Dead Horse

Tribal wisdom of the Lakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says, "When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount." However, in government more advanced strategies are often employed, such as:
  1. Buying a stronger whip.
  2. Changing riders.
  3. Appointing a committee to study the horse.
  4. Arranging to visit other countries to see how other cultures ride dead horses.
  5. Lowering the standards so that dead horses can be more productive.
  6. Hiring outside contractors to lift the dead horse and move its legs.
  7. Harnessing several dead horses together to increase speed.
  8. Providing additional funding and/or training to increase dead horse's performance.
  9. Doing a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse's performance.
  10. 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 some other horses.
  11. Rewriting the expected performance requirements for all horses.
    And, of course,
  12. Promoting the dead horse to a supervisory position and hiring another horse