http://www.pensitoreview.com/2011/0...put-in-god-we-trust-on-all-federal-buildings/
Just four months ago the tea party Republicans won control of the House by campaigning on reducing the deficit and promising to focus on “Jobs, jobs, jobs.” But in the 12 weeks since they officially took over, what they have shown is that, despite their new “tea party” branding, this current batch is no different from the GOP pols who ran Congress in the Bush and Gingrich eras. Like typical politicians, the tea party Republicans have not even bothered to deliver on their campaign promises. They have done nothing to create jobs — they haven’t even held a hearing on employment. And their approach to reducing the deficit is to cut programs that help the middle class, sick and elderly or that are counter to their right-wing ideology, while adamantly refusing even to discuss raising taxes on the 400 American families that control $1.27 trillion of the nation’s wealth — that’s $3.175 billion per family.
Instead, the GOP House has resorted to the same sort of ideological gimmickry that was their predecessors’ hallmark. Since they took control of the House in January, the tea party has:
Similarly, this new bill from Rep. Forbes is really just a political goad directed at Pres. Obama, who recently cited “E pluribus unum” as the national motto.
There are apparently about 9,000 federal buildings around the country, so as far as “jobs, jobs, jobs,” goes, if it requires two signmakers to create and install a new sign for each building, that’s 18,000 temporary jobs, or, at the very least, work orders.
Way to create jobs, GOP! Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t it GOP dogma that government can’t create jobs?
But in terms of cutting spending this is bill is a loser. The law doesn’t lay out the specifications for the materials to be used to make the signs, but we can’t have cheap-ass plastic signs praising God on our federal buildings — nothing is too good for God, right? At the very least, the signs should be engraved in marble or cast in brass.
There won’t be definitive figures on the cost until the Congressional Budget Office does an analysis, but let’s say each of the 9,000 signs costs $10,000 to create and install. That puts the cost to taxpayers at $90 million.
What happened to “We’re broke?”
Just four months ago the tea party Republicans won control of the House by campaigning on reducing the deficit and promising to focus on “Jobs, jobs, jobs.” But in the 12 weeks since they officially took over, what they have shown is that, despite their new “tea party” branding, this current batch is no different from the GOP pols who ran Congress in the Bush and Gingrich eras. Like typical politicians, the tea party Republicans have not even bothered to deliver on their campaign promises. They have done nothing to create jobs — they haven’t even held a hearing on employment. And their approach to reducing the deficit is to cut programs that help the middle class, sick and elderly or that are counter to their right-wing ideology, while adamantly refusing even to discuss raising taxes on the 400 American families that control $1.27 trillion of the nation’s wealth — that’s $3.175 billion per family.
Instead, the GOP House has resorted to the same sort of ideological gimmickry that was their predecessors’ hallmark. Since they took control of the House in January, the tea party has:
- Botched their own swearing-in ceremony
- Read the Constitution out loud, leaving out the icky parts about slavery and accidentally skipping entire sections, requiring a hasty do-over
- Wasted time voting to defund health-care reform without bothering to mention the “replacement” law they promised in their “Repeal and replace” campaign slogan
- Despite repeatedly claiming, “We’re broke, we’re broke,” rammed through a $20 million subsidy for private religious schools in D.C.
- Wasted yet more of the taxpayers’ time passing a budget that the president would never sign, in part, because it would have killed between 700,000 and 1 million jobs and arbitrarily cut $61 billion from programs without regard to their effectiveness — ordering, for example, draconian cuts to the Poison Control Centers, Centers for Disease Control, National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, tsunami warning systems, job training programs and even the IRS, the primary government bureau that brings in revenue
- After drastically reducing IRS funding, debated putting the IRS in charge of investigating abortions — a measure that has 221 co-sponsors
- Defunded NPR because of yet another deceptively edited “punk’d” video by federal felon James O’Keefe
- Killed the U.S. Capitol’s composting program
[Virginia] U.S. Rep. Randy Forbes’ bill to reaffirm “In God We Trust” as the national motto and encourage its display in all public schools was approved by a House committee Thursday after a sharp partisan debate.
Opponents argued it goes too far in pushing one religious belief, while supporters said it acknowledges what they consider God’s role in the success of the United States.
A little background: In 1782, the Founding Fathers chose as the motto for the United States, “E pluribus unum,” which means “Out of many, one.” In 1956, at the height of the Cold War, Congress passed a law making “In God we trust” the official motto, a move that was primarily meant as an insult to the godless communists who ran the Soviet Union. Founders Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin and George Washington as well as Abraham Lincoln, all of whom believed firmly in the separation of religion and the government and none of whom were particularly religious, have been spinning in their graves ever since.Opponents argued it goes too far in pushing one religious belief, while supporters said it acknowledges what they consider God’s role in the success of the United States.
Similarly, this new bill from Rep. Forbes is really just a political goad directed at Pres. Obama, who recently cited “E pluribus unum” as the national motto.
There are apparently about 9,000 federal buildings around the country, so as far as “jobs, jobs, jobs,” goes, if it requires two signmakers to create and install a new sign for each building, that’s 18,000 temporary jobs, or, at the very least, work orders.
Way to create jobs, GOP! Hey, wait a minute. Isn’t it GOP dogma that government can’t create jobs?
But in terms of cutting spending this is bill is a loser. The law doesn’t lay out the specifications for the materials to be used to make the signs, but we can’t have cheap-ass plastic signs praising God on our federal buildings — nothing is too good for God, right? At the very least, the signs should be engraved in marble or cast in brass.
There won’t be definitive figures on the cost until the Congressional Budget Office does an analysis, but let’s say each of the 9,000 signs costs $10,000 to create and install. That puts the cost to taxpayers at $90 million.
What happened to “We’re broke?”