Cashing In

August 4, 2009 by djackson.

You’ve heard by now of “Cash for Clunkers,” the program whereby the federal government dishes four and a half K for cars that meet certain specifications as to decrepitude. The argument runs that it’s a win/win deal: drivers of jalopies get new wheels, Detroit gins up more business, and the greenies take heart because those old heaps spewed exhaust and leaked oil and generally ravaged the ozone and the glaciers.

I have no personal stake in the matter. Neither of my cars qualifies, though I just sold a pickup that the Joads would have been embarrassed to drive. Still, I note that not everyone thinks the program is such a hot idea. Jeb Hensarling, a congressman from Texas, complained that the auto industry continues to receive special treatment. Noting that Pilgrim’s Pride, a Texas-based turkey outfit, just filed for bankruptcy, he demanded a bailout for the bird men, tentatively labeled “Cash for Cluckers.”

The congressman’s wordplay set me thinking about other subsidies that quick-thinking pun-dits could dream up. I’ll offer a few off the top of my head. What about “Stash For Clunkers”? We tell stoners that they can trade in their pot, crack, crank, weed, horse, Aunt Hazel, amp, cube and A in exchange for one of the broken-down vehicles the federal government now owns. That way, we don’t have to park all these old hoopties out back of the capitol, we reduce the number of people driving under the influence, and we don’t have to worry about the junkies selling their cars to buy drugs because we’ve already ruined the market.

Here’s another one: “Cash for Dunkers.” This one plays off a slang term for the Old German Baptist Brethren. The idea is that we post a bounty for every mainline Protestant who takes the plunge. The Southern Baptist Convention could reverse its decline in baptisms and all those Methodists and Presbyterians could tithe the bribe money back into their home denominations, who, I’m told, could use the greenbacks about now.

Or maybe “Cash for Suckers,” where we lavish huge amounts of money on people who can prove that they made stupid business deals that ruined their corporations and started a world-wide financial crisis that threw thousands of people out of their jobs and homes. Oh, wait - that one’s already taken.

Yet all of it reminds me somehow of Walter Wangerin’s Ragman, the strong, handsome fellow who drags a cart through the slums and bellows out, “Rags! Rags! New rags for old!” He swaps garments with the human detritus of the world’s dustbins and, in taking their clothing, also takes on their injuries, addictions, and lamentations. Finally he mounts a mound in the midst of the midden and lays down and dies. The following Sunday he bursts to life, his body whole and his rags clean. The narrator closes the story with the simple words: “He dressed me. My Lord, he put new rags on me, and I am a wonder beside him. The Ragman, the Ragman, the Christ.”

For all the clunkers, pluckers, and suckers, all the punks and junkies, the broken-down and blown-up and bankrupt and busted, here’s a bailout that knows no deficit and needs no periodic renewal. Here is redemption free for the taking.

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