Small Favors
Ivins, Molly
SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins Oil on the Rocks Texas is going broke in style. We make jokes all the way to the bankruptcy court and keep making them while we're standing in line to file. Since we know...
...Since we know no one is going to feel sorry for us, we figure we might as well laugh...
...The good news is that the Bank of Hong Kong has opened a $500 million line of credit for us...
...Former Governor John Connally and his partner, Ben Barnes, are so broke there is a sub-genre of Barnes-Connally jokes...
...Step Two: Put foot firmly in governor's back and say, "Lead, you dumb sumbitch, it's what we pay you for...
...football team was left intact...
...Step Three: Hang the legislature...
...The bumper-stickers that used to read, I'm Mad Too, now say, I'm Broke Too, Eddie...
...they start over...
...have to come up with $500 in cash...
...Another nice thing about Texas going broke is that so many hateful people are in Chapter 11...
...Who says there's no justice...
...Tell Milton Friedman not to visit any time soon...
...This is an oil bust, and oil has always been a crap game...
...Cut the rope...
...That's about the way our political debate usually goes around here...
...You play craps, and sooner or later you crap out...
...Oscar Wyatt Jr., a medium-big oilman who is much devoted to proving that robber barons still live, recently observed, "Ronald Reagan is going to free-market us to death...
...Step One: Get the governor out from underneath his desk...
...This is still the land where everything is assumed to be possible...
...There's no disgrace attached to losing your money in a bust like this one...
...Wanna know how to get an oilman down out of the tree...
...I need some good news...
...Unfortunately, the O.U...
...Frosty Troy, editor of the Oklahoma Observer, has offered to collaborate on a manual for other oil-patch states, How to Go Broke...
...In Texas, the House is taking the more traditional tack of picking on the blind, the disabled, the mentally retarded, and other citizens who haven't had the foresight to hire a pod of lobbyists...
...Eddie Chiles, the even loopier Fort Worth oilman who used to go on the radio with right-wing tirades that started, "I'm mad," is now sad instead...
...All right, what's the bad news...
...The governor of Oklahoma came out from under his and promptly left for Europe...
...My favorite bumpersticker out around Midland-Odessa says, O Lord, Just Let Me have One More Oil Boom: This Time I Promise Not to Piss It Away...
...Nelson and Bunkie Hunt, those peerless funders of loopy fundamentalist anticommie crusades, are taking the chapter...
...It has no seat and no steering wheel, but that doesn't matter...
...And just the other day, Barnes locked his keys in his car...
...The Oklahoma legislature decided to resolve the state's fiscal crisis by dismembering public education...
...The only good thing the late H.L...
...There aren't any big rich oil people in Texas who haven't gone belly-up two or three times over...
...Ben Barnes went to Hong Kong, came back, and told Connally, "I've got good news and I've got bad news...
...The Senate, led by Lieutenant Governor Bill Hobby, has actually proposed to raise taxes as well as cut services...
...This prompted Representative Sam Johnson of Piano to observe that Hobby reminded him of the communist guards in North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camps...
...it doesn't mean you did anything wrong, everybody's bust...
...Oil people are really gamblers at heart, and that's why they don't defenestrate themselves in droves upon learning that they've lost all their money...
...After this you're in real trouble because the guv is obliged to call in the legislature...
...they've lost their ass and don't know which way to turn anyway...
...Hunt ever said was, "Money's just a way of keeping score...
...They're selling a new model Mercedes for Texas oilmen...
...As soon as he came back, he departed on a tour of Asia...
...When Texans go broke, they don't commit suicide...
...Of course, in any tough situation, the Texas legislature can be counted on to make things worse...
...Give me the good news first...
...We Molly Ivins, a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald, appears in this space every month...
...Then there is the wonder of the Suddenly Socialist...
...Hallelujah, we're saved...
Vol. 50 • November 1986 • No. 11
