Jason O'Neil

Sinecure Jason O'Neil

This is a novel about a college professor turned politician in order to gain the maximum retirement benefits prior to what he predicts will be the self-destruction of the American economy, perhaps even the democracy.
Iowan Dr. Ray Small, a professor of political economics at Cornell College in Mount Vernon, Iowa, uses sophisticated, automated models to determine the convergence of the downward spiral of the American dollar with calls for the repayment of foreign loans to the United States in gold combined with an unsustainable Welfare State. His prediction of a stock market crash happens five and a half years in the future.
With his wife, Anita, also a tenured professor at Cornell College, he plots a retirement package based upon three terms as a congressman from Iowa's 2nd District which is bordered by the Mississippi River. The professor gets elected and re-elected based upon a platform of anti-dumping of foreign tractors, reinstatement of the use of fertilizer, and flood protection from the giant river.
The book is filled with scenarios about the perks of congressional life. It sarcastically portrays the role of unions in the Democratic Party. And the congressman keeps his retirement plan secret until the end of his fifth year when he becomes eligible for a horn-of-plenty of retirement benefits. He retires a multimillionaire to his sanctuary farm while the American economy crumbles. In the end, the reader is left quite angry, about the Sinecure profession -- high pay for little work -- of Congress.