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 asked about the availability of gasoline and executive orders.
Energy, Executive Orders, and Texas Cowboy Soup
Dateline: August 12. Begin Transcript:
“Sir? Good evening, sir… May I come in?”
“Oh, right, come on in… Here to empty the wastebasket?”
“No, sir… And… your wastebasket is empty, sir.”
“It is? Impossible. Wastebaskets are always full. They fill up on their own. Junk mail, and reports I’ve already read, and reports I’m never going to read, and subscriptions, and books that people hand me, saying I ought to read them… and before you know it, the basket’s full! Always!”
“That may usually be true, sir, but it’s not true tonight, sir. Look!”
“Oh. It’s empty. I wonder why.”
“Reminds me of two gas stations I stopped at tonight, on my way to work, sir.”
“Oh? Where do you work?”
“Here, sir.”
“Oh? What do you do?”
“I’m your temp, sir. Your soup server, sir. I brought down this tray, sir.”
“Oh, there’s soup? Yum! What is it?”
“Texas Cowboy Soup, sir.”
“Ooooh, what’s that?”
“I don’t know, sir. Tomato base, I think, with… what did she say… bacon, pinto beans, and beef, sir.”
“Mmm… sounds good. Are there crackers?”
“There are always crackers, sir. Here you are.”
“Mmmm…. So you stopped at an empty gas station, huh? Why?”
“Because I needed gas, sir. I didn’t know the stations were empty until I pulled in, and saw that all the pumps were marked ‘out of order,’ sir.”
“Why were they empty?”
“Well, I suppose there’s probably less dependable gasoline now that so much fuel production has been shut down, sir.”
“What do you mean? What’s shut down?”
“Well, sir, the Keystone Pipeline, for example.”
“I’m from the Keystone State!”
“Yes sir. But the Keystone Pipeline is several states west of Pennsylvania.”
“Oh.”
“And by shutting down that pipeline when it was so close to being finished, it threw tens of thousands of people out of work and cost the investors tens of millions of dollars, sir.”
“Oh. Well, they can afford it.”
“Do you know who investors are, sir?”
“Sure. Fat cats.”
“Sir, those kinds of projects are usually publicly traded, or they’re run by groups of companies that are publicly traded… and they involve bond issues by the cities, states, or provinces that own some of the public land where the pipeline goes and where the terminals are built… And when Keystone was killed, sir, hundreds of thousands of people lost money, sir. People who couldn’t afford it, sir.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, sir, are you familiar with things like IRAs?”
“Sure. Heard of them. Even voted on them in the Senate.”
“How did you vote on them, sir?”
“Beats me.”
“Okay, well, have you heard of 401Ks, sir?”
“Sure! Important things. Really big stuff. Big deal. Voted on them too, couple of times.”
“How, sir? For or against?”
“Beats me.”
“Okay, are you familiar with pension funds, sir?”
“Pensions? Sure! Important things. Public employees, union workers, teachers, lots of people count on pensions. Important things.”
“Yes sir. Well, all those are funds, sir. They’re investments, sir.”
“Sure. Everybody knows that. What’s your point, kid?”
“Well, sir, those funds are all collections of tax-deferred investments, sir. They usually have collections of dozens of different stocks and bonds, or even hundreds of different stocks and bonds, sir, in order to spread out risk and maximize opportunities to ride out market problems, sir.”
“This is boring. Soup’s good, though.”
“Well, sir, my point is, millions of people are invested in these sorts of projects, and when Keystone was cancelled after so much money had already been spent on it, that hurt all those IRAs and 401Ks and pension funds, sir.”
“Huh?”
“Closing Keystone, mid-project, was a direct assault on the personal finances of millions of people. I mean, it didn’t totally ruin a lot of people, but it hurt millions who had investments in it. Politicians always talk about how they hope people will have a financially secure retirement, sir, and that closure hurt them. It reduced their ability to have a safe retirement, sir.”
“Why?”
“Well, sir, because it added new doubt, new risk, into that kind of investment. If a government will be stupid enough to slam the door shut on a billion dollar project that’s already more than half done, then that might happen to more projects, not just that one. Adding that kind of risk to investments really hurts people, sir. Not just a few people, but millions, sir.”
“What does that have to do with my wastebasket?”
“Huh? Oh, right. Sorry. Got off track, sir. A cousin of mine was a driver for one of the trucking companies that was working on Keystone, sir, so it’ rather personal for us, sir.”
“What about my wastebasket?”
“Okay, sir, well, the point is, there’ve been a lot of hits to domestic oil production in the last six months, sir. The Keystone closure… pulling permits from ANWR… pulling permits from the Gulf… right down the line, sir, all these illegal federal attacks on domestic oil production have caused petroleum prices to skyrocket, and at these prices, lots of gas stations have to change their ordering processes, and their pricing, and it’s just been a nightmare.”
“What nightmare? What about my wastebasket?”
“That’s why so many gas stations are empty, sir. The skyrocketing prices of gasoline, the crazy city and state mandates that places double their minimum wages, huge increases in property taxes… all over the country, sir, there are gas stations that can’t keep replenishing their gas tanks, and have to reduce their operating hours, or only fill up for days when they’re busy, or they just go out of business… or close down until tourist season, and so forth, sir.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I know that, sir. That’s why I’m giving it a shot, sir.”
“Oh. Huh?”
“See, if the government gets out of the way, then these small businesses can find a way to survive almost any economy. But if government keeps meddling, sir… banning this and mandating that, closing this business and forbidding that project… then it’s just an explosion of scarcity, sir. There will be fewer jobs, more bankruptcies, endless problems, sir. It’s just a never-ending cycle, sir. Things get worse, and cause more things to get worse, and so forth, sir.”
“Oh.”
“Until we get to the point that a guy’s going to work, and can’t find a gas station to fill up, sir!”
“Who’s that?”
“That was ME, sir. Remember, I said I had to got to three gas stations tonight before I found one with gasoline for my car, sir.”
“Well, why didn’t you just go to the one that was open? Why did you waste time going to the ones that were out?”
“Huh? Umm, well, sir… because they were open and fine a few days ago, sir. This was the first night I’ve noticed them closed, sir.”
“Look, you’re not a bad kid, let me help you out. What are their names?”
“Pardon, sir?”
“Just tell me which stations you need opened, and I’ll write an executive order…”
“That Wouldn’t Help, sir!!!”
“Huh? But that’s what I do! An EO solves anything. That’s what my staff says. In fact, that’s what the Doctor says.”
“Who?”
“The Doctor. She hands me a stack of EOs to sign every week. She says they’re always the solution. No matter what the problem.”
“Well, I’m sorry, sir, but she’s mistaken.”
“Not the Doctor! She’s in charge! She knows stuff! She’s a Doctor!”
“What kind of a Doctor, sir?”
“The Doctor! You know, the kind with a D. Big D. Capital D. Spelled, umm, Dee Oh See Tee Oh Are. You know, a Doctor!”
“Do you mean your wife, sir?”
“Well, yeah! Duh!”
“Sir, she’s not a doctor; she has a doctorate in education, sir.”
“She is too a doctor! I’ve seen her degree! It’s in a frame, on the wall!”
“So were thousands of people in dungeons during the middle ages, sir, and it didn’t make them experts on Constitutional law either, sir.”
“Oh. Huh?”
“Sir, I heard about your appeal to OPEC on the radio, sir. That’s not the way, sir. “
“It’s not?”
“If you just let Americans produce petroleum at their own pace, without government punishment, then the reintroduction of American petroleum into the global market will help solve these pricing spikes, sir, and put OPEC back in their place, sir.”
“It will?”
“Yes sir. It will.”
“What’s your name, son?”
“Russell Rhoades, sir.”
“Oh. Good name. I’ll never remember it.”
“That’s fine, sir. I just hope you’ll remember to leave industries alone, so they can survive these next few years, sir.”
“Oh, sure. I’ll leave things alone. I’ll only issue the EOs that the Doctor hands me.”
“That won’t help, sir.”
“And I’ll issue EOs that Nancy and Chuck hand me.”
“That won’t help either, sir.”
“And the EOs that my cabinet hand me.”
“Now cut that out, sir!”
“Huh?”
“I’m sorry, sir. That just slipped out. It’s just… it’s just that… all these executive orders being accelerated like this, moving from a crack addict’s delirium tremens to a signed EO in what looks like nothing but a five minute typing process… well, sir, it’s incredibly destructive, sir.”
“This was good soup. What did you call it? Cowboy soup?”
“Texas Cowboy Soup, sir. Texas Cowboy Soup.”
“Cool. Did our cook make this stuff?”
“Yes sir, I think she cooks the soup every day, sir. She doesn’t use mixes or cans, sir.”
“Cool!”
“But the thing is, sir, I was hoping you could absorb the destruction of our economy because of this assault on the energy sector, sir, and…”
“Never mind that. Soup was good. I’m napping now.”
“I beg your pardon, sir?”
“Zzzzzz….”
“Oh brother.”
Copyright 2021-2024 John F Di Leo
Excerpted 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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