Dead horses

(No, this is not original but it is worth repeating.)

The tribal wisdom of many native Americans, passed on from generation to
generation, says that, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse,
the best strategy is to dismount."

However, within the Federal government, more advanced strategies are often employed in such situations, such as:

1. Buying a longer and/or stronger whip.

2. Changing riders in the hopes of improving horse performance.

3. Hiring outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

4. Appointing a committee to study the dead horse.

5. Visiting other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.

6. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be counted with live ones.

7. Reclassifying the dead horse as living-impaired.

8. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.

9. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.

10. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse's performance.

11. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.

12. Declaring that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do other live horses.