Thursday, May 4, 2017

The Final Solution: Let It Be




“Trump administration memo calls for ending Michele Obama’sgirl’s education program,” runs the CNN headline (CNN, 5/1/17). You may scratch your head. It’s not NAFTA, the Paris Environmental Accords, the tax code or certainly the Affordable Care Act, but it’s like a sadistic scene from a Tarrantino movie say, Reservoir Dogs--which is, come to think of it, one way to "drain the swamp." In his first l00 days Trump has signed more executive orders than any president since Truman. Most recently he ordered a review of national monuments protected under the Antiquities Act. Naturally the one pervasive idea in this Niagara Falls of undoing ("Trump Discards Obama Legacy, One Rule at a Time," NYT, 5/1/17), is that less government is better than more. However, instead of trying to resist Mr. Trump perhaps it’s useful to encourage these sorties. Wouldn’t that be the best way to find out if his ideas really work? What about the FAA? Surely that’s an agency laden down with too many complicated rules. If planes could come and go as they pleased without having to worry about air traffic controllers, there’d be less delays. Why not apply the idea of less government regulation to aviation. Or take the building industry, something the president may know a little something about. Surely there would be more construction if there were less rules on the books. "Pakistan Lahore Factory Collapse: Hopes dim for survivors,"BBC, 11/5/15) is a sample of the kind of headlines that are sorely missing here in the states. And what about all the doctors who are mired in red tape. Certainly, Tom Price, our newly minted Secretary of Health and Human Services would have something to say about that. Under more liberal licensing requirements you could go to a lay dentist who would perform a tooth extraction in the way that was done by the original signers of the declaration of independence, by tying one end of a string around the infected tooth and the other around the knob of nearby door. "Let it Be," sang the Beatles.

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