Washington, DC – The National Governors Association has announced a voluntary product safety recall of sixteen governors, due to a structural design problem that could pose an immediate safety risk to consumers.
“We didn’t know, when we made these governors available to the public, how truly dangerous they were,” said an NGA representative who requested anonymity because he feared swift and remorseless retaliation from one of the defective governors. “In most cases, they seemed like fully functioning human beings. But now it appears that many of them avoided routine safety checks or managed to buy off safety regulators.”
In Pennsylvania, defective governor Tom Corbett has recently barred safety inspectors from issuing citations of his office for safety violations, following on his <a href=”http://articles.philly.com/2011-03-31/news/29366295_1_drilling-companies-dep-inspectors-marcellus-shale-coalition”>Department of Environmental Protection’s unprecedented demand that environmental inspectors in Pennsylvania stop issuing violations against natural gas drillers without prior approval from the DEP</a>. In Wisconsin, defective governor Scott Walker has issued demands for the email records of everyone who has typed the words <a href=”http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/03/wi-gop-foias-emails-of-state-university-prof-critical-of-gov-walker.php”>Scott Walker, recall, collective bargaining, AFSCME, WEAC, rally, union, Alberta Darling, Randy Hopper, Dan Kapanke, Rob Cowles, Scott Fitzgerald, Sheila Harsdorf, Luther Olsen, Glenn Grothman, Mary Lazich, Jeff Fitzgerald, Marty Beil, Mary Bell, Rachel Maddow, or fruit bats</a> since January 1 of this year. And in Florida, defective governor Rick Scott has eliminated an anti-fraud database that would track the fraudulent dealings of defective governor Rick Scott, following on <a href=”http://motherjones.com/mojo/2011/03/rick-scott-floridas-drug-fraud-enabler”>his attempt to kill an anti-fraud database that would track the fraudulent distribution of addictive prescription drugs in Florida</a>.
“These guys are clearly a menace to society,” said consumer watchdogs Albert and Allen Hughes.
But according to the National Governors Association, the problem has spread beyond the initial “bad batch” of gubernatorial products recently purchased by unwary consumers. “It’s not just the new crop, almost all of whom contain toxic and potentially lethal levels of wingnuttery,” said an industry spokesman. “It’s a public hazard of almost epic proportions. You’ve got governors like Bobby Jindal making fun of early-detection systems for natural disasters. You’ve got Jan Brewer’s crew looking for anyone who speaks with a funny accent. You’ve got Haley Barbour reminiscing fondly about the white-supremacist Citizens Councils. So it’s not just a question of a few bad eggs like Alabama’s <a href=”http://blog.al.com/montgomery/2011/01/alabama_governor_robert_bentle.html”>Robert Bentley</a> refusing to acknowledge non-Christians as his ‘brothers and sisters.’ It’s grounds for a total recall.”
Even some conservative voters have begun to express “buyer’s remorse.” “I liked this brand of governor because they yell at teachers, so I bought a whole case of ‘em,” said Roger Waters, an unemployed man from upstate. “I hated the way teachers were always telling me to read and think and stop hitting people and stuff. But then I find out that they’re killing train lines and cutting off my unemployment checks. I asked one of them about creating jobs, and he said something about seceding from the federal government. I asked another one about all the crumbling bridges and tunnels in the state and he said ‘abortion abortion abortion abortion.’ I don’t get it.”
The recalled governors are Haley Barbour (Mississippi), Robert Bentley (Alabama), Jan Brewer (Arizona), Sam Brownback (Kansas), Chris Christie (New Jersey), Tom Corbett (Pennsylvania), Mitch Daniels (Indiana), Nathan Deal (Georgia), Dennis Daugaard (South Dakota), Nikki Haley (South Carolina), Bobby Jindal (Lousiana), John Kasich (Ohio), Rick Perry (Texas), Rick Scott (Florida), Rick Snyder (Michigan), and Scott Walker (Wisconsin). Jerry Brown (California) and Andrew Cuomo (New York) are also being monitored for public safety violations, though consumer advocates warn that their potential replacement governors may give off deadly noxious fumes. “Don’t forget what happened last time we issued a recall in one of those places,” said Anthony Kiedis of the Institute for Advanced Californication. “They wound up with some guy who went through nightclubs and malls shooting people. Even when they tried to blow up his oil truck and crush him in a drill press, they couldn’t get rid of him. So you take your chances.”
The National Governors Association has issued a warning that continued prolonged exposure to defective governors may cause severe corrosion of public works and irreparable damage to the social fabric. If your body politic comes into contact with any of the recalled governors, wash thoroughly with soap and water to prevent toxic effects such as rashes, burns, abrasions, lacerations, boils, and excessive bleeding. Reported side effects include loss of workplace protections, civil liberties, reproductive rights, drinkable water, health coverage, pensions, hair, memory, and eyesight.
{ 34 comments }
JP Stormcrow 04.01.11 at 9:24 pm
Clearly we need to have already stopped this sometime in the past. So that’d be, what? Sixteen Cyberdyne Systems Model 101s? Not going to come cheap; if only there existed some mechanism to raise revenues from the population at large.
Glen Tomkins 04.01.11 at 9:30 pm
I hope your university e-mail account traffic is all in order.
Michael Bérubé 04.01.11 at 9:41 pm
I have added “Rachel Maddow Union Rally Recall” to my email signature in the hopes that they will have to read every single last one.
Red 04.01.11 at 9:44 pm
Some curious events have been reported in Maine, too.
Steve LaBonne 04.01.11 at 9:48 pm
Just to be sure, I’d put “ALEC” and “Koch” in there too.
Michael Bérubé 04.01.11 at 9:48 pm
Some curious events have been reported in Maine, too.
Damn, I knew I would forget a loon or two.
Sev 04.01.11 at 9:51 pm
These governors appear to be performing adequately, with notable rare exceptions.
Michael Bérubé 04.01.11 at 9:52 pm
Just to be sure, I’d put “ALEC†and “Koch†in there too.
Maybe I should just include the sentence “I recall when Alec and Rachel Maddow had their civil union ceremony down by the Koch rally” in every email.
JP Stormcrow 04.01.11 at 10:10 pm
“Many years later, as he faced the FOIA request, Professor Michael Bérubé was to remember that distant afternoon when he mocked his Kochian overlords.”
Bernard Yomtov 04.02.11 at 12:18 am
Excellent post.
Michael Bérubé 04.02.11 at 12:22 am
JP @ 9: ALEC — this is the great invention of our time.
christian_h 04.02.11 at 12:55 am
My colleagues warned me against purchasing Jerry Brown 2.0… First time around, Prop. 13. This time, “pension reform”? Stay tuned. (Although I’m happy we didn’t take Meg even for free.)
garymar 04.02.11 at 1:26 am
Institute of Advanced Californication — how do I apply for a grant?
vivian 04.02.11 at 1:44 am
Thank you, this hit the spot.
dragonet2 04.02.11 at 2:17 am
Right now it’s easy to lose track of a loon or two in the governor class. On the other hand, it’s pretty clear we are sliding into a plutocracy, so I doubt the freedom to express our opinions (since I’m guessing this blogger and respondents are not the multi-gazillionaires that seem to be running the country now) will be here long.
Gene O'Grady 04.02.11 at 2:19 am
I think this is pretty unfair to Jerry Brown. I’ve had a chance to watch California governors up close since before his father was in, and the only ones that were not grossly worse than Jerry were his father (who was better) and Ronald Reagan, of all people. Gray Davis did some excellent things as a legislator (Davis-Stirling Act, which I know from the inside) but was way over his head politically as a governor.
Anybody else have the chance to watch George Deukmejian and the loathsome Pete Wilson up close? Wilson’s real crime was energy deregulation, but the way he enjoyed capital punishment turned my stomach, and I am personally only conflicted, not outraged by the death penalty.
By the way, a bit of the pension reform is reasonable (eliminating piling up overtime in the last year on the job), and, as Jerry learned from Prop 13, if you don’t get out in front with a small scale change you will get something obscene by the initiative process.
Glen Tomkins 04.02.11 at 2:48 am
If they ever pull in my professional e-mails, I have the profoundest pity for the poor boob who will have to0 sort through it for the juicy bits.
Hint to all who may ever be called on to review the e-mail of an Academic Internist for the juicy bits — there are no juicy bits. We are perhaps the single most appallingly boring group of people in the known universe, and I am a veritable emperor in this kingdom of the dead.
We come by our ability to generate boredom honestly. Kierkegaard had it exactly right. People are interesting to others in proportion to how bored they are with the world, and people are boring to the extent that they find the world interesting. I actually find Bayes Theorem endlessly fascinating. That makes me capable of inducing sleep at 50 meters. I have put patients to sleep. Med students, colleagues — putting them to sleep is easy, expected, routine, especially with the aid of the lecture hall, that best friend of sleep. Any neophyte can do that. But patients come to you in fear for their lives. The are thrilled to find, at last, someone interested in their bowel habits, someone who doesn’t insist that they shut up about their bowel habits already. For me to be so much more interested in their bowel habits than even they are is at first shocking to them, but that quickly gives way to sleep paralysis as the detailed questions just keep coming in mind-numbing succession.
I pity the fool who has to paw through the entrails of my e-mail. Horrors await there unimaginable to the non-Board Certified and non-MPH.
P O'Neill 04.02.11 at 3:05 am
A pretty impressive Obliviate on that recall from aspiring dark lord, Tim Pawlenty.
Pat Morton 04.02.11 at 5:00 am
Anthony Kiedis is a wise man, you could even say a red hot pundit.
mcd 04.02.11 at 6:46 am
Are not these governors performing according to their manufacturers’ specs?
JP Stormcrow 04.02.11 at 4:52 pm
MB@11: ALEC —this is the great invention of our time.
Yes, until recently many such organizations lacked names, and in order to indicate them it was necessary to point. Which made effective e-mail discovery problematic.
Zyxomma 04.02.11 at 9:34 pm
MB: You forgot Sean Parnell (SP-II) in Alaska, also too.
Michael Bérubé 04.03.11 at 1:14 am
I wondered about Parnell. But I haven’t heard anything about him, whereas I did hear about Paul LePage’s deeply allergic reaction to labor murals in the Department of Labor building that feature laborers. So I’m kicking myself about Maine. And Nikki Haley was on the bubble. Perhaps there should be a play-in round before the Sweet Sixteen?
Are not these governors performing according to their manufacturers’ specs?
You know, mcd, that kind of cynicism is going to destroy democracy.
mds 04.03.11 at 2:52 am
Dammit, I used to think that if any pseudonymous m__ were to destroy democracy with cynicism, it would be I. But I have to
experience repeated crying fitssleep sometime.Also, too, instead of figuring out who’s on the borderline, or trying to remember which states exist, why not just target all the governors? E.g., Dan Malloy might sound reasonable with his talk of increasing state revenue, but his tax increases fall hardest on the middle class and lightest on the wealthy, and it’s largely the fault of greedy public sector employees who somehow got the idea that their previously-agreed-to deferred compensation was actually deferred compensation. So right now I’m having a difficult time finding a governor who isn’t behaving like a fruit bat.
(… Okay, Pat Quinn can stay. It’s not really his fault if his own party is making deals with Republicans that slash his target for school funding.)
skippy 04.04.11 at 2:55 am
nice reference to the hughes brothers, tho i wonder why.
M. Bouffant 04.04.11 at 3:19 am
Pink Floyd sure went to hell after Barrett left. I wondered whatever became of that Waters dude.
Josh 04.04.11 at 8:10 am
A different Hughes bros. movie would work too—one with Ian Holm.
Michael Bérubé 04.04.11 at 11:44 am
Never mind Roger Waters — what about that Pete Wilson guy Gene O’Grady mentioned @ 16? That guy was a rock star. Presidential material, I was told.
mds 04.04.11 at 4:06 pm
I second Professor Bérubé: Peta Wilson for President! From bitter experience, she’d rein in the “national security” excesses of the executive branch!
Concerning Times 04.04.11 at 6:51 pm
This is wonderful but you have left out Maine’s governor Paul Lepage. But overall a great piece. :)
Miracle Max 04.06.11 at 3:33 pm
This typically pink smear glosses over the corrective powers of the market. As the inadequacies of these governors becomes apparent, alert citizens will migrate to better-governed locales, leaving the abandoned states available for the location of Christian universities and nuclear waste repositories.
Michael Bérubé 04.07.11 at 12:12 am
Miracle Max is, once again, correct. Except that this time he makes me wish that I had started blogging seven years ago under the pseudonym “Pink Smear.”
Stephan 04.07.11 at 11:20 am
On the point. Very funny! Thanks.
Elissa 04.08.11 at 7:21 pm
Frankly. Do you actually think that they care about people’s lives? Yes they care in the election year but after that, they seem to forget about people and focus only on their interest.
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