Where Politicians Look For Solutions

This week I read an issue of “Reader’s Digest” that reaffirmed my long-held belief that most politicians are either inept, unqualified, or too busy trying to STAY in office to make decisions that have positive impact on the lives of their constituents.  Take, for example, these three accounts of recent government “action” meant to solve problems that, in my mind, were more imagined than real.

In Portland, Oregon, a young man got caught taking a leak in a local reservoir.  The article didn’t say how the law was tipped off about the wayward whiz, but after he was apprehended he admitted that adding a pint of sterile fluid to an eight million gallon body of water, was probably a dumb thing to do.  Anyway, no doubt thinking ahead to their re-election campaigns, the loony legislators had the reservoir drained and refilled in the name of “public safety.”  It wouldn’t be surprising if their next move was to mandate that the reservoir’s fish population jump out of the water to relieve themselves in the nearby bushes.

In Thornton, Colorado, city politicians instituted a regulation that will no doubt end up saving thousands of lives of both motorists and pedestrians, alike.  Citing that, “We don’t want signs to be distracting, especially to motorists,” the goofy governing body officially banned barbershop poles… those colorful red, white, and blue moving displays that have marked the locations of barber shops for centuries.  In one legislative gesture, then, they not only  destroyed a distinctive cultural icon, but the only visual example that Thornton residents had, which demonstrated how a politician’s brain spins when he or she tries to think clearly.

Finally, decision makers at the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) recently recalled a recliner because it had a screw sticking out from somewhere on its bottom.  They did so NOT because they had received any reports of people being injured by the chair’s protruding fastener, but because there was ONE report of a dog’s fur becoming entangled in the screw.  Now, whether it was the dog who ratted out the recliner by calling in a complaint to PETA, the report didn’t say.  But one thing is for sure.  Every person who watched the six o’clock news in that comfortable chair, as well as the company that manufactured it, ended up as the ones our “brainless” bureaucrats really screwed.