A familiar name was in the news the other day. Someone close to Dave and me, in the same sense we are close to our colonic output. In the spirit of the current administration, under which the protection of the guilty is paramount, and in the interest of not being sued for libel, or whisked into a Salvadoran jail, or however they’re doing things these days, I shall refer to my characters with pseudonyms.

Dandy Fleederhorn, Laura Loony, and Big Dump.

It’s not nice to characterize people by their looks, so we will refrain, for now, from noting that Dandy looks like a prematurely-aged twelve-year-old in a fancy suit.

Dandy Fleederhorn was raised in the tony West Hills of Portland, Oregon, started his own business renting noisy and polluting jet skis as a teenager using seed money from his lemonade-and-ecstasy stand, and got his business degree just in time to soar in the Reagan era, with the burgeoning of the vaunted Financial Sector. Suddenly, a hell of a good living could be made just fucking around with other people’s money and livelihoods. So he fucked around with other people’s money and livelihoods.

He founded a whiz-bang financial outfit that “provides capital to businesses engaged in restructuring, recapitalization, management buy-outs and commercial real estate.” You don’t see the words “fucking around” in there but it’s implied. Right off the bat young Dandy made what were called “questionable investments” in union pension funds.

Real human consequences are not supposed to figure into the bottom lines of fantasy money-manufacturing companies. And they don’t. But somehow Big Justice got its hooks into this story, and Dandy Fleederhorn’s participation in what amounted to a Ponzi scheme was exposed, and litigated, and doggoned if the little dweeb didn’t do prison time.

After which, like so many ex-convicts, his board of directors voted to pay him what he’d owed in fines, and also paid him his full salary retroactively during his stay in the slammer.

Let’s back up. Why is Dandy Fleederhorn a household name here? Well. Dave was nearing retirement age and his pension, something that ordinarily is funded conservatively, with bonds and selected stocks, was instead flying around like whiskey-fueled regret in a casino. When he and his brothers in the Laborer’s Union learned their future had been gambled away by a well-tailored pipsqueak, they were moved to show up to the trial.

Dave recalls that Dandy shared an elevator, in the courthouse, with him and a few of his larger laborer buddies, any one of whom could have bricked the boy’s eyes shut between floors two and three. They were silent. They stared at him. Let’s call it a preview of prison. Dave began an annual pilgrimage walking to the Fleederman mansion and pissing on the gate.

Meanwhile, I, as a letter carrier, delivered mail to his mommy’s house. Mother Fleederhorn had a big horrible dog–the world’s only shitty German Shepherd–that she let loose to chase mailmen and poop all over the neighborhood. One of her neighbors tried to get compensation when her beagle was summarily executed by Mrs. Fleederhorn’s dog. Both dogs were on the loose, as I can attest. When I talked to her about it, she said, basically, if the other woman’s dog was wandering around looking chewy, her own dog could not be faulted for mauling it.

Prison was no fun for Fleederhorn but it got worse afterwards, despite his remarkable financial recovery. He was suspended from the genteel Multnomah Athletic Club, where local movers and shakers bond in their little white towels. He sold his Portland mansion, a 25,000-square-foot nest he had felt compelled to add a wing to, at a loss. (To be fair, it did smell like hod-carrier pee.) He moved to California, acquired the Fatburger restaurant chain, went public, was accused of looting the company for personal gain, stepped down as CEO so his legal trouble wouldn’t be a distraction, and replaced the independent members of the board with his father-in-law and his three sons (Huey, Dewy, and Louie Fleederhorn), after which they installed him as chairman of the board.

Now he’s accused of self-dealing and tax fraud, old-hat stuff really, but here’s where it gets interesting. His case attracted the attention of Big Dump’s special friend Laura Loony, who noticed that the lead prosecutor in the case was a Biden holdover who once supported the impeachment of the president and clearly needed firing. Something about the unfairness of all the prosecutions of Fleederhorn for things he actually did resonated with Big Dump, and the prosecutor was terminated at his behest and by email, bypassing the Justice Department.

Vestiges of the impartial justice system still remain however and the case against Fleederhorn will continue. With any luck he’ll wind up in an upscale prison this time that serves baked beagle bits on fancy toothpicks, while awaiting his Presidential pardon. The buzz is he’s a shoe-in for Director of the new Consumer Deception Bureau.