The suggestion box for Uncle Sam

As the Gulf States trudge the long road to recovery, pundits across the ideological spectrum are beginning to weigh in with advice on how to speed that along. Some of that advice seems farcical to me, but it's a good conversation to start having.

I'm going to post other people's suggestions here as a wee bit of public service, together with an occasional editorial comment. Hugh Hewitt and Michael Savage, two very different kinds of conservatives, lead the parade. You could find their suggestions on their own web sites, but reading them here at the Paragraph Farm saves you time. Hewitt is verbose even when he doesn't need to be, and the Savage web site is a poorly-designed melange of scrolling headlines and forgettable images that load slowly for people not on broadband connections.

Hewitt (who also has thoughts in the Weekly Standard):

• Define the recovery region geographically.
• Grant a one-year exemption from all taxes on the income generated from selling goods manufactured in that region by new plants that employ at least 100 locals (why 100 as a magic number if most small businesses have fewer employees, Hugh? And why "new plants" alone, assuming that some old plants are still usable?).
• Same as above, but sweetened for bigger investments, i.e., a year of tax exemption for every 100 manufacturing jobs created in the recovery region. (Again with the bias toward huge? And why give labor unions that kind of incentive?) .
• Incentivize the start of manufacturing in the region before 2007. (Service and tech jobs don't count?).
• Establish a Center for the Study of Mass Casualty Events at Tulane University in New Orleans.
• Build a Museum of the Civil War on or near Mobile Bay, Alabama, by April 12, 2011. (Whatcha gonna do for the people who think even the name is wrong, because the complex should be called 'The Museum of the War of Northern Aggression"? And what would the museum do that Ken Burns, Shelby Foote, Jeff Schaara, and thousands of modern day re-enactors don't already do? This sounds like the kind of tone-deaf boondoggle that even old hands at pork requisition like Senator Robert "Kleagle" Byrd would chuckle about).
• Announce a federal plan for evacuees (You really think the states aren't up to this by themselves?).

Savage:

• Rescind the $15 billion in aid already promised to Africa. (Won't happen and would hurt us if it did).
• Redirect the $15 to $30 billion now being used to support the medical and educational needs of illegal aliens (Good idea, but the money is so widely disbursed that it might be tough to find).
• Mine low-sulfur coal.
• House displaced people in military bases now scheduled to be closed.
• Impose price controls on gasoline for 90 days (This backfired on Nixon and would backfire on Bush: Savage ought to consult the likes of Thomas Sowell on economics, or study Hawaii's experiment with price controls, before suggesting it go country-wide).

Paleolibertarian Lew Rockwell:

• Privatize levees and pumps and disaster management (not a suggestion for the feds, except that they should endorse the idea as penance for their own shortcomings).
• Rethink the old bromide about how infrastructure is too important to be left to the vagaries of markets.

Air America radio host Ed Schultz:

• Adopt a family of Hurricane Katrina (not a suggestion for the feds, except that they should encourage it).

My own two cents, apart from what's already been suggested:

• Take the "grocery receipts for local schools" program and go national with it between now and Christmas, using the money in the Gulf Coast region.
• Ask the American Society of Civil Engineers and like-minded professional organizations, together with engineering schools at various universities, to sponsor design contests for improving levees and pumps (We've known how to build them for years, but how about improvements in cost effectiveness for equipment built to withstand Category 5 winds? Self-repairing levees? Nanobots?). Make the prize money significant. Stuff like that would be as practical as so-called "table top" or cold fusion, and while not as revolutionary as finding a cheap substitute for fossil fuels, it would also keep contest winners from getting the hairy eyeball from oil company executives (a little satire there, unless you think Standard Oil really has a "black ops" department)
• Bring back WW2 -style Civil Defense, complete with block wardens and locally (not federally) supervised drills.
• Relax the union rules in the skilled trades throughout the Gulf States, so that more people become apprentice contractors, electricians, and carpenters without already having a brother-in-law in the field.
• Civilian Conservation Corps, Part Two: This Time We Have Cell Phones and Wi-Fi to go with the Trucks and the Pickaxes. But please, please, don't stick us under Homeland Security or anything run by Norman Mineta. We kind of like the Department of the Interior, though. That Gale Norton's got it going on.
• Retrain a (volunteer) bunch of lawyers to become experts at hazardous waste disposal.
• Bring on the Dutch consultants. The Netherlands is below sea level and hasn't had a disaster of this magnitude in more than 50 years.

UPDATE: The ever-quotable Amy Ridenour of The National Center weighs in from a libertarian perspective (thanks, Amy!). Among the suggestions of hers that I like very much are "no plea bargains" for anyone convicted of shooting at rescue workers or otherwise impeding rescue operations, amd "if you have morals, brains, and impulse control, buy a gun." Her scorn for placing a center for the study of mass casualty events in New Orleans is contagious, and she also got me to reconsider the Conservation Corps comeback idea-- that task is better addressed by organizations like Habitat for Humanity.

Your thoughts ? (I'm not an A-list blogger, but this ought to be good for at least half a dozen comments)