Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Episode 44

Political Satire:  Having trouble surviving these times?  You’re not alone.  Join us in columnist John F. Di Leo’s exploration of an alternate universe, where we imagine the impossible:

Joe Buckstop, an aging, corrupt old fool, somehow becomes president in his basement, and every night, an aide has to bring him his soup and discuss the events of the day as he prepares to receive his nightly meds…

Dateline, April 10. Begin Transcript:

“Good evening, sir.”

“Well, hello there! Back again?”

“Yes sir, your cook asked me to bring down your soup one more time, sir…”

“What is it today?”

“Let me see now… she had me repeat it three times… Canadian bacon, barley, and mushroom soup, sir.”

“Oh, it’s Canadian, huh?”

“Hmmm… I don’t know sir. It might be a bacon, barley and mushroom soup that originated in Canada, or it might be a soup made with Canadian bacon that originated somewhere else.”

“Well, which is it?”

“I don’t know sir.”

“Why not?”

“Well, I didn’t make it, sir. I’m a pizza guy.”

“Oh, right. Didn’t the cook tell you?”

“I really concentrate more on my job – which is delivering her pizza – than on what she cooked for you, sir. You can ask her yourself, sir.”

“Oh, no. I don’t want to go up there.”

“Why not, sir?”

“Staircase. Scary.”

“Ah. Yes sir, I suppose so. Well, here you are, sir, soup, crackers, spoon, napkins. That’s everything. Good night, sir.”

“What’s your hurry?”

“I told you the other day, sir… I want to get back to base and keep up my deliveries. I’m saving up for my big purchase, sir. Pulling extra shifts.”

“Oh. What are you buying again?”

“I really don’t think we want to go through all that again, sir, do you?”

“I don’t remember… what are you buying?”

“I’m saving up for a Ruger Max-9, sir. I’m halfway there.”

“Well, then why wait? If you’re halfway there, Just charge it!”

“You’re kidding, sir, right?”

“No, what do you mean?”

“Well sir, that’s the whole problem with our country today, sir. People charging things they can’t afford, getting themselves in debt… I am going to wait until I’ve saved up for this. Another couple weeks of extra shifts, if tips are decent, I should have the full $500. I want to pay for things in cash, sir, not get myself up to my eyeballs in hock, sir.”

“Come on, man! If you need something, don’t put it off, do what you need to do!”

“Oh, right. Like that so-called infrastructure bill you introduced this week, huh, sir?”

“Oh, well, that’s important. Good example. We need that right away. Been putting it off too long.”

“Oh really? Look, we don’t want to get into this. You want to eat your soup, and I want to get back to work, so I’ll just head out now…”

“Oh, you don’t want to admit how important the infrastructure bill is, do you?”

“Important, sir? Important? It’s hogwash from beginning to end, sir, and you know it.”

“What are you talking about? We need it! The experts agree! All the experts say we need it!”

“No, sir, your special interests need it. Not enough to spend their own money on it, but enough to talk you into spending government money that the government doesn’t have on it. It’s all

hogwash. Two Trillion Dollars of hogwash, sir.”

“But we NEED that spending! There’s $620 billion in transportation infrastructure in there! That’s roads and bridges we need! interchanges and connections that the drivers of America are counting on!”

“Well, sir, for starters, a third of that alleged $620 isn’t on roads and bridges at all; it’s targeted incentives and spending on electric cars. Right?”

“Umm, yes, I think it’s was something like that…”

“Yes, sir, almost $200 billion on stuff specific to electric cars. Things like incentives and grants and charging stations.”

“Well, electric cars are the future! We’re going to make sure every car in the country is electric soon!”

“Oh, are we now? Tell me, who’s the biggest electric car maker in the USA?”

“Uhhh, Tesla, I suppose…”

“You got one right, sir. And Tesla’s boss himself said the idea of America switching all passenger vehicles to electric, not just soon but anytime in the foreseeable future, is simply impossible. The electric grid couldn’t support anything close to it.”

“Well, that’s one man’s opinion…”

“Sir, I’m quoting the guy whom everyone on all sides agree is the wizard where American electric cars are concerned.”

“Well, umm, it’s not all about the USA, you know. The whole WORLD needs to switch to electric cars.”

“Oh, really, sir? Who’s the king of alternative powered cars OUTSIDE the United States, sir?”

“Umm… I dunno…”

“Toyota, perhaps? The inventor of the Prius hybrid?”

‘Yes, I suppose…”

“Well, the chief of Toyota gave a major interview a couple months ago on the same topic, sir…. basically seconding everything Elon Musk said, about how the electric grid can’t handle a world of electric cars anytime soon, period.”

“Oh.”

“Nobody who knows ANYTHING about it thinks it’s possible, logical, or sensible, sir. All the people pushing for quickly switching the world over to electric vehicles are politicians and nonprofit nutcases, sir, not car people who know the reality of power availability and the challenges of the grid, sir.”

“Oh.”

“And that’s a third of the money you guys said was going to be on transportation. You better hope the other two thirds of that $600 billion is really going to roads and bridges. With the internet, you politicians can’t keep things buried like you could in the old days. Blow hundreds of billions of dollars on payoffs and walking-around money nowadays, and it’s going to find its way into campaign ads… in 2022, and in 2024.”

“Oh, you’re making a big deal out of nothing… nothing at all. This money is going to real projects, important projects!”

“Oh really. Then how come it’s supposed to be a two trillion dollar infrastructure bill, but only $400 billion of it, that’s just one fifth, is actually on roads and bridges? What the heck else is there that’s ‘infrastructure’ besides roads and bridges? When i was growing up, sir, and people talked about infrastructure, they were talking about roads and bridges. What’s the rest of this boondoggle for, sir?”

“Well, umm, uh… affordable housing! and, umm, sustainable housing!”

“How is that the federal government’s job, sir?”

“What? Well, we have a federal department of Housing and Urban Development, don’t we?”

“So what?”

“Well, if we have a department, it has to do something!”

“Why?”

“Huh?”

“I’m serious, why, sir? Why? I mean, We have a Department of Commerce, right? It’s not expected to perform commercial transactions, is it? It’s not supposed to operate businesses, open franchises, buy and sell stuff… the Department of Commerce is basically a trade ambassador… they help businesses meet potential customers overseas and stuff like that. Probably silly and unnecessary, but relatively harmless, sir.”

“Well, uh, yeah….”

“So why doesn’t HUD do that? Have some offices to produce a national website to post helplines for renters and mortgage holders and stuff like that, maybe a national directory so people who need assistance can find out what’s available for them… and leave it at that? Why should HUD do anything else?”

“Well, but, people need housing!”

“Well, sure. And if they had jobs, they could afford housing.”

“But not everyone has a job!”

“Exactly, sir. And every damn fool infrastructure dollar wasted by the federal government eliminates even more of those jobs, making ever more people dependent. At least if the government weren’t making it all worse by pouring money into stupid overpriced public housing programs at the state and local level, at least the federal share of the problem wouldn’t be so bad, sir.”

“Wait a minute, it’s not just about that… our infrastructure bill is putting $400 billion into the care economy! You KNOW people need that!”

“The what?”

“The care economy!”

“Umm… sir… forgive me for being baffled but… what the hell is the care economy?”

“Well, umm, you know… the economy of, uh, caring for people!”

“That’s not much of a definition, sir.”

“Well, you know how people are suffering, right? Umm, people are poor, or sick, or mentally ill, or depressed, or old…”

“The good Lord said, ‘The poor you will always have with you,’ sir, and that was two thousand years ago.”

“Well, uh, yeah, but we can make their lives better.”

“What does that have to do with infrastructure, sir?”

“What?”

“Well, you’re calling this an infrastructure bill. You’re telling people to support massive, crippling taxes and huge debt on our children and grandchildren and great grand children…. but it’s not really infrastructure, is it? You just put in a couple hundred billion for some famous roadway projects and bridges so you have some actual pictures to point to that really look like infrastructure, and then you fill the rest of it with handouts to social worker groups and public employee unions and other unions and mental health grants for shrinks who are crazier than their patients…. that’s all you do up here, isn’t it, sir?”

“Hey, umm, you’re twisting everything…”

“Look, everybody who’s ever driven a long way in the United States knows that there are a lot of roads and bridges that could use some repairs, or widening, or even more than that, sir.”

“Right!”

“And if your so called infrastructure bill was really just limited to that sort of thing, you might get some support from sane people, sir.”

“Huh?”

“But you’re calling anything and everything you want ‘infrastructure.’ You’re just using the bill as a great big garbage disposal, putting everything down its trap and counting on the machinery to work it out for ya.”

“Hey!”

“Mental health is infrastructure, drinking water is infrastructure, low interest loans are infrastructure…”

“Well, yeah, in a way…”

“Union shop stewards are infrastructure, campaign committees are infrastructure, swing districts are infrastructure…”

“Now, come on, man!”

“Teleprompters are infrastructure, hair plugs are infrastructure, hell, soup is probably infrastructure, if you read these bills closely enough, sir…”

“Well, soup is good…”

“Look, I’ve got to get back to work. I’m so torn, sir, between the idea that I shouldn’t miss on this once in a lifetime opportunity to try to introduce you, of all people, to the real world… and my obligation to earn a living and get ahead in my career.”

“You’re a pizza guy. What career?”

“You think this is a dead end job, sir? Well… it’s not. Lots of people have gone on from part time jobs delivering pizza to successful lives in lots of different career paths, sir.”

“Oh? Like who?”

“Do your own research, sir. I’ve got a job to do. Good night, sir.”

Copyright 2021 John F Di Leo

Excerpted with permission from “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume One,” from Free State West Publishing, available in paperback or eBook exclusively on Amazon.

John F. Di Leo is a Chicagoland-based international transportation and trade compliance professional and consultant.  A onetime Milwaukee County Republican Party chairman, he has been writing a regular column for Illinois Review since 2009.  His book on vote fraud (The Tales of Little Pavel) and his political satires on the current administration (Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volumes I, II, and III), are available in either eBook or paperback, only on Amazon.

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