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| - The Yellow Brick Road began as a massive, post-war U.S. public works project in 1961 that was meant to be the showpiece of America's new, federally-funded Interstate Highway System. That very year, American President John F. Kennedy began regularly addressing the nation on live television to rally taxpayer support for the multi-billion dollar undertaking, which consisted of constructing a six-lane interstate freeway paved with pure gold running from New York City to Chicago to Los Angeles, California. In the words of President Kennedy, "We might not beat the Ruskies to Moon, but Goddammit, we'll have the first golden transcontinental highway in the history of mankind!" Despite Congress' shrewd decision to reduce costs by hiring a work crew composed of thousands of Munchkins belonging to th
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abstract
| - The Yellow Brick Road began as a massive, post-war U.S. public works project in 1961 that was meant to be the showpiece of America's new, federally-funded Interstate Highway System. That very year, American President John F. Kennedy began regularly addressing the nation on live television to rally taxpayer support for the multi-billion dollar undertaking, which consisted of constructing a six-lane interstate freeway paved with pure gold running from New York City to Chicago to Los Angeles, California. In the words of President Kennedy, "We might not beat the Ruskies to Moon, but Goddammit, we'll have the first golden transcontinental highway in the history of mankind!" Despite Congress' shrewd decision to reduce costs by hiring a work crew composed of thousands of Munchkins belonging to the relatively-weak Lollipop Guild trade union, the project nearly bankrupted the Federal Government of the United States and caused it to take the extreme measure of violating "Vizzini's Law" by getting involved in a land war in Asia (i.e., the Vietnam War). Indeed, from 1964 to 1975, the U.S. Government paid for the construction and maintenance of the Yellow Brick Road by using the war to rationalize massive tax hikes - it turned out that tapping into widespread fears of a Communist armageddon was a very effective fund-raising technique. Although the Yellow Brick Road was completed in 1971 after only ten years of work, it quickly deteriorated into a national embarrassment due to a lack of earmarked federal maintenance funds, band-aid repairs using "fool's gold," overuse by bi-sexual British pop stars, and vandalism from flying monkeys and ill-willed apple trees. Today, historians remember the Yellow Brick Road as a testament to the exceptional national ambitions born during America's Golden Age, which have since been undermined by subsequent economic and international setbacks such as the Watergate scandal, the Sub-prime Mortgage Meltdown of 2007-2008, the cash-for-gold mail scams of 2010-2011, and the Glam Rock movement pioneered by English singer-songwriters David Bowie, Mick Jagger, and Elton John.
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