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…
Note: We are sharing approximately every other story from Evening Soup with Basement Joe, and are now sampling Volume Three’s ninety chapters. In today’s episode, President Buckstop has just returned from making a speech about truck manufacturing and the tweaking of Buy America requirements.
Manufacturing, Federal Contracting, and Salmon Chowder
Dateline: July 28. Begin Transcript:
“Good evening, boss! You down here?”
“Hey! Who’s yelling at me?”
“It’s me, your cook, who else do you think?”
“Well, can’t you walk a little more quietly? I’m napping down here!”
“I can’t walk down these stairs quietly while carrying your soup! Remember my bum knee? If you want me to be quiet on the stairs, boss, you should carpet the basement stairs!”
“Oh, there’s no winning with you.”
“Oy. Here we go. Made it down. I don’t look forward to going back up…”
“So what do you have for me tonight?”
“Salmon Chowder, sir. An Alaskan recipe this time.”
“Salmon chowder? Is that normal? I thought chowder was with clams.”
“Doesn’t have to be, boss. There’s corn chowder, salmon chowder, all kinds of fish chowders… There are even veal chowders, I’m told, but I think that’s going a bit far, boss.”
“Hmm… Are there crackers?”
“There are always crackers. Here you go, sir… salmon chowder, crackers, napkins and spoons.”
“Mmm… Yum.”
“So how was your day today, chief?”
“My day? Don’t remember. Trucks.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Trucks. Lots of trucks. Don’t remember why now. Good soup. Like the potatoes. And is this bacon?”
“Yes, sir, that’s bacon. Can never have too much bacon, sir. Now, what about all these trucks, sir?”
“Assembly plant. Went to an assembly plant. Somewhere.”
“Oh yes, You were in Pennsylvania today, sir.”
“Pennsylvania? Cool. I’m from Pennsylvania, you know. Did you know that?”
“Yes sir.”
“Yup, born and raised. Scranton. I’m a Scranton boy. From way back. 1942. Grew up there. Know it well.”
“Didn’t you move away when you were ten, sir?”
“Hmm.. Ten. Yup, that sounds right. Good place to grow up. That was a big deal. Big deal. Scranton, PA.”
“So did you give a speech there, sir, or was it a town hall where they talked to you, or what?”
“Oh, speech. I gave a speech. Long speech.”
“What about, sir?”
“About? Oh. I don’t know. Trucks, I suppose. Making trucks. Cars. Factory. Making things. No limit to what we can make, when we set our minds to it. American labor. Do anything it wants. Anything you set your minds to.”
“Yes sir.”
“Remember this old friend … knew him from college… he always said we could do anything we set our minds to.”
“Yes sir.”
“And uh… what was the question?”
“Just wondering what you talked about today, sir.”
“Where?”
“In Pennsylvania, sir.”
“Oh? I grew up there!”
“Yes sir. I heard on the radio that you’re changing something about how the federal government awards contracts, sir. What’s going to be different, sir?”
“Oh. Different about what?”
“About the way the government awards federal contracts, sir.”
“I like awards. Awards are neat. They’re always presented by those beautiful girls in formal dresses. The red carpet is best. Before the awards. You know. The pre-game. The actresses walk on the red carpet and they pose to show off their designer gowns. Sometimes they’re really…. uhh… shocking…”
“Not that kind of award, sir. How the government awards contracts, sir.”
“Oh?”
“They don’t have a red carpet for federal contracts, sir.”
“Oh.”
“And they wonder why we can’t keep any of the soup aides the temp agency sends over.”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“Never mind, sir. You were going to tell me how you’re changing the rules on federal contracts, sir. Something about Buy America, sir.”
“Oh. Bye America. Yeah. It’s too bad, isn’t it.”
“What is, sir?”
“Bye America. We had a good run, but our time is over. China’s the new manufacturing giant now. It’s all about China. They have the capacity. They have the labor. They’re the new face of labor.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Bye America. That’s it. They had me rehearse that twenty or thirty times on the plane so I’d get it right. Bye America.”
“Umm, sir…”
“Maybe I should do a little wave. What do you think? Like at a pageant. One of those little waves the girls do. Miss Virginia, Miss Delaware, Miss Florida… They do that little wave. Bye America. To the camera, you know? Get some eye contact with the people watching at home…”
“It’s not B Y E, sir. It’s not Goodbye. It’s not that at all, sir.”
“It’s not?”
“No, sir. It’s B U Y, sir. Buy America. It’s a program called Buy America, sir.”
“Oh. Right. I’ve been doing that for years and years. I mean, you know, the Clintons mastered it… They’re the pros. I’m just a poor imitation. Middle class Joe, they call me. The Clintons are the ones who got rich off Buy America. Man, they had it down to a science, you know?”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“They’d give every country a chance to buy a little more of America… you just had to write a fat check to their foundation, and before you know it, man, they were rolling in dough…”
“No, sir, not that… That would be selling America, sir, not Buy America.”
“Huh? It would?”
“Buy America is a program – a policy – a purchasing clause that a lot of federal agencies include in their federal contracts, sir.”
“It is?”
“Yes sir. Has been for years and years, sir.”
“Did I think of it?”
“No, sir, I believe it pre-dates your time in politics, sir.”
“Oh. Pre-historic, huh?”
“Pre-hysterics, anyway, sir.”
“Oh. So what is it again?”
“It’s a rule, something saying that a certain percentage of the content of domestic goods that companies sell to the federal government have to be sourced from American supply, sir.”
“Oh. I see. What does that mean, anyway?”
“Well, sir, it means… let’s see… Let’s say the government is buying a big pump.”
“What would the government want a big pump for? Sounds boring.”
“Yes sir. Well, sir, let’s say they needed to install a pump under the road below an overpass, sir, so that the road stays dry when it rains, so cars aren’t washed out when they drive below the overpass, sir.”
“Oh. Does that happen?”
“Yes sir, all the time.”
“Oh. Okay then.”
“Well, sir, if the government puts out a contract to have these pumps made, the contract might include a Buy America clause, saying that it’s not enough for the pump to just be assembled here, a certain percentage of the components – you know, the motor and the impeller and the housing and the power cord and the electric switch and so on and so forth sir – a certain percentage of those parts had to be made in the USA too, sir.”
“Oh. Why would you do that?”
“Well, sir, so that the job doesn’t only employ Americans for final assembly of imported foreign parts, but so it also employs Americans to manufacture some of those parts. It’s about ensuring that the foundries or electronic firms or other metalworking companies get work too, sir.”
“Oh. Cool. Sounds complicated.”
“It can be, sir.”
“Oh. So what did you want me to tell you?”
“Well, sir, you announced some changes today, sir, in your speech, and I was wondering what those changes are, sir.”
“Oh. They’re in my speech.”
“Yes sir, and I wasn’t there, I just heard about it.”
“What did you hear?”
“That you were going to change the percentage thresholds, sir.”
“Oh. Neat!”
“Don’t you remember, sir?”
“Lady, I just read them, I don’t write them!”
“Yes, sir, I understand that, boss, but I thought you’d know about the changes you were ordering. Like, these percentage thresholds, are they by weight? By value? By cost? By importance?
“Huh?”
“Like for example, a product might have a $100 motor in it and it might cost $100 to paint the finished product… It might be hard for the manufacturer to know how you’re assessing those costs since the motor is assembled of parts too, and the painting job is done with purchased paints… do you get down to the level of where each sub-assembly step’s components originated, sir?”
“Beats me.”
“Isn’t this process awfully complicated for the manufacturer to figure out, sir?”
“Beats me.”
“Doesn’t this process add costs to the manufacturer, and therefore to the project, as the contractor has to staff up to manage all this red tape, sir?”
“Don’t care. Not my problem.”
“And how about the relative importance of different aspects of a job. Is there anything about that, sir? Does the government care more about some industries, or some roles, than others, sir?”
“Beats me.”
“I mean, is there any emphasis on what elements of the cost of a project are important, and what elements aren’t so important, you know, from an economic or national security perspective, sir?”
“Huh?”
“Well, for example, with my idea of a pump that includes a motor, and includes a painting job… the manufacturer might satisfy the percentage obligation by painting it here, but it would really be better for the economy if that motor was made here, you know?”
“Come on, man! I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“I was just wondering, boss, well, if there’s any kind of discrimination involved, sir?”
“No! No way! Never! Can’t have discrimination!”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“No discrimination! That’s a bad thing! Not allowed! That’s not who we are!”
“Didn’t you oppose busing in the 60s and 70s, sir, on the grounds that you wanted to be able to discriminate about who was in school with your own children, sir?”
“Oh, we figured out a way around that.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
“See, once you’re rich, you can send your kids to whatever school you want. Then you don’t have to worry about the local schools anymore. So you just have to get rich.”
“I see, sir.”
“But what does that have to do with saying Bye to America?”
“Everything, sir. Absolutely everything.”
Copyright 2021-2024 John F Di Leo
Excerpted with permission from “Evening Soup with Basement Joe, Volume Three: How Is This Not Over Yet?”, 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.
His newest nonfiction book, “Current Events and the Issues of Our Age,” was just released on July 1, and is also available, in both paperback and Kindle eBook, exclusively on Amazon.
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