DES MOINES, IA – The Governor of Iowa has taken the next step to help his citizens combat the ever-rising gas prices facing Americans. Iowa Governor Chet Culver says, “Enough is enough. I can’t have the people of Iowa, the people who elected me into office of this magnificent state, suffering from high gas prices. There is enough going badly in the economy without needing to worry about filling up the tank.” This past Tuesday, Governor Culver signed a bill to demolish all roads in the state of Iowa. “If there are no roads, people can’t drive. It’s simple economics.”
Several political petroleum analysts and all-purpose experts say they saw this coming. “First it was changing the state motto, then increasing speed limits, then decreasing speed limits, then enforcing new laws, and nothing was working,” explains resident expert Paul Ganglia, “this was really the only step left.” When asked to elaborate on this statement, Mr. Ganglia responded by giving this reporter the finger… that’s right, the middle finger.
However, after some sleuthing, I learned more about the state’s past attempts to deal with the gas crisis. All the actions involved discouraging driving in one way or another in hopes of cutting down gas consumption. However, not once did the state attempt to simply tell citizens to cut back on driving. The first such action made to discourage driving was to subtly change the state motto from “Iowa, so much to discover” to “Iowa, no place like home” to a more direct, “Iowa, its all the same”, and finally to “Iowa, stay home.” When this didn’t work, the state government passed multiple forms of legislature aimed at making driving more difficult and annoying. At first, experts concluded that increasing the minimum speed on all roads to 100 mph (160 kmph) would make driving so dangerous that people wouldn’t even dare pull out of their driveways. This failed entirely, resulting in an unprecedented average of 127.7 accidents per day (a national record). The next step was lowering the speed limit to 5 mph (8 kmph) in order to making driving so inefficient that people would walk instead. Again the state of Iowa underestimated the persistence and resilience of its people, who continued to drive their vehicles despite the obvious absurdity and inadequacy of the situation.
“The problem,” explained Governor Culver, “is that the brave, beautiful citizens of this magnificent state are really not smart. They’re not the brightest in the bunch. The sharpest tools in the shed. The yellowiest corn in the harvest. They are stupid, plain stupid. The original plan was to just tell citizens to stop driving so that they cut down on gas consumption, but extensive research has shown that this would lead to widespread panic, eventually ending in some sort of post-apocalyptic Mad Max scenario.
“Therefore, we are going with our last possible option, to destroy every road in the state. Of course, we can’t tell people we are doing this on purpose, so I sure as shootin’ hope that tape recorder isn’t on. It’s not, right? Good. We’re just gonna tell the people that jealous road-hating terrorists did it. Hopefully this will solve the gas problem and promote the creation of more militias, which is one of the platforms that won me my position back in ’06.”
With gas prices ranging around $22 per gallon (approximately $5.81 per litre), it is clear that some initiative, no matter what the level of stupidity, should be taken.
Chet, as he prefers to be called by his “foxy” interns (his words), also offered me these photographs of some of the first streets to be demolished. “KA-BLAAAMEY,” quipped Chet.
~ Matt Essert
I simply agree
There are a few excellent arguments debated here.
Generally, I’m not awfully keen on politics. but, now and again all of us have to pause for thought. Interesting, i am grateful to you.
You have reminded me of one of my favorite quotes: “Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.”