"Reality Bites"

Donald Trump told us he was going to rid us of all the pesky and illegitimate illegal aliens.  "Eleven million" of them, he estimated.  Since Trump has never held any elected office, and has no government experience of any kind, it wasn't clear whence he got his figure.  But that's what he told everyone.  And for whatever were their reasons, they believed him.  So they elected him President of the United States, because he said he was going to correct all the ills he and his supporters felt sure there must be.  Even though none of them had any reason to know.  And many Republicans who did have a reason to know were very reluctant, if not downright refusing, to back him.

Yesterday-- and who could possibly know why-- Trump told us he was going to rid us of "two to three million" illegal aliens.  And he specified that the aliens he would deal with were the criminals, whom we would apprehend, and we'd either incarcerate them, or deport them.

I have no idea whence Trump got his "11 million" number, or why he decided it was somehow really "two to three million," but when the bluster settled, he found himself where we already are: if someone commits a crime, and is caught, and is an illegal alien, they either get incarcerated or deported.  That is precisely, in detail, what we already do.  It's unclear whether Trump would have been elected, if he had said it's all working fine, and he wouldn't change a thing: if he had said there is a process, and that process has due constraints and requirements, and he couldn't properly or legally do things any differently.

We just elected a new Commission.  The Commission is new importantly because there is a new majority.  Not only are they numerically a majority, but they ran as a group or a slate, and they have declared unity.  And they've told us exactly what Donald Trump told us, and based on the same thing.  They've told us the system is terrible, and the Commissioners are terrible, and no one has had the imagination or assertiveness they have to straighten it all out, and they know all this because they have overactive fantasy lives.  Just like Donald Trump and his supporters do.  Trump's platform is deconstructing already.  I wonder when our new Commissioners' will.

I've been hearing about two targets at which our new Commission will reportedly take aim.  One is the recreation function of the Village, and the other is the Police department.  And as best I can tell, trying to read between lines, since none of the new Commissioners has been at all specific (with one exception), this is about reining in expenses.

I don't know what the asserted issue about recreation will be.  We aren't told.  We've been Trumped: we're just told cuts will be made, with no examples given as to what kinds of cuts these might be.  Very, very recently, there has been outcry about the poor surfacing of the tot lot.  BP residents-- most certainly those with tots-- have been agitating for a surface that is cleaner, easier to keep clean, and less likely to feature used hypodermic needles and animal excrement, for example.  One alternative we considered was rubber surfacing made just for this kind of purpose.  And it's not cheap.  So let's assume that at the very least, the new Commission will ignore an upgrade like this.  So what are they going to tell their neighbors who want better from us?  Tough luck, we're more interested in saving pennies, and cutting corners?  Oh, that'll be a winner.  And even if they don't upgrade the surface of the tot lot, that leaves us with no savings.  It's just avoiding a new expense.  So what would they like to cut?  Don't expect me to tell you.  I'm wondering myself.  They, like Donald Trump, managed to get themselves elected on the strength of meaningless slogans and platitudes, and absolutely no relevant experience, but at some point, they're going to have to do something.  And will have to be based on something.  They'll have to get real.

And what do they think they're going to do to reduce the police budget?  The police budget in BP, as is true essentially everywhere, is about half of the overall budget.  The fact that it's half of our budget is not a sign of anything amiss.   And it isn't more than that, because we underpay our police officers, and we provide for them as little as possible.  If we're not the lowest in the County, we're very near it.  We don't provide adequate training opportunities, because we can't afford to, we're at pains to provide adequate equipment, and we rely on hand-me-down cruisers, because we can't afford a fleet of new cars.  And much of what we do provide for our officers (which means for ourselves, since they're here for the one and only reason to serve and protect us) is according to our contract with them.  So we can't change it until the contract comes up for renewal.  And when it does, and we try to tell our officers, whom we underpay, that we would like to take from them their take-home cruisers (that's the one exception), which are part of the reason, or the compensation, or the excuse, that they agree to work for less than anyone else, how do we imagine they will react?  Maybe they'll tell us we're so magically wonderful to work for that they'd stay here even if we didn't pay them anything, and they had to lease their cars from us.  Or maybe not.

It'll be interesting to watch Donald Trump, and our new Commission, deconstruct, as they have to face reality.  We'll see how they adjust when their fantasies get replaced by real issues and real people and real problems.

Please come to Commission meetings.  If you don't want to participate, at least bear witness.