I have been thinking about what we can expect if our city representative who has reached her term limit is successful and gets elected to the El Paso Independent School District board.  Then The El Paso Times endorsed her candidacy  saying she “… repeatedly demonstrates her desire to get into the weeds …”.

Why anyone would want to run when the Texas Education Commissioner has announced that his own group of managers will manage the district not the board members that the public elects is beyond me.  Let’s say she does get elected and her board gets control back.

This scenario obviously is fictional, it has not happened.  For the sake of readability let’s call her Ms. Aviary:

Ms. Aviary reports breathlessly to her school board that the National Tumbleweed Contest does not have a venue anymore.  It is true that no other city wants to host the event but this gives El Paso a once in a lifetime opportunity to change the quality of life of her citizens.

We need a major league site where tumbleweed growers can come and show us what they can do.  We also need a sponsor.

We don’t have much time.  We will need a manager who will have the authority to bulldoze all obstacles and ignore everyone who objects.  Competitive bidding and transparency will take too much time.  She will need to have a lot of power and an important name.  Ms. Aviary  suggests Tumble Weed Institutional  Tyrant Comprehensive Head (TWITCH).

Luck is with us though.  The selfless businessmen that own the Border Irrigation Group (BIG) that supplies sprinkler systems to growers and the Southwest Tumbleweed Unified Feeding Facility (STUFF) that makes specialized fertilizer for tumbleweeds have offered to buy the sponsorship of the National Tumbleweed Contest and bring it to El Paso.  The only problem is that they need a venue now.  Tumbleweed growing must occur before the summer.  You know what happens to them once they die.

We are so fortunate.  How could these two firms possibly benefit other than by having the joy of seeing El Paso get itself teary eyed?

We must act now.  Where can we find the venue?

Ms. Aviary has the answer.  Boy are we lucky to have her representing us!  She tells us that there is no time to study the market and buy up property.  We must use something we already have.  Austin High School!  That is the perfect venue.  Yes it is a little small, but we could engineer the planting to be more intimate.  Maybe we could graft some plants, we certainly know a lot about graft here in El Paso.   If need be we could cut a deal with the railroad to get the event  on track.

What about the children, you ask?  Once again Ms. Aviary has a plan.  Move the children.  We will have to be flexible.  She tells us that we have all of those yellow school buses that are only used at the beginning and end of the school day.  What we can do is to put one classroom in each school bus.  Where will we park the buses?  Simple again, don’t park them — drive them around town as the teacher conducts the class.

What about gym class and band and orchestra where being in a moving bus might be dangerous?  That’s where the railroad comes in, Ms. Aviary tells us.  We can rent surplus box cars and place them in those unused bicycle lanes all around town.  We will have to pay the price though, surplus box car renting is expensive if you do it this way.

How will we pay for this?  Well first, Ms. Aviary says, it won’t cost much at all.  We already own the campus and the buses so it should only cost about 50 cents to build the venue and about 30 cents to move those kids around.

As luck would have it we can use our powers to get someone else to pay a large part of the 50 cents so that it does not have to come out of our pockets.  We can charge the allergists in town a fee based on the number of cases they treat.  The tumbleweeds will help drive up revenue.  She thought about taxing antihistamines but wanted something progressive.

The El Paso Times  could be a problem though.  What we need to do is to review their transcripts and make them all “A” students retroactively.  They still won’t know how to think independently, ask thoughtful questions, or do much other than print what we tell them to,  but at least they won’t be representing the citizens.

The times interviews Ms. Aviary  and prints this quotation from her. “I’m brilliant and am happy to show those ignorant voters and crazy taxpayers how to improve their lives, it’s nothing to sneeze at really.”

Just wait and see.

Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty

Cato