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 from the first year of his regime, the cook tried to understand why he buried a pilot program for a “per mile road tax” deep in the spending bill.
Pilot Programs, Road Use Taxes, and Knoephla Soup
Dateline: September 30. Begin Transcript:
“Hey, boss! You ready for your soup?”
“What are you yelling for?”
“Because I’m still on the stairs, boss! If I whispered, you wouldn’t hear me!”
“Just bring me my soup!”
“Settle down, boss. I’m working on it…. Okay. Made it… You have too steep a staircase, boss. You need to install an elevator.”
“Come on, man! Stop complaining and bring me my soup!”
“It’s right here, boss. Here we go. Knoephla soup. You’re gonna love it.”
“What did you call it again?”
“Knoephla soup, sir. Kind of a German soup. Chicken, carrots, potato, homemade dumplings…”
“I don’t see any dumplings.”
“These rectangles, boss. They look like thick noodles, but they’re dumplings.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Trust me, boss. I made them. I should know.”
“Oh. Well, okay. Are there crackers?”
“Of course, boss. Here you go, everything you need. Soup, napkins, spoons, and your crackers, boss.”
“Why does it have a funny name?”
“It’s a German soup.”
“I don’t like the Germans. Make me self-conscious.”
“What do you mean, boss?”
“They’re so good at everything. They make the best cars, the best machines, they run the best factories. Hate that. Why don’t they give somebody else a chance, you know?”
“Did anybody ever tell you that you have the strangest ideas?”
“Huh? What?”
“So anyway, boss, this is a great traditional German chicken soup. I don’t make chicken soup often enough, boss.”
“Well, then make it more. I don’t care.”
“My kids are always telling me those ‘Why did the chicken cross the road’ jokes, so I always feel like I’m tired of chicken, but you know, I was thinking about it, and I realized I’m not tired of chicken, I’m just tired of the chicken jokes. So I’m going to start making it more often.”
“Fine with me, as long as it comes with plenty of crackers.”
“You know, you sure have issues, boss.”
“Your kids tell you jokes?”
“Sure, boss, in a normal family, kids tell their parents jokes. Didn’t your kids tell jokes?”
“I don’t know. I was on the train.”
“Well, mine must have told me thirty different versions of the ‘why did the chicken cross the road’ jokes over the years. Never knew there were so many.”
“Oh, stop talking about roads and let me eat.”
“Why? What’s the big deal?”
“Oh, they’re all whining about the road tax in the spending bill.”
“Road tax? You mean the per-mile tax, boss?”
“Yeah. They thought it was buried deep enough, but I guess it wasn’t. Somebody found it.”
“You know, boss, as long as you bring it up, that is something I’d like to ask about. My brother does a lot of driving for work; he travels every week, and he was telling me he’s nervous about that one.”
“See, that’s what they were saying. People are all nervous about it. They shouldn’t be.”
“You mean you’re not really doing it, boss?”
“No, I mean they weren’t supposed to know about it.”
“I beg your pardon, boss?”
“Well, see, it was supposed to be buried so it wouldn’t be noticed. Then nobody would be nervous. It’s become a big obstacle for the bill.”
“I’m not sure I understand, boss. Is there a tax in there or not?”
“Come on, man! How hard is it? There’s a tax, sure, but it’s gradual, see? And it wasn’t supposed to be noticed!”
“You know, boss, you’re not making any sense at all.”
“I don’t see why not. Instead of a per-mile tax, we’re proposing a study, that’s all. Just a study.”
“Oh, that’s a relief. What’s the study on, boss?”
“On how a per-mile tax would work.”
“You mean, like by mandatory odometer checks, or installation of monitors or transmitters in the car, or GPS tracking, boss?”
“Well, yeah, I guess. Something like that. The bill just says to experiment on the best way to do it. It’s not like we’re collecting the tax now! I don’t know what they’re so upset about!”
“I heard the tax was in the bill. So what’s really in there, boss?”
“Just test cases to see what’s the best way to do it, that’s all!”
“Oh. For how long?”
“Well, we put in a four year test plan. So it’s through 2026. Just testing. Just to see what works. That’s all. It’s not really a nationwide per-mile tax test at all, see? Just a test!”
“Oh. Well, boss, I guess that should be a relief. So what are they going to look for in this test, boss? Is it to gauge public reaction to it, boss?”
“Come on, man! What do we care about public reaction? No point in tracking that. No, it’s to see which method works best. Tracking by GPS, tracking a transmitter, having the local towns report it, having the local repair shops track it and report it when people get their… umm… oh, what’s that called… when you bring in your car for that service… ummm… oh darn it, come on, you know the thing…”
“Oil changes, boss?”
“Oh, right, oil changes. So yeah, there are lots of ways to do it, and the pilot program is just to evaluate the various options.”
“So what’s the plan after the pilot program is done, boss?”
“Well, then once the pilot program is done, we’ll implement it of course.”
“So you mean, you ARE going to tax cars on a per mile basis, boss?”
“Well, of course, why else would we be doing the pilot program?”
“But you said we didn’t have to worry!”
“Right, you don’t have to worry now. It’ll be years before it happens! Unless it isn’t, of course.”
“What’s that?”
“Well, if the pilot program works really well, really quickly, and we can manage the technology on a broad scale right away, then we can do it sooner.”
“But you said not to worry!”
“Right! Don’t worry! It’s not like it’s going to be tomorrow!”
“But it’s in a few years?”
“Well sure. What would be the point of doing a pilot program if we weren’t going to do it? That’d be pretty darned stupid, wouldn’t it?”
“Yes, boss. Almost as stupid as people who are dumb enough to think that a political party would institute a pilot program for a massive new tax, if they didn’t actually intend to impose that massive new tax at some future point, boss.”
“Heh heh. And they call ME the dumb one. Heh heh.”
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. President of the Ethnic American Council in the 1980s and Chairman of the Milwaukee County Republican Party in the 1990s, 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.
If you enjoyed this article, then please REPOST or SHARE with others; encourage them to follow AFNN. If you’d like to become a citizen contributor for AFNN, contact us at managingeditor@afnn.us Help keep us ad-free by donating here.
Substack: American Free News Network Substack
Truth Social: @AFNN_USA
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAzcXmIRjODNh
Twitter: https://twitter.com/AfnnUsa
GETTR: https://gettr.com/user/AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA