Deadbeats, Now and Then

There is a column in the Sunday Madison paper (sorry no link) by Susan Lampert Smith telling how John Kerry is only now paying five-figure bills from his pre-debate stay in Wisconsin back in September. The Kerry campaign is blaming the payment delays on incorrect billing information and some of the bills have been paid, but only after the original story appeared online last week. The author ties the Kerry payables to Frank Lloyd Wright's notorious late payment history here in Madison by virtue that Wright's home was just down the road from the hotel where Kerry stayed and owed a bill.

Here's the author's punchline:

Maybe the persistence of those stories (Wright's debts) is our way of having a little claim on the lives of the famous. ... It's the same with Kerry. It's doubtful his jet set life will ever sweep him through these parts again. But it was nice to have him owe us.

What a bunch of crap. A deadbeat is a deadbeat. Obviously, the writer has NEVER been in business in which you are responsible to your creditors and making your employee's payroll. I'd be interested in her response if one of the paper's managers told her she'd have to forego a paycheck or two because the Kerry campaign hadn't yet paid their debt owed to the paper. Maybe then maybe, just maybe, she'd get the point of it being "nice to have him owe us" if her paycheck depended on him coughing up the cash.