Phillip Kerr

From Wikimerica, the United States encyclopedia

**Phillip Joshua Kerr** (November 13, 2095 – April 1, 2177) was an American cooperative developer and later politician who served as the 81st President of the United States from 2137 to 2145. He is among one of the 13 founding members of the Socialist Party.

Kerr was a Doomsday survivor who adopted socialist ideology post doomsday and helped his fledgling community survive the collapse of human society. His administration saw for the first time in nearly 30 years, a reunited United States following the successful completion of the American Reconquista during the Dillinger Administration.

Kerr is ranked as one of the most successful Presidents of the 22nd Century for his upstanding moral character, reconstruction of the American economy, success in maintaining gains made during the Reconquista, and rebuilding of foreign relations. His historic reputation is marred by his extreme Anti-German sentiment, a view held by most of humanity at the time. Following his leaving office Kerr remained politically active, criticizing the Vu Administration, as well as his opposition to the rise of the Imperialist party and all of it's Presidents from Otto Cromwell to Barron Dietrich at his death in 2177.

## Early Life

Born the youngest of 5 children to a family of copper miners in the small, rural town of Thanksgiving, Nevada, Kerr’s early life was fraught with hardship. At the age of 2 years old, both his parents lost their jobs when the local mine was forced to close in the midst of the Kaminski-era economic crisis, and left Kerr and his siblings in the care of his 17 year old sister in order to travel state-to-state in search of employment. By the age of 5, Kerr attended the Thanksgiving school: a rudimentary and voluntary institution set up by the local miners’ union for the provision of their children. Kerr attended the local school until the age of 15, showing a keen aptitude for mathematics, economics, history and political theory. He also took an active interest in learning about the former economic practices of the mining operations in the area, including one instance where he fell 10ft while exploring an abandoned mine shaft before being found 3 days later by a concerned adult, gaining him the nickname “10ft Kerr” among the local miners.

Kerr was 14 at the time of the doomsday attack that devastated the planet. In the following years, the nation-wide chaos that ensued caused serious issues for the town of Thanksgiving. Seeing first-hand the economic devastation that both Doomsday and the Kaminski economic crash had wrought on Thanksgiving, on November 13, 2111, his 16th birthday, Kerr unveiled a plan he had been working on for the past year to re-open the mine. At first, most of the town, while appreciative that Kerr was trying to help, dismissed this as a child’s fantasy, but after months of dogged persuasion a handful of former miners agreed to try Kerr’s idea: and the first committee of the Thanksgiving Mining Cooperative was formed.

## Cooperative development

The TMC grew slowly in the post-doomsday economy: making a loss in its first two years and only breaking even by the third year of operation. By the fourth year the organization started to prove lucrative, with a high demand for business as a result of being one of the few mines that were operational in the wake of the Doomsday event.

In the spring of 2115 (the fourth operational year of the TMC) Kerr and the founding committee began to expand their cooperative venture to meet other needs of the community. The rudimentary and voluntary school was transformed into a community-owned institution with paid teachers in 2116. Shortly after, in 2117, a community-owned utilities company was founded with the intention of tapping a nearby natural spring for the town’s water supply, which had been cut off in the chaos of the doomsday crisis. By 2118, thanks in part to Kerr’s efforts and self-taught expertise, the town of Thanksgiving had been transformed from an impoverished and struggling mining town to a self-sustaining community. In January of 2118, the various cooperatives in the Thanksgiving area met together and a motion was passed unanimously to create a secondary cooperative “for the better co-operation and co-ordination of the societies of Thanksgiving”[1]­ and the Thanksgiving Federation was founded.

## Entry into Politics

Following the re-opening of free elections under the Columbia administration in 2118, a special meeting of the Thanksgiving Federation was called to select a candidate. After less than an hour of deliberations, Kerr was unanimously agreed upon to be the obvious candidate. Standing for the newly-founded Liberal Party, Kerr won the election all but unanimously: beating both candidates from the Isolationist and Ajacentist parties by a landslide. Once in congress, however, Kerr found himself constantly passed over for key party roles owing to his lack of formal education. Of the 30 Liberal party representatives in the 2118 congress, he soon found common ground with a small group of 5 working-class socialist candidates including the representative for Chicago, Ferdinand Vu. These 6 formed the first Socialist caucus within the Liberal party, which pushed for the party to take a more radical agenda on cooperative ownership and workers’ rights.

As the Liberal party grew larger over the course of the early 2120s, however, Kerr’s talents became increasingly noticed and appreciated by the party leaders, notably his talent for economics and his blunt, direct style of public speaking. By the mid 2120s, both he and Vu were working closely with Mason Dillinger, then leader of the Party.

## Dillinger cabinet

After leaving the house in early 2128, Kerr joined Dillinger in his campaign for President, believing that a Liberal Presidency would have the ability to successfully push through the economic reforms he and the socialist caucus had been demanding since those first meetings in the 2118 congress. Dillinger, noticing his keen eye for economic theory and business experience, offered Kerr a position as a senior campaign advisor on economic policy. Later, after Dillinger’s hard-fought victory for the presidency, Kerr was appointed Secretary of Commerce in the Dillinger Cabinet: the only member of the Socialist caucus represented in Cabinet other than Ferdinand Vu, who served as Secretary of Labor. Although initially enthusiastic about the opportunity to put forward Socialist economic policy at the executive level, Kerr and Vu expressed increasing frustration that their policy suggestions were being countermanded by the President and Treasury Secretary. Eventually these frustrations came to a head in February of 2136, when a bill proposed by the Socialist Caucus granting extra rights and protections to trade unions passed congress with multi-party support, only to be vetoed by Dillinger who described it as, “stifling entrepreneurship and subjecting American workplaces to tyranny of the majority”[2]. The veto led to Vu’s resignation from the Cabinet on February 16, with Kerr tendering his resignation two days later.

## Formation of the Socialist Party

Following the resignation of Vu and Kerr, the Socialist caucus met together and a decision was reached unanimously to break from the Liberal party. The Socialist party was founded two months later, in April 2136. The party found initial success: with just under half of Liberal representatives joining, and even finding some new members among disgruntled Ajecentist representatives. With the Isolationists still in disarray after the disastrous Capone administration, the new Socialist party soon became the controlling party of congress.

## Presidential Campaign

Kerr began preparations to run for president as soon as the Socialist party was founded, raising a war chest from trade unions and other labor and cooperative organizations across the USA. He was popular among younger supports of the Liberal Party, who felt that Dillinger had not gone far enough in his economic recovery plan. With Vu as his Vice President, Kerr narrowly won the election by 51%, after the Ajecentist candidate eventually stepped down once it became apparent that Kerr’s ticket was vastly more popular and therefore more likely to beat the Liberals.

## Presidency (2137 - 2145)

Over his two-term presidency Kerr oversaw an overhaul of the US economy, using his experience from Thanksgiving to put measures in place to encourage the growth of cooperatives. Economic growth slowed during his presidency, for which he was criticized often by the Liberal party. Nevertheless, the foundation of cooperatives grown during this 8-year period provided a stable, more localized basis for the American economy, allowing it to weather an economic crash in 2143 with relative ease.

Kerr’s second term was marked by increasing tensions with Ferdinand Vu, who argued that Kerr’s reforms did not go far enough, and would easily be undone by widespread corruption such as was seen during the Capone administration and in 2120s Chicago. By the end of Kerr’s second term, it was even reported by some insider sources that Vu and Kerr were no longer on speaking terms and that communication had completely broken down between the President and Vice President. These rumors were never confirmed by either office.

## Retirement, later life and death

After the death of his sister in the summer of 2144, Kerr announced that he would not be seeking any other office after he stepped down as president, and would be retiring from active politics to spend more time with his family, he would however remain critical of his successors. He returned to Thanksgiving where he served intermittently as director of the Thanksgiving Federation until his death in 2177.

[1] *Thanksgiving Federation charter*, First Annual General Meeting of the Thanksgiving Federation, January 20, 2118, p1

[2] *Presidential Message regarding bill H.R. 24589*, *H.Doc. 174. 32*, February 14, 2136