Impeach Obama

All right, all right. I know I’ve spent the past six months urging friends and frequently blogging that he’s going to be the greatest thing since sliced bread (whole wheat, to be perfectly PC: pigmentally correct).

I know I’ve said his historic election will change the world. And, yes, I know he’s not even president yet.

But, really, we need to impeach Barack Obama anyway.

We need to impeach him because he’s said that his first official act to get the economy moving will, in fact, be an impediment to real progress: mine and yours.

It’s the dreaded infrastructure improvement project. You know what that means: “Left Lane Closed 1,500-feet.” “Merge Right.” “Construction Ahead. Delays Likely.”

Here in Pennsylvania, Gov. Ed Rendell said 319 highway and bridge projects worth $1.03 billion could be underway within 180 days of the announcement. Guaranteed, nearly every one of them will be instigated between me and where I want to go.

It also means savvy investors right now are starting to load up on companies that produce those orange traffic cones that’ll soon be lined up from here to the horizon like so many highway luminary.

If it came down to choosing between crumbling infrastructure and traffic delays, I’ll take the declining highways over the increased blood pressure.

It’s still happening around Pittsburgh where a year’s long improvement project has choked off access to the city’s Squirrel Hill tunnel, the eastern gateway to the Steel City I love to visit. All it’s done has subtracted about 20 hours of my productive and leisure time and substituted it with time spent explaining through clenched teeth to my daughter why some words I tell her to never say are okay for me to shout when traffic comes to a standstill.

The idea is that the $1.03 billion spent on these projects will make its way into the pockets of these burly construction workers who will turn around and spend the money to stimulate the economy.

But these guys aren’t dummies. They’ll simply do what they do every six years or so. They’ll use deliberately inferior products that’ll rapidly and unreasonably decay so they can be rehired in about 2015 to go through the whole tedious process all over again. It’s a rigged system.

It would be like me getting paid by cheating you, the reader, simply by repeating the same line twice.

It would be like me getting paid by cheating you, the reader, simply by repeating the same line twice.

So I propose we ditch the infrastructure improvements and just give a huge chunk of the dough straight to the construction workers. They’ll spend the loot on essentials like pretzels, domestic beer, scatch-off lottery tickets and shiny new Steeler gear in anticipation of another great playoff run. They’ll vacation in places like Florida, Myrtle Beach and other resort destinations that could use a jolt of fresh dollars. That way if we do eventually have to stare at their exposed backsides leaning idly over their shovels at least they’ll all have nice tans.

Then take a quarter of the funding and use it to develop a durable road surface that won’t break down, melts snow on contact, is self-illuminating, and deters deer and other gentle woodland creatures from wandering into the path of my already dented fenders. That way we could save billions on snow removal, lighting and future road and vehicle repairs.

Take whatever’s left and someone, please, figure out a way that freelance writers and bloggers like me can get rich on giving away this kind of genius for free.

Then I can devote my time to helping elect a candidate who knows a thing or two about real progress.