The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

Hits: 22

Hits: 38

I drove my jalopy down to Bellevue and Babylon this week. They got a new Pay-as-you-Drive lane system now, fast lanes for the folks willing to pay up to $10 for a commute to Microsoft and the high tech cubicles, more if you’re like me, the occasional traveler without a transponder and a special bank account. I thought I’d already paid my gas tax and license fees, maybe now I could drive the same roads as the rich, especially since percentage-wise, I was paying even more than them.

I figured wrong. As usual. I’m used to sitting in the back seats of planes jammed in like a chick in the crate going to the slaughterhouse. I’m growing accustomed to feeling second class. Nobody said life was fair, even in a democracy. You pay to play. College. Jewelry shops. Opera. State parks. National parks too. High speed internet. Politics. You maybe thought your taxes give you a free pass to Yellowstone or equal opportunity at the ballot box, think again. It costs $10 to drive into the State Park and I not only throw more optional money at them on my driver’s license fees, I maintain a county park us Friends of Camano Island Parks maintain so the county can use the saved dollars to enforce boat launch fees when I haul my sailboat down.

Maybe the rich do deserve their own lane for commuting. Maybe they deserve every break we can give them. When the King’s carriage rolled through on the highway to the castle, you better believe us peasants pulled over, doffed our caps and bowed ceremoniously to M’Lord. Call me cantankerous and slap me with a macaroni, but I don’t like it.

Probably won’t be too long, though, the gated communities down here will demand their own lane over the bridge onto the island. That, or they’ll go whole hog and insist the state retrofit a drawbridge, just for them, the rest of us, buy a boat. It is, after all, an island. If the riffraff can’t swim, all the better. A few less of us and the property values will go up. The free ride is over. For now, the boat ride’s fairly cheap.

Hits: 140

Hits: 36

Little Jimmy was preaching at the South End Marina’s Pilot House Lounge the other night, carrying on about the upcoming elections. “It’s like we got two Halloweens,” he was orating to about 8 of us layabouts who weren’t quite ready to go home and face the music. “One with goblins and then the one we vote for spooks, no treats.”

“Yeah,” Biker Bob threw in, pounding his Bud bottle on the formica table, sending suds onto the pulpit. “And then you got 4 more years of Halloween every damn day.”

Some of the boyz, especially after more than a couple, don’t much believe in the democratic system we got. “Throw em all out, I say,” says Ralph from behind the bar where he’s filling in for Joey, the usual weeknight bartender and referee. Joey never takes a side in a political discussion, wouldn’t say Gerrymander with a mouthful, which explains why the place stays open in these partisan times we live in and the Stanwoodopolis Gazette isn’t half obituaries of patrons shot in the parking lot.

George next to me sits pensively peeling the label off his beer bottle before venturing, “You mean everybody but YOUR guy, don’tcha Ralph?”

“Oh, my guy’s okay,” Ralph agrees, wiping his hands on a dirty apron. “He voted to kill that Gun Bill this year.” Ralph’s a big NRA fan, something he usually espouses this side of the bar most nights until Joey tells him to pipe down. Ralph can get pretty agitated without much counter-argument even. Argue with him and he can get scary as Halloween in an Ebola isolation unit.

Half the place votes for their guy, it turns out. The other half are too disgusted or apathetic to even vote, especially mid-term. They’d vote if they could vote out the president, but nothing’s going to change, why bother? they think. So Ralph’s vote should count double, a fact that makes him happy. And me … I take the point about a prolonged Halloween in the Land of the Brave.

Hits: 65

Hits: 539

ROCKY HORROR STOCK MARKET SHOW

Like maybe a few of you, I’ve been watching the stock market in the aftermath of the worst economic meltdown in most of our memories. It looks like a jumping bean on steroids and meth both. Huge jumps, kamikaze dives. Nobody knows quite what to do with the money they got left after the 401-K’s were looted, bury it or invest it with the Wall Street crowd. It’s like the creepiest of horror movies where the dead keep getting back up and killed again.

The zombies, of course, are all those folks who preached unbridled capitalism. You remember them. The people who wanted to privatize Social Security. Why make a puny couple of percentage points interest when we could make some SERIOUS money in the Market? Why put the brakes on a wild ride to riches? Bubble? No sir, that was a balloon sailing to Eldorado, streets paved with gold…..

I will make you a prediction you can take to the bank: they’ll be back! They’ll dig up out of the hasty grave we threw them in and kicked dirt over. They’ll knock on our door some midnight dreary when our own fiscal wounds have started to heal and the memory of this nightmare has faded. They’ll be at the door grinning blood and money, offering impossible returns, easy loans, no interest, fast bucks.

Me, I’m resharpening my wooden stakes. I’m hanging credit cards wrapped in garlic by the porch. I’m looking for silver bullets, not silver linings.

So when the rollercoaster levels out and you know the extent of the damage finally, don’t let your guard down, don’t call your broker and don’t assume the worst is over. It isn’t. They’re clawing their way above ground even now.

And here’s a tip: when dawn finally comes and the ghouls in Brooks Brother suits slink back to their coffins, check your MasterCards. From now on, Leave Home Without It.

Hits: 65

Hits: 42

With this next presidential election cranked up about two years ahead of the Big Vote, I’ve been thinking about another round of debates we should have between the Job Creators and us Takers. The Pope’s been in town this weekend, talking about the obligation of a society — or a religion — to take care of the poor and the sick. Seems like the decent, the moral, thing to do, he says. Course, this makes him a socialist. A ‘taker’ too if you figure his salary’s paid from tithes.

I was just in my local Haggen grocery store. They bought about 150 Safeway and Albertson stores this spring, figuring, I guess, they would create thousands of jobs overnight. Now they’re closing stores, laying off thousands and applying for bankruptcy protection. Job Takers, looks like to me.

VW just got caught fudging its emission control tests. Put in a little software to fool the regulators, make it look like their diesel engines were clean as whistles. Now they’re going to end up either going down the Rabbit Hole or, best case, downsizing when the lawsuits and the fines reach many billions of dollar and sales dive. Job Takers, you ask me.

I’m a small businessman myself. Occasionally I even create jobs. Been awhile, since the Great Recession knocked me back on my heels, the one where the financial sector played a little fast and loose with our money. Cost me a little, cost the country plenty. Job Takers, if anyone wants my opinion.

Capitalism is fine with me — I got my little business and it’s given me a livelihood that pays the rent. But you know and I know and the Pope does too, the game is rigged. The winners make the rules and okay, nobody thinks they’re fair, except maybe the winners, but let’s take care of the losers. Let’s think of it as the cost of doing business. If government is only there to rig the game, the Big Boys can do it on their own. Maybe that’s why they hate government — it’s just a waste of their money.

Hits: 102

Hits: 40