The opposite of Progress…

We keep hearing rumors that the President and Congress are planning on repealing the law of Supply and Demand. They are calling it progress. Well, we may be just dumb country folks here in Stump County but we can see a problem. Any darn fool knows pro is the opposite of con which makes Congress the opposite of Progress.

The Stump County Chronicles are a satire about an imaginary county located in rural Virginia. Stump County, population 999, is filled with imaginary people who are struggling with real life problems as they attempt to move into the 20 century. The writer, Half Whitt, is imaginary. He works for the imaginary newspaper, The Sneezeville Sentinel.
Trying to contact Half Whitt? Send letters to editor@southsidemessenger.com, or mail to The Southside Messenger, P.O. Box 849, Keysville, VA 23947 and we’ll pass it along!

Now, back to Supply and Demand. Congress thinks the way to stop this decession (a depressing recession) is to repeal that law. It will work like this: If a business is making something nobody wants or that nobody can afford, they will tax all of us and give the money to that business. Then they will tax us some more and give the money to folks who will buy what they don’t want, don’t need and can’t afford as long as they can do it with somebody else’s money. Then to make it up to the folks they taxed, Congress will give them a tax credit if they will buy something they don’t want.

If the Gov’mit really wants to help us they should repeal half of the laws they have already made. If they would repeal some of the law of gravity it would really help us get things done around here. It seems like the older we get the heavier things are.

Otis Sneezleweed hates change of any kind. All he ever says is, “If it was good enough for my daddy and if it was good enough for my granddaddy then it is good enough for me.” He just bought a bumper sticker that reads, “I’ll keep my God, my Bible, my freedom, my guns and my money and YOU can keep the change.”

We don’t know what he is going to do with it though; Otis not only doesn’t have a bumper, he doesn’t have a car. He just flatly refused to get rid of his horse when those automobiles came out. He said, “If horses were good enough…” and so on.

He took a lot of heat from the environmental types for refusing to trade in his horse for one of those nonpolluting environmentally friendly Model T Fords. They tried to convince him that the tons of manure and urine horses leave on the streets to run into the rivers wasn’t good but he wouldn’t listen. They tried to explain that automobiles don’t kick children or dogs, don’t attract flies or run away, but he wouldn’t listen. They showed him it takes ten acres of land to pasture one horse; land that could be used to grow food for the poor, but he wouldn’t listen. All he said was, “If it was good enough for daddy…” He wouldn’t change even when the Gov’mit talked about taxing horses to force people to buy cars.

Otis is still burning whale oil in lamps. He just won’t try that new kerosene. His daddy said in 1894, “Whales are born every day and you just don’t know how long that petroleum is going to last.”

Now we hear some Congressmen thinks electric automobiles can take the place of those run by petroleum or maybe whale oil. That would make sense if we had lots of extra cheap electricity. It turns out the same congressmen who support electric cars oppose building power plants to run them. Maybe they are trying to force everyone to go back to horses.

Now we all know Otis is a few cards shy of a full deck for refusing any change at all but there’s a good chance that folks who want change without even finding how that change is going to affect them are missing more cards than Otis.