Stinkin' Logic. Who Needs It?

Strange day yesterday as the remnants of Hurricane Laura rolled through the state. Our electricity was off for only a few minutes, but TV reception was sporadic. Outdoors it was nasty. I cuddled with the latest edition of The Politics of The Administrative Process by Donald Kettl. In the preface, he warns us. From the Flint water crisis to the BP oil spill to Hurricane Katrina, thoughtful people know that “Black Swans” are not only possible, but inevitable. (See: Covid-19.)

Thoughtful people think about those things.

Thoughtful people know we need to elect thoughtful, caring leaders who support thoughtful, accomplished public administrators. But we don’t. We elect people who think government is a joke at best and a mechanism for revenge at worst and who appoint cronies—who despise Americans who aren't like them—to run our agencies. “Why?” I was asking myself that when the TV returned with a newscaster energetically reporting on the “tropical storm.”

I assumed she needed at least a high-school education to be a weather reporter. But she warned us that, after an inch of rain, (despite a month-long dry spell) the ground was now “saturated” to the failing tree roots and we should seek cover. Then she breathlessly reported that her camera-person, who was from Little Rock, had just told her that the Arkansas river normally flowed toward the sea but that “the winds were now forcing it to flow in the opposite direction.” Yes, that Arkansas River. Look out Oklahoma.

The clouds outside remained, but the ones in my head rolled away. Things became clear. If we don’t start thinking, we’re gonna keep sinking.

Affordable Housing

 The answer to affordable housing for service workers may require much broader lateral thinking than we have attempted thus far. It may require cooperation from sources not engaged to date in our analysis, to wit:

The military: It must have hundreds of thousands of helicopters it doesn’t need due to the pressure from legislators representing areas where they make the darn things.

Government Archives: Surely there is some hidden corner of some warehouse where one can find the plans for the internment camps and homes where displaced Japanese families were interned in 1941.

Employment Agencies; They should be able to standardize the shift times of entities employing service workers.

Famers: They will make more money with far less effort by renting plots of farmland to the government.

Highway Construction Departments: A dollar saved by not building commuter lanes is a dollar that can be used for transportation.

President Trump: He will certainly throw his political weight behind a program that will help his make good on his promise to protect the real estate investments of wealthy homeowners.

 By now, the hyper-astute among you can see where this is headed,

Yes.

1. Obtain large segments of vacant land downwind but near major employment centers.
2. Use archived plans to rebuilt exact replicas of the internment camps of WWII.
3. Move service worker families into the camps.
4. Construct multiple helicopter pads adjacent to the camps.
5. Standardize shift schedules at plants, service outlets, retail outlets, etc.
6. Build helicopter pads located within walking distance of major employment centers.
7.  Confiscate, say, 50 percent of the largest helicopters the military has but doesn’t need.
8. Confiscate funds wasted on building commuter lanes.
9. Obtain a couple of presidential executive orders.
10. Tear down any existing low-rent housing near suburban enclaves.
11. Schedule pickup and delivery times.

 Problem solved.