President Obama has a problem. He’s promised to close the detainee facility at Guantanamo, Cuba, but is finding it hard to find a place to put them. States all over the union are saying not in my backyard.
California has a problem. It needs federal loan guarantees for its short-term cash flow borrowing. But President Obama and members of Congress are saying – at least right now – that such assistance isn’t forthcoming. The other 49 states, after all, don’t want to bail out California.
Are these two completely unrelated problems?
Or a match made in heaven?
Here’s the deal, modestly proposed: President Obama, we’ll solve your problem if you’ll solve ours.
California should agree to have the Guantanamo folks housed within our state borders. Yes, there’s been some howling in other parts of the country – the sort of red state places that Sarah Palin thinks of as real America — about how dangerous it would be to take in the terrorists. Bunch of wimps.
The terrorists are human beings—not X-men or Hannibal Lechter or movie superheroes. They’re not going to melt the prison walls and overrun whatever town they end up in. We Californians are real Americans – not paper patriots or talk-show toughies – who know how to handle bad guys. The Guantanamo folks should be in a federal facility here, of course — for their own safety. I doubt they could survive our state prisons.
In return, the Treasury should guarantee our short-term loans, and the other 49 states should go along, since we’re protecting them from the terrorist onslaught they find so frightening. California will even pay a fee for the guarantees.
This is a win-win. Unless the populist anger overcomes reason (a common problem these days), or unless our own members of Congress (who don’t want detainees or loan guarantees) get in the way. One other item that California should ask for in this deal: a moratorium on denouncing our state for its irresponsibility.