William S. Burroughs for Fed Chairman

William S. Burroughs for Fed Chairman
by Michael R. Allen

I thought that I could surely forestall having to write a random notes column. How hard is it to come up with 500 words of idea and then cover them in 250 words of introductory blather? Not very hard, if I had not decided to join the ivory tower as a student of literature and spent two hours analyzing a line from The Glass Menagerie (somebody shoot me). Even though I am setting a bad precedent at TAP, I offer my first column of random thoughts.

If the presidential election was held today and I had to choose only from the candidates listed on the ballot I would definitely punch the square next to the name Patrick J. Buchanan. I would vote for Buchanan for one reason only: he is the one candidate who will stand up to the U.S. war machine. He asks the dangerous questions and endures many attacks from the establishment for doing so.

A vote for Buchanan is a vote that says "screw you" to the U.S. establishment. That it also says that one cannot see his ass from a hole in the ground on economics is all the more reason not to go to vote come November.

Someone who understood economics a lot better than Buchanan was the great writer William S. Burroughs. Consider his words on money, from Exterminator!:

"There is something wrong with the whole concept of money. It always takes more and more to buy less and less. Money is like junk. A dose that fixes Monday won't fix on Friday."

The "gentleman junky" was a hard money advocate? Damn straight he was. And with Burroughs, of course, one got opposition to war and -- of course -- opposition to the war on drugs. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that Buchanan ever sought out the counsel of Burroughs, or that he would have considered it. Pitchfork Pat has had access to the greatest economists of the age and has ignored their words.

Imagine if Bill Burroughs woke up one morning and found himself chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank. Imagine that this was not an hallucination, but a reality. He'd have chopped the tail off that monster -- and had Alan Greenspan in tears. This only goes to show that those of us with literary inclinations can be the most powerful foot soldiers against the state.

Also on the topic of money, a poll conducted by Businessmen for Sterling reports that only 17 percent of the British public supports joining continental Europe in the madness of a single currency. Fifty-nine percent of those polled favor staying in the European Union but not accepting the euro, the currency of that Union. Forty-six percent want to leave the EU and keep Britain euro-free -- the most sensible position. It's bad enough that such a large number of Western nations have banded together under a flimsy fiat currency. If the British public is as opposed to the euro as the poll suggests, then it looks like there will be one less nation involved in the euro scam. Now, to get England back on the gold standard...

Public transit is one area where privatization works and where even local public ownership fails. St. Louis' MetroLink light rail system has had a higher ridership rate than could ever have been conceived, yet its parent agency, Bi-State Development Agency, will be over 14 million dollars in debt this year. The high-profile nationalized Amtrak trains have fared no better. By the time the train line had been in operation for ten years, in 1981, fares only covered 48 percent of the operating costs. Though solvency has improved, government's foray into operating a transportation system has failed. Ridership is low, with roughly half of all passengers from the Northeast Corridor. Japan privatized its rail in the eighties and now enjoys clean, solvent, inexpensive commuter lines. To its credit, the U.S. government did sell Conrail in 1986, but it apparently could not go beyond supplicating to the demands of Northeastern commuters and pork-carrying Congressfolk.

The Elian Gonzales matter has not left the news; it has not even retreated to the privacy of intrafamily relations. We have all been made spectators by Commie-fighting Republicans who have suspended their usually strict family values. Since they ask, here is my opinion on the case: the boy should go home to his father immediately. Forget Castro. Forget the father's fitness as a parent. It is not the responsibility of the United States of America to interfere with the internal governance of Cuba. If the boy’s father is unfit, leave that to the Cuban courts to decide. If the US can decide that, it will set a precedent for future interventions on behalf of political poster children.

I could go on, but I don't want to overdo this random notes column. It already is more rambling and less random.

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