The Journal
Serving the Metropolitan Area
Since 1872
November 16th
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. 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 and
twenty 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 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.
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 6019 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 social 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.)
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