New BizarreStuff Feature

April 13, 2011
Paris

In our continuing effort to keep BizarreStuff bizarre and to provide a wider variety of interesting "stuff" for our readers we are introducing today the "Occasional Random Thought" feature. We hope our readers like it and would especially like to hear feedback from our occasionally loyal followers.

Anyway, today's random thought was precipitated by the news that Texas legislators, who meet only for a few months once every two years, and spend the first month arguing about who is going to be the Speaker and what new procedural obstacles could he erected to slow down the legislative process to a snail's pace.

This has the twin effects of getting nothing down for the first two months of the truncated session and of creating a backlog of important legislation requiring careful consideration that is put off until the last minute and then rushed through, if at all, with no opportunity to refine it and make it a good law.

Meamwhile every new and old kook elected to the state legislature has the first few months of the legislative session to introduce every cockamamie measure that h/she has been able to conjure, either alone or wit the half-baked assistance os her or his demonic constituents who got him/her elected.

While Texas' budgetary crisis festers, the educational system crumbles, the judicial system, which is in need of major reform, is permitted to further deteriorate, immigration problems threaten to sink legalization reform,and a few other cataclysmic issues require immediate attention, the legislators concern themselves with bills to name a stretch of highway after some dead politician, the opossum haters organization wants to be allowed to eradicate opossums,the law enforcement establishment wants to legalize the right of burly cops to mace baby squirrels and new legislation to benefit Jerry Jones' Dallas Cowboys football empire are debated for days.

So we here at BizarreStuff were sort of wondering how the state legislative systems where our readers live work, and if they bear any resemblance to the veritable chaos that characterizes the Texas legialature?

Whilst writing this an email from Congressman "Smoky" Joe Barton, one of Texas's worst U.S, representatives of all time, flashed across my screen asing me and 1,000's of others if we are fed up with 'big government?" when Joe should be asking his constituents if they are fed up with him. Joe has made a career of smoking big government and "smoking" North Texas by protecting two of his 'big money' constituents in Midlothia who operate cement plants that heavily contribute to the smoky environment from when Smoky Joe derives his moniker.

See you next time.