Tuesday, February 8, 2011

Message Bills and Waste

In today’s Standard Examiner you can find editorials and opinion pieces regarding message bills during the 2011 Utah State Legislature.  The Editorial Staff hits a homerun with their thoughts about these types of bills and how much of a waste they are. See Here) They bring up the example of HB220 by Rep Michael Morley’s, R-Spanish Fork, that would force Utah public schools to not tell students the U.S. is a democracy.  Not only do I find this bill an absolute waste of time and money but also completely contradictory to Republican values as a whole.  I am sorry, but Mr. Morley should not be reelected if this is how is going to spend his time and our money.
The editorial continued with:

"We have so many important issues to deal with on Capitol Hill this legislative session. Why do these dumb bills -- such as bullying schools or putting up our dukes with the "fedral gubbermint" -- waste our time

What's worse, however, is that Morley managed to get seven allies to continue his clutter through the Utah Legislature. The silly bill passed the House Education Committee by a 7-4 vote. Those seven members need to do their homework on what's important in education. We do applaud Top of Utah state Rep. Becky Edwards, R-North Salt Lake, for having the sense to vote against this time-waster."
I couldn’t agree more; however Rep Morley’s bill doesn’t just say our teacher’s can no longer say “democracy”.  It also says our teachers must give a thorough study of the following:

(a) the Declaration of Independence;
(b) the United States Constitution;
(c) the national motto;
(d) the pledge of allegiance;
(e) the national anthem;
(f) the Mayflower Compact;
(g) the writings, speeches, documents, and proclamations of the Founders and the Presidents of the United States;
(h) organic documents from the pre-Colonial, Colonial, Revolutionary, Federalist, and post Federalist eras;
(i) United States Supreme Court decisions;
(j) Acts of the United States Congress, including the published text of the Congressional Record; and
(k) United States treaties.
(4) To increase student understanding of, and familiarity with, American historical documents, public schools may display historically important excerpts from, or copies of, those documents in school classrooms and common areas as appropriate.
(5) There shall be no content-based censorship of American history and heritage documents referred to in this section due to their religious or cultural nature.

Don’t get me wrong all of the info above is important and should be read, but Rep Morley is going a bit far.  The folks over at OneUtah.org have a nice post on this and how HB220 will actually force teachers to bring up some of our country’s dark secrets.  Like how the Founding Fathers chose not to abolish slavery to maintain southern state support and how the writer of the Pledge of Allegiance was actually a well renowned socialist. (See Here) If Mr. Morely has his way, we all be watching our kid’s teachers like a hawk to make sure they don’t say “democracy” and we will be quizzing them on when “in God we trust” replaced “E Pluribus Unum” as the national motto. If the fail to do this we can then report them to Big Borther Morley and get them all in trouble.  (Or if Stuart Reid’s bill goes through the Governor)


From the Standard Examiner
But the waste doesn’t stop here.  Don’t forget Rep Carl Wimmer, R-Herriman, is pushing for a State Gun to represent the values of our state.  The Wasatch Rambler makes some interesting points that not only is ta waste, but in reality Mr. Wimmer has the wrong gun.  (See Here) The Browning M1911 wasn’t even made in Utah.  But heck, we can’t expect Rep Wimmer to do his homework on everything. Right!   Maybe Rep Morley should add this to his list of criteria.  Mr. Wimmer himself told me this would take no time at all but in reality he has wasted hours of the legislatures time discussing this bill.  In committees alone I have timed the discussions and we are up to nearly three hours of waste. 

It saddens me that every year we waste countless hours for message bills that do nothing.  What waste!

No comments: