The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I’m organizing an exploratory committee to determine the logistics of running for President on the GOP ticket. Why not, everyone else and their 3rd cousin is shooting for the moon, hoping Trump is so under siege with multiple indictments and possibly even incarceration, that the odd man out will become the next candidate for the Republican Party. I’m not going into this naively, don’t even think that for a nano-second. I’m aware that my usual leanings will have to plumb up a bit if this longshot is going to have a snowball’s chance in the hellbroth of today’s politics.

To that end my platform will need to be tweaked a tad. Trans, of course, will now rise to the top of my Greatest Threat to the American Way of White Life. Little girls will no longer have to contemplate suicide worrying about some so-called, maybe not, man coming into their bathroom and scarring them for life. And of course no man turned woman will be allowed to play in the sports of their new gender. In fact, all transgendered people will be required to return to their original sex.

The point here to my future constituents is that I will be running far to the right of my competition. Very far. Guns will be mandatory in every household. Bibles too. Jobs in construction and the service industry will go only to white kids. At a reduced minimum wage. An iron curtain, a Great Wall, will be built not only along the southern border but between us and the lib/woke Canada. America for White Bread Americans, that will be my slogan. All others, those not like us, will be asked to vacate the building. Who needs the complaining?

Welfare and food stamps will be eliminated and those motel and burger flipper jobs will be offered instead. After all, work gives a person dignity. A free lunch sure doesn’t. Rather than waste the country’s time which could be better spent on listening to podcasts debating which books should be banned in our libraries, I will simply ban libraries, saving taxpayers fortunes in wasted money. My first act in office should you, the happily unwoke, elect me, will be to close down Disneyland and Disneyworld. Mickey has had a long enough run. Time to move on.

And, of course, count on me to pardon Donald J. Trump and eliminate the weaponized Department of So-called Justice. The man has suffered enough. We’ll let the local police handle things from here on out. I think you can plainly see, I’m the far right candidate for these right wing times. Victory will be ours … if we can stop the opposition from voting. And after all, isn’t that the American Way?

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Back before the building booms when Camano was discovered by the denizens of Seattle and California seeking low cost gated communities, the Piranha Brothers plied their trade in the South End backwash. Their motto, We Don’t Need No Stinking Permits, explains why they worked after hours, on weekends, often times in the gloom of night, anything to avoid the dreaded building inspector. They worked fast and they worked cheap, hammers strapped to their construction belts slung low the way a gunfighter hung his .45, safety off, trigger filed.

They used recycled materials gleaned from tear downs and salvaged structures, not so much out of environmental concerns as a strategy to building on the cheap. Sheds, garages, chicken coops, artist studios — no job was too small, no building too demeaning. They moved surreptitiously from site to site, word of mouth spread to prospective clients the way a virus travels by stealth and speed. The jobs they turned down were those that might arouse the neighbors or were visible from the highway. Cash only, the Brothers demanded. Leave no trace.

It was only a matter of time, of course, before the long reach of the Island County Building Department tracked the two men to an unpermitted barn south of Tyee Store where Jimmy Kennedy found the pair hammering rafters into place three stories above ground. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. ‘I’ll need to see a building permit, boys,” the lawman shouted above their hammers’ racket, ‘and I’ll need to see it now.’ Even though they’d never laid eyes on the county’s agent, they knew who this was and they knew too the jig was up now that their cover was blown. It was, Josh told his partner Pete over a long afternoon of beers at the Stanwood Hotel after paying their fines and receiving their reprimands, inevitable.

‘You aren’t suggesting we go legit, are you?’ Pete asked bleary-eyed. ‘No way, partner, that’s for other construction outfits, not the likes of us.’ And so, maybe sad to say, maybe not, the heyday of the Piranha Brothers seemed at its end.

There are some who say the Piranha Brothers never really existed, just a rumor from the scofflaw days of the island when we built our own homes without permission or permit, us pioneers of Camano. Others claim they retired, drifted back into time and the backwash where even today they construct odd buildings that defy gravity and the law. But if truth be told — and it seldom is down here at the end of the island — the boys drifted into legend. Even if it was only in their own minds.

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Did you know the world’s richest 8 people had more wealth than the poorest 50%? You think maybe this is an April Fool joke? Faux facts? No, eight people had amassed as much riches as 3.7 billion people at the bottom of the heap. Stop and think about that for more than a nano second. Stop in your tracks. Let your jaw drop down to your knees. 8 people – 8! — with more money than 3.7 billion people combined!! 3.7 billion people in poverty, some starving of famine, some refugees from wars, some just us South Enders who maybe didn’t want to work very hard and never started up a Tech Company.

I guess I knew we had some income inequality, growing wider every year, but c’mon, this seems slightly skewed. I don’t begrudge Gates and Bezos and Buffet and Zuck a few billion, but show me the trickle down. Better yet, show the 3.7 billion people at the bottom whose only trickle is maybe a golden shower. Oh, I know I got a lot of neighbors who think whatever we do, don’t tax the rich! Because they think they might be rich one day…. You know, get an inheritance from Uncle Bezos or finally get around to that start-up tech company or reap the gains from those bitcoin investments or … more likely, win the Powerball Lottery. That, or just bottle lightning and sell it to the poor.

God forbid that we redistribute wealth!! Wouldn’t want to be accused of communism or social engineering or even basic Christian values. Those eight fellows made their money the old fashioned way, with lobbyists and sweetheart deals, with ruthless monopolies and cut-throat capitalism. Why on earth would we tax them exorbitantly when we can take the money from regressive taxation, user fees, sales taxes and other old fashioned usury? Sure, we could use those trillions to feed the poor, cure diseases, fund scientific advances, stuff like that, but you know and I do too we’d probably just build a bigger military. Kill the poor, let them die of disease and starvation, pay them as little as possible. After all, they’ll get to inherit the earth, right? Not that I’m blaming those 8 fat cat rich guys, no sir, they’re probably nice fellows, the way we’ll be when we win the Sweepstakes. I’m just saying there’s billions of folks who maybe deserve a slightly bigger piece of the pie. And I don’t mean Humble Pie.

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Yep, everybody seems really really happy that the debt ceiling crisis got resolved. Me, not so much as some. I don’t really care to negotiate budgets with a threat to bring down the economy, instigate a recession and ruin our financial standing in the world. Don’t ask me why, just doesn’t seem like the way to run a government. Unless the goal is to run it into the ground.

I particularly don’t like deals that spare the rich and rob from the poor. Okay, maybe rob is a bit over the top. Borrow, you like that better? We’re compromising, you like that word?, we’re compromising by agreeing not to raise taxes on the wealthy by cutting 20 billion from the IRS in return for asking food stamp recipients to find a job. It might seem fair, free food but you have to work. Unless of course you can’t find a job because maybe you have a criminal record and no employer will hire you. Or where you live doesn’t have many job openings and the commute into high-priced cities makes a minimum wage job a joke. Or maybe you have kids and working means hiring child care for more than you make. Lots of reasons but none that matter to the compromisers.

Back when I was on unemployment the Social Services people would always send me and my ilk to a sawmill 30 miles north of me, minimum wage, bad shifts, basically a sweatshop … but… if you turned down a job there the good folks at Social Services stopped paying you unemployment. For me and probably a lot of us down-and-outers, it was better for our mental health to turn that job down. Good racket, though. For that sweatshop and for the bureaucrats who bought into the scam, money saved all around.

They say work gives a person dignity. What they don’t say is that a lot of work does just the opposite. What they also don’t say, ever, paying your fair share of taxes might give the rich a deserved sense of dignity too. And maybe even an honest sense of patriotism. Just saying….

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