PBS featured a show on the Blue Ridge Parkway last night.  The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) film showed a remarkable performance of men who needed a job.  And I was unaware of the nifty bargain between a North Carolina politician and FDR  that wound with Tar Heels gaining both the lions share of the tourism yielded, and social security.

We have a current similar situation.  Illegal Immigration.  And a wall that won’t happen is all that we have as a solution.    And a common knowledge that something has to be done that honors the law of the land.

The CCC was all about labor.  Is there labor now capable of solving the border problem?

Sources?  How about the military, both active and retired.  Are there not those who could provide the skills needed such as helicopter pilots, officers who need arms and policing skills, those who have injuries yet can  and want to help.  Are we not already paying many of these heroes.   How about a certain kind of prisoner, a trustee-like person who would serve rather than sit.   How about a program for illegals  themselves.  We may be able have them serve a time period of volunteer aid  that creates a legal pathway for them.

Is there data that could make this prediction:   Surely significantly trained personnel would be more mobil than a wall.  Technology and personnel could surely cut the number crossing illegally.   What would a cost analogy of using the above sources (and others) predict, compared to the cost of construction and management of the wall and what it would accomplish.

“…all a fourteen foot wall does is create a market for an eighteen foot ladder.”

PS—Various forms of the legalization of marijuana are growing.  Will this be worse that the ungodly number of young people who are in jail for minor pot offenses.  Or those who have been branded evil for a little weed?   And even more to the above issue,  wouldn’t this shift the tons of money from the drug cartels who force their citizens to risk flight, to taxation accrued in our own country?

We are going to have drugs.  What could be worse than what we have?

Anyone?  Bueller?