on weighty measures

The Office of Weights and Measures closed its doors today after many years of exemplary service ensuing equity between buyers and sellers. The federal agency stopped functioning due to budget cuts imposed by the administration of Donald J. Trump, cuts that seemed to specifically target such agencies and offices that act as middlemen between consumers and producers. “What a glorious day it is today, now a few days after my birthday, which was last Tuesday,” said Mr. Trump while signing the paperwork that halted funding for the Office and others like it. “No longer shall draconian Washington insiders dictate to the American how much milk can be in a gallon, or how many inches should be in a yard. Now, the people can decide for themselves what’s right, and true.”

Wholesalers rejoiced at the news and immediately began to rewire or retool their scales so as to maximize their own profits at all cost. Car manufacturers changed the distance of a mile from 5280 to 528,000 feet and began claiming that their cars can go a half a million feet on just a quarter pint of gasoline. A million high-school sophomores simultaneously took to social media to claim they had meter-long penises.

Small-town consumers who don’t own or aren’t willing to haul a set of scales to the grocery or hardware store will likely bear the brunt of the relaxation of weight and measurement regulations. Rumor has it that both the Federal Exchange Commission and the Government Accountability Office are up next on Trump’s chopping block.

americanifesto / JPR / whorphan / 場黑麥

private sector triumphs

Last Thursday evening, quietly, and with little fanfare, the private companies constituting America's military industrial complex declared success in their efforts to undermine and ultimately destroy liberty, democracy, and free speech at home and abroad. During a lavish ceremony held at an opulent dining room located in a convention center built using local taxes-dollars, these enemies of freedom toasted themselves, each other, and their cronies in Washington, cronies who used the federal 2012 defense bill to enrich these fools by nearly $400 billion. “NASA just spent $1.6 billion sending a miniature laboratory to Mars,” said the head of a powerful aeronautics contractor, to uproarious applause. “One point six billion? I can see from this here podium seventeen different fellow defense contractors who made that much in stock options in the ten minutes after the President signed the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012 (NDAA 2012). It warms my heart to know that those $400 billion were used to make the persons in this room rich instead of being wasted on launching more scientific labs into space, feeding malnourished children, or developing methods for raising crops in Earth's barren and waterless places. We have done it, gentlemen – hoodwinked hundreds of millions of clueless motherfuckers into making us wealthier and more powerful than they could possibly imagine.”

Called in 1961 by outgoing president Dwight D. Eisenhower the greatest threat to democracy that this country has ever known, a few tens of thousands of defense contractors routinely cheat over three hundred and ten millions of common American citizens out of roughly half the money we commoners give the government in the form of taxes, every year. “With four hundred billion dollars, we could refurbish a thousand schools, explore the seas and space, pay a hundred thousand school-teachers decently, rebuild a thousand bridges, cure a dozen diseases, and perfect renewable-energy-gathering-systems such as solar, tidal, wind, and thermal,” said Shurucq Tamzal, PhD, spokeswoman for the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO). “But no matter how many recommendations this office makes to leaders in the White House or Congress, they keep shoveling hundreds of billions of dollars into the pockets of private individuals who profit from constant and continuous conflict – war on a global scale. So, basically, when the U.S. makes war, defense contractors get rich. This is a disgrace, a farce, not at all how the persons who founded this nation intended us to be doing things. At least, that's my opinion; please don't quote me on it.”

Defense contracting is as old as war itself, a business which in the age of modern warfare and endless armed struggle has no time for or interest in maintaining freedom and democracy for an uneducated, disinterested, television-addled population. In his closing remarks before ceding the stage to Creed – a religiously-conservative music group – the aforementioned aeronautics contractor said, “Frankly, we need the general American public to stay stupid and glued to the idiot-box for five hours every day, because, otherwise, it would ask too many questions, wanting to know who keeps giving us hundreds of billions of its tax-dollars. I thank my lucky stars for the wizards who make compelling, high-drama, high-quality TV programming.”

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