The tribal wisdom of the Lakota Indians, passed on from generation to generation, says that when you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

In modern education and government, however, a whole range of far more advanced strategies are often employed, such as these:

1. Buy a stronger whip.

2. Change riders.

3. Threaten the horse with probation or even termination.

4. Appoint a committee to study the horse.

5. Visit other sites to see how others ride dead horses.

6. Lower the standards so that dead horses can be included.

7. Re-classify the dead horse as “living, impaired”.

8. Hire outside contractors to ride the dead horse.

9. Harness several dead horses together to increase the horsepower.

10. Mount multiple dead horses in hopes that one of them will spring to life.

11. Provide additional funding and/or training to increase the dead horse’s performance.

12. Conduct a productivity study to see if lighter riders would improve the dead horse’s performance.

13. Declare that as the dead horse does not have to be fed, it is less costly, carries lower overhead, and therefore contributes substantially more to the bottom line of the economy than do other horses.

14. Blame the media for the horse’s negative attitude.

15. Promote the dead horse to a supervisory position.