I only wish this were purely fiction. I'm wide open to suggestions on how to fix this.
Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House. One is from Chicago, another is from Tennessee, and the third is from Minnesota. All three go with a White House official to examine the fence.
The Minnesota contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. “Well,” he says, “I figure the job will run about $900. $400 for materials, $400 for my crew, and $100 profit for me.”
The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, “I can do this job for $700. $300 for materials, $300 for my crew, and $100 profit for me.”
The Chicago contractor doesn’t measure or figure, but leans over to the White House official and whispers, “$2,700.”
The official, incredulous, says, “You didn’t even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?”
The Chicago contractor whispers back, “$1000 for me, $1000 for you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence.”
“Done!” replies the government official.
And that, my friends, is how the Government works.
As of 2016, public satisfaction with Congress has fallen into the single digits, the lowest ever. Read Fighting for Commong Ground, by Olympia Snowe, former US Senator. Here is an assessment of that satisfaction.
A driver was stuck in a traffic jam on the highway outside Washington, DC. Nothing was moving. Suddenly, a man knocks on the window. The driver rolls down the window and asks, "What's going on?"
"Terrorists have kidnapped the entire US Congress, and they're asking for a $100 million dollar ransom. Otherwise, they are going to douse them all in gasoline and set them on fire. We are going from car to car, collecting donations."
"How much is everyone giving, on an average?" the driver asks.
The man replies, "Roughly a gallon."
A social worker from Austin recently transferred to Pecos and was on the first tour of her new territory when she came upon the tiniest cabin she had ever seen in her life. Intrigued, she went up and knocked on the door.
"Anybody home?" she asked.
"Yep," came a kid's voice through the door.
"Is your father there?" asked the social worker.
"Pa? Nope, he left afore Ma came in," said the kid.
"Well, is your mother there?" persisted the social worker.
"Ma? Nope, she left just afore I got here," said the kid.
"But," protested the social worker, (thinking that surely she will need to intervene in this situation) "are you never together as a family?"
"Sure, but not here," said the kid through the door. "This is the outhouse!"
At the end of the tax year, the IRS office sent an inspector to audit the books of a local hospital.
While the IRS agent was checking the books, he turned to the CFO of the hospital and said, "I notice you buy a lot of bandages. What do you do with the end of the roll when there's too little left to be of any use?"
Good question, noted the CFO. "We save them up and send them back to the bandage company and every once in a while, they send us a free roll."
Oh, replied the auditor, somewhat disappointed that his unusual question had a practical answer. But on he went, in his obnoxious way. "What about all these plaster purchases?" "What do you do with what's left over after setting a cast on a patient?"
Ah, yes, replied the CFO, realizing that the auditor was trying to trap him with an unanswerable question. "We save it and send it back to the manufacturer and every so often they will send us a free bag of plaster."
I see, replied the auditor, thinking hard about how he could fluster the know-it-all CFO. Well, he went on, "What do you do with all the remains from the circumcision surgeries?"
"Here, too, we do not waste", answered the CFO. “What we do is save all the little foreskins and send them to the IRS office, and about once a year they send us a complete prick.”
