Competition Stiff for Most Idiotic Policy Award
Governors from several states are vying intensely in an effort to advance the most catalclysmically idiotic public policy. Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe, even with his endorsement of the mis-named ERA, is having a hard time breaking into the top three. Apparently, some of the judges are docking him points because the ERA, while doubtlessly an idiotic policy that will cripple business and give activist judges a whole new arsenal, is not his own original idiotic policy. Making idiotic statements in support of the policy, such as saying "every argument against the ERA was used against giving women the right to vote", are not enough. Judges must balance the magnitude of the blunder with its originality, and ridiculous statements in support of the policy can only count for so much.
Beebe still trails Penn. Governor Ed Rendell (D) and Texas Republican Rick Perry (R). Both of those men are advancing policies both gargantuan in the scope of their idiocy and uniquely their own. Rendell for example, has decided that oil companies doing business in the Keystone state have been making "unfair" profits and that they should have a special tax placed on them to pay for their "fair share" of the roads. At the same time, Rendell has proposed privatising the toll road system in the state. Of course windfall oil profits are just about gone now.
A Republican state senator who heard about the proposal said, "I will be very interested to see how the governor is going to enact that without it being passed on to consumers,".
Rendell said, you just have to love the sheer mass of the idiocy in this next statement, the attorney general will be given the power to prosecute any oil company found to be charging higher prices as a result of the tax.
(continued- click TUESDAY below and scroll down for rest of article)
Beebe still trails Penn. Governor Ed Rendell (D) and Texas Republican Rick Perry (R). Both of those men are advancing policies both gargantuan in the scope of their idiocy and uniquely their own. Rendell for example, has decided that oil companies doing business in the Keystone state have been making "unfair" profits and that they should have a special tax placed on them to pay for their "fair share" of the roads. At the same time, Rendell has proposed privatising the toll road system in the state. Of course windfall oil profits are just about gone now.
A Republican state senator who heard about the proposal said, "I will be very interested to see how the governor is going to enact that without it being passed on to consumers,".
Rendell said, you just have to love the sheer mass of the idiocy in this next statement, the attorney general will be given the power to prosecute any oil company found to be charging higher prices as a result of the tax.
(continued- click TUESDAY below and scroll down for rest of article)
posted by Mark Moore (Moderator) at Tuesday, February 06, 2007
3 Comments:
Now that's idiocy on a scale unseen since the collapse of the former Soviet Union and their hapless command economy.
But Rendell surpasses even them with the oblivious obtusity with which he suggests that they sell their toll roads to the private sector. Who in their right mind would buy them with Rendell at the helm? If they actually started making big money Rendell would likely accuse THEM of "unfair" profits and pass laws to control how much he thought a "fair" profit ought to be.
Now with such macro-idiocy as that, you may think Rendell is the clear frontrunner for the award. In ordinary times maybe, but our current crop of politicians seem to reside high atop the Mount Olympus of Idiocy. Us mortals below can only gaze up in awe and wonder at the god-men that our political-media system has produced.
Texas Governor Rick Perry has ordered all sixth grade girls in all public schools in Texas be immunized against the sexually transmitted HPV virus- with or without the parent's agreement. This is a relatively new vaccine whose long term effects are not known. Most vaccines produce a negative reaction in some small fraction of the population.
Now you may think that immunizing all ten year old girls in the entire state school system against STDs without their parents consent would get the man in trouble of some kind, like impeached or hung. Instead, all it seems to be getting him is frontrunner status in the Idiotic Policy Competition. Of course, he has the advantage of recieving large contributions from people affiliated with the drug company which produces the vaccine, Merck. Thus, stupidity gets a boost from greed to form a powerful force for idiocy.
The year is still young, so there is still time for a comeback, but it is hard to say that it is "anybody's ballgame" with this scale of competition.
Did you say that "windfall oil profits are just about gone now?"
I know Exxon's profits declined a little in the last quarter, but they still posted the largest annual profit ever by a US company--$39.5 billion. That's 4.5 million an hour.
Not arguing with the sentiment in your post, but don't claim that windfall oil profits are almost gone.
I don't know about requiring the vaccine, but it is important to note that this is much more than a virus against a sexually transmitted disease. It is a vaccine that can prevent 90% of all cervical cancer.
As someone who has been fighting off the early stages of cervical cancer for several years (there's only so much of your cervix you can have cut off and still remain fertile), I think education about this vaccine should be mandatory.
This is about much more than abstinence. HPV, the virus that causes cervical cancer, can be spread from mother to child during childbirth. Also, it goes undetected in men. So even if two people abstain from sex until marriage it is still possible for the man to give the woman a high-risk strain of HPV that leads to cervical cancer. I know that sounds far fetched, but man, having to get checked every three months and having biopsy after biopsy on my cervix has been awful.
Hopefully, this vaccine will turn out to have few side effects. For me, I wish this vaccine would have been available years ago.
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