The Catskill Chronicle

By Mort Malkin

The Gadfly Revelry & Research team was called together and met via a series of phone calls using land lines, no smarty pants phones. One of the team, a card-carrying Luddite, used a dependable rotary phone. Creativity ran rampant, and Gadfly is happy to report consensus.

If the government won’t pay for what it has already bought and what it has already voted to continue — the National Park Rangers, WIC assistance to mothers and infants, food stamps to the poor (often the working poor), Centers for Disease Control, the Veterans’ Hospitals … — then let the citizens of the nation follow the exemplary lead of our elected representatives in Congress. For the duration of the government shut-down, We the People are to be exempt from:

• paying our mortgages,
• paying student loans,
• paying credit cards, with blanket immunity from that disease, late fees,
• paying insurance premiums on our autos and homes,
• all property and income taxes – only for individuals, not corporations –
• and all hospital bills.

Can you imagine how the switchboards of the Senate, the White House, and especially the House of Representatives will light up with calls from the banks, the insurance companies, the credit card companies, and the hospitals. The House will be forced to pass a spending bill to pay for all the things it is already committed to by law. That bill, unpolluted by amendments, is to be sent to the Senate which must approve it, and send it to the President who must sign it with only one crow quill pen.

Then Open Sesame.