Overtime on the Tragedy Shift

Some states have canceled executions because they're unsure about the provenance, purity and power of the drug "cocktail" used to kill the convicted. There have been lawsuits.

Seems we don't make this stuff in the U.S. anymore, and like the bootleg toothpaste down at your local dollar store, the stuff the government uses to kill criminals may be, uh, full of harmful ingredients.

Irony (and I hate irony) aside, it's not surprising that selling the death drugs is just a business that salespeople, CEOs, truck drivers and shipper/receivers are involved in making the stuff, taking their paychecks home and eventually paying the cable bill.

You think that when Hitler was killing several million people, there weren't salesmen on the poison gas beat?

"Mein Fuhrer," you can hear the guy say. "We're proud to say that our product has changed the mass-murder business. You use less. You kill more. That's a greater efficiency, and it's reflected in your bottom line."

There is no tragedy, manmade, natural, unnatural, perverse, unholy or sacred that does not spin off a business or create overtime for someone.

I probably always knew this, but I first realized it when, doing my day job as a newspaper reporter, I covered the funeral of a local boy killed in Iraq. The kid grew up about six blocks from where I live, in a neighborhood where only a cynical America-hating communist would suggest that double-digit unemployment even partially drives the urge to enlist.

I was standing outside the vintage-1880 gray granite Catholic church from which the boy's coffin-ed remains would soon emerge, and I turned to the police officer next to me.

"You know," I said. "No matter how bad something is, it means somebody gets the overtime."

I was working overtime that day, as was the cop. I took my overtime for the day in comp time. I worked that funeral for three hours, and at time-and-a-half, I got a whole shift off later in the week. I don't know what the cop got for his time, though most cops I know take their overtime in cash. I believe that's because cops possess a severely foreshortened view of the future, but I can't be sure.

In Japan, if the whole tortured place doesn't vanish in radioactive vapor, the present disaster will lead to a bonanza in overtime.

Plenty of Japanese Joe-Sake-Six-Packs will work for years in demolition or pouring concrete or building new roads and bridges. At first, they're going to want a lot of work done very fast, so my guess is there will be plenty of overtime. Japanese employers have a long tradition of ignoring that country's overtime laws, but once they really NEED guys to run jackhammers, the employers will no doubt get at least a bit more generous.

There's a little park not too far from my house where you can buy crack cocaine; though, to be fair, kids play in the park, too.

Crack cocaine is a tragedy, but it provides jobs in manufacturing, transportation and sales. It provides work for cops, too, and corrections officers and court officers and the people who run the rehabs, the state-sponsored drug awareness programs and the grant-funded anti-gang programs.

If you take a casual look at a stinky, near-death pipe head, it's hard to believe that this thing in torn sneakers and grime-sheened pants is the reason why someone in clean khakis can make the mortgage this month.

The only purity standard for crack cocaine is the one imposed by the needs of its zombie-like consumers. There's no state or federal regulatory agency that guarantees your next hit will be manufactured in a clean environment and will not contain any harmful chemicals.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is involved in making sure the drug cocktail they use to kill death-row inmates is of sufficient strength and purity.

A lot of the people who get executed in this country ended up on death row at least partly because they were high when they did what they did or because they were trying to get more money to get high.

The hits you were getting out on the street might have been cooked up in somebody's basement and may have contained everything from battery acid to just plain dirt.

But that last hit you get? Thanks to the government, that's going to be the purest hit of all.

And the circle closes. Every tragedy is a business.

I hate irony.

To find out more about Marc Munroe Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com.