SHUTTING DOWN THE GOVERNMENT

All over the world people are trying to shut down their governments, but here at home we are desperately trying to keep ours open. The most prosperous nation on earth doesn’t want it all to keep going? Go figure!
Shutting down government services has become one of the most dreaded events in our society (right next to coffee stand closures).
Imagine, a person won’t be able to get their passport for that upcoming Bahamas vacation cruise. The national parks and government sponsored art galleries and museums will be closed, wrecking your domestic vacation alternative. You may not even be able to buy a gun or some whisky if the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms is closed. So you can’t even get dunk and shoot somebody for wrecking this year’s vacation plans. Yea, it’s going to be bad alright.
What’s ludicrous here is the political wrangling over the amount of deficit reduction we’re talking about: $33 to $40 billion. With a total deficit of 14 trillion dollars which is increasing by $4 billion per day, this reduction is miniscule, and the wrangling ridiculous. But if you live on credit, eventually it comes due, and if you’re broke, you’re broke! Time to hold out anything you can to put a little caviar on the table.
Back in Yaquina City’s day the government was shut down once. It all started with the railroad. Elsewhere here, I have written about Col. Hogg’s dream of building a railroad to his new city (Yaquina City) which he hoped would be the next San Francisco.
Well, he had frequent trouble funding his new railroad and at times the work was stopped for many months, with all the workers not getting paid. How was this a government shutdown sort of event, you may ask? Let me explain.
With this whole area of the Oregon Coast just opening up to the communities of the white man, governments were either not formed at all, or were small, weak, and certainly not flush with tax dollars. Little villages often had a village elder type of government.
Yaquina City, however, had high hopes, being at the end of a promised railroad full of settlers (tax payers), with goods to buy & sell, her future was secure. But, they had to wait for the railroad to make it all happen.
One group was advocating abandoning their “subsidy” of Hogg’s dream, while others wanted to continue their “investing in the future” even though they were broke.
In Yaquina City about the only governmental authority was Col. Hogg’s project manager, Ralph Kramden (no relation) who had set up his office in Yaquina Pete’s general store which also functioned as the local Post Office; Pete eventually becoming the actual Federal Post Master of the town. So, Ralph and Pete were about the only thing resembling a government that Yaquina City had. Pete even had a system resembling food stamps for the worst off of his rail workers.
Life in this little “strip mall’ of a town, hugging the shoreline of the Yaquina River, was getting rough, and with infrequent supplies coming in overland, Ralph and Pete knew they were going to be in trouble.
All the unemployed rail workers spent their time either hunting and fishing and doing any odd jobs which turned up in Newport, 5 miles down the bay, or sitting at the BiValve Bar and Grill, all day, running up their bar tabs. Not a good social profile.
The town was near “busted” and needed help if it was to survive. Ralph and Pete faced a decision. How long could they keep the town going with no funding?
Well, rumour arrived one day that a wagon was coming with back paychecks and cash bonuses for those having stuck out the rough time in Hogg Town. People were elated!
But, as the weeks went by, no wagon appeared on the forest trail. The town folk began to complain and every day they would gather outside Yaquina Pete’s and press Kramden to find some money. He couldn’t. There wasn’t even a bank in town to borrow some funds from.
One day, Ralph and Pete had finally had enough of being pestered to come up with what they didn’t have and couldn’t get. So they shut the government down, locked the front door and went fishing.