(T. Boone Pickens in the doorway of his ranch. Photo Pickens Army.)

“A fool with a plan is better than a genius with no plan, and we look like fools without a plan.”

-Mesa Oil founder, billionaire and unlikely environmental activist T. Boone Pickens

Ack, it’s Monday. Hate it. I looked back on the weekend and realized it had been two working days to the start of another working week.

I recapped it in the darkness from the comfort and privacy of the Big Bed, looking up, waiting for the music to start on the clock radio. So, I got back to town Friday after checking the Crackberry for important updates from the capital at interludes as I poked along the placid blacktop of US-17 on the Middle Neck. It is such a contrast to the chaotic mayhem of the interstate on the Virginia Peninsula to the south.

I was approaching Fredericksburg, and the rejoining of the madness on the four-lane when I saw that the Government intended to drop the big solicitation that very afternoon. I recalibrated the rest of the day. I was in traveling attire, not dressed in my customary summer business garb of gray seersucker, Brooks Brothers suit and white bucks. Rather, I was driving in flip-flops, shorts and a polo shirt. The humidity was tolerable that way, and the German machine purred as if there were no Peak Oil and no crisis of confidence.

The V-8 did not know its day is past, any more than the City of New Orleans was aware that it had the disappearing railroad blues years ago. Things change, like the weather.

It was not precisely professional, but I went to the office dressed just as I was in the hope that no one would be around to be offended. Sure enough, the computer booted up just at the time that the government transmitted the 277-page document. I sent it to the printer so I could read it in detail over the weekend, and checked the email as I was waiting for the printer-hot pages to feed out of the machine.

Paperless office, my butt.

Two personal emails popped up in the little alert box in the lower right hand corner of my flat screen. The first said that a pal needed to talk to me about a problem with the Office of Personnel Management. The other was an alert that Big Jim has tendered his resignation, effective at the end of the month and will be departing his position behind the bar at Willow.

Both were important, and though not in proper clothing, I realized that I could take the thick binder along with me to Willow. I wandered over there, realizing that the timing of the solicitation was going to completely torpedo any plans for Labor Day, and I began to settle into the resignation that there was not going to be any downtime for a month or more.

I hopped up on a stool at the Amen Corner and slammed the hefty white plastic binder to the bar. Big Jim produced a tulip glass and filled it half-way with crisp amber liquid.

I swirled it and said: “So, you are running out on us.”

He gave me the two-finger gang signal. “Shahh,” he said.

“So what’s the plan?” I said. Old Jim, Mary and some guy I did not recognize appeared next to me and elbowed their way into space for two.

“It is time. Summer is over, and I am going back to teaching. I am tired of driving down here from Ashburn every day. Time to get a career.”

Old Jim looked on with concern. “Where the hell am I going to get a Budweiser if you are not here? And by the way, can I get a freaking Bud?”

Big Jim complied, gracefully scooping a cold brown long-neck from the cooler behind him and twirling it gracefully in an arc across the brown wood in front of Old Jim, with the controlled grace of a stone slid by a professional curler.

“You will be in good hands,” said Big Jim. “I’ll introduce you to Jeanette. She is the one with the Tinkerbell tattoo on her left arm.” He gestured toward a petite blonde in bartenders black shirt and slacks.

“You are a pro, Jim,” I said with admiration.

“Shahh.” He strode off toward the cash register and I turned to look at Old Jim.

“This is my brother-in-law Nick. He planned to be here during the lunacy downtown over the debt crisis. He lives in Ann Arbor.”

“LSA, 1973,” I said, holding out my hand. He took it and responded:

“LSA ’84,” We did a chorus of the Michigan fight song, and got it out of the way.

“It is not going to be the same here without Big Jim, but I am glad he has a plan.”

“You have to have a plan,” said Old Jim. “You should hear Nick’s.”

“I am all ears,” I said. “I feel like we have been fools all summer. The Administration doesn’t seem to have a plan except to generate regulations so they don’t have to actually propose laws, and the idiots on the other side are waving bibles around, like that Rick Perry guy and that strange Bachman woman.”

Nick brightened visibly. “Two plans, neither of them mine. We just need to do something. The tax thing? Easy. I don’t know why the President keeps lumping $250 grand a year in with the millionaires. Warren Buffett, the greatest entrepreneur of the last sixty years laid it out really nicely.”

“I respect the guy,” I said. “There are damn few of those predatory bastards I do. What does he say?”

(Billionaire sage Warren Buffett. Photo Berkshire-Hathaway.)

Nick took a sip of Happy Hour White. “He says that he pays a much smaller percentage of taxes than the people who work in his office at Berkshire-Hathaway. He is one of the top four hundred richest taxpayers, and in 2008, the aggregate income of that group had soared to $91 billion a year. That is an average- an average, mind you, of over two hundred and twenty five million a year. Their tax rate had fallen to 21.5 percent.”

“Christ, I pay over 32%!” I sputtered.

“That is just in payroll taxes. In fact, 88 of the 400 in 2008 reported no wages at all, though every one of them reported capital gains, on which they pay like 15%. Buffet says that is the place to start, and raise taxes on those Americans making more than $1 million a year.”

“Would that make a difference,” I said skeptically. “Didn’t they try this with the Alternate Minimum Rate years ago, and it wound up biting us wage-slaves in the ass.”

“Sure, but we can always fix that later. There were over a quarter million people making a million a year in 2009, and they just should pay the same rates that people who have withholding taken out of their checks do.”

“I could live with that,’ I said. “Like you say, that is a start.”

“It would make it seem like a plan, wouldn’t it? There are nearly ten thousand households who make ten million a year or more.  For them, Buffet says they ought to kick in at least as big a percentage as the people who make a paycheck.”

“Think the Super Congress will do it?”

“No, they don’t have a plan. They are just going to argue and get to Thanksgiving when the automatic budget cuts kick in and then blame the other side,” said Nick. “That is why everyone in the Heartland thinks Washington doesn’t work.”

“Well,” I said. “They have a point, you know.”

“Certainly do,” said Old Jim, and waved down the bar at Jeanette for another Bud.

“What was the other bright idea you had?” I asked.

“Oh, it is that natural gas thing that T. Boone Pickens has been pushing with $86 million of his own money.”

“Oh, I am a member of the Pickens Army,” I said. “That guy has a great plan to reduce the amount of imported oil, transition to more environmental economy, use American resources and reduce by half the amount of money we send every year to people like Hugo Chavez who want to cut our throats.”

Nick nodded. “Yeah. That is around $300 billion a year, and those twits in Congress would have three trillion in savings over a decade.”

“Damn,” I said. “That man is no fool. Why don’t we do that?”

“The Congress and the Administration are the worst of both worlds. They are so smart that they don’t have a plan, and are letting the fools dictate the agenda.”

“That is why I am going back to teaching,” said Big Jim. “Too many plans around here.”

“How ‘bout I plan on having another glass of wine?” I said. “I may be a fool, but I am a thirsty one.”

Copyright 2011 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com