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News BIT pushing for wireless broadband by next year09/09/10 - 7:31 am
Supervisors heard a brief report Tuesday evening from Mickey L. Sims, General Manager of Buggs Island Telephone Cooperative (BIT), who discussed the company’s push to extend wireless broadband throughout Halifax…
Passenger in pick-up injured09/09/10 - 7:30 am
A 19 year old passenger in a pick-up truck was injured and transported for treatment early Tuesday morning after the driver of the 2004 Ford F150 ran off the right…
Highway safety better over holiday09/09/10 - 7:29 am
Virginia’s highways proved to be considerably safer over the 2010 Labor Day weekend than in 2009. Last year over the holiday weekend 14 people lost their lives in traffic crashes…
Sports Richmond critical to Hamlin’s Chase bid09/08/10 - 1:51 pm
Denny Hamlin will walk through the gates at Richmond International Raceway Friday morning locked into NASCAR’s Chase for the Sprint Cup title and currently 10th in the standings.
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Opinion The Virginia way
SoVaNow.com / March 04, 2010
If all of a sudden you were put in charge of developing the model society, chances are you wouldn’t choose for your template an area with double-digit unemployment, chronically low levels of education, social disorders as far as the eye can see and a political system that for generations has exalted cronyism as its distinguishing feature.In other words, Southside Virginia has some perfectly wonderful things going for it, and it’s a fine place to live and raise a family if you can get past its retrograde aspects (and let’s face it, retro is just about everywhere you look these days). But does anyone seriously think of Southside as the shining city on the hill that should light the way for the rest? It wouldn’t appear so. But then you aren’t Gov. Bob McDonnell or one of the so-called “conservative” legislators in the General Assembly for whom, amazingly, Southside seems to be a magical Never-Never land. As in, never do anything for the ordinary citizen. Never act in the best interests of the broader community, only cater to the thin slice of the population that “has theirs.” Republicans abide by only one consistent governing philosophy: Never, ever raise taxes, even though the pledge rarely is deserving of the hype. Most Richmond politicians, for all their populist hot air, are more than happy to fob off the bill for government to someone else, or squeeze the middle class in sneaky, unseen ways. Yet the result is always the same: The closer you live to the top, the further away from the wallowing masses you’ll find yourself under conservative rule. McDonnell and his minions in the General Assembly are well on their way to refashioning Virginia, one of the wealthiest states in the nation, after the image of Southside, one of the poorest areas of the Commonwealth. Virginia’s $4 billion budget debacle is the wedge that McDonnell and crew are using to separate Virginians from their senses; the birthplace of Washington, Jefferson and Madison is now Tea Party nirvana, a place where ignorance, short-sightedness and plain meanness have found a home. Southside Virginians, of all people, should understand the folly of eviscerating the public schools, health care, social programs, the arts and other worthy endeavors that partly or predominantly are underwritten by government. We have lived for generations under the “conservative” rule of, first, the Byrd machine, then its heir apparent, the modern-day Republican Party. And what do we have to show for it? A region that young people can’t wait to leave behind. A place where opportunity is the exception, not the rule. You can go almost anywhere in the state — indeed, in the country — and find highly successful people who rose up through Southside Virginia. Yet most never come home. Why is that? Yes, it’s true, Southside enjoys low taxes — Halifax County has one of the lowest real estate tax rates in Virginia. And this is fitting to the extent that people here are genuinely hard-pressed to pay a growing share of their stagnating incomes to the government, although such is not universally the case. Virginia’s abysmally outdated tax structure is not up to the task of generating adequate revenue for vital public services, transportation being the most glaring example, and the strait-jacketed reliance on local property taxes poses a Catch-22 for communities that desperately need to invest in human capital at the same time they must avoid overburdening a low-income population. But the goal always ought to be same: Do whatever it takes, begging included, to come up with the means to provide services that enhance the standard of living, that raise the standard of education — indeed, that raise expectations all around — in order to better a region that has been Virginia’s impoverished stepchild for far too long. So what does McDonnell do in his first months in office? Well, he reopened the rest stops — great for Southside drivebys, not so meaningful for people who actually live here. More relevantly , Republicans who run the show in Richmond intend to gut schools and torch the social safety net in the name of “sacrifice” and “belt-tightening.” And what are these legislators themselves prepared to sacrifice? Their salaries? Their state-funded health care? Why not lay off legislators in numbers commensurate to teachers and cops? But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Delegates and senators are mere members of the courtier class; they are the servants, not the masters. How much could Virginia’s public schools today use the $150 million in annual revenue that the General Assembly (and shamefully, then-Gov. Tim Kaine) frittered away by repealing the estate tax on the ultra-rich? We hear a lot about the need for shared sacrifice; where’s the sacrifice by people who often count as their greatest attribute the luck of being born into wealthy households? Instead of exacting a pound of flesh from working-class families of school kids, why hasn’t the General Assembly reinstated the estate tax, or closed corporate loopholes that drain millions from the treasury? Long after EDS (now Hewlett-Packard) established its data center operation in Clarksville, hometown senator Frank Ruff pushed through a tax break for the company that was completely unnecessary and has served (along with many other sweetheart examples of corporate welfare) to rob state government of much-needed revenue. Ruff’s son is employed at EDS, a fact that may or may not be relevant to the services that the senator rendered on behalf of the company. But as EDS profited, what did the rest of the world get? I get a little tired of legislative failures like Ruff telling us that tough times call for belt-tightening — not because the statement is untrue, but because the admonition is selectively applied. When Republicans are feeling especially yeasty, they roll out the argument that spending on public education has exploded, that cutbacks are appropriate in light of the dollars that have been lavished on academic programs and teachers and children over the years. A day spent in any classroom in Ruff’s home county of Mecklenburg would put the lie to rest; other than the modern South Hill Elementary facility, the county’s school buildings are a half-century old, or older. And to the extent that schools do require more money, it’s because we demand so much more of them. In addition to being responsible for educating the next generation of Southside Virginians (and, sadly, future Southside ex-pats), the schools are the region’s social services agency of last resort — and, increasingly, of first resort. McDonnell’s budget, amazingly, called for eliminating state support for the school lunch program. What more evidence does one need to grasp McDonnell’s wretched priorities? Our governor bills himself as “Bob for Jobs,” a curious piece of marketing in light of looming school layoffs across Virginia. But more important than the short-term shock of public sector downsizing is the long-term impact of McDonnell’s bankrupt philosophies, especially in Southside Virginia. Education is the one force that in time can uplift the region and produce a population and workforce that future employers will crave. At the same time McDonnell is applying age-old concepts of Southside Virginia misgovernance — low taxes, dismal public services — to the rest of the state, he is doing more to undermine the region’s prospects than any governor in memory. McDonnell’s strategy for economic development is to mimic the policies of the Virginia Tobacco Commission, that politician-led flop. (Superimpose the Tobacco Commission’s service area over a map of the state’s highest unemployment regions and you’ll see what I mean). Long-term, there is only one solution for what ails Southside: a laser-like focus on developing a well-educated society, by pushing the ranks from within and recruiting talent from without. It’ll never happen as long as our system of public education is treated as an afterthought and government services are gutted with sneering disdain by Tea Party-style ignoramuses. I wrote during the campaign that McDonnell’s priorities would be a disaster for Southside Virginia. The prediction was off the mark. The McDonnell administration is shaping up as a disaster for the entire state of Virginia, although by virtue of being on the bottom already, Southside will catch the worst of it. McDonnell’s apparent fondness for the failed Southside Virginia way suggests that we’ll soon yearn for the days when Jim Gilmore was governor. And being among the regions that lent McDonnell such fervent support mere months ago, we have only ourselves to blame. |
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