My pal David Gardner has brought to my attention that Marvin Horne, 68, owes the Federal Government 1.2 million pounds in back raisins. "How is this possible?" you ask. "Seven hundred thousand pounds of raisins, sure. Maybe even nine-hundred fifty. But 1.2 million?" The reason is that this scofflaw has refused to pay raisins to the National Raisin Reserve for the past eleven years.
Now, it's all making sense, isn't it?
Every schoolchild learns about the National Raisin Reserve, a federal program created during the Truman administration whereby the government confiscates a certain amount of the raisin crop each year to stabilize the raisin market, which is one of the bulwarks of the economy. And once an economy starts losing its bulwarks, you've had it. Many trace the real estate collapse to a the raisin bran shortage of 2004. A constipated banker, is a reckless banker.
Clearly Mr Horne (Pictured above. He looks a little like a raisin himself, doesn't he?) has to pay up. Let the raisin growers run amok, and next it'll be apricots and prunes; before you know it, it'll be the wild west out there as far as dried fruits go. And yet, we fellow citizens should feel some sympathy. I myself have run afoul of the Federal Manuscript Reserve, when federal agents demanded I pay up one third of the manuscript pages I'd produced that year. The worst part is, those were the pages with all the sex scenes. What I propose we do, therefore, is pay Mr. Horne's debt for him. There are 315 million people in the US; if we each left just one box of raisins on the steps to the Capitol, there'd be enough raisins to satisfy the Raisin Reserve for years. The economy's bulwarks will be safe, and we can rest easy knowing we have done our part.
