Ever wonder how a Government Program gets started? I have (Hat-tip to the late Andy Rooney!). I've been giving the process some thought, and I think I have figured it out (bear with me, this gets complicated).
It usually begins when some twit writes a Letter to the Editor. She (it's usually a "She" ) has her tits in a knot because she's been inconvenienced by what used to be called "one of Life's little Turdburgers", and she's mightily upset. Some Congresscritter who needs to find a way to justify It's existence, hefty paycheck and exalted status, picks up on it, and then decides to"help" this poor, downtrodden citizen, because -- dammit -- America is just that sort of country and no one should be expected to suffer the indignities and consequences of simply being alive and clueless!
What follows is a comedy of earnest Congressional nonsense, which requires an expensive and expansive government "solution", which has unintended consequences which themselves require yet more expensive and expansive government "solutions". In the meantime, Life As it Was becomes a little bit harder, and your freedoms and choices are gradually reduced, while your pocket gets picked. The process repeats itself endlessly, as those who had good intentions but bad ideas struggle to remain one step ahead of their own stupidity.
An example:
Some nitwit in San Francisco (it's always some nitwit in San Francisco) tells the harrowing tale of how her little tyke was seriously injured in school, a result of his untied shoelaces. He tripped, bumped his little coconut, and wound up in the Emergency Room, where he was given stitches and his mother was given The Bill for $100.00. It's only $100.00 because her private insurance (her husband actually works for a living and can afford insurance for his family, a rarity considering everyone else is on ObamaCare) paid the other $400.00. However, that $100.00 is a financial hardship -- that money was earmarked for new, matching gold-plated-Second-bathroom-sink-designer-hot-and-cold-water-taps, you know -- and isn't a shame that in Modern America a family must sacrifice and make the dreadful choice between medical care for a child and a home improvement project that would have raised their resale value by several tens of dollars in a down real-estate market that has caused grave economic damage all over the country?
The ordeal has "shaken her faith in America"; apparently, the union teacher who witnessed the fall refused to help the boy because "it wasn't her job" to help him tie his shoes. The distraught Mother didn't even know her son couldn't tie his own shoes (after all, she gave birth to the little demon, how could she be expected to watch it and teach it anything, and besides, isn't this what the schools are for anyway?). She bemoans the fact that with "our busy lifestyles", that she doesn't have the time to teach her children to tie their shoes properly and hasn't got the "resources" to do this (usually because she's busy Facebooking and hand-printing more "Bush Lied, People Died" signs for her Code Pink rally), and "shouldn't something be done about this dangerous and expensive situation?"
Now, Nancy Pelosi reads the Letters to the Editor (or at least one of her Staff reads them for her) because she "needs to know what her constituents are thinking and saying". She picks up on this immediately. Why, who knew that children are being injured by defective shoelaces that come untied of their own accord? Who knew that the skill of knot-tying wasn't being taught in the Public Schools? After all, we teach our children about Anal Sex, Homosexual Marriage and Bestiality! Where is all the taxpayer money going?
Nancy (or rather, her Staff) does some quick research. They find a study done by the University of West Buttfuck on Fire Island, which concluded that 14-out-of-every-6 (liberal math always works this way) people will trip over untied shoelaces in the course of their lives,and suffer "serious" injury (defined as mild embarrassment, and momentary loss of equilibrium). The study is ironclad, unimpeachable -- Charlie Rangel funded it with an earmark stuffed into last year's Agriculture Bill, and the expenditure of taxpayer money must be justified, so it becomes the Bible of the Shoelace Injury Movement.
It also just so happens that another study by the Velcro Advocacy Board (located in Steny Hoyer's District, and funded by an earmark stuffed into a Pentagon Appropriations Bill), a Velcro-Industry Think-Tank, has determined that Velcro never comes unstuck once fastened, and that 743,000,000 Americans could be spared serious injury (defined as any situation likely to cause others to laugh at you) if only their shoelaces were replaced by sturdy Velcro.
The Congressional Black Caucus adds yet another study (funded by another earmark stuffed into a National Park's appropriation for the purpose of fighting forest fires by John Conyers) by a prominent "Black Cultural Organization" which states that Black children are more likely to be injured by untied shoelaces because Ghetto Culture deigns the tying of shoes to be "acting White". If you're going to address the critical problem of untied shoelaces, you must take the plight of Black shoelace-trippers into consideration. Its a Civil Rights Issue, you see.
So now, we have a real "emergency" on our hands! Untied shoelaces constitute a multi-pronged threat to civil society! They come untied, causing children to trip over them, resulting in injury and Emergency Room visits, which cost American families money. The Public Schools are woefully unprepared to teach our children about the dangers, causes and solutions to the threat of untied shoes. Parents are overwhelmed by the ordeal of having to teach the intricacies of the basic slipknot, and Black People are being forced to pay for shoelaces they don't even use! Why, it's a confluence of dilemmas that threatens the very fabric of American life; Public Safety, Health Care, Educational deficiency, Racial Inequality and Consumer Protection issues, all rolled up into one!
Nancy, Charlie, Steny and a few Squishy Republicans get together to "solve" this vital National Emergency, and to save their phoney-baloney jobs by a brilliant display of Law-writing.Their wheels start a'spinnin', Lobbysists drop off thick envelopes of cash, Keith Olbermann has apoplexy on (P)MSNBC, and Evil Republicans who Defend Big Shoelace are excoriated it the Press. What emerges is an absolute gem of Washington problem solving.
The Shoestring Initiative (or SHIT, because Washington loves catchy acronyms) is born.
SHIT requires that all shoemakers stop using shoelaces and makes provision that all shoes in future be secured snugly and comfortably by government-approved Velcro fasteners. Shoelaces will be completely outlawed by 2178, and where that is not practicable, replacement shoelaces will be heavily taxed (except the for the "exempted" ones produced by Union Labor in Louise Slaughter's District, which cost three times as much and break twice as often. That provision will be slipped into the next Homeland Security Bill, because the Evil Republicans in the Senate would vote it down, otherwise). Soon, the entire country will be surefooted and secure, their personal safety never again threatened by the danger of a deadly shoelace.
Five years later, the Zipper Institute of America (in Barney Frank's district) will announce the results of a new study (funded by another earmark slipped into a NASA appropriations bill, because Barney has been looking out for America's zippers forever) in which it has been discovered that Velcro is not very biodegradable, and will remain in landfills for the next 17-and-half Trillion years. American landfills will be full-to-the-brim with unrotting Velcro by 2764, an environmental disaster of epic proportions in the making -- which flies in the face of every U.N. Climate Change Treaty (none of which have never been ratified by the US Congress, but the issue is kept alive for political purposes). Something must be done!
So, the Congressbeasts go back to "work", and what emerges is the new VAGINA Act (Velcro and Garbage Dump Investigation and Neutralization Act). VAGINA requires that no shoe be made with Velcro after Christmas-three-years-ago, and imposes heavy taxes and fines on those still using it. Old shoes containing Velcro will be considered "assault weapons", and all Americans required to turn them in at their local police department (where they will receive a lovely JiffyLube gift certificate as an incentive. Inner city Welfare Recipients don't have cars, so they will be given an equivalent redeemable at their nearest Needle Exchange Program).
Furthermore, all Velcro shoe-fastening arrangements must be replaced by zippers designed to exacting, European standards, made of flimsy, bio-degradable materials, complete with bi-lingual instructions for illegal Spanish-speaking immigrants (that provision will be stuck in the back-end of next year's Inland Waterways Capital Improvement Bill, which no one bothers reading, anyway).
In the meantime, it will soon be discovered that 2,000,000,008 Americans (according the U.S. Census Bureau) will have lost the ability to tie knots of any sort whatsoever, a problem that will result in heavy loss of life to mountain climbers, S&M enthusiasts (many in Barney Frank's zipper-loving district), surgical patients, cowboys and those expecting to be rescued from burning buildings and other emergency situations by the local Fire Department. Just as Congress turns it's attention to this issue, the Feminazis will take the Boy Scouts to court, charging them with discrimination and patriarchal oppression of Womyn because they STILL insist on teaching young boys to tie knots in secret, male-dominated-crypto-fascist-Womyn-Bashing-Circles, while denying the same accommodation to little girls. They'll bash Sarah Palin as a Gun-toting-Right-Wing-Retarded-Baby-Making-Eco-Nazi for daring to defend the Boy Scouts and the Free-Enterprise rights of Big Velcro...and Haliburton... for good measure. Rachel Maddow will vow to shave her beard on national television in support of her "sisters".
But not to worry:Nancy, Steny, Charlie, Barney, Louise and a "Reaching-across-the-Aisle-in-Bi-Partisan-Fashion" John McCain will be Johnnys-on-the-Spot, proposing the solution to the "Knot-tying Gap" between the genders with the new Females United against the Clove-Hitch Knot Decree, or FUCKED Act.
And now you know just how it is that we all, eventually, get FUCKED.
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