(Senator Sam Irvine)

I am not reeling this morning- actually had a pleasant evening with some decent sleep afterward. Rose early, read and scanned email and fell asleep again.

Some parts of the old-age thing are OK, if you don’t spontaneously fall asleep driving to some recently-developed place out near Dulles International Airport. I actually consider that territory to be closer to West Virginia than to my little hovel in Arlington, but oh well. There was a lot of money floating around when the development happened. And fear, of course, of the collapse of home-rule in the District. That is old time and past history.

This morning it was the wild chaos on the Hill about tax reform, which is supposed to be about lightening the burden on the Middle Class. Or bailing out the 1% and the Big Evil Corporations if you look at it that way. Since the top 25% of taxpayers pay almost 70% of the tax revenue, how could they not benefit proportionally more than taxpayers who don’t?

I guess we will see.

I had no interest in the Affordable Care Act when it got jammed our throats, thinking it did not apply to me. I actually was foolish enough to think it would not wind up ultimately hitting me in the wallet. We can talk about that some other time. I had the only conference call I enjoy this morning and it got me out of bed. I was sitting in the brown chair and turned on the flat-screen to decompress and was slammed by the images of a guy I had previously respected being dragged into the E. Barrett Pettyman Federal Courthouse down on Duke Street in Alexandria to plead guilty to the Federal charge of lying to the FBI.

It seems these days that everyone is, and should the Bureau be interested, they can come over and I will cheerfully lie that everything is fine.

The man of the moment has been closely surveilled by the media for a year. The expert analysis on the television was that he was pleading guilty only to one count, which is to say, the former leader in the Intelligence Community was copping a deal with the FBI, which was led by the guys who originally helped orchestrate this horror show of abuse of power.

I am shocked that I am now old enough to know some of the people being slimed in all this. It took me back a long way to seeing him emerge from the armored SUV, just like Scooter Libby to hustle to the court room and beg forgiveness to behaving exactly how everyone does here in the Swamp.

In the days of the long-ago Watergate hearings, my exposure (after JFK and Oswalds’ moment) was to the riots and soon-to-be ubiquitous television coverage of the War public scandal.

I watched the courtly Senator Sam Ervine (D-NC) drag Mr. Nixon’s special operators through the mud and extract justice. I watched with the grandfather of one of may best pals, whose family had paradoxically moved back to Detroit from the suburbs after the ’67 Riot. After graduating from college I got a job on the express provision that I exit Ann Arbor and maintained a decorous life-style.

It was a good place to live, since really nice places from the Glory Days were going for a song. It was Burton Abstract and Title place, located just in Detroit, inside 8 Mile and just off Woodward Avenue. I had the maid’s quarters, a work -at-home schedule, and would come over to the Big House in the afternoon to join Pop and watch the festivities when there was a Senate hearing.

I marveled that these things happened in the Constitutional Republic in which I was raised. This was not at all what I was taught in Civics, though I found it entertaining, and thankful that nothing like that could happen to people like us.

Then I became part of the Swamp. And now I can see my former colleagues doing the perp walk on national television. Is this a great system, or what?

I am very happy to be retired. And that thing that happened in 2002? I have absolutely no knowledge of it or who thought it up in the begining. I swear. Or will take a plea on advice of Counsel.

Copyright 2017 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com