I had to catch a Metro bus in L.A. last week. The paved street along Wilshire Boulevard was in such poor condition that I felt as though I was riding on one of those Magic Finger beds they used to have in low-rent hotels back in the 1970s. I traveled on the Rapid, our sorry excuse for a fast bus, on which I had so many dropped calls on my cellphone and which was so overpacked with teeming masses of brown people, you'd think I was stuck in the middle of the developing world, not traveling from the Miracle Mile to Koreatown. When I got to the Koreatown stop, the escalator in the subway station was broken, so I needed to walk down a flight of stairs---a clear danger when you're trying to text-message your editor at the same time.
Maybe you’ve gotten used to all this. I haven’t.
My bus driver, a round-faced man with large, fleshy hands, shook his head. "Economy gets bad, more people take the bus," he noted. "Too bad we can't get more money from the government, otherwise we could run twice as many lines all day, and they'd be full up of riders."
"Our country needs a renewal," I replied.
"Ain't that the truth," my driver nodded. "Ain't gonna happen anytime soon, though. Poor Obama, he can't do it alone, what with all them fool Republicans holdin' him up."
The bus shuddered over another pothole. My cellphone dropped another call.
"But it's not just the Republicans," I interjected. "Today, neither party is talking seriously enough about the taxes that will have to be raised or the entitlement spending that will have to be cut to put us on sustainable footing. That’s why we need an independent Presidential candidate---like straight-talking, socially moderate and fiscally conservative Mike Bloomberg---who could challenge both candidates by speaking honestly about what we need to restore the foundations of our global leadership before we implode."
My driver laughed. "What do you mean we, white man? Who ya spoofin'? You wanna fix Washington? Get rid of all the muthafuckin' crazy people."
I got off the bus at Fairfax. The traffic signal at the intersection was out, traffic was snarled in all four directions, and a homeless man on the corner asked me for money. My mind rushed back to that conversation on the bus, and of our country's urgent need for entitlement reform.
---Vitelius
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