I don’t know about you, but I live near a major metropolitan area and traffic during rush hour is generally horrible.  The highways around Seattle are a shining example of government genius at work.  In most areas, roads were built to meet demand at the time, instead of future demand, so that by the time any road is complete, is already at capacity.  In my travels in other cities, this seems to be a problem endemic to all big cities, not just the liberals with lack of foresight in the Pacific Northwest.

But yesterday, the roads were surprisingly clear.  What is normally a 45 minute commute to work, took only about 25 minutes.  I puzzled over this until I realized that it was a federal holiday – Columbus Day. This realization was the inspiration for several related ideas.

First, liberals are still afraid to admit the truth that global warming is a hoax.  Just last week, I read that scientists in Europe are predicting the coldest winter in 1000 years.  So let them continue to fret over a non-existent threat.  We can use it against them.  Yesterday, with so little traffic, my commute was cut almost in half, so that’s half the amount of normal carbon emissions my old gas guzzling SUV was emitting than normal.  Of course, this means finding a way to keep federal workers off the roads.

Second, the Tea Party, and just about every other individual with an IQ higher than a pumpkin, realizes that government has gotten too big.  That is why, on a federal holiday in big cities, roads are so much easier to navigate. 

Third, most cities face a populace that wants more and better roads so that getting around is easier.  Fixing traffic has been a campaign issue in Seattle, Boston and New Jersey, just to name a few areas that have made headlines. 

There is a solution that would make all three of these constituencies happy.  While the obvious solution, getting rid of a bunch of government employees, is something we conservatives would like, it wouldn’t solve the problem.  After those former government employees finished using up their 10 years or so of government unemployment benefits extended by Obama, they’d eventually get back to work and start clogging the roads up again.  What cities should do instead, is to set a work schedule for ALL (city, state, federal) government employees that minimizes their impact on traffic.  If all government employees had to be to work by say, 6 AM and got off at 2 PM, then by the time the rest of us went to work, they’d already be off the roads.  The added benefit of doing something this draconian is that those who simply couldn’t handle working for the public at crazy hours would quit and join the private sector – thus shrinking government without firing anyone (if we maintained a policy of not backfilling those positions).   It’s a crazy idea, but something some conservative who is willing to think outside the box should consider.