Back in 2009, I posted about a critical new scientific discovery that helps explain the functioning of government.
In the same spirit today, I reprint a notice that appeared in my inbox.
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The Americans With No Abilities Act
President Barack Obama and the Democratic Senate are considering sweeping legislation that will provide new benefits for many Americans. The Americans With No Abilities Act is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition.
“Roughly 50 percent of Americans do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society,” said California Sen. Barbara Boxer. “We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability (POI) to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing.”
In a Capitol Hill press conference, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pointed to the success of the U.S. Postal Service, which has a long-standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has an excellent record of hiring Persons with No Ability (63 percent).
Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million mid-level positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.
Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability (POI) into middle-management positions, and give a tax credit to small and medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.
Finally, the Americans With No Abilities Act contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the non-abled, banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as, “Do you have any skills or experience that relate to this job?”
“As a non-abled person, I can’t be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them,” said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint , Mich. , due to her inability to remember righty tighty, lefty loosey. “This new law should be real good for people like me. I’ll finally have job security.” With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.
Said Sen. Dick Durbin: “As a senator with no abilities, I believe the same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as lawmakers to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her inadequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation and a good salary for doing so.”
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While this bit of satire is amusing, the joke may be on us. Let’s keep in mind that a recruitment agency in the United Kingdom actually got in trouble because it placed an ad “for ‘reliable’ and ‘hard-working’ applicants.” According to the government, this was wrong because such language “could be offensive to unreliable people.”
Surely it’s just a matter of time before similar forms of government stupidity migrate to this side of the Atlantic Ocean.
What’s next? Government intervention on behalf of ugly people? Oops, forget I asked.
Jonathan Swift is saying, right now, “Let me outta this box. I want to get back in the game…”
God bless for this little laugh! I say little only because it is only a matter of time…after all children in school can no longer excel if it makes their disabled (less intelligent, or less motivated) classmates “feel bad”. Let’s go from a nation of achievers to a nation of well, you said it. We can now just all hang around and get paid for nothing.
Thanks for this, and the hilarious 2009 link.
Following the link to the 2010 UK story, this sentence pops out:
“If the matter wasn’t so serious I would be laughing out loud.”
I have given up on laughing out loud about these matters:
a self-satisfied smirk is much more gratifying.
I LOVE This!!!
excellent satire. As for your point about the English actually doing this, I believe the cause of it all occurred back in the 70s when the English somehow started to believe that Monty Python was a news program.
Reblogged this on electricscribbles and commented:
I was incredulous until I realized it was satire. Then I thought…things are getting so crazy that at first I didn’t realize this was satire!