Chapter 421: Chapter 195: Full of Holes
Washington D.C. A conference room on the top floor of a K Street office building.
In the center of the room, several senior Republican Party aides and policy experts were gathered around a circular table.
On the large screen on the wall, a replay of Leo Wallace’s press conference in Pittsburgh was playing.
Onscreen, the young Mayor was passionately waving his arms, speaking about idealistic concepts like "new citizens," land trusts, and "jobs, not drugs."
"Pause."
A voice rang out in the dark screening room, and the image froze on Leo’s confident face.
「The lights came on.」
Richard Taylor took off his gold-rimmed glasses and rubbed his strained eyes. He had been staring at the video of the young man’s speech for a full twelve hours.
The screening room was quiet, save for the low hum of the air conditioning vents.
A few of the strategists sitting across from him broke the silence.
"This is tough," a young analyst spoke up first. "He’s admitting the problem exists, then presenting a solution that he appears to be actively implementing."
"Exactly," added another expert in charge of monitoring public opinion. "And his personal image is too clean. No scandals, no tax problems. There’s nothing to sink our teeth into."
Listening to these discouraging remarks, Taylor put his glasses back on.
’He knew these complaints were directed at him.’
’Subordinates always make a habit of emphasizing the difficulty of a task before starting—it’s a way to inflate their own value and give themselves an out in case of failure.’
’He needed to step up and point them in the right direction.’
"Listen to you. Just listen."
Taylor scoffed.
"What are you all talking about? A solution? A clean image?"
"If I were twenty years younger, if I were still in college reading utopian texts on collectivism and social engineering, I might be moved to tears by him."
"But, gentlemen, don’t be fooled by appearances."
"This is complete and utter sophistry."
"He’s lying."
Another man, his hair streaked with gray, picked up the thread.
He was a senior fellow at the Traditional Foundation and one of the Republican Party’s key minds on economic policy.
"On immigration and the labor force, he’s playing a shell game."
"He goes on TV and says he’s solving the refugee crisis, that he’s giving ID cards to illegal immigrants and putting them to work in factories."
"It sounds noble, humanitarian, but that’s not what’s actually happening."
The researcher pulled an internal research report from the Federal Labor Department out of his briefcase.
"Look at this data."
"These tens of thousands of new workers Pittsburgh has absorbed over the last three months—are they really refugees who climbed over the border wall?"
"No."
"The vast majority of them are from Detroit, from Cleveland, from Toledo."
"They’re skilled assembly line workers, senior machine operators."
"Leo Wallace is playing word games."
"He’s taken this group of blue-collar workers—who were already American citizens, already highly skilled—and repackaged them as ’new citizens’."
"He’s used high wages and benefits to siphon off the prime labor force from other cities to Pittsburgh, then turned around and told the world it’s a victory for his inclusive immigration policy."
"It’s the logic of a thief."
Taylor nodded, his eyes turning grim.
"Then there’s the housing issue."
"He claims the market has failed, so the government has to step in, create a land trust, and implement rent control."
"It sounds like he’s protecting the poor."
"But we have to ask a question: when he packs tens of thousands of out-of-town workers into Pittsburgh like sardines, what happens to the local housing market?"
"Supply is finite."
"No matter how he fiddles with his so-called ’affordable housing,’ the houses aren’t just going to fall from the sky."
"When a massive population floods in, and the land is locked up by the government and can’t be freely traded, a black market is born."
"What about the people who don’t qualify for affordable housing? What about the original middle class?"
"They’re going to find that outside of his so-called non-profit system, free-market rents will skyrocket due to scarcity."
"He’s creating a new privileged class: the people living in government public housing."
"As for drugs and public safety..."
A man who had been silent in the corner spoke up.
He was a former senior prosecutor from New York, now serving as a legal advisor for the Republican Party.
"This is a classic case of leftist naivete."
"With one or two people, maybe you can use this nanny-state approach to reform them, to watch over them and give them a urine test every morning."
"But when thousands of addicts are gathered on a construction site, and they figure out they can cheat the urine test with a few simple tricks, or that they can get half their pay just by raising a little hell..."
"That worksite will become the biggest open-air drug market, and administrative costs will rise exponentially."
"Who will watch the watchmen? Who’s going to ensure the people handing out the paychecks can’t be bought?"
"He’s trying to use administrative measures to solve a complex issue of social pathology."
The former prosecutor shook his head.
"It’s doomed to fail. And when it does, when the crime rate rebounds, he’ll find that his theory of non-prosecution will only force innocent citizens to pay the price in blood."
Finally, the conversation returned to the key proposition: trust.
Taylor pointed at the frozen image of Leo on the screen.
"He says he’s rebuilding trust."
"He says the government should think like a service provider."
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