SMALL FAVORS
Ivins, Molly
SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins The Texas Solution As if things weren't bad enough at home—the Republican candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner just accused the incumbent of encouraging the use...
...Old Swivel Hips Bush distinguished himself mightily...
...Domestic tranquility and the general welfare might go down the tubes, but chicken gizzards would be checked...
...What did our Congresspersons rise, one after another, to assure us would not be interrupted through sleet, storm, or dark of night...
...All these years we thought our heroes were in the Halls of Montezuma or on the shores of Tripoli, but it turns out the indispensable public servant is actually the Federal meat inspector who stamps USDA-approved on salmonella-free pig-carcasses...
...Bush's evil twin Skippy, who was first identified by cartoonist Garry Trudeau, moved into the White House that week...
...We all made out like bandits, demanding more services and refusing to pay a penny in taxes...
...The Founding Fathers themselves thought there were at least six legitimate purposes of government (to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity...
...The General Land Office of the state of Texas, an agency devoted to the intricacies of the in-kind gas program and bioremediation of oil spills, might seem to the average witness the closest thing possible to a combination of saltpeter and cold showers...
...What we do is, we send all the unemployed oil and gas lawyers in Texas (and if we run short, there are more in Louisiana) to the Middle East and let 'em choose up sides...
...Michael Milken, Ivan Boesky, Donald Trump, and all the S&L crooks did well out of the 1980s, but the rest of us, it turns out, lost ground...
...So guess who gets to pay for their bender...
...One of the most delightful aspects of the budget crisis was the peculiar set of priorities that emerged...
...Gilbreath says if he takes his grandson into the Land Office and some homosexual hustles the little boy, he, Wes Gilbreath, will fire that fellow...
...this fine hypothesis...
...Life is full of little surprises...
...Meanwhile, we got to enjoy the standoff at Impasse Pass over the budget...
...SMALL FAVORS Molly Ivins The Texas Solution As if things weren't bad enough at home—the Republican candidate for Texas agriculture commissioner just accused the incumbent of encouraging the use of marijuana in Texas by promoting crop diversification—the only President we've got is sending another 100,000 soldiers to the Middle East...
...But when it came right down to the lick log and the entire Federal Gummint was due to shut down in just a few hours, what indispensable services did we demand be kept going...
...What you have between Iraq and Kuwait is a giant slant-hole drilling scandal complicated by a land dispute...
...We have an institution that specializes in these problems: The agency that regulates the oil bidness in Texas is called, with our usual puckish humor, the Railroad Commission...
...Whenever Bush came out for a progressive tax package, his evil twin Skippy would issue a press release saying it was unfair to the rich...
...Lots of people were puzzled by the President's imitation of a pendulum, but the explanation is simple...
...For example, the possibility of lust in the land office...
...And if there's one thing Texans know, it's how to settle slant-hole drilling and land disputes...
...He had a position on taxes everyone in the country could agree with...
...Then they start charging each side their usual hourly rates, which gives them both a serious incentive to settle...
...How about trying the Texas Solution...
...The blame-the-people approach has the charm of novelty—we were all getting bored with blaming the politicians...
...Of course, there is a certain lack of evidence that hampers the development of Molly Ivins, a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald, appears in this space every month...
...Libertarians have long maintained that the only purpose of government should be to defend our shores from foreign invasion...
...Then let the lawyers argue it out before the Railroad Commission, which is the Solomon of slant-hole drilling...
...Yup, seems it was all our fault because we were so greedy and selfish during the 1980s...
...My favorite ploy was when all the pols and pundits, after arguing themselves to a standstill, announced that the whole problem had been caused by—us, the voters...
...Why, air traffic control and meat inspection...
...The Republican penchant for drama is frequently underestimated...
...This is not a hopeful sign...
...But our Republican candidate for land commissioner, Wes Gilbreath, sees "perversion" lurking in the halls and hiding behind the Xerox machine...
Vol. 54 • December 1990 • No. 12
