A new party is emerging

Being Frank, by Frank Ameduri

Though it's too late to create any noticeable change in the political landscape, something exciting is happening in Alaska following the recent round of elections. You guessed it, there's a new political party in the state of Alaska! This party is not particularly independent, nor does it have a color associated with it, though if it did, it would probably be black and silver. That's two colors, but we're allowing for a little wiggle room here. After all, it is a new party.

Anyway, the new party is called the PPOGDSU, pronounced Pog-sue. It stands for the Pragmacratic Party of the Greatest Darned State in the Union. As the name might suggest, the party is all about pragmatism -- all about applying practical solutions to problems rather than spouting off theory and speculation. You know, like when we determine that people right here in the good ol' U.S. of A. are going hungry and that we're paying tax dollars to farmers to not grow things, a pragmacrat would say, "Hmmm." Now you might say that's a knee-jerky, bleedy heart kind of thing for a pragmacrat to say, but then you're probably not going hungry right now.

There are some things that set the pragmacrats apart from the other political parties.

The Pragmacrats have an anti-rhetoric plank in their platform. Being the practical folks they are, this is not a philosophical plank only, but an actual hunk of lumber. The anti-rhetoric plank is a splintery 2-by-4 about four feet long. The plank is carried to debates and public functions. When a politician is heard saying something like, "We need real solutions for this problem," or "This is not a Republican problem or a Democratic problem, but an American problem," or "We need to put partisanship aside, especially those other guys, and work toward a solution for Americans -- indeed for the entire known Cosmos," that politician is introduced to the anti-rhetoric plank. The pragmacrats call this process a sound planking. Pragmacrats are forbidden from using rhetoric themselves, and any pragmacrat who slips into political babble must spend the entire weekend deconstructing Rush Limbaugh transcripts and then must write blah, blah, blah 10 million times on a chalk board and then erase the board with his or her tongue.

Pragmacrats also seek to make political lobbying a felony. Under a pragmacratic administration, lobbyists would be "sequestered" and sent on an extended junket to a remote island surrounded by barracuda and hungry political analysts who are also deprived of free coffee. Any lobbyist who escaped the island would be introduced to the anti-rhetoric plank and then locked in a cell with Martha Stewart and a lifetime supply of yarn and hot glue. The only people allowed to contact pragmacrats and demand action are … well, people. And they wouldn't even be expected to hand over large checks for "consulting fees" or to send the pragmacrats to the Bahamas during the peak season. You see, pragmacrats have this weird notion that the term public servant actually means something -- and they think the public part of that term means the everyday people who live from check to check and take their kids to baseball practice and dance class. They don't think public means multi-million dollar corporations who really need that tax exemption so they can muck up the water and then lay off 6,000 of those check-to-check folks every time the economy hiccups. Whoops, there I go again.

Pragmacrats don't believe politics is a career choice, but rather a responsibility. They think you should get in, do something and get out -- you know and go back to work or something. They wonder about career politicians who keep saying government needs to be downsized. They wonder why those career politicians, who collect paychecks consisting of tax dollars, have never voted a pay cut for themselves during lean times or offered to give back 20 percent of their pay to help keep a park open or some such nonsense. Pragmacrats wonder about all sorts of trouble-making stuff like that.

As I said, though, the pragmacrats haven't yet made much of a splash in the political arena. In fact, there's only one of me so far. If you think solving problems is all about getting your neighbors together, rolling up your collective sleeves and working your tail off until everybody's kid gets a fair shake, well, maybe you're one, too. Wouldn't that be great if there were two of us? If so, I'll see you in the funny papers.

Frank Ameduri hopes he is not the sole member of the PPOGDSU. He probably is.