Tell ’em they’re dreamin’
It was a lovely film, but Field of Dreams may have done incalculable damage with its refrain “If you build it, they will come.” A guy builds a baseball diamond in his cornfield and is rewarded by the unending patronage of the grateful spirits of long-dead baseball stars. Nice.
In public policy, however, “batter up” is harder to achieve in corporeal form. The first problem is that politicians and bureaucrats are too ready to assume that “they” will not only come but will spend lots of lovely money when they come to the “it” that’s being built.
The second heroic supposition is
