Though it gets tougher and more demoralizing every year, I try to be a good, engaged citizen. What with the screwball antics and partisan posturing that passes for legislative activity in Washington D.C., giving up on the whole democratic process often seems more sensible than continuing to push the rock up the slippery slope. Be that as it may, I’ve written dozens of letters this year, signed what must be hundreds of on-line petitions on everything from global warming to reform of the financial system, to easing bankruptcy laws and giving consumers a break on their credit cards, to protests against escalating the war in Afghanistan.
I don’t know what value, if any, to place on my feeble efforts to remind lawmakers that real flesh and blood people are impacted by the deals they cut, fail to cut, or compromise beyond recognition. The replies I receive from my representative and senators are always polite, bland, equivocal, and machine generated.
Anyway, the other night I woke up thinking how refreshing it would be to receive a reply from a “congress critter” (thanks, Jim Hightower for that moniker) that speaks the dead honest truth. No BS, no holds barred. I imagined it might read something like this:
Dear Mr. Tanguay:
Thank you for all the letters you’ve written me about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mortgage crisis and economic meltdown, Wall Street corruption and potential for reform (not likely, ha ha), the TARP program and the climate crisis. I find your letters amusing, both for their trenchant analysis and unbridled anger against the way things are. My staff rarely agrees with your opinions, but they enjoy reading them all the same.
What’s obvious from your correspondence is that you do not understand that people like me do not listen to people like you. I hope this doesn’t hurt your feelings or drive you to purchase an automatic weapon at your local gun show. But think about it. What are your letters – no matter how comical and entertaining – compared to a big fat check from an industry lobbyist? Sometimes they even come to call carrying wads of cash. Watching them lay all that money on my desk is an experience I never tire of.
There are other perks as well, like prime concert tickets, Super Bowl tickets, the ever appreciated junket to Hawaii for the NFL Pro Bowl, and World Series tickets. (FYI: Once you’ve sat in a team owner’s private box you can never go back to mingling in the cheap seats with the commoners.)
Does my brutal honesty offend you? If it does I’m terribly sorry, but I didn’t create this byzantine system of payoffs and favors, nor am I responsible for the revolving door that propels people from corporate suites to high-level posts in the DC bureaucracy and back again. The game is what it is, and by God, I’m pretty good at it. Average citizens don’t appreciate what a snake pit this place can be. Big time politics is nothing less than blood sport. Trust is as transient on Capitol Hill as it is among Mexican drug dealers.
Bear in mind that these transactions -- if you don’t mind my calling them that -- are perfectly legal. After all, this is a system created by lawyers, interpreted by lawyers, and circumvented by lawyers for the benefit of surprise, surprise – lawyers!
It’s unlikely that you could despise me any more than you do already. Sorry to burst your bubble about the sham our democracy has become, but this is the way things work here in our nation’s capitol.
Keep writing. I can always use a laugh.
P.S. The least I can do is thank you and all the other suckers out there for my defined benefit retirement plan, and my platinum, taxpayer-funded health insurance coverage. Life is good!
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Saturday, December 26, 2009
Duke Lives
Standard Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. The Balcony does not advocate or support armed insurrection against private interests or the government of the United States.
The front door swung open and Duke appeared, wobbly and unsteady, like a boxer after a bad round; he held a .357 magnum in his right hand. I’d never seen a .357 that close before, and the size of the thing shocked me; it was a beast of a pistol.
“Fucking missed,” Duke said sheepishly, brushing plaster dust from his shoulders and eyebrows. “All that stuff about Amsterdam was BS. Come in.”
“Not until you put that canon down. Christ, Doc, you scared the crap out of me.”
“I’ll make some coffee,” Duke said. I followed him into the kitchen, sat at the table and watched Duke measure out the coffee. I noticed that his hand was shaking. The .357 was next to the toaster oven. Good thing Duke lived in a remote, heavily wooded part of Mission Canyon, otherwise his driveway would be jammed with curious neighbors and cops, just the sort of attention a suspected dope dealer tries to avoid.
“Be ready in a minute,” Duke said. He sat down, studied the table. “Lost my nerve at the moment of truth. Offing oneself is harder than I thought. I figured it would be no big deal. Load, aim, pull trigger. Guess I wasn’t ready to depart this earth. You want it black?”
“With cream,” I said.
“You’ll have to settle for 2% milk. I’m out of half and half.”
“Whatever.”
We sipped our coffee in silence. For a man who lived alone and traveled abroad frequently, Duke’s kitchen was surprisingly well-equipped; Sub-Zero refrigerator, Braun espresso maker, restaurant-style gas range, big spice rack, bottles of imported extra virgin olive oil, cookbooks from Williams-Sonoma; a complete set of Calphalon cookware hung from a ceiling rack. Duke even had a Winnie-the-Pooh cookie jar, a nod to his whimsical nature.
“I wrote a note,” Duke said. “Nothing profound. It’s damn hard to come up with a single sentence to encapsulate a long, eventful life. Know what I wrote? ‘The bastards have won.’ Four words.”
“Lean, straightforward, perhaps a bit vague, but it certainly sums up your frame of mind. Glad you missed, Doc.”
“Me, too.”
“What now?”
“I’m in the mood to make some trouble.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Controlled anarchy, Edward Abbey style.”
“Monkey wrenching? Is there a dam somewhere you have a hankering to destroy?”
“More like banks, investment houses, the offices of certain hedge funds, maybe the headquarters of a particular insurance giant, the nearest Wal-Mart. Confront the swine where they live and in a manner that will get their attention. Fuck with their lobbying firms too. There’s no time to lose. Every day we delay the motherfuckers get stronger.”
“So, I quit my job and you and I zip around the country blowing up banks and Wal-Marts? My family might not support this idea with much enthusiasm. They enjoy eating and living under a roof. You do understand that this isn’t the mid-70’s? You are familiar with the Patriot Act? In contemporary America we could go to jail just for having this hypothetical conversation.”
“Killjoy,” Duke said.
He went into his den and a few minutes later came back and tossed a worn copy of Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang on the table. I hadn’t read Abbey in a dozen years, but remembered the characters and their exploits in the slick rock country: Hayduke, Doc Sarvis, Bonnie, Seldom Seen Smith.
“I don’t see another way,” Duke said. His eyes were coming alive again. “The oligarchs are too powerful, their control of the system too absolute. We can’t beat them politically or economically. Massive civil disobedience might work, but do you see any cohesive, coordinated and committed movement springing up from the grassroots of this weary and demoralized nation?”
“Doc,” I said, “you’ve been through a traumatic experience. I think you need to smoke a bowl or two and take a nice long nap.”
He pondered this advice for a moment, then said: “The line between sanity and madness is very thin.”
The front door swung open and Duke appeared, wobbly and unsteady, like a boxer after a bad round; he held a .357 magnum in his right hand. I’d never seen a .357 that close before, and the size of the thing shocked me; it was a beast of a pistol.
“Fucking missed,” Duke said sheepishly, brushing plaster dust from his shoulders and eyebrows. “All that stuff about Amsterdam was BS. Come in.”
“Not until you put that canon down. Christ, Doc, you scared the crap out of me.”
“I’ll make some coffee,” Duke said. I followed him into the kitchen, sat at the table and watched Duke measure out the coffee. I noticed that his hand was shaking. The .357 was next to the toaster oven. Good thing Duke lived in a remote, heavily wooded part of Mission Canyon, otherwise his driveway would be jammed with curious neighbors and cops, just the sort of attention a suspected dope dealer tries to avoid.
“Be ready in a minute,” Duke said. He sat down, studied the table. “Lost my nerve at the moment of truth. Offing oneself is harder than I thought. I figured it would be no big deal. Load, aim, pull trigger. Guess I wasn’t ready to depart this earth. You want it black?”
“With cream,” I said.
“You’ll have to settle for 2% milk. I’m out of half and half.”
“Whatever.”
We sipped our coffee in silence. For a man who lived alone and traveled abroad frequently, Duke’s kitchen was surprisingly well-equipped; Sub-Zero refrigerator, Braun espresso maker, restaurant-style gas range, big spice rack, bottles of imported extra virgin olive oil, cookbooks from Williams-Sonoma; a complete set of Calphalon cookware hung from a ceiling rack. Duke even had a Winnie-the-Pooh cookie jar, a nod to his whimsical nature.
“I wrote a note,” Duke said. “Nothing profound. It’s damn hard to come up with a single sentence to encapsulate a long, eventful life. Know what I wrote? ‘The bastards have won.’ Four words.”
“Lean, straightforward, perhaps a bit vague, but it certainly sums up your frame of mind. Glad you missed, Doc.”
“Me, too.”
“What now?”
“I’m in the mood to make some trouble.”
“What do you have in mind?”
“Controlled anarchy, Edward Abbey style.”
“Monkey wrenching? Is there a dam somewhere you have a hankering to destroy?”
“More like banks, investment houses, the offices of certain hedge funds, maybe the headquarters of a particular insurance giant, the nearest Wal-Mart. Confront the swine where they live and in a manner that will get their attention. Fuck with their lobbying firms too. There’s no time to lose. Every day we delay the motherfuckers get stronger.”
“So, I quit my job and you and I zip around the country blowing up banks and Wal-Marts? My family might not support this idea with much enthusiasm. They enjoy eating and living under a roof. You do understand that this isn’t the mid-70’s? You are familiar with the Patriot Act? In contemporary America we could go to jail just for having this hypothetical conversation.”
“Killjoy,” Duke said.
He went into his den and a few minutes later came back and tossed a worn copy of Abbey’s Monkey Wrench Gang on the table. I hadn’t read Abbey in a dozen years, but remembered the characters and their exploits in the slick rock country: Hayduke, Doc Sarvis, Bonnie, Seldom Seen Smith.
“I don’t see another way,” Duke said. His eyes were coming alive again. “The oligarchs are too powerful, their control of the system too absolute. We can’t beat them politically or economically. Massive civil disobedience might work, but do you see any cohesive, coordinated and committed movement springing up from the grassroots of this weary and demoralized nation?”
“Doc,” I said, “you’ve been through a traumatic experience. I think you need to smoke a bowl or two and take a nice long nap.”
He pondered this advice for a moment, then said: “The line between sanity and madness is very thin.”
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Lost
You gotta’ love the theatrical aspect of Washington D.C. politics, whether it’s the President using West Point cadets as props for his speech to justify the escalation of our Afghan war or Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke explaining to Congress how the Fed rode to the rescue of the financial system.
Way to dodge any accountability and spin the myth, Ben. That must be the reason Time magazine named you as its Person of the Year. CNN reported that, ”the central bank of the U.S. is the most important and least understood force shaping the American – and global – economy.” That’s quite an understatement. Along with the intelligence apparatus, the Fed is the most secretive and unaccountable government agency, able to stonewall Congress with impunity and pimp for its member banks with steely efficiency. I guess the good folks at CNN forgot that the Fed was complicit in creating the real estate bubble – and the tech bubble before that – not to mention guilty of turning a blind eye and a deaf ear while Wall Street went on a risk binge. Some of that shame must be laid on Alan Greenspan, the former wizard-in-residence of the Fed, but Bernanke has kept the tradition alive.
Nevertheless, when Bernanke appeared before Congress recently his message was that the Fed works just fine, thank you, and further oversight of its activities would be counter-productive and might spook global investors.
And we can’t have that, can we?
By choosing Bernanke as its Person of the Year, Time magazine, a charter member of the mainstream media society, affirmed what’s important in this country: the financial sector and the almighty buck. One problem with choosing Bernanke is that the real economy of work and wages hasn’t recovered at all. A $14 trillion taxpayer bail-out may have stabilized Wall Street and worked wonders for financial sector profits, but John and Jane Public are still waiting for a hand to help them out of the ditch; city and state governments are starving for revenue and slashing services for the most vulnerable citizens; banks remain hesitant to lend; unemployment is still high; foreclosures continue; and the gap between haves and have nots is wider than ever.
Some rescue.
Fucking up the lives of average American families in the service of bankers and Wall Street gamblers is merely a misdemeanor in this country. No harm, no foul, no blood, no ambulance as Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn used to say.
$14 trillion could have purchased a lot of health insurance, a lot of teachers, a lot of shelter for the homeless, a lot of medical research, a lot of college tuition. Opportunity costs.
Lost.
Way to dodge any accountability and spin the myth, Ben. That must be the reason Time magazine named you as its Person of the Year. CNN reported that, ”the central bank of the U.S. is the most important and least understood force shaping the American – and global – economy.” That’s quite an understatement. Along with the intelligence apparatus, the Fed is the most secretive and unaccountable government agency, able to stonewall Congress with impunity and pimp for its member banks with steely efficiency. I guess the good folks at CNN forgot that the Fed was complicit in creating the real estate bubble – and the tech bubble before that – not to mention guilty of turning a blind eye and a deaf ear while Wall Street went on a risk binge. Some of that shame must be laid on Alan Greenspan, the former wizard-in-residence of the Fed, but Bernanke has kept the tradition alive.
Nevertheless, when Bernanke appeared before Congress recently his message was that the Fed works just fine, thank you, and further oversight of its activities would be counter-productive and might spook global investors.
And we can’t have that, can we?
By choosing Bernanke as its Person of the Year, Time magazine, a charter member of the mainstream media society, affirmed what’s important in this country: the financial sector and the almighty buck. One problem with choosing Bernanke is that the real economy of work and wages hasn’t recovered at all. A $14 trillion taxpayer bail-out may have stabilized Wall Street and worked wonders for financial sector profits, but John and Jane Public are still waiting for a hand to help them out of the ditch; city and state governments are starving for revenue and slashing services for the most vulnerable citizens; banks remain hesitant to lend; unemployment is still high; foreclosures continue; and the gap between haves and have nots is wider than ever.
Some rescue.
Fucking up the lives of average American families in the service of bankers and Wall Street gamblers is merely a misdemeanor in this country. No harm, no foul, no blood, no ambulance as Lakers broadcaster Chick Hearn used to say.
$14 trillion could have purchased a lot of health insurance, a lot of teachers, a lot of shelter for the homeless, a lot of medical research, a lot of college tuition. Opportunity costs.
Lost.
Thursday, December 03, 2009
Mental Mind F*&K - 09
Too much information, mind can’t handle it, overdrive and overflow, disk full, disk screaming. Information Age – e-mails, text messages, tweets, social networking, TV, fucking TV -- most of it garbage, trash, refuse, flotsam, jetsam, detritus – the sordid compost of our culture. Housewives of Orange County, California, look-alike blondes, fake tans, fake tits, fake nails, shit for brains…Tiger Woods drives his Escalade into a tree, a fire hydrant, a telephone pole…which is it and why? What’s the real story? Media feeding frenzy…blood in the water…prepared statements, Larry King all over it, one woman on the side for Tiger, two, three or was it four? Did Tiger’s Nordic wife take after him with a 9-iron? Riveting. Knocks the Afghan quagmire off the front page. Cue the drama on CNN: Tiger Woods, American icon or incurable skirt chaser and pussy hound? Unthinkable, yet…icons are created to be destroyed, no other reason. Americans love watching the mighty stumble and fall. Stupid human tricks. Can’t avert our eyes from the pedophile in the pulpit or the 20-car pile-up on the freeway…Jon & Kate…dipshits, little kids running around, pissing, shitting, upchucking peas while their parents angle for the best deal they can get…Jon is a dork but he gets chicks, go figure. Brett Michaels? Who the fuck would want to date that has-been? Every slutty girl who calls LA home and desperately wants to become the next “personality,” that’s who. No talent required. Ray J? – same story. Faux ho’s falling all over themselves for second-tier celebrities...as if the feminist movement and women’s liberation never happened…as if Gloria Steinem never existed...as if bras never burned so Women could be respected for who they are not what they do for men. Dumb girls with their tits hanging out, glitter on their eyelids…look at me…look at me…look at me…everybody wants to be on TV, on the red carpet, in the receiving line at the White House whether invited or not. Better not to be invited, better to crash the gilded gig, then sell the story to the highest bidder, always the highest. E. National Enquirer. People. Sell the story, write the book, sit down with Oprah or Larry King. Stock market rises, unemployment does, too. 1 in 8 Americans eligible for food stamps. How about a show devoted to that, Oprah? The ghost of Tom Joad has returned. The criminalization of poverty. The canonization of greed. Welcome to George W. Bush’s recession, the gift that never stops giving, like an untreated hemorrhoid. Aisles in Borders bookstore bursting with vampire novels and apocalyptic fictions. Supernatural beings loiter at the end of the world, trading tales of dark eternity. Pale faces, bloodshot eyes, cold fingers. Rush Limbaugh becomes king, distributes Oxycontin to school kids. Brain melting under this terrible strain, pressure…tremendous urge to castrate Glenn Beck with a dull knife, serve his severed scrotum sack to Ann Coulter or that freak Sarah Palin. Here, bitch, eat Glenn’s balls! Searing pain in the frontal lobes…can’t take any more…can you?
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