Bad Government is Worse than a Bad Santa

Reuters reports trouble at the North Pole:

Canada's post office and police are trying to track down a "rogue elf" who wrote obscene letters to children on behalf of Santa Claus.

The Ottawa Citizen said at least 10 nasty letters had been delivered to little girls and boys in Ottawa who wrote to Santa this year care of the North Pole, which has a special H0H 0H0 Canadian postal code. Return letters from Santa are in fact written by an 11,000-strong army of Canada Post employees and volunteers.  [emphasis added]

Canada Post's popular "Write to Santa" program -- which last year delivered more than a million letters to children in Canada and around the world -- has been shut down in Ottawa until the offender is caught.

This story tells you just about all you need to know about government:

• Government loves to play Santa Claus to little kids so that when they grow up, they'll believe that government can deliver benefits without costing them anything.
• "Write to Santa" sends out a million letters per year written by an army of 11,000 surrogate Santas.  One bad apple writes ten nasty letters and they shut down the program.  That's about as sensible as the American FDA pulling cough syrup off the market because a few parents don't follow directions.  Overreaction is typical of government.
• How are they going to catch the perp without a confession?  If there were fingerprints, Salacious Santa would have already been bagged.  They have 11,000 suspects; the letters could have come from anywhere.  Are they going to quiz all 11,000 Surrogate Santas?  Haven't the police anything better to do?

Paying government employees to lie to kids...  Shutting down a program when there are 10 bad letters in a million...  Setting impossible conditions from starting again...

What more do you need to know about government?