It’s a week before Halloween. Want to hear a scary story?
Once upon a time, there was a squat, ugly building in the center of a bustling town. For much of each year, it was filled with people – people with power, people wanting to meet people with power, and people wanting power over people with power. Needless to say, it was a terrifying place. To the townsfolk, it sometimes seem to reach out and suck the very lifeblood from them. Other times, it sent forth horrible deformed monstrosities, created with little forethought and even less basic competence, that wreaked havoc throughout the land. And on still other occasions, when passersby foolishly entered to see what transpired within, they would encounter the rulers of the place – carefully preserved, lording over all for what seemed like generation after generation in a splendor reminiscent of an Egyptian Pharoah.
(OK, for those not “getting it” yet, I’m talking about the Legislative Building, legislators passing tax hikes, legislators passing silly bills, and Marc Basnight. Do try to stay with the group, won’t you?)
As scary as the squat, ugly building could be during these times of frenzied activity, it was later in the year, with a bitter chill in the air and the falling of dying leaves, that the building took on its most horrifying aspect. It was then that the Phantom Session first appeared.
No one had ever gotten a clear look at the Phantom Session, even though it crept slowly along the deserted halls and hovered lazily over the sickeningly patterned floors. Perhaps the explanation for this was the thick fog, which the local sages called the obfuscatia media, that billowed around whenever the Phantom Session was on the prowl. Or perhaps it was simply that few bothered to investigate the mysterious apparition. Some said it was little more than the ghostly reminder of a battle long since played out in the building. Others speculated that it might be the work of pranksters, or of those looking to make a quick buck or two.
But the wisest of the sages, those who understood something about the fundamentally wicked nature of the squat, ugly building, believed the Phantom Session to be a powerful thing, a presence just waiting until the right moment to accomplish its evil end. And what was the demonic purpose of the Phantom Session, they alleged? Possession. The embalmed ones who ruled the building wanted to make sure that no one else could challenge their supremacy. And so they conjured the Phantom Session to protect them from the outside world, to take possession of the building and all its power should the townsfolk succeed, albeit briefly, in taking it by storm.
There is no ending to the story of the Phantom Session. It continues to haunt the squat, ugly building – its basic nature still a mystery, its ultimate end confined to the realm of conjecture and foreboding. It waits, and watches. No doubt, just when we least expect it, it will strike . . .
(Postscript: The special redistricting session of the General Assembly continues, despite the concerted efforts of Republicans to shut it down or at least expose it as a device potentially to reverse the result of next month’s elections by redrawing legislative districts before a new General Assembly can be sworn in. Today, Raleigh Rep. Art Pope filed a formal protest of the session’s unconstitutionality, which you can read about here: http://www.herald-sun.com/state/6-279763.html).
(Another Postscript: An alert reader yesterday pointed out that contrary to my assertion that Adam Smith had originated the idea of “comparative advantage” in The Wealth of Nations, it was the later British economist David Ricardo who articulated this important idea. Smith was a believer in absolute advantage in trade, which was one of the few things he got wrong.)