What You Learn In a Bowling Alley in Rural Iowa
ADEL, IOWA-All the way out here, between all the towns, in the long, flat stretch of Iowa Highway 6 between Waukee and Adel, you can see the vast archaeology of the burst bubble. Huge housing and condominium developments, haunted by the fractured dreams of the deluded and the defrauded. What happened at the end of 2008 is still stretched across the Iowa landscape, looking as deserted as the ruins of Nineveh.
Two presidential elections later, we are still living with the hangover. A movie about the sharks who got rich because of their clairvoyance as regards future human misery is a favorite for the Academy Awards. The recovery has been slow and sluggish and it hasn't reached many places. This is the third election of the post-bubble era, and the great detonation still echoes across the gelid landscape. Hillary Rodham Clinton is now running in her second one of these, and she has been tasked to answer for the policies put in place by her husband that eventually came to contribute to the economic devastation at the end of the last decade.
Yesterday, at the Adel Fun Family Center, a bowling alley in which Walter Sobchak would be proud to roll-except on Shabbos, of course-HRC got her ferocious on talking about a Wisconsin company called Johnson Controls. It seems that Johnson Controls makes parts in the auto industry and, therefore, Johnson Controls benefitted mightily when the president bailed out-and thereby saved-the American auto industry. Johnson Controls was very grateful for the American taxpayer for having saved the company from ruin, so much so that, a couple of days earlier, it had announced a kabuki merger with Tyco that will enable Johnson Controls to move its corporate headquarters to Tyco's headquarters in Cork, which will allow Johnson Controls to stiff the suckers who bailed it out $150 million per year in taxes.
(You may recall that, a few years back, Tyco proved to be quite the nest of crooks itself. And rebel Cork is turning itself into a phony tax haven for plutocrats? James Connolly wept.)
It is a perfect demonstration of the truth that, while American corporations may have been briefly chastened by their look into the abyss, the corporate culture of greed and arrogance that led them to the edge goes merrily along. HRC sounded genuinely angry when she told the story.
"Johnson Controls begged the administration and the government to bail out the auto industry," she said. "And now, in the last few days, Johnson Controls has decided to pretend to sell itself to a company in Europe just to avoid paying taxes. They call this an IN-version. I'd call it a PER-version. "
There is no question that she's swum in these circles like a fish in cold water. And there also is no question that she's tuned up the populist outrage as a result of being challenged from the left by Bernie Sanders. But, whatever the reason, she is right to call out this company for being the towering corporate ingrate that it is. If this kind of thing becomes an issue in the campaign, and if the free-market fetishists on the other side have to defend this incredible tax dodge, that cannot be a bad thing, either for her, or for her party, or for the country. That battle is now universally joined.
HRC's host on Wednesday was Bryce Smith, a young redheaded fellow with bright blue eyes who first walked into the Adel Family Fun Center when he was a child, watching his grandmothers bowl, and Jane Jones and Linda Smith can still roll. Now, though, not long graduated from the University of Northern Iowa, Bryce Smith owns the Adel Family Fun Center, where he once did every job, from renting shoes to waxing the lanes. He met HRC at a small-business roundtable early last year, and that's how she happened to be standing in one of Bryce Smith's lanes on Wednesday, just on the right side of the foul line.
"We center a lot of things around bowling," he said. "But we have the arcade and we have the food and grill. The thing I really enjoyed as a kid was seeing all different people-weight, shape, sizes-come in and enjoy themselves. It was a way that, if you can make people happy and have fun, while you can somehow make a living, that's the real reason to own a business."
And amid all the echoes from the great detonation that exploded so many dreams, you can still hear something stirring. It's easy to get cynical watching thickly financed politicians praise small business owners, and they all do, but it really is important to places like Adel to have someplace where people can go and play for a while. And if you can turn an honest buck, all the better.
