White house raises corpse-tax on oil

by Aleister
Published: Monday, October 31st, 2005

WASHINGTON, November 4, 2005 - The Bush administration, at the behest of President of Vice Dick Cheney, has ramrodded an unprecedented change in tariff laws through Congress. This alteration calls for a 15% reduction in cash tariffs for petroleum, while drastically increasing the tariff paid in corpses, as high 16.5 bodies per barrel in the case of light crude.

At a press conference this morning, Cheney deemed the measure "necessary for continued growth in the private sector." At the prompting of his armed guards, attendees nodded and murmured in wholehearted approval. President Bush spoke next, providing assurance that our corpse accumulation in Iraq would be more than adequate to foot the bill for the foreseeable future. When an Associated Press reporter questioned him about the war's relationship to the oil tariff, Mr. Bush responded, "We are hot on the trail of those WMDs. They will be brought to justice."

Outgoing head of the Federal Reserve Alan Greenspan, speaking from his Washington home, remarked, "This increase in the petroleum corpse tariff will promote growth in the private sector inasmuch as we provide growth to mean, in this sense, the standard of living, and again provided that the way in which this standard is computed changed such that it is a division of GDP by total population, which we expect, in the long term, to decrease under this policy. In the short term, it may stall the domestic inflation of the dollar by providing additional disposable income to survivors, defined as those who are not entirely dead, based upon their continued metabolic functions, however, these gains may or may not prove temporary, inasmuch as..."

This reporter missed the middle portion of Greenspan's statement because he left to get lunch, but returned in time to hear Greenspan conclude, "and that's why I use baking soda instead. There's just less chafing overall, with a slight possibility of a negligible increase or decrease in the rash level, provided that a rash is a skin irritation not referring to boils, warts, scabs or tumors, but possibly including hemorrhoids."

Some White House officials spoke, on the condition of anonymity, about their reservations regarding the new tariff. One indicated that it was passed, for the most part, to pander to special interests, notably the funeral industry, whose revenue is expected to increase as much as 7% nationwide due to the measure. The advocacy representative of the National Funeral Directors' Association was in attendance at today's press conference, but declined to comment.

Another aide indicated his suspicion of an intent that is darker yet: That the administration is raising the corpse tariff on petroleum to bolster the legions of Hell in anticipation of the End of Days. We contacted Hell's Secretary of Defense for comment. "If you heard this upstairs, odds are that it's pure speculation," he said. "I'm going to have to go now; I'm having trouble hearing you over the collective moaning of all these new recruits."

The Prince of Darkness could not be reached, as he is no longer taking this reporter's calls.