Local Politics
Well, it is interesting. Before I moved to Staunton and Augusta County before that I'd heard a lot about the inability of the natives to accept newcomers. After many years working with the National Guard units at the Staunton Armory and meeting many of the locals, sometimes on an unintended but rather intimate basis as one does in the military setting, I thought that I was getting to know the locals a bit. It is also a lot of fun to have the political leaders of the day step up to the retaining wall and shake my hand as we watch the July 4th parade each year. Now, I've started getting second thoughts.
You see I supported some of these folks, Republicans in this particular instance, because I thought they were doing a good job. I never personally experienced any overt signs of incompetence or of their disdain for the common folk. Must have been lucky I suppose. There are a few Republicans trying to do a coup on their local committee and illictly take over from their elected chairperson. Why? Because the rest of us ain't good enough to know what's right for us. This same thinking is what prompted Emmett Hanger to promise to oppose tax increases and then agressively support them. It is the same thinking that got us these ridiculous "civil penalties" for traffic law violaters (and only for VIRGINIANS on top of it all).
The old saw is that all politics is local and I am beginning to think that we need a good housecleaning to include several recall actions. Senators Warner and Webb need to go, they seem to think that we're wrong for thinking that as US citizens we have more rights to our tax money than foreign invaders. State Senator Emmett Hanger needs to go (and might in the upcoming election) because he thinks we're stupid for thinking the state should be able to get by on a tax money surplus and not raise our taxes in addition to the surplus. Dittos for City Council, a majority of whom seem to think that the new property assessments didn't raise our taxes quite enough! Governor Kaine for, aside from his other assinine actions of no particular value, for signing the traffic violation money confiscation and discrimination act.
I wonder if my folks felt like this when I was a kid? "How's that?" you say. Thoroughly disgusted, that's how I feel.
Labels: Politics
