PART FOUR

Ross started in without preamble. “Reverbo, what is the domestic industry probably least likely to suffer for the foreseeable future?” A relevant question, to be sure.  “Slim-Jim production, my astral-projected figurine?” I said. “You’re on the right track,” said Perot, “it’s health care. You’re all getting older and the boomers, despite their courageous fantasy of exercising and eating their way nutritiously to eternal youth, are all going to be ordering orthopedic pants within the next ten years, if not sooner. You’re going to be the biggest group of American sickos ever assembled at one time. Manufacturers know this, care givers and medical providers know it, assisted living communities are gearing up, drug companies and insurance companies are drooling over it–that’s one place where the profits will never dry up. See this chart I’ve prepared? As the age line goes up, the sick line follows, and this dollar sign just explodes.”

“Look around,” said Perot, “what do you see now? Everywhere people are younger than you. The business world is basically comprised of frat boys and 30-something managers making half of what you made when you got the slip, and who couldn’t give a damn how long you’ve worked or how loyal and dependable you are. What few decent jobs are left they give to their buddies. The government ain’t much better–cronies in almost every corner. What else is new? If you want to dilute the competition, you have to go at it in a sector-specific way.

There was no arguing with this logic. But I had no experience in the health care industry. Perot already guessed my predicament. “Now Larry…sorry, Reverbo, you’re probably asking yourself, well Ross, how am I going to fire a torpedo right into the middle of this one? From the edge. Let me tell you a little story. One time I had an idea to develop a line of personal adhesives. People are always needing to stick stuff to things, right, and don’t always have a way to do it. I convinced the 3–M Corporation to wrap me in an experimental high-density adhesive foam for three weeks, and was handsomely compensated for it, I might add. Now, what does this have to do with our health care discussion? Nothing, except I’m just demonstrating the potential economic power of unconventional possibilities. One time I was in Canyonlands National Park and watched how a husky lad of about ten gathered up a little too much speed down a slippery trail and then tripped and suffered a badly sprained face. You know what I thought of right then? The Runaway Tourist Ramp. I had some plans drawn up, and after a couple of phone calls to a senator friend of mine and a few million dollars later, these public safety features are now installed in almost all our national parks. Do you see what I’m trying to tell you here?”

Sure. Wish I was H. Ross Perot and could do any damn fool thing I wanted? That maybe this perky plutocrat was part of the problem? But that was not going to be a constructive answer, and anyway, I don’t hate all the super rich, only the ones who use their wealth to jack the system at the expense of everyone else. My response was unnecessary, though, because this was his show and his point was on. I remembered how Vonnegut felt about the edge. Fifty-nine years ago he wrote in Player Piano, “I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the center.” Right now my job was to listen and learn.

“You know,” said Ross, “speaking of health, I had an idea for an affordable alternative to traditional, insurance-based medical care. I’ve been working up a plan for a home-based, all-in-one consumer machine that could fit in a shed or the corner of a garage for simple neighborhood family trimming and grooming jobs. Takes the place of costly treatments, unpleasant lotions, and often hard-to-find tools. I’ve named it the Master Family Groomer. You can offer it as a kit using relatively inexpensive components from the Sears Catalog. A do-it-yourselfer could put the whole shootin’ match together in an afternoon.

I had that captivating sensation one gets when the brain knows something odd and wonderful is soon to be revealed. “Dial me in, H.R. What does this contraption do?”

“Well, it does more than just groom,” said Ross, “way more. I’m using that as kind of a catch-all word. Think about this, Larry. Almost everyone you know has some minor physical abnormalities, right? Cousin Leo has that thing on his back that embarrasses the family every time he takes off his shirt at the lake; Uncle Dave contracted a peculiar rash on his hands from operating a lemur ranch that never healed properly to this day; Aunt Louise has never been able to completely remove them chin hairs––there’s always something.”

“Familiar stories all,” I nodded. Perot continued. “If you don’t need a specialized medical procedure or a university-trained anesthesiologist, this could be a profitable part-time occupation.”

Ross, of course, had a sketch of the device that combined a triple-action, three-speed Dino-Shift gearbox from a Craftsman lawn mower connected to a modified weed-eater shaft with bolt-on accessory and attachment flange, and the whole thing mounted on a wheeled tripod with dual patio lights and push button alarm–maybe $1500 worth of Sears parts. An enterprising promoter with an attractive price list could smooth out unsightly clusters of lichens, carbuncles, saddle sores, and bunions on a Saturday morning and still have time to get to the bank by noon.

“Listen to this,” Perot said, and started reading copy off another chart he had flipped on the easel. “At last, a practical, portable, and economical home unit that completely cleans, grooms, trims, grinds, peels, polishes, scrubs, slices, probes, buffs, routs, de-burrs, and de-greases every member of the family, including house pets and farm animals. Removes unwanted boils, lint, moles, lumps, hair, hives, cowlicks, frostbite, road tar and tattoos. Take it on your next vacation for emergency wilderness trimming. Opens stubborn pores!” The man was completely enthralled by his presentation. His expression had brightened into an almost incandescent gleam. As for me, I was unable to form complete sentences at this point.

The bubbly brainiac wasn’t done. “There’s more,” said Ross. “You got to hook ‘em with everything, Reverbo, so I thought of a couple of more teasers.” Still another chart was produced with more promotions and graphics, and the enchanting industrialist continued his pitch. “Colons re-bored! Order by Memorial Day and we’ll include a Pulse-King Dino-Flow Bowel Jet with pressure gauge, fifteen feet of hose and 6-gallon insulated water tank. A $99.95 value, yours absolutely free. And how about this Deluxe File Cabinet? Replace that complicated home computer and store individual trimming schedules you alphabetize!”

Although ill-at-ease with the picture of the bowel jet and pressure gauge accessory, I was nevertheless stunned by this man’s enormous capacity for ideas. “I can’t think of anything left to add except maybe, DOCTORS BAFFLED!” I laughed. “You ought to send one to Southern Culture on the Skids. It’s right up their alley. They’d use it as a door prize at one of their shows. Hell, you might as well say, ‘And boy, can this catch fish!’ Even on one of his 72-hour psilocybin benders Ron Popeil never dreamed of anything this big.”

Ross flashed that big grin. “See, Larry,” he said, “you’re catching on and thinking it through. Now’s no time to try to become an employee. Hell, there ain’t no regular jobs around anymore that pay worth a damn anyway. You want to really push the envelope? What we do is take the Home Groomer to the next level: Genome Modification. Picture a fleet of airships with this logo on the side: BIO–GEN Mobile DNA Sales & Service. Bio-Genetic Engineering While–U–Wait. This is where it’s going to happen, Reverbo. It’s right around the corner.”

Next:  Cortex grinding, slaw slinging, tater topping, and a final chart for now.

Reverbo                                                                                                                                                                            Critic-At-Large

PART THREE

I took another turn at the issues as best I could.

“You know, I’m not comfortable with blaming others when times get tough. I’m well aware there is truth to the line, Reverbo didn’t apply himself enough. But damnit, Ross, they stole from us. They sold us out and swiped our future. Working Americans have a legitimate beef this time. Jobs were allowed to swim away, wages tanked, and the cost of decent education and medical care went through the roof. Living on credit was the only way to keep up. Then the contrived real estate bubble went pop, and we had to cover that. Four hundred people now control half the wealth in the United States, and our piece of the pie looks like a crumb.”

“And that is basically what I predicted would happen nineteen years ago!” said the magical magnate. “Things turned out just like the chorus from an old honkabilly number by the Farmer Boys from 1957. Those howlers could have been singing about policies that wouldn’t afflict the country for fifty years.” He sang the following line in an excellent Bakersfield-styled imitation: ”There was a flash, a crash and some thunder, take a look now at what you done to me.”

“Or more accurately, to us,” I added. “How the hell are the baby boomers going to make it back now? Does this make any sense, RP?”

Ross nodded and squinted into the sun glinting off the bay, his nose and thoughts deep in his rockeroo and the Farmer Boys’ tangy tune. “How is any working or middle-class citizen going to make it back?” he said. “This was a deliberate design. The government has allowed an aristocracy to literally buy political power at your expense, and there is no We The People in this model. They control the money, the message, and the elections, and their plan is simple: a new feudalism. Sacrifice you to protect them, and they will do anything to keep it that way. The Republicans have been happy to help. What’s new is that far too many Democrats are for sale now, too. Make no mistake about it–we’ve elevated money and wealth to the highest motivating component in our political system, and this has sabotaged the democratic process with the thoroughness of a coup d’etat. What that leaves, Reverbo, is a government that does not listen to you anymore. By the way, that song I attempted was co-written by Buck Owens. I’ll bet you didn’t know Buck’s real first name.”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” I said. “Alvis. I would imagine everyone knows your first name is Henry, right?”

Accepting his disapproving look, I took a long sip of my drink and stared at our beautiful curved blue world. “You know,” I continued, “most of us aren’t born into the accident of privilege or power, and I also know that perseverance can trump talent. I mean, how else do you explain Richard Nixon, Brittany Spears, David Hasselhoff, and Paris Hilton? What do you do with a Jim Belushi, a Sarah Palin? Just having money doesn’t explain these people. Did I mention Nixon?”

I wanted a wrap-up for now and this was it. “It wasn’t that long ago when the middle class was enjoying the wide-track life on one salary, remember? Is it really like George Carlin said: ‘They’ll get it all, sooner or later, because they own this fucking place. It’s a big club and you ain’t in it. You and I are not in the big club.‘ The fundamental ideas of the United States are going down the tubes.”

“It’s just sad,” agreed Ross. “We have become an oligarchy, and the class at the top and their corporate friends successfully lobby against any legal, trade, or tax barriers to ditching the country. They feel no obligation to the American workers who enabled their success, and their stooges in government cultivate and recruit bus loads of well-chumped fools who keep voting them in. And the thing is, the wealthy and powerful never have enough, but keep telling you that if you just take care of them, y’all will be millionaires one day, too. While you’re waiting for that ship, they’ve sailed to the Cayman Islands.”

We sat in silence for a spell and then Perot, his cocktail finished, stood up and stretched. “Now Larry, I know you’re probably thinking, well Ross, how am I going to cut through this and land one right in the wheelhouse? There seems to be only two possible realities: that opportunities exist even in these dark times, or you may already be retired, my friend, no matter how much we look. The answer is, you have to think outside the tetrahedron. Let’s get our heads together, set the neuron activators to income generation, and see what turns up. But first, how about lunch? Put on some Johnny Tyler and the Riders of the Rio Grande, bring this airship down to the water, and we’ll catch us some dejeuner.”

In the ideas of sacred geometry, the tetrahedron–and it’s geometric iterations–is considered the fundamental repeating mathematical shape in the universe. And he wants to think outside it? This fizzy financier must be vibrating at a frequency beyond anyone I know. Though never having met Claudia Cardinale, I can’t say that for sure. It was theorized by some physicists, including the legendary Richard Feynman at Cal Tech, that the torso of the astro-arrayed Italian actress contained the elementary numerical equivalent of the sought-after Golden Ratio. Suffice to say that in HRP I was in the presence of a heavy hitter.

The Silver Pelican descended over a calm stretch of the Miles River near the Hooper Strait Lighthouse, and we broke out the rods and reels. Ross tied on some old EDS-logoed blinking flash drives for lures, and in tandem with some experimental proprietary-coated hydro goggles, turned out to be a pretty fair angler. I mixed a couple of more rockeroos, and Perot returned to the topic of music as we waited for some action.

“You remember we were talking about the Farmer Boys and Buck Owens,” said Ross, “but here’s a fact you may not know that might come in handy some day: The great Tammy Wynette was married five times. And I’ll bet you don’t know her first husband’s name.” He had me and he knew it. “It was Euple. Euple Byrd,” he said. “You can almost imagine how it went on their wedding day. Feel free to come up with your own ideas for the parts, but this is how I picture it: for the Justice of the Peace–the JOTP? It’s John Goodman all the way. For Tammy, let’s see–Scarlett Johansson? No, maybe too alluring for the role. How about Holly Hunter? And for Euple, a sweaty M. Emmet Walsh or Harry Dean Stanton. Here’s the scene:”

JOTP:     (nods) Miss Wynette. (then turns to her fiance) And you must be…

Euple:     Euple.

JOTP:     Well, Euple, you don’t know this, but Miss Wynette is going to marry five times. You are the first of four more husbands. (Turns back to Tammy) That’s how it’s gonna go, right?

Tammy:  I’m afraid so.

JOTP:     Now, Euple, there’s something else that might affect your decision today. You don’t know this either, but within no more than a year or so, the both of you will be sucking on rhinocerous tranquilizers just to brush your teeth in the morning. But I can tell you this. For as long as it lasts, you will be driving down the road in some fine automobiles. You still want to go ahead with it?

Euple:     (looks at Tammy, then, somewhat dazzled, back to the JOTP)  Yes sir.

JOTP:     All right then, repeat after me. I, Euple Byrd…

We were both laughing so hard, we almost spilled our rockeroos. ”Called the First lady of Country Music,” said Perot. “Only 55 when she died. It’s just sad. Hey, feels like I got a bite!”

In short business we had landed two plump rockfish. While Ross scaled and filleted them, I prepared my signature Tampico salsa (onions, tomatoes, mangoes, serrano chiles, mushrooms and lime), and we grilled up a trophy mid-afternoon repast which I hoped would energize the exceptional executive’s brain cells. I was correct. After lunch, I took the Pelican back up to about 2000 feet, assembled the easels, clipboards, sunscreen, artists supplies, and cocktail tray, set the iMac on voice activated audio capture, and prepared for a Perot-inator mind meld. Remember the t is silent. I wasn’t disappointed.

Next: Uncle Dave has a pesky rash, and Ross unveils some fantastic options.

Reverbo                                                                                                                                                                           Critic-At-Large

First Posted: 03/ 9/11 07:45 PM Updated: 03/ 9/11 07:45 PM

Sam Stein
Sam Stein HuffPost Reporting stein@huffingtonpost.com

Amanda Terkel
Amanda Terkel HuffPost Reporting aterkel@huffingtonpost.com

WASHINGTON — In a bold gambit to put an end to the weeks-long budget standoff in Wisconsin, Gov. Scott Walker (R) split his controversial budget-repair bill in two on Wednesday, allowing the Senate to pass the most hotly contested provisions while their 14 Democratic colleagues remained out of state.

The parliamentary maneuver, first reported by local press, allowed the anti-collective bargaining measure to pass with just Republican support. Under Wisconsin law a 3/5s quorum is needed for a statute that is fiscal in nature. No such quorum is needed for non-fiscal matters.

It was also a 180-degree reversal by Walker and state Senate Republicans, who have insisted for the past three weeks that the collective bargaining provision was designed to help alleviate the state’s budget problems. State Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R) had previously said he would not attempt to pass any portions of the bill without Democrats present. Source Article

Think Progress

By Pat Garofalo at 11:25 am  Sunday Jan. 9, 2011

Yesterday, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) was shot at a campaign event in Tuscon by a deranged gunman who also fired at twenty other people, killing six, including a federal judge and a nine year-old girl. Police have a suspect in custody — 22 year-old Jared Lee Loughner — who in one of his internet posting “suggested that the government was trying to trick him, or take advantage of him.”

Last year, Sarah Palin’s political action committee posted a map with gun cross-hairs over the districts of several Democrats who voted for health care reform, including that of Giffords. Last year, Giffords herself warned that such a depiction may have consequences. “For example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, the way she has it depicted, we’re in the crosshairs of a gun sight over our district,” Giffords said. “When people do that, they’ve got to realize that there are consequences to that action.” The image appears to have been taken down yesterday.

Today, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) was asked by CNN’s Candy Crowley about Palin’s ad, and responded that it was actually those referencing the ad that are being “irresponsible”:

CROWLEY: Was it over the line, sort of specifically, since it’s now being talked about everywhere, with Sarah Palin’s web ads about people that she would like to see targeted for political defeat.

ALEXANDER: Well, Candy, I think you’re responsible, by bringing this up, of doing the very thing you’re trying to condemn. You’re making and implying a direct connection between Sarah Palin and what happened. You’re picking out a particular incident. Well, I think the way to get away from it is for you not to be talking about it.

Source Article

1-5-11

Today, Judy Bonds was laid to rest at her Coal River home in Rock Creek, WV.  I had the honor to serve as pallbearer, along with Bo Webb, Ed Wiley, Judy’s grandson Andrew, and two others.  The casket, like Judy, was unadorned, simple, straightforward, and practical.  I remembered Judy saying, long before her cancer, that she had no intention of being embalmed.  “Why put more poison in the Earth?” she said.  Green to the end.  As we removed the casket from the vehicle, I could imagine Judy saying, “Hey guys, be careful.  Don’t drop me.  Watch your step.  Don’t fall.  Be careful.  Make sure you’ve got a good grip.”  We set the casket on two wooden blocks beside the grave, and Rev. Jim Lewis conducted the service.
Rev. Lewis spoke well of Judy’s work, the impact her life had on the lives of others, and her importance to West Virginia and the rest of the country (and the world for that matter).  He described the godliness of her work for justice, her fight for God’s people and God’s creation.  He quoted Frederick Douglas: “If there is no struggle there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without demand.”  Later, I would see a short version of this quote on a magnet on Judy’s refrigerator.
After the service, I had the honor of lowering Judy’s body into the ground, into the Earth to which we all return.  The spot has a brilliant sunrise and a view of the mountains that Judy spent the last dozen years of her life fighting to protect, and not far from her garden and grapevines.
In carrying Judy’s casket and lowering it into the ground, I thought of the many times I conveyed her, by driving her car, to meetings, hearings, rallies, etc.  I remembered having to remove her booster seat and slide the car seat back, because as many know, Judy was more hobbit-sized than man-sized.
I thought, as I cried, that Judy was going on the ultimate speaking tour.  Many know Judy from her speaking at universities, rallies, Mountain Justice events, in the Coal River Mountain Watch office, etc.  So I and other CRMW staff folks became used to Judy being gone for speaking tours all across the country, as far as Alaska, sometimes for a week or more at a time.  This time, though, she won’t be coming back.  We’ll still have her words in the many documentaries, press releases, emails, etc.  No matter what the situation, there will be an appropriate quote from Judy.  Axioms abound:  “If you sit on the fence, you’ll get splinters in your ass.”
In this ultimate speaking tour, Judy will speak directly to people’s hearts.  No plane ticket needed, no rental car, no carbon footprint.  And Judy will be in good company, with heroes of like mind, heart, and soul, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., Gandhi, Thoreau, Mother Jones, and the many other saints of justice throughout history.  From her vantage point, she can see the many crimes Massey and others commit, and direct our hearts, hands, eyes, and cameras, as well as pointing out criminal machines of destruction to those who wield lightning bolts.  From now on she will have the clouds as a podium and thunder as her microphone.  From now on, rather than remaining silent, Judy’s voice will ring in the hearts of all who love her, amplified a thousand-fold.  Let those who can hear, hear.  Let those who can see, see.  Let those who can speak, speak.  Let justice prevail, for the people and mountains of Appalachia, as the only fitting tribute to this extraordinary life.
We are working on a public memorial event for Judy, most likely January 15 in Charleston, WV.  Please plan to attend.