Writer's advice: Go build something

To the Eagle:

Our president dithers while the middle east burns, health care tanks, border leakage reaches crisis levels, and the economy remains anemic. The Republicans are casting about for a new Ronald Reagan to solve our problems. I personally would settle for a new Herbert Hoover, or anyone who knows how to build stuff. Somehow our various governments have become slaves to the silly notion that you can solve problems by passing laws. Big problems require big complicated laws. My grandma called that wishful thinking.

School shootings? Pass gun control laws. Fuel shortage? Try fuel consumption standards by imperial decree. Swamped with illegal aliens? A thousand page comprehensive immigration bill will surely do the trick. Weather's a little warm? Tax carbon. Go figure! When the economy tanked they passed laws to spend a gazillion bucks on shovel-ready projects, and discovered that it takes permits from 40 agencies to get started, and then nobody knows how to operate a shovel anymore.

Some modest proposals: Put chain link fences around schoolyards (like we have around fairgrounds) and take a look at everyone coming through the gate to see if they have weapons. That would also fence the kids in, so you could do away with all the speed zones and traffic cameras. Then send the fence crews down to the southern border. Doesn't take a Berlin Wall; just chain link fence, dirt roads, and a few TV cameras. How about just telling coal exporters to build a dust free terminal and a few railroad overpasses instead of spending millions on protests, PR, and zoning laws? Turn the oil and gas drillers loose, as well as the pipeline builders, and fuel prices would drop, foreign oil would become superfluous, and the railroads' oil tanker crisis would go away.

Dithering is not confined to our prez and his minions in D.C. Voters here turned loose entrepreneurs to build marijuana farms and stores, and the opportunity was then dithered away mostly at the county level. (Full disclosure: I served on the advisory committee to try to expedite action in this county, but failed -- they're still dithering). And frustrations about not being allowed to work on our own dams, dikes, and riverbeds has filled more than a few editions of this newspaper.

Forget legislating -- go build something.

Howard Brawn

Puget Island