Mutant Federal Agencies

As the Bush-Obama presidential transition reaches its final stages, some frightening and bizarre discoveries have been made by the incoming Administration.

"We all knew about the public side of the Bush Administration," said Obama’s Chief of
Staff Rahm Emanuel. "You know, the various departments and agencies of the federal government that regularly make the news. Organizations like the Department of Defense and the Office of Management and Budget."

However, there appears to be a secret underbelly of government, a grouping of once-active but now seldom-used offices and bureaus. Emanuel’s subordinates have only begun to catalogue the unusual groupings of dormant bureaucrats who have apparently resided in the sewers of Washington, D. C. for the last eight years.

"We often heard stories about agencies of this type," said the Chief of Staff. "Agencies from the last century that supposedly had mandates to help the general public and occasionally even performed useful work."

Early reports indicate that deep below the streets of the nation’s capital live the remains of a department devoted to improving the educational standards of American students.

"We found barely breathing bureaucrats," said Emanuel. "Who whispered strange phrases like ‘second to none’ and ‘more public financing’ and ‘no child left behind.’ Sadly, none of them could recall any details of these long forgotten policies."

Also discovered in Washington’s sewers was something called the State Department where blank-eyed diplomats muttered expressions that sounded like ‘diplomatic relations’, ‘human rights’ and ‘no unilateral invasions.’

"We had heard rumors about strange government bureaucracies like this," said the new Chief of Staff. "But we never thought that they really existed. Apparently there was a time when America actually listened to other countries and even engaged in mutual cooperation."

Perhaps the strangest mutant organization found within the murky sewer waters was something called the Treasury Department.

"I’ve never seen anything like it," said Emanuel. "There were scores of functionaries who apparently once regulated financial institutions to keep them from making crazy investments. And sitting next to them were legions of bureaucrats whose only job was to ensure that the rich actually paid their fair share of taxes."

As the new staff members slog deeper and deeper into Washington’s sewers, they’ve been finding even stranger and less effective agencies.

"Believe it or not," said Emanuel. "We’ve discovered entire government departments that were once devoted to protecting the consumer, the environment and even the health of the nation. Who knows? If we can revive these strange creatures, we may even learn something about how to run a country."