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Two Studies In Title Inflation

Comedy newspaper moment of the weekend: although I must warn you, this is a bit of a strange one. (I have no idea why Common Dreams is reprinting an LA Times story – damn you, corporate media! – but they helpfully don’t require registration. It was also in Sunday’s R-G.) The George Kenney writing this bizarre little piece isn’t State Rep. George Kenney of Pennsylvania, although it would be much, much funnier if that were the case. Here we go:

The only way to restore genuine democratic representation is a substantial, long-overdue increase in the size of the House. We need a fivefold increase now, and a longer-term goal of maintaining districts of about 100,000 people.

It’s mind-boggling, to be sure, to contemplate a House of 2,000 or 3,000 seats, or more. Such a change would cause huge disruptions. But reluctant as we may be to do it, the alternatives are far worse. Let’s not quibble over practicalities.

That last sentence is always welcome in an op-ed. To indulge for a moment, though: we need an additional (say) fifteen hundred congresspeople? Each one earning $150K? Presumably that figure doesn’t include things like staff and travel budgets. I think George Kenney just earned a seat of honor on that free ice-cream trip we alluded to yesterday.

In related news, Gregg Easterbrook tackles the difficult task of writing TMQ in a week when no football games were actually played, and ends up musing:

If General Motors had the same ratio of titles to revenue as the Houston Texans, GM would boast 1,928 vice chairmen, 4,820 senior vice presidents and 13,496 directors.

That sounds about right. But let us not be distracted from the real matter at hand, people. You know what this country really needs to set it on the right track? I’ve figured it out: more graduate students. Tens of thousands of graduate students. No, seriously.

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