”I see where a lot of those Ross Perot people say they ain`t going to quit,” said Slats Grobnik. ”But they ain`t got a candidate. So if they`re interested, I got a lot of spare time, so I`ll volunteer to be their guy.”
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Not to be disrespectful, but I doubt if they are that desperate.
”Why not? I`m skinny, I got big ears and beady eyes, and my wife gives me haircuts. So if they liked him, they ought to be nuts about me.”
It`s not your appearance, although there is a resemblance. But they were attracted to Perot because he stood for something. He promised action, solutions, decisiveness.
”So? I can be decisive. When I make up my mind to do something, I either do it or I don`t do it, one or the other. That way, it`s sure to be done or not done, so you know where you stand.”
I suppose that is a form of decisiveness, one we have become familiar with in the George Bush years. But Perot`s supporters would want to know what your programs are. Some specifics.
”You want a specific? OK, how about this. Everybody shut up.”
Everybody shut up?
”Right. That would be my campaign slogan.”
Everybody shut up? What does that mean?
”Just what it says. It means we talk too much. This country used to be the strong, silent type. Look at the old Western movies. A guy rode up on his horse and went in a saloon. Somebody said, `howdy stranger.` He said, `howdy.` That was it. If somebody asked him where he was from, he shot the busybody. That`s when this country got great. No portable phones, no fax machines, no radio talk shows, no sound-bites on TV.”
And you think that is what is hurting this country?
”Sure, too much blabbing. No wonder we`re falling behind. If we`re blabbing all the time, how can we get anything done? You see, it`s simple math. Everytime someone is blabbing, that mean`s somebody else is listening, even when they don`t want to, which they usually don`t. So that means that the blabberer wastes his own time, and he wastes the listener`s time. It`s a two for one deal. If we shut up the blabberers, we got a 200 percent
improvement.”
What kind of political platform is that? You just can`t tell the country to shut up.
”I don`t mean everybody has got to shut up like they`re in church or a library. Only people who talk when they ain`t got nothing to say. And I figure that`s about 98 percent of all the blabber.”
And just how would you enforce this?
”With different taxes. We`d have a whiner tax. You got to buy a coupon book. So everytime you whine about something, you got to take out your book and give a coupon to the person you`re whining to. Once it`s torn out of the book, it`s not valid no more. We charge maybe a dollar a whine. So do some math. We got about 200 million adults in this country. Most of them whine about something at least once a day. We`d take in about $200 million a day just in whiner taxes. That`d be almost $70 billion a year just from one tax.” Ah, but what about people who whine on the phone? How do you get a coupon from them.
”You don`t. But they got to pay the blather tax.”
A blather tax?
”That means everybody gets only three phone calls a day. Nobody needs to talk on the phone any more than that. After three, there`s a tax on every call, except when you call your mother or the cops or the fire department. And if the cops come and it`s just some boozy couple having a fight, they pay a stupid tax. Now, that would be a big revenue raiser, the stupid tax.”
How would that work?
”Like I said, stupid calls to the cops. You get millions a day. And we`d put a tax on every stupid phone call to radio talk shows. And when the talk show host said something, we`d collect another tax. I`d call that the encouraging stupid talk. Of course, we`d have a fax tax and a modem tax for the nerds who think they can say something stupid over machines and computers and get away with it. And we`d make a fortune from the babbling on the elevator tax?”
The what?
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”You hear `em. You go to work on Monday, get on the elevator, and somebody says: `So, how was your weekend?` `Oh, I did a lot of yard work. Then the dog got out the gate and I had to chase him down. How about you?` `Oh, my wife`s cousin came in from out of town, and we were gonna go to the ballgame but we didn`t go because the starter burned out on my car, so we watched that show on TV, whatyacallit? You see it.` `Oh, yeah, I never miss it.` `Have a nice day.` `Yeah, you too.` And everybody else on the elevator has to listen to that. So they pay a tax for causing other people misery.”
But how can you propose taxing people for talking. That is restraint of free speech?
”Why not? All the politicians say that our biggest problem is that we need jobs, jobs, jobs. So I got a job. I go to work, and I do my job good. Then they give me my paycheck. But what happens? They take part of my pay. So they are charging me a work tax. Well, if doing work is good, how come I got to pay a tax to do it?”
I hadn`t thought of it that way.
”Then think about it. What we need are all kinds of national stupidity taxes. If we taxed everything people do that`s stupid, we`d balance the budget in one year. Just a tax on stupid lawsuits would bring in a fortune. Then we`d get to keep our paychecks.”
Except that which this conversation would have cost us, which would be substantial.
”I hadn`t thought of that. Forget it.”