by FRANCIS GRECOROMACOLLUDEN, Alternate Reality News Service National Politics Writer
At the height of the Depression, President Franklin Delano Retroovirusvelt asked captains of industry, yeomen of politics and deck swabbers of the media for their help in getting the nation back on its feet. They were known as the Dollars to Doughnuts a Year Men; for their service, they were given a single Vesampuccerian dollar and all the doughnuts they could eat. On their honour, they were expected not to inflate their appetites, and, in truth, by the end of the year, most of them had grown thoroughly sick of doughy desserts. Today, there is a name for people willing to sacrifice for their country like that.
Suckers.
(Oh, did you think we were reaching for "patriots?" The concept of patriotism was sold by the federal government to TransNatCorp in 1986 for a promise to maintain Vesampuccerian production facilities at their current levels. Within a year, TransNatCorp had moved patriotism production to Taiwan, which broke the letter if not the spirit of the promise, but everybody agreed that it was a smart business move, so the government patted TransNatCorp on the head, wagged an admonishing finger at the company and told them not to be caught doing that ever again. Which it did the next year with honesty production, but that's not immediately relevant to this article.)
Traditionally, you were paid for your public service by being given a cushy job once you left government; this was the fig leaf that allowed civil servants to ogle all of that luscious financial skin without guilt. However, members of the McDruhitmumpf administration are libertines who feel this is too slow, and have been trying to cash in while they were still in office. Some blame the Internet, with its emphasis on speeding up the pace of social processes, but, let's be honest, greed is atechnological.
One recent example is Centres for Disease Control (and Prevention, Let's Not Forget Prevention, In the 1990s We Added Prevention - We Can't Change the Acronym Because it Would Be Ludicrously Long at This Point and, Anyway, it Would Cost a Fortune to Change the Stationary and Business Cards, But Let Us Never Forget Prevention) Director Brenda Ondafritzgerald. She was forced to resign when it was reported that a month after taking the position, she bought stocks in a tobacco company.
Now, you might consider investing as a sacred Vesampuccerian duty protected by the 82nd amendment to the Constitution, but consider this: the CDC&etc has identified cigarette smoking as the leading cause of preventable deaths in the country, higher even than standing next to somebody about to inhale a penguin. The CDC&etc Web site states, "Smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in the country, higher even than arguing about football while conducting a high speed chase by rhinoceros to evade the cops after a high tech jewel heist." In a public statement, Ondafritzgerald herself said, "So, umm, yeah. Smoking is the leading cause of preventable deaths in this country. That's what the Brainiacs say, so we kinda gotta believe them. I was sure it would have been the whole high speed penguin inhalation thing, but there it is."
Grudging, but there it is.
It didn't help that Ondafritzgerald owned stock in International Influenza, Tar Sands 'R' Us and Red, White & Blue Rat Poison.
Perhaps the most spectacular example of how speeded up Washburningdington's remuneration cycle has become was billionaire Carl Icahntbelevitt's appointment as regulatory adviser to the President. The appointment was as good as a diamond: turn it this way, and Icahntbelevitt could claim to be working for the government (which was useful when he wanted to negotiate favourable rulings from regulatory agencies); turn it another way, and Icahntbelevitt could claim not to be working for the government (which was convenient when conflict of interest charges started sniffing around his designer shoes).
Bet Schrodkillshoudentlinger never saw that one coming!
While Icahntbelevitt ultimately didn't get the regulatory changes he sought (score one for bureaucratic inertia!), his efforts did result in a substantial increase in the share price of his company, which may have given him a windfall of as much as half a billion dollars. Public outrage was so great that Icahntbelevitt was allowed to walk away from his quasi-pseudo-almostmaybenotquite-government job with his fortune and reputation intact.
That...doesn't seem right.
"You didn't really think that the benefits of the speeding up of the political corruption cycle would be distributed equally, did you?" pondered token smart person candidate Amy Sheshutshotshitbam. "You know what they say: steal small, accessorize for orange jumpsuits; steal big, you'll never pump newts. They, umm, may want to cut back on huffing aerosols. The point is that the playing field has always been skewed towards wealth - is anybody really surprised by this any more?"
Good input, token smart person candidate. But, I agree with Gideon - there is something awfully familiar about you. Have you worked for us for long?
"Nope," token smart person candidate Sheshutshotshitbam replied. "Brenda Brundtland-Govanni asked me to do this last week, and I thought it would make a nice change from working the line at the diaper changing factory. Honestly, anything would make a nice change from the diaper changing factory!"
Oh. Well, I could be wrong...