Tag: Christmas

A New Hat For America

By Jim McCraw

While it is maddening to know that President-elect Biden couldn’t get a really good start on 2021 between President Trump’s recalcitrance and COVID-19, there will eventually be a Biden administration, and it will be in trouble up to its hips from Day One.

Herewith, a suggestion for Biden/Harris I believe is important, and eminently doable. As Congress fights over both short- and long-term follow-up bills to the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security Act (CARES), which ends the day after Christmas, I think it might be time for something as ambitious (though relatively easy, considering the big funding levels already proposed) and quick to do as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), circa 1933. Let’s call the new one the American Reconstruction Corps (ARC).

Lord knows there are plenty of skilled and unskilled people out of work.  And there are plenty of American infrastructure projects, largely ignored by the previous administration, that need doing.

Biden is not FDR, and we do not have a modern Robert Moses, the mid-20th Century “master builder” of New York, Long Island, Rochester and Westchester counties (it’s certainly not Donald J. Trump).

We are not Frank Lloyd Wright, the Ford Motor Company Whiz Kids, nor the first seven astronauts. We are just Americans who recognize a need to get a lot of things done by a mass of people willing to work. There has got to be a way to do this.

With widespread distribution of COVID-19 vaccines likely coming with warmer weather next summer, why couldn’t we dispatch squadrons of out-of-work Americans to do road, tunnel and bridge repairs that have been waiting years for funding and final approvals?  And not just men, which is how the original CCC operated. Skilled and unskilled women need work, too. At, say, $20 per hour.

Why not send platoons of the willing into every one of the national parks to do repairs and cleaning?

While the original CCC troops had uniforms, meals and housing, I humbly suggest self-provided work clothing, bring-your-own meals, work near home, and ARC baseball caps in red, white and blue.

There will be periodic need for FEMA supplies and equipment after summer storms, so why not divert some FEMA funding, vehicles and materiel to help Americans fix the things that are already broken?

Yes, men and women working and sweating in close quarters for eight-hour days may be problematic from a health standpoint, but with masks, distancing and frequent washing and spraying, I think it could work. Let’s get some guys from Amazon, Apple, AT&T, Ford, Google and Tesla to volunteer, put them in a room and see if they can figure this out while Biden and Harris get on with the rest of the recovery.

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When Will the Whining Stop?

By Stephen Macaulay

In 1997 Frank Costanza brought his holiday to the attention of the world: Festivus. The airing of grievances. And a demonstration of feats of strength.

Festivus occurs on December 23, thereby getting a jump on Christmas.

On December 2, Donald Trump held his own Festivus. But there was no un-decorated pole. Rather, there were the trappings of the Office of the President of the United States.

To be sure, Trump is still the president. But the clock is running on his occupancy at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

And he doesn’t like it.

Trump’s airing of grievances took the form of a 46-minute video shot in the Diplomatic Reception Room. Diplomats are supposed to be deft handlers of situations. There was nothing particular deft about his Facebook rant about the “rigged election”

Christopher Krebs was the director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency until Trump fired him by tweet (the new diplomatic channel?), because Krebs said that the election was not at all rigged or otherwise unduly influenced by dead Venezuelan politicians or whatever the conspiracy of the day might be.

Right now, William Barr, the attorney general whose actions over the past several months show that he would probably be more than glad to pick up Trump’s dry cleaning and shave his back, is reportedly on the edge of losing his job because he said the Department of Justice has uncovered nothing that would be voter fraud of the magnitude to change the outcome of the election.

The “Seinfeld” show broadcast on December 18, 1997, was and remains funny.

There is nothing amusing about the man who should be representative of all that is good and noble in this great country making it sound as though the United States is some third-world dictatorship.

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An airing of grievances before Festivus.