Washington DC - "You know, I was on my way to a strip...uhh...to church yesterday, when I realized that people could turn right legally when it was a red light. This made traffic speed up for everybody involved." Bill Frist (R-TN) observed to the media last Thursday. Senator Frist, among the hundreds of millions of Americans known as "motorists," recognized that right turners speed up their lane by decreasing the number of drivers who need to go straight or left, thus decreasing the people who need to wait for a green light to go.
As a result, the Republican Party, reaching a bipartisan deal with Democrats, meaning that everyone agrees since everyone is one or the other, persuaded the President to add tax incentives for drivers who turn right. This incentive, to be included in the 2007 budget, aims to speed up traffic significantly. "We look to encourage people to turn right instead of going their usual convenient way of turning left or going straight. I don't know why we haven't thought of this before!" Sen. Rockefeller (D-W. Va) said.
Traffic experts disagree on the actual result of the incentives. Jack Abramoff, with no relation to Washington lobbyists, who claims loosely to be an expert on the case, stated that "This will increase traffic flow, thus decreasing fuel consumption, which means less dependency on OPEC and foreign oil. If you don't sponsor this, you like terrorists. Do you like terrorists?"
Jerome Poop, professor at Harvard with a doctorate in intersection engineering, dissagreed. "This will just make people take three right turns when they could have just turned left. Either that will happen, or people will freeload of this sytem and make a living off of turning right."
Congress diagrees. In fact, they were so excited to reccomend this to the President that they missed one, well, mino detail. How they're going to keep track of it. John Kerry (D-MA) supports the idea that people have security cameras installed in their car by law to record every time they turn right. Sen. Frist (R-TN) diagrees. He believes people should just record it themselves and put it on their income tax return. "I trust the people to tell the truth. I trust them so much, I take about half of their paycheck and put it towards broken down programs. I trust them so much, I don't even let them decide what to do with their bodies or trust them with what language to use. I am the American congressman."
