The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I was following a Cadillac SUV with a bumper sticker that read: YOU’RE THE REASON YOU’RE SUFFERING. This is bad news indeed for most of us down here on the South End, but at least now we know who to blame for our misfortunes. Although … I don’t think I care for the Winners in the Game of Life telling us Losers we deserve what we got. Some of us sure do. And I’m one. But I don’t ask for favors … or sympathy … or welfare either. I’m not going to make it to the 1% and I’m not gonna work myself to death trying.

But there are folks like Janet down the road, two kids in preschool and daycare, a husband John back from the Oil Wars with one leg and a head bounced too many times in IED explosions who’s pretty much a permanent casualty. She’s trying to hold a job and hold things together too. She’s 24 going on 60 and I seriously doubt she thinks her suffering is on account of her.

Joe the Plumber — and no, not that Joe the Plumber — has meliosomethingorother, the cancer from breathing asbestos when he unknowingly worked with the stuff in his youth. I doubt he’s going to take kindly to a Cadillac bumper sticker that thinks his Attitude must be to blame for his disease.

The rich think the rest of us are lazy, I guess. The 1% think the losers are takers. The corporate boyz think they made it on their own, no help from the education system, no assistance from the government that built the infrastructure, no subsidies or tax credits or loopholes in the law. They got theirs and if it happens to suck up most of yours, well, tough. You coulda done it too. Course, you might have been born black or Hispanic, you might be autistic or handicapped, you might be a single mom or a laid-off worker, you might get sick, you might be discriminated against, you might have been born on the South End.

We all want to believe we’re the captains of our destiny. But the waters we sail are more treacherous for some. It doesn’t take much compassion to pick up survivors in the water from the lifeboat off your yacht. Course, when the time comes we take the yacht away from you, I hope you’ll understand, it’s going to be your fault.

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Kind of makes your head spin, this 30 plus trillion dollar debt we have. I can remember back in the day when we had a debt. Took eleven years to pay off 24 grand for our shack’s mortgage but when we did, we vowed never to incur another one, not for a car, for credit cards, for a plasma TV, not for anything, just stop paying interest on money we didn’t have. Trust me, there were times the money ran out, like halfway through building our house, when a loan looked like the only recourse, but we just stopped buying lumber for awhile until we managed to get enough to continue. And yeah, I know, a lot of folks have to feed their kids, pay for college, all that stuff … so we count ourselves lucky more than smart.

This past month we’ve been enduring the continuous chatter about hitting the national debt ceiling, that point where the federal government cannot borrow another dime and sets off all kinds of mayhem. The GOP is suddenly alarmed by the 31 trillion we owe and want to cut back on spending for increasing the budget of the IRS or welfare programs. The Dems want to spend more on those but pay for it with rolling back the tax breaks the Republicans under Trump gave the rich and the corporations which of course added plenty to the national debt. Wasn’t troubling then but it is now with the Democrat Biden in office.

I’m all for a balanced budget, probably even for a reduction in the national debt. Most folks are. The issue really isn’t balancing or reducing, it’s how we get there. Neither party thinks we can cut anything from the military or Social Security. Medicare is pretty much off the table. So that leaves … not a whole lot of places they can cut. Welfare programs, school lunches, Medicaid, stuff that helps the poor, what we call a safety net. Of course we could raise taxes. I know, verboten! Especially raising taxes on the rich. You know, the folks we gave tax breaks to under the last regime. But we probably won’t and if you need proof, consider that part of the deal this week was to cut money from the IRS. Sure don’t want auditors probing the tax filings of the rich or the corporations. Sure don’t want to collect money from those folks even if it might help bring down the national debt.

Maybe the poor ought to call up their banks and their credit card companies, tell them No Way are they gonna pay one more red cent on their loans until the government does something about cutting down that national debt. And further, maybe they should demand that those same banks, those same credit card companies and all the corporations who are bilking the IRS because nobody’s checking the henhouse, only then will they pay one thin dime. I know, kind of a fantasy….

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