I am so grateful to the RI Tea Party and the RI Republicans in the General Assembly. Rather than let us wallow in our misery over high unemployment, deficits or miserable storms, they’ve brought us some wonderful diversions.
First, thank you to Rep. Doreen Costa (R-No. Kingstown). Newly sworn in after riding her steaming tea pot to victory, Ms. Costa immediately went to work tackling one of the most troubling issues facing the state – Christmas.
Right out of the box, on her first full day on the job, Ms. Costa (on a whim, she said) introduced House Resolution H-2011-5005 which directs state agencies to call Christmas trees nothing other than Christmas trees. Do not call them Chanukah bushes, Holiday hedges or Kwanzaa shrubs. Under this resolution (which passed unanimously because no one knew what they were voting for), the Secretary of State must issue a directive to every state department and agency on the subject. Later, there will probably be training programs and a new agency to monitor compliance.
Not content with this great victory, Rep. Costa has now introduced H-5196, co-sponsored by just about all the other House Republicans, to make February 6th “Ronald Reagan Day.” See the text of this bill here.
The bill honors Reagan as a “union leader” and for shrinking the size of government, the deficit, the national debt and taxes. Of course, it is irrelevant that Reagan was actually a union buster and that he increased the size of the federal workforce by 61,000, tripled the size of the deficit and the overall national debt and raised taxes on the middle class four times, and that his own son says that he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease during most of his second term.
But, hey, he’s the Gipper and Rep. Costa and her colleagues love the guy. And besides, what would you want the General Assembly to be doing. Working on our economic woes? Faggedaboudit!
Author: Will Collette