ah, reagan. the man, the myth, the godhead of the republican party. he could do no wrong. how do you immortalize his legacy? by replacing franklin delano roosevelt on the dime with his immaculate image:
Congressional Republicans are pushing a bill to honor former President Reagan by putting his profile on the dime.But Democrats intent on keeping the existing image of former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt oppose the idea.
he's not even dead yet. and why is there a bill running around in the halls of congress? apparently it's in response to that reagan miniseries that finally aired on showtime. obviously, a tv movie you don't agree with requires a change in the currency.
but why the dime? it's so tiny. one republican senator from indiana offered his thoughts about why the ten cents piece was the perfect place to showcase ronnie's face:
And Souder said, "It is particularly fitting to honor the freedom president on this particular piece of coinage" because he was "wounded under the left arm by a bullet that had ricocheted and flattened to the size of a dime."
in washington, there's a technical term for a statement like this. it's called 'pulling a reason out of your ass.' it would seem more apt to put his face on bullets so that the evildoers can be cleansed with the steel visage of st. ronald from the inside.
i find all of this reagan worship very creepy. and it's not just the dime they're going after. there's the ronald reagan legacy project, a mission of americans for tax reform, that wants to put reagan everywhere. and that's not hyperbole, either.
The mission of the Ronald Reagan Legacy Project is to honor the legacy of our 40th president, Ronald Reagan. The Reagan Legacy Project aims to fulfill its mission by naming significant public landmarks after President Reagan in the 50 states and over 3,000 counties of the United States, as well as in formerly communist countries across the world.
they, naturally, are all for this dime idea.
and who runs americans for tax reform? why, our good friend grover norquist. you know, the guy who once said, 'my goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.' he's also the guy who compared the estate tax to the holocaust in an interview with terry gross on npr's fresh air:
I think it speaks very much to the health of the nation that 70-plus percent of Americans want to abolish the death tax, because they see it as fundamentally unjust. The argument that some who played at the politics of hate and envy and class division will say, 'Yes, well, that's only 2 percent,' or as people get richer 5 percent in the near future of Americans likely to have to pay that tax.I mean, that's the morality of the Holocaust. 'Well, it's only a small percentage,' you know. 'I mean, it's not you, it's somebody else.'
yes, grover, because a progressive tax scheme = killing jews. i guess godwin's law never made it to the radio.
it's no accident that they want to take fdr's image of the dime. forget that wwii business. it's the evil of the new deal. yeah, it got us out of the depression, but it also began the evil welfare state. and the only way to kill the welfare state is to cut taxes and drive up the deficit so that programs actually have to be cut because we can't afford them anymore. and what gets cut? certainly not pork to big business. just all of those nasty, social services that churches should be providing.
reagan's already got an airport in dc, a turnpike in florida, a naval aircraft carrier, and they're trying for tons more. do we really want to have him jingling in our pants?
Posted by kilgore at December 5, 2003 11:26 PM | TrackBack