The devious, manipulative, beautiful, and majestic Athena has directed Rhymer Enterprises to make available $1 billion for the improvement of life in a single city to be determined later. No, I do not know why the Queen of Olympus has decided to do this; nor do I care. One does not ask such questions, and a thousand million simileons is but a drop in the bucket from our coffers anyway.
Anyway, the funds have been prepared. I’d see to the matter myself if I weren’t so lazy, and as this is a non-evil project none of the RhE staff are qualified. So I have decided to subcontract the matter to a Doper. You’ll be paid a handsome salary for your work, of course, but you may not use the billion to enrich yourself or your family/friends/mistress. That would be stealing from Athena, which is punishable by fates far, far worse than death, and the no-hitting-girls rule does not apply.
But enough dithering. Tell me what city you’d choose to help out (it can be your own or any non-Welsh city), and how you’d use the money to make llife better for its people.
I’m not sure how far a billion dollars goes, anymore…
Does it have to be confined to the political limits of a single city? I’d develop some kind of regional mass/rapid transit system. Apart from buses inside the Kansas City limits, mass transit is next to nonexistent.
On many days I’d gladly trade my 30 minute drive for an hour bus or train ride, given the option.
Portland, Oregon-Guarded public bathroom/shower facilities located where they are most needed, and a large grant to reopen the 24 Hour Church Of Elvis.
Has Portland a large homeless population? Is that the best way to help them?
Athena would also like you to explain why Her funds should go to furthering the worship of a dead mortal, when even She Herself is not interested in being worshipped by the masses.
On Pallas’s behalf I am going to put the kibosh on the CoE bit. You may however take $5000 to track down the god!damn!idiot!Wikipedia “editor” who thought it would be useful to anyone to put the god!damn!latitude and longitude of the place in the article and slap the piss out of them.
Okay, I’ll go with the whole state of Rhode Island if I can (it’s not as big or has the population of some cities). I’ll start by opening a shoe factory to put people to work. I’ll have a huge ‘Made in the US of A’ marketing campaign which bluntly calls competing shoe companies un-American for outsourcing their products. After that I’ll start a program to provide state benefits for wounded veterans and a campaign to attract them to our state to spend their government benefits here, and promote services and industry in the private sector to assist them. I’ll start training programs for people lacking useful employment skills, something rapid and efficient that teaches people how to dress properly, talk properly, show up to work on time. I’ll do something to unify our 27 small school districts into a few competing districts that are rewarded based on performance. After that if there’s enough money left I’ll build up a large arsenal of water balloons and catapults so we can declare war on Connecticut.
I’d use the money for the benefit of my own city - Washington, DC. Specifically, I’d use it to fund a vigorous campaign for DC Statehood - in California, New York, and other selected areas that tend to elect Democratic Senators and Congresscritters. DC’s lack of autonomy and voting representation in Congress harms us in all sorts of ways - our democratically elected government must submit laws to Congress for approval, our voice in national policy is distinctly muted, we have no role in Senate confirmation of judges or cabinet members, etc. There are six hundred thousand Americans living in the capital of the American republic - and we are not free.
Thing is, a lot of Americans just never think of DC this way. They tend to assume most people here are just transients (not so) and/or government drones (again, not so). DC Statehood is one of those problems that would probably benefit a lot from having some money thrown at the problem, simply for the sake of publicity and (though I hate the phrase) “awareness.”
Why focus the campaign outside DC? Because lobbying inside DC for DC statehood is pointless - there are very smart people who have been trying that for decades, with little to show for it. And the reason isn’t hard to fathom - members of Congress aren’t accountable to DC residents, so their desire for autonomy/statehood just isn’t that much of a priority, even for CongressCritters who might be sympathetic in principle. What we need is for voters in California and New York and Massachusetts, etc to start saying that they care about this issue - then, we might see movement.
So, that’s the plan. Can I have control of those billion dollars now?
msmith, it’d probably be a lot longer than ten years. The rest of the money is going to be earning interest meanwhile.
Mr. Excellent, you’re going to have to campaign in a lot more places than New York and California to get a constitutional amendment passed, which would be required for DC statehood.
As for myself, I’ll answer for the metropolis of Cleveland, rather than the suburb of Lakewood where I actually live. What the city needs most is a complete overhaul of the public school system, which right now is completely dysfunctional. Unfortunately, I’m really not sure how to solve the problem, but with a gigabuck to spend, I could probably get some really smart minds working on that to start with.
I use the <pinky to edge of mouth> One Meeeeeelllion dollars to create a Nannystater Exclusion Barrier Field to keep out residents of the NannyStates, I.E. massachusets, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Illinois, and California
The NSEBF folds space/time so that when a Nannystate vehicle attempts to pass through it, the vehicle is warped back to their home state
No more Nannystaters or their insipid nanny-law mindset
Other people have to present their plans, man. The money may have come from RhE’s coffers but this is still a Pallas project, and thus both rationality and fairness are being applied.
Yes. You have to get 3/4th of the states to agree, if I recall aright, and then 2/3 +1 of Congress.
Would you have a problem with starting four extremely good private schools (one pre-school, one elementary, one middle, and one high) whose students are all poor kids, rather than throwing money at the public schools?
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