Electing Drones on the Boulevard

Today I’m going to tell you what to think about drone regulation, the pestilence of signs on the Boulevard, and the remarkable choices made by the national electorate on Tuesday. A classic tale of the good, the bad, and the ugly. You will all then go back to thinking exactly what you did before I did everything I could to rewire your brains, and I thank you for not throwing this demotivating truth in my face.

The good: Kudos to the City of Key West legal eagles for stopping our well-meaning city commission from giving the aerial drone operators more rights than they are due under federal law. Our always well-meaning Jimmy Weekley was captivated by the charming Head Droner in town, and tried to “regulate” him into being allowed to fly where the FAA says “No!”

Apparently someone in the city did call the fellow I spoke with there, whose phone number I sent around.  And while no one gives a damn what I think, they collectively listened to The Man at the FAA. Smart choice. No more drones crashing into crowds while the charming drone operator keeps it whizzing madly, trying to escape and damn the injuries.

The ugly: A tiny two-finger clap for FDOT agreeing to remove 19 of the 250 signs irritating everyone who drives the Boulevard with his eyes open. This was reported in the daily as 46 signs, which is what the project manager said. Far be it from the corporate daily to actually investigate anything when a official, any official, gives then a truth from on high. Taking away 19 leaves it only  92% as ugly.

Cynthia and I did some brilliant research, taking 20 minutes to drive back and forth with a pencil and paper. (Dang, if the darn city commission had passed Jimmy’s law, we could have sent our drone to do it.) We counted only 12 signs anybody needs to read, by European standards.

Why do we have so many more signs than they have in civilized countries? I first noticed this when watching the Tour de France. Few signs and underground utilities. More beauty, less ugly. Two reasons: Europeans actually care about beauty, whereas we invented the suburban “Miracle Mile” and thought it was a good thing. Second, the inept sign makers didn’t do what ours successfully did: get themselves on the commissions that decide what is a sign necessary for National Security, oops, for “safety.”

When you are making and selling signs for a living, you think every sign is vitally necessary for the safety of the people. The most important task for the industry is then to pack the “technical research” panels that decide what signs need to be posted on our roads. This they have done. Just  as engineers dictate how much engineering needs to be done, and surgeons tell us if we need surgery, and lawyers write laws dictating how much law needs to be done, etc.

Not counted were the painted arrows on the center lane. Bizarrely, from Kennedy to the Marriott Beachside there are 14 arrows gaily directing us to turn left as we are leaving the island and drive into the Gulf of Mexico. The ONLY reason for these paintings is that the Painting Commission is fully comprised of technical experts who sell paint and painting contractors to our government. My tax dollars paid for these perfectly applied and ultra-high-quality small monuments to stupidity.

I don’t know if I should believe this, because it was printed in the same paper that said there were 46, not 250 signs, but if moving “the left-turn arrow at the entrance to Key West” means that the hilarious large overhead turn light that was, following a dunderheaded policy, placed about forty feet east of where approaching traffic could see it, that would be a very good thing. Full-handed applause.

Also, mucho thanks to the Chamber of Commerce for getting the right-turn lane from South Roosevelt onto Flagler. This is a major surprise, the Chamber helping out at all on the Boulevard, because they were totally useless in getting the one-way changed to two-way. Businesses were baffled that their paid representatives fiddled while they burned. Maybe the Chamber’s had a change of leadership.

The bad: The national election. Many well-to-do conservatives got exactly what they want, and worked hard for. I congratulate them. They won. But non-conservative majorities favor a higher minimum wage, Social Security, Medicare, medical marijuana, marriage equality, and background checks for guns. But they voted for congressmen who are against all of these, even in states where voters come out to vote two-to-one in favor of the minimum wage.

Maybe these 99%-ers actually like the mega-bank bailouts.  Did you know, right now the lucky fellows who gave us the Great Recession, and  who we rescued with hundreds of billions of dollars, are now sitting on $2.7 trillion dollars they should be loaning to businesses and prospective home buyers, but instead are just using to buy their own stock and U.S treasuries? The electorate must love these bankers, because they voted for the candidates well paid for by the banker class to protect the banker class, candidates against any minimum wage at all, Social Security, Medicare, pot, gay marriage, and restrictions on home tactical nukes.

I think I have figured out what’s in it for the non-conservative voters who stayed home, or voted for candidates proudly against everything these voters want. It is the sense of superiority they can feel by just being pissed off at complicated stuff, and showing how mad they are by voting for the angriest candidates on the ballot. I know my internet trolls revel in these kinds of emotions. And in a way, it is more psychologically functional to feel angry and superior than humbly obeisant.

But maybe it was indeed all Obama’s fault. I have found this at the same time to be perversely inexplicable, while also maybe true for the wrong reasons. Let me explain. Obama has been reviled more than Clinton and Bush, without having a Lewinsky or Iraq war on his resume. He won the Noble Prize. He caught Bin laden. He got a half-dozen of my friends health care, and millions around the country. He got us out of the Great Recession against the determined efforts of the opposition.

Worst of all, he did everything he could to work with his opponents. When he had super-majorities in the House and Senate and could have passed anything he wanted, he relentlessly tried to compromise. His promise was to change the way Washington worked, and it cost him dearly. To the end, he has done what his tragically wrong inner circle of advisers has counseled, trying to mollify his opponents.

Is this a minority thing? Is the heritage of being an abused minority mean mollification is an instinct? Obama is bombing Syria. He extended the Afghanistan war a worse than useless four years. He put off immigration reform.

I think none of his respecting the desires of his opposition earned him a single vote. People who hate Obama do so viscerally. What he does makes no difference. I think if he’d given a major address echoing Romney in his disdain for, say, the “47 percent of voters who are gun nuts or suck-ups to the rich” he wouldn’t have lost a single Republican vote that was not already against him.

And here is the kicker. Yes, the Republican base was motivated. While I think the majority who favor majority causes listed above stayed home because they are stupid and lazy, I know there are many Democrats who were profoundly disappointed by the very actions Obama took in a vain and losing effort to not piss off people who were already terminally pissed off.

He keeps doing war. He has done nothing for immigration reform, being instead the family-breaker-in-chief. We send drones to kill families and spy on ourselves like the Stasi. Worst of all, from this writer’s point of view, is his near-Putinesque war on whistleblowers and the investigative press in this country, the land of the Pentagon Papers and Watergate.

Of course, everything he did would have been done in spades by McCain and Romney—except probably the war on Snowden and the press, where Eric Holder made me long for the integrity of George W.’s Attorney General Ashcroft. But he was not elected to be less bad. He was elected to stand up for the people who elected him. He instead did his level best to accommodate the people who didn’t.

Our country has learned a terrible lesson. The ethos of the uncompromising Tea Party has utterly demolished that of the now-forgotten, religiously nonpartisan Occupy movement. If the way Washington works is changing at all, it is changing in the opposite direction from what our electorate says it wants, but votes against.

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