cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/44416979
Michelle Goldberg March 12, 2026
Slight and bespectacled, Fishback has a geeky charisma and the verbal dexterity of a former competitive high school debater. His policies are a mishmash of extreme conservatism and economic progressivism; nationalism tinged with socialism, if you will. He believes that Florida’s gun laws are too strict, its abortion laws too lax and its public teacher pay too low. He’s called for a 50 percent sin tax on OnlyFans creators and $10,000 grants to high-performing high school graduates to buy homes or start businesses. Though he’s the son of an immigrant — his mother is Colombian — he wants a total immigration moratorium.
Most of all, Fishback has made contempt for Israel and its American lobby a centerpiece of his campaign, constantly reminding audiences how much America spends on Israel while its own needs are ignored.
For a minute I got confused by the term WPA since where I am all that shit gets blanketed under the CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps). But yeah bringing that shit back on the state level at least could do a lot of good, doesn’t even need to be all that hard of work, for example having a bunch of guys walk through a river during the dry season (I’m from SoCal the rivers are dry as bone during the summer) picking up trash and marking shit for maintenance. Not hard work but slow work that requires a good bit of manpower.
If you want them to do something fun IDk get volunteers and launch an extermination campaign on the local boar population or something.
Yeah, agreed on the state part - ideally they all use similar names (like states do for “DOT” - maybe something like ColoWPA or CaliWPA, etc.) so people that have a memory of seeing something tied to those names from the past make the connection, or if they ran across the modern version in one state and move, they can find the other department.
And when it comes to ideas, there are probably tons of things that people could think up as you have. I’d much rather have a direct engagement with government, the kind of contracting seems to be riddled with graft and people working for those outlets can (and do - I’ve seen people that work for huge defense contractors do this) tell themselves stories about how government never does anything.
Having government directly cutting checks to people for valuable work that benefits their community in ways that people can see would do a lot, beyond the direct and immediate benefit of the people getting paid - it would more than likely raise the level of civic engagement. This is, of course, why conservatives hated the New Deal (even though that was the compromise between some much more radical moves) and even still whine about it.
CCC was the other one I forgot about, yeah. For some reason, WPA came to mind first.