A Progressive Plan To Care For The Useless? (Updated with source of the satire)

Do you like good satire? I do. A friend e-mailed me this the other day and it’s too good not to share. We don’t know who authored it or when it was written. It has Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House so it could have been written in 2009 or 2010, in which case this may not be new to you. But, if you are like me and reading this for the  first time, let’s assume it is 2015 and that the Democrats won control of the House in the 2014 mid-term elections. I hope you enjoy this as much as I did.

Update: The friend that sent me this delightful satire did some digging and found the original source and we thank her.

From the Truth or Fiction blog we learn:

This is satire from the humorous website The Onion and it was originally written on June 24, 1998.  

Someone took the time to update this to appear more current by mentioning President Obama and “House Speaker Nancy Pelosi,” which resulted in this new version going viral on the World Wide Web shortly after January 1, 2013.   The first clue that this was a hoax was that Nancy Pelosi has not been the House Speaker since the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and replaced her with John Boehner after the 2010 election. 

 

 

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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.”