Wednesday, December 27, 2000
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Wednesday, December 27, 2000 |
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A few happy post-Christmas returns By AMY RILEY I can't imagine a job more difficult than being a customer service clerk at a retail center the first several days after Christmas. You couldn't pay me enough to be the person who has to smile and be gracious to people who have stood in line too long, eaten too much, stayed up too late, and consumed way too much caffeine and sugar. At last, it is upon us again, the return season. In honor of all of those misfitting gifts, and in tribute to all of those gift-givers who didn't quite find their mark, I thought I'd suggest a few returns of my own, just for fun. These are things that seemed like a good idea at the time, but have far exceeded their shelf life. For starters, let's return all of those water saver shower heads and toilets. If you have to run around in a shower to get wet, it's inevitable that you will run the shower longer, and waste time to boot. I hear you can retrofit your shower head with some patience, a good eye, and an electric drill. I don't even want to get in to the whole water saver toilet thing, because most of you have one, and you know where I'm going with this. Where is water saved with three times as many flushes? There must be a black market somewhere for those good old-fashioned single flush fixtures. Maybe I'll look on eBay. How about we return all that extra money we paid in taxes, to both the state and federal governments, over the last few years to the people whose pockets it came from. We're all bankrolling this great pay down of debt so government can be more fiscally responsible, and running up a fistful of our own to offset the net loss in income to higher taxes. Then the feds sit around and contemplate the dip in consumer confidence, the downturn in spending, and suddenly all of the "It's the economy, stupid" pundits are scrambling for something that everyone is happy about so the people won't see just how gross and inefficient big government really is. While we're at it, let's return the Georgia Regional Transportation Authority (GRTA), and the constitutionally suspect law that authorized this nonelected governing body to "activate jurisdiction" over local planning and zoning issues and levy taxes. That's taxation without representation, and over two centuries ago, we fought a revolution and wrote a constitution to protect ourselves from it. Granted, they haven't sent us any bills yet, but they are authorized to do so, which usually means they will. Let's return our natural gas service to pre-deregulation days.' It's odd that I never had a billing problem, never had a service problem, and never paid as much for natural gas as I do now that there is "competition." The same thing happened with phone service quite a few years back. Next time the government tells us that deregulation is the best way to guard against consumer rip-off, hold on to your wallets. In my mind, gas deregulation is all about driving up fuel prices to discourage waste and alter consumer behavior. If the government had done that themselves, we would have spit and hollered, and incumbents everywhere would be looking for jobs. So they convinced the gas suppliers to be the bad guys, created the illusion of mass shortage with the help of mass media, and there you have it, high demand, low supply, big rates and big profits for suppliers, big bills for consumers, with the end result being an overall reduction in energy consumption. Have you wondered why suddenly the energy industry is running commercials? When was the last time you saw a commercial for coal? It's a squeeze play, folks. Give me the good old days of the Atlanta Gas Light monopoly any day. We simply must return those dastardly punch ballot machines in Florida. I'd hate to think I ever had to live through another media engorgement of such epic proportions again. Please, no more pregnant chads. Why don't we even return the word "chad?" No offense to the country, of course. Maybe all the Chads could use the more formal Chadwick instead. And last, but certainly not least, let's return Bill Clinton to Arkansas. Since we're in the mode, we may as well go ahead and return Hillary's eight-million-dollar book. She probably won't be able to keep any of the money anyway, if Republicans in Washington are conscientious about their job, and frankly, who cares about how she felt during the whole Monica Lewinsky scandal? The American people didn't even care about perjury, obstruction of justice, or even impeachment. Just keep it for yourself, Hill, really.
(Your comments are welcome: ARileyFreePress@aol.com.)
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