I have to admit that I didn’t go into the forests in the lower New England states, Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, but in the other three, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire, the forests were littered with nature’s debris.
I couldn’t help comparing the sight of those forests to the ones I visited in the Black Hills of South Dakota a couple of years ago. One of the neatest sights there was the stacks of debris every 100 feet or so throughout the forests. And the floor of those forests was clean of any brush. Tree trunks were visible all the way to the ground, and there was very little flammable material in between those trunks.
We have a forest area within a few miles of my home, which is also cleared of all undergrowth, and the floor of it is clean and fireproof. If all forest areas looked like this, we wouldn’t have the huge fires that have plagued the Southwest, and especially West Texas this year. (They are in their fifth straight month of drought over there.)
Obviously, some people had worked pretty hard and long to accomplish this cleanup, and it was still in progress, since the stacks hadn’t yet been collected for disposal.
This is just a guess on my part, but I suspect some of that underbrush gets put through a wood chipper and recycled back into nature as mulch, while part of it is used to create good hiking and biking trails in those same forests.
So, what is my point? Where could we ever get enough volunteers to clean up the forests in New England like they did in South Dakota or here is Georgia? You are perfectly correct to ask those questions, but I have an answer.
We currently have unemployment in the country above 9%, and congress has recently passed yet another extension of the unemployment insurance payment to people who have been out of work for over two years. Since the states quit paying after only 26 weeks, that means that you and I have been footing the bill since then with out federal tax dollars.
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look as though the jobless will find any work soon, and I’m sure you’ve read or heard the same reports as I have that continuation of payments provides a disincentive for many people to even seek gainful employment. I heard this week that if we counted the people who are not even actively seeking jobs, the true unemployment rate would be about eleven-and-a half percent. That represents a couple of million slackers.
Add to that the number of fraudulent claims that are apparently being filed by people who are actually working “off the books” and collecting benefits too. Frankly, we are paying way too much taxpayer money and getting absolutely nothing in return.
My solution is to require those able-bodied people on extended unemployment benefits - say anything beyond thirty-nine weeks - to take part ten days a month in a mini-CCC work group. (Don’t know what CCC stands for? Google it, and learn!) They would work 5 days a week with a weekend off between work periods. During those two weeks the group will participate in the forest cleanup within fifty miles of their home.
I’m certain that there is a model in South Dakota that could be followed to set up the work group. I’m also sure that there will be a lot more self-motivation among the unemployed to find a new job to replace the one they lost, even at a lower wage. There’s nothing like a manual labor job to spark initiative to escape it.
Please, those of you who usually respond or comment on my columns, don’t tell me about how politically incorrect this would be. After all, it only requires about one-third of their time and effort to “earn” their ‘free” benefits. That payment is not covered by the unemployment insurance premiums after the first twenty-six weeks.
I also am taking into account that there would have to be some purchases of equipment and maybe even clothing to outfit the workers. I’m confident that the investment in that infrastructure would be rewarded when fewer people collect the unemployment after they find a replacement job.
I suspect there are some details I’ve left out of the formula – I’m not a businessman or an entrepreneur, after all – but it is a means of utilizing all that excess labor we seem to have for the public good.
In case you’re wondering, I do intend to present this idea to my congressman and both of my senators for their consideration. Wouldn’t it be interesting to have a program that FDR started way back in the Great Depression rekindled (a pun, in case you didn’t catch it) by the Republicans?
Your comments are welcome with the exception I specified above.
