Bright Ideas From the Dimmest Bulbs Will Ruin Us

When the power goes out, the light bulb goes on and the political candidates scramble to make dumb videos. This proves, once again, that a fool and her money are soon elected.

It rained a little bit last week, and more than a million Michiganders found themselves in the dark.

What does Jocelyn Benson do? She makes a freakish selfie from a bluff at a lake house somewhere, commiserating with the hoi polloi who—yet again—were baking in the darkened streets of Detroit.

“I have a plan to change these unfair profit driven rate hikes,” she said dressed in a black blazer in 95 degree heat accessorized with a splendid view of a lake and beach behind her. “But also ensuring we’re investing and modernizing our energy grid.”

She said that last week, too, in different lame video about high-speed trains.

Her buzzwords seem to be: “modernizing infrastructure.” But that’s exactly how DTE and Consumers make their profits. Investing in “modern infrastructure.”

What the monopolies do not do is upkeep the current infrastructure. There’s no profit in it. What we really need is for the power companies to cut the trees and maintain the existing grid.

Benson instructs us to go to her website to see the plan. Go to the website. There’s no plan at all. Dumb.

Then there’s Perry Johnson. He’s got a video. He’s got lots of videos. One of my favorites is him standing in an open collar, remembering how a hundred years ago his parents used to be poor.

That’s why the mega-millionaire wants to return $4,747 to our pockets. Nice number. Johnson says he’s going to do a mega-audit and find the waste to give us the money.

But how do you settle on a dollar amount before you do an audit to find the money? Dumb.

Haley Stevens wants to be your senator. So there she stands on the Detroit River, claiming that the Gordie Howe Bridge is being shanghaied by Matty Moroun, a corrupt billionaire crony of Donald J. Trump.

Moroun, who owns the rival Ambassador Bridge, is Trump’s biggest contributor, she says in a cringy voice. Trouble is, Matty Moroun died six years ago. This proves once again that Stevens knows little about international affairs or Michigan. Again, dumb.

“Doctor” Abdul El-Sayed—he of little professional accomplishment—can be found on Instagram, prancing about in a suburban cowboy costume. He wants to expand Obamacare into Medicare for All.

The problem there is that Obamacare exploded medical costs and now there are more uninsured people than ever before. They’re not the poor. They’re the middle class. And the country is broke. Dumb.

I like social media as much as the next guy. I can’t afford cable. Or health insurance. Or air-conditioning at peak hours. But it’s going to take more than some yard signs and lame videos to convince me they know what’s going on out here.