South Dakota State Legislator from Sioux Falls proposes a bill for mental health evaluations for his colleagues
l3wis I spoke with the legislator last night about his proposal, and at this point he wants to remain anonymous, but promises me that he will have several sponsors for the bill.
The bill, if passed would implement a law that requires all current and new legislators to undergo a mental health evaluation and IQ test. They will also have to take a UA (drug test) and undergo an addiction screening.
I asked Legislator ‘X’ why he is proposing this.
“Well, do you need to ask? Every year we are faced with more ridiculous bills, in this year alone there has been bills introduced that would limit surrogacy, limit transgender treatment, allows people to avoid vaccinations for their children, and take taxes off of guns and ammo (instead of food).”
I reminded him of what Hunter S. Thompson once said about that, why would people want to hoard food for an apocalypse? You want to hoard guns, because the people with the guns will have the food.
After a brief chuckle from Rep. ‘X’ he continues, “Many times these laws are unconstitutional and that costs taxpayers money to fight them in court, which brings us to HB 1004 which would allow the legislative body to ’employ legal counsel other than the attorney general…to represent the Legislature in any court of this state or the United States.’ In other words more kooky right wing groups interfering in our court system.”
So what do these bills this have to do with the mental health evaluation?
“Because the legislators that are proposing this crap are batsh*t crazy!”, exclaimed Rep. ‘X’ “They are either crazy, stupid or on drugs, and this bill addressed them all.”
Well you cannot argue with that.
So what are the repercussions if they fail one or more of the tests?
“If they are newly elected, they will be ineligible to serve to begin with, if they are already serving, they will be removed. In both situations they will also have to pay for the testing.”
I asked him how many legislators he suspects that will leave us with and Rep. ‘X’ said this, “A handful, and they will probably all be Democrats.”
So what would happen after this mass exodus of crazy folks? He said the first thing that would happen is we would have to increase the funding to the state hospital ‘significantly’ and secondly we would have to have a second emergency election to fill those seats. Rep ‘X’ is not certain how that would work, but he said in order to make the legislature viable we would probably have to leave ‘Republicans off the ballot’ in the emergency election.
Some have argued with Rep ‘X’ that this proposal is crazy and goes against personal choice of the electorate. “Yes, it does go against ‘personal choice’ and this may be why they just might support it”, says Rep ‘X’. “Because if the state legislature in South Dakota is good one thing, it’s taking away your personal choices.”
A majority of both houses just may be ‘crazy’ enough to support it.
*This piece is satire and only meant to inflame the nutty right wingers in Pierre.
