Funny Thing About "Free"

Texas just passed HB1481 (the respectful language act) into law. This was promoted as a feel-good measure so we don't hurt the feelings of retards. Representative Vicki Truitt has demonstrated herself to be somewhat lacking in mental capacity because of one sentence:

"It costs nothing to adopt verbiage in state statutes to reflect the fact that we recognize individuals and their uniqueness, without using offensive terms to categorize and label these good Texans."

"It costs nothing"

Hold on there.

• So the staffers wrote the bill on their personal time, off the clock, pro bono publico?
• The vote to pass the bill was held on members' personal time, not during a regular legislative session?
• The governor, he signed it for free also? We didn't pay him for those five minutes?
• And the memoranda that will be distributed to all the State employees, those are typed and distributed free of charge?
• When the employees are reading said memos, they will surely be off the clock?

The first part of the bill is innocuous enough. Going forward, we won't call frikken retards retards any more in Texas law. Fine, sure, whatever. Pat yourselves on the back right?

Then the Health & Human Services Commission is ordered to do a review to help with statutory revisions. This I suppose will also cost the taxpayer nothing? Then there will be a recommendation which will, again, be prepared, typed, disseminated, read, and commented-upon while people are NOT on the clock in their State offices?

The commissioners are going to "ensure" that the appropriate, nonbutthurting language is used. You know how that's done? Proposals, proposals of rulemaking, comment periods, revisals of proposed rules, preparation, writing, publishing, reading, and training on proper implementation of the rules. All this is, according to Rep. Truitt, "free."

Also free: webhosting! The State of Texas has Hosting Faries who pay to host the text of stupid laws like this on the Internet, and IT Faries maintain the servers donated by Server Fairy. You see what you did there? You cost the State money by clicking that link. NOT free. Duh?

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All of this is stupid anyway. Retarded is a word and everyone who speaks English knows exactly what it means. It is based on the word Retard, which is a VERB, not a noun. You don't base STATE LAW on the misuse of the English language, you train your children in school how properly to treat the language!

They didn't run a survey on retarded persons with intellectual disability to see if "the R word" hurts their feelings or not. This new law is only to protect the sensibilities of people who get offended on the behalf of other people who don't get offended because they're not smart P.C. enough.

And here's the dirty little secret: they get offended when you say retard, because they look down on the retards. The tools whose idea this law was, disrespect retarded persons 'way down deep in their own hearts, and they want to legislate their wicked lack of compassion away from themselves.