The D'YuYus take over the Erie Post Office, hold it hostage. Erie-stamps soon cost three-for-a dime. It hits the fan. PEDCOM responds. Morty Mealymouth, from Disarm All Taxpayers, is criticized. Baggie breakthrough! D'YuYus get what they want. Ketchem Squeezum shot down!
A small tribe of Bulgarian Gypsies, 'untouchables' to even other Gypsies, had moved into the basement of the old Erie Post Office. They refused to leave. No one knew any more about how to get them out than why they'd gotten in. The D'YuYus had, over the centuries, built up immunity to any form of social pressure. They ignored personal pleas from the Postmaster, eviction notices from the Sheriff, nasty letters from US Marshals, and tear gas. Even Social Workers couldn't talk them out. They'd tried, from a safe distance, with bullhorns.
No one could get too close to them. They were too disgusting. D'YuYus fought with an awful weapon. Anyone who got too close was driven back. The Post Office was inoperable, all the trucks were inside, and law enforcement refused to do anything about it.
The family leader, YeYe D'YuYu, brightened with a flash of genius that technologically dragged his clan all the way to the Middle Ages, stripped inner tubes off the Postal trucks, and made a crude catapult. Their giant slingshot dropped all kinds of rotting waste and garbage all over downtown Erie. Complaints soon reached Washington.
"We need a new Post Office so we can keep going to work!" Postal authorities claimed, as people began to mention the unmentionable, that postal workers shouldn't get paid if they couldn't pick up and deliver the mail.
"Why build a new one?" asked a young Congressman. "People can't tell if there's a Post Office in Erie or not."
It was amazing but true. Since the D'YuYus had taken over the Post Office, mail in Erie was being delivered two and three times a day by an informal arrangement of garbage men, milkmen, and paperboys. None of them had a monopoly like the Postal Union, so the price of locally printed Eriestamps had plummeted to three for a dime.
Senior Congressmen were deeply concerned about other towns or businesses hiring splinter clans of the D'YuYu Tribe to come and live in their Post Offices, so more people could buy three stamps for a dime. Mail order and dot-com firms were negotiating with the Bulgarian Government to bail large numbers of Gypsies out of Bulgarian jails to shut down Post Offices all over America. Their executives correctly calculated that they'd be able to cut costs for all their items with a competitive postal system. Politicians were worried.
"We can't allow this. If everybody had these lousy Gypsies in their Post Offices, why, there wouldn't be any more Post Office. There wouldn't be any more Post Office Administrators. Then, my brother-in-law would be out of a job. You think I want him hanging around my house? You want your brothers-in-law hanging around your house?" Senator Mendle Meddle rhetorically asked fellow members of the Postal Appropriations Committee.
"Not one of us has a brother-in-law that anybody in his right mind would hire for a third of the money we pay them!" agreed Senator Pocketed, from nearby Tickton. "My relatives need a Government Postal System, your relatives need a Government Postal System, Erie needs a Government Postal System. I say, give 'em a new Post Office."
Bureaucratic officials were equally worried. The Public Employee Defense Committee (PEDCOM) met in a penthouse boardroom beyond the Beltway, atop a luxury hotel.
"Those dirty, ingrate, taxpaying pigs!" shouted Ketchem Squeezum, head of Postal Union. "Why, we give those damned taxpaying swine the best years of our lives, just to make sure they get their bills and tax forms on time, and those money-grubbing serfs would throw us out on the street at the drop of a hat, just to get cheaper stamps!"
"They are pigs. Dirty, grubby, little taxpaying porkers. Why they're the ones who get to have the jobs to make the money. Now, they think that they should get to keep it. What awful selfishness! Why, what would we do if everyone did that?" asked the up-and-coming Miriam Babeter, from Health In Human Services.
"Get jobs." the stenographer thought to herself in the lengthy silence that always followed one of Miriam's practiced litanies at the Daily Crisis Meeting. "Work for a living."
"Who do they think they are? Civil Servants? Why, they've no right to save a dollar if it means that even one of us would lose a penny!" recited Slith Venum, of HUD, from the Federal Catechism. "Why, if the accursed peons spread these foul Gypsies to other Post Offices, they might even think of attacking us, at HUD, or any of us, at any bureau, just to reduce their taxes. Why, they might even want us to use the money to actually build houses, rather than pay us to employ tens of thousands of Important Scholars and Congressional Relatives to study tens of thousands of vital housing problems." he finished, his voice rising in astonishment as he realized just how seductive his thought might be to lowly taxpayers.
"We all agree. We can't allow the mindless field beasts to use the desperate actions of these crazed Gypsies to keep from giving any of us money." announced craggy old Sherm Souldout, from EPA. "If the Field Beasts won't give us their money, we'd have to take it. We have no other way to survive. We all lack the intelligence, imagination, and initiative to make money on our own, or we would. And, we can't totally enslave the filthy Field Beasts because we still haven't gotten all their guns away." he finished, with a sharp look at the Disarm All Taxpayers representative.
"We're trying.' whined little Morty Mealymouth, DATREP. "But, it's hard. So many, many of them still believe in that awful 2nd Amendment. You'd think they'd be happy with free speech, but the smarter ones want guns to protect it. Some of them even think that the government is their enemy. It's not our fault they aren't disarmed. We know how important it is to get their guns away if we're going to get Our Fair Share. We're trying, and so are all of our FedTube flunkies, and..."
Sherm Souldout Interrupted rudely. "Give those damned Gypsies anything they want, before FedTube is forced to cover it! If we're accused of Minority Insensitivity, we'll lose urban Congressional seats. If we have Media announce that the Gypsies are no better than White people, we can shoot them down like dogs. Do something! Do anything! Just get them out of that Post Office!"
A dozen expensive haircuts looked at each other. When all knew it was safe, each nodded in agreement.
Sal Balberg, IRSREP, cleared his throat. "It's not only saving a tax structure that's important. It's equally imperative to preserve our controls over Congress. If those accursed field beasts start cutting down on bureaus, that reduces the number of jobs we can trade to Congressmen for the unlimited budgets we've enjoyed since Franklin D. That could really hurt."
"Does anyone know what the Gypsies actually want?" asked Miriam, hoping in a vague way that it could be something that she could do.
"No one knows," answered Ketchem Squeezum, from Postal Union. He spoke with authority. As head of the concerned Union, he was less than a dozen management layers away from actual mail handlers, so he had the best information. "No one has been able to get close enough to ask them. No one will volunteer to go through that hail of garbage and waste, except maybe a few military types. And, we all know what happens to their budgets every time they do something we can't. (Regretful nods all around.) Civil Service Regs prohibit us from forcing any of our people to go, and, of course, none of us would think of doing such a thing."
The thought of what might happen to their designer clothes made them shudder at the thought of braving that unholy fire.
"We have to talk to them. Somehow. Otherwise, we can't give them whatever it is that they want." said Uriah Leech, of GSA. "How do we get through to them? What can we do? What can we do?"
Two dozen eyes dropped to stare at the expensive briefing notebooks their staffs always prepared for emergency meetings. "Damn that Leech!" they thought to themselves. "How dare he ask such a hard question!"
"Why not just call them up on the telephone and ask them?" blurted the stenographer into the lengthening silence.
"What! Just like that? Just call them up and ask them?" replied an astonished Miriam Babeter, from Health In Human Services, whose salary plus bonus plus consulting fees was easily fifty times the stenographer's wages. "Why, we'd have to have a meeting, and decide, wouldn't we?"
"You're already at a meeting." the stenographer said, but she said it to herself. She'd been recording Daily Crisis Meetings long enough to know that governmental problems solved quickly reflected little glory on few people.
A top-level conference was put on the Scheduling Agenda. It was to convene as quickly as possible in order to decide the really...
