Politics in America is slowly but surely becoming less and less about freedom and more and more about getting what’s mine. That’s because the people we elect have promises to keep, promises they have made to us.
Read any newspaper on any given day, and you can easily find several articles about one group of citizens busily picking the pockets of another group of citizens. For an example, let’s look at today’s Gainesville Times.
Article One
The first story in our list is on the front page (here). Gainesville’s Supervisor, John Stirrup has proposed a resolution that requires the Prince William County police and agencies to verify the immigration status of every suspect and client respectively. Already, so-called immigrant advocates are raising a howl. Undoubtedly, some, perhaps even most of these advocates are well intentioned, but these good souls stubbornly ignore the detrimental effects caused by the flood of illegal immigrants. What about our schools, emergency rooms, neighborhoods, language, and culture? As Stirrup puts it, there is a problem.
Illegal immigration is “something that I think everyone will agree is destroying the fabric of the county,” Stirrup said. “It’s making our neighborhoods unsafe, it’s reducing property values and it’s destroying our quality of life.”
Instead of helping to solve the problem, immigration advocates provide cover for the main beneficiaries of illegal immigration, employers with a seemingly endless need for cheap unskilled labor. If immigration advocates want to help, they should stop blaming the victims and help take on the perpetrators.
Aside: Craig’s Musings provides an excellent example for a letter folks may wish to send their member on the Prince William Board of County Supervisors (here).
Article Two
Del. Dave Albo provided the second story as a guest column (here). Albo wants us to understand the origin of the “abuser fees” in HB3202. Along the way, however, Albo had this to say.
A number of years ago I started trying to find a way to build some roads. Other delegates from Northern Virginia and I put in bills to pay for Northern Virginia roads with existing revenue, including bills to change the transportation funding formulas, bills to make the rest of Virginia send us money for roads, and bills to allow Northern Virginia to keep some of the money it sends to Richmond to pay for its own roads.
Every year, year after year, the bills were killed. The bottom line is that Northern Virginia has 21 delegates and the rest of Virginia has 79. And the 79 refuse to send their funds to Northern Virginia.
Albo vastly understates the problem. The funds that the 79 delegates refuse to send to Northern Virginia did not belong to those 79 delegates; this money comes from the citizens of Northern Virginia. Bob FitzSimmonds puts it this way (here): “While we produce 40% of the state revenues, we receive approximately 25% of the transportation dollars.”
So what did Albo propose to help find more funds for transportation spending? Apparently, he thought the solution was find some group whose pockets we could pick. Hence instead getting bad drivers off the road, we now charge them “abuser fees”.
Article Three
The third article (here) came from Del. Scott Lingamfelter in another column. Lingamfelter described a public hearing sponsored by Dept. of Energy on the Meadow Brook to Loudoun 500 kV Line , a huge electricity transmission power line that will cut through Prince William County. Here are the issues.
The facts of the matter in this situation are very clear to me. There has not been a clear or convincing case that shows how this energy will actually benefit Fauquier. This power line will only cause problems for our families and neighbors.
First, the clear beneficiaries of this energy are in the northeast United States, not in Fauquier or Prince William counties. True enough, we will need more energy in the future, but we can meet our needs by expanding existing power generation in Virginia. This power line project is not needed to do that.
Second, the right of way, particularly through the Elk Run area of southern Fauquier County is simply too narrow to bear this burden. And taking more land from families who live along that line is just unfair.
Third, I remain concerned about the health of the families and schools in the path of this huge project. To date, I am not convinced that there is not an adverse impact on the health of our community posed by mega-lines.
What the problem boils down to is that some folks want electricity but they don’t want to live near dirty power plants. On the other hand, electricity producers do not want to pay the expense of building clean power plants. Solution! Build power plants in West Virginia — where there is cheap coal — and ship the power over the path of least public resistance.
What About Values?
All great things are simple, and many can be expressed in single words: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope.
Sir Winston Churchill
British politician (1874 – 1965)
Virtue is essential for the survival of any nation. Ask the Japanese. Consider their reputation for honor. Even on a pile of volcanic rocks, this honorable people survives and even prospers. Without honor, how would they live?
Consider our own heritage, a Christian nation founded upon two simple commands.
But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees with his reply, they met together to question him again. One of them, an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question: “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”
Jesus replied, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.’This is the first and greatest commandment. A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
When our public policy decisions start to look like daisy chaining pickpockets, what have we forgotten?
