Freeway Association

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One of the advantages of driving around Los Angeles County and getting stuck in traffic is that there’s time for contemplation and occasional inspiration. Inspiration hit last week while I was crawling down a freeway and listening to Marketplace on the radio. They were talking about a new labor shortage – in the career field of Border Patrol agent.

“Ah, ha!” I thought. The solution is so obvious. Where are there thousands of readily available job-seekers?

At the borders trying to get into the country. All we have to do is hire them to patrol the border.

We get the agents we need and turn potentially undocumented aliens into productive members of American society who no longer have to deal with illegal immigrants because they’re now legal.

And those new agents, while doing their jobs, can recruit even more agents as they approach the border. Soon we’ll have an enormous human shield (aka the Red Rover Line) cheaper than a wall protecting our country from no one while longtime American citizens are free to pursue careers in farming and hospitality.

This is the kind of clogged-freeway thinking that can be applied to many of our toughest problems.

Take the inner cities. The so-called president has offered to “send in the feds” to stop crime and violence, but he hasn’t done it and there may not be enough feds to go around.

So why not recruit people in the inner cities? They know their communities and they need jobs. Many of them already have guns – their God-given Second Amendment right – and uniforms, so the cost of employment goes down.

And you get new hires by arresting them.

Employment up. Crime down.

Russian hacking and press access to government?

Do I need to explain how one helps the other? We can improve relations with our former Cold War foes by encouraging their hobby while learning valuable lessons about our own institutions.

Consider bathroom controversies and the construction industry. Individual bathrooms for everyone in public buildings can do wonders for the economy.

Sometimes two problems can’t solve each other, but if you bring in a third, there’s hope.

For instance, federal budget deficit reduction/tax cuts for the needy rich and massive spending on infrastructure. That may seem hopeless until you consider making Mexico pay for them.

Or at least Mexicans. If we charged for admission to the country, that deficit would be gone in an instant.

We could take it out of the pay of Border Patrol agents.

All things become clear when you’re stuck in traffic.

Inexplicability. My favorite kinds of lawsuits are the ones that raise more questions than they answer and make you wonder why anyone would file such a thing.

I have two recent examples from complaints in Los Angeles Superior Court.

The first is a suit filed by a local law firm which shall go nameless here because they probably should be embarrassed.

It sued a phone company for lost business during a six-day outage in which “attorneys were unable to access case documents, records, and files.”

Questions:

You didn’t have anything backed up?

You never heard of the cloud?

No lawyer thought of working at home or heading over to Starbucks with a laptop?

This sounds to me like a “dog ate my homework” excuse. Those guys just wanted a week off.

The other suit raises the age-old question: How do you defame a strip club?

I don’t have the answer even after reading a defamation complaint filed on behalf of the owner of a gentlemen’s club called Ace of Diamonds.

Check out the club’s Facebook page to see how classy this joint is.

Ace of Diamonds allegedly was defamed by Amber Levonchuck, aka Amber Rose, who, in the suit, is described as “a model, actress, rapper and fashion designer, according to her Wikipedia page” and has been paid to host events at the club.

While accepting an award at the All Def Movie Awards, she said: “Do you all know Ace of Diamonds? Well, I bought it.”

That’s it.

This was “false and slanderous” and “severely damaged plaintiff’s reputation.” The requested damages are in excess of $1 million.

Questions:

Do you care who owns your local strip club?

Are you more or less likely to patronize a strip club if it’s owned by a celebrity?

Is it possible that people could think there might be less stripping if a celebrity owns your club and that would hurt business?

Reputations are precious and tricky things.

Passing freeway traffic thought. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we found out that all those White House leaks were coming from the Russians?

After all, they do seem to have contacts ...

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