Lewis Black is funny. Dangerously funny. That he has such a large audience and still packs plenty of politics in his shtick gives one hope for the fate of our sorry species. So I figured it's time I learned something from him.
What I've learned is that since a million more of you pricks out there watch him than will ever read my stuff, I'm done with all the painstaking research and putting in links to original sources so you can see that I'm not making it all up. I don't have time any more. We're killing people in more countries than I can count and YOU want me to be fair and balanced and plus show you where all this shit comes from. Well, I'm sorry...if you don't believe me, LOOK THIS SHIT UP FOR YOURSELF!!
Here's a perfectly good example.
My favorite Lewis Black show is a Broadway HBO special from probably 10 years ago that I have on perfectly good VHS - YES, VHS - not one of those goddamnUSELESS DVDs that get stuck over and over and over and break up into crazy little squares whenever they want and some day will be more of a goddamn JOKE than 8-Track cassette tapes - he talks about what it would take to get the economy going after those greedy little shits from Enron and Global Crossing and Tyco made off with billions and threw thousands upon thousands out of work.
Then Lewis made a very courageous statement: "The economy goes up. The economy goes down. The economy goes up. The economy goes down...up...down...up...and NOBODY KNOWS WHY THE FUCK IT DOES!"
"THAT is really FUNNY," I thought! And that's what I've believed. Until last week. I was listening to NPR and a reporter was talking with the economist de jour about how to get the economy going after those greedy little shits from AIG and Citicorp and Goldman-Sachs made off with trillions and threw MILLIONS out of work...and there...right THERE on NationalPetroleumfuckingRadio the economist says, "Well, you know, Linda, nobody really knows what makes the economy do what it does..."
WHAT THE FUCK?!?!! So in other words, those greedy bastards in the Republican Party and those spineless bastards in the Democratic Party really have NO IDEA if tax cuts and bailouts will stimulate the economy! For all we know, we should be doing what Lewis said 10 years ago - enact a big, massive jobs program, put millions of people to work building transit systems or health clinics or parks or any fucking thing. As long as it's BIG and it's a fuckingTHING...and THAT would STIMULATE THE ECONOMY, TOOOO!!!
You may think that's just a broad, sweeping generalization made by some smartass comedian trying to sound like an economist. But it's true. Just like Lewis said, think of all the BIGFUCKING THINGS you've seen built over the years and ask yourself if pretty soon there wasn't a BIGFUCKING RESTAURANT and a BIGFUCKING MOTEL and a BIGFUCKING CASINO and BIGFUCKING SPA. You KNOW it works like that!
And here's another one. Lewis didn't say it, I did. Or rather, some economist, who's name I can't remember, said it a meeting in Pittsburgh last year. If you add up all the college tuition costs in the entire country, you'd find they equal less than 5% of what we've spent on the Iraq and Afghanistan war so far. Five percent!!!
FIVEgoddamnperCENT!! of what we've pissed away in the sand, killing millions of people, ruining the environment, making a good part of the world's population HATE OUR GUTS...five percent of that would pay every single college tuition in the United States!! HowffffuckingSTUPID is THAT!?!??
OK, so I can't remember if that was all college tuitions or just tuition for public colleges. If you don't believe me, go look it up for yourself - there's only so much research I can do out of one bloodshot eye - and DON'T expect me to put in any links to the Dept. of Goddamn Education for you to just click and forget.
And here's another one! Every so often you'll hear of some politician - usually one who's got a death wish or is never going to run for office again - suggesting that just MAYBE we might just CONSIDER some kind of new tax so we can start PAYING for all these FUCKING WARS!! If Lewis wants to use that one he can have it and I promise I won't sue as long as he keeps his flying monkeys off me.
The reason I like the war tax idea is because it saves a lot of time...I mean a LOT of time. Why, the other day, I had just BEGUN thinking about it and within MINUTES I had graphs and tables and links upon links spinning before my eyes...coming at me from every direction. And I said ENOUGH!! ENOUGH!!! Let those little bastards look it up On. Their. Own!!! Here's how.
Pick up your local newspaper if you've still got one. Or one of those national ones always sitting around in airports and freeway rest stops - god knows we don't have an TRAIN stations worth mentioning - but don't get me started!!
If it's your local paper - and maybe you'll have to wait till next Wednesday when it makes its weekly appearance - I'll give you FIVE TO ONE odds on any...ANY!...amount of money you want to bet, that somewhere in that paper will be a story of a library near you, or school system or mental health agency or fire department or transit system that's going broke and will probably be asking for a tax increase any day now. If it's a national paper it'll have the exact same story in it, only the numbers will be bigger.
If you want to do some really FANCY research, here's what you do: you pick up the phone and call your city government. If there's still anybody there to answer the phone, ask them this simple question. "Did we used to get federal money for things like water plants or sewer plants or housing programs or health departments, say 20" or - make it easy on them - "10 years ago that we don't get now?"
You'll probably hear a couple minutes of silence. Don't worry. They're just in the bathroom changing their pants because they LAUGHED so fucking hard they couldn't control their BLADDER! And they'll say: "ARE YOU CRAZY?? ARE YOU FUCKINGCRAZYORSOMETHING??!!?? IS YOUR HEAD FAR ENOUGH UP YOUR ASS YOU CAN TASTE BRYLCREEM YET?! EXACTLY WHAT DO YOU THINK HAS BEEN GOING ON IN THIS COUNTRY??!!
After their aneurism passes, they'll maybe apologize and say something a little more subdued like, "Well, OK. I guess I can understand. It's not as if you've had much of a chance to hear about where all the money's been going. What with BigFootDopplerRadar weather reports, commercials, sports and murders committed halfway across the country, there's only about two minutes for hometown fires and stabbings on the local news. But take my word. We don't get JACK from the feds any more."
And you'll have to take their word for it because you are probably talking with the last human being still working for your city and they're getting laid off next week. So if you don't believe them, guess what? YOU'LL HAVE TO LOOK IT UP YOURSELF!!!
But it's true. Every bit of it. I can tell you firsthand from my own gloriously brief career as an elected official 20 years ago when bullshit like Trickle Down Economics started rolling downhill BIG time. Here's just one example.
We had a huge problem, just like every other city in this part of the country, because every time it rained our sewage plant would burp millions of gallons of...well, crap...into Lake Erie.
Fixing it cost MILLIONS. The EPA paid for the first phase, even though it sucked up almost all the money for that kind of work in Ohio. For Phase II, we split the cost between the city and the feds. The latest and biggest phase, required a public vote for a 15-YEAR, 450 MILLION DOLLAR RATE HIKE! ALL of it...every goddamn DOLLAR, comes out of our pockets! So WHY didn't local officials add a little line to sewer bills, right there, just above the Total Amount Due, called "PLUS THIS MUCH MORE SO WE CAN INVADE ANOTHER GODDAMN COUNTRY!!" with a big fucking EXCLAMATION POINT - TWO OF 'EM - to let people know who's been SHOVING IT UP THEIR ASS??!!
No, instead, it gets piled on top of a little more tax for schools and a little more library tax and a little higher bus fare and a little more...YOU know what I mean...do I have to paint you a GODDAMNPICTURE? Then when everything's really going down the shitter your city lays off police and firefighters! And I'd make a joke about THAT, except Lewis does it so much better when he says, "Cops? Nah...who needs 'em?! And firefighters? Hell...we ALL know it's a lot more fun to just sit back and watch shit burn down!"
It's all true. I swear. Go look it up for yourself.
Mike Ferner claims to be a writer from Ohio. You can look it up here.
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