Death Star, Trillion Dollar Coin Failures Show Washington is Broken

It's official: Washington is the place where good ideas go to die.

The first of the two most recent examples occurred yesterday when the White House denied an online petition, signed by more than 25,000 people, to build America's own version of the Death Star, the planet-sized Starship of Destruction that the Empire used in the Star Wars movies.

The government's official response denying the petition is here:

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/isnt-petition-response-youre-looking

I don't like to talk politics in this, um, Space, but some decisions are so incomprehensible they simply must be addressed. 

America is facing a stubborn eight percent unemployment rate. Perceptions of the country's direction are near an all-time low, as are Americans' perception of their government.  The public is increasingly divided, as Fox News and MSNBC convince their respective partisan audiences that the other party is Evil Incarnate. 

Amidst this divided backdrop, an overwhelming mass of the public agreed on one fundamental proposition: We the People need a Death Star. 

And the administration said no. 

The official reasons were that a Death Star is too expensive, that we have no actual desire to blow up other planets, and that the vessel has a design flaw that can be exploited by one renegade starship, which can cause immediate explosion. 

These petty concerns are beside the point. 

The construction of the Death Star would provide jobs, both in the construction and storm trooper industries.  The storm troopers jobs, to be filled by applicants unable to hit various human, robotic and Wookie targets at point-blank range, would also provide employment for individuals who, let's face it, probably couldn't get a job anywhere else.  And the fashion industry would get a boost too, as various designers competed for government contracts to produce the chicest possible Storm Trooper designs. 

It's a win-win for the entire employment sector.  The job gains from this project would provide a boost to the economy sufficient to offset any initial cost. 

The boost to the national morale the presence of a Death Star would provide, or the fear it would put into our enemies, also cannot be overstated.  Would Iran continue with its nuclear program if we parked the Death Star on the Iraqi Border? And so what if we lose in the World Cup?  We have an f'ing Death Star. 

Critics suggest that the we don't actually need a Death Star, because we have no known extra terrestrial enemies.  The key word in that sentence, however, is known.  If we ever do meet visitors from neighboring galaxies, they are much more likely to be polite if we have the ability to destroy them on a whim.  Besides, we'd be at a significant disadvantage, and feel more than a little bit silly, if we don't build a Death Star, and our alien visitors already have one. 

It would be prudent be prepared for this possibility.

As to the complaint that the Death Star has proven vulnerable to one-man starships, this argument presumes that our attacking Intergalactic foe has seen Star Wars.  We need not worry about this. 

If any competing civilization started watching Star Wars at Episode I, they probably didn't make it to the end.  Besides, when is the last time you saw a one-man starship floating around?  This fear is unrealistic.

Still, the demise of the Death Star, was not the only bad news of the week.  The government, on the very same day, decided against minting a one trillion dollar platinum coin.

The background behind this issue is straightforward.  The government, like Enron and the Hostess Company, spends more money than it makes, and it's getting near the limit of what it can legally borrow.  While the two most obvious solutions to this problem would be to either balance the budget or raise the legal borrowing limit, but both of those measures have the downside of requiring Congress to actually do something. As a result, neither seems likely to happen.

Instead, it was suggested, the Treasury Department could simply create a $1 trillion coin, deposit it in the Federal Bank Account, and the government suddenly would have a trillion dollars with which to pay its bills.

It sounds simple enough, but this possibility raised important and serious legal questions.  For instance:

Whose face would be on this thing?"

Could the coin be used to fund the construction of the Death Star?

How would someone get change if they used the trillion dollar coin to buy a pack of gum?

The government had no answers for these questions, so the idea died this week.  My answers would have been: (1) Montgomery Burns; (2) YES!; and (3) Store Credit, but no one asked me, despite the fact that: (1) Our First Treasury Secretary, Alexander Hamilton is my ancestor, and (2) I have a blog read by at least 30 people last week. (If you count my cat as person. Twice.)

So instead of a quick fix to our nation's debt crisis, we'll have to wait with anxious breath as our self-serving, short-sighted, hyper-partisan politicians attempt to forge a bipartisan solution. 

I just can't help but think I'd have more faith in Congress' ability to make that deal if the Death Star was pointed menacingly toward Capitol Hill.