Discord felt rather proud of himself a few days after finishing his piece on the Royal Guard, mostly because it had been one of the main things that he had heard a lot of other ponies talk about most recently. Including the fact that Shining Armor, the stallion who was still overseeing the Royal Guard, actually took his advice and hired Tempest Shadow as a consultant so they could help fix the royal guard.
Though… one of the topics going on this week was one that the news had been talking about a lot in recent months and that many ponies were paying attention too. However, there was one key thing that a lot of ponies were not entirely focused on and they were still important nonetheless. Plus, the only times that they seem to mention it is when something crazy just happened and it just only showed up on the local news.
So, as he began to prepare himself for tonight’s episode and began to kick things off, Discord soon greeted everypony in the audience with open arms. “Welcome, welcome to Last Week Tonight!” Everypony in the crowd cheered tonight in response as the spirit of chaos soon began to start his topic on a much different note. “I’m Discord and thank you so much for joining us… before we begin with our main story though, there’s something that should be mentioned… because if any of you have been paying attention to the news recently, there’s one thing that practically everypony knows. The Midterm elections are upon us…”
“Few days to go before the Midterm Elections… All eyes are upon them to see if the current delegates for many Equestrian cities will still be their city’s delegates.”
“Many of the folks here are wanting to have new delegates with some fresh new ideas to share because as it stands… this Chamber of Canterlot is being the most unproductive in Equestrian history so far, despite many of the massive changes that we have seen over the years.”
Discord paused for a moment… before beginning to speak. “The more and more that you hear them talk about this, it sounds less like the countdown to a vote and more like a countdown to see who will potentially get fired from their job… But the best pony who happened to describe the situation… might be this guy on EBC news.”
“This is… and it’s something that’s said almost every time… ‘One of the most important elections in Equestrian History’.”
And shortly afterwards, Discord began to add onto it with his own impersonation of the same news anchor. “Oh but I’m serious this time! Take those old Equestrian history books, set them on fire, let them burn in the streets because they will be worthless in a few months. The chamber is up for grabs! I repeat, the chamber is up for F**KING grabs!!!” As Discord got himself back together now, many of the ponies in the audience were laughing as he soon began to clear his throat. “Now… it sounds completely strange to me that all the coverage is focused on the national level of government, where barely anything is happening…… While on the local level… everything is happening. And that brings us to our topic tonight, City Legislatures… the bodies of government in most major cities. Now, places like Ponyville and Appleloosa don’t exactly qualify for that since they are only seen as small towns… but one colt for a school project in Ponyville made it seem like a big city when they did this ‘Hastily Made Ponyville Tourism Video’ as a school project… the video itself is charming, but my favorite part is around the end.”
“... At least we aren’t Detrot… WE AREN’T DETROT!!”
After hearing that, the draconequus cracked up along with the rest of his audience. “That… is definitely one way to make a point… and I don’t have anything against Detrot… it’s just that the first time I went there, I accidentally walked into a building that was the home of a Raccoon Fight Club, to which, I accidentally broke the first rule of that, which is never talk about Raccoon Fight Club!”
That was followed by a few images of what looked like Raccoons fighting each other in an empty building while Discord just watched in horror… and also covered Fluttershy’s eyes so she would not witness what was happening. “Back to the topic though… you may not have heard so much about City Legislatures… or you have and just have been ignoring some of the most ridiculous advertisements for them… including these ones. One of them having a seventy year old stallion looking like he’s pretending to be good at boxing, to another where a pony that’s a certified public accountant is standing with a barrel filled with grains and talking about his life as a wheat farmer to one where it actually shows a mare who’s actually having a hawk land on her forehoof and act’s like ‘the Hawk Whisperer’ while saying that with their vote, they can have the economy take off. Which is surprising… because that mare does not realize that there were actual griffons in the background of that shot.”
Discord had the image of the last one zoom in to show what he was talking about… before getting back to the main topic. “The other time when you might have heard of them though… is when you hear about something crazy happening on the legislative floor,” As he was beginning to list off the some of the reasons, brief clips were shown of those things that he was talking about. “From two ponies getting into a hoof-fight in the middle of the legislative floor at the Vanhoover Chamber… or a city representative in Pi-ami looking at porn while they were in a middle of a debate involving a mare’s right to choose… or this moment in the chamber at San Franciscolt where a member of the legislative chamber left his mic on while talking about his sex life with a colleague… and when he was asked about it later, he was too embarrassed to say anything. Which isn’t really a surprise… because that guy is the only pony I would think knows if something’s ‘turned on’ or not.”
That caused the crowd to laugh in an uproar, just so they can get the images of what they saw out of their heads for a short bit. “Sometime though, if they’re doing their jobs… things can get out of hoof very quickly. Just take this story from Pi-ami.”
“A member of the Pi-ami Legislative Council is now pushing forward on a repeal to ban… and get this… Midget tossing.”
Just as they were going to hear that same pony talk about it, Discord put an end to that clip immediately. “Okay, just stop… Individual rights aside there, let’s all collectively agree that just because it was done in ‘The Pone of Rich Street’, it should never be legal… ever.” Shortly after that small side note, the image of a midget pony getting launched out of a cannon during an office party and the laugh from the crowd that followed, the draconequus wasn’t quite done yet. “Other times, you’ve heard about them because of something insane they’ve said. Take Corn Kernel here from Phoenix, Marezona.”
“Is it just because they’re an Earth Pony or Zebra that some of them are in prison? Or could it be because they didn’t want to work hard in school? Unicorns don’t always work hard often times or Griffons don’t always work hard often times. But often times… that’s what happens. I’ve taught school for over twenty years and I’ve seen many creatures of other species who didn’t want to work as hard and wanted things given to them.”
All the draconequus could do in that moment… was just facepalm himself as he looked back at the camera. “Look Ms. Kernel… but if you’re going to be openly racist like that in public for that matter, maybe not use the phrase ‘creatures of other species’,” He said, before adding on to something else. “There’s not going to be anypony intently trying to listen to you and be like ‘Careless? HEY!! Imprisoned?! HEY!! Creatures of other species? Well, that is rather nice. It balances it out… I guess we’re all clear now’.”
That was when Discord let out a deep sigh as he cleared his throat and looked back at the audience. “Though, it’s no wonder that some of these City Legislatures are seen as crazy legal circus’ when you get clips like this… where a stallion is so angry about all the work that just always happens to come back in a crazy loop… that he lets out this.”
“I feel like somepony trying to release my kind from Neighgypt. LET MY KIND GO!!”
That… had a lot of ponies cheering and Discord cracking up like crazy, shortly before mentioning something. “If Somnambula… used that kind of tone towards the Sphinx that was holding Prince Hisan hostage, it would be like ‘Okay, fine Somnambula! I’ll let him go!! Just calm the buck down!!!’” The Draconequus replied back. “Look, after seeing everything so far involving city legislatures, you might think that they’re just for entertainment… but they aren’t. Because much of the laws that we see in Equestrian society are down at the city level… instead of the national level.”
To prove this, Discord now had an image of a bar graph show up as he looked back at the audience. “The congress in Canterlot, just this year, have passed more than a hundred and fifty bills in the last year… while at the City legislatures, last year, they passed over twenty thousand… and with it, I’m now beginning to see why that stallion in the last clip was so pissed off. I would react the same way if I knew that there were over twenty thousand of them.” With that, Discord himself conjured a stack of what looked like paperwork and smacked it with his lion paw, sending pages everywhere. “It’s too many! There’s just too many of them!!”
After the outburst, Discord soon snapped his talons to clean up the mess that was made before looking back at the audience. “Now, some of the laws that are passed at the level are… well, sometimes relatively pointless. For example, Manehattan passed one not too recently that officially made kegels… yes… kegels their state exercise. Which is fine for those who are into yoga themed foreplay… but still doesn’t make any sense at all. But a lot of the times, they are seen as the testing grounds for democracy and new laws. For example, some cities raise the minimum wage of hired employees while others follow anti-discrimination laws against other creatures… but other times, city laws can go in the exact opposite direction.”
“In the last few years, City Legislatures have passed over two hundred health care restrictions… that’s twice as many restrictions than the ones that were passed the previous decade.”
“That’s right… in fact, a law in the city of Rockville is so restrictive that it may only close the only mares health clinic left in there… meaning that there’s a mare right now in dire need of help and is thinking to herself… I need to move to a more progressive town, like Appleloosa.” The draconequus told his audience, getting a quick laugh out of them before continuing with what he was saying. “City Chambers do a lot of work when nopony is watching… meaning that you haven’t probably even heard of some of the ponies that we just showed you and you probably don’t know who the representative of your city is, do you?”
All the ponies in the crowd looked confused and some shook their heads in response, leaving Discord to make his next point. “Exactly… so, all those conspiracy theories that you’ve heard from your friends about a shadow government are actually true. However, instead of a bunch of billionaires ruling the entire world from a mansion in Germaney, it’s run by a bunch of dull and bored bureaucrat ponies in a windowless committee room somewhere in Whinnyapolis.”
That was followed by an image of a committee panel where half of the ponies looked like they were either half asleep or they rather be doing something else right around now as the crowd cracked up some more. “So, with the help of Princess Twilight Sparkle and a few other ponies, we took a look at City Legislatures and to start… we first found out that no two are alike. Like how each city has something special that represents them, each one of them have a different way of governing and are vastly different in size from around thirty nine of then in Las Pegasus to over four hundred in New Maneshire… Four hundred! Princess Twilight… only needs her five friends and a few other companions to solve most of the worlds problems and somehow, one city needs four hundred ponies in order to issue out a f*cking piece of legislation!”
As that fact began to set in, the Spirit of Chaos continued with what he was saying as he issued another big revelation. “Also… while most of these City Chambers serve year round… a lot of them happen to work only part time. For example… Cloudsdale has only one sixty day session per year. That’s not a legislative congress, that’s a flyer’s summer camp. Except instead of smores and using storm clouds to scare away critters in the forest, these ponies are taking away a mare’s right to choose and using storm clouds to scare away forest critters…”
After this, Discord also named off one other big part of the whole story. “And the last part to this is that with the typical stereotype of sinister organizations that say they’re supposed to be doing something good… a shocking lack of any form of oversight. For example, on the subject of conflicts of interest… many of these lawmakers are suppose to be able to basically recuse themselves. They’re basically asking for them to restrain themselves and practice self control… Legislators like this guy.”
“LET MY KIND GO!!”
“OKAY!!” Discord shouted in response to the same pony being shown screaming in the middle of a legislative session. “So, let’s see how that works in practice… Ponelulu’s city chamber works part time and one of its members, Sunflower Seed, worked as a consultant for one of the shipping companies that was responsible for bringing in imports from countries that were across the Luna Ocean like from Neighpon and Shang-hay… So when the city was thinking of placing a fee on incoming shipments that would serve as a financial bonus for those who have ties with those companies, it was on her to try and point it out to them…”
With a motion of his paw, almost like he was handing out. “So… let’s see how that played out for her.”
“I have a conflict of interest.”
“What is your conflict, Ms. Seed?”
“I’m a consultant with the Equestrian Shipment Committee… They handle imports and I’m hired right now as a consultant to keep track of incoming imports from our trade partners across the Luna Ocean. Thank you.”
“Thank you very much. There is no conflict.”
That got a big shock from everyone. Including Discord… who personally could not believe what he just heard. “What?!! She was working for the shipping industry!! That’s an obvious conflict! The only way for that to be reasonably possible is that if the words ‘Conflict of Interest’ mean both Conflict and No Conflict of interest. Like in Ponelulu when ‘Aloha!’ means both hello and goodbye! That’s the only f*cking reasonable explanation as to why!!”
As he took in a breath, Discord soon spoke up as he looked back at his audience. “And if you are thinking… sure, some of these groups only work several days out of the entire year and some of them seem to not understand the textbook definition for what Conflict of Interest is. Is there anything else we should know? Well, for that, you’re going to have to pace yourself because there is still quite a bit to unpack here. Because, to be fair to these cities… many of them have ethics commissions in order to try and make sure that these politicians don’t do any activities that can get them in trouble. Which is good, right?”
Many ponies in the room actually nodded their heads in response to that while some of them thought that they were effective. Unfortunately… that was when Discord began to speak up again. “However, when the royal guard did an investigation in order to see how effective they are, they found that over 70 percent of the ethics commissions that were established were given grades of D or F. That’s close to 30 out of the 41 commissions in the country. And if you fail an ethics test… that’s twice as bad. Because it meant that there was no f*cking way at all that you tried to find a way to cheat on it in order to pass.”
That was followed with an image of a stallion who had what looked like answers to a test form under his shirt as he attempted to try and pass without getting caught. “And even when the ethics commissions work… because of the fact that there are rules that aren’t strictly enforced and a major lack of oversight, some of these ponies working for the City Legislature still get themselves caught in the worst possible way. And yet… these places are where a majority of the laws in Equestria get passed… and while mostly everyone ignores these bodies… businesses certainly don’t.”
That was followed by everypony staring at each other in a bit of confusion before Discord began to explain more on that. “Because a lot of them have taken advantage of a group called LUNA… and yes, I do acknowledge that the name I just said sounds like that of a spoiled teenaged princess who just crashed her fathers chariot and doesn’t give a sh*t…” That was followed by an image of the same mare brushing her mane while in front of a burning wreckage of what was a chariot. “But to be fair… it’s actually a lot worse.”
“For over thirty years, a private tax exempt organization known as the Legislative UNited Assembly, or LUNA, has brought Lawmakers, think tanks and corporate interests in order to write up model legislation to be introduced and passed in cities across Equestria.”
When the clip ended, Discord felt himself getting back on track as he began to talk once again. “LUNA, not the princess mind you, is basically seen as a bill workshop where many lawmakers would make templates of legislation ranging across all different subject such as immigration and health care while others expand things such as private prisons and for profit colleges. It’s so uphauling… that by the end of this episode, I will have to place LUNA in the end credits as the ‘Special Guest for providing us horrible things in order for us to talk about’ …” A clip of the end credits for the show was then seen with the same text that was provided. “And guess what… these guys are everywhere. One in four city lawmakers are associated with these guys… because it makes their jobs troublingly easier. In fact, some are so textbook generic that they are seen less as actual bills and more like fill in the blank forms.”
As he said that, he snapped his fingers and had some paperwork show up in his paw while also having a pair of reading glasses in his talons as he put them over his face. “For example… this is their model ‘Free Drinking Water Bill’. And at the top of the page, it says ‘BE IT, THEREFORE ENACTED, that the city of [Insert City] will repeal the clean water mandate’. So if you were a lawmaker… as long as you remember the name of the city that you lived in, you can have this bill passed into law.”
With a quick snap, both the glasses and the papers soon disappeared into smoke as he looked back at his audience. “And some lawmakers don’t even attempt to hide LUNA’s hoofprints. For it was known that several of those lawmakers have been fired from their jobs in Canterlot when they tried to get this kind of legislation passed Princess Luna herself… and to those guys… I hate to sound like Celestia’s personal assistant… but you can’t just copy anything that Luna does…”
That brought the entire crowd in an automatic uproar as Discord continued to speak. “It’s just… pathetic… And I think so far tonight, we’ve seen that from the lack of any form of accountability, rules, enforcement of rules in place and the awful behavior, city legislatures are seen less like the testing grounds of democracy that they claim they are… and more like the out of control college fraternity parties of democracy. But unfortunately… we are still not done. Because barely any of these guys get attention whatsoever and it’s hard for you to be angry at somepony when you don’t know who they are… and you might think ‘well, now that I know about them, I’ll just show my frustration to them by not voting to them this year’. However, for over 25 percent of the country, these ponies are running unopposed… And their sole purpose… is that they exist.”
Getting up from his chair, that was when he walked back over to the side of the set and to a big screen that was behind that. “So with that in mind… let’s present to you some of the ones who we can call winners… That pony who wanted to make Midget Tossing the new hit sport in Pi-ami? Winner! That one mare who had interesting theories on species prison populations? Winner! One pony who was caught for weapons trafficking even though he was an advocate for keeping weapons off the streets? Bingo, another winner!!”
With that, more and more ponies names and their faces began to emerge on the screen as Discord looked back at his audience one last time. “The point is, we can call over a hundred different races going on in the next few months where these ponies are winners and all they have beaten is the very concept of nothing at all!!” As he said this, special red, white and blue balloons began to drop down from the ceiling as he looked back at the crowd. “We look forward for you to be wielding a horrifying amount of power in the years to come!”
The Following Morning…
“Sister… can we talk?” Celestia had just finished raising the sun for now as she turned around to see Luna at the entrance to her chambers. Which was surprising because Luna was normally the kind of pony to sleep in whenever she had the chance.
“Luna… you’re up rather early… what seems to be the occasion?”
“Can I ask you an honest question?” Her sister asked as Celestia moved out of her chambers. “Does everypony think I’m a bad pony?”
“Wha-? No! No you aren’t a bad pony… why do you ask?”
“Well… there’s been something that I have been dealing with in Night Court that I think I should address to you. Mostly because it was something that Discord himself addressed in another one of his segments again…”
“You know that Discord is just being Discord most of the time right?” Celestia told her in response. Only for Luna to shake her head.
“Not in this case… Are you familiar with how the legislative systems in cities work?”
“In Canterlot yes…” Celestia replied, before looking down at the floor. “Unfortunately, with my attention mostly being here, I don’t know how the systems in other cities work in the modern era.”
That… just prompted Luna in order to go over to what looked like another TV that Discord had ‘left behind’, press the rewind button and started the video back at the beginning. “Well, prepare to be surprised…”