There are few people or things around these days that have received more attention than Donald Trump.
Like him or loathe him, fear him or respect him, there is one certainty: He generates strong opinions from almost everywhere.
Even his own party has christened the hashtag #NeverTrump on Twitter as the Republicans try to recalibrate the presidential nominating process. (That it hasn't dawned on the GOP to start a #NeverHillary campaign speaks more about them than they likely realize.)
FILE - In this March 12, 2016, file photo, Republican presidential candidate, businessman Donald Trump speaks in Vandalia, Ohio. Trump wants to win the White House in November. House Speaker Paul Ryan wants to save the Republican Party for the future. Those goals put Trump and Ryan increasingly at odds over both tone and substance as the billionaire businessman barrels toward the GOP presidential nomination. (AP Photo/Kiichiro Sato, File) 
Jay GreesonTrump's rise and, more correctly, his staying power as the GOP frontrunner have confused almost every political pundit.
The most frequent and rational reason given for the Trump movement is a staggering number of folks so disenfranchised by the political system that the lunacy of Trump is more appealing to a lot of folks than the ignorance and the insanity that is our current government.
And it's stories like the one this paper's Yolanda Putnam reported Sunday. The Chattanooga Housing Authority has a glorious idea called Upward Mobility. It was a proposal to try to make sure the people in some public housing sites are trying to get jobs, training or an education to stay on its rolls.
It was a great plan.
It helped folks who are in need of help, and helped them beyond just a monthly rent check. It was motivation. It offered a path and a plan to a better way and potential self-sustainability.
It also allowed the authority a way to evaluate the folks it helps, and since the pool of people in need of help is greater than the help it can offer, it would have served two paths to help even more people.
In a perfect world, the folks the housing authority helps would get a job or training to get a better gig and be able to move beyond its help. In an imperfect world when some people violated the terms of Upward Mobility, the authority would move them out and reallocate resources to individuals willing to abide by the program's guidelines.
"We don't get up trying to put people out of this program," housing authority Executive Director Betsy McCright told the TFP's Putnam. "We get up every day trying to help them to succeed, but unfortunately there are the rare few who have just stayed in the units and won't move on. So we have to open those units up to people who are ready and willing to go to work and to participate fully in the program."
Perfect, right?
Too perfect, apparently.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development branch of our federal government has thrown a kink into the plan, saying that local authorities can't evict using different standards, according to McCright.
Great. Another example of federal policy negating really helpful processes.
Washington wonders who created Trump.
Well, Trump created Trump, and us media types and his followers have spun that madness into an unimaginable froth.
Truthfully, though, Washington created the disconnect that has served as the perfect incubator for Trump's ascension, and Washington did it with policies like the one that the housing authority has run into.
Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com. His "Right to the Point" column runs on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays on A2.