
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, August 16, 1995                   TAG: 9508160054
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BY BEN BEAGLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE 'PEEPUL' MAY END UP IN THE POORHOUSE

Politicians of both major parties in this country - after they've won an election - always claim that they're doing what the voters said they should do.

Congressmen go around saying things like: "We have a mandate from the gret Uhmurrican peepul."

Today we see Republicans saying the peepul want to change government so that nobody will ever recognize it again - except, maybe, if you're old enough to remember the Grant administration.

And I suspect that a lot of gret Uhmurricans are saying things like:

"Whoa, Erma, I didn't think I was telling them to abolish the National Weather Service or rent unused portions of the national Capitol to fast food chains."

This is a time for Sen. Genghis K. Attila from the South. He says on the Senate floor that the voters in the last election gave the clear signal that they want old people to go away somewhere.

We won't infringe on the senator's time here by mentioning, in any detail, the wonderful orphanage plan Newt Gingrich has for many American children.

A committee on the aging, with a Republican majority, begins a search for poorhouse architecture, as it was known in the 19th century - which is where the country is headed.

The committee staff comes up with several plans that were used in Charles Dickens' time. The committee is particularly interested in designs that feature dirt floors and open fireplaces for cooking gruel.

The staff is then fired as a budget-balancing measure. The so-called Over the Hill to the PoorHouse Bill is passed .

Sen. Attila says the dirt floors and open fireplaces will remind the nation of a heartier time in its history - when men were men and women were women, although not for very long. He mentions Abe Lincoln reading by firelight and says that in those days there was no national deficit.

As Timothy Medalwinner, a 75-year-old infantry veteran of World War II, is carried off by federal marshals to his neighborhood poorhouse, he is heard to tell CNN:

"That's the last damned time I'll ever vote Republican."

This gives some hot-dog congressman the idea that people in poorhouses shouldn't be allowed to vote and legislation to that effect is prepared.

When Sen. Attila is told this legislation is probably fascist as well as unconstitutional, he says: "But thet's whut th' gret Uhmurrican peepul tole us they wanted in last Novembuh's election."

by CNB