< PREVIOUS ] [ 1990 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
In many ways, today is my favorite quasi-holiday.
Tradition holds that I am allowed to print any preposterous
but plausible item on April 1, string the reader along, and
then pull that string with an admonition to look at the
calendar.
So let's have some fun with a few leg-pullers:
· President George Bush, in order to establish for once and for all that he is not a wimp, flatly bans a vegetable he detests from his plate. Despite strident protests from aggrieved broccoli growers, he stands firm.
This is in stark contrast to another politician who was occasionally praised for his courage, Dick Lamm. When Lamm was in his first term as governor of Colorado, the cook revealed that the Lamms seldom, if ever, ate beef. The Colorado Cattlemen's Association raised a tremendous fuss. Instead of bravely standing his ground against those purveyors of cholesterol and defenders of overgrazing, Lamm issued fulsome praise of Colorado beef and allowed himself to be photographed grilling hamburgers.
· After years of accusations that the Rocky Flats plant was run in a slipshod and unaccountable manner, it halts production of thermonuclear warhead triggers. A clean-up finds enough errant plutonium in the ventilation system to build six bombs.
· The Environmental Protection Agency actually acts to protect the environment by reaffirming its ban on any reservoir of any size at Two Forks.
· The residents of Denver have an average income
of about $20,000 a year. Nonetheless, they are likely to
agree to tax themselves in order to provide a stadium for
athletes who make an average of $500,000 a year. This
trickle-up
subsidy mechanism has been popular ever
since Ronald Reagan's election as president.
· If you belong to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, you have a constitutional right to loaf on the job. That, in essence, is the argument presented by a union official, who said that conducting field audits -- that is, checking to see whether a pothole crew is fixing potholes rather than drinking coffee at a convenience store -- represents a civil-rights violation.
· Once upon a time, about 1973, the metropolitan area decided to solve its public-transit problems for once and for all by creating the Regional Transportation District. That didn't quite solve everything, but the next panacea was to elect its directors. One director lives in San Diego and flies to meetings at public expense and says it's nobody's business; he used to be an investigative reporter. The new Metropolitan Transportation Authority is proposed as a cure, even though its ambitious light rail plans have already been sabotaged by the highway lobby.
· Colorado Republicans have finally honored their party's long-standing belief in individualism and limited government. As precinct caucuses approach, they have two announced candidates for governor.
One sponsored a bill to legalize marijuana when he
served in the state legislature. The other leads an
organization called No More Drug Wars,
which rightly
holds that the cure of drug wars is more damaging to
society than the disease of drug abuse.
Isn't April Fools Day wonderful?
< PREVIOUS ] [ 1990 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >