There are a number of strategies that can get you out of things you don't want to do. But the stand-by procedure—the most fool-proof—is one I like to call "The Wait for a Distraction." Put off the work—say you'll do it soon. Eventually, something else is bound to come up, and in dealing with that, your task will be forgotten. The savvy child may never have to mow the lawn again.
Sometimes fearing the unknown isn't such a bad idea. Like, for instance, when they're serving "mystery meat" in the cafeteria. Or, on a slightly bigger scale, when your state is considering a new law that could disfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters.
The debate around voter ID laws is generally one about protection versus disenfranchisement. Advocates of the laws, which require photo identification to vote, often say the law won't have an impact anyone who's voting legally. In Pennsylvania, the Secretary of the Commonwealth assured lawmakers that 99 percent of voters in the state had the necessary identification, and promised that "No one entitled to vote will be denied that right by this bill." Her views were echoed by Republican lawmakers throughout the state who pushed for the measure. You need a photo ID for everything these days, the logic seemed to go, so why not voting too? After all, who doesn't have a photo ID?
In their continuing effort to make theirs the worst state in the Union, Arizona Republicans want to require food-stamp recipients to carry bright-orange identification cards with large black lettering, as opposed to the current, debit-style cards:
[A] Chandler Republican lawmaker wants the debit cards now given to food-stamp recipients to be bright safety orange. And if there's any doubt what the card pulled out of someone's wallet at the checkout is, that would be erased by the words "Government Food Stamp Card" stamped across it in large black print.
