Bush Sewage Plant

Some creative San Francisco bar patrons want to rename a sewage treatment plant after the, um, sitting president.

From the Department of Damned-With-Faint-Praise, a group going by the regal-sounding name of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water treatment plant on the shoreline to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant. The plan, naturally hatched in a bar, would place a vote on the November ballot to provide “an appropriate honor for a truly unique president.”

[…]

The renaming would take effect on Jan. 20, when the new president is sworn in. And regardless of the measure’s outcome, supporters plan to commemorate the inaugural with a synchronized flush of hundreds of thousands of San Francisco toilets, an action that would send a flood of water toward the plant, now called the Oceanside Water Pollution Control Plant.

Critics say this is “an abuse of process” and being done “without regard to the city’s governance or cost.” Well, that’s democracy, I guess.

Amusingly, Josh Patashnik has responded with a post entitled “Why Direct Democracy Is Awesome” that rather demonstrates the opposite.

via memeorandum

FILED UNDER: Blogosphere, Democracy, Uncategorized, , , ,
James Joyner
About James Joyner
James Joyner is Professor and Department Head of Security Studies at Marine Corps University's Command and Staff College. He's a former Army officer and Desert Storm veteran. Views expressed here are his own. Follow James on Twitter @DrJJoyner.

Comments

  1. Bithead says:

    Interesting that this post should follow so close on the heels of a post entitled “The Fallacy of mass appeal.”

    What is direct Democracy but that, after all?

  2. Michael says:

    Interesting that this post should follow so close on the heels of a post entitled “The Fallacy of mass appeal.”

    What is direct Democracy but that, after all?

    Wasn’t it Churchill that said “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others”.

  3. Grewgills says:

    It’s not an appropriate choice. Sewage plants clean up messes.

  4. Bithead says:

    Wasn’t it Churchill that said “Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the others”.

    Use of “Democracy” in that context is a falacy in and of itself, since both we and the brits at the time, have what amounts to a representitive Republic.

  5. yetanotherjohn says:

    I’m a supporter of Bush, but I don’t see a problem for this. If they put it on the ballot and the voters decide it is a good idea, go for it.

    Of course, I suspect that we in Texas might be able to find a lunatic asylum that we could name after the junior senator from Illinois.

  6. carpeicthus says:

    Finally, a good target for the Reagan Legacy project.

  7. rodney dill says:

    I for one would like to propose the

    President William Jefferson Clinton Sperm Bank

    Now there’s an appropriate legacy.

  8. julita says:

    Actually, this sewage treatment plant represents the opposite of everything that Bush has stood for. The plant protects the environment by treating wastewater and storm drain runoff, cleaning the waste out of the water and purifying it before releasing it into the ocean. The plant is all about water conservation and reducing pollution. So while I understand the satirical objective, naming this facility after G.W.B. really kind of misses the point, and is more an insult to the SF water treatment system than anything else. It’s an award-winning, state-of-the-art, scientifically-based, environmentally-friendly facility. I don’t think it’s very nice to the people who work there to turn their jobsite into a potty-mouth joke about the president. Also, the effort that went into getting this on the ballot could have gone into something that would do some actual good instead of a stupid joke.