The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I went to apply for my State Park Annual Permit yesterday, what used to be free to us citizens, but now costs us taxpayers because the State doesn’t have enough tax dollars for what it used to have enough for so the budget needs to be balanced. Now the poor can pay what the guy launching his 25 foot Bayliner pays for a permit, same way he does at the gas station for the gas tax, same as he does at the drug store, same as he does just about everywhere he buys something. This is what we call Recessive Taxation. No breaks for the indigent. You know, folks we now refer to as Takers.

Big break for the wealthy. Evens the playing field … for somebody. I’m not so poor anymore. Maybe I should harden my heart, take up polo, spend my days investing on the stock market and figure I got mine, those who don’t, well, they probably didn’t work hard or make the right decisions. Plenty of em down here on the South End living on the wrong side of the road. Probably LIKE poverty. Got what they deserved for not going to college or working at Boeing or being born white or male.

So I go online for my permit cause I can afford a computer and DSL. Good website, easy navigation, sign me right up! I notice, though, if I apply online, it costs $5 more. And I remember the same thing happened on my vehicle licenses. They want me to go through a private vendor, see? Job creation. Get rid of that state job which, apparently, isn’t as valuable a job as a private one and now we pay less taxes, right? Sure … Course, I gotta pay it privately now. Kind of like saving money on garbage pickup in the city. Turn it over to Waste Management, your taxes go down. But you gotta pay Waste Management now. Costs more since they don’t have much competition. But at least you’re not paying more in taxes. It’s a little like contract soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. Better, I hear, to pay double or triple pay for Blackwater Boyz than to recruit more volunteers or God forbid, draft kids to fight our wars!

I sure don’t want to pay more taxes. Neither does Boeing. Or Amazon. Or Weyerhauser. Or Cabelas. I guess why we give em huge tax breaks. Sure glad taxes aren’t going toward helping out our State Parks. And that extra 15% to give the private sector a piece of the pie, well, at least it won’t raise my taxes. And the poor. Let em eat cake. But I don’t recommend they order their bakery online.

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Apparently the rumors reached Rome — folks down here on the South End are crabbing without licenses, without proper or legal equipment, without regard for managing the crustacean resource — so they’ve sent the centurions down to enforce the Law. It came as quite a shock to Poacher Paul on his first trip crabbing this season, not only to his poaching pride but to his wallet.

Martha on the bluff with her binoculars, sick of Paul’s seasonal greed, called the Authorities. In short order the Game Warden pulled up alongside Paul’s Boston Whaler and demanded to see his license. Paul, never at a loss for words, informed the gendarme he didn’t have one, had never had one and by Neptune he didn’t need one now. He’s a South End Old Timer, Paul is, and an honorary member of the Take-All-You-Want Club. There’s a lot of members of that society and most of them aren’t old timers, they’re just folks who have theirs and to hell with those who don’t.

They think government is just a bunch of imbeciles bent on keeping them from what is their God given right to take. More for me, less for you. Actually, less for all of us, but when the crabs are gone, they’ll blame the Department of Natural Resources for mismanagement, proof once again of government incompetence.

Down at the Marina a day later, Paul was still livid at this intrusion on his personal freedom. The warden, what Paul calls the Fish Police, fined him for crabbing without a license, fined him for an unlicensed boat, fined him for a trap without an escape hatch and fined him for 15 crabs either the wrong sex or undersized or both. He confiscated the traps and threw back all of Paul’s catch. It was an expensive day of crabbing, for sure.

Paul, of course, vowed to show that Fish Cop who was boss. No way was he buying a license, no way was he paying those fines, no way was he backing down to the &#@!!* government and its &%#@ stooges.

As the old saying down my way goes, you can lead a horse’s ass to water, but you can’t make him think.

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This month Washington is opening its first pot shops since we legalized marijuana last year. It’s been the Hot Topic at the Diner, almost as polarizing as global warming and Affordable Health Care, two topics Anita, the current owner, has turned into gold by changing her menu to include Obama Omelettes and Polar Bear Burgers. No doubt we’ll be seeing Killer Kannabis Hot Wings and other items shortly. The Diner is a regular debating society most breakfasts and lunches. At least indigestion isn’t blamed on Big Larry’s cooking.

Marijuana hasn’t exactly been a scarce commodity down here, legal or not, although if you listened to Charlie Griper’s apoplectic rants that legalizing the stuff will lead society inexorably down the toilet, you’d think liberals had just cloned a few plants from terrorist pals in Afghanistan and smuggled them onto the island. “How you gonna keep it out of the kids’ hands when we let dopeheads sell the stuff right up north? Might as well hand it out in the high school cafeteria!”

Harley Bob laughs. “Charlie, trust me, they won’t buy it at the Bud Hut — they’ll get if for half the price where they get it now. It’s not like buying rotgut moonshine when you can pay more for something that doesn’t blind you and tastes like turpentine strained through a dirty sock.”

“What are you talking about, Bob? We just told em it’s okay to fry their heads when we legalized it. We classified it as one of the most dangerous drugs out there as long as I lived. Now we’re spozed to think it’s okay. Like taking an aspirin. Jeez, gimme a break.”

“I guess you put too much trust in the government, Charles,” Bob laughs, knowing Charlie’s a card carrying anti-government Tea Party member. Charlie practically gags on his cheese Glacier Melt, a meal vaguely reminiscent of those Here’s your brain on drugs commercials a few years back.

“Laugh all you want, Bob. You’d laugh if they legalized heroin.” Bob taps his empty coffee cup for a refill. “Hit me again, Brenda,” he calls over to our morning waitress. “And hold the meth this time.”

Yes, it’s a New Day down at the South End.

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