“A beautiful day, eh, Reg?”
“With the rain falling in sheets and the wind blowing at 50 mph?”
“Ah, but the sun is shining in your face. The rest of the news must be good.”
“In that, my dear Syd, you are correct. I just heard a little story that tells me just how well our plans are working out.”
“Do tell.”
“You know how this hidey-hole vacation island we own property on has a bond issue on the fall ballot for school maintenance?”
“Yes, I saw that. How dare they? How am I supposed to pay for my new Dreamliner if we allow such things?”
“Well, you can relax, Syd. The daughter of one of my managers was in the local hardware store yesterday, and their sentiment was exactly the same as yours. Apparently, she was prepared to, ah, help them along a bit with this, but she didn’t need to. They were so angry about the furlough days that were put into place this year, and their need to hire child care one day a month as a result, that they were prepared to trash the whole system.”
“Perfect!”
“One woman who came to the checkout while she was there had the perfidy to challenge them, saying something like ‘if you want schools, you have to pay for them’. They just about ran her out of the store!”
“Even better! But won’t the schools fight for the bond?”
“The superintendents are of us, Syd. And the rest of the school staff are as we’ve made them, for the most part. Nine to five clockpunchers. Our long-term strategies of union-bashing and keeping salaries well below what will pay off education and opportunity costs, so that only dummies would wish to be public schoolteachers in the first place, are paying off handsomely.”
“Reg, this calls for a bottle. Sam, a Rothschild from the cellar, chop chop. To a world where only our children are entitled to an education.”
“Hear, hear.”
“How’s the 13th-Amendment Repeal Team coming along?”
“Top secret, Syd. Top secret.”
You did such a good job writing it, it was almost as if I were there.