Virginia 7th District Voters Steve Edwards & Byron Jamerson

traveling to the 9/12 Taxpayers March on Washington today

Steve Edwards and Byron Jamerson today announced their support for Floyd Bayne for Congress.  Both are residents of Henrico County in Virginia’s 7th Congressional District.  Steve is a U.S. Navy veteran and Byron is a plumber in his family’s small business.  ”I am voting for Floyd Bayne for Congress!” Steve shouted as he held up his sign.  Byron added, “Floyd will fight for the regular guy, the small business owner, and the U.S. Constitution.  We need people like Floyd Bayne in Congress!”

Both will attend the 9/12 Taxpayer March on Washington rally that begins at noon today in our nation’s capital.

8/28/1963

8/28/2010

The case against it

From “The Free Lance-Star” Saturday August 14, 2010

Read full article

The Friends of the Wilderness Battlefield and six nearby residents are suing the Orange County, Virginia Board of Supervisors over its approval of a special-use permit to allow Walmart to build a 138,000-square foot Supercenter a quarter-mile north of State Route 3, near the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park, about 3 miles from our home at Lake of the Woods.  The plaintiffs claim that the Orange County zoning ordinance doesn’t “give reasonable consideration to the objective of protecting against destruction or encroachment upon historic areas” and that the Walmart site is part of the Civil War battlefield.

“We’re arguing that there is a substantive defect in the ordinance,” Rosenbaum said. “The plaintiff wants the county to adopt an ordinance that goes along with the state statute.“

Orange County Attorney Sharon Pandak argues that there is no federal or state law that addresses what needs to be included in a zoning ordinance in regard to battlefields and that it is up to each locality to set historic preservation provisions in their zoning ordinances.

The suit also claims supervisors failed to comply with the county’s comprehensive plan and that the Planning Commission made procedural errors in the course of three separate votes on the permit.

In addition to the county, defendants include Walmart and the owners and developer of the 51-acre parcel where the store is to be built.

The trial is set for January 25, 2010.

The case for it

According to Walmart’s website, here are the benefits of this development project:

The project is expected to create approximately 300 new jobs, the majority of which would be full time positions.

• In 2008, Walmart Stores and Sam’s Club gave $13,497,262.00 in cash and in-kind donations to local causes and organizations in the communities they serve in the state of Virginia. Through additional funds raised through stores and clubs throughout the state, Wal-Mart contributed and raised a grand total of $14,753,255.00 as a result of its presence in Virginia.

• An independently-certified study showed that Wal-Mart saves the average American household more than $2,500 per year, regardless of where they choose to shop.
• Shoppers will also benefit from Wal-Mart’s $4 Prescription Drug Program that has saved customers more than $1.6 billion dollars since it was introduced.

• 17 acres of land – one third of the total project area – will be preserved for conservation and left in a natural state.
• Walmart is leading a global sustainability effort to reduce energy consumption through a variety of initiatives that will also be used at this store.

• The average wage for regular, full-time hourly associates in Virginia is $11.20 per hour (Walmart Discount Stores, Supercenters, and Neighborhood Markets). Additionally, associates are eligible for performance-based bonuses.
• Nearly 2/3 of all our management associates company-wide, began their careers as hourly associates.

• Wal-Mart collected on behalf of the state of Virginia more than $277.4 million in sales taxes in 2008.
• Wal-Mart paid more than $30.5 million in state and local taxes in the state of Virginia in 2008.
• The new store will help fulfill the County’s goal of diversifying the economic base that will help fund various projects and priorities.

Should Orange County, Virginia be permitted by the court to build the Walmart?

Something that really drives me nuts is this notion that employees of our government must sell things to each other. The sheer amount of money and energy spent selling so called ‘good ideas’ and ‘personal agendas’ is overwhelming. But there are bigger problems.

Our government is broken. It is badly in need of repair. The only way to fix it is to cut off the money. Stop paying for it. Require the budget to be balanced and only spend what it takes in.

Will that be painful…yes! But what is the alternative, more government spending? I think not.

To get the conversation going, why don’t we push senior entitlements out to age 85 for everyone under 55 today and for those under 60 cut all the senior benefits in half.  Reduce federal government payroll costs by 25 percent with an immediate across the board pay cut, and cap federal executive pay at $125k for all government employees including the Congress. We must restore the civic duty of service and not continue to bankroll federal corruption.

It’s time for drastic measures America. We all need to step up. There is no easy way out. Government employees and Congress are incapable of fixing it from the inside. They lack the knowledge and the incentive. Reform can’t happen under the current spending arrangements and it won’t happen unless the American people step up.

I suggest that if you work for the federal government in any form – military, civilian, contractor, then you work for the American People and your customer is the U.S. Taxpayer.  There are many stewards in the government that can claim to represent the people (elected, appointed, and other government officials).  How do you think they are serving their customers?

What do U.S. Taxpayers get from their government?  Besides security, entitlements, and a range of services, don’t they get to pay for it all?  Is the cost of running the government at record highs?  Who is to blame for that?  The Congress and President for sure… but I think we are overlooking a big part of the problem – government bureaucrats – those tenured pathetic assholes that are stinking up our country.  They hide and the American People can’t see them, but like termites they are burrowed in our government departments eating away at taxpayer dollars.

So, whether you work for the federal government or a company that works for the government, the next time you hear about “the customer” – think about the American People and the U.S. Taxpayer.

Are you meeting THEIR needs?  Do you even know what they are?

The right to kill Americans and not be killed themselves.

For many Americans who have not worked with the federal civilian workforce this may be a surprise or a shock.  In the federal government, it is widely known that outside of law enforcement and security, probably about 25 percent of the people, at the most, do all the real work.  The other 75 percent have jobs and that’s about it.  It’s an employment program – some insiders call it a welfare program, that’s all it is.  Anyone who works with feds knows this – it’s a privately held known fact.  Federal workers are paid more than their private sector counterparts and they produce much less.

So when the President calls for transparency in government he might be sincere but there are a lot of folks standing in his way.  Take Congress for instance – they are hiding things as we just learned about in health care reform.  The President said the other day that some of the provisions that got “snuck in” might have violated his pledge.  He said he would fix it, and that’s all we should expect.  He is our President, and we should take him at his word, nothing less.

However, the President has an even bigger problem than that.  For what I estimate to be the 75 percent of worthless bureaucrats populating the ranks of our government, well, they have a lot to hide.  They know what happens when we find out they don’t contribute anything productive at work.  And boy, I don’t have to tell you that they are sharp to criticize anything that does.  They use their position power to protect themselves from being revealed, and that is what we have to stop.

So the solution isn’t just to cut spending or to raise taxes or anything like that.  The solution is to remove the power from the federal government brick by brick.  The American people should go line by line in the budget and pick out programs they want and then decide – who does it – a government bureaucracy at the federal level, or somewhere closer to the people like the state, local or even the private side.

It’s not going to be fixed from inside the federal ranks and it’s not going to be fixed fast.  To make government transparent the people have to do it from the outside-in.  No blue ribbon commission of ex-Senators and Congressman or top bureaucrats can fix the problem from the inside.  There are too many strong forces with bullshit jobs and lucrative contracts producing little or nothing to hide.  The real fix is for the American people to elect officials who have the guts to make the tough choices and shed the pork.

We also have to look-in at the problem from the outside.  We need real transparency.  The President has called for it, so we should take him at his word.  It’s the only way anything will get fixed.