Tough Day for the Army: Stories

What I Am, What I Found, What I Did (Attachments Enclosed)

116 What I Am, What I Found, What I Did (Attachments Enclosed) It is important that certain things be cleared up. What I did was not a protest, and I am not nor ever have been affiliated with any antigovernment , citizen militia group. I am not an Islamist or anything like that. I’m not entirely sure what an Islamist is. What I did should not—and I cannot emphasize this enough—be compared to the tragedy at Oklahoma City or, God forbid, the attacks on 9/11. I am not a gun-and-explosive-toting madman seeking to overthrow Western civilization. What I am is an economist. I have a B.A. from Rice and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago . My studies surrounding what I did were sound in concept and executed with the utmost thoroughness, as befits my background and experience. I have been cataloguing the economic health of Lake Charles, Louisiana, for close to eleven years now, which is to say I did what I did only after much difficult deliberation. Economics is a science , and it was with this in mind that I finally decided to do what I did. If there were another way to achieve the desired result, I would have found it. But there was no other way; the numbers simply don’t lie. And while a few casualties were necessary for the ultimate success of the project, I deeply regret there were so many. Six hundred forty-two people injured is a most unfortunate number , but I think it’s important to remember—now that the forensic report on Mr. James T. May indicates that he had suffered a fatal myocardial infarction prior to the first explosion—that my actions 117 resulted in no deaths. I also maintain that many of these injuries could have been avoided if the crew did not panic. Let’s face it, the boat was sinking very, very slowly. Because of the crew’s slipshod service , I have drafted a letter to Congress (Attachment 1), urging them to examine the training programs, if indeed there are any in place for these people. Yes, their primary jobs are to deal blackjack and schlep watered-down drinks to customers flushing their final pennies down a bottomless well of stupidity, but let’s remember, this is all happening upon a ship in navigable waters. Rather than training their attention on the engine of capitalism, our financial services industry, perhaps our government regulators should look this-a-ways. In addition , contrary to published reports, my actions were not predicated on a grudge against Mr. Merv Griffin or his legacy. I did, in fact, very much enjoy his television show when it was a daytime staple. And while I am a Christian and believe gambling to be a sin, I am also a pragmatist; therefore I am the first to acknowledge the beneficial effect that Mr. Merv Griffin and his consortium have had on the greater Lake Charles area with the introduction of their riverboat casinos. Bringing gambling to Lake Charles lowered unemployment, increased the tax base, raised the number of housing starts, and stimulated the regeneration of a downtown nearly destroyed by the invasion of the Walmart out on Highway 14 (Attachments 2–5. Also, see my article in the June issue of the Journal of Business and Economics, “Here Comes Walmart, There Goes the Neighborhood”). However, as has been well established, we are in the midst of a historically bad economic downturn, and the numbers make it clear that we are in dire need of additional economic stimulus in order to maintain a viable and at least semi-prosperous community (Attachment 6). If you’ll pardon the metaphor, in the current competition for the discretionary dollar, Lake Charles is armed with a slingshot in an automatic-weapons world. As a staunch believer that free markets make free people, I felt it was both impractical and immoral to turn to government to bail us 118 out. If loving Ayn Rand is wrong, I don’t want to be right, and so I resolved to go Galt on behalf of the Interstate 10 corridor between Vinton and Lafayette. The key to meeting the challenges of a twenty-first-century economy was to transition Lake Charles from a semi-failed postindustrial city known for its chemical processing plants into a tourist paradise. After some initial investigations, it became...