disapproving kitty

Monday, March 31, 2014

No Bears Were Harmed as a Result of This Post*

Dear Legislature,

It's time for your annual evaluation as protectors of the public good!

We, the People, have determined that the best way to evaluate your ability to protect our general welfare is to see how well you can defend yourselves against angry bears.  We'll be loosing the bears upon the Statehouse during the first week of May, and will be carefully examining all your responses to gauge your effectiveness as a legislative body.

As you are well aware, last August we presented you with a multitude of Bear Defense coursework, intended to hone your protective skills, as provided by the now well-funded Angry Bear Aficionados of America.  The millions of dollars these courses cost, along with the cost of providing bears for your examinations, as well as graders for these exams has been well spent.  The ABAA is extremely happy with the money in its coffers, and supports this effort in full.

What's that?  Training exclusively for bear defense takes away time spent doing more important aspects of your job?  What could be more important than protecting your public against angry bears?  While this may only be a portion of what you do, without this objective measure, we'll have no way of determining how effective a legislature you are, and how well you are protecting the interests of those who voted for you!  If you have to spend all your time teaching to the test, to the detriment of your other duties, well, that's your problem.  You should find a solution to that, shouldn't you?  Perhaps you should work harder instead of taking so much time off.

Beg pardon?  You say that basing our judgement of your ability to govern entirely upon how well you defend against angry bears isn't reliable or valid, and maybe we shouldn't be loosing angry bears on anybody as a measure of anything?   Let me tell you that the ABAA assures us that this is a very fine measure indeed, and we demand accountability!

Excuse me?  Did I just hear you say that letting angry bears rampage around in order to test the ability of people to do anything other than fight angry bears is absurd at best and has the potential to cause real, serious and lasting harm?   And it won't accurately assess anything at all -- it's just a way to funnel taxpayer money into private hands?

Well.  Imagine that.

Sincerely Yours,
The Good Citizens You're Supposed to be Protecting


*nor was anyone else.  For the humor-impaired, this is satire, not an actual threat.