The LR (locker Room) boys were at it again, this past week. (Side note: if anybody reading this is from one of the two locker rooms I frequent, think before you get upset.) The arguments for and against whatever was being discussed (and the offered solutions) all percolated around a central theme: NIMBY, with a touch of GMGA.

NIMBY is “Not In My Back Yard”, and from past essays, GMGA is “Got Mine Go Away”, the process where once someone escapes poverty, or homelessness, or drug addiction, or has an abortion, the same person does little to help anyone else do the same, and even (See: Mark Robinson, 2024 candidate for NC Governor and Justice Thomas) wants to prevent anyone in the same position from getting the same help. Also known as “Ladder Pullers.

Every solution by our group was centered on removing the topical issue from our neighbor hoods, or from our minds. For example, homeless were collected and “removed” to some other locale. Criminals were put in jail for long stretches of time, assuming the time was long enough to rehabilitate them. There was another more vigilantistic (sic) solution, but it was offered more with frustration than actual intent.

Immigration is a perfect example of small, local conversations lacking the power to reach anything but a small, local solution. In a “Tales of Wells Fargo” western starring Dale Robertson, Wells Fargo Agent, he was dispatched to El Paso, Texas, to investigate gun-running by Mexican Bandits illegally crossing the Texas-Mexican border. Crates supposed to be full of shovels for Mexican farmers were really full of standard issue US Army carbines. That’s a TV show from 1957, dealing with southern border problems in 1870’s. THE 1870’s, capitalized for emphasis.

Crime in NY City? Especially post-Giuliani? Watch the 2002 Oscar Winning Movie, “The Gangs of New York” and wonder how much safer or unsafer (sic) NY City is today, compared to 1860. And in the 1960s when the FBI cracked down on NYC organized Crime families, the families moved upstate where the FBI captured many Family Members running through hay fields in Appalachin, NY.

Homelessness, and the poor, are not new to the American Problem Pile, either. But can you solve a national problem by busing the homeless from one state to another?

Health care. There are people who move from state to state to find affordable, decent health care. As a Financial Planner, I saw several foreign born clients leave America entirely, and move back to their original European countries for the free Long Term Care help, something NOT offered in America’s capitalistic Healthcare system. Boy, wait until the United State’s Long Term Care Crisis hits…

These issues need strong, central, deliberative and fair government to reach comprehensive, effective, and lasting solutions. The problems can only be solved from the top down, with the unicornish (sic) “everyone” participating. Even then…

As recently as 2013, The Gang Of Eight (a bi-partisan group of four Republican and 4 Democrat senators) designed a comprehensive bill to fix immigration. It passed the Senate with vote of 68-32 (54 D’s and 14 Rs voted yes) and was killed in a Republican House Committee, never even coming up for vote. Why?

No current politician, or Political Party, NONE, have the will to solve America’s problems. And if the politicians don’t care, why should we?

And what about world-wide problems like pollution and climate change? Can me and my locker room buddies solve those, too?

Yes, but the first step? STOP being Democrat or Republican. Now.