There’s a gas station near my house that is very popular early in the morning with the “handy guys” – the landscapers and the bug sprayers and the driveway pavers and others with muscles and pickup trucks.
They mob the place for coffee and donuts and lottery tickets and conversation about the twits they have to cope with when they do work for bankers and real estate professionals.
When I pop in for my morning coffee, the line is often way too long. I leave without paying and come back at dinnertime to confess my shoplifting and to pay up.
I’ve long advocated this technique as a way to lessen the angst about state and federal government debt and overloaded credit cards and underwater mortgages. The trick is to borrow stuff and just don’t tell anybody you’re doing it.
I often do that with my column. Do you really think I can crank out this thing of beauty, without occasionally borrowing from the existing marketplace of ideas?
For instance, I was thinking about writing a column explaining that the Tea Party types and the conservative Republicans are sort of mad at U.S. Sen. Scott Brown for being too accommodating – while at the same time, the lefty nutballs are screaming at President Obama for doing exactly the same “compromise” thing.
And then I was going to write this joke about Obama, who, when he heard that Jesse Jackson had threatened to “cut off his balls,” responded by suggesting, “well, maybe only one.”
The thing is, that’s not really my joke. I heard it from Carl Hiaasen, the novelist and Miami Herald columnist. But, that probably wasn’t his joke, either. You see how much easier it is just to borrow stuff and not tell anybody?
A Way With Words
By the way, I do think it’s important to have politicians who are “reasonable” and open to compromise, because, as I’ve often said, a house divided against itself can not stand.
Oh, sure, I suppose now you’re going to tell me that Abraham Lincoln had already used that one. So what? He sort of stole it from the New Testament.
The folks who best grasp the notion of borrowing, but not telling anybody, are state and local government officials. They usually manage to balance their make-believe budgets, because bonding somehow doesn’t count. Use a broad enough definition of “capital expenditures,” and you can borrow and borrow – and not have to tell the taxpayers very much about it.
I think “plagiarize” is too harsh for just a bit of borrowing among writers. When I tell bankers that words are so fascinating that I think looking in a dictionary is like being turned loose in a bank – I don’t bother explaining that the singer Eddie Cantor came up with that one. The young loan officers never heard of Eddie – and he isn’t around to complain.
Corporate guys know about sort-of-borrowing without telling anybody. It’s like what Loretta Mester of the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia wrote, even though I had thought of it first: “Entrenched managers can consume agency goods, including perquisites, avoiding effort, avoiding risk, engaging in discrimination, and/or empire building.”
The ability to borrow without filling out all those forms is an asset not only at work, but also in our personal lives. I just returned from a family thing in rural South Dakota, where I regaled the crowd with how I wished I could live where the buffalo roam free of a personal income tax, and the deer and the antelope play, and where seldom is heard a discouraging word, and the skies are not cloudy all day. They thought I should be a songwriter.
The unreported borrowing thing is everywhere. Remember when Gov. Patrick in 2008 wanted to snatch millions from the rainy day fund to pay a few bills? He broke into song: “Say, don’t you remember I’m your pal! Buddy, can you spare a dime?”
Yes, that was from a 1932 song, but even the Republicans had forgotten. We gave him the money.
I’ll be back next week. This column is of the people, by the people, for the people – and it shall not perish from this Earth.
