Top 5 dumbest decisions recently made

To the Editor:

Here are five of the dumbest decisions that businesses, schools or communities have recently made.

Fifth, and a good contestant for dumbness, was a court order which prohibited a small meatpacking company from testing all its meat for mad cow disease rather than the small sample required by law, because if they had tested all, the larger meat packing industries might feel obligated to test all their meat and they didn’t want the extra expense.

Fourth, and even dumber, was a natural resources official who fined two men $90 each for rescuing a deer by inflating a life raft and floating out to untangle the deer from a floating tree branch. The men didn’t wear life jackets.

Third, and dumber still, a high school in Minnesota turned all schools into “sweet free zones.” Oh well, no more hot chocolate at November football games.

Second, and the penultimate champion of dumbness, a high school in Virginia for disciplining a gang of students who belonged to a nasty group called the “Christmas Tree Sweater” gang, a group trying to encourage the wearing of Christmas attire.

And No. 1, and by far the best example of inane decision making, is being exhibited by two out of three local school systems deciding to consolidate without the third school system when all the communities are within one intermediate school district and all have declining enrollments.

Ken Bowman

Ironwood