More Cheddar, Please

When I grow up, I wanna be rich enough to matter. I don’t want to be just debt-free, I wanna be the kind of rich that guarantees a spot on any board or commission my heart desires, the kind that means I can beat most criminal charges and buy off anyone I want, just like the other Richie Riches who matter, too.

Heck, why stop there? For all I know, it might be a real gas to be rich enough to get elected. Governor Goforth has a nice ring to it. I do love alliterations; come to think of it, Congresswoman Claire ain’t half-bad, either. Now if only my name started with a ‘P’…

With enough zeros after my name, rather than just the one at which most presently value my worth, I could really make a difference with my life. Important people would listen when I talked. My opinions would carry enough weight that decision-makers would come a-stepping when I say boo, just to find out how to toe the line I’m drawing.

See, kids, these days, you gotta have coin to have any real say-so in how things are run. ’Cause other than on the campaign trail (and not even then, if they’re being honest), most pols don’t care to hear from their constituents, unless those constituents have big, fat checks to stroke in their name. And the higher they are on the ballot, the bigger the checks have to be.

Just ask John Rutherford—well, if you can find him. Nearly two years in Congress and he has yet to hold a town hall. He’s not alone in his reticence to face voters, however. Far from it. After the mass shooting in Parkland last February, Marco Rubio went to his first town hall in a year. Spoiler alert: It didn’t go so well. He hasn’t done one since. The senator is staying busy hiding from those Indivisible folks who keep showing up at his office on Tuesdays.

But why should they face the voters? Absent another presidential bid, and then only if his hairline can take it, Rubio won’t appear on a ballot near you until 2022. Rutherford is up against Democrat Ges Selmont in November, but he’s in one of those super-safe districts which parties in power dearly love to draw—state constitutional amendments notwithstanding—so he’s probably not particularly inclined to get roasted by an angry electorate hell-bent on giving him a good comeuppance. I mean, really, the election is two months away and Jax’s former sheriff isn’t even campaigning.

So for now, they need only pay attention to the cool cats in the skybox and whoever’s ranting about taxes on Breitbart (tagline: We put the ‘press’ in oppression).

That’s why I want to get rich. Not because I love the finer things like good credit and not being one major illness away from bankruptcy; but because I want my opinion to matter to the people who really run this country, that is, the donors. As I’m not willing to use my genitals as a dragnet, the only way I’m going to do that is by becoming one of them, that is to say, rich.

Think of it. I believe that healthcare is a right, not a privilege. If I were ultra-rich, I could command my whipping boys and girls, I mean, public servants, to create a single-payer system. I could demand they alter the tax code so that multinational corporations pay the same tax rate as those brave few clinging to the upper-middle-class bracket.

Have you seen the national debt these days? It’d be a lot less if a comparatively fiscal conservative like me was pullin’ them strings, instead of those big government fakers at the Conservative Political Action Conference and their bobbleheads at Fox News.

With a truly righteous bank account, I could get rid of mandatory minimums and felony disenfranchisement, legalize marijuana, increase funding for our mental health system, make sure veterans get the care they need, fairly fund public schools, improve infrastructure, strengthen environmental regulations and enforcement, preserve wetlands and other dwindling ecosystems like the Florida prairie, invest in clean energy, plan for climate change, reduce water waste and pollution, lower carbon dioxide emissions—the list goes on and on.

All I need are unlimited funds. It’s not that I’m greedy, it’s just the way of the world.

See, even though most of us have heard the Kardashians speak, we take for granted that rich people are smarter and better than everyone else. Perhaps that’s why the people who represent us keep getting richer. Roll Call reports that in just two years, the net worth of the already-wealthy Congress increased 20 percent. Today’s representatives must be smarter-er and better-er than ever-er.

Except they’re not.