The Journal
Serving the Metropolitan Area
Since 1872
May 18th
THE CATFISH BOOK of JOBS!
By Jack Parnell - retired Congressman and Independent Presidential
candidate
Syndicated
by Acme Features
Now that deal Americans cut with the posterity... one as held up
since before 1776... went sorta like this: educate yourself, work hard, conform
to the caprices of your betters, and don't disgrace yourself in the community.
Do this and you'll move up in the world a bit and be able to buy stuff; if'n you
don't, at least your children might.
Were, always, exceptions... misfortunes as struck plenty of American
Jobs (that Bible-man, not employment golden passports, though both have their
much of a muchness in common) as didn't get redeemed after their
time of moral and/or physical testing… like the preacher-fellow in that French
book about the pests as the Don Jones folks were reading a while back during
the pinnacle of the plague, that priest as died just as ev’ryone else was
getting better. Innocents dead in floods
or earthquakes; wars, lynchings, schoolyard shootings or hurricanes while, on
another finger, gangsters, Purell, baby formula or toilet paper-speculators and
dim celebrities flourished – then, again and now. Always wondered what all that collateral damage
out’n that Book… those relative and neighbors, children and such thought about
the system – burning down there in Hell after their excruciating deaths or, at
the best, shivering in some cold, damp Greekish Limbo while Job gets a new,
improved family, livestock and friends they can look up at, if not to. Part of what made the Satanist of me, I guess…
Used to be that parents sent their children off to schools,
instead of work, out of belief in a delayed gratification as would bring
rewards later in life, instead of a six-figure debt. Politicians in Washington
and the statehouses passed or rejected legislation people might or have might
not liked… but at least could understand. (You may want to look here for a bit more on that!) On
the whole, a dull sort of justice prevailed... most got more or less out of the
system as they put into it.
Then, somebody busted the contract! Some Republican apologists
blamed the women working, though I'd recommend anyone as maintains women didn't
work before the Jazz Age to Granny Tarleton, o’er the ridge in Varnersville.
Hit ninety-five, last October, can still shoot squirrels out'n her dead tree.
Women did plenty of work in those days. They just didn't get paid
for it - so had to make do with that washboard, broom and log-fueled cookstove
instead of Maytags, microwaves and dirt devils.
When the circle of commerce widened, some housewives used their
pay from phone companies, schools or hospitals to buy devices as cut their
at-home working hours. This fattened paychecks of their American menfolk, as
assembled and marketed those devices. That's how we rode in the good old days.
Then some slicks... as likely considered themselves part of this
New World Order... figured out how paying Mexicans ten percent of American wages
would fatten their bottom lines, so we got the NAFTA and the crisis at our
border. Then Red China scrapped half the Communism... that
liberal silliness as frowned on exploitation of proletariats... kept the other jackboots-germ-warfare-and-concentration-camps
half, and sold off their gulag-state labor at ten percent of the Mexican
ten percent. By the ought-eight election our Federal Gumment owed them Chinese more’n
half a trillion bucks, same to Japan, three-hundred billions to the Brits… even
seventy-five bil to Russia for what was it (borscht? vodka?)… while millions of
Americans with costly educations couldn't pass the application tests for jobs
serving up fries or sweeping our streets. (Don’t ask what now?... it’s worse since the gumment
gave companies stimulatin’ tax breaks which they put to use upon the making n’
buying of R2doodoos and See Three Pee Ohs to do all that work for wages no greater
than the electricity as costs us in wildfires and flooding, the both, and a
little no-longer-cheap oil,!)
They replaced laid-off Civil War re-enactors in the Westville,
Georgia replacement theme park after the original split off to Columbus with
Guatemalans and recruited miners from China, Romania and Ukraine to replace
downsized Kentuckians and would’ve hired those caved-in Chileans and Thailand
boys except that they’d already made a modest pile selling their stories to the
media and doin’ those movies. If there's
a cave-in, FEMA uses our tax money to train rats
to replace dogs sniffing and people pulling Dracula’s daughters out – the mine
owner, meanwhile, runs for Congress. (To
America’s credit, however, Don Blankenship didn’t win so he hitched up with the
Constitution Party ticket in Florida, finished seventh in a seven pony
shuffle...behind even the Socialist candidate… Djonald Unelected called him an ingrate
– not quite so bad as Mike Pence, but worse than Doctor Oz!) Then, should anyone have to go to hospitals, their
medications can be administered by robot pharmacists or substitutes like the
good Doctor and his fellow snake-oil salesmen on your plane.
No wonder that, as the Don Jones people reported some years back, America ranked 43rd of
43 so-called “developed” nations in maternal death statistics. Behind Romania! Behind
Last! Dead last!
So no wonder the good Democrats of Manchinville (West
Virginia) in the next-to-last Congressional primaries gave over forty percent of
their primary vote and a fistful of delegates to some convict with a sense of
humor as nominated his fellow West Virginian, Mr. Manson, as a legal delegate to
such effect as the lawyers would’ve finally agreed to patch in a satellite link
to Folsom Prison or wherever and allow Crazy Charlie to ramble on in his nomination
speech until some unexplained technical difficulty occurred. Manchin, Manson... f***g nihilbillies couldn’t
figure out the difference, thanks to their American educations. Fortunately, Mister Manson relieved them of responsibility
by passing on to a lower place.
Remember that movie "Norma Rae" as won Oscars for all
the inspiration? Well, the West Point/Stevens people in Roanoke Rapids, NC shut
down the mill it was based on, "to stay efficient in a global economy."
What the hey... them laid-off Normas can always go to Hollywood and act...
or bet their car, or do that something else...
Meanwhile, Washington took a hint from Allen Otten of the
Wall Street Journal as deduced how problems of the human surplus arise "...from
a too-generous welfare system and an easy-on-crime approach that encourage(s)
minority youths to spurn low-wage jobs." So Congress, as hadn't raised the
minimum wage in a coon's age til’ that token bump at the end of George III’s
reign, reversed course and lowered it after the plague generated so many
millions of Americans willing to work all day for a hamburger… some for a
handful of Brussels sprouts… then
lowered it again for so-called "trainees"... meaning that former
steel, textile and hi-tech workers making $7.15 an hour flipping burgers and
stocking shelves with Chinese products were bumped down to $4.85 under ACTA,
then let go, soon as their six month "training" period expired or, if
they really busted their asses, raised back to $5.30 with plenty of
unpaid overtime, under the Osama… oops, I mean Obama… Family Time and
Workplace-Flexibility Act (FATWA) that the so-called Democratic Congress signed
off with Mitchy McConnell on a promise of no more tax cuts for the rich over
and above the usual pail of pork for six
whole months! And then, of course, ‘Publicans signed on in another deal
where the coupon-clippers got more tax cuts! Meanwhile, the lib’rals still go marching
round their yellow brick roads, asking for fifteen dollars the hour.
No wonder that most ‘Murkans greeted the Gumment Shutdowns of
ought-thirteen, eighteen, twenty and twenty six with something akin to relief
and, while appreciating front line healthcare workers, first responders, even
the retail clerks and delivery drivers, expressed nothing but contempt for the
Federal and some local state legislators as still
haven’t raised the minimum wage for the latter.
A conservative black Boston University professor, Glenn Loury,
agreed with Tommy Tuberville (that football dude as won his election) that the underclass had become "hard-edged"
and no longer described "a tragedy shared by us all." So we cut
healthcare, welfare and food stamps, too, built prisons for them as turned to
desperation under NAFTA, ACTA, FATWA, FEMA and such, and found some PIC jobs in
that way, chainganging the new inmates of debtors’ prisons and sending ‘em out
to pick the tomatoes that had been rotting on their vines since we kicked out
the Mexicans.
Never... I say... never underestimate the ingenuity of American
Entropy! Even when it's starving from having caught its right leg in a trap,
it'll find ways to chew off the left one for a snack!
Now, over in Germany, two-thirds of student princes as don't go
on to Heidelburg or Ingolstadt take what's called the "dual
educations"... classroom learning combined with half-time training on real
jobs. Germans shell out twenty billion deutschmarks yearly on the
dual-training... to match that commitment, says the former New York Times reporter
Hedrick Smith, "American industry would have to spend $60 billion a
year." Back in the 90's Wisconsin, Boston and Tulsa experimented with this
system... matching high schools with corporate partners in printing, healthcare,
electronics and manufacturing. Gave it up... must've figured nobody'd need American
printers, doctors and manufacturers! Let them Chinese do those jobs – or
outsource to the even more poorly paid Vietcong!
(Noting shrieks “Entropy” like the guy in the t-shirt with
American flags and some writing like “Guns, Guts and Glory” or “Don’t tread on
me” as, behind the neck, there’s a little label as reads: “Made in Vietnam”. At least, until the 2020 “woke” election, the
Good Chinese outsourcers would cover their iniquities by proclaiming “Made in
Taiwan”...
Sixty bil's a lot of sauerkraut; just what the Muskmelon
apparently frittered on Twitter or IBM's
Lou Gerstner said slovenly education costs America... $30 bil yearly
for remedial education for new workers, as can't spell or balance checkbooks,
other thirty in lost productivity from employees as don't upgrade what limited
skills they've acquired in the first place. Doesn't even begin to factor in the
costs of maintaining the P.I.C.
Recently, the National Assessment of Educational Progess (NAEP
for short – rhymes with ruh… uh…tape?) took one of those studies on the state
of American students and found ‘em… well, not getting stupider, at least, just
sort of treading water while most were being passed up by the Germans, the
Communist Chinese, the other Chinese and, nearly so, the Turks. Spokesmen for education hailed it as a victory.
A Catfish administration, now, that would first set some American idles to building or renovating
neighborhoods as real Americans can afford to live in, with public transit
routes as will set the oil mullahs to bubbling over with outrage. Consider
David Bell, an architect of the Glasgow Development Agency (GDA), as
embarrassed Maggie Thatcher by rehabilitating Europe's worst slum (with the
possible exception of Sarajevo). Consequently, as reported Frank Viviano in the
San Francisco Chronicle, "...with cheap land available to the right
buyers, and most of the population living in well-kept public housing at rents one-fourth
the level in London - and with office rents just 35 percent the London norm -
potential employers could reduce their total costs significantly without doing
so at the expense of employees' living standards." The reconstruction went so swimmingly that hundreds
of world leaders cruised in this week to talk about the climate, such as it is.
Now, with a nod to the season, bringing back the draft is controversial
– tho’ not so much now as at the start of the year, when people could still
walk the streets of Kyev without dodging the mines and the missiles. Our millenials are so entitled and their
elders so burned-out with our adventurings in Iraq, Vietnam and the like that,
for all the free soda pop with lunch at Cracker Barrel yesterday, the veteran’s
lot is not a happy one (despite yesterday’s annual fetish of free Slurpies and
Thank Yous. But military training can
also do a lot to make up for the bad schooling and parenting and in preparing
youth for jobs as an alternative to crime and welfare and, if the jobs aren’t
there, we can mobilize our conscripted military to fight the fires as seem to
double in number and intensity year by year by year, lay solar panels in the
desert and do all them nifty, necessary infrastructure stuff that Djonald Unchained
promised and then welshed on (to use an anti-cymrural slur), lay railroad
tracks and cybercables, clear the forests, drain the swamps and sit down with
all that broken machinery nobody has the time to fix or to recycle and keep
their minds and bodies occupied against the day that new hostiles think to take
a poke at Uncle Sam.
There’s also some merit to using our military, as well as
assorted civilian conservation corpses, to scoop up some of those migrants now
sleeping on the streets of Brownsville (Tx, not NY, not yet) and hoping the next tornado don’t blow them away. Might even organize them into militias to go
back to their tropic hellholes and terminate the cartels and corrupt
politicians. Might do that!
And, reminded of President Joe going to Egypt to blame climate
change on Russia - where there flat-out warn't no chance of real jobs
coming back, I'd do as ancient Pharaohs did with their surplus labor...
erecting "works of magnificence or utility", giant pyramids and
oubliettes as might persuade tourists of 6023 AD (if human beans with disposable
incomes survive that long!) that America left more behind than broken,
indestructible fragments of yellow plastic from Qual-Mart "Q's", shattered
porcelain toilet bowls and wild white rats with human ears growing out'n their
backs! If The Donald signs on, might
even let him have the use of one for his tomb.
"In the whirlpool of decline," contends historian Mike
Lazin, "populism too easily becomes a language of the dispirited, the
vengeful, and the cynical - of young men spoiling for a fight." (Or – a
$400 haircut!) In the brainwash of
virtual prosperity, this populist old grouch replies: "Lift those hick’ry sticks
and bring the li’l bastards on!"
(The kids, by the way, seem to be finally getting their revenge
on us old farts because of all the ChiComsocial media and bloggings that they
use on tinier and tinier screens that old eyes can’t focus on, therefore can’t
read about their plots to poison our porridges whilst down there in one of them
Caribbean nursing homes.)
And as if I haven’t made myself clear, I don’t care much for the
teenage gossip or adult trolling so I’ll go along with banning that TikTok...
if that’s what the Joneses want... but kow and remember this: as President, I
will prosecute all the telemarketers with misdemeanors, and them as scam our
seniors, our war veterans – hell, anybody – I will lock them up!
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PAST and PRESENT EPISODES of "BLACK HELICOPTERS" and to OTHER JACK PARNELL COLUMNS |