Why We Can't Trust Government To Do Things Right

I had jury duty today.  I know a lot of people pull faces at the very thought, but I take the chore seriously. I would actually like to be a juror, but I know that no lawyer is going to want another lawyer on his jury. I'll never get on an actual jury, and that knowledge dims the glow of the experience somewhat. Still, I go, I sit and read for a day, I earn my six bucks, and I go home. 

When I got downtown to the courthouse area, I parked in the county's parking garage. I parked on Level Three and walked down the stairs.  When I left this afternoon, I got in the elevator and pushed the button for Level Three. I stepped out and saw a sign to my right that said "Stairway B, Level 2." I turned around, thinking I'd gotten off on the wrong floor, and there was a sign at the elevator that said, "Remember that you parked on Level Three." 

I was confused. Where was I?  Far off to the left I could see another sign, "Stairway C, Level 2." Then I remembered that, where I'd parked, the floor was only half-covered by the floor above. This clearly was not Level Three. I walked up the stairs and found my car on Level Three.

So: if we can't trust our county government — and by extension, all levels of government — to correctly do something as simple as counting to three, twice, why should we trust them to do anything right?

It's a question I don't have an answer to. 

Message to Obama: Unemployment

So...we've got nearly ten percent unemployment. Worst hit is the construction industry.

We're spending billions of dollars on "shovel-ready" projects, which turn out to require lots of materials and not much in the way of labor.

Why don't we just re-institute the Civilian Conservation Corps? Remember that old program from the Great Depression, which took unemployed young men to the nation's parks and forests, and put them to work building roads and bridges and facilities, and planting trees, and landscaping. It got them out of the cities, started them on an adventurous life, gave them some skills, and kept them out of trouble. Most of them found other careers, outside the construction industry, but all of them learned something, and did something, and our country was better for it.

These days, of course, we'd have to let the girls play too, but that's OK. And there's lots of work to be done in our national parks, and forests, and monuments, much of which can be accomplished by young people just learning how such things are done. And surely it couldn't cost much more than we're already laying out for next to nothing.