Dumb Dip at Work
Ivins, Molly
SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins Dumb Dip at Work The nation's capital bears a striking resemblance these days to a dumb dip, an inept pickpocket. Here's D.C. doing the old look-at-the-other-hand trick...
...The bankers love it...
...But yes, folks, while Jesse the Art Czar has his hand up in the air wiggling like mad, the Gum-mint is about to nick thee and me for a healthy sum to finance the shambles they've made in FHA and Ginnie Mae loans...
...Does that tell you how much trouble we're in...
...And now Congress expects us to bail those bastards out when we couldn't get a loan from the sumbitches if we went down there and applied...
...It is perfectly natural that they should seek more power, influence, and greater wealth...
...It is both archetypal and museum-quality...
...Then the greedheads in the thrift industry proceeded to rape, pillage, loot, plunder, and swindle billions and billions of dollars...
...Every proposed law dealing with business should be carefully considered with reference to its effect upon Molly Ivins, a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald, appears in this space every month...
...Yoo-hoo, look at this hand, up here, over my head, look at me wave, looka-here...
...Congress started this incredible mess by deregulating the S&Ls, with the able assistance of their very close friends, the S&L lobbyists...
...Meanwhile, this little piece of corporate welfare legislation they're hatching to bail out the savings-and-loans will cost every man, woman, and child in the country about $1,800: If you have a spouse and two toddlers, they're already into you for almost $8K, and if they keep.dickin' around the way they've been doing, it'll go higher...
...It is also true that where there is no vision, the people perish...
...We know that many, but not all, of our most powerful and influential citizens are very greedy...
...I want to hear him say stuff like, "It has significant plasticity and is subtly reminiscent of the early blue period of Norman Rockwell...
...the genre is so fluid and minimal...
...And, "The painterly qualities of the late Keane children are didactic and only demonstrate his derivative sensibilities...
...And our elected representatives are in a giant snit because some guy burned a flag...
...Why the gutless creeps decided to charge the S&L bailout to us is one of the indicators of how bad our politics has become...
...Actually, this is one I favor...
...And it would take our minds off the fact that we're about to be asked to cough up billions more dollars on top of the S&L bailout to cover the losses created by rich Republican consultants ripping off HUD programs...
...Wright Patman, the great East Texas populist, said, "It is one of the first duties of government to protect the weak against the strong...
...But the only guy in Congress to run with even part of their program was Joe Kennedy of Massachusetts, who is not the brightest porch light on the block...
...And, "The biomorphic shapes in Mapplethorpe's work are too stimulating...
...doing the old look-at-the-other-hand trick with flag-burning and dirty art while they've got their working hand into our pockets up to the elbow...
...the consumers, who represent our entire population...
...Aha, you thought they were just ripping off the poor and the homeless to finance golf courses, didn't you...
...Where are the populists when we need them...
...This vaunted S&L bailout, so highly praised by The New York Times, "is regarded by banking experts as one of the most solid and responsible bills ever to emerge from the Congress...
...to prevent men from injuring one another...
...That fact has many times been demonstrated...
...So what we're offered in the way of vision is Jesse Helms, Art Czar...
...What I want to know is, the day after James Watt got the $300,000 for making four phone calls, do you think he gave a quarter to any of the homeless people he passed on the street...
...Too bad Andy Warhol croaked: He and Helms could have been like ham and eggs...
...I want to see Helms at all the important openings discussing juxtaposition, modulation, rendering, composition, and chiaroscuro...
...The Financial Democracy Campaign has a plan to put the cost of the bailout where it belongs—on the greedy bastards who caused this mess in the first place...
...And, "The contraposal angst shows in the intensity of his complex oeuvrc...
...I want to make it a fulltime position for Helms and am willing to help pay for same...
...You didn't realize it was going to cost you, did you...
...it's epic...
...Helms would have been fab at a Warhol opening, I mean, it's so site-specifically him...
Vol. 53 • September 1989 • No. 9
