Socialism here we come
on the road to perdition
life will never be the same
socialism here we come.
My Fellow Compatriots,
Our opponents in this bitter campaign have savagely attacked our grand plan for a LOOPIER America. They say the Loonie Overall Opportunity Plan for Inclusive Economic Recovery will cost too much money. As if their “golden parachute” plan to bail out the richest of the rich won’t cost a lot of money. As if their “universal health rationing” program won’t put enormous windfall profits into the already Monolithic Insurance Industry. As if their convoluted morass of bureaucratic buffoonery masquerading as education financing isn’t ridiculously expensive, time-consuming, and patently unfair, to boot. Who are they to talk about “scattering money into the wind like it’s so much confetti?” For decades they’ve been burning it like cordwood to stoke the fires of their solid gold, gem encrusted, fiscal fleecing machine of insatiable greed.
Puts me in mind of a story from my youth.
Once upon a time, a long time ago; when a chocolate bar was only a nickel, a fin was a lot of money, and a double sawbuck was a veritable fortune; back when I was just a little Loonie; I had a friend named Myron Corkwhistle.
Myron was a not-quite-poor kid who was always dreaming of strikin’ it rich. Always lookin’ for the big score, it’s all he ever talked about. After he heard the legend of “Mad” Henry and his buried treasure, he wasted most of a summer out at the old abandoned Stoat property, digging holes. He found some old horseshoes and nails and junk, and once he even found a nickel, but he never found any of old Henry Stoat’s gold. I doubt there ever was any.
So anyway, when it came time for Myron’s confirmation, it just so happens that his birthday fell on the same day. And what with aunts and uncles and such, Myron raked in a whopping $23.
“I’m rich,” he told me later. “You know what I’m gonna do? I’m gonna get me a twenty dollar bill.”
“Know what else I’m gonna do? Next Saturday I’m gonna take you to the movies.”
So the next Saturday, just as we’re about to enter the theatre, Myron says “Wait a ’sec. I still gotta get my double sawbuck. You go in and get us some good seats, I’ll be back in a minute.
Thirty minutes later, just as the feature was starting, Myron came running in, found me, and before he even sat sat down whispered, “I’m gonna be rich.”
“Whatta you talkin’ about?” I hissed back.
“I’ll tell ya later,” he said.
Oh was he excited. He was so charged up he was shakin’ and ashiverin’ like he was freezin’ to death.
“You alright?” I asked.
“Yeah. Watch the movie,” was all he said.
When the movie was over, I asked him what happened.
“It’s gotta be a secret,” Myron told me. “Let’s get some sodas and go out to the Ramparts. I’ll show you there.”
The Ramparts was what we called the ramshackle little fort we built on the bluff overlooking Caterwaul Creek. When we got there, Myron took something from his pocket and set it on a boulder we used as a table.
“Whutcha make o’ that?” he asked.
Before me was a small wooden box, no more than four inches wide and eight inches long. It had a couple slots in the top, one near each end, and the top was fastened down with four small screws at each corner. Sticking out the side was a small crank.
“What is it?” I asked. “A jack-in-the-box?”
“No, you smart aleck. It’s a money machine.”
“Whattaya mean, a money machine?
“I mean, “he said slowly, “it’s a machine, that makes money. Five dollar bills to be exact.”
Now when it come to brains, Myron wasn’t exactly on top o’ the food chain, if you know what I mean; but he wasn’t completely stupid.
“You’re crazy,” I yelped. “That silly little box can’t make money.”
“Yes it can,” he argued. “I saw it work.”
“Where’d you get it?”
Myron then told me how he’d gone to two places trying to get a twenty when a clerk at the five & dime suggested he try the pool hall. So he went in there and got the crispest, almost newest, twenty dollar bill Manny had in the drawer. As he was leaving the building, a fellow who’d apparently just been hangin’ around came up to him.
“Hey kid,” he says. “How’d you like to make $20 month for the rest of your life?”
“Sure,” said Myron, “but I ain’t gonna rob no banks, and I sure ain’t gonna kill anyone.”
“Nothin’ like that,” the guy says. “You look like a smart kid. I’ve got a little business proposition for ya.”
So they go around back by the coal chute, and this fella shows Myron the box. He tells him that it prints absolutely authentic, hundred percent real, five dollar bills. Then he says he’ll sell it to Myron. Seems he got into a game with some tough cookies and he owes one of them $25. If he don’t have it tonight, he’s in big trouble.
“So you bought it?” I interrupted. “Buddy, I think you’ve been taken in by the flim flam man.”
“No, it really works,” Myron insisted.
“Then why didn’t he just print up $25 and pay the creep?”
“See, that’s the thing,” explained Myron. “That’s why I can only use it to make $20 a month, and why he couldn’t use it to pay his gambling debt. The guy said you have to wait a whole, entire week between uses. That’s how long it takes the frammerstam to recombobulate.”
Myron then told this fella that he’d like to help him out but he didn’t have $25.
“Ya got twenty?”
“Yeah.”
“Then you’re in luck,” he says. “I’ll print a fin, show ya how it’s done, then with that and your double sawbuck I can get this guy off my back.”
And so he did. Myron was so impressed he whipped out his twenty.
“I feel kinda bad about this,” Myron groaned. “What’re you going to do without your money machine?”
“I appreciate the concern, kid,” the man smiled at Myron. “But don’t you worry about me. I’ve got another one at home that prints sawbucks. I just can’t use it yet ’cause I used it during the game the other night. — Lost my stake. Took a break to print a tenspot. Then, holding a full house, got myself $35 into a nice hot pot. Four treys took it home. I think I got cheated.”
“So you gave this guy your crisp, new, first-time-ever, twenty dollar bill for that little wooden box?” I asked.
“Yep,” Myron beamed, “but I’ll make that back in a month. Then I’m on easy street.”
Myron explained to me how you cut a piece of paper to the exact size of a five dollar bill, stick the end into one of the slots, then turn the crank. The blank paper goes in one end and out the other comes a perfect fin.
“Let’s try it,” I said.
“Can’t,” he spat. “Gotta wait a week.”
“I have an idea,” I spat back. “Let’s get a screwdriver and take it apart.”
“Oh no, we can’t do that,” he gasped. “That’s the second rule. I can’t take it apart. He told me the mechanism is so intricately crafted that even just loosening one screw could ruin it forever.”
“Are there any other rules?”
“Just one,” said Myron. “I have to use good bond paper, no cheap notebook or newsprint type stuff.”
So we agreed to meet back at the Ramparts a week later.
Oh Oh.
Friends, my sincerest, heartfelt apologies. Seems this ol’ windbag got to ramblin’ on with his reminiscences and plumb lost all track of time. I’m truly sorry, but I have to cut this story short.
Now of course, as you all certainly know, Myron Corkwhistle’s little wooden box didn’t print any five dollar bills. After more than a month of trying, we finally took it apart. The mechanism was just a set of rollers attached to the crank. It pulled one piece of paper in one slot and shoved another piece of paper out the other slot. The only way to crank out a fiver is to first crank one in. My buddy Myron had indeed been taken in by the flim flam man.
And so have we been taken in by the flim flam man. Those Dysfunctional and Reprehensible power-brokers have been conning us for years. Myron was taken in by a money machine that doesn’t work. We’ve been taken in by one that does. My opponents say our plans to ring in a new age of wealth and prosperity will cost too much money. They’re full of enough balderdash to make even P.T. Barnum blush. What they don’t reckon on is the fact that I know what they know, and we’ll be fooled no longer.
Myron’s money machine didn’t work. But I know who has one that does. The United States Treasury, that’s who.
Those hucksters have had control of the money machine long enough. They gleefully print, with gay abandon, bushels and bushels of money, just to fill the coffers of the high muckety-mucks deemed worthy of their blessings.
NO MORE! Our time has come!
When I’m elected president, the money we print will go where it rightfully belongs. To you, the hard-working, long-suffering backbone of this great nation.
So vote for me, Senator Raymond V. Loonie, to be your next president.
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A Loonie vote is the money vote
