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 is confronted with the damage being done by the covid-era moratorium on evictions:
Landlords, Renters, and Broccoli Soup with Ginger and Lemon
Dateline: August 4. Begin Transcript:
“Hello, Boss! Look what we have tonight!”
“Huh? What are you doing here?”
“Way to make a girl feel welcome, boss. I WORK here, remember?”
“Oh, yeah, well, I mean, weren’t you going to have an assistant to bring down the soup?”
“Looking out for my knee, boss?”
“Your knee? Why, are you planning to kick me?”
“No, I meant… oh, never mind.”
“I just thought you were going to hire a new soup server.”
“We did, boss. The agency sent over that young man Dwight a few days ago, sir.”
“Who?”
“Dwight, sir. Dwight Kankakee.”
“Oh, right. Where is he?”
“That one only lasted one night, sir.”
“Huh? You shouldn’t fire them so fast. Give them a chance to get used to the job.”
“Fire them, boss? I don’t fire them! This kid only made it one shift. He said goodbye at the end of the evening, and he just asked me one question: ‘How many times did Delaware elect that guy to the US Senate?’ I thought that was odd, since he could just look it up on his phone, but he was very nice and very polite and he headed out and never came back, sir.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The next morning, the agency called and said Dwight quit and moved away. Apparently, he started packing as soon as he got home that night, and he called the agency to quit as soon as they opened the next morning, and he started driving west, sir.”
“Did he say why?”
“He just told them he wanted to get out of Delaware as fast as possible and never set foot in this state again, sir.”
“Oh.”
“So they’re looking again, but you know, it’s hard to hire people these days, sir. So I may be hobbling down here with your soup myself for a while, boss.”
“Oh, right, soup! So what’s the soup?”
“It’s called Broccoli Soup with Ginger and Lemon, sir.”
“Neat! Colorful! So what’s in it?”
“Exactly what it says, sir. Broccoli, ginger and lemon, sir.”
“Oh. Are there crackers?”
“Of course, sir. Here you are, sir. Enjoy.”
“I wonder why that agency has so much trouble finding people to work. Maybe you should find a different agency.”
“They all have the same issue, sir. With a year of stimulus payments and unemployment boosts over the basic unemployment and welfare programs, the bar is pretty high, sir.”
“Well don’t hire someone who can’t see over the bar!”
“I beg your pardon, boss?”
“If they can’t see over the bar to order a drink, they might not be tall enough to climb the stairs with my soup.”
“35 years in the Senate, eh boss?”
“Huh? What’s that?”
“Sometimes I know how these guys feel about this job.”
“What’s that?”
“Just that, well, if we pay people too well to stay home and not work, sir, then they WILL stay home and not work. It’s really as simple as that, sir.”
“But we don’t pay them that well to stay home!”
“Well, no, sir, you don’t, exactly, but when we add up the federal benefits and the state benefits, and the county and city benefits, before you know it, sir, people are getting enough in welfare to stay home.”
“Come on, man!”
“No, sir, it’s true. And remember the tax code. Since we tax people on their income, these benefits wind up being tax-free, so they’re really more valuable than they look, because a regular salary is subject to state and federal income tax and Social Security tax, but a lot of these welfare benefits are exempt from most of these. And they qualify you for housing assistance and food assistance, and in some cities, even transportation assistance, sir.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know, sir. It’s okay, we’ve all pretty much resigned ourselves to that, sir.”
“It’s like you want people to suffer.”
“Who, sir? I want people willing to work to have jobs, and I want people earning a living to be able to enjoy the fruits of their labors without it being taxed to death, that’s all, boss.”
“Hey. You sound like a Republican!”
“Time was, sir, when every elected official in the country would have said what I just said, regardless of party, sir.”
“You don’t understand. We have to take care of people!”
“Why, sir? Since when is that your job?”
“Huh? Well, since, umm, it’s always been our job!”
“No, sir. Begging your pardon, sir, but… taking care of people isn’t the federal government’s job, sir. It’s people’s job to take care of themselves, sir.”
“Hey, you didn’t used to talk like this, did you?”
“Me, sir? Oh, I don’t talk much to anybody, sir. Never really have, sir. I work in the kitchen and listen to the radio, that’s all, sir.”
“The radio, huh?”
“Couple of my relatives have been having a rough time of it, lately, sir, and today just made it worse. So I’m not exactly in the best mood, sir.”
“What’s that? What happened?”
“Well, sir, one of my sisters and her husband own a couple of small apartment buildings, just three-flats… it’s pretty much their entire retirement investment, sir, and for the past year, half their tenants haven’t paid them rent, so they’re having to work three jobs to earn enough money to pay their mortgage, sir.”
“Wow.”
“And I have a cousin in pretty much the same shape, but with one six-flat, sir. Tenants aren’t paying their rent, because they say they don’t ‘have to’ anymore, sir. As if moral principles don’t apply now that the CDC made up their idiotic ban, sir.”
“What’s that? The Seedy Sea?”
“Yes, sir, the CDC said today that nobody can evict a tenant for nonpayment of rent, sir.”
“What’s does a seedy sea have to do with anything? Is that something about boaters in houseboats?”
“No, sir, the CDC. Centers for Disease Control, sir. You must know it, sir, Federal agency. Says they know something about epidemics and pandemics. Contradicts themselves again and again, sometimes on a 24 hour cycle, sir.”
“Oh. So they can’t see over the counter either, huh? Lot of that going around tonight.”
“Over the counter, sir? Beg your pardon?”
“You said they’re counter dicks, themselves. Oh, did you mean they’re like the house detectives at the department store?”
“The what, sir?”
“Counter dicks. Is that what they call them now? The house detectives?”
“No, sir. Contra-dicts. That’s what I said, sir. Contra-dicts. As in, the CDC makes things up out of thin air on a daily basis, not just on medicine, either. And they contradict themselves all the time, boss.”
“Come on, man!”
“Well, sir, take this stupid thing about tenants and landlords for example. They say they’re looking out for tenants, right?”
“Well, sure.”
“But they’re just throwing landlords under the bus instead. They’re acting like landlords are just billionaires with money to spare; they aren’t, sir.”
“Well, sure they are!”
“Who says, sir?”
“Uh, the Tenants Associations! There are lots of them, all over the country, and they clearly explained how landlords are ripoff artists, taking advantage of the poor.”
“Hogwash, sir. There are probably a few of those big companies, sir, but most landlords are like my relatives, sir. They’re just regular folks, usually blue collar, who save up until they can scrape together a downpayment, and they buy an apartment building. They do the repairs and painting and lawn-mowing themselves, and then they live on, or save, the difference between the mortgage and utilities and repairs, and whatever they can collect in rent, sir.”
“Huh?”
“I’m just saying, landlords are often as broke as the renters, often way more so…. because they’re looking for the long term, sir. They’re working long days to plan ahead for their retirement, sir. After 30 years with a couple of three or four flats, sir, hopefully, people can have a modest retirement. But not if we deny them a year or two of rent, sir!”
“But the tenants! What about them?”
“They can get jobs, boss. There are plenty of jobs out there. Nine million openings today, sir. I heard it on the radio.”
“You just don’t care about my people.”
“Your people, sir? You used to call yourself Lunch Bucket Joe, or Middle Class Joe, remember? Who do you think identifies with those personas, sir?”
“Oh, i always identify myself when I go in the sauna.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“You asked if I identify myself when i go in the sauna. I do…. Sometimes you have a good chat, if there are other people there. Even if there aren’t…”
“No, sir, persona, sir. I was talking about personas, sir. You used to say you represented the working folks, the class that maybe had a part time job in addition to a full time job, and did their own painting and mowed their own lawns and had grandma provide the child care instead of sending kids to day care, and worked hard buying apartment buildings to live in, sir.”
“Oh.”
“And sometimes, they aren’t even renters by choice; a lot of the landlords being robbed today are homeowners who lost their jobs and had to move, but they couldn’t find buyers for their houses, so they move to the new job and are forced to rent out their old house just to pay the mortgage. But the renters now don’t have to pay them, boss… so it’s sticking them with two mortgages they simply can’t possibly afford, sir! Working folks! Normal, hard working lower-middle class, to middle-middle class people, sir, who are often landlords unintentionally, sir, as they try to do the right thing, sir. Hard working folks, boss.”
“Yeah, right! That’s our people! That’s our constituents.”
“And that’s where you’re wrong.”
“Hey! Come on, man!”
“The hard working people aren’t your constituency anymore, sir. You’ve driven them away, sir. This eviction moratorium is a direct shot against the bow of the working class, boss. “
“Hey, I didn’t bow! Heck, I didn’t even curtsey!”
“Nobody said you did, sir.”
“Oh.”
“I said it was a shot against the bow, sir. An attack, sir. Look, boss, no property owner will ever vote for you people again if you don’t reverse this stuff. Don’t you see you’re attacking the very people who run this country, the working class, the folks who work and raise families and are active in their community, of either party?”
“That’s a good idea.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“An ether party. I could use a party. A big party. I need to cut loose. Maybe have a drink or two. And some hors d’oeuvres. That’s right. Here’s the deal: Maybe a party is just what I need. A big party. Maybe outdoors. Hmm… Maybe there’ll be girls. Hmm… This is good soup. Yeah, girls. Maybe there will be waitresses…”
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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