We don’t need a 3 pointer. Just take the layup!

Before we start, I have a question for Marianne “Glinda the good witch” Williamson. If all of our concerted emotional power, good vibes, and universal love can keep hurricanes from hitting the US, how come the pipes in Flint are still leaching lead into the water? I’m just guessing here, but looking at the pictures from the Bahamas, I’m betting that that hurricane is a lot heavier than a bunch of pipes under a couple of feet of dirt. No wonder Oprah puts freakin’ cauliflower into everything these days.

Congress will come back to Washington next week, like the swallows returning to Capistrano. Which is actually a pretty good analogy, since when they get there, just like the swallows, they sit around and shit all over everything. But as a concerned citizen, I thought that I’d offer Jerry Nadler and Nancy a little simple, heartfelt advice: Quit dicking around.

We really don’t need anymore “show” hearings, or protracted court battles, or wasted time. That may have been necessary if our only path forward was to untangle the twisted web of Trump’s conspiracy with Russia, or his obstruction of justice. But those are complicated, difficult to explain and understand issues. Why risk breaking your neck climbing a tree to pick apples, when there are so many good ones laying around on the ground right under the tree?

I was born in, raised in, and spent 48 years living in Chicago. Back in the early 70’s, when I was cutting my political junkie teeth, there were two different kinds of Democratic politicians in Chicago. They were called the “lawyer” politician, and the
“insurance” politician. Both were a scam, and they both worked the same.

If a promising Democratic politician was a lawyer, he got himself a partner, and opened a law office. Pretty much every business in a city is going to need legal help in dealing with the city on occasion, and who better to represent you than a firm with a politician on the roster. This served two purposes. It gave the politician a living income while he pursued power, and it gave him an influential donor base to tap into.

If you didn’t have a law degree, you were by no means out of luck, There was an even easier route open to you. Simply open up an insurance agency. To have an insurance office, you only need two things, an office with your name over the door, and an employee qualified to write policies. Every business needs insurance, so why not force feed the premiums on your friendly politician insurance agent instead of an agent who can’t do you the slightest bit of good in a zoning dispute? In Chicago educational circles, this is known as “graft 101,” and it’s taught in second grade. That’s just how we roll.

If you’re a city maintenance manager and the city has a deal with a particular gas station for a discount rate for filling the trucks at that station, and you send the trucks to another station instead, with higher gas prices, because you get a 10% kickback from the owner, that’s called corruption. And if you tell the drivers to stock up on soda, danishes and cigarettes while they’re there, that’s even worse.

If you’re the manager of the travel office at a company, and you send an executive to a conference, and you book that executive at a hotel three hours away from the conference, at a rack rate higher than the hotel next to the convention center, because you know that the hotel belongs to the company’s CEO’s uncle, that’s corruption. and if the company’s CEO suggests sweetly that you might like to book the executive at that hotel if you’d like to still be collecting a paycheck from the company by the end of the week, that’s even more blatant corruption.

If a company treasurer allots company funds to the purchasing manager to build a satellite office in Toledo, and the company CEO steps in and tells the purchasing manager to use the money to build a wall around his estate so the neighbor’s dog doesn’t keep shitting on his putting green, that’s a misappropriation of funds. and if the CEO then tells the purchasing agent not to worry, if he gets caught, the CEO will fire the company treasurer to protect his job, that’s an abuse of power.

If a company CEO owns a restaurant in the lobby of the corporate offices, and visiting executives know that they can sell the company inferior products at inflated prices if they just stop in the restaurant on the way upstairs for a nosh, do you think that the board of directors might want to have a little something to say about that?

This isn’t sarcasm, and it isn’t satire. This is going on every single day, and right under our goddamned noses. And not only our noses either, Jerry Nadler and Nancy Pelosi have noses too, and it’s happening right under theirs as well. What’s up with subpoenaing a porn star and David Pecker fer Crissakes? Why are they continuing to pore over every expense report for an inflated $20 in cab fare when the CEO is so sloppy that the local newspapers are reporting his sleazy scams on the front page every day?

Look, I get it. The Russians fucked with our election in 2016, and saddled us with The Mango Messiah. But re-litigating 2016 in a bad tempered rage isn’t gong to remove Trump’s plush bottom from the Oval Office, it isn’t gong to make Hillary Clinton President, and it isn’t going to protect us in 2020. basically because the whole damn thing is too hard to understand. Nobody can grasp the significance of “micro targeting African American voters through social media in specific legislative districts.” But everybody can understand a scruffy guy wearing a pair of felony flyers running down the street with a purse in his hand, while a little old lady screams bloody murder down the block.

So please, Chairman Nadler and Madame Speaker, we’re begging you. Stop trying to make the Harlem Globetrotters fancy bank shot from mid court, and settle for the layup instead. Stop trying to turn an alley mugger into Bernie Madoff. It’s a whole lot easier this way.

To know the future, look to the past. before the insanity of the 2020 election, relive the insanity of the 2016 GOP primary campaign, and the general election, to see how we got to where we are. Copies of  President Evil, and the sequel, President Evil II, A Clodwork Orange  are available as e-books on Amazon, at the links above. Catch up before the upcoming release of the third book in the trilogy, President Evil III: All The Presidents Fen