cons. In return for participating in the program the businesses will receive tax break incentives from the state. Thus when a prisoner comes to his or her release date they are returning to our community with a home, a job, some money in reserve and most of all hope. Also as an added incentive the prisoners felon status will be erased if they have not gotten rearrested in a year period after release.
7. The cities population would remain fairly stagnant, as one convict is released one will take their place.

All too often when I speak to ex-cons their response is "I do it because no one will hire me anyway, no one cares about me." Another factor I see is that the ex-con goes straight back to his gang or previous lifestyle where criminal activity is encouraged, this would end with housing placement.

My goal with this whole rewrite of the penal system would be targeted at the model prisoners, but would also, with the success of the program show borderline prisoners that there is hope and it could pay off for the prisoner to become a model prisoner. I feel that if there is a hope that something good can come from this, there is an incentive to change bad behavior.



Remember this only applies to non-violent prisoners, murderers, rapists or other predatory criminals would never be eligible for this program. My hope is that the program will also help our economy by helping the businesses hiring these reformed criminals grow and produce more. I think it definitely bears taking a look at, I'm sure there can be holes found in my logic, but all in all I feel it is a strong idea.

For the record, my teacher in the class, an activist, questioned me as to are we just creating more "projects" like Cabrini green. I countered that this would not be a band aid approach, we wouldn't just build it and forget it, it would be monitored and regulated with a microscope to make sure that the community within grows and flourishes. She also questioned about the cost, and while I am not an economist by any means, I will admit at the inception of the project it will be costly getting it started. I countered though that with proper administration of the "prison city" within 10 years it will cost the tax payers nothing and start actually making a profit for the tax payers.

I received an A for my overall project.

#8. Sport team mentality in politics

If you are from Chicago you are a Democrat it has been said. If you are from Texas you are a Republican.

What the politicians have been banking on for years is the general population like to root for things. We don't like losing so what the general public does is identify themselves as Democrat or Republican, Left or Right, Conservative or Liberal. Often times when I am having a political discussion with on or the other side of the line I will ask a question for clarity on why a person has a certain stance on an issue.

The response I get most often? "Because I am a (fill in political party here) it's what we believe."
Most can not answer why they just stand by their party line.

Here is my take, I am conservative on most issues, liberal on a few. That is just the way I think. I tend to vote right, but have not always voted for a right party candidate if I feel the other candidate will better represent my beliefs. That is the way I feel this country will prosper the most. No candidate who has ever run has seen eye to eye with my beliefs 100% so it is my responsibility to find the best fit.

My responsibility as an American, and my responsibility to my countrymen.

The problem I see here is we now have voters who vote based on their experience with watching reality television, or news channels, there isn't much original thought going on here. It is our responsibility to educate ourselves on the issues. Too often that is not the case, again the answer I get most often is because that is what my party wants.

America, what do YOU want? That is why we have a voting process. Tragically it has turned more into a "you will vote this way" policy. I have some amazing friends on both of the political spectrum who do educate themselves on the issues and I enjoy the back and forth in our discussions. What happens though when educated people get together and discuss issues is that sometime you can agree to disagree, but most times someone from one side will make a very strong argument for one side that makes great sense, and the other can not come up with an argument against it. Everyone knows what was just said makes sense.

By the political parties treating us as "sheep" or people without free thought is each side has dug themselves further against each other. The original idea behind the two party system was for a more streamlined government. When one side proved not able to get the job done, they could be voted out and replaced by the other who had similar but slightly different ideas. Government never missed a beat and went on.

Obama's "Change" campaign was brilliant, yet dangerous. It did play to millions of Americans who were not happy with the way things were going. The idea of electing someone who promised change sounded great, we were in a recession, fighting two wars, losing brave soldiers. Who wouldn't want change?

The danger in the "Change" message that I saw is it was identifying that the two parties are now so far apart on issues that a streamlined government no longer existed. Changing something means that the ideas from one side to the other are separated by miles not feet.

What we have seen is even more gridlocking, one side took control the other fought back, and what I see now is one party always is the underdog. Americans love an underdog, it's a great place to be. What we should be asking is not for fundamental change for change sake, we should be asking for a candidate who will lead us as a nation closer together. Obama's message was just that, what happened is it drove us farther apart. It could just well be time for a third party to rise up be it libertarians, tea party, green or any other party. I just pray that party can make the moves to draw us together before we, as a nation find ourselves fighting a second civil war because from everything I see there are parallels to that time period happening right now as I type

#9. The American Education system

# 9: The education system

Now let me be the first to say, teachers are essential to our nation and to our children. The profession of teaching is a noble one, on par with police, fire, military even the clergy. Teachers should be praised for their contribution to society and rewarded in kind.

That is the only for good ones.

I understand in every profession you have bad apples, you have lazy workers who do not care and are only there to collect a paycheck, I get that. But within that field there are some excellent, qualified teachers that fundamentally change their students. Those teachers should be given their weight in gold my friends. The problem is the system, the system rewards all teachers the good ones and the bad ones. No child left behind tactics don’t work either. The idea might sound good, make sure each and every student is reading and doing math at a basic level. The problem there lies in the fact a teacher can then elect to just train the students to pass the state required tests and teach nothing else. You lose a ton of creativity in the classroom which is the core of learning.

An example for you: In high school I had one teacher, honors algebra, who came in every day, read out of the book, asked us if we did our homework and when we said yes he took our word for it. This process was repeated every day and I learned absolutely nothing. I passed the class with a C, this is after learning nothing. The teacher’s response was “Everyone needs to pass so I can keep my spot.” There was one guy in my class who cut the class the entire second semester, he earned a D. The problem was partially with me, I didn’t care to learn, and there was a girl in class who liked to lift her shirt and flash people, that was much more important to me to watch than the teacher. However, it is the teachers job to inspire his students, to find a way to get them to want to learn, this teacher failed, and I would take it was getting more money in salary for “his spot”.

On the other side of the coin I took chemistry in my senior year, many people who had already taken it told me what a horrible class it was and I would hate it. I loved every minute of it. The teacher in this case showed us the world of chemistry in practical lessons. We made soap through chemistry, we made aspirin, and in a truly bold move and with permission slips sent out we made dandelion wine from scratch and distilled our own alcohol. At the end of the year we were presented with our own bottles of wine to take to our parents. I lived for each class; I soaked up knowledge because I was motivated to learn. Here you had a teacher who was teaching, and wasn’t in “a spot” because it was not an honors class. He kept our attention by presenting the material in a way that the text books didn’t spell out, but rather in a way that we could relate to.

To me this is teaching!

How about this as a new idea. When students get to the college level they select what they are most interested in. Usually this gets changed because the student is getting a new experience; they’ve never had to make these choices before and don’t really know what they want. How about revolutionizing the whole experience and from a very young age teaching students based on what interests them. Students from a young age usually excel in one or two areas like math, or science or reading. If a student excels in math, focus on math! Of course they still need to be trained in reading and science, but make the overall focus on what they excel at. Not everyone can be a doctor, not everyone can be a rocket scientist. If a student shows promise in an area, expand that area and challenge them in what they can most readily understand. You could then revolutionize education by setting up math academies, science academies, etc. and enroll students in those schools that will gain the most from it. Fill those schools with teachers that excel in teaching the subjects. I never understood, even as a child a teacher teaching 8 different subjects, they couldn’t be that versed in everything, and as I got older and asked questions in certain subjects I often got “I’ll check into that” as an answer. The student now knew as much as the teacher. Why have a teacher who wants to teach math also have to teach English and science? That doesn’t make sense and can lead to teacher burn out. Let the teachers do their jobs that they are most able to do! Also start looking really hard at underperforming teachers and cut the fat, if they can’t effectively teach any subject what good are they to our children anyway?

Finally, and quite possibly most importantly, we need to get a control on out of control tuitions. There is no reason why it should cost $53,000 a year to send someone to Harvard, or $46,000 to Notre Dame, or $43,000 to Northwestern. Do the students really get a return for their money spent? Sure they get a great name on their diploma, and it opens doors into the working world, but does it really cost $40,000 per student per year to go to 30 credit hours of classes? I’ve been doing a lot of reading on this subject with journals, and periodicals from the likes of Forbes and Wall Street Journal and they agree. There is a lot of wasted spending by those Universities administrations. They know it, but they also know that if their program is that desirable people will pay the money. In a Forbes article it even stated that if the University raises tuition it often make them EVEN MORE DESIRABLE! We have been shammed into thinking going $100,000 to $200,000 in debt equals better. Harvard’s endowment has reached $35 billion in funds, so they spend that on the student’s right? A very little percentage of that yes, but overall the answer is no. They can take more students in with that much money, right? Sure they can, but they don’t enrollment has remained steady for the past 20 years, while the endowment has grown and grown and grown. Does Harvard really need $35 billion dollars sitting around? Hell in my city we are facing a $700 million dollar budget gap next year, how about a few of the local universities dip into those endowments and bailing us out?

A higher education should cost more than a basic one, I don’t dispute that, but it shouldn’t cost 4 to 5 times the amount of a private high school education per year, I could accept 2 to 3 times for a prestigious university, but no more than that. Unless we fix our educational system our country is doomed, the current trend of teaching texting instead of writing (Proposed in Indiana grade schools), grading papers with purple ink instead of red because red will make the child feel bad (California comes to mind here but I’m sure more states have done away with shameful red ink) and covering for useless teachers (unions are to blame for this one) is doing much more harm than good to our most precious commodities, our children. I’m very interested to hear back from teachers, I’ve said it before, I’ll say it now, I just have ideas, I’m open to newer and better ones. Until we can all get together and discuss solutions we are just spinning in the mud.

Top ten things America needs to fix: #10. The Grasshopper and the Ant

One thing I’ve been promising myself I would do is lay out a 10 part plan on what has gone wrong with America and how best to fix it. So Over the next few weeks I will list my top ten list of what went wrong. Here comes the first topic. If you are reading and agree or disagree with anything I write, please comment, the only way we can truly fix this is by conversing and planning!

10. Demonizing the working class giving a pass to the leeches

My father is retired. He gave 48 years of service to my city, and to its residents, 48! That I know of the only real time off my father ever took from the job was his yearly vacations and some time when he got really sick and was hospitalized. Other than that he went to work every day, for 48 years. He did that to make sure he and his family was taken care of.

My mother is retired. She worked two jobs at times to make sure me and my siblings had what we needed.  I had the opportunity to work a job with my mother and I can vouch, this woman knows what customer service entails! She has been versatile as well, working for schools, department stores, midsized companies, large companies. It didn’t matter where she worked she always gave her best. I can’t remember a time my mother wasn’t working.

Now they are retired and the key words being used around America is “cut backs”. Cuts to Medicare, and medicate, cuts to social security and cuts to pensions for government workers are things being thrown around. Let me get this right, we want to take our working class; you know the ones who did it for decades, helped this economy and take away the things promised them?

You know I watch the news stations fairly religiously. Fox, CNN, even for comedic value MSNBC. It’s important to understand all sides of the argument. Watching one side of the argument is counterproductive at best. The thing I have noticed is the demonization of the worker. Where is the outcry to stop the free money going to the people who have sponged on the backs of the workers? I’m sure there are stories out there, and people who want this to happen but the overwhelming focus is cuts to the worker.

A Google of “stop welfare” revealed not much in the way of articles to read. Googling “Stop Social Security” reveals many more articles. Now I’m not saying our politicians are out and out saying the wish to cut social security, that could be political suicide, but they sure do use it as a scare tactic. “If I don’t get (place sought entitlement program here) I don’t think we can save social security!” This comes from both sides of the political spectrum. What should be said is “We need to overhaul social security so the workers are taken care of, the people who earned it get their benefits, and the ones who didn’t, don’t. “

You see I make a living dealing with all classes of people, high end, low end, and middle class. The one thing I get all fired up about is seeing a hard working person of any class get penalized by a person who scams the system. I arrest people for a living. I love feeling like I made the city I live in a bit safer each day, I do my job. People let me tell you I am tired arresting 19 year old drug dealers who always seem to ask me “when am I getting out? I need to get my social security check.” I think most people would be alarmed by how common this actually is. One time specifically comes to mind with a person I have arrested at least 5 times and has a record that is literally pages long. This day in particular I got the guy, with drugs, and trespassing to sell his drugs. The conversation went something like this.

Him: “Let me go man, I need to get to the social security office.”

Me: “Why do you need to go to social security?”

Him: “For my check man! I got no job.”

Me: “Dude, you’re 20 years old why can you work?”

Him: “I can’t work, I get seizures.”

Me: “Why can’t you work? Do you get medication for your seizures?”

Him: “Yeah, but I can’t work because of them.”

Me: “have you ever tried to get a job man.”

Him: “Hell no man, jobs are for chumps.”

So here is a guy who sells poison to others like heroin, crack, cocaine etc. who is saying he has never had a job and never will, who is getting free money from our government because he has seizures. I know people with epilepsy who go to work every day and work their behinds off who are not on social security. Other people with disabilities work every day as well. But this guy will just take his free check and make tax free money selling poison and buying weapons and more poison. This is one story I’ve come across that mirror many others. I’ve dealt with families that are living on free government money and are on their fourth generation of living on the government’s teat with no intention of ever changing that status.

This is a problem, people! This is something we need to change!

Am I saying we stop the payments to people who fall on hard times but who want to work? Absolutely not! A mother whose husband leaves her without any financial support for her and her children should be entitled to help. But only for a limited time, say two years, enough time to stabilize her life. I think we need to have a discussion on securing benefits to the workers who earned that security by a lifetime of toil and stripping away the useless waste. If you get welfare and are between to ages of 21 and say 50 or maybe even higher you should be required to earn that welfare by working for it! No more sitting around on your behind waiting for your check! If you live in government housing for free you should be required to help maintain that housing development or work on beautifying your community to earn that payment that comes your way, it should be required that you show proof that you did something for your money! Imagine the reduced cost of government if instead of the government hiring people to clean the roadways, or paint over graffiti or fix a broken window, you give those same jobs to people who are already drawing from the tax dollars brought in. If you don’t work for it, then no money for you, you’re on your own until you can prove you can work for it!

Let’s stop with the talk of stripping pensions, social security and medical benefits for the people who have worked their entire life and now deserve the break and start talking about ending the waste eating away at the programs! Going back to my example, and putting it bluntly, maybe at risk of sounding too blunt do any of you out there really think if this 20 year old drug dealer who thinks “jobs are for chumps” stops getting his free money, crawls under a bridge and dies that our society would be any poorer for the loss? I don’t.

America's war with Islam -circa 1784

The war with Islamic Fundamentalists continues on, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Iran, Syria all play a role in our daily threats. To a lesser extent, at least on the surface, Saudi Arabia worries us too, even though they are on our “friends” list. These are all things you know if you even scan the newspapers. You also may know that we have now been at war with these so called Radical Islamic Fundamentalists for about 10 years, or have we?

You see we have been at war with these radicals for as long as our country has been around.

Huh?

Time for a little history lesson.

You see on October 11, 1784 Moroccan pirates seized the brigantine Betsey. This was the precursor to the Barbary wars. Spain helped our new nation out and negotiated a release of the ship and crew. Spain also gave us some advice, pay tribute to the Barbary States. Enter Thomas Jefferson, you know the creator of separation of church and state guy, third president of the United States. Well obviously he wasn’t president yet, he was merely a minister in France for the United States.  He, and future second president John Adams went to London to negotiate with a representative of the Barbary States from Tripoli, now Libya, Sidi Haji Abdrahaman. When our ambassadors asked the representative why there were hostilities between our country and theirs his answer was chilling, at least to me. Why? The message hasn’t changed much in 200 years. What he basically said was it is our duty as Muslims to go to war with countries who were not Muslims. Jefferson himself wrote an account of the ambassador’s reply:

It was written in their Koran, that all nations which had not acknowledged the Prophet were sinners, whom it was the right and duty of the faithful to plunder and enslave; and that every mussulman who was slain in this warfare was sure to go to paradise. He said, also, that the man who was the first to board a vessel had one slave over and above his share, and that when they sprang to the deck of an enemy's ship, every sailor held a dagger in each hand and a third in his mouth; which usually struck such terror into the foe that they cried out for quarter at once.

Thomas Jefferson was a man who neither cared if his neighbor worshiped 20 gods or none so long as they did him no harm. What Jefferson saw in radical Islam however bothered him greatly. Here was a group of territories where there wasn’t separation of Church and State, but rather the Church was the State, and people who did not worship at that Church were the enemy. Jefferson was against paying tribute to the Barbary States from the very beginning. Our congress decided to pay the tributes anyway, even when George Washington was against paying it.

Jefferson, when he became president in 1801, got a present from Tripoli, a demand for tribute of $225,000. Jefferson stuck to his guns and refused to pay the demands going against what congress wanted. Jefferson dispatched our relatively new Navy to the North African region to protect our citizens and vessels in the area. The USS Enterprise (Not the one with James Kirk) did battle with the 14 gun Tripoli and defeated her on August 1^st 1801. The United States Marines saw action on the shores of Tripoli, and even a song was written about it. The term “Leatherneck” it has been said was brought about by the Marines wearing leather around their neck to protect them from sword blows by the Muslim pirates. It’s a romantic but not entirely true story though. But any way you slice it Semper Fidelis guys!

Jefferson even at the end of his days was still interested in the Islamic threat; he knew that one day it would return. Boy was he right. Jefferson even owned his own Koran, a book on which he studied to get to know the mindset of the people he was dealing with. Centuries later Democrat Keith Ellison used that same Koran to swear him into our Congress, Ellison saying Jefferson was a true “visionary” of his time because he owned a Koran. What Jefferson really was trying to figure out was why a group of people half a world away felt they had the right to go to war with those who didn’t worship the same way they did. I did find it somewhat disappointing that one of Jefferson’s sticking points towards the Barbary States was his horror that the pirates often sold our citizens who were captured into slavery and that somehow Jefferson didn’t see the problem with our own slave trade as equal in fault.

Regardless of that glaring fault it was the beginning of America’s war with Radical Islam, and people those same people are back at our doorstep. They hate us, not for our perceived liberal ways, but for our freedom to worship who we choose, or to not worship. The radical Islamists wish to change that. That is not to say that 99% of Muslims out there wish to do that, they don’t they wish peace. It’s that 1% that Jefferson was so worried about way back in 1784, that same 1% is the problem we face today.

What is a Debt Ceiling?

The Debt Ceiling deal was announced yesterday by a very tired looking Obama. Somewhere in the back rooms of Washington D.C. there was high fiving and back slapping. Nancy Pelosi’s face moved… slightly. Dick Durbin belched. But what exactly does the debt ceiling deal accomplish?

Well if you listen to the politicians with the deal we can now pay our bills, the treasury department can start printing money again!

But underneath it all what does it really do?

                "In reaching this agreement, each political party yielded to the other party's highest-priority political and ideological interest," and fails to resolve the country's long-term budget problems, Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) said Monday.

So this was about political parties digging in? What about us, the American people? You know us, those who control (supposedly) the government by electoral process? What does it do for us?

Well… um… that’s the thing… not much. This country has a budget of around 3.7 Trillion Dollars. The cuts to that budget amount to somewhere in the neighborhood of $21 Billion dollars for this year, or less than 1%. In 2010, according to U.S. Federal Receipts the Government took in approximately $2.16 Trillion in Tax Revenues. That’s all the money they get, they spent approximately $3.46 Trillion using my handy dandy math skills beaten into meat by Sister Ann Lucille that makes for $1.3 Trillion in debt added to the already growing national debt… in one year!

In the year I was born our national debt was $ 370 Billion, total so in one year we put approximately 4 times that number on our national debt!

Now do not think that I am above letting both sides of the political spectrum get away without fault being throw their way. I think Ronald Reagan was one of the strongest presidents of all time, however under his watch the national debt climbed alarmingly from around $900 Billion dollars to around $2.6 Trillion dollars, and this was from a president that demanded a smaller government and was “conservative”. Yes he made our country stronger, yes he was instrumental in tearing down the Berlin Wall, mostly by funding a covert action in Afghanistan to help mire the Soviets in a endless war, by sending weapons into Pakistan and having the CIA and Pakistani people work with Afghani rebels to arm them, and yes that does cost money, it essentially crippled the Soviets, but it also heap a huge burden on the next generations of Americans.

Bush the senior was not any better taking over a national debt of $2.6 and growing it in only 4 years to around 4 Trillion. Yes there was the first Gulf War. I’m starting to see that war is costly! Imagine the debt in 1976, the 200^th anniversary of our country was $620 Billion, so in 200 years our country was in debt by $620 Billion in the next 16 years through the presidencies of Carter, Reagan and Bush we succeeded in overspending another $3.38 Trillion dollars! The first 200 years we over spent an average of 3.1 Billion dollars per year, the next 16 we overspent by an average of $211 Billion dollars per year! That’s an enormous jump folks! I will admit that the Clinton years our national debt did not rise much, a balanced budget does that, it only rose slightly and I would assume that is due to interest. Bush the Junior left office with our Country in debt around $10 Trillion and now Obama has raised that debt to over $13.5 Trillion. Yes, again I understand we are in wars, we have been attacked and we must be vigilant against terrorism. Economic downfalls also have had a major role in the debt. But what exactly does raising the debt ceiling have to do with economic prosperity? It doesn’t.

What is the debt ceiling? It’s a cloudy number that the government can’t spend past what it takes in. This law took effect in 1917 and the number has been raised many, many times. If our government didn’t raise the debt ceiling it couldn’t spend more money. It would have to wait until more money was in their coffers before they could write checks. This sound familiar to me… kind of like when I have to wait for my check to pay my bills. If I spend more than my check I have to go into debt, how much I wish to go into debt is my own personal debt ceiling.

I think it is time to look to electing brave, fiscally responsible politicians who are going to balance our budget and even start paying down our debt, just what is the interest accrued on $13.5 Trillion?

Sources for this came from FoxNews, CNN Money, Los Angeles Times, NPR, and several government agencies.